Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Conference Call for Pandora's Q2 Results. I'm Bilal Aziz from the Investor Relations team, and I'm joined here by our CEO, Alexander Lacik, CFO, Anders Boyer, and the rest of the IR team. As usual, there will be a Q&A session at the end of the call. If you could limit yourself today to two questions at a time, that would be wonderful. If you could please pay attention to the disclaimer on slide two and then turn to slide three. I will now turn over to Alexander.
Thank you, Bilal, and welcome, everyone. As usual, I'll start with a quick snapshot of the overall quarter. For Q2, I think it's fair to say it's been another quarter of solid performance from Pandora, especially when you consider that we delivered these results in a very challenging external environment. That's not only when it comes to consumer sentiment, but also when it comes to significant volatility in FX, commodity, and headwinds through tariffs. Despite this, we're progressing on our overall mission, making Pandora known as a full jewelry brand. As you know, this is the main focus of our Phoenix strategy. For Q2, we delivered 3% like-for-like growth, which alongside network expansion drives 8% overall organic growth. Once again, you'll see within the numbers that our core is stable, and then this is complemented with good growth in fuel with more, exactly in line with our overall mission.
On profitability, I already mentioned the three types of external headwinds we're facing. I say this because they're quite significant now. Despite that, you'll see we're still delivering very strong profitability with gross margins close to 80% and the EBIT margins in the high teens. As I just mentioned, the underlying performance of these metrics is even stronger. That means our core profitability drivers offset a lot of the external headwinds, which I think is a testament to our strong business model. Finally, our return on capital continues to remain very high at 44%, and we continue to drive good EPS growth. That's especially true if you ignore the effect of foreign exchange, which has been moving around a fair bit recently. All in all, quite a good quarter in the context of the background. Now, let's look ahead. Can we move to slide four, please?
As always, guiding forward in a world with little visibility and high volatility isn't easy, but let me summarize our thoughts. From a top-line perspective, our guidance is unchanged. We've delivered H1 growth at around 4% like-for-like, with organic growth at 7%. Whilst our Q2 numbers were slower than Q1, I want to highlight that we have a strong commercial pipeline for the remainder of the year. This year, some of our initiatives are slightly back-end loaded. You'll remember last year we launched Pandora Essence in the second quarter, and this year we have another exciting product pipeline, which will be live from the end of Q3. We also continue to elbow our marketing messages. I'll speak about this a little bit later. In short, we have many initiatives due to start from September and onwards.
Therefore, we reiterate our organic growth guidance of 7% - 8%, with like-for-like growth of 4 %- 5%. We've had some clarity on tariffs from a cost perspective, but there is still significant uncertainty in how this plays out indirectly on the consumer front. Our guidance does not take these factors or a general weakening of the macro environment into account. We remain incredibly vigilant, but currently, we haven't seen many effects of this. Finally, that brings me naturally onto current trading in July. The overall like-for-like trading has been around 2%. There are two important ways to read this. In the first two weeks of July, our performance has been negatively impacted by a weak end-of-season sale this year versus a particularly strong one last year. That's partly down to us, as we simply had less surplus stock available this year.
This effect also impacted our trading in the second quarter in June. You should also be reminded that we launched Pandora Essence last year towards the end of Q2, so it had full effect globally in Q3 2024. This year, as I mentioned, product news is more skewed towards the end of Q3. Overall, we're on track. That's not to say there are no challenges, but it's nothing we can't overcome with our plans. Our EBIT margin guidance, I will let Anders comment on in detail a bit later. However, as a summary, the message is that our guidance is unchanged at around 24%. This now accounts for the full impact of the current tariff levels. We believe this will be a fantastic outcome.
I'm sure you'll agree with me that any company that is able to maintain margins around the mid-20s, despite significant incremental external headwinds, has a pretty good control of its commercial actions and cost base. Can we now move to slide six, please? I mentioned last time how in times of uncertainty, it becomes even more important we remain clear on what we're trying to achieve. Our North Star is the Phoenix strategy. We are changing the perception of Pandora into a full jewelry brand. The pillars you see on the strategy are taking us towards that. Through the quarter, we executed on many initiatives across the four pillars. Importantly, we have a very healthy pipeline of exciting initiatives ahead of us. We think these will attract more consumers to the brand during the rest of the year and next.
You should recall that our runway for like-for-like growth is quite vast. We're only at the beginning of this full jewelry brand journey. That brings me nicely on to the next slide. I've mentioned our overall objective of the Phoenix strategy, namely to transform the perception of Pandora into a full jewelry brand. This slide lays out quite well. Some of you may remember we highlighted the initial arguments at the Capital Markets Day in 2023. You can see that today we're mainly a big player in wristwear, but that's only 18% of the market. If we continue to change the position of Pandora from not only being a wrist player in the mind of consumers, we'll increasingly open up the other 82% of the market. The purpose of this slide is just to illustrate the opportunity ahead of us is significant across all product categories in jewelry.
That's what makes our growth prospects quite exciting for many years ahead. Now, it's for us to execute on that promise through our marketing and designs, of course. Next slide, please. I mentioned marketing a few times. Let's talk about that now. Probably the most important pillar of our Phoenix strategy. Here, I wanted to highlight what we've been working on and equally highlight what is coming up. As usual, we have a full breadth of tools to drive consistent brand heat. In the quarter, we've used many of our ambassadors to great effect to drive conversation, particularly our presence in lab-grown diamonds. Q2, as always, marks Mother's Day for us, and our campaign this year landed quite well with consumers. We saw that both in the metrics of the brand campaign and our performance across Mother's Day. A campaign like this makes the Pandora message very strong.
Our brand stands for storytelling that can emotionally move our consumers. You can bet we're going to double down on that as we enter into the holiday season with a campaign that deepens emotional connections through our storytelling. Finally, we're also going to increase our efforts to be even more culturally relevant across markets. Whilst the global campaign will always remain central to the brand, we believe we have an opportunity to strengthen our local relevance through the use of local talent in selected markets. You can see we're already making moves here with the appointment of Annalisa, a famous singer in Italy, and Caroline, a prominent fashion blogger in France. You can expect to see more of these engagements in the future. Next slide, please. Alongside strong marketing plans, we're equally excited this year about the creative pipeline we have.
