Morning everyone, and welcome to the conference call for Pandora's Q2 2026 results. I am Bilal Aziz from the investor relations team, and I am joined here by our CEO, Berta de Pablos-Barbier, 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 to two questions, that would be great. Please pay notice to disclaimer on slide two and then turn to slide three, and I will hand over to Berta.
Thank you, Bilal, and welcome everyone. I would like to start with a small reminder and providing some context that 2026 is a year of deliberate change for Pandora. We are rolling our new growth model with greater focus on distinctive design, cultural relevance, and a stronger local execution. In addition, we are also expanding our retail experience with some pilots intending to inspire discovery and giving the consumers more reasons to buy. We will be scaling across markets as we see proof points that it is working. Importantly, we are also improving the quality of growth, substantially reducing promotions and heavy discounting. You can see this implemented particularly in our core markets. All these actions, of course, are intending to strengthen brand desirability and relevance and to build a healthier platform for sustainable growth.
I will expand a little bit later and you will be able to see some examples. With all that, let me turn to quarter two. Quarter two played out broadly as we expected. We deliver 1% like-for-like growth and 3% organic growth. Growth in this quarter reflects a deliberate reduction in promotional activity, particularly in core markets. Of course, it has moderated growth in the near term, but is the right choice for both the health of the brand and the quality of our growth. Profitability remained strong. EBIT margin benefit from the refund of previously paid U.S. tariff. But even if we actually exclude this effect, the business has continued to demonstrate a disciplined cost control and very resilient profitability. Finally, our returns remain high at close to 40% despite the external environment. Let's now move to the next slide, please.
I would like to turn to guidance now. We have adjusted both our top line and EBIT margin guidance for the year. For the top line, we are now targeting an organic growth of 0% to +3%, and the main change on this guidance is actually our like-for-like growth, which we are now increasing to -2% to +1%, and this compares to the previous -3% to 0% on like-for-like. Why this upgrade? Well, this upgrade reflects our performance in the first half of the year, but at the same time, we have to be careful because we continue to operate in a volatile macroeconomic and geopolitical environment, and the implications for consumer still remain uncertain. On EBIT margin, the upgrade of our guidance to 22%-23% from 22%-23%, compared to the 21%-22% previously.
Anders will be taking you through the guidance in a little bit more detail shortly. Let me talk a little bit about current trading. The like-for-like growth in the quarter so far has been around mid-single digit levels. Of course, it has benefit from the timing of our end of season sale, which was more weighted towards July this year versus June last year. I want to be very clear, while we start the quarter and the quarter at the beginning is encouraging, July is not representative of the underlying run rate of the business, so it should not be extrapolated forward. It is important to keep this thing in perspective. Let's get into more detail on the quarter two performance drivers, if you can pass to the next slide, please. Quarter two.
We deliver a 1% like-for-like growth, and you can see the split between the Core and the Fuel with More on this slide. The way to read this result is where we have distinctive product newness with high impact activation, we are driving growth. In other areas, there is more work to do and actions to put this in place are starting with high focus, of course, on our Core business. Core deliver - 1% like-for-like growth in line with Q1. The growth in the Core continued to be supported by the strong performance of the collection launched last year, Talisman. In Moments, our playful aesthetic, the opportunity is still there to bring a stronger, more distinctive newness, and as I said before, this is where all our focus is now.
In Fuel with More, where we have higher mix of distinctive design, we deliver 3% like-for-like growth, and that performance was very supported by Timeless, which our new Garden of Dreams collection and PANDORA ESSENCE. Let's go into the next slide to talk about markets. Our regional performance in quarter two remained mixed. Let me start with the EMEA region, which is our largest region. There we deliver a like-for-like growth of - 2%. Spain, Poland, Portugal continue to perform very well, and that was offset by weak performance in some of our mature markets like Italy and the U.K. Growth in these markets, Italy and U.K., reflects, as I mentioned, a significant reduction in promotional days versus last year.
In these markets, in addition to implementing the new growth model, we are also piloting an evolved retail experience with a clear objective of a strength and desirability, inspire discovery, and give consumers more reasons to buy Pandora. We are bringing collections into curated looks, elevating the product presentation, and strengthening visual storytelling. Early signs are encouraging, and we will continue to refine and scale what works. In the U.S., our larger market, the like-for-like growth was flat in the quarter. Performance continued to be impacted by softer consumer sentiment and lower store traffic. Against this backdrop, the brand remains healthy and strong, and we continue to focus on what we can control, strengthening demand creation through more impactful brand activation and locally relevant execution. So overall for the region of North America, there was a stable growth around - 1%.
In Latin America, our like-for-like growth accelerated to 18%. The price repositioning that we introduced earlier this year continues to deliver strong results. This is supported by a strong local activation and influence engagement, which I will touch a little bit more later as well. Finally, in Asia, we deliver a strong growth of 10%. Our rollout in Japan continues to progress very well, and we still remain in the early stage of building that brand awareness, that reach through continued increased marketing investment. Now let me show some examples of what do we mean by our new growth model is coming to life to drive demand. If we can go to the next slide. I did mention last quarter that we have started to rebalance our marketing investment, and the introduction of the Garden of Dreams campaign is a good example of this shift in action.
