Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q1 2026 results conference call. I'm Moritz, your conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christopher Sheldon, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2026 conference call. I'm here with our CEO, Vincent Warnery, and our CFO, Astrid Hermann. As always, we will start with a presentation of our sales performance of the quarter, followed by a Q&A session. With that, I'd like to hand over to Vincent.
Thank you, Christopher, and good morning. Welcome to today's conference call. Astrid and I will walk you through our sales figures for the first three months of 2026 and an update on the key strategic initiatives we are executing to strengthen our business. This includes an update on our ongoing Nivea rebalancing. Our Q1 sales were in line with expectations. As mentioned in our full year 2025 call a few weeks ago, we anticipated a challenging start into 2026, with several factors impacting La Prairie’s and Nivea net sales performance. Our Derma business continued to demonstrate outstanding growth, fully delivering on its strategy. La Prairie faced headwinds through disruptions in the U.S. department channel and travel retail in China. Finally, Nivea’s first quarter net sales development is challenged, but we are making progress on our Nivea rebalancing. I will share more details on this a bit later.
All that is translated into numbers. In Q1, we saw an organic net sales decline of 4.6% at group level. Our consumer business declined by 4.7% organically. Derma delivered an outstanding +8.2% organic sales growth. Healthcare was up +1.9% on top of a difficult prior comparison base. Nivea and La Prairie faced headwinds, with net sales declining by 7% and 14.9%, respectively. The underlying sellout performance, however, showed an improving trend, making us more optimistic for the coming quarters. Tesa ended the first quarter with an organic net sales decline of 4.3%, mainly as a result of phasing related double-digit growth in the first quarter of 2025. Our first difficult quarter performance was anticipated and reflected in our full year guidance for 2026. We continue to believe in our ability to return to growth as the year progresses.
Let's review the Derma performance with our brands, Eucerin and Aquaphor. With an outstanding 8.2% organic sales growth, we again significantly outperformed the Derma market, which is growing at low single digit rates. This underscores the strength of our portfolio and the successful execution of our growth strategy. Our success is driven by two pillars. First, our innovations. With our breakthrough in ingredients Epicelline and Thiamidol, endorsed by dermatologists, Eucerin continues to lead the way. Consumers are increasingly seeking science-backed, efficacious Derma products. Second, our successful expansion into white spaces. Three examples of these white space expansions are North America, Brazil, and China. North America, Derma's largest region, delivered strong 7% organic sales growth, driven by a double-digit Aquaphor performance and the continued momentum of Eucerin's face, including Thiamidol.
Eucerin in Brazil was able to more than double its net sales in Q1 and is close to taking the number three position on the market only five years after being number 15. A key driver of the recent success is Eucerin Epicelline. Lastly, our Derma business in China is showing continued high double-digit growth, a clear testament to the successful rollout of Thiamidol on the domestic market. Let's continue with La Prairie. Q1 was impacted by disruptions in the U.S. department store channel as well as travel retail in China. Both had a significant negative effect on the Q1 selling performance, with net sales declining by 14.9% organically. However, this was not an indication of the underlying sellout demand. Retail sales, excluding disruptions, grew close to 10% in the first quarter. A key growth driver continued to be China in the fourth consecutive quarter.
Remain cautious on the outlook of La Prairie in a volatile luxury skincare market environment, but continue to see green shoots from its reposition strategy. Now let's have a closer look at Nivea. In line with what we showed you at our full year call several weeks ago, the mass market environment remains challenging, which is negatively affecting Nivea performance. As we ended the year 2025, market volumes were flat and continued to be flat in the first months of 2026. In addition to the market environment, four main factors negatively impacted Nivea net sales in Q1. First, Nivea last two strong prior first quarters, leading to a more difficult baseline. Second, certain trade negotiation conflicts in Europe have had a negative net sales effect.
Third, the selling of our major innovations, Epicelline and Derma Control, lifted Nivea net sales in the fourth quarter of 2025, while most of the corresponding sellout was absorbed in Q1 and no new countries were launched in the new year. Lastly, Nivea's core portfolio has not returned to growth yet. However, the dynamics are improving as we are implementing a rebalancing strategy to restore Nivea growth. Before we deep dive into the rebalancing, I want to demonstrate that also global innovations remain a cornerstone of Nivea's strategy. Nivea Epicelline continues to be on track. We have already been satisfied with the sell-in and sell-out performance, and are pleased to confirm that also the repurchase rates looks promising. In fact, the initial repurchase rates and intentions to repurchase figures of the Nivea Epigenetic Serum in Europe are comparable to the figures of Eucerin in 2025.
Let me now take a few moments to remind you of our Nivea strategy recalibration, the rebalancing of the portfolio. What do we mean by rebalancing? It's a shift in how we allocate resources and drive growth at Nivea along three pillars. First, portfolio. We are broadening our focus across our key franchises, face care, body care and deodorants. In practical terms, this means that we are shifting marketing and innovation efforts to strengthen all three categories. Second, accessible face care. We are rebalancing the focus also to popular face care products at a more accessible price range next to the premium face care lines like Luminous and Epicelline. Third, local relevance. Next to major global franchises, we will support important local product lines by giving key markets, for example, China, the U.S., India, Japan, and Brazil, greater flexibility in local execution.
