Welcome to Dellia's presentation of the first quarter results. My name is Thea Guldbrandsøy, VP Investor Relations, and I will later be hosting the Q&A. Before we begin, I would like to introduce our new CFO, Sindre Li. Very happy to have you joining Dellia.
Thank you, Thea. Very happy to be here in Dellia, and I will do the finance update later on.
Thank you, Sindre. Now we can begin with the presentation, and we will have our CEO, Jan Storli Eriksen, that will be presenting the company update. The word is yours, Jan.
Thank you, Thea. Again, welcome to the first quarter of 2026. Revenue came in at NOK 214 million. That's up from NOK 122 million last year. That's an increase of 76%. Our EBIT came in at NOK 20 million. That's up from NOK 15 million in the first quarter 2025. That's an increase of 32%. Our EBIT margin came in at 10%. That's a reduction from 13% in first quarter 2025. The EBIT margin was impacted by approximately NOK 6 million in air freight cost related to flying in Dippies to Norway. If you adjust for that, the EBIT margin would have been the same in the first quarter of 2025 as now this quarter in 2026. Furthermore, our gross profit was NOK 72 million, with a gross margin of 34%. That's up from 31% we had in the first quarter of 2025.
The reason for the improvement of gross margin relates to optimized logistics, where we now are using more bags per container and reduced air in the container, so we can transport more products per container, and that reduced our freight cost. That's one of our initiatives for sustainability. Furthermore, our EBIT was impacted by marketing and development cost, field agents and consultants and legal. Legal also mostly related to the transaction of Kirirom, which is ongoing at full speed. On operational highlights, I would like to focus on what we have achieved in U.K., where we got a trial now with Tesco and also a trial with Morrisons. That is a big achievement, and I'll come back to that more when I talk about our international markets.
We're also rolling out in Germany with sales agents in REWE, and we are preparing for the commercial launch in REWE in 500 stores in end of June. We also are going to invest more, going forward, in brand building and strengthening our Sunshine Delights brand. We keep also strengthening the organization to support our current market position, to support the revenue we have right now, but also make the organization ready for future growth. The Kirirom transaction is now estimated to be completed in August in the third quarter due to regulatory approvals and completion of trust arrangements. That's a change from previously communicated to be completed in Q2. Let's look on the company update. Dellia is maintaining its market share in dried fruit across all Nordic countries. Competition is becoming more visible for the first time this quarter.
Norway are maintaining its market share in the category at 52%, same as they had in the third quarter of 2025. However, in Sweden, our market share now has been reduced down to 30%, compared to 35% previously. In Denmark, you can see the same. We have now a market share in the category there at 31%, where we had the peak at 40% in the third quarter. The reason for the market change is reduction here is because the category itself is increasing and booming. The better choice snacking category getting much larger, so our share of the category in Sweden and Denmark, therefore, is less. Looking on Finland, however, we are increasing our market share in all dried fruit and berries category up to 20%, which is the largest market share we ever had in Finland.
Dellia is still driving the category growth, we are expanding beyond the dried fruit category and stepping into the confectionery and snack market. Here you can look on the category we had in Sweden, for example, in Q1 compared to Q1 this year. We have driven the growth of the category 42%. Previously, from 2024 to 2025, the Sweden market grew the category 62%. The category is growing, now there's more SKUs growing the category and not only our brand, Sunshine Delights. In the rest of the market, it is a staggering good performance. You can see both on Norway, Denmark, and Finland, we are increasing our share of the growth in the category with very large numbers. Dellia are recognizing revenue when we are invoicing our retailers.
The underlying performance of the company, or the most important parameter to look at for the underlying performance of the company, are when consumer buy the products in the grocery store. We are looking at NielsenIQ data on checkout. How many products are bought out of checkout at major grocery retailers in the Nordics? This is not including the airports or convenience and kiosk and many other channels which we are now selling our products. We can look on the trend here. In the first quarter 2025, we sold out of checkout 3.9 million units. That went up to the second quarter, 4.5 million units. It grew to 4.8 million in the third quarter of 2025. During the fourth quarter last year and Christmas, we did 4.4 million, which is the Christmas season.