The campaign basically brought together some of our most distinctive designs of the season with a stronger, more focused amplification across touchpoints, events, influencers. You can see some examples in the picture. This reinforced a point that I made last quarter. When we bring a strong product design and marketing that is relevant, they work hand in hand and deliver growth. This absolutely translated into growth across all markets, and you can see that reflected in the strong performance of the Timeless collection and therefore our Fuel with More segment in this quarter. Let's go to another example on the next slide. You can see here as well how we are bringing our new growth model to life.
Following the success of Bridgerton in quarter one, in July, we launched Pandora Wonders, a multiyear creative platform that is designed to build desirability and drive demand through design, craftsmanship, and cultural relevance. Our first action was co-created with Harry Lambert and was launched during Paris Haute Couture Week. This is exactly what we want to do more, is really create cultural moments for Pandora, is bringing Pandora into the cultural conversation through distinctive design and high impact activation. This campaign was launched in key markets. It's early, but response has been very strong, particularly on our earned media and PR coverage. So it is encouraging and that we are seeing as well the first sign of early engagement from new customers coming to the brand and being attracted by the Pandora brand.
What matters most is the long-term opportunity of this platform, as this year we will bring a new creative voice to play and reinterpret our materials and our craftsmanship through limited edition capsules. Of course, you will hear more of how this campaign performed on the quarter three, which we will have the entire KPIs. Let's go now into the next slide, please. Of course, we do continue to invest on our store network, both expanding our footprint, but most importantly or equally important, elevating the experience of our existing stores. So we do continue to roll out our digital screens, our store facades, which is allowing us to bring the collections and the brand storytelling to life with much greater impact. During the quarter, we opened new flagship stores in Barcelona and Milan.
And these stores are a good opportunity to bring together the full breadth and inspiration of Pandora and set a new benchmark of how consumers experience the brand. I really encourage you, if you find yourself in either city, to visit some of the stores, as you will see and understand better what the great expression of Pandora can be on the brand experience. Now let's go to the next slide. I'm just going to bring everything I have just said together by reminding the direction that we set out in February. You will recognize this slide. You have seen some concrete examples of how this is now coming to life. More design-led newness, more effective marketing, and a stronger, locally relevant execution.
As you see, Garden of Dreams showed that and brought that into practice and also proved that we have opportunity to get Pandora into new categories, necklace, rings, et cetera, where you know we have a still opportunity to grow. So these actions are in motion. We are seeing encouraging proof points, but they are not yet fully reflected in the performance of the business today. So as I said, 2026 is a deliberate year of change. We bring in more discipline and scaling what works. You will hear more on the quarter three, where we are bringing together a strategic update, but now we can go into the next slide. Now, of course, growth is one part of the equation, but of course, as you remember, the biggest second priority for Pandora and for myself is to protect profitability. Equilever is our response to our rising silver prices.
Now, in February, we introduced the platinum-plated jewelry on our proprietary EVERSHINE alloy, which is going to transition a part of our existing white metal portfolio over time into platinum-plated. Now, this is supporting profitability, but equally and most importantly, it is a compelling consumer proposition. Why? It's bringing platinum, which is a precious metal, into a more accessible format with a strong durability for everyday wear. Now, I think it's important to remind that Pandora has already evolved beyond a single material proposition. That what matters also is that consumer choose Pandora for our design, our craftsmanship, our quality, and our meaning across different materials. We don't need to speculate. A proof of that is the success of our gold-plated jewelry, which continues to grow strongly. Now, of course, as you remember, we have been working on this transition for more than a year.
This transition is being supported by extensive consumer testing and validation. So it will evolve, give us confidence in the acceptance and adoption of platinum plating as a white metal proposition. Now, during the quarter as well, we have started our pilot in the Netherlands with five key carriers, four bracelets, and one necklace. Now, this is early, but the initial response, I have to say, has been encouraging on the adoption. And we are also using the pilot to learn and refine our execution before the global rollout next year. We will extend as well this year with more selected design across more markets, and this will be a good source of learning for us. Now, important to remember, this is an evolution of our product platform that is bringing greater choice to consumer while strengthening the long-term resilience of our business.
We expect, and it is very obvious, that we will be the first jewelry brand to bring platinum-plated jewelry to scale. We will be providing more detail on the rollout and as well on the latest financials and EBIT margin implications with our quarter three strategic update. On that note, I would like to now hand over to Anders to take you through the rest of the presentation.
Thank you, Berta, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to slide 14. Berta has already commented on the top line, so I will focus on a couple of the other financial metrics. The key message for the quarter is that margins remain solid. That is both on the gross margin and EBIT margin level, and that we continue to manage all of the external headwinds quite effectively. As I am sure you have read, we did get a one-off benefit this quarter from the partial refund of our U.S. tariff claim, and we have broken it out in the impact out on the margin for you so you can track the underlying performance. This one-off meant that our gross margin was up 120 basis points in the quarter.
