Hello, and welcome to Fiskars Group's Q1 2026 results webcast. My name is Essi Lipponen, and I'm the Director of Investor Relations. I'm here with our President and CEO, Jyri Luomakoski.
Good morning.
our CFO, Jussi Siitonen.
Good morning.
Let's look at the agenda for this call. Jyri will first go through the key takeaways of the quarter. After that, Jussi will dive deeper into the numbers. Jyri will then continue with the business area highlights and looking ahead at what this year is going to be like. After that, we will have time for your questions. You can ask questions both through the phone lines and through the chat. You can type in your questions in the chat already during the presentations. Jyri, please go ahead.
Thank you, Essi, and a warm welcome from my side also to our Q1 webcast. Summarizing a bit, the quarter, starting with group-level topics, our comparable net sales and free cash flow both increased. The comparable EBIT and that comparison does not contain the currency translation effect. It declined, but the impact really that broke that equation was from the U.S. dollar translation. If we would be using constant currencies, actually, the comparable EBIT would have a smaller growth. Key in our BAs, it was the third consecutive growth quarter for our BA Vita, and this is of course not the biggest quarter and less important for Vita. While for BA Fiskars, the garden load-ins in the first quarter is an important season, and there was a very solid execution that we could see from the team, and the numbers are testament to that.
A lot of internal activities went into the technical and legal separation of our two business areas as subgroups, legal entities, and that was finalized according to the plans during the quarter. Around sustainability, we had actually already reached our 2030 targets on some of our targets, and, of course, that means that then you raise the bar, and that was validated by the SBTi and also published as such. No change to the guidance, comparable EBIT to improve from the 2025 level. What's behind these statements? Numbers speak the language of business. Jussi, please.
Thank you, Jyri, and hello, everyone. Starting from the top line, as Jyri mentioned, we had a good top-line growth there at constant FX. Constant currency is 2.3% up. At reported currency, it was down 3.1%. This is explained by quite significant US dollar weakening in Q1, roughly 10%. We had a solid growth in main countries U.S., Sweden, Finland, China, just to mention a few. Some of these big countries were even at double-digit growth. EBIT, EUR 25 million, EUR 1.8 million down versus last year at reported currencies. I'll get back to those changes on the next slide. Gross margin at the group level, we were down 70 basis points there, so that Vita was down and Fiskars was up. We go more specific with this in Jyri's presentation. Free cash flow, slightly positive, EUR 0.9 million. Typically, Q1 is always negative when it comes to free cash flow.
Now it was more than EUR 18 million better than last year at the same time. Comparable earnings per share, EUR 0.16, up EUR 0.01 there. If we take some of those lines below the EBIT there, net financial items were EUR 4 million better than they were last year at the same time. That's the main kind of below EBIT line improvement that we had. Jumping into these changes from last year's EBIT to this year's EBIT, and as already mentioned, U.S. dollar had a material negative translation impact on our comparable EBIT. If I start here from right, where we have Fiskars BA EBIT bridge, you can see that at reported currencies, Fiskars were able to improve EBIT by EUR 0.3 million. Excluding this negative translation impact there, Fiskars improved EBIT by EUR 2.7 million.
The biggest driver being gross margin improvement, which was only partially offset by these tariffs. Q1 this year was the last quarter where we did not have tariff impacts in the comparative numbers. Moving to the middle here, Vita, you can see a significant negative item there coming from gross margin. This continuation of those actions we have put in place in Vita, which are supply chain related, mainly our production related there. The good thing is that as said, these are coming from manufacturing side. We have succeeded to keep our sales prices, so none of this operating margin negative is coming from sales prices.
At group level, you can see that we succeeded to continue improving EBIT by EUR 0.5 million there at constant currencies, the biggest driver being volume growth and then some savings that we had in marketing expenses there. On cash flow, as I mentioned, we had slightly positive cash flow there of EUR 900,000, and you can see here the trend when it comes to our previous Q1s. This is significantly better than what we typically have reported for Q1. Improvements came from all the main lines, from operations, from net working capital changes, CapEx and cash taxes. We were able to improve quite holistically our cash flow items now in Q1. When it comes to our net debt to EBITDA, it was up from the year-end 0.24 and then versus the Q1 last year it was up 0.65.