This is what we call localization within a frame. Empowering regional teams to develop and activate products that resonate with local consumers while maintaining the integrity of the Nivea brand. Let me elaborate on three specific initiatives. First, body care in emerging markets. In our emerging market regions, we began to rebalance our marketing budget to body care in September last year. In addition, we focused our portfolio on the right franchises with the right assortment in the right countries and enriched our global advertising approach with local storytelling. We also stepped up our efforts with the influencers and further improved in-store execution. As an initial results, we have seen Nivea body care and also overall skincare market shares in emerging markets moving to positive territory this year in terms of both value and volume. Second example, deodorants in Europe.
As part of the Derma Control launch in the fall of 2025, we shifted marketing budget towards deodorants. This did not only help to promote Derma Control but had the positive halo effect on Nivea deo as a category. Together with assortment optimizations, it led to regain customer and consumer attention for Nivea deodorants. As a result, the Nivea deo market share situation in Europe improved, and we recorded market share gains in the first months of this year. Third example, Luminous Glow in emerging markets, a global innovation adapted to local needs. Nivea Luminous initially struggled to scale in emerging markets due to its premium positioning. To unlock the full growth potential, the product was locally adapted across assortment, packaging, pricing, and activation. This was implemented at the launch of the Luminous Glow line. Thailand was the most prominent proof point.
The launch of a sachet formats, stronger claim communication, and intensified influencer activation drove rapid consumer uptake. As a result, Luminous Skin Glow achieved a significant market share uplift and quickly became the number one serum in the market. As demonstrated by these examples, the rebalancing of Nivea is underway. The measures will take some time to show their full impact, but Nivea's current sell-out dynamics already show substantially better performance than the net sales decline in Q1. In fact, Nivea's year-to-date sell-out grew by 1.7% following two quarters of negative growth. These early indications make us optimistic that we are on the right track and that our rebalancing strategy is working. Before I hand over to Astrid for tesa and the financial review, I would like to turn your attention to China, one of our key white space markets.
At this time last year, I presented to you our ambitious plan in China to put our house in order. We implemented comprehensive restructuring measures, especially for Nivea, to lay the foundation for future success in this important white space market for Beiersdorf. Our efforts are starting to pay off, and we saw impressive growth across all three major brands in the first quarter of 2026. Nivea increased net sales by 1/3, and Eucerin net sales grew in high double-digit territory. Also, La Prairie showed an impressive 12% retail sales growth, which is not a reflection of the weaker net sales performance in the quarter. With that, finally over to you, Astrid.
Thank you, Vincent, and good morning, everyone. Let's take a look at tesa's performance in the first quarter. Net sales declined by 4.3% organically in line with expectations, and as reflected in the full year guidance. The decline can be attributed to a high prior year comparison base in the electronics business. This was related to shifts in some customers' production footprint as well as adjusted order patterns. The automotive sector remained challenging with tesa outperforming the market, especially in applications for new energy vehicles. The consumer segment was impacted by strong performance in e-commerce. Let me now take you through some further details of our Q1 performance. Beiersdorf consumer business net sales declined to EUR 2.077 billion in the first quarter of 2024. At an organic growth rate of -4.7%. Adverse foreign exchange effects resulted in lower nominal growth of -7.7%.
Our tesa business recorded an organic net sales decline of -4.3% in the same period, closing the quarter with net sales of EUR 407 million. Due to unfavorable foreign exchange effects, nominal sales declined in line with the consumer business by -7.7%. As a result, the group generated net sales of EUR 2.484 billion at organic and nominal growth rates of -4.6% and -7.7%, respectively. Looking at our consumer business across regions, the negative performance across regions is mostly attributable to the challenging net sales performance of Nivea and La Prairie in the first quarter, while the underlying sellout performance is positive. North America, Western Europe, and the Africa, Asia, Australia regions were impacted by additional factors I would like to explain in more detail. North America was negatively impacted by the retail disruption affecting La Prairie as well as Coppertone.
Coppertone weighed on the first quarter performance as we are streamlining the portfolio to focus on the sports segment, as well as promotional facing shifts of net sales between quarters. Excluding these factors, the organic net sales growth of North America increases to +3.2%, mainly driven by the strong Derma performance. Western Europe was adversely affected by the disruption of travel retail in China. As you will remember, we record La Prairie's travel retail business in Western Europe, which was 130 basis points headwind to growth in Q1. Lastly, the crisis in the Middle East weighed on the Africa, Asia, Australia region with 170 basis points headwind on growth. Excluding the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Australia would have grown by 1.1%. Back to you, Vincent.
Thank you, Astrid. To conclude, Q1 was a challenging start to the year, but in line with our expectations. Our Derma business remains strong. Nivea and La Prairie showed an unfavorable net sales performance, but positive sellout dynamics point to an improvement in the quarters to come. Based on this, we are confirming our 2026 guidance. For both our consumer and tesa business, we continue to expect net sales to be flat to slightly growing organically, with an EBIT margin excluding special factors slightly below the previous year. At group level, this translate to net sales flat to slightly growing organically, with an EBIT margin excluding special factors slightly below 2025. With that, we're happy to answer your questions. Over to you, Christopher, for the Q&A.