I also give an update now in our outlook on seasonality, on Dellia, where our third quarter are normally the best quarter, and followed by the first quarter, and then the second quarter and the fourth quarter are normally the more soft quarters due to Christmas and Easter programs. We have not a time yet to develop those programs. We are working on that now as a company, of course, but we don't have much Easter design or Christmas design. Therefore, we are having normally soft quarters on the second quarter and the fourth quarter. Looking here on the Q1 2026, we sold 5.5 million consumer packs out of store. That's a record. We have never, ever sold that many products out of store. Also the first quarter of this year has the highest revenue ever in the company history.
Looking at 2024, we sold out 8.3 million units for the whole entire year. Just this quarter here, we did 5.5 million. Dellia also is ranking our brand, according to NielsenIQ, we are ranking in snacks and dried fruit combined 2025 as top 10 in the category. 2026 is the year where Dellia are being transformed from being a Nordic snack distributor to become a vertically integrated international snacking platform. That stands on four pillars. Pillar number one, building a strong brand. Number two, investing in field agents and promotion. Number three, building the organization for scale. Number four, Kirirom as the backbone for growth. I will now make a deep dive into each of these four pillars. Building a strong brand. Dellia has the product and the distribution.
If you look on the left slide from Xtreme Insight, you can see that we have, so meaning if you buy the product one time, you are buying it again. Looking on the right side, you can look on our retail distribution, which we have grown from 1,000 stores in 2019 up to 2025 with over 13,000 stores. We have all the distribution, we have the repeat purchase, which makes a very strong position to scale the brand investments. Just scaling the brand investments is the missing accelerator. That's what we are now making heavy investments in going forward. Number two, investing in field agents and promotions. I want to look at Sweden as an example here. If you look on the left side, you can see the category, tropical fruit in Sweden. That's a subcategory of dried fruit in Sweden.
It has grown from NOK 60 million in retail sales value in 2023 to in 2025, almost approach NOK 400 million in retail sales value. At the same period of time, the number of Mango SKUs in Sweden has normally been laying flat around 26, 25 units, but during end of 2025 and in the first quarter of this year, the number of Mango SKUs have almost doubled from 2025, standing now at the first quarter 2026, at 47 units listed in Nielsen database. How did that impact our sales in this quarter? To understand that, we want to look on rate of sales, ROS. That is number of units sold out of the store per store, per week. From 2023, when we started launch Mango 100g and Mango 200g, it used to be around 6.3 units sold per week and 8.9 units of the Mango 200g.
That has grown up to the peak in 2025 in Sweden at 43.4 units. That came down now to 39.6 units in the first quarter. We have a slight impact on the ROS of the Mango 100g. However, the Mango 200 g grew still from 27.5 units up to 28.1 units. The impact on our rate of sales has not been that large, but you'll start seeing some impact on it. What we have here now is a category that is growing. More and more Mango SKUs going into the market during the first quarter of this year and end of last year. The space in the category, dried fruit, is the same as before. The space in the category haven't changed. There's a lot of more companies now fighting for the same space.
The fight for secondary placements or impulse location in the store has intensified during the quarter. That require much more feet on the street. The conclusion here is the category is booming, yet the store space of dried fruit is lagging behind, meaning we have to work long-term with retailers to get our fair share of the shelf. We are working on all fronts to give the category its fair share of store space. We do that by intensifying use of field agents and promotions, of course, but most importantly, we are working with commercial agreements, cooperation agreements together with the retailer. Dellia has a very high ROS on the product, as you saw on the previous slides. Occasionally, if you have good impulse location, we can have rate of sales exceeding 100 units per week per store.
We are now working together strategically in all the Nordic region, together with the retailers to define new space for the category better choice snacking, with aiming to create the most profitable square meters in the stores. Number three, building the organization. On the left side here, you can see the revenue development of Dellia from 2023 to 2025, where we have grown from around NOK 106 million in turnover, and last year reached almost NOK 640 million, and this Q1, our record quarter, NOK 214 million in turnover. The number of employees in the company on the upper line there, you can see we had nine employees in 2023. That has grown to 19 and then 25. Right now, this quarter, we have around 40 employees in the company in Dellia.
