Welcome everyone to Synsam Group's Q&A session as we released the interim report for the first quarter 2026 this morning. My name is Frida Leim and I'm Head of Investor Relations at Synsam Group and the moderator of this Q&A today.

I'm joined by our CFO Per Hedblom and our CCO Jimmy Engström. Those of you watching this live, you're welcome to ask your question in the chat and we will try to answer as many questions as possible.

We have also our analyst from Citi joining us. I would like to welcome and hand over to Yang from Citi.

Hi Yang, and welcome with your questions.

Hi Frida, and hi everyone. Thanks for having me back on again.

As I always start with a current trading environment question, but I feel that it's even more relevant this time with the effects of the Middle East conflict. The question is, would you say you saw negative impacts on customer behaviors in Q1?

How has it been trending in April and maybe the first weeks of May in terms of the sentiment?

There's been a cautious consumer environment quite long time now, and in the start of the first quarter, it was quite cautious actually. Some improvement at the end of the quarter, we would say, if we look at the development during the quarter.

To what extent the sentiment then in March, I would say, has been affected by Middle East, we can't really tell, but of course there is a cautiousness among consumers. Trading, we can't comment on trading, but March was, as we said, somewhat better than January, February.

That's helpful. I know this is not a trading color, but in general, what is your assessment at this stage for the full year in terms of where do you think the cautiousness among consumers are heading?

No, really, at the start of the year, we had some hopes that consumer sentiment would improve. I would say right now we can't comment really.

It's difficult to say anything about consumer sentiment during the year.

Thank you. I appreciate there's a lot of volatility still out there.

I want to spend a little bit on Denmark specifically. Very good performance.

Can you maybe elaborate on the changes to the lifestyle program that you mentioned in the release and specifically when did that start in the quarter and do you expect to see similar magnitude of benefits to sales growth for the rest of the year?

This is a technical aspect. We didn't change the offering towards consumers, rather how we handle in our books the belongings from 1st of January.

That has a positive technical impact on growth and technically impact negative on gross margin. We will see an effect also in Q2, Q3, and Q4 technically from this.

The most important thing about Denmark, I would say, we do have a positive growth regardless of if this technical aspect in Q1. Our program of improvement Denmark is continuing.

Thank you, understood. The way that I understand it is that in Denmark you've got probably around a point of underlying growth, and then on top of that, you have 370 basis points of the benefit from the technical changes to the buybacks.

The question is going forward for the coming three quarters, assuming similar magnitude from the technical changes, what do you expect the underlying demand in Denmark to look like? Do you expect the trajectory to continue being positive from here?

We don't expect anything really and our efforts focus on growth and profitability in Denmark.

Got it. I want to move on to the cost side of thing.

This is again back to the whole Middle East conflict topics. I saw in the release that it was mentioned that Synsam is seeing higher costs given rising inflation.

Can you maybe provide a little bit more details around what type of costs are you seeing impacted, how much increase are you seeing, and how much was the impact in Q1 if you could quantify that, please?

We have mentioned that we do have some effects of store openings. We have a ramp-up period of 2 years for store openings.

That has an impact, for example, on Finland and Norway, somewhat in Sweden as well, of course. Then, of course, there is a sort of an inflation aspect, but not on a large magnitude, I would say.

We do have cost programs in place to ensure that we keeps cost in check. In this quarter, the costs were somewhat higher.

Do you want to add, Jimmy, to some extent?

No, we have had some years now with, of course, a less than ideal macroeconomic environment, and inflation was high and then it came down. Now there are sort of a new situation.

When in regards to Q1, sort of the recent sort of events in the Middle East, I would say is no direct impact really.

Thank you. Maybe still on that topic, is there anything you can comment on whether at this point you're seeing pressures from your suppliers and also within your own manufacturings and your store network?

How are you seeing the cost of energy or electricities? Are you guys hedged for the years?

How did that work?

Of course there are increased transportation costs and so forth, but we don't hedge against such cost. You want to add, Jimmy?

No, exactly. Flight transports, I would say.

That is the one that have seen sort of a more of a sort of an instant effect. Typically we transport by shipping and we only fly things in when absolutely necessary.

Otherwise, I think it's early days, as we all know, in this. How it will develop we all will, of course, follow.

When it regards to Q1, that was sort of the only impact we could see from this specific Middle East conflict.

Thank you. I want to touch upon the sales mix and general discounting campaigns.

I noticed that Sweden deliver very good profitability and you called out the sales mix specifically in the release, but there wasn't any mention of mix in other regions. Anything you could comment on that?

Are you seeing the same, less, or more discounting or campaigns in different regions?

