Hello everyone and welcome to GN 's Conference Call in relation to a Q2 report announced this morning. Participating in today's call is Group CEO Peter Karlstromer, Group CFO Søren Jelert and myself Rune Sandager , Head of Investor Relations. The presentation is expected to last about 20 minutes, after which we'll turn to the Q&A session. The presentation is already uploaded on gn.com and with that I'm happy to hand over to Peter for some opening remarks.
Thank you, Rune, and thank you all for joining us today. In Q2, we executed well and successfully navigated a challenged market environment with uncertain trade policies. We controlled our revenue and margin and have set us up successfully for delivering on our year in line with our guidance. Importantly, we also executed significant changes in our supply chain that will support the margin expansion towards our strategic ambitions. In Hearing, the launch of ReSound Vivia is progressing well. With the help of Vivia's strong value proposition and our strong market execution, we gained market share and grew 8% organically. We are very pleased with this performance in markets that are growing below the structural trends. We are also excited about our recently announced new superpower hearing aid, ReSound Enso IA, which will help us to build on the strong launch momentum from Vivia.
In Enterprise, we continue to see positive seller growth across North America and the rest of the world in line with what we also saw in Q4 2024 and Q1. In Europe, the market continues to be challenged by a weak macro environment and the indirect effects of the global trade uncertainty. Despite the challenges, Enterprise has successfully maintained a strong market-leading position, making us prepared to benefit when the market turns. Furthermore, FalCom is continuing to build its pipeline, setting them up for a good year, and in Q2 alone they contributed positively to the Enterprise division. With almost DKK 100 million in Gaming, we continue to take market share and deliver 0% organic growth in a gaming gear market challenged by tariffs and lower consumer sentiments.
In summary, this was a quarter with strong execution, navigating an uncertain environment, and a quarter where we will further have increased flexibility and agility in our supply chain, enabling us to respond more quickly to future uncertainties. While we are not fully there, we are gradually leaving the difficulties behind us and look forward to working with our customers, partners, and employees to build a strong future together. With that, I'm handing it over to Søren for group numbers in the quarter.
Thank you, Peter, and thank you all for being here with us today. As Peter mentioned, Q2 was challenged by the direct and indirect effects of the global trade situation. However, by concentrating on the business factors within our control, GN executed well under these circumstances. Our tariff mitigation plan is well underway, and we are confident that it will enable us to ensure a continued strong performance while protecting our margins. In summary, our organic revenue growth ended at 0% excluding the wind down driven by the very strong performance in Hearing, leading to 8% growth offset by a - 7% in Enterprise due to the global trade uncertainty. Gaming performed well in a challenged market, achieving a 0% organic growth and taking share, including the wind down. Our organic growth rate was - 5%, driven by a combination of broad-based growth, margin improvements, and prudent cost management.
The EBIT margin came in strongly at 13%. Our cash flow was solid, coming in at DKK 353 million excluding M&A, reflecting our earnings profile as well as our favorable development in inventories. Now let's move to the P&L and cash flow details on slide 6. Despite a flat top line, our gross margin continues to improve, which in the second quarter amounted to an improvement of 3.7 percentage points compared to Q2 of last year. The positive result was achieved despite direct tariff costs in two out of our three divisions and can be attributed to our strong pricing discipline, favorable business mix, and group-wide synergies from the One GN integration. Reported EBITDA reached DKK 546 million, equivalent to a 46% increase over Q2 of last year, reflecting our strong gross margins, prudent cost management, and no extraordinary costs.
Moving to the cash flow, our strong earnings profile combined with our favorable development in working capital resulted in a positive cash flow of DKK 353 million in the quarter, driven by positive cash flow on our solid earnings level. Our leverage decreased from 4.0 compared to 4.9 in Q2 of 2024. Moving to the next slide and our refinancing process, driven by our strong fundamental operational improvements in recent years, we started to discuss the next refinancing opportunity with our core banking group earlier this year. Following these discussions, we are happy to announce that we have agreed on key terms for a new facility agreement. The agreement is still subject to customary long form documentation, which is expected to be concluded during Q3 of 2025.
This new agreement effectively allows us to refinance up to EUR 1 billion and push relevant maturities to 2028 with optionality for a further two years. On top of this, we have also been able to push maturity of our current undrawn revolving credit facility. The new agreement will provide GN with improved terms and conditions as well as lower interest rates compared to existing loans. As a consequence of the refinancing and the lower general leverage level, this would lead to a significant reduction in net financial items already by 2026. Assuming constant FX and interest rates, we are currently assuming net finances for 2026 in the region of DKK 450 million. With that recap of our group performance, I'm pleased to hand you back to Peter for additional insights across the three divisions.
Thank you Søren. Let me start with our Hearing division. In Q2 we executed strongly in a market which grew below structural trends, where we gained market shares across geographies and channels driven by recent Vivia. In total, we grew organically 8% in the quarter. This was on top of the 10% growth we had a year ago. In the same quarter, our gross margin came in slightly lower than last year, primarily reflecting our disposal of Dansk Hørecenter and the regional sales mix. Sales and marketing costs decreased by 9% compared to last year, driven by prudent cost management and our general group-wide cost program. As a result of the strong top-line development and solid operating leverage, our divisional profit margin ended at 36%. Let's move to the next slide. As mentioned, Vivia is the main reason behind our ability to drive market share gains in the quarter.