Thank you, Vincent. Now we're ready to go to the Q&A. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your phone. Please note that we have a maximum of two questions per caller. We will start with Jeremy Fialko from HSBC this morning. Jeremy, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Morning. Just one sort of short technical one to start with, is whether you could give us the Nivea sort of full Q1 number, whether you have any data that goes to the end of March, as I saw the slide, just took you to the end of February? Secondly, perhaps you could just talk a little bit about the cost situation and what you're seeing from that perspective, given some of the higher inputs, and to what extent that puts greater risk on the margin side of your guidance? Thanks.
Jeremy, I will take the first question. Astrid will take the second one. Your question about the Nivea, so the market share, the data we have is only until end of February, and that's why we're looking at year-to-date February. In fact, the bridge between the net sales and the sellout, you have three factors which explain that. The first one, which is obvious, I mentioned that already in the yearly call. We have an innovation phasing, and we did 100% of the selling of the two big launches, which are Epicelline and Derma Control, in the Q4 2025, and even more in November, December. Obviously, all the countries that are being sold in, we have to absorb the sellout in the first quarter. The second element, which is also important, is that we have a market dynamics which is flat.
It's really 0% growth, and it has an effect on the core business, which remains negative, and this is what we have to correct. Third element which we were not expecting, obviously, is the Middle East crisis, and I think Astrid mentioned that. It cost us 50 basis points of Nivea growth. The last element, which took place particularly in March, we have some retailer conflicts. We are clearly in some discussions with retailers, particularly in Germany and France, which are willing to decrease prices. We are not willing to do that, and we do not accept any pressure to go in this direction, especially at the time when we have this uncertainty with the Middle East crisis. All of that makes a difference between a negative quarter in net sales and a positive quarter in sellout at +1.7%. On your second point?
Jeremy, on the cost situation. The immediate impact, given that the direct impact of oil and gas on us is relatively limited, primarily on the logistics side, has been manageable so far. We're obviously really watching the supply situation and ensuring that we are set there, really emphasizing that. We are working through obviously many different scenarios, as you can imagine, on what could come if this crisis is staying for longer. That clearly could trigger significant cost increases, and we will then obviously look at all the tools we have to ensure that we can offset the impact from that pressure.
Thanks. Sorry, just to follow up, could you give us a bit more color on the retailer disputes and to what extent those are resolved, or to what extent they'll carry on affecting the business into Q2?
It's under negotiation right now, and hopefully we'll have some good results in the weeks to come. It's clearly focusing on, as I said, France and Germany. It's about a few retailers which are wanting us to decrease prices, which is absolutely something we'll refuse. We are discussing, we are exchanging. Hopefully we'll have a solution, because it's really limiting to a few specific retailers in the coming days or weeks.
Thank you. The next question is from Callum Elliott of Bernstein. Callum, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for the questions. Maybe I could just start with following on from Jeremy's theme, looking at your slide on sell-out. If I look at the Q4, it shows sell-out basically flat, and you reported +2%-ish on Nivea. Let's call it two percentage points of inventory build on Nivea in Q4. Then you show +1.7% year-to-date versus the -7% that you've reported. There's sort of two percentage points of stock build in Q4 and -9 percentage points of drag in Q1. Should I infer from that that the majority of the -9 percentage points gap between sell-in and sell-out is the retail dispute rather than de-stocking? Maybe you can just help us understand the discrepancy between the +2 percentage points in Q4 and the -9 in Q1.
I will give you the bridge. Just to get the figures right. You have a decline in Q1 of Nivea of -7%, and you have an increase of sell-out of +1.7%. If you try to separate the different elements, as you mentioned, quite clearly you have two points of growth, which is the sell-out of the sell-in we did in Q4. You're absolutely right. You have two points which are linked to the retailer conflict. You have, I would say, 50 basis points which are linked to Middle East, and the rest is the evolution of the core business. Let's say 3%, which we have not yet been able to turn around, and this is what we are working on with a good example I mentioned to you and they own Europe, Body in emerging market and Body and Face in emerging market.
This is what we are willing to improve through this rebalancing. You got the math right.
Okay, perfect. Thank you. Maybe just a follow-up on the other sales, Coppertone, Chantecaille, et cetera. I think by my calculation that sort of division, if I can call it that, is down 25% in reported terms in Q1. I don't think you talk about it at all in the press release. Could you just give us some color on exactly what's happening in that division? Is it still just ongoing Coppertone weakness, or is there something else going on there?
Coppertone, there was clearly a phasing change. The fact that one of the biggest U.S. customer decided to order in December because the history was early and unplanned, makes us make a very nice Q4, but a very low Q1. It does not impact the sell-out. The sell-out is pretty good now that we are focusing on sport. We are growing. We are even growing in sport at 7.6% in sell-out, which is something we never had since we bought the brand. That's more this phasing issue in terms of net sales. The rest of the brand, Chantecaille, is obviously hit by the same phenomenon as La Prairie. We have the Saks Fifth Avenue issue that is not sold. We are selling back to Saks in March, and you have the change of travel retail operators in China.