Even when you exclude the one-off, you will see that our gross margin was still above 78% and thereby only down around 100 basis points compared to last year, despite that we faced just under 300 basis points of external headwinds. So quite a strong margin and highlighting the good cost efficiencies that is still being delivered, but also a deliberate reduction in promotions, as Berta said. Next slide, please. Here we break down the revenue growth in the quarter as usual. We have talked about the like-for-like building block already, so I will touch on some of the other elements in the bridge. On the network expansion, the purple building block at 4%, that continues to track well, generating healthy top-line growth in white space areas, and with no cannibalization, and generating very healthy margins.
You also notice that this quarter specifically, we saw a 2 percentage points drag from the bucket that we call sell-in and other. There are two elements to this. One is just phasing between quarters that we will always see. Secondly, some of it is linked to lower sell-in to certain partners. Next slide, please. On the EBIT margin, performance was strong. The EBIT margin was up 210 basis points year-over-year. As you can see from the bridge here, it was helped by the partial refund of our claim on the U.S. tariffs, and that accounted for 250 basis point on EBIT margin level. It is a one-off, of course, and there will be more of that coming in the second half of 2026, and I will speak about that shortly.
If you exclude that one-off impact, you can calculate that the EBIT margin was broadly in line with last year. Some of you will probably point out that even that was a bit better than what we have communicated about phasing through the year earlier on, and that is fair. The reason is that just like in Q1, we did see some cost phasing benefit of around 200 basis points in the quarter. That phasing includes the level of marketing spend where we ended up deciding to spend, which you can also see in the announcement today, that it is a bit below last year. That phasing will be reversed in Q3 and Q4, and then be neutral for the full year.
Overall, you should read from this that we are, of course, keeping a tight control on our cost in this current subdued revenue and macro environment. We will continue to offset a large proportion of the external headwinds that we are facing. With that, let us move on to the guidance. As Berta already said, we have upgraded both our revenue and EBIT margin guidance. Let me tackle revenue first. We upgraded our organic growth guidance by 1 percentage point on both low end and high end to now being +2% to -1%. Sorry, 0% - 3%. This upgrade is driven by higher like-for-like expectations for the full year, where we now see like-for-like growth of between +1% and -2%, versus previously between flat and down to -3%.
The low end of that range continues to factor in the fact that the consumer environment remains weak and the geopolitical uncertainty remains quite high. We do not know how this will play out for consumers, even on a short time horizon. The high end of +1% basically called for similar growth in the second half as we saw in the first half. So keeping the run rate of our like-for-like growth to what we have already seen. We do acknowledge that our comp base is getting easier in the second half of the year. Here is a couple of thoughts on how to think about that. First of all, we are planning a promotional detox in the second half of the year to further protect brand equity.
Secondly, if you dig into the comp base, you will see that the two-year stack mostly gets easier in the U.S. But the U.S. is, at the same time, the market with particularly high macro and geopolitical uncertainty. It is also the market where we see the K-shaped economy impacting our consumer base. Lastly, we do not expect to repeat the growth levels that we have seen in Latin America and Asia Pacific in the first half of the year. Some of this will naturally moderate. When we say this, that is not to ignore the impact of the initiatives that we are working on to reignite the growth engine. But these will take time to feed through into sustainable improvement in like-for-like every quarter. As we did say back in February, 2026 is a transition year.
As you can also see in the bridge, we have increased our network guidance to +3% organic growth contribution, up from 2% initially. This increase is then offset by slightly lower sell-in to certain partners. We now expect sell-in and others to be around -1%, and then those two components net out. If we could go to the next slide, please. On the EBIT margin guidance, we have upgraded it to 22%-23%, from 21%-22% before. So an increase of 100 basis points in both the low end and high end of the range. This change in the guidance you can see here relating to the purple box that we call tariff refund, and the 100 basis points being the income we expect from the refund of tariffs that we have previously paid.
We already got an impact, as we just talked about in the second quarter, equivalent to just around 50 basis points of full year EBIT margin impact. We expect to have another similar 50 basis points positive impact sometime during the second half of the year. Again, this tariff refund is a one-off benefit for the year. So keep that in mind when you think out to 2027. All other building blocks are broadly unchanged. On that note, I will hand back over to Berta.
Thank you very much, Anders. Let me just conclude. I would like just to leave you with a key few points. Yes, we are making progress on the priorities we set out in February. The actions are now in motion across the business. We are seeing encouraging proof points. There is still more to do to translate this consistently into a stronger like-for-like growth. At the same time, we are also driving healthier growth through greater promotional discipline, and we do continue to demonstrate a strong financial control. Based on our performance and outlook, we are upgrading both our top line and EBIT margin guidance for the year. We are progressing our transition to platinum plating, which is an important evolution of our product platform that will diversify our metal mix and strengthen the resilience of the business over time.