Around four months into the launch, we are pleased to share that ReSound Vivia continues to outperform previous major product launches such as Nexia and Omnia in terms of its launch metrics. Our launch schedule is progressing as planned, and by the end of Q2, Vivia was available in most leading hearing aid markets. From a regional perspective, we did see solid organic growth in North America, especially driven by very strong growth in the independent market and VA. While our comparison base at the large US retailer was challenged in the quarter, in Europe, the launch of Vivia had a significant impact on our performance. In total, we delivered double-digit organic revenue growth in Europe, with particularly strong growth and market share gains in Germany and UK.
In the rest of the world, we continue to do well despite several markets that were performing quite weakly, including China, Japan, and Australia, and they all grew below the structural trends. In addition to Vivia, we are pleased to announce the launch of ReSound Enso IA, our newest superpower hearing aid. ReSound Enso IA is our most powerful and most compact superpower hearing aid, which delivers clear sound even in the most noisy environments. This is the industry's smallest rechargeable superpower product, and Enso is our first product introduction in this segment for more than five years. This will help us to strengthen our value proposition to hearing care professionals and further support our growth ambitions going forward. With this, let's move to the Enterprise division in the quarter. The Enterprise division was, as we anticipated, challenged by the direct and indirect effects of the global trade environment.
As a result, Enterprise delivered 7% negative organic revenue growth. As I mentioned in the introduction, FalCom continues to build momentum and contributed with almost DKK 100 million in the quarter. Despite the challenged top line development, the gross margins in Enterprise improved by almost 2 percentage points to 56%, reflecting pricing discipline as well as impact from group-wide synergies. Sales and distribution costs in the division grew by 4% in the quarter, reflecting good cost control and targeted product launch and market investments. Divisional profit margin ended at 34%, positively impacted by gross margin improvement but offset by the development in the top line and sales and distribution cost. Moving to the next slide to provide some additional insights into the Enterprise revenue development Q2, let's look at the regional performance. Our sellout growth continues to be better than our selling growth across the three regions in the quarter.
Sellout was positive across North America and the rest of the world for the third consecutive quarter, supporting a gradual return to growth for the Enterprise market. In Europe, sellout continues to be challenged due to the weak macro environment and uncertainty of the trade environment, making several companies hold back investments. In North America, selling was impacted by a deliberate decision to limit certain product variants in the U.S. in the first part of Q2. In the rest of the world, we saw healthy sellout growth as well as selling growth despite the market being under pressure for a longer time. We continue to believe in the long-term attractiveness of the Enterprise market driven by hybrid working and the ongoing upgrade of collaboration tools to create a seamless and high-quality experience allowing hundreds of millions of people to communicate in a natural, undisrupted, and clear way.
Let's move to the next slide and our Gaming division in Q2. The Gaming division was challenged by low consumer sentiment and an uncertain trade environment, which led to a declining gaming equipment market. Despite these headwinds, SteelSeries performed well and continued to gain market share, leading to organic growth rate of 0% on top of last year when SteelSeries grew with 12%. When including the successful wind down of our Elite and Talk product lines, overall revenue growth for the division was -29%. In the US market, gaming was negatively affected by a deliberate decision to limit certain product variants due to elevated tariffs in the quarter. This was, however, to some extent offset by our implementation of targeted price increases which supported the revenue of SteelSeries in Europe.
Revenue was challenged by low consumer sentiments and a high comparison base where we grew strongly in the rest of the world. Our gross margins ended at 32% in the quarter, supported by pricing discipline and the effects of the group-wide synergies, but offset by some incurred tariff cost. Sales and distribution costs decreased 36% in the quarter driven by consumer wind down and prudent cost management under our group-wide cost program. All in all, divisional profit came out at 12% excluding the consumer wind down, reflecting the positive development in our gross margin and our operating leverage. It should be noted that the direct impact from tariffs was limited in Q2 for gaming as we took advantage of the existing already declared inventory. In the quarters to come, we will start to see a more negative impact from the direct tariff cost.
We will mitigate this with price increases and operations improvements related to our One G and strategy. With that overview of Q2 performance, let's move to the next slide where we'll give an update on our tariff mitigation plan. In Q1 we presented a comprehensive tariff mitigation plan to protect our margins in response to fast-evolving and highly uncertain trade environment. The plan involved a combination of acceleration of our existing supply chain diversification, commercial initiatives, and a group-wide cost program to control the cost base and protect the GN business. A few months into this work, we can confirm that we're executing these initiatives well and that the plan is working as intended. In Enterprise, we've already diversified production significantly and are on our way to a setup where close to 90% of our volumes shipped to the U.S.
can be produced in more than one location and outside of China by the end of 2025. In Gaming, we're also making good progress and will reach a position where close to 90% of the US volumes can be produced in countries outside of China by the end of the year. Related to this, we are pleased to share that these production moves have worked very well without any meaningful production disruption or quality issues on our commercial actions. Our price increases for Gaming and Enterprise in the U.S. market are well underway and have generally been well understood and accepted by our retailers and partners. As for the impact of the tariffs and our mitigating actions, we estimate that we are having a 1% negative EBITDA margin impact this year.