The rest of the business is doing well, and particularly we are pretty happy with the U.S., if you exclude the Saks issue, because we are growing in the U.S. and gaining market share. That's the two main brands in order. You have other small local brands, but not really relevant for the figures.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Warren Ackerman with Barclays. Warren, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Morning, Vincent, Astrid, and Christopher. A couple from me as well. The first one is just on the organic growth guidance. Given the slow start, Vincent, the -4.6%, how do you get confident on the full year guide? You've obviously got a lot to do in the balance of the year. Doesn't look like you've got much wiggle room. Can you maybe sort of give us some of the building blocks to give us the confidence that the guide is realistic? Maybe if you're able to say whether you think the Q2 organic growth might be positive given the sort of sell-in, sell-out dynamics you've talked about. The second one is maybe a little bit on emerging markets, because we've still got Eastern Europe down -8.2% and LATAM down maybe a bit better than it's been trending.
Can you maybe sort of outline the rebalancing of Nivea? How confident you are that you can get some of these big emerging markets back into better territory? How long is it going to take to see that kind of negative swinging back? That would be helpful. Thank you.
Right. We are maintaining the guidance for 2026, as I mentioned. Indeed, I would say what is pretty safe is Derma. We are seeing clearly very nice growth rate of first. We have not only ambitions for Eucerin, but also for Aquaphor, and the fact that we have these extremely strong results in all our white spaces. I also could have mentioned India. I could have also mentioned Japan. We just launched in Japan because we are pretty optimistic. Derma will continue to be the growth driver of Beiersdorf for the quarters to come. We are also expecting now that we are out of the disruptions in Luxury, that now we are selling back to Saks Fifth Avenue.
We have also the two new trial retail operators in Beijing and Shanghai. They are working, the app is working, so we are back to normal, and we see some pretty nice traction. We have also, as you might remember, a very interesting launch with a more affordable line for La Prairie, which will also suit to enlarge our distribution, not only to Amazon in the U.S. but also to other retailers in which we are not today because of the price level of La Prairie. Pretty positive about La Prairie. The question is Nivea. What is making us optimistic is that we are growing in sellout.
The +1.7% I was mentioning includes positive sellout in all regions and Europe, for example, which obviously is important for us. We are growing also in sellout, about +1.1%, which is the first time in a long time. We see that the rebalancing is starting to pay off. Obviously, one of the questions for Q2 will be the sun season. We've been very successful in the last two years, so we are ready to embrace a pretty nice season. On this basis, we believe that Q2 will be flattish back to growth, slight growth, but we clearly do better than Q1, and this is why we maintain the guidance. On your second question about Eastern Europe.
Eastern Europe was not so much linked to the focus on premium face care because we are mostly selling personal care and the body product. It was more the strong development of local and Korean brands and also some retailer issues that we have to tackle. Retailer issues, we are good. We have a good conversation with the retailers and we have also, I think we'll be more proactive in the way we embrace the strategy. We will develop some exclusive partnership with some retailers.
Back to growth on the key categories, as I mentioned, we are positive on the other ones, and this is essential for Europe, not only for the growth but also for the profit. We are also preparing a pretty nice launch in Body and Face. We are not yet positive on Eastern Europe, but I think we have a good plan, and we should see some progress starting in Q2.
Thank you.
The next one is Celine Pannuti from JP Morgan. Celine, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. My first question is on Middle East and the impact of the geopolitics. From what you said, there was 170 basis points impact on AAA. At the group level, I think it's like 40 basis points only for a month. Could you explain what that is, and whether there was as well extra impact on travel retail, and what have you baked in for the potential impact of that in the second quarter? Coming back on the COGS, clearly there's a lot of things we don't know, but we also see that the spot prices is higher, that there are potential shortages of some derivatives of oil.
At this stage, is it fair to assume that already in the second half of the year, you are going to see a higher COGS inflation than what you thought at the beginning? If you could give us a bit of an idea on that, and what measures are you planning to take with the pricing or cost savings to offset that? My second question is regarding AAA. I understand that there was an impact from Middle East, but nevertheless, growing 1.1% versus, I think, growing 9% in the fourth quarter, I was quite surprised because you should have had the positive impact of comp from China as well as the strong selling that you did in Asia Middle. Can you say how much China was growing in the quarter? What happened maybe in other regions if it was not the issue in China?
How should we think about that regions, going forward? Thank you.
Celine, I will answer your question related to the impact on costing. As you might imagine, we are currently protected at least in the current quarter to some extent, also in the next quarter through the contracts that we have, which is good. Immediate impacts as I already mentioned, obviously on logistics clearly, and we are managing that. Yes, as we are looking into, obviously, contract negotiations for the back half, we will start to see some pressure there. We are looking at various scenarios. I cannot give you here numbers at the moment because it is very fluid. Of course, we will need to then make plans on how to offset those. It will be looking at everything, including, to be honest, pricing that we will need to look at for the back half, if this continues.
Your second question, Celine, as you know very well, China is not a big part of our business, at least on the Nivea and Eucerin front. The fact that we are growing double digit in China is obviously very important for us. We have also a big part of the business which is done in Southeast Asia, where we are suffering from the same issue that we had in other part of the world with Nivea being down on core. The good news, as I mentioned, that we are back to growth on face care with the launch of the Sachet Glow. We have also some local issue. Thailand is obviously impacted by the border conflicts with Cambodia.
