Good afternoon, everyone, welcome to Verkkokauppa.com's Capital Markets Day 2026. My name is Elisa Forsman. I am the head of investor relations, and it is my pleasure to moderate today's event. It's great to see so many of you joining us here in person in Helsinki, and also welcome everyone joining us online. As announced this morning, we have updated our financial targets for 2028 following our midterm strategy review. The key message is simple. Our targets remain largely intact, and we continue our focus on profitable growth. Today is all about delivery, how we make this happen in practice. Let me walk you through today's agenda. We'll start with the presentation by CEO Panu Porkka, who will outline our direction and how we are positioned for the future of retail.
We'll move on into four deep dives with our management team members, and finally, we'll conclude the individual presentations by CFO Jesper Blomster, who will tell you about our financial framework and how we plan to reach our targets. After that, we'll move into the Q&A session with the management team, and we have reserved plenty of time for that. Just a few practicalities for asking questions. For those of you joining us here in Helsinki, if you want to ask a question, just raise your hand and wait for the microphone to be brought to you. Please remember to state your name and the company before asking your question. Those of us joining online, you may submit questions throughout the presentations via the question box, and we will take them during the Q&A session.
Before we begin, I would like to note that today's presentations include forward-looking statements, and the relevant disclaimer is shown on the screen and in the presentation material. With that, I think it's time to get started. Panu, the stage is yours.
Thank you, Elisa, for great opening. Welcome also on my behalf to our Capital Markets Day. We are delighted hosting you this event today here in Helsinki and also everybody online. In my presentation, I will cover three things. First of all, what is the position of the company today? Secondly, how have we been executing our strategy, which we released back in 2024? Thirdly, what is our path going forward? Before I jump into the presentation, let me introduce my team, the ones who is making all the work and also those ones presenting today. After me, you will be hearing from Suvit uuli about brand and marketing, then from Anne-Mari about fastest fulfillment and supply chain operations, then Pekka about our growth story, Ville about technology leadership and AI, and then at the end, we will have Jesper with the financials.
We stand today as the clear leading online retailer and clear leading operator in consumer electronic markets. We are the customer's number one choice. We have a huge customer base which is active and growing. If you take out the two Corona years, last year, we reported record high online visits on our site. We are the number one when it comes down to customer loyalty, according to many studies. We are known for a high qualitative created assortment, which is vouched by our customers. The transparency that we give and the reviews that we have on our site gives us the edge also to improve on our offering. The high quality of our offering is stated again last year. If you look at the return rates. From all revenue last year, only 0.7% were returns. That is probably record high in the world.
Our financial position is strong, stronger than it has been for few years. Looking backwards, last year was a successful one, significant growth, almost 13%, significant profitability improvement, getting back on earnings per share on a positive note. This year we are going to distribute quarterly growing dividend as we have a policy to do so. The success of last year was not due to the market. It was actually despite the market. We are known that in the market surrounding, which is tough, which has been tough, we are the one who is still performing better than the rest. We have decoupled our performance from the market. The consumer confidence has been low for three years in a row in the Finnish market. We are used to that. Still, despite the soft demand, discretionary shopping being under pressure, we are able to grow and gain market share.
You can see on the right side our performance in red and the market development in gray. Clearly, significantly growing market share quarter after quarter. Which makes us, according to financial statement releases, the clear market leader in Finland in consumer electronics and also our business model, the cost efficiency and revenue per employee is significantly higher than that of our competitors, and the gap is growing. We don't benchmark ourselves to Finnish peers when it comes down to customer experience. The ladder must be higher. It needs to be global. According to Omnichannel Index, just some weeks after release, we are the number one in consumer experience, customer experience in Finland. We are number 1 in electronics, we are number three in Nordics. If you look on the right side, in all major customer journey touchpoint, we clearly outperform the market.
Brand is something that cannot be copied, or at least it is quite hard to copy. It is a foundation for us to grow and gain market share in Finland. We are the number one choice for customers. We are number one in customer preference. We are the number one in trust and reputation. The way we approach brand and marketing is always different from our competitors. When seeking new customer segments, we try to find out new ways to getting those customer segments' attention. For example, our TikTok currency campaign was widely seen and globally renowned as well. Our strategy is actually quite simple, accelerating online shift through fast deliveries. Interesting is that on the left side, you can see the expectancy of the consumers in the Finnish market after we started with our strategy. The expectancy has increased significantly.
Still, as you can see, to our peer markets, Nordic, Europe, or even global benchmark, there's a huge potential in this way of adding value to the customers. We have been transforming the market online. We have internally also increased our share of online. The fast deliveries are booming. We just don't do it because we gain revenue growth outside of it. If you look in the center, you'll see that the fast delivery customers, they are more valuable for us. The lifetime value is over 70% higher than those ones who don't use fast deliveries. The frequency is almost 60% higher than those who don't. It is a clear operating model which makes sense. What we said or have been saying for years, the online market is growing. On the right side, you can see the offline market will continue to decrease.
Everything in our company is optimized to online and nowadays, the fast deliveries. Out of the 60,000 SKUs, 34,000 can be right away delivered. Online and fast delivery capability is a leading guideline for our category management, and we steer the most focus in that category. It yields in better results and sales and margins. We have been improving our availability on those, and therefore, it can be widened as we go along. Interesting also to see is that after we have been discussing with our suppliers that this is the way to approach the market, this is the way to guarantee growth, they actually see us as top-tier partner because our business model is future-proof. It's not only the width and the fast delivery capability of the assortment. Quality must come first.
The transparency on products that are not meeting our expectancy or not that of consumers, we use those reviews to de-list products. After we do that, you can have these kind of figures. Out of all of the assortment, average rating for a product, it's 4.4 out of one to five. Customers also vouching, your assortment is best in class. Besides having all the A brands, most exciting assortment, we have been investing and developing our own brand portfolio operations, significantly focusing also on margins and profitability. The profitability, the margin of our own brands has significantly improved since the start of our strategy period. The sales is improving and customers are choosing wider and wider outside of more and more subcategories, our brands. Here, the interesting thing is that we have now built a capability to have products that can be also sold internationally.
We have really positive first indicators of that. This will be one key component in having international growth in the future. How have we been delivering on our strategy promise? If you look at the big picture, we can say that we have done a fairly good job in these four pillars, fastest fulfillment, curated assortment, new business models, and operational excellence. If I take few of them at this point, fastest delivery is something that is the main focus area for us. We said quite boldly back in 2024, we are making fast deliveries the new norm in Finland. This is what we said. At that point, we had just had few kind of tests. We were ramping up the capability. Now with the confidence, I can say that we have done it.
This is a new way of shopping in the Finnish market, and we have been the one introducing it to the Finnish customers, and we have been one who is pushing it because it's in favor of our profitability to do so. We also said that we will have one-hour delivery in all major cities. Well, we have done that already last year, so a lot of these promises ahead of schedule, ahead of 2028. New business model, we said asset-light, international expansion in focus markets. Yes, we have done that with piloting partners, with own direct selling to certain markets, and now in Sweden, we have success in many different approaches. If you look closer in certain metrics, in my interim report, I actually give you an update on our fast delivery capability each quarter.
After the first quarter, 30% of all online sales was with fast delivery capability. It is the biggest part of our business basically at the moment. Next day delivery is scaling ahead of targets, improving faster than we expected. We will probably have the target of coverage 90% already by end of this year. We promise that it will be by end of 2028. The fast delivery is not just for those fans who order several times a month or every week. The amount of customers utilizing fast deliveries is growing each day, week, and month. From the start of the period until now, significant growth, over doubling the amount of customers utilizing this. New business model we have talked about, we said that we're going to double retail media revenue. We are totally on track with that target.
We said that international sales will be a key component in our growth story. We are totally in line with that target as well. In curated assortment, we said we are going to focus on the hero assortment. We're going to make it more profitable. We're going to make it sell more, all taking place. In own brands, we have said that we will be increasing the internal share of sales. Own brands have been developing favorably. They have been growing, but at the average speed. We are not on track at the moment, but we are quite confident that by end of 2028, we will be by 10% of total revenue. Operational excellence is, for us, DNA. It's culture. Finding new ways of making things faster, more cost-efficient through automation, our platform, better processes, and analytics. Our fixed costs are going down to revenue.
Our revenue per employee is increasing. We are really scaling our business as we go along. Interesting here, bottom right, you see picking lines per hour, so it's a logistical metric. Although we have automation since 2020, 2021, and 2022, partly all in those years invested, still we are able to increase the efficiency in our supply chain, and that's the mindset. Always try to improve in your core operations. What can you expect the last two and a half years? It is not a big surprise that we are going to maintain basically the same game book. We are really successful with the current strategy. The strong brand will be driving traffic conversion. Loyalty is a huge potential. We will give you a deep dive into these topics. Fastest fulfillment, it's a key component on gaining market share.