This year, our innovation is going to be focused on our core business, namely our charms and carriers. We'll be bringing new and relevant aesthetics while emphasizing the Pandora brand promise of being accessible to the many. Last year, we launched Pandora Essence in the first half of the year. This year, we're skewed towards the second half. In a few weeks, you will see launches of our new mini charm selection and medallions. Both hold good potential in the jewelry market where we know good consumer appetite sits. In the case of minis, we're also looking to further strengthen our entry price points. We know this is incredibly important in the current environment. Overall, the past two slides should give you comfort for our commercial plans for the remainder of the year. Next slide, please. In the past quarter, I mentioned the launch of our new e-commerce platform.
As part of our mission to dial up brand desirability, we've been investing in this for a completely new look. The new platform brings the brand to life through a much more immersive experience. Since showing promising results last fourth quarter, I'm happy to report now that the platform is live across all of our markets. You can see on the slide some of the commercial metrics, even though it's early days in many countries, which have been very encouraging. This includes a low single-digit improvement in revenue per consumer, which is a fantastic achievement. Next slide, please. Let's now look at our two segments, core and fuel with more. As you know, our strategic aim is to be seen as a full jewelry brand, which essentially entails driving steady growth in the core whilst adding high growth in fuel with more.
As I mentioned earlier, we're going to be driving more innovation in our core through the introductions of the new talisman and minis design. Before that, our core is remaining relatively robust at 1% growth in the quarter. This was supported by good performance in our core labs. You can see how over the past three years, we've been able to drive good, stable growth sequentially in our core, exactly in line with our plans. Next slide, please. Our fuel with more segments continue to grow quicker. We grew at a healthy mid-single-digit rate in the quarter, still up against a relatively tough comp from the year before. In Q2, our growth here was helped by strong growth in Pandora Essence and lab-grown diamonds. Again, our strategy has been to drive faster growth in fuel with more, with good sequential growth year after year.
You can see on this slide that it's been working well. Now, let's discuss our performance within the markets. Next slide, please. As usual, I'll start with our biggest market, the U.S., which delivered a very strong 8% like-for-like growth. This performance is particularly impressive in the context of a tough market. Importantly, our brand metrics remain very strong, meaning this is high-quality growth. We've said this before, but this is a market where our runway is quite strong, so we'll continue to push our marketing efforts here. Tied to that, we've launched our first new Pandora pop-up store recently on Times Square. Some of you may have seen some pictures. It's off to a very, very good start. Next slide, please.
In Europe, our total like-for-like growth across all markets came in at 1%, helped by strong growth in markets disclosed in what we call Rest of Pandora, such as Spain, Poland, Netherlands, and Portugal. This was offset by weakness in the four European markets that we've historically disclosed separately. There's always some variances between countries, but let me talk you through how we see this in a general sense. I'm happy to take questions about specific countries. Firstly, I'm sure you'll be aware the macro environment isn't easy in many of these markets. Of course, we like to control what we can. In that regard, we look to further sharpen how we connect with our consumers through telling stories. I already mentioned our upcoming holiday campaign, and in certain markets, we also want to connect much more closely to the local culture.
I mentioned earlier, and we're already acting on this. Finally, we'll also dial up our affordability proposition a bit better. The launch of minis will help with that. You've also heard me previously speak about rings being a strong entry price product for the brand and will act tactically here in some cases too. Overall, our European growth comes in at plus 1% like-for-like, which is a mix of some countries performing really well and some things we need to work on. We're aware of that and are certainly moving ahead with executing on our plans. Next slide, please. In Rest of Pandora, we delivered another good quarter of 6% like-for-like growth. As I just mentioned, a big chunk of our other European exposure actually sits here, which helps the growth.
I just mentioned some of them in the previous slide, but even beyond Europe, we have many markets which are growing strongly, and that includes Canada, which grew at double digits. In Mexico, which is the other large market in Rest of Pandora, we are facing some challenges with respect to the macro and the broader promotional environment. In the light of that, we have probably gone a little bit too hard on our promo detox journey here, which will be corrected in the back half. Next slide, please. Finally, in China, we had a -15% like-for-like growth, and performance remains challenging overall. China is only 1% of our overall business, so the impact at a group level is minimal. As you may have read in the company announcement this morning, we are taking the next steps in this market by closing around 100 loss-making stores.
This is part of our plan to reset China and significantly improve profitability while keeping a relevant network in the main metropoles. Finally, in Australia, we saw good improvement to 7% like-for-like growth. This was helped by good performance across Mother's Day and some signs of the macro improving. Let's see how that evolves. Next slide, please. Here, you can see a familiar slide on how we create value from our network. There's been one technical change here for 2025. You'd have noticed that we're targeting 50- 75 store openings this year versus 75- 100 previously. This adjustment is purely related to the high number of closures in China, which I just mentioned, where we're targeting around 100 closures. Those stores do not generate much revenue, so the impact of these actions on organic growth is virtually nothing.
Overall, our plans for store openings ex-China are tracking exactly as planned. That means we're firmly on track to deliver around 3% organic growth contribution from store openings this year. As always, you'll see on the top of the slide the economics of the new store openings of Pandora, a fantastic aspect of our business and is highly productive stores. Next slide, please. Finally, before handing it over to Anders, I just wanted to highlight that the rollout of our new store concept Evoke 2.0 is going quite well. We now have a total of 576 concept stores in our new format. I mentioned the new pop-up store in New York on Times Square. Another recent highlight store-wise was the opening of a second flagship store on the Strip in Las Vegas.
For those of you who have seen our flagship store in Copenhagen, the idea is very similar: to enhance the look and feel of the brand and present the brand as a full jewelry brand. I'm convinced that the in-store experience we provide consumers is incredibly important in unlocking our growth. We will continue to invest here, and the new store concept overlaid with a couple of flagships are going to be critical for that. On that note, I'll hand it over to Anders for a closer look at the financials.