Thailand is a very big country for us. We don't sell in some big areas of Thailand. We have also a big pressure from local brands in Indonesia. I would say in the good side, you have a very strong business in Southeast Asia and India, double-digit. Low side, you have Thailand and you have Indonesia. This is why all in all, you end up with a +1.1%, doing also, as I mentioned, that we are also destocking further in China. We want to be extremely by the book in terms of stocking in the brick-and-mortar La Prairie China. We have also managed to reduce our stock to the absolute best situation possible in the first quarter in order to embrace also the coming launches in Q2 and Q3.
Sorry, just to follow up. Can you give me what exactly the number is for China? Because double digit seems to be for Eucerin. What is China all inclusive, La Prairie, Eucerin and Nivea? Then can you explain the Middle East impact that you saw in Q1 for one month, and what should we expect for the coming quarter?
Very good. In China, we're doing pretty well. We have a very strong Nivea growth. We are growing Nivea plus India. We are India, +18%, LFS, gaining market share on every category. You might remember that we launched Luminous. Luminous has got a very good start. We launched a specific galenix with tubes in order to be accessible for the majority of consumers. We are already a pretty good market share. We're also relaunching our core business. Nivea Soft, India is the number one country in the world for Nivea Soft. We are gaining five points market share, which is pretty. You're asking about China or India, Celine?
China.
China, we are growing on Nivea at +22%, and we're growing on Eucerin at +87%. If you look at China, Nivea, the biggest part of the growth is coming from face care. This is a category we have been launching with Thiamidol. We are growing on Nivea face care at 71%, gaining more than two points market share, which is very big for us on Nivea. Eucerin is flying. Eucerin, we are growing at 87%, which means that we have already, after only six months on the market, our Eucerin product, which is the Thiamidol serum, is the number one derma anti-pigmentation serum on the market. We are extremely happy with Eucerin and very optimistic with Nivea.
The last information was La Prairie, the retail sales, we are at +12%, and this is the fifth quarter in a row that we are growing double digit in China. This is a mix of both brick and mortar and also a very strong success online and particularly with Douyin, which is TikTok.
Okay, Middle East?
Middle East. Do we have the figures of Middle East evolution? Middle East is 3% of our sales. Now, if you look at the total, we are at -50% in Middle East. We are not so much suffering. 50 in Middle East for Nivea and Eucerin. It's a small business for La Prairie. We are not suffering in sell-out. That's the good news, because we've been able to find ways to stock the retailer in due time. We are suffering in net sales, so which means that no issue on the consumption, on the sell-out, but we hope to be able to continue to find ways. We are extremely creative, using all the means you can imagine to drive our product to Middle East. We are using the other routes, like everybody is using Salalah, Khor Fakkan, Jeddah.
We are rerouting as much as we can in order to be sure that we can serve our consumers. Again, nobody can say what will happen, especially now today. We have found ways to serve our consumers in as much as we can.
Thank you.
Thank you, Celine. The next one is David Hayes from Jefferies. David, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks, Christopher. Morning, all. Just to quickly follow up on that, just that -50% Middle East, I guess that's March you're talking about. Is that right? Rather than the quarter. Just to-
Yes.
Clarify that first. Yep. The two questions I have, just again, to sort of reconciliation. The 2nd of March, you reported full year, you guided to low single digit decline in the quarter, this current first quarter. Obviously, you did mid-single digit decline. You talked about the Middle East circa 50 basis points. I'm still struggling to see what happened in the month of March that was not expected. I guess the S.A.C dynamic, the La Prairie travel retail dynamic, all of that would have been known. Just trying to still reconcile why there was that underperformance relative to what you expected five or so weeks ago. Then secondly, on the profitability and delivering on the margin. There's a very big contribution last year, EUR 90 million in other income expenses, that is within the underlying margin.
I think a big chunk of that was a reversal of provisions. I just wonder whether you can give us any visibility or guidance on what that number looks like. This year in terms of delivering on the operating margin guide, whether that's going to be a similar number or even bigger, potentially, which helps with the profit delivery. Thank you so much.
Take the first question and Astrid will answer the second one. Very simple, two news which we're not expecting. One, as you mentioned, the Middle East crisis. We were not expecting to lose sales in this part of the emerging market. The second element, we got tremendous pressure from some retailers to close the deal before the quarter, according to their expectations. I didn't want to accept that, so I don't want to decrease our prices. We refused that, which impacted, obviously, March.
In terms of profitability, David, obviously we manage our SOI overall. We are actively managing also that line of the SOI and that is built into our guidance. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Guillaume Delmas of UBS. Guillaume, good morning. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you, Christopher. Good morning, Vincent, Astrid. A couple of questions for me, please. Both on Nivea, actually. The first one is on the Nivea recalibration strategy. Vincent, can you maybe shed some light on the marketing support you are planning behind this initiative? Because I think your margin outlook seems to signal relatively flat A&P spend both as a percentage of sales and in absolute terms. Just wondering how you will make sure you get the maximum traction on all these initiatives under Nivea recalibration. My second question, it's still on Nivea, but the brand declining by 7% in Q1. Could you maybe share by how much volumes contracted in the quarter and in which key categories, regions you are seeing the most pronounced volume share losses?
Still on the volume point, what does it do to your capacity utilization and more broadly to your operational leverage? Thank you very much.