We will be saying much more about it on the next phase for Pandora and all our strategic priorities with our quarter three update. If you allow me, before we move to Q&A, I will just briefly like to touch on an announcement that we made last Thursday regarding you, Anders. As you know, Anders has been an integral part of Pandora's development, and I am really personally very grateful for everything that he has contributed to Pandora. We do, of course, respect his decision to retire from operating roles. It is his choice, and we wish him all the very best. Of course, at the same time, we are very pleased to welcome Paulo Garcia. He will be joining Pandora in October.
We will have a leadership transition that will run very smoothly between both of them. This does not change our strategy, does not change our priorities or our ambition for Pandora. We do know where we are going. We remain fully focused on our execution to deliver that with discipline and consistency. With that, please let me thank you for your attention. I think it is time to open for the Q&A.
Thank you. We will now start the Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing five star again. We kindly ask that you please limit yourself to two questions and then rejoin the queue for additional questions. Our first question will be from the line of Thomas Chauvet from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Before questions, Anders, let me thank you for all the support over the years and best wishes for your retirement from executive life. I think you have many other exciting projects, and so all the best for that. My two questions are as follows. The first one on the U.S. LFL improvement in a still difficult consumer sentiment environment. What are you seeing across traffic, conversion, average tickets? Berta, are you starting to see tangible benefits from the recent product and marketing initiatives that give you a greater confidence about a rebound in this market, maybe in the back half of the year? Secondly, on the tariffs topic, but maybe for next year, you indicated in the release a lower tariffs rate of 12.5% on U.S. imports from Thailand going forward, down from 19%.
How much do you expect that to support your gross margin next year? Could you comment on the implications for Vietnam as well? Is there any change there in that new crafting facilities tariffs for the U.S. imports? Could you comment whether that facility is also adapting, shifting to the platinum-plated strategy as planned, given it was built for a slightly different purpose, I guess, more for a silver type of business? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Thomas. Let me start with your question of the U.S. What we are seeing in the U.S. is that the consumer sentiment continues to be low. The macroeconomic continues to be difficult for the increase of discretionary spend. This is something that you see. What we see on the industry, on the total jewelry and accessories industry, the traffic is slightly flattish. We are slightly behind on traffic, but we are seeing a strong increase on our conversion on our average basket for the U.S. business, and this is both on our offline and our online store. Everything that we see indicates that what we are doing with the distinctive newness and the new marketing model is working in the U.S. We see that as well reflecting on the performance of the Timeless collection, which was growing as well in this market.
Yes, the proof points are building up, and that's why we are confident for the remaining, not only of the year, but of the years to come.
Thank you, Thomas. On the other question, thank you for your kind words. On the tariffs, when we communicated targets back in February, a high level guidance on EBIT margin for 2027 and midterm, that was based on the assumption of the old tariff, if I can call it that, around 19%-20% level. With the new tariffs in place, that gives roughly a 70 - 80 basis point of margin upside on gross margin going forward compared to what we've said previously. We'll take that. On Vietnam, the tariff level between Vietnam and Thailand are very much aligned, so there's no competitive difference from that point of view from producing in the two countries. Vietnam is definitely part of our overall plan on how we build up much more plating capacity going forward.
There will be some plants that have a higher share of plating than others, like today, where one of the factories in Thailand, the double B factory, is only doing plating. There will be some differences between them, but there's no disadvantage on Vietnam from the tariffs.
Thank you.
Thanks, Thomas. Our next question will be from the line of Lars Topholm from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Yes. Congrats, first of all, on a great quarter. From me also, Anders, thanks for everything. You still look way too young to retire, but that's how it is. I'll also limit myself to two questions, please. One goes for the moving parts in 2027, where you specifically call out that the price of silver, everything else equal, helps you with 200 basis points on the gross margin compared to the assumptions behind the 12% minimum margin, 14% underlying. I wonder if you can give a similar specification of the tailwinds relating to gold, relating to FX, and relating to platinum, so we sort of know what moving parts you are working with. Then, second question, maybe for you, but I just wonder if you can put some more color on what you are seeing from the platinum plating in Holland.
I know it's early days and not that many SKUs, but have you learned anything that surprised you pleasantly or the opposite, and what are sort of the key findings? Are there any sort of hard numbers you can share so far? Thanks.
Thank you for those questions, Lars, and I'll put the you look younger into my scrapbook, so a particular thank you for that. A fair question on the margins, starting with 2027. Silver, just around 200 basis points, as we wrote in the announcement. The logic in that is that the original assumption was a silver price of $82. Now we've hedged around $65, so that's a $17, obviously, upside. With a sensitivity next year in the 12%, 13%, 14% range, basis points per one U.S. dollar, you get to around 200 basis points of upside on that. Then, on gold and platinum, it's much smaller numbers, but still an upside of, in round numbers, for both gold and platinum, 25 - 30 basis points of upside at the current spot prices, each next year.