It's a key component making everybody else look old-fashioned or slow. New business models, we have huge potential in retail media. We have huge potential in our service portfolio. International sales is going totally according to our plans. It will take a bigger part of our growth as we go along. Operational excellency throughout platform technology and AI. Ville will give you insight on how we utilize technology in our advantage, and why do we believe that we are the ones taking the most advantage of technology going forward. As an outcome, this yields into our long-term targets, which we updated this morning. Basically, still aiming for 5% growth every year. For the remaining strategy period, CAGR of more than 5%, 2026-2028, while outgrowing the market. For us, it is the same what kind of market we are facing. We are confident that we can grow despite market turbulence.
The most important target, probably EBIT margin still, we expect to be above 5% by end of 2028, and we have clear path going forward and Jesper will give you that in details how we're going to do that. As a reminder, we have an existing dividend policy of paying out 60%-80% in quarterly growing dividends. What I would like you to remember, I think for an investor, it is important to understand what is the position of the company in the whole market. I think we have demonstrated clear that we are the leading operator. We have a future-proof business model. We have been consistently outperforming the market despite market changes. We have a clear strategy which we are executing every day. Every meeting in the company starts with the strategy. Everything is about the strategy. We are good on track with most of the targets.
In some, we still have work to do. I'm confident that we will reach those targets. The scalable, asset-light, efficient business model, we do believe gives us the leverage to invest in international growth and also in growth in the home market. We have a proven engine, we have good momentum, and we have the right team going forward. At this point, thank you from my side. Now, Suvi, the stage is yours. Thank you.
On the next part of the presentation, I'll talk about brand, marketing, and our customer. The presentation headline says Trust. Trust is the foundation of our brand. The trust is built on two things, responsible operations, how we do business, and our clear commitment to put the customers first every day from the day one of Verkkokauppa.com. Our company vision is to create new norm for buying and owning. That is also the long-term goal of our sustainability program. Our sustainability program has three main areas and one overarching principle. Firstly, circular business. Secondly, responsible operations and supply chains. Well-being and success of our people and maintaining exemplary business conduct. I will dig deeper on the first topic because it also has business value. Circularity for us means extending product life cycles. Of course, we will do this online. I'll give you a couple of examples.
First is, of course, long-living, high-quality products we sell, and we sell them for true need. As Panu said, return rates are extremely low. We are super happy, and that proves that the way we do business actually is good for our business and good for the customers. Next is the assortment. There we are expanding our pre-owned assortment and also integrating our outlet more thoroughly into purchasing process. Third topic is services. Pekka will go through more thoroughly on what we are planning there, but for example, we are accelerating or extending product life cycles by scaling the trade-in program. Also, there are things we are working in the services side. We will look at the brand. As Panu has already highlighted, our brand is the strongest in many metrics. First comes the reputation.
In the reputation, the numbers are very high if you compare all the retail companies in Finland or all brands in Finland, and we outperform our competitors by far. We are especially good in products and services quality. Also on the right side, you can see our preference. That means that we've grown to be the preferred retailer in electronics. We are the preferred one throughout Finland, but especially on the fast delivery areas. There, our competition is far behind us. This means that when the customers can experience the full Verkkis experience, the fast deliveries, then it really lifts up the preference. During 2024, we have renewed our brand. Let's look a short video. In the core of our brand is the core of our strategy, fastness.
Fastness is not only about logistics, it's about the way we do business, the way customers find the products, how we serve them, and of course, about the delivery. Fastness is everywhere in our communications. That's the core. Moving on to marketing. Our brand and the marketing we do is world-class, and it engages different generations throughout Finland. If you look at our brand awareness, we are extremely well-known throughout Finland. In fast delivery areas, in store areas, 93% of people know us, and elsewhere, 87% know Verkkokauppa.com. This means that we speak to whole Finland, even though we are online first player. Also, we are able to talk to different generations. As Panu pointed out, our viral payback TikTok currency campaign is a good example of the way we talk to younger generations. That campaign had minimal media investments and generated almost 12 million views.
That's an incredible number. This is not only about one campaign, it's about how we are able consistently do world-class creatives that reaches new audiences, broad audiences throughout Finland, and content that has cultural relevance. It also pays off. Compared to the competition, when we compare selection criteria, when consumers are selecting where to buy consumer electronics, we buy in all relevant selection criteria. We are ahead in assortment, in price levels, in shopping experience, and especially we are ahead in fast delivery image. There, the lead is 18 percentage point. What we've been working on during the strategy period is raising the awareness of one-hour delivery services. That number has gone from 15% to nearly 40%. That means that nearly 40% of Finns know that we can deliver within one hour.
That is important because the fastest image is a clear driver of our preference and also sales. Our marketing is also efficient. Comparing to the competition, we spend less, but we get more. In mass media, we, for example, buy consideration cheaper than the competition, and we are also able to convert this consideration into traffic in online channels cheaper than the market average. Earned media is also a very important channel for us. There, I'm happy to say that our brand is so strong that we generate significantly bigger positive earned media than our competition. We spend less, we get more because our brand is strong enough to earn attention on its own. Our creative is consistently better, and our ability to use data and automations in digital channels continuously improve our cost efficiency. Now, let's look at our customers.
We have a strong, loyal, and highly satisfied customer base. As Panu already pointed out, the customer base is growing strongly. I especially want to point out those customers who make repeat purchases. That number is up 32% from the beginning of the strategy period. Good numbers here. We are also in the lead in the EPSI Rating listing companies with top customer loyalties. During the same time, our customer lifetime value is up by 23%. We've been able to lower the customer acquisition costs. In sum, more customers, more loyal, more valuable, and acquired more efficiently. Let's quickly look a bit deeper of who our core customers are. Our core customers are the market's high spenders. They are tech savvy, and they are online native. We have a really good position there. They value quality, value novelties, buy more high-quality products.
They are primarily not bargain hunters. They use fast deliveries, and currently they make purchases from approximately five working categories. This means that there is a lot more potential here. Also, they, as I said, use fast deliveries. How do we unlock the value from these customers? We've made great progress with data, AI, and automation during the strategy period. We've been able to enable better data utilization in all platforms. We've improved the ability to personalize the online experience, further automate digital marketing, bring more Gen AI usage into generating more personalized content. Also, the most important thing is that we've increased the marketable customer base by 30%. Why is that important? Because customers with marketing permissions show significantly higher value. They have higher margin, and they have higher sales. That is something that we will continue working on. What's next?
We are scaling our operations with three focus areas. Firstly, we continue to leverage our strong brand as traffic and sales driver. Broad audiences, growing traffic, and further developing our superior customer experience remain in our focus. Secondly, we build loyalty mechanics. We are expanding our addressable customer base, and with that, we drive repeat purchases. We also plan to introduce a renewed Verkkokauppa.com customer ship and loyalty mechanics. Thirdly, we will scale AI-aided automation across the whole customer journey. We will further automate creating and running campaigns and producing hyper-personalized content. What do we expect from this? Firstly, lowering customer acquisition costs. Secondly, higher purchasing frequencies, conversion, and basket size. Three, improved traffic monetization and retail media margins. To sum it up, Verkkokauppa.com is the top brand in retail, driven by speed and superior customer experience. We have a high-value, loyal customer base.
A data-driven engagement increases customer value. It has high potential for us. Strong brand, world-class marketing, data, and AI drive efficient acquisition. Fifth, loyalty and automation enable scalable growth and margin expansion. With that, I'd like to invite Anne-Mari to the stage to tell how we actually make this happen in the logistics part.
Good afternoon, everyone. It's my pleasure to be here today to share why speed is the new black in online retail. Just to give you an overview of what I'm going to talk about today, I'm going to share what our journey in fast deliveries has been so far, where are we today with our targets, as Panu mentioned, we're ahead, and where does the future lead in terms of fast deliveries. When a consumer selects where they want to shop, the assortment and the price level are table stakes. Those you need to have in place. When it comes to differentiating as an online retailer, convenience is key, and on top of that comes fastness and accessibility to deliveries. As you can see here, the global market for fastness, the expectations of consumers are growing.
As the world ticks faster, this is the way how we are going to win. What is our place in the market? We are making space for us and speed between the traditional physical retailers that typically have very good availability once you walk into the store, but carry a narrow assortment as not everything fits into the shelves. Also traditional e-commerce, where you have endless aisle, you have tens of thousands of products, but you have very slow delivery. My personal record has been waiting for three months for a parcel, needless to say, that was not Verkkokauppa.com. Where we play is wide assortment that we deliver from our 24/7 operations, 34,000 products that are available for fast deliveries.