On your first question, you might remember that I explained also that the face care category is extremely expensive in terms of working media. When you do a launch, you have to spend at least 1% of the net sales in marketing budget, which is what we did for Luminous and Epicelline. Overall, you are clearly above 40% of your net sales in working media, while the other categories are much cheaper. If you look at body care, if you look at deo, you are more into the high single digit or low double digits. In fact, rebalancing part of this extra investment on face care, on deo and body is already making a huge difference on deo and body without impacting so strongly the investment you put on face care. This is what we've been doing.
We started to do that in September on deo in Europe, and you saw already the results. We are doing that also in emerging markets since September on body, and it is also paying off. We believe that with a pretty stable marketing budget, just by having this rebalancing, we can have a pretty nice effect on the sellout. Again, this is what we are seeing in both regions on the two major category, which are deo and the body. I think, Astrid, you take the second one?
Sure, Guillaume, on Nivea, the decline is primarily driven by volume. We do see, as you would've seen also from the regional chart, an impact pretty much across all of the regions. We do have some bright spots in certain countries, but from a regional perspective, it's quite broad, kind of reflecting also what we have showed you, obviously from a market development, which is quite global, in terms of the development of our mass market.
Thank you. The next question is from Olivier Nicolai from Goldman Sachs. Olivier, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning, Vincent, Astrid, and Christopher. Just on Europe, competition has been intensifying, particularly in Germany. We talk about Mixa last quarter, but you also have now Korean brands entering the market aggressively. What are the risks to your market share, in Germany specifically, but in Europe in general, and do you think that you can maintain a share with Nivea? I guess it's a bit early, but do you see any sign of consumer weakness in Europe so far? Thank you.
Sure. On Europe, yes, Mixa and the Korean brands took market share away from us, and this is also why we reacted already in September by putting more investment into the core categories, which are body on one side, and which are accessible face care on the other side. We are expecting, we have not yet regained any market share in Germany. We have a strong plan on Nivea Soft. We have a strong plan on the Nivea Repair & Care, which is also an answer to the brand you are mentioning. We are also coming with a much more ambitious plan on affordable face care, launching a new line soon. We expect also to be able to fight against these brands. We are coming with a very smart innovation.
We just launched Nivea Sun Stick, coming from Korea, which is clearly one of the bestseller we have been putting on the market in sun care, also leveraging. We have also our own expertise in Korea, also leveraging what we know from Korea. The good news that we clearly see, and we have some kind of a long-term view on the market, we see that those Korean brands are not really sustainable. They are not even strong in Korea, so they go up and down. They take market share away from us, but after, they disappear. We just have to be smarter, and this is, for example, one of the things we are doing in Eastern Europe. We'll be able to be much more visible on shelf. We have also been extremely aggressive in terms of influencers.
We are learning from those brands without trying to copy them. We are not yet positive in Germany, but I'm pretty optimistic starting this quarter that we see some good results in those categories.
Thank you.
Thank you, Olivier. The next one is Mikheil Omanadze from BNP Paribas Exane. Mikheil, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two, please. First, you mentioned that you may be looking at pricing actions to offset input cost pressures in H2. Does your full year guidance of flat to slightly positive growth for consumer already embed an assumption of some pricing benefiting the second half? The second question would be on growth by brands. I know you don't guide specifically, but if you could maybe just comment directionally what you expect for each of the brands for Q2 and the full year. Thank you.
Mikheil, I will take your first question. We are currently working through various scenarios on the impacts of our costing. We have not built those into our guidance, and we have also not built in, obviously, the countermeasures. It's an extremely fluid situation. We're obviously looking at what that could be for the second half. As you can imagine, it's really hard to pinpoint the exact impact, but we're managing that as much as we can, again, via scenarios. Neither the pricing but neither the cost.
Your question, so I will not guide, but I think I mentioned already that we are expecting a flat to slightly increasing Q2. Mostly driven by the success of Derma, but also some much better figures on La Prairie, on Chantecaille, and also on Nivea. I would say on the year, if you look at the guidance, I'm expecting, again, strong growth with Derma. Should stay the same across the year. Recovery in the second semester on La Prairie, Chantecaille, and finishing the year with Nivea, slightly positive, a bit in line with the market, and that should give the guidance we gave you.
That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you, Mikheil. The next question is from Tom Sykes from Deutsche Bank. Tom, please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Morning, everybody. Firstly, just on the margin, could you give a view on the cadence of margin change in the year, so H1 movement versus H2? Just why doesn't consumer need a more significant margin reset? I mean, to cement the longer term growth, you could invest more. You're facing a lot of competition from smaller peers, indie brands. You point out more competition in EM. Why doesn't it need a more significant margin reset? Then on the Sun season sell-in, you mentioned it's obviously a very high margin business for you. Could you just talk about the scope of that sell-in, and in particular, the move or the sell-in to online distributors. So retailers and offline. Is that initial sell-in the same scope as it always has been, please? Thank you.
Tom, I will take your first question. We typically have a stronger margin, EBIT margin in the first half than we have in the second half, and we expect similar in this year, with obviously a stronger first half versus the second half. Again, we will see what impacts we do see from the Middle East. Again, the attempt or the ambition is to offset those impacts. In terms of your question around whether or not we need an even stronger margin reset, look, this is the plan we have made. We feel like we can with this plan, deliver on the guidance we have committed to. We are starting to see some green shoots, as we've mentioned also in our presentation, also seeing the sell-out moving in the right direction.
We're not yet happy completely about obviously how strong that is, but we do think we will see continued impact from all the changes we are making.