As we just spoke about just before, then we have 70 - 80 basis points of tariff upside as well, if they remain at the current levels that was announced by the U.S. government over the summer. Foreign exchanges is a small change. On a pure technical upgrade, that will give just a little bit above 300 basis points of margin upside next year on an all other things basis. Of course, we think that it makes more sense to give you a broader update on the margin guidance for 2027 and midterm as part of the strategic update that will be coming in November. Because, of course, there's other moving parts than commodities and silver, so we want to bake it into the broader update, which feels like a natural time to do it come November.
That makes sense. But in connection with that, because in your part of the presentation, you also mentioned underlying margin drivers contributing 250 basis points. Since we're on that topic, maybe you can specify what those are. There's some channel mix, there's probably some price, there's some efficiency gains. There is an effect from Fuel with More outperforming Core. Can you quantify that bridge a little bit more?
You're thinking about specifically then the second quarter margin?
Yeah, because I assume some of these drivers are also drivers which are relevant when we look into 2027.
Yeah. A fair comment. By far, the majority of what sits in that net operating leverage in the second quarter, that upside there, that is cost phasing to the tune of 200 basis points, specifically in Q2. Again, if we drill one more step down into that cost phasing, more than half of it is marketing, where we have been spending less marketing in the first half compared to last year. In the second half, we will be spending more than what we did last year. So on that note, there is no other structural changes for the 2027 margin apart from commodities and tariffs.
Good?
Yeah. Thanks.
On your second question, it will actually become the third question. On the platinum-plated. So you said it, Lars, I think it is still very early days, but what was a pleasant surprise was to see that it was confirming the hypothesis, and it was according to the expectations of all the data that we had previously collected with our more than 30,000 consumers. So that is actually confirming what we initially expected. Just to give you a little bit more flavor, as a reminder, we are doing a test on both our physical stores and on our online stores. On our physical stores, the platinum-plated products are priced at the same price as silver. So we are learning about what is the demand when we price at the same. On the online, we are actually getting a different price testing as well.
More to come on our quarter three announcement on all the learnings on that part. But so far, confident.
Thank you very much. I will jump back into the queue.
Thanks, Lars. Our next question will be from the line of [Frederick Novice] from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, your line will now be unmuted.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I have two, if that is okay. Firstly, on the 2026 like-for-like guidance. So you are now guiding from -2% to +1% for the year, which given the flat like-for-like in H1 implies roughly -4% to +1% or 2% in H2. But at the same time, Q3 current trading is already running at mid-single digits, albeit with some benefit from phasing of commercial activities. So perhaps could you help us understand the degree of conservatism embedded in the guidance, and specifically what would drive the slowdown implied for the remainder of the second half and in Q4 in particular? Then my second question is on Europe. Berta, you mentioned earlier today that the recent heat waves have weighed on store traffic in Europe, with some consumers staying at home and shopping online instead.
Could you help us understand how material that impact has been on recent like-for-like trends? Are you seeing online growth broadly offsetting the weaker store traffic, or has there been a net negative impact on like-for-like? As temperatures have normalized now, I think, have you seen any corresponding improvements in store traffic? Thank you.
Yeah. Hi, [Frederick]. I will take the first one on the guidance. You are broadly in the right ballpark in terms of the implied like-for-like growth for the rest of the year with the high end implying around one-ish. I will just kind of repeat what Anders said. There is a kind of deliberate detox on the promotion planned, even for the remainder part of the year. That will act as a small part of a drag against that just to protect the brand equity going forward. I also appreciate your comment on kind of current trading. But again, we said, please don't take that as a run rate right now. There is some phasing element in that as well. Then last but not least, we are still relatively cautious on the broader macro environment in the U.S. as well. We will see how that plays out.
So many moving pieces. I appreciate the maths is what it is, as well. But there's many factors at play here.
Yes. Then on the traffic, is it substantially impacting the quarter two results? The answer is no. Did we see some changes on those weeks? Yes. What we are seeing is that if I take the full quarter two traffic, in seven out of our 10 markets, the traffic for the industry, so this is either the jewelry and accessories or the retail, has been negative on the quarter two, and we are pretty much either online or slightly negative, depending on which are the countries. As far as our e-commerce performance, it is pretty much online for the total quarter with our offline, with again, maybe on those two weeks. Yes, we saw in a slightly peak, but we are just talking weeks out of three months, so not a substantial impact.
Thanks, [Frederick]. Our next question will be from the line of Kristian Godiksen from SEB. Please go ahead, your line will now be unmuted.
Thank you. I usually don't do these congratulations, but Anders, I also want to congratulate on a strong heritage and performance based on your well-deserved choice to retire. To the two questions I'll limit myself to this time. First of all, maybe could you comment a bit on whether there's a structurally higher run rate and hence impact from new stores as you allude to your upgraded guidance from network expansion without upgrading the number of new stores? That would be the first question. Then the second question, I guess that's for you, Berta. Could you maybe comment a bit more on when should we look in terms of timing of the inflection points in terms of like-for-like improvement in mature markets such as Italy and the U.K. and France based on all the initiatives you are doing? Thank you.