Always in Q1 our net debt is increasing from the year-end due to the seasonal pattern. This year, the increase was much less than what we have done historically. One item to explain it is that typically we have paid dividend in two installments, half in Q1, half in Q3. Now we are paying it in four installments, so only one-fourth of dividends were now increasing our net debt here. The focused measures that we had put in place, especially in Vita on the inventory levels. They are now bearing fruit here and improving to manage this net debt situation. Regarding the current highly volatile business environment, it's worthwhile now to remind of our FX and commodity exposures, what we have and how we have hedged them.
On currency transaction, U.S. dollar is our main currency in which, together with Danish krone and Polish zloty, we have a short position, meaning that weaker the U.S. dollar is, better it is for our transactions. Overall, we have hedged over half of our next 12 months' flow in our main currencies. On translations, we do not have hedges in place. On commodities, especially when it comes to gold, silver, and aluminum, we have hedged over two-thirds of the expected next 12 months consumptions. Gold and silver are important for us, especially when it comes to jewelry business and then aluminum overall, both in Vita and in Fiskars. On energy, mainly electricity and gas, we have long-term contracts in place, so we have hedged that in that way.
When it comes to our climate ambitions, we have now new CO2 reduction targets validated by Science Based Targets initiative, so that CO2 for Scope 1 and 2, we were now at level of 62% down versus base year 2017. Target were lifted up from 60% now to 70%. On Scope 3, target is now up to 40% from 30% and we are now at 34%. When it comes to our important circularity target, what we have set for the company, i.e., by 2030, 50% of the net sales should come from circular products. Now we are at 29%, two percentage points up versus last year. On social targets, the important one being this lost time injury frequency, LTIFR. We are now nicely down versus last year from 3.8 to 2.8.
However, the target is there at zero level, so we are going to right directions but not yet there where we should be. This was a snapshot of our financials and now over to you, Jyri.
Thank you, Jussi. Quickly on our two BAs, Vita. As I mentioned in the introduction, third consecutive growth quarter, the comparable EBIT didn't move the same way, and there are reasons for that. When we look at the growth, much driven by our two Danish brands, Georg Jensen and Royal Copenhagen, and nice tapping kind of to the opportunities through Rörstrand having its 300 years birthday. It's actually our second oldest brand in our portfolio. Then on the EBIT, why is it moving down? Last year in the summer, we stated that cash flow is a priority and we have clearly too high inventories, and started actions. This is now something that last year maybe was then in the latter parts of the year when we curtailed our production and got these inefficiencies expensed directly.
Now it was in line with our plans to continue the efforts to reduce our inventories. That's where the comparable gross margin decrease is solely coming from, is the supply chain related, not that we would have lost the kind of price position in the marketplace. Besides Rörstrand 300 years, there is always some good reason to celebrate, and our iconic Aalto Vase is actually celebrating its 90th birthday, and now there are special editions, so you can add to the standard colors and so forth. Now the all kinds of wooden mold and with bubbles, et cetera, as you see in the picture.
Royal Copenhagen, it's one of the older brands, 251 this year, actually launched a new pastel floral tableware collection called Iris, and again, very positive reception by consumers with that new pattern. BA Fiskars' comparable net sales remained stable, and the growth that we saw in the U.S. also for the third consecutive quarter for the Fiskars brand, actually then was somewhat offset by mixed performance in other geographies, the European economies, having been, from a consumer cautiousness perspective, maybe more cautious than the Americans have been. The EBIT margin was improving. Cost management has been prudent. We need to remember that, as Jussi pointed out, uncertain was on April 2 last year, so Q1 was still a comparison in the kind of old tariff regime, i.e., well, there were some tariffs, but nothing in the magnitude as we have seen then.
Gross margin increased 220 basis points, is of course a good performance, and that's where the team has done also a good job, not only with those new products that you have seen in the latter part of last year, but also now a new launch, the X-Series DualAction cutting tools. Depending on what you are working on, how thick branches you are working on in the garden, you can just optimize your own effort by having it turned either in the small or the large mode, so then you avoid extra work. Guidance for this year, and I believe I have read some expectations from some market participants that we would be coming with a more specific guidance after Q1, and that potentially was also our wish.