Thank you, Alexander, and good morning, everyone. Please go to slide 20. I guess you're all painfully aware that we are facing quite some external headwinds from commodity prices, FX, and now also tariffs, just like many other global companies. These headwinds are of a magnitude where the impact across the KPIs becomes quite important in order to understand what really goes on behind the scene. In the company announcement, we therefore break out the effect of this in many of our KPIs. If you look at earnings per share, for example, the reported growth in the second quarter is 6%. If you take out the FX impact, mainly the weaker U.S. dollar, the FX-adjusted EPS growth becomes 18%. That's quite a different number and quite a different story. On the gross margin, you will see that it was down only 90 basis points in the quarter.
I use the word only intentionally because we are faced with around 170 basis points of headwind from the three external factors that I just mentioned. We have, in fact, managed to offset a good chunk of that headwind. These offsets come from our pricing actions and cost efficiencies. You can also see a bit more about that in the gross margin bridge in the company announcement. The overall message on gross margin in 2025 still stands. That is that you should expect the gross margin to be flattish to only slightly down in 2025 versus last year, despite that we are facing 240 basis points of headwind. I do think that that is a good achievement given this level of headwinds. Next slide, please. On the slide, we break down the revenue growth in the quarter, as usual. I'll just add a few comments to the like-for-like.
Like-for-like growth in the second quarter was three points lower than the 6.6% that we reported back in Q1. There are two elements in that sequential development that we just want to highlight. First of all, Easter this year was in the second quarter as opposed to being in Q1 last year. That had a small positive effect in Q1 of this year of just under one point of growth, with a similar negative effect here in the second quarter. Secondly, as Alexander mentioned, we were negatively impacted in the month of June from a smaller end-of-season sale than what we ran last year. We simply had less surplus stock. At the same time, the sale last year was quite strong.
Some of you will probably say that, Anders, based on that, you should see the like-for-like in current trading being back up at a higher level than what we saw in Q2. You're right. There are three things to be aware of here when you look at current trading. First of all, when we announced the second quarter numbers last year, we did highlight that July trading in 2024 was particularly strong. Our current trading should be read in that perspective. Secondly, and this is just repeating, the launch of the talisman range and mini charm selection sits in late Q3, while the launch of Pandora Essence took place from May onwards last year. Finally, as Alexander also mentioned, we continue to evolve our marketing messages and have a strong holiday campaign lined up. Next slide, please.
On the EBIT margin, our performance played out exactly in line with the expectations and in line with the phasing through this year, which we have already communicated externally. You will also see that we faced significant headwinds from commodities, FX volatility, and tariffs, adding up to 230 basis points in the quarter. You can see that within the dotted box on the bridge here. In that regard, 18.2% is quite a solid EBIT margin. In terms of the factors that are sort of closer to being within our own control, you can see that added up to a slight positive margin impact in the quarter. Here I'm speaking about the sum of the three purple-pink bars just to the left in the middle called network expansion, net operating leverage, and inflation salary increases versus price increases and efficiencies. Next slide, please, and that's slide 24.
On the top-line guidance, Alexander has already spoken about some of our thinking here, but I'll just add a couple of points in greater detail. Clearly, since we issued the guidance back in February, the macro picture has become more clouded and uncertainty has increased. Especially when you add tariffs into that mix and how consumers may respond to that, that is a big unknown. Our guidance does not include any potential significant impact from worsening macro, just like when we had the announced guidance earlier this year. We did see like-for-like in the second quarter and current trading being a bit below what implicitly sits in the guidance for the second half.
We do indeed see the business delivering a higher like-for-like in the second half of 2025, based on some of what we've already covered, being the phasing of initiatives this year, as well as the strong pipeline of commercial initiatives lined up from September onwards, which Alexander spoke about. On balance, there's no change to our top-line guidance. Next slide, please. The EBIT margin guidance is also unchanged. We still expect a margin of around 24% this year. As you can see in the bridge, we will be facing around 280 basis points of external headwinds. This now also includes the tariffs factored into our guidance for the full year. Offsetting around half of those 280 basis points of headwind will be quite okay and a testament to our ability to invest in our business, drive leverage, and at the same time, move ahead with our mitigation plans.
Next slide, please. Given the many moving parts externally, we wanted to update you on our latest thoughts about the EBIT margin target for 2026, next year. First, I also here want to highlight that the total external headwinds since we issued the EBIT margin target back at the Capital Market Day in October 2023 now total to a very significant 500 basis points. That's the sum of the headwinds from commodities, FX, and tariffs, as you can see in the bridge here in the dotted box. That is quite some headwind in less than 24 months. As you remember, we updated our CMD target for 2026 to be around 25% margin back in the Q1 announcement in May. That included the headwinds from commodities and headwinds at that point in time, but we did not include tariffs back then.
Now, we have added the full effect of tariffs, as well as the latest update on FX and commodities. Let me talk to you a little bit more about that. Since we updated the target to around 25% back in May, we have seen another 30 basis points of headwind from commodities and FX. The good news is that we are able to offset this through further pricings, which we have, in fact, already implemented. We therefore now confirm 210 basis points of margin uplift from price increases, as you can see, just roughly in the middle of this bridge. Given all of these continued increases in external headwinds, we are dialing up our cost efforts even more. We did launch our group-wide cost program that we call Project Silverstone already early this year, and we are now taking another look into further opportunities.
At this point in time, we still expect savings equivalent to 50 to 100 basis points of margin uplift next year. That's captured in the box that we are calling net operating leverage and efficiencies. Overall, if I ignore tariffs for a second, the message is that we can absorb the additional headwind from FX and commodities that we have seen since Q1 and still target an EBIT margin of around 25% for next year. Now, bringing tariffs into the equation, that's going to give us an extra headwind of around DKK 450 million next year from 2023. That's 120 basis points of headwind, as you can see to the right in the bridge. By far, the majority of those tariffs are related to Thailand, obviously. It is a bit too early for us to conclude how much of this we can mitigate and how fast.