You may select as a consumer whether you want to pick them up in 15 minutes, if you want to have them delivered to your home in one hour, should you live in the area where we deliver, or have them by next day in areas that we don't cover yet by the one-hour deliveries. Needless to say, this is not a capability that's been built overnight. This is a result of years of development, investment in automation, investing in our people and their skills, continuous process improvement, automations, and systems. The model gets pressure tested every season. On the peak weeks around Black Friday and the high season, our volumes increase significantly. Scalability and efficiency of operations are core. In the gearbox, you need to be able to shift the gears up or down.
During the high seasons, we have been able to systematically decrease delivery lead times, improve seasonal operations efficiency throughout this strategy period. Now, this is not only operations and logistics, but we have built an entire consumer experience, our customer experience, around speed. It starts with search. How do customers find the products? We have invested in findability and better discovery of our products. When deciding whether to order or not, the availability of delivery options is key. We are displaying them already on the product page, so it's easier to select whether you want to get it or not. You don't need to click all the way through to your shopping cart to know when you're getting your deliveries, and if the products you want to give as a gift next Saturday, as a graduation gift, if you'll get them on time or not.
In payments, we have also invested in faster payment methods, and those have proven to be popular and speeding up the shopping experience. Receiving or actually getting the goods faster. This is, as also Panu Porkka explained, a growing part of our business. 30% of our online sales is already fast deliveries. As last point, we are able to continuously improve the service. One of our core capabilities is that we have the systems at our hands. We hear the customer out. We develop our processes and systems for yet improved customer service. Where is this all heading? How much growth are we getting? It's my pleasure to share that we have shipped over 900,000 fast deliveries already, and we expect to break 1 million by summer. This is not the linear trend, but we are growing exponentially. This is really proving out that growth comes from fast deliveries.
We set targets in 2024 in our strategy for one-hour deliveries and next-day deliveries. Our goal was to expand one-hour deliveries from Helsinki capital area to all our locations by 2028. I'm truly happy to tell you today that we have reached this target already now, two years ahead of time. Today we are reaching 2 million people, roughly 2 million Finns across the country with our fast deliveries, which is almost half of the purchasing power in Finland. With next-day deliveries, we set the target for 2028 to be 90% of Finns. We're not quite there yet, but almost. Today, we're covering 80% of Finns with next-day deliveries, we expect to reach this goal quite soon. This is the result of the great work done by Verkkokauppa.com team together with our partners to catch the wave of consumers' demand for speed.
As investors, you might think, "Where's the money?" This is not only a path to volume growth, but it's also profitable. Fast deliveries are profitable because customers shop more frequently and are more satisfied as measured in customer lifetime value and NPS. The sales margin per basket is higher compared to the full customer base. Fast shoppers shop more often, the customer lifetime value is over 70% higher. This is also a way to profitable growth. Where are we heading next? By 2028, we will scale our fast deliveries in and outside of Finland and make precision the next new normal. We will continuously optimize our operations. We will increase automation in our operations in Helsinki and utilize machine learning and AI. Yes, not everything is AI, there's also other ways, together with our proprietary systems and data.
We will broaden the next-day deliveries to cover all major hubs in Finland. We will also expand next-day deliveries beyond our borders. We are going to pilot one-hour deliveries in new locations. On top of all this, we have also sensed a new need. In addition to speed, consumers want to control when are they getting their deliveries. When is it that my parcel will arrive? Together with our partners, we will make delivery precision the new normal, controlling more at hands at the customers to select when will they get their orders and select the most convenient location and time where they want to pick their parcel. Overall, we will use these capabilities to win market share in Finland and catalyze international expansion. The five points I'd like you to remember from today.
Fast is the new normal. We will scale this to win in the market. We have been fast also reaching our targets, as we are two years ahead. We have reached our goals in one-hour deliveries and are soon reaching our goals in next-day deliveries. We expect to soon break 1 million deliveries to our loyal, profitable, and satisfied customers. As this makes them happy, we want to expand speed to reach also new customers in areas where we're not yet. We will also create the next new normal with delivery precision. Thank you.
Good. Thank you, Anne. We are slightly ahead of schedule, and we have a break now, but may I suggest that we take a 15-minute break, and we'll be back here at 2:00 P.M. Feel free to have coffee here, and online audience, we'll be back at 2:00 P.M. Thank you. Welcome back from the break. Next up, we have our Chief Experience Officer, Pekka Litmanen, talking about growth. Pekka, the stage is yours.
[Break]
Thank you, Elisa. In my presentation, I will explain how Verkkokauppa's strongest retail experience in the Nordics is now driving growth. Our core is stronger than it has ever been. We are leading in omnichannel in terms of growth, in terms of customer satisfaction, and in terms of fast delivery capability. We have built a system that scales efficiently and has the assortment and availability to do so.
We are growing our business beyond our core in multiple adjacent areas, B2B, value-add services, retail media, and new markets. I will next elaborate these on a more detailed level. First, let's look at B2B Finland opportunity. B2B is a EUR 1.8 billion market where small, medium, and especially large businesses are still shifting to digital-first buying. We focus on capturing 70% of the core market. Our model is strongest in micro, small, and mid-market, where price, speed, and simplicity decide the winner.
On top of this, we can provide vast range of additional services to serve also our large customers. Our consumer-grade experience and fast fulfillment give us a unique edge in this fragmented space. No other player combines our array of assortment, digital-first buying with immediate availability. We can offer one-hour deliveries for companies in key metropolitan areas, making speed a true differentiator also in B2B. In B2B, our market share growth is expected to continue. Our strengths in B2B are speed, full assortment available, convenient self-service capability, value-adding services, and strong brand position, and we have aligned actions where we are focused next. We are ramping up customer acquisition, we are expanding assortment, we are utilizing our integration capabilities, we are leveraging partnerships, and we are expanding in the Nordics.
With a common theme of AI and automation, removing the need to add headcount in order to grow, B2B is already more profitable than the group average, and it scales without adding overhead. These actions turn our position into measurable growth and positive EBIT contribution. Next, let's look at value-add services. During the strategy period, we have built, step by step, an online-first enabled value-add services ecosystem. First, we built Tili credit account, and we embedded it in customer account. The service now has over 100,000 active customers, and we have unlocked further growth with Walley partnership. Next, we launched native trade-in service embedded in Tili credit account. This service enables consumers to trade in their phone and purchase a new one fully online.
We have also built capability to offer services already in the product detail page, and the latest example being heat pump installations, where we offer the most convenient consumer journey in an otherwise complex market. Financing is a great example how services are win-win-win. They're improving the sales, they're improving the profitability, and they're improving customer loyalty. We are at 12% financing penetration today. Now, with our partnership with Walley, we see a clear path to improve attach rate to beyond 15%. The key insight is that we can get there with our online-first model. No need for high fixed cost base and hundreds of in-store salespeople pushing credit. There are two reasons why this matters. First of all, more customers qualifying for credit means increasing sales. Secondly, financing profit is nearly pure margin, and that improves our profitability. The impact doesn't stop at the transaction.
Customers who adopt financing are 42% more valuable. They take up more services, whether it's trade-in, extended warranties, or fast deliveries, their lifetime value multiplies even further. Services, for us, are a true loyalty catalyst. We are building an online-native, full lifecycle services portfolio from buying to owning, and our services portfolio is still underdeveloped. There is plenty of opportunities we haven't yet fully captured, and that is what we are focusing next. We're doubling active credit customers, we're expanding protection services, we're introducing service partnerships to online, and we're leveraging trade-in. Every service added to the basket increases sales and loyalty, while it also moves us closer to our profitability ambition. Next, let's look at retail media. Retail media turns our traffic and data into high-margin revenue stream.
It's a fast-growing market, and we are positioned to capture the growth thanks to our digital reach and supplier relationships. With over 80 million visits, 1 million customers, and 2,000 brand partners, the demand and media assets are already in place. The main development area for us is expanding and improving media inventory even further. We're scaling campaigns and digital screens to maximize value for suppliers and for us. Retail media itself, as market, the spend is growing over 20% per year in Europe, and the market is just beginning. Our assets and scale put us in prime position to lead as the spend shifts to retail-owned channels. We are on track to double retail media revenue by 2028 with expanding margins. The growth is driven by increasing partner and client base, more ad space on our website.
