Okay, good afternoon everyone, and a warm welcome to this Q1 pre-silent call from Anora. My name is Milena Hæggström. I'm the head of IR here at Anora, and in today's call, our CFO, Stein Eriksen, will be discussing the recent events and go through the Q&A with you. Please also remember that you can post questions through the chat or then live after the presentation. We will mute your microphones now, so please be aware that when you speak, please open up your mic. Thank you. Let's then welcome Stein. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you, Milena. Like Milena also said, welcome to this pre-silent Q1 call. As you know, we are entering into a silent period starting from Monday, 7th, and lasting until the reporting of the Q1 numbers the 7th of May. As you know, it's still early days, and we are currently closing the books and preparing the numbers. That being said, I think it's appropriate that we give you some reflections of the quarter so far. Before moving over to Q1, let us do a quick recap of 2024. If we change the slide, I think 2024 gives some good indications moving into 2025. Let's first have a look at the net sales. As you know, it amounted to EUR 692 million. It was down from EUR 727 million in 2023.
There were several reasons for the decline versus last year, but the main elements, I think we can sum it up in four elements. First of all, we lost two partners impacting net sales, and it was the resignation of François Lurton in Sweden in March 2024. Also, in the spirits segment, the distribution of Braastad Cognac produced by Tiffon was transferred to a third party in 2024. That was number one. Number two, the Larsen divestment. As you know, we sold Larsen. We still continue to distribute Larsen in the Nordics, but then lost the international sales. Reason number three, we did exit some or discontinued some low-margin filler business in Denmark. Lastly, we had lower sales in industrial segments due to lower sales of side products, mainly ethanol, feed, and starch.
The lower sales in industrial contributed with around 1/3 of the total decline in net sales in 2024. Moving over to gross margin, we were happy to see that all segments in 2024 improved their margins for the full year. That was mainly related to, yeah, I would say improved revenue management. This was a main contributor to that comparable EBITDA ended at EUR 69 million for the full year, explained by mainly improved profitability in the wine segment driven by both higher gross margin and lower OpEx. The spirit segment ended below 2023, explained by lower sales volume and some higher OpEx. The higher OpEx, as you probably remember, were related to higher A&P investments.
The industrial segment also had an EBITDA decline impacted by the lower net sales that I already talked about, but had a good, did some good work on OpEx and managed to counteract some of the net sales decline with reduced cost levels. Finally, our board of directors proposed a dividend of EUR 0.22 per share, and this is then to be approved by the upcoming AGM in Anora on the 15th of April this year. That was a quick summary of 2024. I think we then continue to Q1. I think these slides illustrate in quite a good way that Q1 is a very small quarter when it comes to both turnover and profitability. On the left-hand side, you see the turnover in Q1 compared to other quarters.
On the right-hand side, you see the comparable EBITDA, which during the two last years has been between EUR 8 million and EUR 9 million. As you then can see, it's a very small portion of the yearly results. Also here you see how big Q4 is compared to the other quarters, both in terms of sales and profitability. Of course, very much of this is related to the sales during the Christmas holidays for the spirit segment, but also partly for the wine business. I think also when we are talking about Q1 this year, just please be aware that we also have some periodization effects this year due to timing of Easter. We have one extra sales day.
However, last year we had positive, I guess we can call it pipeline effects of selling into the monopolies that fill up the stores before entering into the Easter holiday effect. This we will first see in Q2 this year. We do expect some negative Easter effects compared to last year. If you then move to the next slide and look at more some specific quarter-to-date publicly available information, on the left-hand side, you see that since, I guess we can call it the bloated market growth during the pandemic, the development has been more challenging during the last quarters from a market perspective. The volume development in the monopoly channel has been negative now for 15 consecutive quarters, or I guess we can say 14 consecutive quarters, but we have got numbers also from all the monopolies for January and February.
This is publicly available information. What we see is year-to-date February, Norway monopoly volumes are down 4%-5%, depending on spirits or wine. Finland continues to be down 11%-12%, while Sweden is the country with the least decline, over around 1% in volume. Hence, we still do not have the market figures for March, but it seems like Q1 will be another quarter with a fairly strong volume decline. Just want to state that being said, if we compare 2024 versus 2019, we did see a small volume increase. In the longer run, we do also expect a rather flat volume development in the long run going forward. Of course, like I said, so far it seems like the monopoly development in Q1 is fairly weak.
Moving over to gross margin, which I think if we change the slide, I think at least until very recently events that happened yesterday, it's fair to say that the prices on the input cost have flattened out. Here exemplified with the development in Finnish barley. On the right-hand side, you can see that Anora during the last quarters have regained lost gross margin, mainly due to improved revenue management. Also, just reminded that we started a more active hedging policy back in the end of Q4 2023 in order to then avoid strong deviations in gross margin due to bigger changes in currency. This is also something we have continued with, as you know, in 2025. If you look a little bit on the balance sheet, moving over to the balance sheet and the cash flow.
If we change the slide, just restating where we ended in 2024, we ended, I would say, at a fairly good financial position. We ended with liquidity reserves, EUR 352 million compared to EUR 382 million the previous year. Also bear in mind that we paid down EUR 50 million of the term loan in September 2024. That explains the reduced liquidity reserves. Cash flow in the fourth quarter was fairly strong. Hence the net interest-bearing debt ended in 2024 on EUR 122 million, down from EUR 138 million the previous year. The leverage ratio ended at a fairly decent level, I would say, at 1.8. Also, of course, bear in mind that we are continuing the sales of receivables program. Sales of receivables in 2024 ended at EUR 164 million versus EUR 174 million the previous year.