While around 0.5% of this is more of a one-off nature, we will continue to work across our full set of levers to mitigate this in the coming years. I will hand the word back to Søren to conclude our presentation with an update on our guidance.
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It seems like, sorry, if anybody can hear us, it seems like somebody can hear us. At least that's what I'm told right now. There seems to be some issues with at least the telephone line where we are sitting and maybe we should just continue because I get a lot of messages now that actually people can hear us speak right now. I guess let's just continue for now. Please text me if that's not right. With that, let's continue with Søren and then let's see whether we can get our sound working in the studio as we speak. Søren, please continue with the Financial Guide.
Thank you so much, Rune, and thank you, Peter. We are today reconfirming our guidance for the year.
With the divisional performance we have seen in the first half of the year and with our expectations for the second half of the year, we are narrowing the Group organic revenue growth guidance from - 3% to 3% to now - 2% to + 2%. The underlying assumptions include a hearing business which is likely to end in the lower half of the original assumptions due to the North America and expected market growth in Enterprise. We are currently trending in the middle of the growth assumptions provided back in April for Gaming. We are currently trending in the upper half of the range we provided in April for our EBITDA margin and cash flow guidance. We are confirming these to provide some direction in the second half of the year.
We do expect the Group EBITDA margin to be a bit soft going into quarter three as we expect to see the full amount of tariff costs impacting margins in Gaming, while we also do certain commercial investments across our divisions in third quarter that will support our businesses in the important fourth quarter. This should also then lead to a strong EBITDA margin in quarter four, reflecting higher volumes in fourth quarter as we have normally seen it. That concludes our update on the business and I'm happy to hand you back to Runa.
Thank you, sir. Thank you, Peter, for the updates. A quick practical remark before hopefully we get the Q&A up and running. We will invite you for the OYA presentation again this year. This will take place in Nuremberg on October 23rd at 9:00 A.M. Official invites will be sent out in due course.
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Ladies and gentlemen, we established a connection back with the speakers. You may proceed with the presentation. Thank you.
We have concluded the presentation. Let's just move to Q&A, please.
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We can hear you. Can we start with the Q&A?
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Q&A, please.
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Let's get ready for the Q and A, please.
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Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star and two. Our first question comes. Carsten Lønborg Madsen with Danske Bank, please go ahead.
All right, thank you very much. I don't think we got the entire presentation, but let's start with Q and A. I was wondering about the FalCom and the pretty large impact you have here in Q2 from FalCom. DKK 500 million. If we look to our sources and our intel, then there hasn't really been any tenders of this size in 2025 or Q2, etc. I guess my question is, what is this? What will be the run rate for FalCom going forward?
Will you say that FalCom now finally has sort of made the breakthrough we have been waiting for many, many years? Thank you.
Thank you. Carsten, let me soon come to your question. Can I just ask, kindly explain how much of the presentation did come through? Can you just clarify that, Carsten?
I think it ended something like 16, maybe.
Okay, just before the guidance section, assumed on. We take this question.
I didn't hear anything about guidance.
Yeah, maybe what we will do is if we can come back to your question, Carsten. Maybe we'll let Søren, and yes, to conclude briefly on the guidance and then come back to your question.
Okay, we'll go back to slide 16 where we are on the financial guidance. We are here today confirming our guidance for the year. With the divisional performance we have seen in the first half of the year and with our expectations for the second half of the year, we are now narrowing the group organic revenue growth guidance from -3% to +3%. Now changed from -2% to +2%. The underlying assumptions include a hearing business which is likely to end in the lower half of the original assumptions due to the lower than expected market growth in Enterprise. We are currently trending in the middle of the growth assumption provided back in April for Gaming. We are currently trending in the upper half of the range we provided in April for our EBITDA margin and cash flow guidance.
We are confirming these to provide you with some direction in the second half of the year. We do expect the group EBITDA margin to be a bit more soft going into third quarter as we expect to see the full amount of tariff costs impacting margins in Gaming. While we will also do certain commercial investments across our divisions in third quarter that will support our business for the important fourth quarter. This should also then lead to a strong EBITDA margin in fourth quarter reflecting higher volumes in Q4 as we have normally seen historically. That concludes our update on the business and now we can move back to the Q and A.
Carsten, thank you for helping us here and sorry everyone here for a bit of disruption on the technical side. Hopefully we have come across clear and can move now to the questions. As for your questions on FalCom, as you know we have been building this business for a longer period of time. Everything from a product portfolio to the way we approach the market to engaging in many, many conversations on franchises and tenders. It started already last year; we started to make good progress on securing more franchises and participating in tenders. Last year, though, the orders were relatively small. This year the order volume has been building up a bit, and in this quarter we are communicating now it's a little bit less than DKK 100 million just to help you also to get the right understanding of the business. It's not only one customer.