It might be sponsored product search results, display ads, when and if it makes sense for the customer. Using our customer data to offer brands more precise targeting and personalized campaigns. Finally, increasing the automation and self-service, which enables us to grow the margins. Last, and most likely the most excitingly, let's talk about new markets. Beginning of the strategy period, we set out to reach Nordic customers beyond Finland with a new approach. We built three channels, distribution partners, marketplaces like Amazon, and our own online store, all operated remotely without any local warehouses or offices. In two years, this international revenue has more than doubled. We've built multi-channel capabilities and validated our expansion strategy, and now we are accelerating distribution and direct sales. Next, I'll explain the channels and their assets in more detail. Our international growth runs through three channels.
First, we have distribution partners, then we have marketplaces, and thirdly, our own direct e-commerce. Through distribution partners, we introduce the assortment, including our own brands. Through marketplace, we introduce Verkkokauppa brand, and through own channels, we eventually own the customer relationship. Each of these channels play an important role in our expansion strategy. Each one is profitable on its own, and this asset-light business model that we use, it uses shared resources across Finnish and international channels to minimize the investment needs. Looking at our progress in Sweden. In Sweden, we've built a 10-plus million business from zero in a relatively short time, using our strengths in assortment, price, and availability. To accelerate growth, our focus will be in building a satisfied customer base and brand awareness. We already have over 70,000 customers in Sweden.
Working closer with the channel partners we have today and selectively onboarding new ones. Of course, investing into our own channel to support cross-border e-commerce, improving our assortment and pricing, and accelerating the delivery speed. These actions will lead us gaining more market share point by point. Going forward, the formula we are developing here for Sweden, it also efficiently replicates to other markets. Looking at our assets. In our expansion strategy, we are not reinventing the wheel. We're not launching a greenfield operation or e-commerce store, nor we are not setting up local warehouses. We use the same formula internationally that is the foundation in Finland. Wide assortment, high availability, currently at 87% of our assortment is sellable to other countries. Smart pricing, it's already showing visible results, example in Amazon. Reliable delivery with shortening delivery times towards next day with our logistics partner.
We just enabled Fulfilled by Merchant Amazon Prime in Sweden, and we can only do that now that we have short enough delivery times. By leveraging our Finnish assets, we scale efficiently and profitable while creating economies of scale that strengthen also our performance in the Finnish market. Our international playbook is working. Next, I will highlight development plans within each channel. In distribution, our focus is on deepening key partnerships and expanding our own brands distribution. In marketplaces, we focus on strengthening the existing marketplace presence and selectively expanding within EU. Third, in our own direct e-commerce channel, we're developing our own direct cross-border sales capabilities, and we move to gradually to own the customer. We are on track to double international revenue from 2024 and sustain growth across channels.
To summarize key takeaways, we have stronger core than ever, and we have multiple adjacent growth areas built on top of that Finland's most efficient leading retail platform. We have EUR 1.8 billion B2B market where businesses still compromise on speed, self-service, and efficiency, and that's our advantage. In value-add services, every added service, financing, warranty, trade-in, makes every sale more profitable and customers more loyal. Our retail media is on track to double with expanding margins. Finally, the international revenue will grow with an asset-light, three-channel model, Sweden leading the way. That's it for me. Next, it's Ville from Technology.
Good afternoon from my part as well. I'll be sharing with you today why we as a company are uniquely positioned to win in the AI era. I joined Verkkokauppa.com personally a couple of months ago, and the driving factor for that decision was the stellar reputation of the technology team in the company. From day one, Verkkokauppa.com has built its core systems in-house, has developed a strong engineering culture, and maintain full control over the platform. At the moment, we employ over 90 high-quality tech experts. You could almost say that we are a technology company who happens to do retail. What we are, in reality, is a retail company who is, by any standards, definitely a leading technology company as well.
Our team stands toe to toe to any leading tech team in Finland. To illustrate what technology leadership has meant in practice over the years, here are a couple of examples. Starting with the fact that we were online in 1992. That was before Amazon was founded. We had our ERP running based on browsers in 2001. No one had heard about SaaS back then. Other retailers have reached this point 10 or 20 years later. We are online first, we were able to manage prices also in our stores in a dynamic fashion already over 20 years ago, which other players have reached five or 10 years ago. Working mode wise, on track with leading players in Silicon Valley, not only in Finland, we were doing Agile and DevOps already in the early 2010s, and we have had AI in production since 2017.
All of this means that besides having a structurally lower cost position, we get things done fast and are much more agile than those companies who are dependent on third parties for their technology. Especially important, as we have always been a technology-first company, we have never had to go online or do a digital transformation. It's who we are. Being online native is the best possible starting point for AI era when we compare, for example, to those retail players whose core tech is tied to the stores. Taking a step back, over the past two years, you have heard from every single company that AI is important and that they are doing AI stuff. What do the leading minds of the world say? Which companies are going to be the winners in this AI era?
First, AI is not about adding things on top of your existing operations, new tools, new agents, or anything. The true value for business comes when you're actually able to change your core capabilities that are deep down in your systems and in your processes. Second, AI models are pretty much a commodity nowadays, but data is not. AI eats data for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Winners both own proprietary data and have top-notch capabilities in data management. You have heard earlier, for example, about our pretty much incomparable asset in product reviews. This is golden fuel for AI use cases. Third, if you want to drive fundamental change, it needs to happen across your tech stack. If your architecture is combined from a patchwork of different vendors, this is extremely difficult, if possible at all.
Additionally, of course, your vendors have their own agendas, including, for example, limiting or dictating what you can do with your own data. In this fast-moving space, you are under enormous risk by having your future tied to certain vendors' bets and capabilities. Finally, fourth, in the AI era, speed and flexibility is critical, but it's relevant only if you know what you're doing. Own technical capability and control is what enables a company to truly do all the aspects mentioned above. Of course, when you buy from consultants, you at best get what everyone else is doing. It's not about if you're doing AI, it's about whether you are structurally positioned to actually benefit from it better than others. As a strong technology-native company, we tick all the boxes here. We design and control the architecture.
We embed AI directly into the processes without being dependent on vendors, and speed of iteration is very high. When you compare us to other store-focused and vendor-locked retailers, they will adopt AI features, but they will struggle to turn it into lasting competitive advantage. As said, strong in-house capabilities allow you to be fast, which is critical to learn, critical to adapt in this very fast-moving world. We have been in AI since 2017, and when around three years ago, Generative AI capabilities came in the market with a big bang, we were able to adapt, learn, and apply them in our operations very fast because of our own capabilities. Already back then, we also knew that true AI adoption requires capabilities to understand and manage risk.
We created our AI governance practices and rules already in 2023, and as the first company in Finland, according to our knowledge, we also published our AI policies publicly. We also know for a fact that quite a few other companies have copy-pasted what we have written, and we are, of course, very happy and proud for that.
Last year was the year of AI agents, which started appearing and proliferating across the company, across operations, and we have also done our first proof of concept on agentic commerce well over a year ago. Finally, of course, software development is critical for us, and we have been closely following the developments. I am very happy to say that 100% of our software developers employ AI tools in their work every single day. The common theme here is the in-house capability allows us to act fast, learn, and adapt faster than others.
Not to leave this only on a theoretical level, here are some selected examples where we have already gained material measurable impact from AI in our operations. In software development, only within the last six months, we have gained 30% productivity improvement, which is huge in our size of operation. These benefits accrue to us, not the consultants or technology vendors. Our customer service is 65% self-service because of AI, and this number will increase dramatically still this year. Managing product data is a critical function for an online retailer, and we have been able to increase throughput of those processes over 30% during the last year. In Suvi's team, we run a huge number of marketing campaigns every year, and we have been able to decrease the cost of creating tactical marketing assets by over 90%.
One example, we just recently launched the Swedish and English translations of our Finnish website. We translated 90,000 product descriptions in 26 hours. You can only imagine what that would have taken with human labor. Finally, most interestingly, we all are already live with Agentic commerce in our B2B operation. What that means is that our customers' employees are able to order using AI tools, IT equipment for us through our APIs. Small, but we are there. It's operational. Clear impact from AI in our operations and the trajectory is clearly accelerating now this year as we have moved more and more into fully agentic AI systems. Looking forward. What we are working on today and will be working on during the next couple of years, we see impact of AI from three different lenses. First of all, how do we employ AI to revamp the customer experience?
Second, how do we transform our operations? Third, how does technology development scale up dramatically? What comes to Agentic commerce, we know consumers are already using AI tools for search, for comparison, and in the future, part of purchasing will be done through agents without visiting our site. As said, we're already operating this in B2B, and you can be assured that with our capabilities, this will be an additional opportunity for us in the consumer space as well. Additionally, we will deliver hyper-personalized experiences enabled by AI tools for our customers, and we'll be able to conduct marketing much more precisely and effectively. In the commercial and support operations side, we of course already do employ AI and other tools extensively, but we will be driving much more fundamental benefits still than until today.