Thank you for that, Kristian, and likewise, a pleasure to have been working with you. You're right that we are upgrading the network guidance but keeping the same number of stores that we opened this year. When we set out the guidance at the start of the year, we took probably a somewhat deliberate cautious stance on this, given that it's a transition year, but also the uncertain consumer environment, and the network assumptions and how much growth each store would be generating was part of that. Since that, so far, the seven, eight months that has passed so far, the rollout of new store has tracked at the upper end of what we had sort of planned for internally. That has, with some of the new stores generating a bit more revenue than we had in the original 2% assumption.
We are basically simply bringing the assumptions now in line with the actual delivery for the first seven months of the year.
Yeah.
Okay. Maybe just, Anders, before Berta, can I maybe just follow up? Just to basically to understand, I guess, many of the stores are opening in the new markets. Is it fair to assume that you're confident or optimistic or a bit more optimistic on the growth contribution from network expansion in these new markets? Is that the way to look at it as well?
I think in general, the way to think about it is that when we set out the original guidance, we had an assumption of both, of course, when do the stores open, and then what kind of revenue do they generate from day one. On both, we saw a little bit earlier in terms of opening, and they generate a bit more store than what, sorry, a bit more revenue than what we had hoped for in this macroeconomic environment. That's somewhat, I would say in the decimals, when we made the original guidance, it was 2 point something that rounded down to 2. Now, with the updated assumptions, it's 2 point something that rounds just to a 3. That's also, of course, one of the consequences.
Okay.
When you report in without a decimal, and you can't see that.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah, as for your other question, basically when you look at how the performance of our core market is directly linked to the performance of our Core collections. What we need to do is to start improving the performance of the existing Core collections, and as we said already, this has come from new distinctive newness being reinjected to refresh the Core collections. What we are starting to see, we are now focusing on that, and you will start seeing improvement over time. When we look at the time it takes us to develop collection, the biggest impact will start from 2027. Of course, that doesn't mean that we are doing nothing this year. We are just trying to maximize the impact of what we had on our plan.
One example of that I shared with you was Wonders, where we created a lot of noise and achieved earned media value record for Pandora, 10 times more than previous activation. We continue to focus on driving that perception as we bring the new collections.
Okay. That's very clear. I think you said earlier on a conference call that you could see when, I think it was the connection when Philippa was hired, that we could see some newness in Q4. Is that still in place for timing-wise, that you will see some of the newness in Q4?
She's working hard on that. That still remains some of the plan, and then let's see how much volume we can bring. One is to bring the design, and the other is to make sure that we can scale that at a substantial level.
Perfect. Thanks a lot. I will jump back.
Thanks, Kristian. Our next question will be from the line of Daria from Bank of America. Please go ahead, your line will now be unmuted.
Hi, this is Daria from Bank of America. Thank you for taking my questions, and I also wanted to say thank you to Anders for all the years of collaboration. I have two questions. Could you please share the split between volume, price, and mix in the second quarter, but also in your current trading number? Then a clarification on the EBIT margin guidance upgrade. Considering also better like-for-like growth guidance, why is the underlying margin assumptions not really moving, considering the upgrade feels driven mostly by the tariff refund? Thank you very much.
Thank you for that kind words, Daria. On the second quarter, the overall volume, so of total, is slightly positive in the quarter, when I am thinking about total revenue growth. If you look specifically at like-for-like units, it is down 2 points, and then you have +3 on the pricing. Then that takes us to the 1% like-for-like for the quarter. On current trading, we do not comment on that, but structurally, you should think the same on the pricing side because we did not do any pricing in between. On the underlying, you are right, technically, with 1 percentage point higher like-for-like growth, there is a little bit of operating leverage, all other things equal in that. Of course, it is not something that moves several percentage points on the margins. That will be in the decimals. But we have decided two things to note here.
We have decided to invest a little bit more in reigniting our growth engines in different parts of the world. That includes Asia, where we want to put even more muscle behind that, becoming an even bigger growth driver in the years to come. Secondly, we have bits and pieces on the freight cost from the Middle East crisis. It is not big money in our context. But net, that means that the underlying margin is the same despite the revenue upgrade.
Thank you.
Thanks, Daria. Our next question will be from the line of Anthony Charchafji from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Yes, thank you. Good morning. It is Anthony Charchafji at BNP Paribas. I have two questions, please. The first one is on the tariff reimbursement, which is an interesting deal that you have done with a third party and leaving $0.23 to the dollar on the table. Just curious to know if you felt that there was a sense of risk on those reimbursement and why did you take the decision to book the cash in Q2 and Q3? Is it a sign that potentially you could resume a share buyback as early as 2027? My second question is again on the 2027 margin comments, maybe just on the commodity part, because I have quite a bit of a delta versus your indication of 250-260 basis points upside to the guidance on commodity. Could you just remind me the moving part?
Because, if you switch one third of the silver consumption and it's switched to platinum, I get something closer to 400 basis points instead of 250 basis points. So maybe just some color on those sensitivity would be very helpful for me to understand why I got it wrong. Thank you.