What we can say is that we are indeed dialing up our cost focus even more, and we will be watching out on what happens to consumer prices and consumer behavior due to tariffs. For now, what we want to say is that we will deliver at least 24% margin in 2026, and we will come back to you in due course with updates. On that note, I'll hand it back over to Alexander.
Okay, Anders, thanks. To conclude on everything, I want to highlight a couple of things. First, I think the Phoenix strategy continues to work, and Q2 was another step forward. 8% organic, 3% like-for-like in the current backdrop, we think is a good achievement. Secondly, whilst the external cost pressure is significant, as Anders spoke about, we continue to show good agility and execution. That's why we can still deliver very high profitability levels. Finally, I'm super excited about the commercial pipeline, which we've spoken about. We have exciting products lined up, strong marketing for the holiday season. We look ahead with confidence, knowing the brand typically does very well in our gifting periods. With that, I think we can move to the Q&A.
If you do wish to ask a question, you will need to press five star on your telephone. To withdraw a question, press five star again. In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to two questions at a time. Our first question comes from William Woods from Bernstein. Please go ahead, you're live on Zoom.
Good morning. Thanks for taking questions. You've seen a significant growth slowdown across geographies, fueled with more, and obviously experiencing negative volumes as you pass through the pricing. You've decided to protect margins. How do you think about managing the business for growth in margins? If we keep seeing a sequential decline, is the aim to keep protecting margins at the expense of volumes? The second question is on your space growth. Given the environment, given the volume declines, why are you so comfortable continuing to add space in that environment? Thanks.
I mean, I think the answer is relatively simple. The brand's reason to be is to offer affordable jewelry. We will obviously protect margins, but not at the expense of consumers still thinking that Pandora is a good offer. We keep track through all sorts of equity trackers where we measure the, let's say, the value equation. That's going to be the offset. We're not going to kind of die on the sword on margins if we have to give up the position of the brand. That would be ludicrous. This is the answer, really. Of course, it's a tightrope walk when we have all these kind of costs flying around and inflation and all of these things. That's why we are here. I think we've proven over the last few years that we manage this equation pretty well.
If there's anything to go by, history would suggest that at least we have some experience in kind of navigating through this. Yeah. Anders, maybe you can talk to the space point.
Yeah, thanks for that question, William. It's a super strong business case to add new stores. There's zero consideration about slowing that down. We go as fast as we can. Just a couple of points on that. You can see that in our EBIT margin bridge, the network expansion that we've done over the last year was driving 80 basis points of margin uplift for the group in the quarter. That's, of course, a reflection of that basically from day one, when we open up a new store, it drives a margin. As a rule of thumb, you can think about that when we open up a new store, even in year one, the EBIT margin is between 35% and 40%, which basically means that all of the investment gets paid back within a year.
Positive like-for-like growth in the physical network. In our own physical stores, it was a couple of points positive in Q2. That's important to note as well.
Thank you.
The next question will be from the line of Chris Huang f rom UBS. You're live on Zoom.
Hello, hi. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on kind of the July comments. I think, Anders, you commented earlier that July trading last year was particularly strong. Can you maybe give us a little bit more quantification on that? Are we talking about a 9% growth in July last year? Just trying to better understand the shape within the quarter, please. Secondly, on mix, you've constantly seen a continued outperformance of the fuel with more segment, which I assume has been very helpful from a mix perspective. I appreciate a mix is always a little bit more abstract than pricing and volumes. Can you perhaps help kind of quantify the mix component a bit that you have been seeing recently? Is there some high-level principle that you can provide, perhaps something like X percentage point of outperformance of fuel with more will translate into X percentage point of mix secretion? Thank you very much.
On the July trading last year, July last year just got into the double-digit territory on like-for-like. The mix, I didn't get that question.
No, the question is on mix. I think we have a mix of gross margin on fuel with more, which is what, 82% and change. On the core, it's something around 78%. You can just do the math, right?
Yeah, it means that they're both margin accretive on the bottom line. Obviously, no matter whether we grow in one or the other category.
Thank you. The next question will be from the line of Thomas Chauvet from Citi. Please go ahead, you're live on Zoom.
Good morning, everyone. Two questions, please. The first one on product innovation. Can you talk a bit about talisman and minis from an inventory standpoint? You know, how will this ramp up into the holiday season? Are you going to do the same kind of one-off shipments to distributors as you did with Essence? How do you think about these two innovations as a game changer to bring Moments back into positive LFL? More broadly, how do you think about customer response to innovation in the mass jewelry market? Do you feel more newness is needed at Pandora, particularly at lower price points? That's a lot of questions, sorry, on product innovation. Secondly, on marketing, can you comment on how the marketing strategy is evolving with the second iteration of the Pandora campaign, which is obviously global, a bit one size fits all? As you said, the need to adapt communication to reflect cultural differences in some markets where you have weakness, like in Europe. Just on the numbers, maybe for Anders, marketing was 14.5% of sales in H1. Towards the top end of your historical range, how much do you expect in H2 and next year? Is it still closer to 15% rather than the 13%, 14%, 15% range historically? Thank you.
Thomas, two questions. You had like 16 questions, but we'll help you. On product innovation, your question on how we ship, we have enough inventory to fill the pipe. The distributor part of our business is what? It's 15% of our revenue base. The question is more to make sure that we can service the 85%, which is our own channels, of course. This is no concern. On the Minis and Talismans, I think you kind of already answered almost the question. It's important that we continue innovating in opening price points. If we kind of look ourselves in the rear mirror, we probably innovated not enough towards that part. One thing is, of course, you can kind of massage your pricing, but if it's not exciting, then it just does half the job.