I think we have a couple of larger things happening here in the quarter, and we are not normally disclosing customers for any of our divisions and will not do it here either in FalCom. I can just say that we continue to build the pipeline, continue to build progress, and hopefully we can continue to have a second half quarter of this year also with some good momentum on FalCom. When this business has become stable enough and large enough, we can of course more share the numbers on a regular update. They still do fluctuate quite a bit, but we're trying to call it out here to both talk about the good progress, but also help you all to understand our business in the right way.
Excellent. Just to confirm, you are expecting, of course this will be lumpy, but you're not expecting, for example, $0 in revenue for Q3 and Q4. You are expecting a meaningful sustainable contribution from FalCom for the rest of the year.
Yes, we are. I think that as we see into the pipeline and orders, Q3 probably going to be a little bit smaller, and if things go well, Q4, a very nice quarter again for FalCom.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Hassan Al-Wakeel with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning and thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. Firstly, on hearing it is clear from the results that there are some strong share gains which at least to us are not obviously explained by the VA data that we track. Can you talk about the split of hearing organic growth price versus volume, please, and how the other channels and regions are performing and where you see the most share gains from? Secondly, on margin guidance, a much stronger result in the bag for the first half than expected. I appreciate there is still a second half ramp, but you typically have a stronger second half versus the first. What are the drivers for not raising guidance and what are the key risks to your mind?
If you can quantify the uptick in commercial investments year- over- year. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Let me start and then I hand it to Søren for your second question here. If we look first on the broader kind of both growth momentum and likely share gains, I would say in the U.S. we did perform well, particularly strong in the independent market, which we saw very healthy growth in. Thanks to the strong appreciation of Vivia, we also did fairly well in some other channels, but this was probably the channel that stood out. Also, geographically, it was really Europe and the rest of the world supporting the growth in the quarter where we launched Vivia, and I called it out here in my opening. In particular, we grew very strongly in Germany as well as in the UK, but there were actually several other international markets we also did very well.
I think that if we look back also last year, it is a good example where we grew very strong in the U.S. in the first half and then very strong in the rest of the world in the second half. I think we have seen this over a period. One region is being a little bit more the growth driver and another quarter can be handed over to another region. Overall, we do expect this year to be a year of healthy growth and good market share gains essentially across geographies. The question you have on price and volume, in more general terms, I can say that in the quarter the volume growth was slightly higher than the value growth, indicating some level of ASP pressure. I think that's predominantly driven by channel mix and geographic mix.
Thank you for the question on the margins. It's clear that we are also pleased with the second quarter here, but also if you look at it in sort of in half term years, right, we are sort of just above 10% after the first half of the year and we've set out and reconfirmed the guidance here from 11%- 13% on the full year. Of course, the midpoint would lead you to the conclusion that in the second half of the year we need to be stronger than evidently we've been in the first half and even on average stronger than what we've been in the second quarter.
What we're just paying your attention to is that what we do expect is a third quarter that will have some headwinds on the tariff, especially in Gaming, but actually also that we do invest in our business and part of that investment actually comes in the third quarter, in due course for the fourth quarter where we are also expecting to launch new products. In many ways this is how we see the world and we do expect also, as we normally see, as I said, that the fourth quarter on top line is higher in the fourth quarter and as such you will have some leverage due to that. Think of it as there is a clear bias towards the fourth quarter when it comes to the earnings profile. You asked on more the commercial investments.
I think here and of course it is a little difficult for you guys, right, because we've actually also been winding down the Consumer last year, which actually also had a meaningful commercial full year impact. Of course you need to deduct that. Trust me that in our minds we are still investing in sales and marketing to support our business. You cannot just take it one year or the other at least without adjusting for the Consumer in terms of sales and marketing costs. I hope that answered your question.
That's very helpful, thank you.
Our next question comes from Martin Brenoe with Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi Søren and Peter. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two if I may. First of all on Enterprise, if we take out the FalCom impact, I guess that you saw a double digit decline in Enterprise underlying. We'd just like to hear whether this is also including and you also think that you have taken market shares in here and maybe a little bit why that is happening when you have easier comps with the speakerphones not being such a big headwind as it has been in the past. The second question on that would be heading into H2, how confident are you speaking strictly about Enterprise demand, not about the FalCom part, how confident are you that demand is going to hold up given that a lot of companies are speaking about delayed impacts for tariffs, holding them back a little bit on investments, etc.
Would be super helpful to hear where you get your confidence from. Thank you.
Thanks a lot for your questions here. Maybe I repeat a bit on what I said in the introduction and provide some further context on it. What is encouraging with enterprise business is that we are seeing sellout growth in North America as well as APAC rest of the world in the quarter, but it's actually for both regions the third quarter in a row where we see this. When it comes to Europe, here we have not seen the market turn into growth from a sellout perspective. The reason we're talking a lot about sellout, it's really the leading indicator. It's essentially end customers buying and in between there of course we have the channel. I think that the explanation for Europe, EMEA I think is largely what you said in your question. The macro environment is uncertain.