All right. Thank you for those questions, Anthony. Let me start with the tariff. You're right. We sold the claim back in early May, based on an evaluation of the risk of whether the fund would actually ever come back. We had quite extensive discussions about that, both how long time it could take before cash would be returned, if ever, by the U.S. government. Therefore, we decided to monetize the claim and sell it. So we got the money that was received, the $55 million we received back in the first half of May. And we know that several companies or many companies around the world decided to do that, but it was based on a risk reward, and compared to the discount that we had to sell the claim at.
The accounting around this is, under IFRS, is actually rather complex, but all the cash is sitting on the bank account. They have been received. Then under IFRS accounting, how that works is that even though we've sold the claim on a non-recourse basis, so it's full and final, then we can only take the income in the P&L as such as the refund administrative process in the U.S. is progressing. That led to $28 million coming into the books in Q2. And we expect the majority to come here in the second half of the year, maybe in Q3, maybe in Q4. That still remains to be seen. And on the share buyback, you're right. Of course, everything helps. We're getting cash into the bank, but it's still too early to go down the line of reinitiating a share buyback program.
I think if you do a little bit of math with the 2027 margin, you would see that we would be above the leverage range next year if we started out a share buyback program either this year or next year, in fact. That doesn't mean that we wouldn't end up concluding that a share buyback program next year might be appropriate, even though it would lead to leverage being a little bit above the range for a short time as we transition into Platinum plated. But that's too early to decide and communicate anything on that. That will be a part of the 2027 communication. And of course, also when we come out with the full year guidance for next year in February next year, we will talk about how we look at it at that point in time.
But I think it's very important to stress it's not a question of if we start the share buyback programs again, it's only a question of the timing during this transition into platinum plated for a part of the jewelry. Then the consequent increase in leverage that we'll see, just by pure math, because the margin will go down next year compared to this year. More to come on that. Then on the 2027 margin, high level, the ways you think about the silver sensitivity, if we take that one specifically, then in 2026, so this year, the sensitivity is around that if the silver moves one U.S. dollar, then the margin changes 20 basis points. Now, with the level of transition that we're doing from silver to platinum, then next year, that sensitivity goes from the 20 to around 13, 14 basis points.
That's just step one, then the sensitivity will go down even further next year. But if you're using 13 basis points sensitivity per one U.S. dollar, then the upside on the margin next year would be $17 lower from $82 -$ 65. That's now being hedged times 13, and that gives you 214 basis points to be precise, but let's call it 200 basis points of margin upside. Then I'm happy to go through the math on gold and platinum, or we can follow up separately afterwards with IR. But there, the sensitivity is obviously still much lower, and that would give 25 - 30 basis points uplift on each.
There, the prices that we are using is that in the original announcement back in February, we used a gold price of just above 4,700 and getting to the 25- 30 basis points upside, we are using a gold spot price of 4,400. Equivalent on platinum, it's from 2,400 originally to now around 1,600 spot price for platinum. But again, happy to go through it and reconcile the math that you had in your mind.
Okay. Thank you, Anders. But just to confirm, in term of silver usage, your assumption still take into account the reduction of one third?
Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Anthony. Our next question will be from the line of André Thormann from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Thanks a lot for taking my questions. I have two as well. First question is regarding this promotional detoxing you mentioned, Anders, in the second half to come. Can you maybe tell a bit more about where this will be in the world? Second question is regarding the U.S. like-for-like in the second half. Can you maybe put some words on why we won't see a significant uptick in like-for-like with comps coming significantly down in the U.S. for the second half? That's my questions.
Yeah. Why don't I start with the retail discount? I would say that what you will see, you should expect to see this is pretty much across all markets. We have as well, a higher focus on our mature markets. You should expect to see a reduction on the U.K., on Italy, et cetera, as a biggest reduction. Of course, when you look at the retail discounts, you will see a big decline, or what we are seeing is a big decline on the retail discount level on LATAM. As a reminder, there was a change from a high low positioning in the previous year to the beginning of this year, getting the same pricings in line with the rest of the pricing corridors on the rest of the world and substantially reducing the promotion to nearly half of the days.
Long answer short, it is across all markets, but we are focusing heavily on the mature markets, which is where we saw the highest increase in the last two years.
I am sorry, André, I did not get the second question.
Comps get easier in the U.S.
In the U.S.
Why might it not get better?
I just asked why we will not see a strong like-for-like tick up in the second half for U.S. when the comps are much lighter.
Okay. Let me start, and again, Anders, you can complement. I think we discussed it in the call. We are not claiming victory yet. We are seeing strong signs that our model is working. But if you look at it, our like-for-like growth on Core is still negative. I can look, of course, at what is happening on the collections and the base assortment in this market, so we are sensible and we remain prudent with our approach. Yes, the comps get easier, but at the same time, and I answered just before, we are seeing a decline on our promo details as well, which in the U.S. it was really on our offline, but also on our online, on our e-commerce store, where we were promoting slightly heavily on quarter three, adding more days in addition to the Black Friday weeks, et cetera.