Whether that's supply chain effectiveness, optimizing inventory levels, whether that's real-time pricing, reacting to market conditions, supplier analytics, or fully AI-driven customer service. Ultimately, of course, technology development is what allows us to deliver all of this and all the ambition that my colleagues here have also talked about. We will develop a flexible AI architecture that's based on a combination of best-of-breed commercial, open source, and in-house technology because we can. All of this will obviously lead into faster growth, reaching our ambitions, increasing ambitions, and allowing us to really scale growth, scale our profitability without increasing costs accordingly. To summarize my three takeaways for you today. Verkkokauppa.com is and has always been a leading technology company with a track record to show.
Now, strong technological competence and control of our technology are what will make us and has already made us a winner in the AI era. Third, it is not about individual things that we build with AI on top of existing things. We drive forward with AI across the business, across the operations, accelerating growth while structurally improving efficiency and margins. Next, I'll then hand over to Jesper to talk about the financial trajectory which all of this will enable to happen. Thank you.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for my behalf as well. In my section today, I will summarize the presentations that you've seen earlier today in terms of financials. How does it look in terms of revenue growth? How does it look in terms of profitability? How does all of this affect our capital allocation? We launched our strategy beginning of 2024, and we are now approximately halfway through our five-year strategy period. I will begin today by looking at the first two years, where we stand financially today, how we moved from a market-driven downturn into a clear structural turnaround. In addition, I will go through our progress against the financial targets that we originally set back in 2023. Having reviewed the past performance, we will turn our focus to the remaining years of the strategy period.
Of course, that's the reason why we are here today. I will walk you through the key drivers of growth, the key drivers of profitability, and finally, I will present the new financial targets, the updated financial targets that we announced earlier this morning. As said, let me start with where we are coming from. The things that we have built the past years are actually the key enablers for us to reach the financial targets at the end of 2028. We launched our new strategy end of 2023, beginning of 2024, and over this two-year period that we have now gone through this period, we've seen a clear cycle. 2024 was a market low point, but it was an extremely important year for us. We continued building and strengthening our strategic foundation. You have heard from other presenters today that we built our fast delivery capabilities.
We optimized the assortment to the new strategy. We cleaned up also our assortment quite a bit. We built multi-channel capabilities that actually enable today the international expansion that we are doing. Additionally, we made quite significant strides in terms of operational efficiency. We did a rather sizable reorganization, setting the resources and teams in line with the new strategy. In 2024, we basically set ourselves for a turnaround through the work, through the measures that we took back then, but also the years prior. 2025 was the year of a strong turnaround. It was built on this foundation. It was built on the operational efficiency that we had been working the past years. Our revenue grew 12.5% in a market where consumers were still somewhat cautious, and clearly we outperformed the market. The consumer market grew approximately 3%-4%. We grew 12.5%.
Our comparable EBIT increased from EUR 1.8 million to EUR 14.8 million, so EUR 13 million increase. That represents 2.8% of revenue. Additionally, our financial position was strengthened quite significantly. Of course, improved profitability was a key factor there, but we also divested our consumer finance business, which further improved our balance sheet, strengthened our balance sheet in 2025. The key reason why I wanted to talk about those two years is the quality of recovery. This is not a cyclical recovery. This is a structural improvement that is driven by our strategy execution, and we are building on this foundation. We are building on this for the coming years. Next, let's look at how we are performing against our financial targets that were set in the beginning of the strategy period.
We have three key targets, growth, cost efficiency, and profitability. I will walk you through on progress of each one of them. On growth or revenue, we target revenue growth of more than 5% annually and to outgrow the market. Naturally, the performance was impacted by the market low point in 2024. As said, 2025 was a year of significant turnaround, double-digit growth, 12.5%, and clearly outperformed the market. This continued in Q1 as well. Despite the changing market conditions during the quarter, we delivered close to 7% growth, again, clearly ahead of the market. Overall, we are clearly demonstrating our ability to structurally outgrow the market. Moving to cost efficiency, our target was to bring fixed cost to below 10% of revenue in 2028. In 2023, we reached 13.2%.
This is tracking above the path to the long-term target. It's important to note that this reflects the impact of the lower revenue base in 2024. What matters even more is that we have structurally improved our cost efficiency, our cost base through the operational efficiency, through the organizational redesign, and further utilization of automation, AI throughout our everyday work. As growth continues, the operating leverage will bring us closer to that target level. Our third target is profitability. Our target is to reach EBIT margin above 5% by 2028. In 2025, we reached 2.8%. It's quite significant improvement from 1.2% the year before to 2.8%. I think it's also important to note that this improvement has been achieved in a still fairly soft consumer environment. This underlines even more so the strong progress that we have done during the past couple of years.
Based on this trajectory, the identified measures and levers that you have heard earlier today, what I will also go through in the rest of my presentations, we remain confident on reaching the 5% target in 2028. Then we have a dividend policy. We are committed to distributing 60%-80% of our annual net profit for 2025. We were in line with this. The proposed payout is 71%, and as said, in line with the policy. In summary, we are clearly outgrowing the market. The profitability is improving in line with our targets, and cost efficiency has clear improvement potential. Let's now move on to look at the remaining two and a half years, three years of the strategy period. I will cover this section through growth, gross margin, cost efficiency, profitability, and then we will talk about our capital allocation priorities and balance sheet.
I will sum up the part with the updated financial targets. Let's start with growth. I'll go through the key drivers behind our growth target. The growth is a combination of proven strategy, the strategy that has delivered us 15 consecutive months of growth faster than the market. It's a combination of strategy execution. It's a combination of market dynamics. Let me start with the strategy, and you've heard this already before today, but the fast delivery is, of course, a key factor here. It's a key differentiator for us. It already represents around 30% of the online orders that we are doing today, and we continue to scale this further. If you look at the one-hour delivery growth, the deliveries grew close to 100% in Q1. Pekka also showed that these customers are actually very profitable.
The combination of speed, the assortment that is available for our consumers, and the overall customer experience is the core driver of our outperformance. Second is the structural shift to online. As Ville also said, we are a fully online-native operator. We're built online. With the strong value proposition built around this speed, convenience, when the market continues to shift online, we are well-positioned to capture that growth. Third, the international expansion. We have built these capabilities for the past years. We have been validating the business model, and now we have moved to scaling execution. As said, this is done through a proven cost-efficient, asset-light business model that supports our profitable growth. In addition to our own strategy execution, the underlying market dynamics also remain supportive. The market declined for three consecutive years.
Started recovering last year, but we believe that there is still a lot of pent-up demand on consumers. Innovation cycles are also accelerating. It drives shorter replacement cycles, particularly in categories where we have a strong positioning. Finally, the continued digitalization of both work and everyday life supports long-term demand for our strong product categories. When combining our strategy with the structural trends and market dynamics, we see a clear foundation for sustainable growth. Pekka talked more in detail about the growth drivers for different segments. We have consumer business and B2B business. On consumer side, it's the speed, it's the online transition, it's the leadership in customer experience. Then on B2B side, it's all of these as well, but it's a clearly under-penetrated opportunity where we see a significant upside going forward. In 2025, we grew 12.5%, quite equal in both channels, B2B and consumers.
Looking forward, the target that we have set is to deliver more than 5% annual growth, clearly outperforming and outgrowing the market. We are targeting 5%-6% growth in both. As you can see from the graph, the international growth or the new markets growth is a key growth driver as well. Implicitly, this basically means that excluding the international growth, we expect the Finnish consumer sales to increase 3%-4% annually and Finnish B2B sales 4%-5% annually. The rest of the growth will come outside of the Finnish borders. It's also very important to note that the growth is not dependent on market recovery. It is driven by structural factors. Our speed is advantage, the continued online transition, and the scalable growth both in B2B and new markets. Let's look at gross margin and how we drive expansion going forward.
This is an area where we believe we have significant improvement opportunity still. We have multiple levers to drive that improvement. Many of them has been already mentioned earlier in the presentations today, but I'll walk you through on a high level what those drivers are. The first is commercial excellence through category management, margin-optimized category management, pricing, campaign optimization. We see a clear improvement opportunity. We are working on this today. We have identified, validated that there is room to improve in this area. The second is sourcing. We have already done some supplier consolidation. We are growing, leveraging scale, deepening supplier partnerships usually lead to better commercial terms. Pekka talked about retail media and value-added services. It's a significant potential for us going forward. It's important already today, but there is much more potential going forward. Fourth, own brands.