As shown on the right-hand side, you see that the cash flow is also, like I showed on one of the previous slides here, that the cash flow also varies quite a lot throughout the year. You see that the case with the operative cash flow, especially in the beginning of the quarter, is impacted by the payments of excise duties related then to the Christmas sales the previous years, while February and March being normally more cash-positive months. You see how important, of course, Q4 is also from a cash flow perspective. Talking about the balance sheet and the sales of receivables, I think I also mentioned in Q4 that we will have a little bit more cautious view on sales of receivables going forward. This is also something we have had an eye on during Q1.
This was a little bit about how much we can say about Q1 so far. If we move to the next slide before moving over to the Q&A, as mentioned, the markets so far in Q1 have been slower, I would say, than expected. We also then expect partly recovery during 2025. As to year 2025 guidance, our comparable EBITDA is expected to be between EUR 70 million-EUR 75 million as previously communicated. I think that was my comments regarding Q1. Milena, I think we can leave over to the Q&A session.
Yes, thank you, Stein. Let's open up for questions. If you have a question, please raise your hand to mark that. You can also post questions through the chat. The first question is coming from Maria Wikström at SEB. Please go ahead, Maria.
Yes, thank you.
Firstly, I wanted to touch base at what kind of volume assumptions you have built in your guidance.
No, I think we have, as previously mentioned, Maria, been using fairly flat volumes. Of course, also remember, like I said, Q1 is a very small quarter. Also we have several levers to pull in case the market continues to be weak going forward.
I think I need to ask, although I would think positively you are quite unimpacted on these yesterday's announced tariffs. If there is something that I'm missing out in case of Anora, I mean, please enlighten me.
It's an extremely good question, right? I mean, there are a lot of balls in there right now. Of course, we are currently investigating it. I won't give you a precise number in this call.
I think it's fair to wait until we have investigated a little bit more in detail the consequences for Anora. What I can say is that we are selling to the U.S. for around $1 million yearly. We do not expect any big impact, as you can understand, on sales or net sales. Of course, when it comes to procurement, that's where we had the biggest exposure. We will, of course, investigate and look further into how to, on different actions, but really depending on what measures EU and Norway are going to take towards the import that we have currently from the U.S.
About the FX, I mean, given the Swedish krona has strengthened quite a bit lately. Can you remind me on the hedging policy, when should we start to see the benefit of stronger Swedish krona?
Yeah, so basically we are hedging between the, as you know, we have three pricing windows in Norway and two in Finland and Sweden. What we do is to lock the currency effect between the pricing windows. Of course, right now, we will have, since we have locked the currency for some months going forward, we will have, I would believe, if the Swedish krona continues to strengthen towards the U.S. dollar, we will have negative effects on the currency in the short run.
In a short run.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was the instrument that we implemented in order not to have any big deviations in the gross margin between the pricing windows. We are hedging quite a substantial part of our FX between the pricing windows. Especially the nearest pricing window, all the currency is currently hedged, most of it.
Because I would think that stronger Nordic currencies is a positive for you, right?
In the longer run, yes, exactly like you say. In the longer run, it will have a positive effect. In the short run, it will probably then have a negative effect since we have already hedged the currency. But it's exactly like you say, in the longer run, absolutely then it should be positive. Yes.
Yes. Okay. I have no further questions. I can give the turn to somebody else.
Thank you, Maria. Thank you.
Thank you. Do we have any more questions? If so, please raise your hand to mark that. Maria, I think your hand is still up or?
I had one more, but let's Rauli ask first.
Okay. Please go ahead, Rauli.
Yes, thanks. Hi.
I was just wondering, you have mentioned that you, of course, try to increase your sales more than the market, and you have certain measures ongoing, which should be visible already now, at least during the first half. Have those been implemented already now in Q1? Can you say anything about how they are doing?
Yeah, no, we are currently looking at, like you said, measures to improve sales. You know what, Rauli? I think I want to wait until Q1 reporting to give you any specific answer, but we are not standing still, to put it like that. We are looking at measures to improve sales. Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. Also, like I said, we still have not got the market numbers either for March. I want to be a little bit careful what to say regarding our market, our own performance versus the market.
Yeah, sure. Okay. Thanks. That's all from me. Yeah.
Okay. Then we have a question from Sanna Perälä. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Just wanted to ask about the Danish operations or the Globus Wine integration and the challenges you've had there still recently. Is there anything in Q1 we should be aware of, or is it going according to plans so far?
Yes, it's a very good question. Not any specific things that I'm aware of. I hope I'm not surprised either, to put it like that. Yeah. It's going according to plan, I would say. Not any major changes to my knowledge. No.
Right. Thanks a lot.
Yeah.
Okay, Maria, you had one more question. Please go ahead.
Yes, I had a follow-up.
We talked about, I mean, volumes down in Q1, but then if we talk about price mix, how would you describe the price mix in Q1?
I think, as I showed on the slides, Maria, you saw that we had good gross margin development during the last quarters. I also said that 2024 is maybe representative also for the continued development into 2025. Yeah, being careful not to say too much, but we have not seen any major changes in the input costs so far. We have continued with improved revenue management. That is what I can say. Also in 2025, an effect from 2024.
Yeah. The gross margin expansion, if I understand right, should continue.
That is how I would see it. Yes. Yes.
Thank you.
Yes.
Okay. Do we have any more questions from the audience?
Please raise your hand to mark that. It seems that we do not have any more questions, and there are no questions in the chat either. Thank you all for joining us today, and I wish you a happy weekend. It looks like a sunny one here in Helsinki. Thank you.