Minis in particular, but also Talisman, will offer very, very attractive price points for the concept that we're offering. That's one part of it. The other one is, of course, that we keep bringing new aesthetics, new ideas into the moments or the core platform. You have a spillover effect that there's something happening overall with the core. There's kind of a two-sided benefit of bringing things that we know consumers are interested in based on all the research that we've done. On the marketing strategy, the B-Lab is a global campaign. That's not changing. The evolution, if we kind of look at it sequentially, started off with a heavy tilt on, let's say, moving up the brand, the desirability, the kind of the way we portray, you know, using very different calibre of photography and the type of people portraying the brand.
What we're now adding more would be what you saw in the Mother's Day campaign. We're maintaining all of that kind of brand lift. We're also now infusing it much more with stronger emotional stories, like the one, if you've seen the Mother's Day campaign. If not, we can send it to you. What you'll see in the back half of the year is exactly that. The Christmas campaign, which we've just qualified, is actually the strongest piece of ad I think Pandora is ever going to put out there. We have big, big hopes for that. That's quite exciting together with all the other things that we're doing. To your point on adapting culturally, when it comes to the global campaign, we test them across the main markets. We know that they are kind of working hard for us.
I think what we mentioned in the past is that maybe they became a little bit too, let's call it, anglophile. That's now being addressed. What's also important is the comment I made on adding culturally relevant talent. Let's say there's going to be a stream of communication that's done by, we can call them local key opinion leaders, be it brand ambassadors, influencers, whatnot, to the tune of this Annalisa and many, many more. That's probably a layer that we're going to strengthen. That also comes on the learning of our Spanish business, which has been growing, let's say, double digits for years now. That's where they've done a particularly good job. In addition to the global campaign, they've overlaid this with local talent. That's also, I think, what's happened in the last two years in the U.S.
where we managed to kind of move the needle, to also add some local flair to the global campaign. Now we have lined up Thailand, which you maybe haven't noticed. The pool of talent that we're managing to bring in and support the brand is also strengthening year on as we go forward. Your last question was on the marketing. We've said that the 13% to 15% is not a highly scientific number. It's a benchmark of what healthy and growing brands typically invest. It depends on the situation. Some years we've been more towards the 13%. Now we're a bit more tilted towards the 15%. I think we'll be playing in that spectrum. It depends on what we have to talk about with the customers. It's not a fixed number.
We have enough space in our P&L to move around, and we could even invest more if we needed to. We have a few other cost headwinds that we need to deal with. The guidance of 13%- 15% is still going to stand.
Thomas, for this year, in order to get to the EBIT margin guidance this year, we are not sacrificing that line in the P&L. I think for the full year, you will see it from a % of revenue, we will end up pretty much in line with 2024, which in absolute krona means that we are investing a decent amount more than last year, especially in the second half.
Thank you. The next question will be from the line of Anthony Charchafji from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is now unmuted.
Yes, good morning. It's Anthony from BNP. Thank you for taking my question. I have just three quick ones. The first one would be on the current trading, please. Sorry to come back on that, but it seems that the market is focused on the second derivative element of the top line rather than your strong delivery on the rest of the P&L and the balance sheet. If we think about the 2% in July, would you be able to quantify the underlying like-for-like if we exclude the end-of-season sales and maybe if you can adjust it for recents? Any comments also on August trading because your guidance basically implies 4%- 6% in H2? July might be at close to the 12th. Just a bit more color on this key current trading number.
My second question would be on your gross margin, and I guess it's a bit mixed in the OpEx as well. On the promotional activity in your gross margin bridge, it seems that there are only 60 bps in Q2, only 60 bps of pricing efficiencies net of promo. I guess there is a bit more also in it. What's the outlook for the promo at Pandora A/S? Especially because you raised prices in August by maybe 2% globally and probably a bit more in the U.S.. Any comment on this would be helpful. Is it linked to, I don't know, Pandora Essence being in the base and needed some more discount and the outlook for the rest of the year? My last question is a bit more forward-looking. It would be on the APAC expansion. It seems that you open a new headquarter somewhere in APAC, I think Singapore. Is the APAC expansion happening post-2026? Do you have any color to share today? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Anthony, for those questions. I can start out on the current trading and the 2%. That is indeed an impact of the end-of-season sale combined with the fact that we haven't launched the talisman and minis yet. When we're trading in July, we are also comping that we have the full impact of Essence in the baseline for last year. The way to think about it is that with the initiatives lined up, the talisman and minis coming in, actually at two weeks' time, roughly, just on one of the last trading days of August, with the holiday campaign and the twist we've made to that, getting sort of a touch step closer to the brand DNA, the investments that we're doing with local ambassadors in a couple of countries, and investing properly, marketing money as well in general.
In the second half of the year, we're quite comfortable that we will see this acceleration when we meet next time in November. August trading is the same as in July. So far now, we're just a couple of weeks into it, but in the same ballpark as we saw in July. On the gross margin, it's actually a good call out. We only have 60 basis points, if I can call that, in uplift on the gross margin from that. The answer actually lies in the last word on that bucket. We call it pricing, efficiencies, and other. That's the way we name that bucket. The other in that, we do have a remote provision related to diamonds, 60, 70 basis points. I think it is 70 basis points. It comes out of that.
We are shifting focus on our diamonds collection towards somewhat smaller diamonds rather than larger stones. As part of that, we are taking a prudent provision as we see how we can repurpose the bigger diamonds that we have on stock. Underlying the pricing uplift is bigger than what could it look like when you just look at the bridge like this.
Yeah, and on the APAC expansion, if you remember well, we moved part of the APAC responsibility to the LATAM organization. Now we've decided to move it back out again. The establishment of HQ in Asia is merely a reflection of that; we're going to put this in there. Other than that, there are no huge acceleration plans at this point in time. I should probably mention that the Japan business is actually performing quite nicely. We never get to talk about these smaller countries, smaller Pandora countries, I should say. It's a big jewelry market out there. That's going to be a topic for the future. This is more kind of getting ready for rather than any immediate changes to the current plans.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Lars Topholm from Carnegie. Your line is now open.