Own brands is a healthier base, or we have a healthier base in own brands than ever before. We are now ready to accelerate its very profitable business, and we believe that's going to give us further boost during the remaining years of the strategy period. At the same time, we continue prioritizing, of course, competitiveness. We continue prioritizing market share. We continue investing into new markets. This may have a short-term negative mixing impact on our margin. Overall, these levers support our path from approximately 17% margin today toward approximately 18% by 2028. Again, this is driven by multiple levers. It's not depending on a single factor. It's not depending on the market environment. Let me turn to cost efficiency. This is already one of our key advantages. It's always an important thing in our business.
It's always, and it always will be, deeply embedded to everything we do. We are already structurally efficient. Our business model is scalable to the high share of online sales. This means that our lower fixed cost base compared to the traditional retailers. We have a lean and scalable operation. We have strong technology capabilities in-house, as Ville said. We have a lean back-office organization. We have high efficiency in logistics. We are already using broadly automation. We are already using AI across our functions and operations in everyday work. What this basically means is that our cost base doesn't grow at the same pace as revenue. It creates a strong operating leverage. AI, of course, is something that is again, a significant potential going forward. It will enhance the efficiency.
It will impact our business in many ways, and we believe it's going to be a significant and important driver going forward. Overall, our efficiency base is already strong, but we see clear upside on both scale and technology. When we combine the growth, the gross margin improvement, the cost efficiency supported by operating leverage, we see a clear path to our profitability target. These are based on structural improvements in our business model, not on cyclical tailwinds. This leads us to clear path to above 5% EBIT margin by 2028. Again, it's important to note that these are based on tangible, already visible drivers that we have discussed today. Briefly on the CapEx requirement and capital allocation. Our operating model is inherently asset light. It allows us to support growth with relatively low CapEx requirement.
Our annual CapEx is expected to remain in the range of approximately three to five million EUR for the remaining years of the strategy period. If you look at the capital allocation more broadly, strategy, of course, is the key driving factor how we allocate capital. Core business growth is of course a key priority for us, but a lot of the bigger investments have been already done in that area. New business models, international growth services, retail media, those remain a priority for the rest of the strategy period. Operational excellence, operational efficiency a priority as well, and then shareholder returns. We have a policy as said, distributing 60%-80% of our annual net profit on quarterly growing dividends, and that will remain. On the balance sheet, we have low leverage. We have strong cash position.
All of this and our business model overall is a solid foundation for our strategy execution. We want to maintain the strong cash position. We want to maintain the low leverage, and we believe that the business model that we have allows us to do this. This also gives us both stability and optionality as we continue executing our strategy. These are the financial targets that we announced or published earlier this morning. They're largely intact. There is no significant changes here. For revenue, the remaining strategy period, we expect to grow more than 5% and clearly outgrow the market. On profitability, EBIT margin is targeted to be above 5% by 2028, and dividend policy remains. We don't have the cost efficiency target here anymore, but it's good to note that it's not a step back from cost discipline.
It's a deliberate decision to increase our strategic flexibility, but the cost efficiency remains. There is no change in that. This allows more flexibility in getting us to that 5% EBIT margin target. These targets are also fully supported by the operational progress, the structural improvements that we have demonstrated today, but of course during the past two years as well. The key things to remember, we have a proven growth model. We have a model that makes us believe that we will deliver above 5% growth. We believe that we will outgrow the market. We have a clear path to 5% EBIT through gross margin expansion and cost efficiency. Operating leverage AI will be supporting that target. We have a robust asset-light balance sheet with a solid foundation for strategy execution. The financial targets that we announced earlier this morning remain largely intact. Thank you.
Good. Thank you for the presentations. We'll now move on to the Q&A. We already have quite a lot of questions here from the online audience. Let me start by taking a few of those. There's a couple of questions about our market share gains and whether they will continue. Maybe Panu, could you answer this question? Why should we believe that your market share gains will continue?
Well, thank you, Elisa, for that easy question to start with. It's a good question. Let me put it in a way, it's always possible to gain market share while over-investing in margin. That's not a sustainable way of getting market share. You will lose profit. If you look at the time period where we have been clearly outperforming the market, at the same time we have been improving our margin. There needs to be something underlying to make us in a position to gain market share. I think we have demonstrated today quite clearly that on many fronts we are exceeding. It's a combination of hard work. It's a combination of exceeding in all areas of retail, starting with brand loyalty, product quality, price campaigning, fast deliveries. Not least to mention that we have built multiple levers on being better than our competitors.
I think that's a sustainable way of having the levels that we have on market share, and we are quite confident that with these levers, we will also be, in the future, the ones gaining market share.
Thank you. Thank you, Panu. About the updated targets. I think this one is for Jesper. You previously had a below 10% fixed cost target, but now it's no longer highlighted. Why did you drop it?
Well, maybe to start with, this is not going to be a change in our cost discipline. We will continue to operate the business as earlier. We are going to be as disciplined as always. No change in that ambition, per se. This gives us more flexibility to execute our strategy and to achieve our 5% margin target by 2028. All in all, it doesn't change really the way we operate. That remains the same.
Okay. Thank you. The next question could be either for Suvi or for Ville, but I think I'll ask Suvi. How does the AI era affect branding and marketing?
Well, thank you for the inspiring question. AI will be the biggest transformation in marketing in social media. It will make many things different. For example, it will enable us to produce content at scale, hyper-personalized content in a speed of light. That's the first thing. Of course, is targeting. With AI, we can predict the customers for a certain product, who is the most probable to make the purchase. Of course, make the products meet the customer's needs more precisely. Of course, the third thing is probably the most inspiring thing, is the whole purchasing process differing. When the discovery and comparing products will go online or to AI, then the strong brand will be even more important because I think that in the preference part is the thing that where we win.
Of course. Thank you. Ville, I think you covered this one already in your presentation. The Agentic commerce, how far are we with that one?
Well, as I pointed out, we are live in B2B. B2C, of course, the market in Europe, if we consider Agentic commerce to be actually doing transactions through AI tools, it's not yet there. It's not yet possible. The regulatory framework with EU is still in move.
Right
We have been following market developments very actively. As I pointed out, our own first proofs of concept a year and a half ago, roughly. We know quite well both what the technical capabilities that are required and what are the compliance requirements as well that are needed to make this happen in the consumer space. There is a little bit of work, but nothing that would be extraordinary for us.
Good. Thank you. Anne-Mari Paapio, you are our Chief Supply Chain Officer. Where do you still see the biggest efficiency potential in logistics and the supply chain?
Well, when you have operations, it's a never-ending chase for either speed, cost, or quality of operations. I see that we have opportunities in developing scale for fast deliveries. That is the first one we need to look into. Secondly, as the speed, cost, and quality, they require development in automation and utilizing AI and the systems we already have.
Okay.
Thirdly, we also want to look into developing the precision of deliveries, not just the speed.
Thank you. Good answer. Last one for Pekka before we move into the questions from the live audience. Pekka, is international actually profitable or are you just prioritizing growth?
Both. We are prioritizing profitable growth. The growth that we are after needs to have positive unit economics. It needs to have positive EBIT contribution in our total results. That gives us a good discipline on how we scale. We have lot of great assets that we just extract value out from, and we have lot to extract, and I'm keeping Ami busy in order to sell more. That's the way of approaching profitable growth.
Yes. Thank you, Pekka. I think we can take questions from the live audience, so if you have a question, then just raise your hand. I saw Sanna first.
Hi. Thank you. Sanna Perälä from Nordea. I'll start with a couple of questions, perhaps first with the, perhaps this is kind of a household question about the top-line target. You target above 5% growth outgrowing the market. Is this above 5% or above market, or is the 5% kind of the priority before outgrowing the market? Would you be satisfied if you kind of only outgrow market but below 5%?
We target the 5% growth and also we target outperforming the market, but 5% is the key priority that we are targeting.
Thanks. I have a question on actually. One question about the fast deliveries. Could you comment on your point of view about your competitors introducing these fast deliveries as well recently? Do you view them as credible threat or competition in that area?
Well, clearly we have developed something that's worth copying.
That's it.
Let's leave it there.
All right. Regarding international growth and perhaps the current international sales, can you share anything about the profitability levels of these revenue streams, and should we expect those as well to improve in the future? What I mean by this question is that, is international growth also a meaningful margin driver in the future?