There are many companies that are having quite strict cost control and investing a bit less, which is impacting how much they spend on NP enterprise equipment. We do believe that over time this will of course stabilize and over time we will of course see Europe in growth as well. Also when it comes to our own numbers, I also indicated that our sell in has been weaker than the sellout and it's a difference with around 5% in the quarter. That means actually that the underlying demand for our products is a bit higher than the revenue which we have here, around the negative 10% as you highlight. For the second half I think that the way we see enterprise is that normally Q3 is about the same absolute size as Q2 and we believe it will be this year.
Also you don't need to factor in the FalCom order I mentioned here in the opening, which then of course need to be compensated for but that is how we seeing the business building towards the end of the year. Q4 is always a bit of a stronger quarter in enterprise, also comps are becoming a little bit easier towards the end of the year and here also we are now gradually launching products into the enterprise segments. We are shipping now a video product P40 and as we have talked about before we are planning to gradually launch new headsets also towards the end of the year. We are planning the year for a bit of a stronger finish and a Q3 that is a bit more in absolute terms the same as Q2 with adjustment for FalCom essentially.
Hopefully that's helpful and giving you a little bit further insight into it. I will just round off with recognizing that it's of course been a longer period of time where we've been seeing pressure in Enterprise, but again I think it is encouraging that the two regions with a bit of stronger macro data, both the U.S. and APAC, here we're starting to see the growth come and hopefully we can soon see that on a global basis. Thanks a lot.
Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Our next question comes from Martin Parkhoi with SEB. Please go ahead.
Yes, Martin Parkhoi from SEB. A couple of questions just back to Hearing. Peter, maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on Germany because as I recall it, it has not been a very, you know, strong—historically it's not been a strong GN market. What kind of position do we have there in the market? I don't expect you to give market shares, at least with a digit, but in round numbers, how big are you in Germany now and what kind of opportunity do you see? Do you also see any positive spillover from the fact that the other larger manufacturers, of course, the latest, are quite active in forward integration in the German market?
And then maybe for Søren, just if we look at the—could you give some building blocks for the margin going into 2026? Not that I expect to get real margins, but of course we are seeing movements in the US dollar. Given the current level, what kind of positive margin impact will that be in 2026, given your exposure to components in US dollar, and then of course also with respect to tariffs? And then lastly, just Peter, on the Enterprise side, you mentioned the product launch, new headset platform. Do you think that it will be a meaningful contribution in the fourth quarter in Enterprise?
Martin, thanks a lot for your questions and maybe I do one and three first and then hand over the second question to Søren here. Yes, I mean, we have seen a very healthy growth in Germany that, as you know, is a large and meaningful hearing aid market. Our market share, as you indicate in your question, is a starting point relatively low. We do believe we have some room to grow there and see this as very positively. We're holding ourselves a little bit back to give exactly volume data per market, but can say we're encouraged by this. We have taken quite a lot of initiatives on how we work in the German market and I think now also with the help of Vivia, I think it's really helped us to have new conversations, more conversations and essentially opening up new possibilities for us.
It's not happening overnight, I see. It's a team making gradual, very good progress and hopefully can continue in the year with good Q3 and Q4 also. If I comment on the Enterprise side and the launches, I think that the products which we will launch hopefully will be very meaningful. We are very excited about the products and it will be some launches this year and you should see us making more Enterprise headset launches next year. It's essentially a range we're building up where launches will come over time. In Q4 alone, it will possibly positively contribute. It will not be very significant. It takes some time before you're building up the full volumes around the launch. I think you will see more of the impact coming into next year, but some impact in Q4.
Yeah. Marcin, I think you're asking me for a little bit of a crystal ball on the US dollar. Maybe not directly, but I think it's important to sort of—it's correct that of course the dollar has come down and normally that of course also assists us. That's actually true. There are also other currencies where we actually do sell meaningfully, whether it's in the UK, in Japan, or in Australia. That probably has a headwind to us also. I think it's a little early to speculate in whether or not the US dollar will help us in a meaningful way. Let's see where we end the year. I think most of us will remember when we reported out in February for 2024, right. Suddenly the dollar was really high and now it's really low. I would suggest at least that we currently do not speculate much.
Of course, normally it is a little tailwind for us with the dollar. You need to bear in mind there are other currencies actually going in the opposite direction, so I'll not log it in yet. That's probably also what you will hear me say.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Veronika Dubajova with Citi . Please go ahead.
Hi guys and thank you for taking my questions. I have three please, if that's okay. Hopefully they're pretty short, but the first one is just would love to get your thoughts, Peter, of the current market conditions in the hearing aid market, especially what you're seeing when you look at July and August and I guess in particular sort of your assumption that the market improved in the back half of the year a little bit. Is it driven by what you're seeing on the ground? Is that driven by kind of, you know, just speculation? Maybe as you talk about that, you can also comment on some of the comments we've heard around Southern Europe and whether that's a region that matters for you and if it's getting any better. That's my first question.