We do mention mix in Norway, I think. We had a small increase in gross margin compared to last year.

There we have some mix effect. In Finland, we do mention that we have continued reduced discounts.

That we mention actually in the report.

Could

you repeat the question, please?

Yeah. How do you in general see that trending through the year, and especially on the discounting front, because of consumer sentiment concerns?

We try not to do forecasts, but we can describe in general how we work. This industry is to a large extent affected by discounts and always been.

When we look at the impact of weak consumer sentiment, we historically have seen an impact on trading down, lower ASP, rather than necessarily gross margin.

That is clear. Putting all of that together, we have concerns around consumer sentiment yet there's still some underlying growth in the business.

You have questions around inflation's impact. Do you see the likelihood of margin progressions for the better through the remainder of the year considering all the different headwinds and tailwinds we have?

Or do you think that there's a greater likelihood of protecting the margins at its current level through the rest of the year?

How should I put it? We can all talk about ambition.

Our ambition is to have an EBIT margin of 12% to 15% in the medium term. We are at 12% now, of course ambition is to increase that.

Clear ambition, I would say. That being said, the consumer sentiment and macro environment is, of course, changing day by day.

We take all action we can to improve growth and profitability.

Thank you. For the corporate cost or other and central functions cost, in this quarter, you you reported a positive 7 million figure.

Can you help us understand what that on the EBITDA levels, can you help us understand, what what are the drivers behind this plus 7 and for the rest of the year how should we think about modeling this line?

Some components of this is, of course, the cost program we've been performing. We continuously work to become more efficient, and that is paying off.

That's one part. Also our factory in Östersund, Frösön, is gradually improving its profitability, which also helps us.

A lot of different components, but these are the two one two important ones.

If that's the case, do you expect to see a little more positive values through the rest of the year given that you're talking about benefits of improvements in manufacturing?

We have said we're going to double the output in 2026 compared to 2025, 200,000 frames I believe we said. That gives the opportunity to increase profitability in the factory specifically.

Also with our cost programs, we have an ambition to manage costs centrally. That could help us, yes.

Okay. I guess around this topic of cost programs and inflation headwinds and whatnots, hypothetically, if you were to see higher than expected pressures from the current backdrop, would you consider the pace of your new store rollout in order to help alleviate some of the pressures, to help with profitability?

Would that be one of the considerations?

We have a plan regarding store rollout, and that is not affected really by short-term effects. We will act upon the opportunities we see in the market for opening up new stores.

We have said 90 for the period 2024 to 2026, meaning somewhat fewer in 2026, which you can see now if you take the Q1 and Q2 together. That being said, we will act on opportunities.

If we see more opportunities opening up, there may be more establishments, but not as a response to the macro environment or consumer sentiment really. I do want to highlight one thing in this quarter.

If we look at growth and everything, and the lifestyle subscription, we need to highlight that. We have a customer growth in customer base of 7.2%.

7.5% is a goal, medium-term, but we're almost at that goal in a quarter with cautious consumers. We do want to highlight that aspect that the subscription is performing well in this quarter.

That need to be said, I would say.

I think, adding to that, we should also remember what our business really is, is to sort of treat one of the most common health problems, vision correction need. That, of course, means that consumers, they do take care of their vision regardless.

Then, when there are more cautious environment, of course it might impact that you trade down a little bit. Still you need to take care of your eyes.

That, I think, is always important to keep in mind.

That makes sense. That's the beauty of being within the healthcare space.

I suppose the lifestyle subscriptions comes into play specifically when there is consumer cautiousness around. I suppose that really hit to my list of questions and on that very positive note.

Thank you, everyone.

Could I add one detail, though? Because there's been a lot of thoughts around our cash flow and amortization of leasing debt, which that amortization increased now in Q1.

We have some increases in the number of stores etc., but I would say the large increase from Q1 last year is, to a large extent, a temporary effect if I'm going to look forward. I need to highlight that.

That was not a question, but I think an important piece of information.

Great. Thank you, Yang.

It's time to wrap up. Before we do so, Per and Jimmy, anything additionally you would like to add?

No,

but I think we can summarize that we do deliver increased profitability in the quarter, both in absolute terms and also in all margin measures. Strong development of net income growing by more than 50%, and organic growth and like-for-like was delivering regardless of the sort of cautious consumer market.

Also that we are delighted to see that we have a positive organic and like-for-like growth in all markets in the quarter.

Great. Thank you so much, Per and Jimmy, and thank you to all of you watching this live.

If you have a question you have not received an answer of today, please email the question to email address below, and we'll make sure you get an answer. I think says thank you, and see you next time.