We have three different channels that we operate the distribution to marketplaces and our own direct e-commerce. The way we look at it, we look it from bottom up. We look at the basket level. Basically each sale we make, whether it's distribution marketplace or our own channel, needs to be profitable. That cascades up to a complete business model being profitable. Distribution partnerships are profitable, marketplaces are profitable, and our own channels are profitable already even if we put all the cost from the company. They're still a positive EBIT contributor. Not only separate from the business, but it creates us scale advantages. It makes the whole company more efficient. When we scale our volumes up, we get better purchasing terms, et cetera, and that should impact our margins going forward.
Thank you. Perhaps a follow-up question on that. When you talk about new markets, do you talk about the current kind of new markets like Sweden, or do you target expanding further? If so, what could the additional new markets be?
New markets means all the things that we are doing outside of Finland, basically. We are already active in maybe seven countries in distribution marketplace or our direct channel. Sweden is a key opportunity and focus area currently because the consumer market in Sweden is double the size of Finland. It has really densely populated the metropolitan areas. The consumer is really similar as in Finland. As I said in my presentation, the model we are creating is replicable to other markets as well.
All right, thank you. My final question is on the fixed cost or personal cost more specifically. You have already quite lean structure there. Is it still possible to optimize personal costs or are you on a pretty optimal level already? Perhaps this question comes from removing the fixed cost target.
The operating leverage is the key improvement driver going forward in personal costs.
Okay, thank you. That's all from me for now.
Hi, this is Maria Wikström from SEB. I have four questions, I'm aiming for a speedy delivery for these questions. I wanted to touch upon the international strategy as well. You mentioned that you use third-party platforms to get audience for your products, but also you have direct business to consumer business in the international market. Can you a little bit elaborate that? Which is the strategy you use, and what is the motivation to go for a third-party platform rather than direct distribution? How would you say that now in five years' time, how will it look, the balance between third-party retailing as well as your own?
Yeah. Good question, besides the speedy delivery part because I'm not sure can I do it. Yeah. Again, distribution marketplaces and direct e-commerce, three different channels, and each channel has their own advantages. Distribution channels are based on integrations between us and the partnerships on the retailer that then ultimately sells the product. There, we don't even see who the customer is, but typically, the volumes are quite large. In a marketplace, the customer starts to see the actual brand behind the product, especially because we deliver everything in a nice Verkkokauppa parcel box. That's the first contact. Then in our own channel, we own the whole P&L for the sales and also the customer. The good side of marketplace, of course, is that if you have good commission models, it's really predictable. Utilizing marketplace is good because then you have an audience.
Why we are so attractive for many different marketplaces is that we have a really good assortment. We can fill many of the category gaps that currently marketplaces may have. Our own channel then again, we can maybe increase the margins, but at the same time, then we are responsible for attracting those customers into the site. We need to invest a bit more in the customer acquisition part. I see there are a lot of synergies introducing our products and then introducing Verkkokauppa brand, and last, introducing our own channel as a go-to. I see a clear role in each of these roles. I cannot answer where we are going to be in five years. I can make wishes, but they wouldn't be forward-looking statements.
Thank you. That was very clear. The second question is on assortment, because in this situation before, we have little bit like, first I think it was expanding the assortment, then it was cutting back. Now you have 60,000 SKUs in your assortment. On the other hand, now you have these speedy deliveries that you have introduced, and I'm wondering that, do you see your assortment optimal now? Given the new capabilities you have brought into the business, or do you think it could be time to add in the assortment when these elements are in place?
I can take that. It's a good question. You've been following us for many years, you can recall the years when we had bio Bajamajas and rowing boats. I still do. I don't want to go back to that time. Maybe we have learned something throughout the journey in these years. I think what we have done really well is that the assortment is a key driver for the strategy, which is fast deliveries. Now 34,000 SKUs can be delivered within an hour or extremely fast. That needs to be a key component and a piece in the puzzle for the whole operations because that's the way that we can improve our profitability. That said, we are making quite big analysis as we speak on where are gaps still within our assortment.
We have no clear plan on what we want to launch next, but as an example, I think in kitchen, for example, I think we are not fully covering all the daily needs that one has for cooking and having dinner at home, for example. If you look at families with kids, do we have the whole life cycle from before birth until 17 years of age? No, we don't. There's opportunities. I think it's rather finding the blind spots and filling them than going totally crazy and going into bio mayos again. I think it needs to fit online. It needs to be profitable. We have capabilities of integrating partners, integrating external warehouses. There is the opportunity to sell something which is not fast delivered or cannot be fast delivered, but might be an additional revenue growth for the upcoming years.
That is not the key driver for us at the moment.
Interesting. Happy to hear about the cooking appliances.
It was just an example.
My third question is, you target for a dividend payout ratio of 60% to 80%. Last week you announced a big share buyback program, now we just talk about the dividends. Was this a one-time thing, taking an advantage of a depressed share price, or will you be doing buybacks in the future as well?
Don't want to comment too much about the future. The dividends will remain the way to distribute profit to our shareholders going forward as well. That's going to be the way that we prioritize.
You said during the presentation that you see a lot of, or at least some pent-up demand still, given there was a lot of electronics bought there during the pandemic years. I know that this is a difficult question to ask, but so far what you have seen, is your view that the pent-up demand would be strong enough trend to defend what will happen to consumer demand if we see a rise from the component prices reflecting to product price inflation?
I can take that. We see already the impact on component prices in the category components, for example, as the end product is the component per se, and the price might be double or three times as high as it was one year ago. That impact we can see already, and that can be mitigated through other actions. We have a wide assortment, we can play through different categories and make sure that we are relevant for the customer needs. Secondly, I think as we understand the market quite well, we can also have additional purchases to the right prices. We have the possibility, and we are in a position where we can always offer the best possible prices to different kind of segments.
That's the reason we have a wide assortment, that we can always have one brand which is in a need of growth, and then we negotiate and have good terms, and we can offer customers good prices despite the market. To the first part of the question, the life cycles of the products got longer than it is normal after the COVID period of time because people were saving. That is a fact. It is expected that the life cycles, in a long perspective, always even up each other. If one life cycle is longer than the next one, the third one will probably more like the average one. If we calculate in a way, it always balance each other up after five years or after 10 years.
The devices that are out there somewhat are outdated and partly the refurbishment cycle kicked in last year already. I think it is expected that that will be a positive push to the market. There are always negative pushes to the market. It seems that the Finnish consumer is slightly more scared of outside shocks than other markets. I think that also evens up. I think we have demonstrated that we don't tie up ourselves or the success to a market environment. Despite the market, we will gain certain growth levels, and we will always grow faster than the market.
My final question is on availability. We have heard some supply issues of memory chips as there is a lot of demand in the AI era. Have you seen any availability challenges across your assortment?
I can take that as well. I think it is dependent on, first of all, the impact is the most in IT categories, so basically PCs. Somewhat in mobile, so tablets and phones. Obviously then in memories and components and graphic cards, et cetera. Those are smaller categories in general. I think the brands work hard on being in a position that they get the production running in a way they have estimated, and they make deals with their suppliers. There's a lot of component suppliers still. If there's an issue with one component provider or one PC provider, then there might be a position that brand C is having good availability, and they have secured their availability to build their pieces.
For us, being in a good position to have partnerships with each and every of those, having a strong balance sheet, a strong cash, we can operate and change our plans and make moves where somebody else is maybe not making a move. That's the way we play with inventories, and that's the way we utilize the strong partnerships we have, and that's the way of mitigating the problem that there might be shortages. There's always shortages. There's always been shortages. I think it's common in our market.
Arttu Alanko, Inderes. Thank you for your presentations. I have a question about the gross margin target of 18%. Based on your history, one can argue that this is optimistic, but if you nail in all those drivers you named, other can argue that the 18% is too low. How do you balance with these two drivers?
Yeah, of course, we don't count for 100% success rate. You're right. If we would nail each and every kind of driver that we showed in the presentation, it would be above 18%. We feel 18% is something that we believe we will achieve by 2028, and the actions and initiatives that we are driving at the moment are supporting that level as well. For us, it's a good, I wouldn't say a conservative target, but it's completely realistic target to reach 2028.
Okay. Question about the international growth. Given that you are aiming to double your revenue during the next two, three years, I think at some point you need to think about third-party logistic partners, for example, in Sweden. What is the point of volume that you are kind of taking new logistics partners? Do you think that this, of course, this supports your growth given that the delivery times are kind of smaller, but on the other hand, there comes additional cost given that the logistics partners take their fees. If you can talk us through this whole entire entity and give us some specifics about this one.