My second question, I was hoping you could quantify the hearing aid growth in the U.S. excluding the large customer where you've lost some market share or at least give us a flavor for the sort of impact for that. The final one, probably better for Søren, is just can you break out the contribution from price to the growth in Enterprise and Gaming and whether that improves further as we move into the back half of the year. Thank you guys.
Thanks a lot. Thank you for your questions here. I believe that we have talked about the market being below its structural growth and several of our peers, I think, are indicating the same things. To our understanding, we probably observed the same markets and talk about them in similar ways. Our assessment is that with the current momentum we have, I mean we are 1%, 2% below what we normally see in market growth. If we look for the second half, we have taken planning assumptions to see similar kind of patterns in the second half. As we indicated here in our guidance section, in the written part, we are saying we're trending towards the lower half of the planning assumptions for hearing and that is only due to the market assumptions have slightly changed.
If there would be a more normal market, we will likely have been able to grow slightly stronger this year thanks to the good launch we have with Vivia. If I comment a bit on the US retailer, I should first say the launch we have with Vivia, or it's sold at the Jabra brand there, of course, is going very well. We're very pleased with the continued collaboration. We feel very good about the partnership. I think that it is, of course, now a situation with four players instead of three players and that is naturally putting some level of pressure on our business. We did see some level of pressure in the quarter for hearing business. In total, there probably is around a percent organic growth headwind in the quarter.
I would say that data channels have performed very well and we also feel good about the way we're working in this retailer.
On your third question, sorry.
Peter, please can I just clarify that that's 1 point for the US growth or 1 point for the group growth?
Not for the Hearing division growth.
Hearing in total. Thank you.
Thank you.
With the final question on pricing, we also spoke to it a little bit in the opening, right. We have actually taken price improvements in both Enterprise and Gaming, and they were also positively contributing in the second quarter. Bear in mind that when you look into the rest of the year, in Gaming we took advantage, as we said, on the inventory we did have that was declared already. There you don't see the same impact in quarter two of the negative side of the tariff. That's one thing. The other part is that it was not during the full quarter necessarily. We took the price improvements in the second quarter.
I think you should think of it as in Gaming it's probably a little better coming out of quarter two because of the inventory, and when it comes to Enterprise, probably more balanced in terms of the price improvements. Of course, we still remain open to continuously seeing this as a lever, as a mitigating plan to the tariffs as we also set coming out of First Quarter. That would be my guiding points for the second half.
Great. Thank you, guys.
The next question comes from Niels Granholm-Leth with Carnegie. Please go ahead. Maybe your line is on mute. All right, we continue with our next question from Maja Stephanie Pataki with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. If I may, from my side, first of all, you've talked about the challenging macro conditions in Europe that were a challenge for the Enterprise growth. I was wondering what is it from your perspective that needs to happen? Is it, you know, calming waters when it comes to tariff talks or is it really GDP growth that needs to pick up for you to see Enterprise growth returning in that segment? The second question, when we look at Gaming, have you seen any change in order behavior from an inventory perspective in Q2 from your customers? Lastly, maybe that's a very general question.
I'm not sure you can answer. The hearing aid market has been very volatile over the last few years. 2025 seems to be another challenging year. What do you see as the main reasons for the subdued growth or also for the volatility? Because it has been seen as a very defensive market and I see that there is still growth. Still, the kind of volatility is unprecedented. Thank you.
Thanks a lot for your questions. For the European enterprise business and the comments on to return to growth, I think it's a combination of the two factors you laid out in your question. A bit stronger general macro environment, getting some macro growth in Europe. What we also hear is that several larger companies are of course also trying to adjust to the environment of tariffs and uncertainty over that. Several larger companies have been having different types of cost programs in place, restricting investments and CapEx spend basically. We believe it's a combination of those two, and hopefully here in the coming periods we will see some level of turning here driven by these two. The second question on gaming. No, I don't think we have seen a real difference in order behavior or inventory management practices.
I think it's actually been a period of very close collaboration in the U.S. between our teams and the larger retailers. There was a period where we were a little bit unsure on how much supply we could support given the whole difficulty and uncertain trade environment. I think there's been a strong collaboration to prioritize what products to promote, what products to sell, and how to do this. I think that's probably been what's been a bit unusual in the period. In terms of inventory management, ordering behavior has been fairly normal, I would say. The last question on the hearing market volatility, I think we recognize this also. I don't think we can pretend we have the answer to it, but our humble observation is that we saw that particularly early this year, the consumer sentiment in particular in the U.S.
really affected the way that hearing aids were purchased. It's essentially in many cases elderly consumers hesitating a bit on what is a fairly big purchase. At the same time, we still believe it's very resilient over time. The hearing aid industry is of course supported still by an aging population and a population that likes to live a full life until later in their lives. We do not downgrade in any way the kind of belief on the growth in the hearing aid industry over time, but we recognize it's been a little bit more volatile than normal. Still, we believe the structural growth over time is certainly there. Finally, I should say, and that was probably a bit implied also in your question, there's also been periods of growth above normal growth trends the last few years.
It's been slightly on and off, but if you take an average of this, this actually looks fairly stable and in line with historical kind of trends.