What happened on the February 28, the Iran war broke out, and that has, of course, not cleared the visibility more to the contrary. These uncertainties in the global economy persist. Visibility is somewhat limited, as one can guess. We know that the planned changes in BA Vita are expected to support our EBIT from H2 onwards. Why from H2 onwards? We have in the biggest markets completed the union negotiations, change negotiations as those are spelled under different jurisdictions. Those conclusions also have been taken, but they have until... If it's about people who are departing the organization, it doesn't happen overnight. Consequently, that's why the H2 onwards is taking place there. Steady performance by BA Fiskars, and why we added the following, the typical seasonality of its business.
The guidance is not to take Q1 and multiply it by four to arrive at a good guess for the year. This is the strongest season for the business. We see from the performance how we have been able to also gain on distribution in some key markets, been able to convince the distributors, i.e. our customers, through new offerings, our performance also in the volatile environment, that there are new doors or distribution points have opened to us and are opening to us. We also have planned for this year that we continue on the kind of curtailing production in some categories, really to work down and sweat down the excess or too elevated inventory levels. We know that will carry some negative impact also going forward during this year.
As you can see from the Q1 numbers, I think that's a kind of under control type of a situation. Comes the update on advertising and commercial. Capital Markets Day will be held at our offices in Espoo on May 12, and that will also be available online. There's also a QR code you can sign up for the CMD. To summarize, on group level, top line cash flow increased, breaking some historical patterns also on the cash flow, which is important. Comparable EBIT, yes, it declined. Absent the translation, actually, the situation would be looking better. Third consecutive quarter of growth for our BA, and the Fiskars BA team has done a solid good job in tapping into the opportunities of the season.
Internal technical restructuring completed, finalized as planned, and that means no hiccups in terms of costs or kind of functionalities, et cetera. We continue to focus on our sustainability topics, and these climate ambitions have been raised. There was a good performance over the last years, and we want to continue on that track. Guidance unchanged, comparable EBIT to improve from the 2025 level.
Thank you, Jyri and Jussi. Now we have time for your questions. Let's first check if we have any questions through the phone line.
The next question comes from Maria Wikström from SEB Group. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Maria Wikström from SEB. I had a few questions and I'd like to start on the Fiskars BA and your profitability which was on par with last year level, which I think it was a bit surprising given there were no tariff impacts in the comparison quarter. Can you a little bit walk us through that, how did you achieve such a good performance in the BA Fiskars? Did you actually raise prices more than the tariff would suggest? I mean, would then be behind the good performance. Thank you.
Yeah, Maria, this is very much operational efficiency improvement, what we have made, especially when it comes to our own manufacturing, how we have succeeded there. That's the main driver, what we have had here to mitigate the tariff impacts. Now the actions what BA Fiskars team has put in place, they are now bearing fruit there. Very much that one. Pricing, we are following the market there. This is not pricing related, this is more internal operations related.
Okay, perfect. My second question is on the consumer trends. Have you seen any changes after the war broke out in the Middle East? If we take it separately on different market areas, Americas, Europe, and Asia.
When we look at the consumer trends, and I know you all have access to all kinds of statistics and surveys, et cetera. I think the high-level takeaway is that European consumers are probably currently more cautious than the American one, especially when the stock exchange started to rebound after the war broke out. There was a big hit to the equity markets. At least my experience is that the American consumer, when the portfolios are doing okay, then they are more shopping happy or such. That has been less of an impact. In the behavioral pattern of our distributors, of course, this cautiousness is visible, so that instead of some big distributors taking maybe certain stuff in truckloads, they start with one truckload, and then once they see that it's sold out, then there is kind of a replenishment order taking place.
In this type of a chain, we know there is this bullwhip effect in terms of the further down in the chain you get, the higher the volatility can get. I'm proud of our team has actually been able to manage that pretty well, this increased volatility.
I wanted to ask on the inventory levels as with the Q4 results. You said that you saw that the inventory levels were too high, and actually, if we compare the inventory levels after the Q1, you are actually more or less on par, but slightly higher than Q4. What do you think? Are you happy with the current inventory level, and what are the action plans if you want to bring it down throughout the year?
We're definitely not happy with the level. We are far from where we would like to be. That's clear when you compare end of Q4 and Q1 and take historical patterns, that's a seasonal increase. Jussi has the number better in his mind, but I believe that we did a bit better than the historical pattern.
Indeed. For example, Q1, EUR 8 million better than last year.