The second question?
I was just going to say, sorry, Vincent. Just the change year-on-year in margin rather than obviously the seasonality, but the year-on-year change in margin, how are you expecting that to progress? Sorry, Vincent.
Yeah. It will be a similar impact throughout the year.
Okay. Thank you.
We don't see it. Thank you.
Question on Sun Care. We are ready. I think we've done the sell-in, which is in line with last year. What is good news for us is that we're doing better in the emerging market. Last year, the success was really more driven by Europe. At this stage, again, sell-in driven, we are good everywhere. Again, what we are expecting is the sun. We are ready. We have also a very strong plan with influencers. We are also, as I said, new products, which I think will be interesting also for Gen Z. It's something we are willing to seduce this year. More to come. As you know, it's starting now, and the sell-out will be clearly in Q2, and I hope to be able to share some good figures at the end of this quarter.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Tom. The next one is Fulvio Cazzol from Berenberg. Fulvio, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, good morning, and thank you for taking my question, which is on the investment rebalancing. Vincent, I remember when you became CEO a few years ago, you highlighted the strategy change away from the decentralized model that Beiersdorf had previously. At the time, you highlighted the inconsistency across countries on product launches, on marketing practices, which basically resulted in lower returns from investments in categories like body wash, sun, deo, et cetera. Now, it sounds like you are taking the business back to that more decentralized model, investing in products with lower price points that generate lower margins. What will be different in the next few years that gives you the confidence of a better return on investment than, let's just say, six, 10 years ago? Thank you.
This is the right question, and thank you for asking. I think the situation in 2021 was indeed that we were ultra-localized. Every country was doing what they wanted in terms of launches, in terms of advertising campaign, in terms of support, of key initiatives. We ended up into a kind of patchwork of different look and feel, different visualization of the brand, and clearly no return on investment. Clearly, on top of the direction into premium face care, I went into a very strong globalization, and I went too far. It's obvious when you look at the results. I went too far into the globalization because there are some local franchises which suffered from the fact that they were no longer invested. Are we back to what we were before? Not at all.
What we are talking about is de-localization in a framework, which means that clearly we are controlling everything from the center. When, for example, I'm talking about the new support towards some local franchises in the emerging market, it is driven by headquarters with our own R&D organization, our own marketing organization, and we don't give the right to everybody to do what they want. I mentioned five countries, and it's not just a coincidence. We consider that countries like Brazil, India, China, Japan, and the U.S. are different and that they deserve a specific treatment. We expect the neighboring countries to follow exactly the same logic. What I do in Brazil, I was last week in Brazil, Argentina and Chile. I can tell you that what we are doing in Brazil will be followed by Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Colombia and all the other countries.
The second element also is important. We are leveraging the global franchises but accepting local execution. I gave the example of a sachet, which seems to be clearly not rocket science, but the fact that we are able to have the exact same formula with the exact same concentration of Niacinamide with different galenics is something new. Yes, you have the product, the dispenser you know in Europe, which is pretty premium. But you have a tube in India, you have a sachet in Thailand, and you have something even more premium in China with Nivea Niacinamide. We are much more, I would say, open in terms of galenics, which are using the same global platform.
Last but not least, in terms of communication together with Publicis, which is our global agency on both Nivea, Eucerin, and also on Hansaplast, we have created some specific hubs in specific countries, and those five countries that we're mentioning, where we have the global marketing team and the Publicis team working together in order to be sure that what we are doing locally is also consistent with the global look and feel of the brand and the way we want to push forward our initiative. It's clearly more freedom. It's also more ability to the countries to test new ideas, but it is clearly controlled. We don't want to come back to the kind of fruit salad we had in the past with so many different look and feels and different executions.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thanks, Fulvio. The next one is Fon Udomsilpa from RBC. Fon, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning. Just a few questions on Nivea body care, please. You gave color on regional performance for body care, but could you confirm the market share momentum for Nivea body care globally? Tying to that, with the early result you've seen on the rebalancing strategy, momentum in the body care in many markets improving and with the lower media costs that you mentioned, has your view towards investment in the body care category changed? Does improved momentum give you confidence in increasing investment for the rest of the year, and how much flexibility to do so considering higher cost inflation in the second half?
I think I shared a few examples already in the call, and they are very important for us. It's the emerging markets body. This is also the emerging markets face and the European deodorants category. They are products. They are categories where we started the rebalancing this September. It's, I would say, easier in emerging markets because we have a lot of local franchises that we just have to revamp, and this is what we've been doing. We see, and this is really important for us, we saw clearly that we are gaining market share in those regions. Globally, we have been gaining market share for the first time, if you look at the total Nivea brand in January, and this was the first time we're gaining market share on Nivea global since end of 2024. Pretty good news.
We are slightly down in February, but it's really just a few basis points. Overall, we see clearly a dynamic which is positive, which is very positive for deodorants, as I mentioned, which is positive for body, which is not yet as positive as we expected on face care. Face care is clearly the category we'll push forward. There are some launches coming in affordable face care. As I mentioned, I was last week in Brazil. We have a fantastic line called Facial, which has a 25% market share. We are revamping this line with new initiative, new ingredients also, not only the one coming from Beiersdorf, but also some very well-known ingredients. All of that should materialize in the Q2, Q3. Hopefully I will also get the same kind of growth figures in the months to come.