Majority of these employees are based in Shanghai, where we have operational hub supporting our salespeople in Europe and the Nordics. That's a quite few people now approaching our outlook target of above NOK 900 million target for this quarter. We have, of course, we need to look on strengthening the organization further, and we are strengthening the organization in both sales, finance, sustainability, quality and supply chain. Furthermore, we're also building systems for scalable planning, forecasting and operation. The third part is the most important part. We are looking now at integration as a core capability of the company. The integrating Kirirom, we will have around 3,600 employees in Kirirom. Of course, most of that is seasonal workers, but it's still a very large organization to integrate. We have Shanghai as the operational hub supporting the whole group, with more than 20 people.
Then we have Norway and Europe. All this now has to be linked together, and share knowledge, share knowhow, and work as one team going forward. Kirirom is the backbone for a scalable growth, that providing us also a long-term competitive advantage. You can see on the left side, we have the capacity to grow in Kirirom to exceed revenue in the current infrastructure of more than NOK 2 billion. That's also why we now are investing in organizations. We have an organization that can support a long-term target of exceeding NOK 2 billion in turnover with Kirirom as we are scaling the company. Also we have land where we can expand further, so we have a very good platform for expand and tapping into a massive, huge market internationally, competing and with replacing chocolate and sweets.
Europe is having its first two profitable markets this quarter, working towards EBIT contribution from all countries as a target for the remaining part of the year. You can see U.K. was the first quarter now to make money, and U.K. also achieved, as I mentioned initially, the trial with Tesco in 400 stores, and also that we now are doing trials in Morrisons in secondary placements in the fruit and vegetable department with free-standing displays. These trials are very important. If they are successful, it can lead further on to central listing or permanent listing in Tesco and also get more or permanent placements for secondary placements in Morrisons. Switzerland also is becoming a very profitable market now for us, where Coop is contributing and rate of sales are increasing.
If we go back and look on the ROS rate of sales we used to have in the Nordics, where we started around eight to 10 for the product, that's basically where we are or were when we started launching out in Europe for the Mango products, but now we are seeing also rate of sales increasing in Europe. That is very typical on the graph. You can see on the right side there with Morrisons, which now is, when we now including the rate of sales for April as well, come back to February 25, is a 600% increase. That is built by repeat purchase, as I mentioned under the brand story. The key part of building the brand is that we actually have almost one-to-one on the repeat purchase on the product of our dried Mango.
In Germany, we have a very good commercial rollout going, step by step into stores in REWE. Of course, that will be strengthened further with the 500 stores late June. We are also restructuring the operations in Europe, much more focused and with a local CEO and local warehouse in each market. In China, we have done investments as well. We have now set up a team in China doing distribution towards Chinese retailer, not only online, but also in physical stores. The Kirirom is doing great, working with international customers. As I have mentioned earlier, also, we work for Costco, producing dried Mango for them in the factory. This is the last slide, and I will make a summary.
I also want to mention before I go on this slide that the good international traction we now also see in Europe also support our investments in organization. We have an organization that can support the growing demand and the commercial rollout in Europe as well. We started in the Nordic market. We started in Norway, we rolled out in the Nordics, we were the first company to roll out our Mango Kirirom raw material from Cambodia into the Nordic region. We have been quite alone in that space for a long while. During that period of time, we have prepared ourself, we have worked step by step looking and building the fundamentals. We have got the product right. We have integrated now Kirirom into the group, we have the production capacity.
We have built the full Nordic distribution, and we are now building the brand. These four pillars is making an integrated branded snacking platform, which is a big transformation of the company during 2026. For the first time now, also maybe in a speed faster than we previous anticipated, we can see the competition of more and more Mango SKUs. A lot of Mango SKUs are coming into the market in the Nordics. While in Europe, it's a different market, where we don't have the similar products competing of the shelf space as we have now in the Nordics. Now we have to utilize what we are prepared for.
We have to utilize the integrated brand and snacking platform and invest in that to utilize our potential, and then take category leadership and become a long-term partner with the retailers, define the category, expand the category, and get the category have its fair share. With this fundamentals we have built, we are positioned to win, not only in the Nordics, but also to become a category leader internationally. Thank you very much for my presentation, and now I will give my word to our CFO, Sindre Li.