Yeah. This is going into the season. It's certain specific categories where that issue is more of an issue and very much under the loop and under actions. It's a longer journey, as we have indicated already last year, that it doesn't happen in a couple of quarters. That statement is still valid. In the Fiskars BA, we have these seasonal patterns and certain big seasons. Now it's gardening, then in the summer, it's the back-to-school season, which are those that are driving also this type of inventory load-ins, first to our inventory, then to the distributors or wholesalers, our customers. In there, given the forecasts of the available points of distribution, shops, stores, or doors, as we call it in the jargon internally, as there has been and we expect a good trend to continue.
That's also to be prepared when you have load-ins into new points of distribution, that we are available there. That part is not at least keeping me up at night.
Maria, when it comes to seasonality for this year and the biggest actions or major actions what we have in place are in Vita. This visible reduction of the inventory, it's more year-end loaded than the first half loaded. Therefore, you should not see big improvement until we are entering into the second half .
Okay. My final question is that, do you anticipate some availability challenges when it comes to some of the raw materials you are using? What kind of cost inflation you currently see in your raw material bill? Do you think you will be able to compensate with price increases if there are raw material pricing increases during this year?
There are two types of shortages. One can be logistical shortage. As we know, the ocean freights and some of those routes are currently in big changes. Getting from Asia to Europe is a couple of weeks longer journey than it used to be when you could take the shortcut before the war. That is an issue of its own. Freights, those go up pretty much overnight. Containers, shipping them across the world because of the fuel costs has increased. Jussi had a great slide in his deck on our hedges. It's not only currencies, but it's also some of the key commodities that we use. Hedges don't solve that problem. It just gives us time then to adjust on our market pricing, et cetera.
From that perspective, availability per se, I'm not aware of any of our key input materials that there would be problems currently with the physical kind of availability of the said.
Yeah
input material.
Yeah. Maria, on that one, when we entered into this year, we assumed that that will continue as they were at the end of the last year. Now, we know that at the end of February, there were some changes there which are benefiting us. Of course, these kind of things are somewhat offsetting the impacts that Jyri just described, especially when it comes to logistics.
Perfect. Thank you. I have no further questions at this point. Thank you.
The next question comes from Joni Sandvall from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the presentation. Couple of questions from my side. Do you have any extraordinary short-term savings in operating expenses in Q1, or should we just expect declining cost base from current levels when the actions are starting to kick in?
At group level, SG&A was pretty flat versus last year, so therefore it follows that pattern that we had. The items or actions put in place in Vita, as Jyri said, they will start contributing to our SG&A levels, but they are also more second half loaded than the first half loaded. We continue running those efficiency programs that we have, but nothing like this kind of big one-off positive there in our numbers at the moment.
Okay. Thanks. Going to the Vita. You continue to see the positive comparable sales growth there. With the current trajectory, could you give any indication when we should be expecting more normalized production levels?
Not really. As we said, it will take some time, and it's focused on a couple of product categories and manufacturing technologies, mainly around the crystal value chain, where the inventory and consequently, curtailing the production has been taking place. It doesn't touch unfortunately, so to speak, too much the brands that I mentioned that have been growing the most, Georg Jensen, Royal Copenhagen and Rörstrand, which are jewelry, other home decor, not in the glass categories or crystal categories much, and fine bone china type of categories. Work continues. Of course, getting inventories reduced has two parameters. One is the sell-out, and one is the input.
The input we can control very much ourselves and have taken those measures and are biting, so to speak, the bitter pill by expensing some of those factory overheads now every day as we go when we don't utilize the capacities as they could be utilized. Then on the other side, the sell-out, that work also continues. It's a journey that's not over shortly, but determined to get this done.
Okay. Thanks. One question on the current tariff situation, because there has been changes now in April, obviously a little bit related to Section 232 tariffs and those implications. Could you give any color? Does this have any material impact on Fiskars BA?
We have gone through the recent changes there, especially when it comes to steel tariffs and the likes, how they are calculated. Our current view is that those changes are benefiting us, so the tariffs will be less than what we had in our original plans for this year. We haven't disclosed and won't disclose any material numbers regarding this one, but we are benefiting from those.
Okay. Thanks.
Yeah.
Lastly on the guidance, Jyri, you mentioned that maybe someone has been expecting more specific guidance, but should we still expect this maybe later towards the year or are you sticking to current, let's say, a little bit vague guidance?