Thank you. May I just add a follow-up here? Since you're calling out consumer sentiment, can you give us a bit of qualitative feedback on how your OTC division has been doing in Q1, when it was really, really bad, the consumer sentiment versus Q2? Has there been a change, and how is that business performing for GN?
Yes, thank you. We can confirm that this part of our business has also been affected in the U.S. largely due to the consumer sentiment here. Also, in the quarter we saw some level of growth in Q2, but on a relatively low level. Q1 was a little bit more difficult. This is a segment that is fairly sensitive to the consumer sentiment. We can confirm. At the same time, in other periods we've seen very high growth, so it probably follows quite a lot the pattern we just spoke to here.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Niels Granholm-Leth with DNB. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Now it works. Firstly, could you talk about your distribution cost in the quarter that dropped about $100 million. To what extent is this driven by cost curtailment or is it something that we would only see for this quarter? Secondly, could you talk a little bit more about the expected market response to the price increases that you have implemented on the US market? What are you hearing? Are you expecting end user demand to be affected by these price increases? Thank you.
Hi. Hi Niels. Good that you came through here in the end. In terms of this distribution, I think we have actually seen some cost savings during the quarter, and of course we are still focused on ensuring that that is a pattern we also can see going forward. It of course also follows how our goods are shipped around and in many ways here. The second quarter was of course a little bit out of the normal with the tariffs we've seen. Of course we're satisfied to see that we are having improvements in distribution costs and then of course are aiming to a future good level also for that.
You expect a level of below $1 billion per quarter is recurring.
I wouldn't say that in terms of setting a level of. When you say sales and distribution, I mean of course it sits in marketing within which we have distribution. In that sense, it was a lower quarter. Bear in mind also that we actually deliberately said coming out of First Quarter that we would put in place cost containments as part of the mitigating plan. That's also what we have seen work. We are of the opinion that we have it in good control, know where things are going, and we also reserve the right to invest in the places where we would like to invest. That's also what I said before when coming into the third quarter. Actually, fourth quarter is also high on sales. It's really a combination of the sales and marketing and distribution cost. Right.
We are following the plan. We were cautious in quarter two. We now think we have a good plan and of when we are moving the operations around in Asia. In that sense, we are still expecting a higher sales and marketing cost to actually support the growth of the company. I think that was probably more your underlying question that you can of course confirm.
Anils, if I take the second question here. On price increases, we have increased prices in the U.S. with around 10% for Enterprise and around 10% for Gaming. The Enterprise price increases have taken effect a little bit earlier than the Gaming ones, mostly due to the way it works in our contracts and mechanisms to increase the prices. On Enterprise, where we have a bit more, what should I say, weeks of observing how it's been working, I can say that it's been working well. It's likely driven to some kind of reduction in volume. In total these price increases should give some level of support to revenue growth and of course perhaps even more important to protect our margins. I would expect it to play out similarly for Gaming, but we don't have a full set of data to observe it yet.
Would you expect a volume decline due to these price increases in quarter three? Is that a fair assumption?
There are many factors that contribute to the price increase alone. Yes, but then there are other things that are driving volume increase. There is an underlying volume growth in the markets. How the total plays out, I'm not sure the total will be a volume decline, so to say. The gaming market here, as I said in the opening of our call, has been in decline and quite significant decline in the last quarter where we certainly have seen some kind of volume decrease. I'm not sure that is related to the price changes, though it's probably related more to the general consumer sentiment.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Andjela Bozinovic with BNP Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Just two questions. First one on Hearing, so on Vivia, again a successful order with market share gained. Can you share with us any feedback from the audiologist on Vivia versus the competition, like specifically Infinius, Sphere, and the AI feature, and any drawbacks of the product that you're hearing exist? The second one is on Enterprise. Now that you're seeing three quarters of positive sellout in Rest of the World, in America, do you feel more confident that you will be able to successfully guide on Enterprise going forward? It has been very volatile amid the macro concerns and tariff concerns. Do you feel like now the situation is calmer and you will be able to guide more specifically? Thank you.
Thanks a lot. Starting with Vivia, I prefer to talk more about what we hear about our hearing aid and be a little bit careful on how to talk about our peers' products. I would say that generally what the hearing care professionals are saying about Vivia, which they really appreciate, is that it's building on the very strong performance of Nexia in terms of hearing in noisy environments and then adding the AI capability to this, which is essentially helping them even further when you turn on this program to reduce the noise level in the noisy environments. It is essentially taking a very well-performing hearing aid, Nexia, to the next level. We are doing that with almost no compromises. It's still the same small form factor, the good battery lives, and it's easy to work with.
While there is a price increase, it's still seen by many hearing care professionals as a reasonable price increase for the strong value they're getting basically, and they continue to get good feedback on how the quality works and the whole experience of working with Vivia. I think it's really the totality of factors making it a very complete and appreciated hearing aid. Of course, the alternative from our competitors has slightly different characteristics. I think it's quite clear from us that what we're offering here with Vivia is appreciated and supporting our growth here. For your second question on Enterprise, I think it's a great question and you highlight it's been a market with more volatility and uncertainty and we've seen that this year. We got an added kind of element of this with the new trade policies coming in the U.S.