Thank you.
Thank you, Fon. The next one is Tilly Eno from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one was on the Nivea Epicelline launch. Just wondering if you're seeing any cannibalization in the Eucerin Epicelline product, because just looking at the last couple of months, there seems to have been a bit of a slowdown in Eucerin in Europe. On the second part, on the areas where you've seen improved sellout in Nivea, could you just give any steer on the magnitude of the growth margin differential of the parts of Nivea that are starting to perform better with the rebalancing strategy? Thanks so much.
On your first question, absolutely zero cannibalization. That's a very good news. It's particularly easy, I would say, in Europe because we are not sold in the same retail environment. You find Nivea Epicelline in mass market, you find Eucerin Epicelline in pharmacies. Even in regions, and it's particularly the case for the U.K. but also for emerging market where we are sold in the same drugstores, we have absolutely zero effect on the sellout. Epicelline is really doing extremely well on Eucerin. We are also adding new SKUs. We are enlarging the routine, so coming with a day and night product. Nivea Epicelline also will benefit from the same kind of addition. What is great is I mentioned that in the call that the repurchase rate are absolutely amazing for Nivea.
We are reaching levels between 35%-48%, depending on the countries, which is even above Eucerin, which is also more expensive. We feel pretty safe with both product. You have also to remember that we decided also not to launch Nivea Epicelline everywhere. If, for example, it's clearly a brand which is skewed towards Europe. We didn't launch Nivea Epicelline in countries like Mexico and Brazil because it's too expensive. We obviously, the field is totally open for Eucerin, and this is also where we are reaching very high levels of net sales, market share, and repurchase. On your second question, Astrid?
Yeah. Gross margin, as you can imagine, across our various categories is quite different. Subcategory by subcategory, and tends to be obviously quite a bit lower on our personal categories than our skincare categories. That said, when we're looking at what we call margin two, so the margin including also our marketing spend, we see a much more even picture. In fact, there our face care business has some of the lowest margin too. As we are rebalancing that, we can manage this margin two pool, and thereby managing our profitability.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have two more questions. First we have Anneli Palmen from Thomson Reuters. Anneli, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Hello and good morning. I have some questions on what oil price is the forecast based, and has the company taken any specific measures due to the higher gasoline or kerosene costs? For example, allowing more working from home, reducing business travel by plane. Last, do you have to pay any tariffs in the U.S.A., and are you now claiming back then?
Thank you so much, Anneli, for your question. We are in the midst of working on our forecast, and as I mentioned, we have various scenarios that we're looking at. Obviously, one scenario with a quite high oil price, then kind of a middle ground, and one where it doesn't quite return to the previous place, pre this crisis, but significantly lower than what we're seeing this minute, and we're working towards what that means. In terms of the actions, what I can tell you that we anyhow have very much watched T&E and so on, our travel cost over the last years. Absolutely, we continue to want to save there, and that's what's also contributed to managing our overheads quite well over the last years, and it's a continued impact even in this year.
In terms of your questions on tariffs, as we've mentioned in the previous calls, our impact from the U.S. tariffs has been quite limited. We are, in that sense, lucky, I'll call it, given our footprint of producing quite a bit of our sales in the U.S. itself or in Mexico, and thereby the impact was low. Of course, we will still use what we can in terms of refunding and so on to offset the limited impact we have had.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Anneli . The next one is Ulrike Dauer from Dow Jones. Ulrike, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I hope you can hear me properly.
Yes.
Okay. Thank you. I have one question related to the Middle East. What would be the maximum impact on margin that could you envisage in your worst case scenarios for the full year? Also, in terms of retail-related, so I better understand, what was the problem with the U.S. department stores? You mentioned delays of innovations getting in stores. Is that related? Could that threaten your innovation timing this year?
On the Middle East, Ulrike, we are not sharing a max impact because to be honest, we really want to manage that impact. Again, it can have a substantial impact on our cost, which we will try to find measures to obviously offset. Given the size of our business in the Middle East, the direct impact will be quite low, but we know obviously this could lead to a much more global impact, and then obviously have a much larger impact on us.
Department store. No, the issue on the department store is solved. It's public knowledge that Saks Fifth Avenue was in a difficult situation and we were not selling anything to Saks Fifth Avenue until we had an agreement on the overdues. They were still selling in store and they still had some product they could sell, but we're not selling to them, and there's no order. We have a deal with them and we are absolutely back to normal. We are selling La Prairie and Chantecaille in each and every Saks store in the U.S. No issue on that.
Okay. You mentioned the pricing discussions with European retailers, and at the same time that some innovations were not getting in the store or there was a delay between delivery and getting into the stores. Is that threatening or could that threaten somehow your innovation timing this year?
No. You know what happened regularly when we have some customer conflicts, and again, it's mostly about Nivea, it's mostly about France and Germany. There is this kind of blackmail that might delay some innovation, but that's normal business. Retailers are smart enough to bet on the right product, so we are not suffering from that. We are able to put the right product on shelf when we want them to be on shelf.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ulrike, and thank you, everyone. That was our last question. This concludes our conference call. Beiersdorf's next investor relations event will be the release of our half year results on August 5th, 2026. We appreciate your interest in Beiersdorf and look forward to seeing you back here again in the summer. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.