Yeah. A good way of thinking it is through theory of constraints. Example in Sweden, our market share is maybe, I don't know, maybe it's 1%, 2% of sales currently. The market is twice the size of Finland. In order to be able to compete in that market, you need to have the products and a great price and great availability. We check all those boxes, especially in Sweden, because that market seems to be a bit more expensive than Finland. You need to have that delivery capability. You don't need to have same day or one-hour deliveries. You need that if you want to own the market like we do in Finland, but in order to compete, you need to have good enough. We saw that actually six days is a good starting point.
Now we're down to four, we'll be down to three days within our existing system. The question is, what is a good timing? What we are doing, we are building scale, we have just started building that scale, it will take some time before we reach that point where it actually makes much more sense to have local warehouse. Of course, we have a lot of partners in the logistical space who already are supplying products in Sweden. Maybe instead of having something physical, maybe we have a digital connection. Yeah, the logic is to extract value from the current system as much as possible until you reach the point where it actually really much makes sense to set up local operations.
All right. If we think about last year, the revenue growth and EBIT improved quite significantly. Now Q1 was a bit poor in terms of the market development. Could you give us some trading update on the Q2 given that also especially in terms of the competitive environment?
I can feel the eyes on me from my beloved team. Well, I think you know the answer. We will not give you an update on current trading. I think we have an guidance intact what we are aiming for this year. The first quarter was not a bad quarter at all if you look at the underlying performance and the shock that we had during the quarter in demand, in consumer behavior. Like I said, we have built the business which is robust enough to take these kind of hits during a quarter. We have an intact guidance for this year. We are confident that we will be reaching our guidance.
Okay. The market seems to be an opposite direction or think on the opposite direction. Thank you.
Do we have any more questions from the live audience? If not, I have plenty of questions from the online audience. Three questions from Miika Ihamäki from DNB Carnegie. First one, fast delivery is now represent roughly one-third of all your online orders. However, I was wondering what is the ceiling for this, and how do the unit economics evolve from here as volumes continue to scale? On the same note, are you able to do something with the pricing of the delivery fees or otherwise improve the contract terms now that there is presumably more delivery supply in the market?
Let me take that one.
Yeah.
The first part was understanding how does it scale?
Yes.
How does the whole system work?
Exactly.
Well, in operations overall, when you build something, when it gets bigger, when you get scale, it gets more efficient operationally. The second part was on the pricing of the service. Obviously, when you start something, you have to price it at a level where it feels affordable and where people can try it out. So far, we've seen that it works on this level, and we will see where the future brings us.
Thank you. Miika's second question is very long, so take note, especially Jesper. A question on your financial targets, which effectively imply a doubling of comparable EBIT from 2025. Your comparable fixed costs were just under EUR 70 million in 2025, improving by over one percentage point relative to sales from the prior year, largely driven by earlier cost initiatives. With a target of below 12% of sales by 2028 and assuming EUR 610 million in sales, this implies over EUR 80 million of additional sales versus 2025 levels, while fixed costs would be at or below EUR 73 million in 2028, suggesting very limited cost growth from 2025 levels. If your growth expectations do not materialize, particularly given the uncertain market environment, would this not imply a need for increased investment in marketing?
Yeah, good question. A long one.
Yes.
First of all, our growth model and the growth target does not account for market recovery. That's maybe the first thing to mention. We are targeting above 5% growth.
When it comes to our cost base, the operational efficiency, of course, is the key lever, and our business model is fully supporting that. Most of our operations scale with the growth. We don't need to invest additional OpEx to enable that growth. That's of course, one of the key strengths of our business model as well, and that's one of the key reasons why we have strong confidence in reaching the 5% EBIT margin target. It's true that we are not planning to do significant OpEx investment remaining of the strategy period. We want to be cost efficient, but of course, we want to ensure that we are putting that money to the right places. It doesn't mean that we don't invest a certain area. It could be that we take out some cost from another area to invest to a strategic priority.
It's reallocation, and I would say that's another important lever for us to reach the target.
Thank you. Miika's third question is also about current trading and also about inventory. Let's see how we can answer this. You have now clearly higher inventory than a year ago, whereas you mentioned you have been pre-buying ahead of component price increases. At what point does that inventory start flowing through your P&L as a margin tailwind, and how should we think about the customer activity in 2026 around this topic?
I can take that. I think it's impossible to measure what will be the tailwind, it will definitely give us opportunities to have the right prices for the consumer in a position where everybody else is forced to increase prices, the selling prices for consumers. It's a good opportunity for us to attack again and gain market share. We see that more as ammunition for the time we need. If that's not the case, then we will have the tailwind from that as a positive impact on our margin.
Yeah. Thank you. Next may be for Suvi. How well have you been able to diversify your customer base? Have you been able to break through consumers who are usually not buyers of electronics?
2025 was, of course, kind of an interesting year because there was a demand for televisions in the consumer segments that are not that often in the market. As I pointed out in the presentation the biggest part of our customers are with more stable spending patterns. They are not that easily affected by what's happening in the market. Also pointing out from presentation, we do have a really broad customer base. We're told that we have currently over 1 million active customers, and that's quite a broad base to operate with.
Thank you. There is a question up. Do you see concrete headcount reductions potential through AI?
Well, AI, I think for us, it's not primarily about cost-cutting. AI is really, as I was talking about in my presentation, it enables us to meet the really high ambitions that we have outlined in our strategy. It further enables us to increase those ambitions further from that point of view. Definitely, as Jesper was talking about, AI enables us to, in effect, decouple growth from cost increases.
Right.
That is certainly a big factor that is going to be financially seen.
Good. Thank you. There is a question about our lease in Jätkäsaari. When is your lease in Jätkäsaari ending, and do you see Jätkäsaari being optimal location for the flagship store?
Our lease runs until 2031, if I remember now correctly.
Maybe Anne-Mari can comment on the location.
Well, at the moment, the location is great. It's close to Helsinki city center, it's also close to areas where we can feed the fast deliveries soon also outside of the Helsinki city center. If you look at core Helsinki area, there are not too many places where you would have locations for a big flagship store.
Yeah
in combination with an operation center.
Yeah.
It seems that the location is getting better and better by time.
Yeah.
as the city is evolving. I think it gets more and more important for us in the years to come.
Great. We have a few more questions. Consumer electronics have always been notoriously cyclical business, both demand and competition wise. Do you see that you are better positioned for poor cycle when price competition becomes extremely clear? If so, why?
Well, yes.
I think we are. I think what we have done to leverage those cycles or those shocks, first of all, we have actually a quite broad assortment. We have a broader assortment than the pure consumer electronic retailers for the reason that we want to have more frequented purchased categories. We want to have categories that, while they are not impulsive, but they are more impulsive than a washing machine, where the need is driving. Secondly, stating the washing machine, there is a need when it gets broken. There's always a healthy underlying demand for certain MDAs, refrigerators and washing machine and dishwashers, as nowadays everybody wants or needs those. Thirdly, we are quite Agile in our category management and sourcing function as we have a wide purchasing network. We can act fast if we see that something happens in the market.
We don't have long contracts which tie up us into certain volumes. On the other hand, when something is booming, we can be fast and utilizing that momentum. These positive momentums, in best cases, overweigh the negative momentums. I think we have this disciplined category management and commercial operations, and we have been gaining market share due to these factors.
Good. Thank you. Just a couple of more about our outlook. What really gives you the confidence to guide improved EBIT just before Q1 was there and even after the lacking Q1?
Well, I can take that, and I think this was also partly.
A question. I think the playbook that we have is functioning. The playbook functioned also during the first quarter. The first quarter had only the mismatch. The previous year was the margin where we, I think, explained the reason why it was impacted. We have actions taken, and we are confident that we can secure good margins, and we can leverage the good availability and the higher inventories. The operations and the market share levers are in place also going forward. We are confident with the guidance.
Yes. There is a question about our share buyback program. It was informed to set place 25th of this month, but we haven't seen any news about it yet. Is it on, and what gave you the spark to start it right now?
It is on now. It started on Monday.
Yes.
The regulation nowadays requires to report once a week, so most likely you will see a report of that on Friday or Monday, but it is on and has been now on for four days. We felt this is a good time. Our balance sheet, first of all, enables this. We have significantly strengthened balance sheet from last year, and we felt that this is a good opportunity for us to optimize our capital structure and share profit for our shareholders.
Yes. Thank you. Do we have any more questions from the live audience? We're also done with all the questions from the online audience, so this brings us to the end of the Q&A session and also to the end of today's event. A big thank you to all of our presenters and to everyone joining us today, both here live in Helsinki and also our online audience. Just a quick reminder about the presentations and the materials. They will be available at our website, investors.verkkokauppa.com. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out to me. From all of us at Verkkokauppa.com, thank you for joining us today, and we wish you a wonderful summer. Thank you