Those days of extra promo outside of the big commercial periods will go away, and that will have an impact. Of course, last but not least, this is a market where the consumer sentiment is still low, at record lows. We see jewelry increasing, and then we could be very happy about that. But when you double-click on that, it is actually on the high income, so the accessible jewelry market is still declining, and this was in quarter one and quarter two. We are just looking at the facts and making sensible decisions for the rest of the year.
All right. Thank you so much.
Thanks, André. Our next question will be from the line of Lars Topholm from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead, your line will now be unmuted.
Just a couple of brief follow-ups, please. On the current trading and this uptick from Q1 to the mid-single digit level in the beginning of Q3, can you comment on, is this broad based? Is it specific markets driving this? A second follow-up question. Berta, you gave a comment on the performance in mature markets being related to how the Core performs. Just wonder if you can give some numbers on the distribution between Core revenue and Fuel with More revenue in some of your less mature markets like LATAM, Japan, Spain, compared to the group average, where Fuel with More is 26%. Is that a significantly higher share in some of these younger markets? Thanks.
Yeah. I will take the first one, Lars. It is relatively broad based. The commercial phasing had quite a consistent effect across all regions, really. Yeah, on to Berta.
Yeah, I think on the thing you should explain, when you look at all the mature markets and when you look at NAM and EMEA, and given that is really the biggest part of our market, the split is the same. What we are seeing slightly different is when we start new markets like Japan, where we are seeing that is slightly more, let us say, balance between the Core and the Fuel with More. But on the majority of our business is exactly the same.
This would also imply profitability incrementally is better in LATAM, Japan, since Fuel with More has higher margins?
It is close to each other, so I think the gross margin between the two are high or high. But strictly speaking, you are right.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Lars. Our next question will be from the line of Kristian Godiksen from SEB. Please go ahead, your line will now be unmuted.
Thank you. Also, a couple of follow-ups from me. Maybe could you comment a bit on the relative weak performance in the online channel this year, compared to the underperformance of the physical stores, so contrary to the last many years? Secondly, could you elaborate a bit maybe on the, I noticed a jump in the unaided brand awareness in the mature markets for the younger groups in the first half year in 2026. It would be nice to have some more flavor on that. Thirdly and lastly, comment a bit on the lower selling. I guess it is a bit contrary to me based on the performance of wholesale actually for a very long time, obviously has underperformed, but this quarter, actually, it is doing better than your own stores. So, yeah, it sounds a bit contrary to me that then they reduce their inventories.
I am happy to hear some thoughts on that. Thank you.
Why don't I start on the e-commerce? What do you see? We have been talking quite a lot on this call about the promotional detox, and we were detoxing, of course, in the entirety of our business. We do get less offer huntings that we will get actually on the e-com. I think this is one of the biggest driver. The second question was?
Unaided brand awareness among-
Yes.
the younger.
Yes, sorry. That is good. What is important to say is that unaided brand awareness continue to increase, which is important because, of course, as you know, we are moving from only reach to reach and relevance. The shift on the marketing investments that are going more to earned media, PR, et cetera, is not in detriment of our reach. We continue to increase that. What we are seeing as well is that the recent activations that we have done has drove proportionally more Gen Z consumers into our brand. We continue to be cross-generational, and this is an important strength for Pandora. But it is, of course, important that we are relevant to the new generation.
What we have been doing in the last quarters, in the first half of the year, has actually increased the number of Gen Z consumers slightly higher than the Millennials and the Gen X.
On your last question, Kristian, I think that is very well framed. Where we see the lower selling is on the partners that are not sitting in the like-for-like base. With the way that we build up our revenue growth rate starting with like-for-like, then the like-for-like base is, let us call it, almost 90%, 85%-90% of our revenue base. Then we have the small multi-brand partners as an example, that is not counting in like-for-like, but obviously impacts our selling, that is the main area where we see that drag on the selling and thereby the reported revenue.
We have seen for a while that those partners are trailing the growth that we can generate in our own channels and in the partner concept stores, probably partly linked into the fact that we have a bigger marketing muscle that we can put behind that helps our own channels more. That is the link into why we see this selling impact.
Okay. That is very clear. Just one very quick follow-up then, just on the performance and like-for-like, sorry, on the online channel. What about the structural impact? Are there any there when the promotional detox is done? Should we expect online to grow faster again than physical stores, or how should we think about it?
Yeah. But exactly, that is typically how we see it, the reaction online to promos is bigger than in the physical store. So if you do more promos, you would typically see faster growth online and, case in point, the second quarter here, it goes the other way around as well.
Okay. Thank you. Very clear. Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Kristian. As we have no further questions in the queue, I will hand it back to the speakers for any closing remarks.
Yes. Listen, just thank you very much for being with us today. We just like to remind everyone that we are not declaring victory, but we are seeing that the proof points are building, and this is just reinforcing our conviction on the direction and on the new growth model. I am looking forward to seeing you in November for our quarter three update and a more of a strategic update on all the other shifts that we are planning for Pandora. So with that, just have a fantastic day.