Yeah, two questions from me as well. 8% organic growth, that's actually better than most of the consumer discretionary space. Yet the share price reaction seems to indicate there's something else worrying people. I guess one could be price elasticity because arguably it's easier to increase the price on a EUR 20,000 handbag than on jewelry. I wonder if you can put some comments on your observations on demand when you do pricing. The second question is related. When I speak to, I guess, yourself, but also a number of your peers, it seems everyone is very focused on mitigating gold and silver price inflation, not just through pricing, but also through changes in design, changes in metal composition, et cetera. I wonder if you can put some words on what you're doing there. I also know that it, of course, takes a while from you do something and until we see the numbers. Is this anything you see as a relevant margin driver, maybe second half of 2026? How should I think about that? Thank you.
On the pricing, I think this is a dynamic environment, right? You might move your pricing up. We can see that the promotional intensity around us, and I'm not just talking about jewelry in general, is a little bit hotter, especially if I think about Europe. We need to be really careful. As you know, we do all this live testing on pricing, and we pay particular attention to opening price points. I think what we'll see going forward is maybe there's going to be some ups and downs, whereas up to now, I think it's been mostly up. We might see some tactical adjustments as we move into the future. That's probably the reality, more because of what's happening around us versus what our research suggested.
On the gold and silver situation, yes, we are doing quite a lot of work in the background, but it's not just about the metal composition or material composition of the jewelry. Historically, at least Pandora has only been operating in gold and silver in different ways of executing that. A big question we, of course, had to ask ourselves is, in case we move to alternative materials, what's the consumer reaction going to be to that from an overall brand perception standpoint? It's equally, you know, I can knock out stainless steel jewelry if I want to. What I need to understand is what does that do to people's perception of the brand? That's a really strategic assessment. That work is ongoing. When we have something more concrete to talk about, we will obviously bring that under the spotlights also for you guys.
At this stage, I would keep this a little bit under wrap. The time to execution is, as you suggest, the 12 month- 18 month perspective. If we pull the trigger, you might see something coming in the back half of next year. The way I've pitched this is for me a board conversation. This is not just purely a management conversation because it has long-term implications or could have long-term implications. If we get too focused on margin and forget about what it is we're actually proposing to consumers, that could drive us down an avenue. Maybe the repercussions of that, you'll only see in a couple of years from now. There's a lot of deliberation that goes into that topic. That is probably the answer. I hope that helps.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Freddie Wild from Jefferies. Your line is open.
Good morning, Alexander, Anders, and team. Thank you for taking my questions. First of all, could I just follow up on that last question? Am I right in assuming from what you said that it feels like elasticities, which were previously running at a minus one rate and have been consistently for some time, may have deteriorated a little bit from that rate? Secondly, I guess further to that, could you give a bit of detail about how those elasticities and how the consumer and competitive environment is changing by region? I.e., are U.S. competitors putting up prices more because they don't have global pricing options? Is the European consumer becoming relatively more sensitive to price? That would be super helpful. Thank you.
On your first question, I mean, this minus one still holds as a global number. That is not the point. On U.S. pricing, we've seen some movements, but so far, I think everybody's kind of, at least when I speak to European and European journalists, everybody's, oh, tariffs and the world is changing. Jewelry is a very, very slow category, okay? The reason is because you don't buy jewelry very often. It's a discretionary nature. You buy jewelry less than two times a year. Any change in sentiment actually takes a long, long time before we see. In reality, the whole tariff, let's say, turbulence, I think that's all ahead of us. There's been maybe some pricing up to now, but nothing radical. I think the other thing to consider here is the U.S. consumer will eventually have to bear the brunt of these tariffs. It's not just on jewelry.
It's on many product categories. The big question mark is, you know, what happens with inflation in the U.S., unemployment rates, all sorts of other macro drivers. I think this is ahead of us. I don't think we've seen much yet, to be honest. Specifically on competitive pricing, we've seen some people move prices by 4% or 5% or something to that tune during the year. I think this, as I said, this is just the beginning. It's too early to say.
That's really helpful. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Martin Brenøe from Nordea. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Hi, thank you very much for taking my questions. I also have two, if I may. I'm not sure if I can count better than my colleagues. The first question would be about the tariffs and how you are seeing your competitors react to this. Is it a general trend that the jewelry category is raising prices, or are you alone here? What do you think will happen with your competitors? Some, I guess, are worse exposed than Pandora is with exposure to India, et cetera. How do you think, or what do you see them react to this situation? That's the first question. The second one would be just, you know, help me a little bit with the building blocks on the H2 like-for-like. You have easier comps heading out of July. You have less promo detox in Mexico. You have the talisman and minis coming. Is there anything else to point out in terms of that could be collaborations coming, further price adjustments, as you mentioned, Alexander, growth in new markets, anything that's worth mentioning here?
Should I do the tariff thing first?
Yeah.
Because it kind of ties back to the previous answer. We haven't seen a lot yet. We've seen some, as I mentioned, some of the competition has moved 4 points or 5 points. Now, what happens going forward? I mean, now we're into crystal ball territory. It is true that most, if not all, of our, let's say, competition in the U.S. specifically source from somewhere in Asia. That can be from India, Vietnam, Thailand, China, or whatnot. Most, so you could argue that everybody's going to be hit by a tariff minimally around 20%. What does that then mean? On top of that, of course, we have silver and gold that's been going up. Those are kind of two headwinds that everybody is dealing with. If I'm guessing a man here, we will see a general price rise for the category.
This, you know, nobody, or at least from what we understand by our competitors' profitability profiles, there is nobody that starts with a profitability that's higher than ours. There would be a small player somewhere. Of the larger players, nobody has the luxury not to pass, I think, a large majority of these headwinds onto consumers. The benefit we have from a competitive standpoint is, of course, we also know that very few, if any, are hedging like we do, which means that, and we have hedges that take us through the majority of next year, at least three quarters of next year, which also allows us then, first of all, come back to Lars's point. Should we be introducing some other margin-enhancing ideas? Importantly, it allows us to force the other people to show their hand first.