I'm hopeful we can get less uncertainty over time. If we get that, I think what you imply in your question is very fair, then I do believe it will be easier for us to guide in a somewhat more narrow way and help you all understand how this evolves. What we've seen in Q2 and the actions we have taken, I think we have left quite a lot of the uncertainty gradually behind us. What remains now is one of the earlier questions we just answered, which is Euro and the macro uncertainty in Europe, and hopefully that can also soon stabilize and we're getting all to all in a more stable environment. We of course look forward to that also. In the meantime, I do like to highlight that our teams, I think they're doing a very good job on controlling everything they can control.
We're working on the new products we mentioned before. I also think the execution in the market is good, maintaining healthy market shares and margins, making us ready to benefit at the time the market terms.
Perfect, thank you so much. If I can squeeze in just one short follow-up, if you can give us any indication of the outcome profitability.
Yes. Not sure. We are not giving exact numbers, but I think you should think about a similar gross margin profile as we're having in the Enterprise division. That is also the ambition we have as we move forward.
Perfect, thank you so much.
Our next question comes from Martinien Rula with Jefferies . Please go ahead.
Guys. I hope you can hear me. Okay, thank you very much for taking my questions. I have two, so the first one on hearing. Obviously, you now expect the hearing division to lead to the lower half of the 5%- 9% range. I know you've commented on softer than expected markets, but I was wondering if that was also triggered to some extent by the current dynamics you're seeing at Costco and or also from the fact that one of your competitors is on the verge of introducing a new product. I'll let you have some time to answer the question before I ask you the second point if that suits you.
Thank you. As we mentioned here in the guidance section on the planning assumption, it is due to the market growth. When we set our guidance here, we did factor in that we believe there will be some kind of changes from three to four suppliers in the large US retailer, as well as we did factor in that we did expect some of our competitors to launch products in the year. I think it's solely due to the market dynamics and growth we are indicating the low end of that planning assumption.
Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. For the second question, I appreciate the comments that you've made on the tariff impact being roughly 1% and how you have that being kind of a temporary nature in the sense it's related to the relocation of production and so on. I guess my question is, should we expect you to continue diversifying your manufacturing footprint in the future? If so, would the cost related to that be a meaningful drag to your mid-term margin guidance?
We laid out this strategy around two years ago to diversify our manufacturing footprint and essentially did it to have more resilience and flexibility for possible shocks coming. The way we're set up now is essentially in most cases for most product lines to have production in China and one more Asian countries. We feel good about the setup we have today. At the same time, we should not rule out that we might make further changes over time if we find locations and partners where we see that's beneficial for our business. It's nothing we have planned today. The setup we have now, we think it's a very good setup, providing a lot of flexibility for us, flexibility of course for tariffs, but flexibility for other type of scenarios as well. The 1% impact this year on margin, 0.5%, are more one temporary in nature.
I think it's essentially what we see now. We will for sure continue to work on the full set of levers to continue to improve our margins. That is still a very important kind of priority for us as we're developing into the future.
Okay, perfect. Thank you very much.
Our last question for today's call comes from Susannah Ludwig with Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Great, thanks. Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. I have two please. First, could you just provide your current expectations for the tariff impact on margins in 2026 and I guess what are sort of the assumptions behind that expectation? Do we stay at sort of current levels? Second, could you explain what's driving the sharp jump this quarter in receivables from associates which looked like they were up around DKK 300 million? Are we correct to assume that those are largely receivables from your Beltone network?
Okay, thank you so much. First, for the margins for next year, we are not yet guiding next year in terms of margins, so a little bit refraining from how precise to be here. If we look on the tariffs alone, as I just talked to, it is having an impact around 1% this year or half or more of one of natures. There are also quite a large set of other levers we are working on to improve our margins. Essentially, how we will guide for next year, we will come back to that a bit later. We certainly have the ambition to increase some audience coming into 2026.
Do we think about the tariff headwind going down between 2025 and 2026, or is the tariff headwind sort of similar? If you could directionally give us a sense, because obviously you'll have a full year of tariff impact in 2026 and different rates. You won't have these temporary costs. Just trying to think about directionally what we should be thinking of as the tariff impact incrementally from 2025 to 2026. Is it positive, is it negative, or roughly the same?
I would probably more think about it because the timing effects here, the tariffs were announced, of course, in April. They've been implemented and changed many times this year. I do think it has been a quite evolving situation this year as we know. I think you should more think about it. The way we are leaving this year is probably with a kind of a residual tariff effect around 0.5%. That doesn't mean that we are not thinking through additional ways to manage that, but it's probably what we see today. We will work on everything we can to see how we both can improve margins and lessen that impact.
When it comes to your second question, let's get back to that offline. It could be the way it's reflected in the report. Let's clarify that offline to make sure that you're looking at the right numbers.
Okay, thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this was our last question. I hand back over to the management for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much, operator, and thank you for the call. Sorry for all the mess with the line today. Hope everything went clear in the end. See you all on the road.