The H1 report and the Q3 reports are not written yet, and the internal forecast processes have not been run, and the visibility from July onwards or from October onwards is not yet there. We recognize that, let's say, desire from the market to have more precise guidance. At the same time, we recognize kind of the facts in our operating environment. It's been a bit blurry visibility into certain things. Stuff that we do, we have the confidence that we execute what we have planned and promised. What's happening outside will be smarter, hopefully, again, than in July on that topic, when we have seen where the world has taken us to.
Okay, thanks. That's all from me.
The next question comes from Rauli Juva from Inderes Oyj. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Rauli from Inderes Oyj. A couple of questions from me as well related to the Vita segment. First of all, was there some clear kind of campaigns or discounts in Q1 related to the efforts to drive down inventories?
On those categories, which I refer to more being the kind of our crystal glass type of value chain, we've been actively looking at with somewhat dynamic pricing, but not big campaigns or that type of fire sale type of efforts have not taken place. It's still valuable brands in important geographies, big economies. One needs to balance with the short-term benefit and the long-term sustainability and viability of the brand.
Yeah. Sure. On the gross margin, if I understood right from the previous answers, you will basically continue the inventory reduction throughout the year. Would that imply that the gross margin in Vita would remain around the levels of Q1 and the second half of last year, maybe throughout this year? Is there some drivers to push it up, kind of besides the inventory reduction, which is eventually then improving the efficiency in production?
We don't guide gross margin specifically, not on a BA level. There are seasonal patterns to the gross margin of the Vita business, which is heavily kind of gifting season back-end loaded in our calendar of the year. From that perspective, unfortunately unable to give an answer to your question.
Yeah. Rauli, on that, not commenting this year at all, but last year when we informed and announced those actions, what we were putting in place in Vita to get inventories down. Of course, last year's second half, the gross margin started to come down. Therefore, at least we have lower comps in the second half this year versus normal.
Yeah. Sure. That's clear. Yeah, I was wondering if there's anything kind of seems driving that up from the current absolute levels, if you will continue with the inventory reduction throughout this year. Can you comment anything on that, if there's price increases or some other kind of levers to impact the gross margin?
Yeah, coming back to my comment that we don't guide the gross margin on the group level and not on a BA level.
All right. One of the Fiskars division as well, you mentioned in Q4 report you had pushed some spring launches due to the cold winter, and then it eventually turned pretty spring-ish in March. Did that have some clear negative impact in the Q1 for Fiskars? Kind of should be benefiting Q2 if the kind of spring push is more in Q2 this year.
Not in any material effect. I think we had some, if not scary moments, but times when we were gnawing our nails because the winter was dragging and dragging, and then suddenly it became spring more or less overnight in many geographies, actually.
Indeed
Winter when we had first loading orders in North America, in the U.S., to some big distributors, then came some blizzards, and the authorities closed the roads for multiple days. That was fortunately not the end of the quarter. That was in February when we really had some stressful days that, "Hey, will we make the season or is spring canceled?" Then spring was not canceled. That's the good news.
Yeah. Okay. That's all for me. Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Yes, we do have a couple of questions here in the chat, and these are topics that both have been already discussed, but maybe for transparency's sake, I will still read these. The first one was about the curtailments in Vita, how many quarters, but as we said, it will continue. We haven't given any detailed guidance on that. Anything you want to add, or.
Jussi said it well.
Yeah. Timo asked it well.
Yeah.
Great. We have a question about the gross margin improvement in Fiskars segment. Can you elaborate further why did it improve? Maybe, Jussi, you already touch upon that topic, but
Very much so.
Yeah.
Already started last year, when Fiskars BA put in place those actions to mitigate the tariffs there. They are now yielding results, and as I said already earlier, this Fiskars improvement is very much coming from internal efficiencies. The new categories we have launched, they are not yet visibly contributing to gross margin, but they will in the future. This is very much internal efficiency is what we have now delivered.
Maybe to build on Jussi's comment on the new categories. That's true, they're not visibly contributing-
Yeah
because the baseline is still small.
Yeah.
They're not mathematically dilutive.
Absolutely not.
To the margin. That's important.
Absolutely not. Yeah.
Launches have, from that perspective, also served their purpose.
That's correct.
Good. I think it seems that we do not have any further questions, so I think we are ready to close the call. Thank you for your active participation. Please remember the Capital Markets Day coming up quite soon. You can register for that either on-site or online.
Thank you for joining.
Thank you.
Thank you.