We can adjust our pricing policies accordingly when we understand where the market goes and how consumers respond to this. The other point, of course, is on the tariffs. If you're a U.S.-based only company, you either take it on the chin or you pass it on to consumers. Your choices are quite, you know, few. We have the option, and we've spoken about this in the past. We could take that and we could peanut butter that out on a global volume. We haven't decided exactly how to play this because, as I said, I think it's going to be a very dynamic environment and we will have to follow this closely and decide what to do. I think this is what's going to come. That's kind of the considerations that we have.
I think we have a bit more time and we have the ability to maybe share the load globally. I think from sitting between a rock and a hard place, we have a slightly stronger hand than probably many others that we compete against, at least in the jewelry space.
On the like-for-like building blocks, I think you mentioned most. The only one I would add or repeat maybe is the marketing campaigns that we have lined up for the rest of the year. As Alexander said, the one that's lined up for the holiday season is the one that's testing the best ever. Combining that, we are putting decent money behind it. Hopefully, it's going to be a traffic driver online and into the stores.
Thank you very much. Can I just ask one quick follow-up? I like when you look into the crystal ball, Alexander. I'll ask you to do it one more time, if I may. What do you think will happen? The jewelry space is quite fragmented, as you have also pointed out many, many times. There are a lot of mom-and-pop shops around the world, also in the U.S. What do you think will happen in terms of your competition and these retailers? Do you think that there's a chance or a risk that these will struggle to compete with the tariffs and the consumer environment that we might see changing here?
When I was a young cook, I started at P&G and we did interviewing people. They always said history is a good predictor of the future. Do not ask hypothetical questions, that one. That is why I prefaced the crystal ball thing. If we look at what happened coming out of COVID, we saw that there were a lot of these small mom-and-pops that folded. If that is any insight in that, that might be a trend that may continue. We can also see that some of the department stores, you know, the Macy's and the Dillard's and et cetera, et cetera, that maybe were less interested in this category in the past have now turned some of their attention to the category.
We might see some of the kind of mom-and-pop business go away and that might be picked up by some of these kind of nationwide chains in the U.S. That is certainly something that I could see happening. Of course, as you know, we have a very decent business with Macy's and we have just opened up our business with Dillard's with very good results. I think this might be kind of a reshaping or a little bit of the retail landscape. This takes time, right? I can kind of see that happening as we go into the future. This may very well be a global trend, by the way, where we see the emergence a little bit of the department stores or larger chains at the expense of the mom-and-pop stores. A bit like what you have in France with the store door. That is actually, in my mind, where the market could be moving to. Again, as I said, it is an extrapolation and a bit of a crystal ball thinking.
Perfect. That's very clear. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
The next question will be from the line of Kristian Godiksen from SEB. Y our line is open.
Thank you, guys. A couple of questions as well. First of all, maybe could you comment a bit on how confident you are on continuing to have this vast overperformance in the U.S.? Obviously, you have a strong runway, but also taking into consideration the vast overperformance and we've seen things normalize in Germany. Could you comment on the performance regionally, being a big country and your maturity is different per region? Secondly, on the network expansion, could you speak a bit about the pipeline of store openings going forward? If you adjust for China, then the runway still seems to be a bit low or it is still lower in 2025. How to think about this in the years to come would be much appreciated.
How confident are we in the U.S.? History will help to point into the future. Over the last few years, I think we started changing the strategy in the U.S., if I'm not mistaken, back after the summer of 2020. Since then, the U.S. business has doubled. Now we have a 2% market share. The largest player in the market, the largest branded player in the market, has 4%. If that's anything to go by, that would suggest that there should be quite some runway. You can look into other, let's say, brand funnel metrics. If I take the U.K., which is very well penetrated, you would have an unaided awareness of, what, 65% or something to that tune. In the U.S., this is still sub 30. The metrics flow through that if you think about purchase and penetration, all those metrics.
We still think there's a very nice runway in the U.S. Part of this also comes with us expanding the network because one thing is to advertise. That's kind of where you generate, let's say, half of your awareness. The other one is just by being physically present. Let's remind ourselves that this is still a mass market proposition. Distribution or easy access to the brand physically is critically important. We know when we put a store in a place, our e-commerce business goes up, the awareness of the brand goes up, and we still have a nice runway to plant more flags in the U.S. Is it going to continue, you know, at 8%- 10%? Let's see. There's certainly plenty of opportunity to keep driving the brand. On the regional commentary, let's start far away. We have Australia, which posted a 7% for the quarter.
It was a very good performance in Mother's Day, but also in general, we can kind of sense that there's some consumer sentiment starting to be a bit more positive in Australia, and it's been subdued for a little while. China, as I said, is 1% of the business. This is not the prettiest of pictures in the Pandora book, but I don't see, and this is mainly by listening to my local team there, but also reading what other brands are experiencing, and it doesn't look like anybody is really having a field day. We know that the savings quote is very high in China at the moment. People are sitting on their hands. When that confidence in the market comes back, maybe some of this comes back into this type of category. I'd like to be in a better position with the brand proposition than we are today.
That's China for you. If I do LATAM, we tried again, I should say, to detox, a heavy detox in Mexico as a start. That's part of why the Q2 and recent trading was a little bit subdued because it simply doesn't work. When the other guy is advertising 50% off and we jazz up with a full price proposition, that unfortunately doesn't work. We have to go back to the drawing board there again. The rest of LATAM is actually doing pretty okay. We've just spoken about the U.S.. We never really talk about Canada, which is one.
10 markets. It's actually been growing in lockstep with the U.S.. That wasn't the case a few years ago when we had the vast franchise community that's kind of now converted more or less to an [ONO Environment]. Then we can put the right assortment, right investment, right hours, and the business responds. Europe is a mixed bag, which is actually not new. This has been going on for a while. When we've been speaking about Italy, I detailed that out quite a level of detail on what we thought the issue was based on the McKinsey study we did and the activities we're doing to try to course correct that. Those are all in full swing since two weeks. France, as we know, is a slightly weaker brand equity, but the French market in general continues to be very, very tough for us.
That remains, that needs work. As we've been saying, that's going to take a bit longer time. U.K., I mean, you might look at that U.K. number, which is, I think, minus 9% for the quarter, but there's a bit of phasing in that. You should remember that Mother's Day is the second biggest trading event we have in the calendar every year. That last year fell in Q2 and this year fell in Q1. If you actually look at the half one number, that's minus 3%, which probably sits in line with market thereabouts. We have had some hiccups there on the e-com platform, which may contribute a little bit to that negative number and the end of season sale. Of course, U.K. is probably one of our most price sensitive markets globally, so a poor end of season sale obviously did impact the numbers in the U.K..
Structurally, there's nothing different going on in the U.K.. Spain, Iberia, Spain, Portugal continues to fly in double digits, very strong. I think we've now overtaken Toes as the clear number one brand in the market, and Eastern Europe continues to be very strong for us. Germany, yeah, we are cycling another quarter of 65% growth, which is kind of a big mountain to climb. Underlying, the brand is super healthy. All the metrics we look at, it's just going to be a year where we have to cycle all of these TikTok trends that we have sitting in the base. Now as the quarters go by, the comp becomes a little bit easier. Even Q3 is still 45% or something growth last year, to ease to like 20 odd points in Q4. Germany is, you know, that's just up against a crazy comp.
We've said all along that there's going to be a normalization. Of course, we got a nice push by this kind of TikTok virality, but, as I've always said, we take it when it comes and then we cry the following year because it's just so difficult to comp. I mean, it comes and it goes. It's there. I'm more kind of looking at the longitudinal trends and making sure that there's nothing funky going on, and there absolutely isn't in Germany. I think that's kind of the world tour for you. I don't think I missed anything major. Yeah. Okay.
Good. The only thing, maybe, Alexander, sorry, I was actually also, I appreciate it very much, the world tour here, but I was actually also looking a bit for the, maybe for the regional tour just in the U.S. because that's also a very large market. I appreciate the comment on the runway and all that. I agree with that. It's just more if you could give some commentary on the performance intra-U.S., you know, coast and Midwest, you know, just the difference there. The maturity is different for you guys.
I keep getting this question and every year the answer is the same. There are no major differences. The only major differences we've had was that we were underpenetrated in terms of stores in the West and the South, which, you know, successively, as you know, we're buying back or taking back the franchisees in most places. Once we can, we start planting a few flags, but there is no massive difference. If you kind of cut the country up in pieces, there is nothing more to that story at the moment.
The network question, Kristian, the way to think about that, we, when we had the capital market, David said around 3% CAGR contribution, and I think that's the kind of the way to think about it for another, let's call it a couple of years. Yeah, 3% network contribution. When you look further ahead beyond that, so for how long can we keep adding significantly to like-for-like growth through the network? We will talk more about that when we have the next capital market day. We haven't put out a date yet, but that's definitely one of the agenda points, obviously. I think partly it links into one of the questions we got early on, on Singapore and Asia headquarter. Asia is, as you know, one of the regions where we have the least penetration. That's quite a number of big markets out there, mostly operated from partners.
How far can we take that over the next decade just to say something? It's some of the things, one of the things that we are looking into and will come to the agenda on the next CMD.
The last question will be from the line of Alison Lygo. Please go ahead. You'll now be unmuted.
Hi, I think that's me. I think that's Alison Lygo. Thanks for taking my questions. I was just going to ask about pricing and the Pandora brand. I just wonder whether there are any learnings you're taking in terms of what product categories, like consumers are more comfortable taking sort of price items from the Pandora brand. We think about kind of wristwear versus, say, rings, necklaces, and kind of silver versus gold. The second one, I appreciate this is much further out, but just wondering if there's any update in terms of how you're thinking about hedging policy out into 2027. Thank you.
Let's see if I got it. Can you repeat your first question? I'm not a hundred percent sure what you're asking.
Are consumers, as you're kind of putting the price rises through, more willing to take price rises on, say, wristwear versus other product categories like necklaces and rings from the Pandora brand? I'm just interested in terms of how they think about or how they're reacting to different pricing across different categories.
It's a yes and a no. Let's see how we answer this. If you move your opening price points on charms, for instance, a lot, there will be a reaction, which is also why that's the place which we have tried to protect. If you look at, for instance, collaborations, people are more willing to move the pricing up, especially when it's the Disney collabs. That fan base seemed to be quite keen to follow along, so we've moved that a little bit. If I look at, then it almost becomes by product concept somehow. It's not just product related. If I think about, in general, there's a trend on yellow gold plating going in the world. We used to have an over, let's say, two thirds or more of the business used to be rose gold plated, and then one third used to be yellow gold.
If I'm not mistaken, it's kind of flopped, so that just seems yellow gold is more in demand somehow, which of course then allows a little bit more pricing to go up with that. By particular category, no, I haven't really seen. We've seen on rings, for instance, that seems to be, you know, rings sub 50, take euro, pound, dollar, have seemed to be kind of a good entry point for especially younger consumers to the brand. Of course, if you move that 50 price point to, let's say, 70, you kind of rule yourself out of the market. That's another area where we are a bit more careful. Those are probably the only hard, fact-based insights I would have for you.
It's dependent on which collection, it's dependent on the starting point on the price, and depends a little bit on the design and what you're actually putting on offer, if that makes sense. Maybe Anders, you can talk to hedging.
Yeah, on the hedging, our sort of standard way of hedging silver and gold is covering, on a rolling 12 months basis, the P&L. That's the starting point. In order to cover the P&L on a 12 months rolling basis, that entails hedging the purchase of silver and gold eight months out, give and take. That's the standard. As you know, we did a bit more back in April. We hedged a bit out longer than normal. For now, we haven't hedged anything of 2027. The standard will be that when we then get into January 2026, we'll start hedging bit by bit a part of 2027. That's how to think about it.
Okay. Just back to standard policy. Great, that's clear. Thank you.
Okay. I think we will lay down arms at this point. Thank you for the interest, and let's hope that the share price somehow finds a different pathway in the future. We are really believing in the back half plan. Let's see in a couple of months when we meet you again. Thank you for today.