Thank you, Jan. I will start with revenue. Total revenue for the quarter ended at NOK 214.4 million, up 76.4% from NOK 121.6 million last year in Q1 2025. Looking at the operating segments, Norway is the standout this quarter, with growth of 108% year-on-year, and they reached NOK 73.1 million. The other Nordic market also delivered solid growth. Sweden up 46.8%, Denmark up 59.2%, and Finland up 58.8%. Outside the Nordics, Pan-Europe grew from NOK 2.3 million in Q1 2025 to NOK 10 million in Q1 2026. Asia nearly doubled to NOK 10.3 million. This shows that the traction we're building outside the Nordics is continuing. The growth across the Nordic is driven by improved distribution, stronger in-store visibility, and increased units sold, both across our existing products and a broader product portfolio. Our gross profit margin increased to 33.6% in Q1 2026 from 30.5% for Q1 2025.
The increase in gross profit comes from improved logistics and scale effects of increased revenue. This is partly offset by air freight in Q1 2026 of NOK 6.2 million. On currency, a significant share of our purchase are in U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar currency rate has an impact on gross profit. There is, however, a delay before the U.S. dollar effect is reflected in the COGS in the P&L. Dellia has around 50 to 60 days of shipping time, during which the containers are already part of our inventory, and on top of that comes the turnover at our finished goods warehouse. Together, this means that today's COGS reflects purchases made several months ago. This quarter, we have seen a weaker U.S. dollar, and Q1 in isolation will therefore impact gross profit, but with a delay of a few months rather than in the current quarter.
The EBIT margin came in at 9.5% compared to 12.7% in Q1 last year. As you have seen, gross margin actually improved. The lower EBIT margin reflect the operating cost side. If we excluded air freight expense this quarter, the EBIT margin would have been more in line with last year. The composition of OpEx in Q1 2026 is similar to what we disclosed in a note to the 2025 annual report. A large share of OpEx is sales-driven expense, which will grow with revenue and brand investment. The remainder is more fixed in nature. Looking ahead, the sales-driven part of OpEx will scale with revenue, while we expect the more fixed cost base to give us operating leverage over time. That said, we are continuing to invest in the organization this year.
G&A will increase, payroll expense will also increase as we add headcount to build out the organization. The target is to complete the organization by end of 2026, expect scaling effect from 2027. Looking at our balance sheet, the total asset at the end of Q1 2026 are at NOK 575.8 million, slightly down from NOK 597.4 million at year-end 2025. Non-current asset of NOK 17.1 million mainly consists of right of use asset from our lease agreements. A current asset decreased from NOK 580.5 million to NOK 558.7 million, mainly due to lower cash balance following the dividend payment. On the equity side, total equity decreased to NOK 373.1 million, mainly reflecting the dividend payment of NOK 24.8 million made during the quarter. Total liabilities decreased slightly to NOK 202.7 million.
Non-current liability consists mainly of lease liabilities, while current liabilities are mainly related to the group's credit facilities, which includes supplier finance arrangement and factoring. Our consolidated statement of cash flow. Cash flow from operating activities in Q1 2026 was - NOK 8.7 million, which is an improvement compared to the - NOK 16.2 million in Q1 last year. The negative number this quarter mainly reflects working capital effects from increase in trade payables and taxes paid during the period. In Q1, we entered into a new factoring agreement with Nordea, where we sell trade receivables rather than borrow against them. The effect will be visible from Q2 with a corresponding reduction in both trade receivables and related interest-bearing debt.
Cash flow from investing activities was a positive of NOK 1.9 million, mainly from interest income from our cash account, while cash flow from financing activities was negative by NOK 19.9 million, primarily reflecting the dividend payment of NOK 24.8 million to our shareholder. Taking all this together, the net change in cash for the current quarter was negative with NOK 26.7 million. The cash balance at the end of the period was NOK 237.1 million. We continue to hold a strong cash position. Thank you. We will go over to our Q&A.
Thank you, Sindre and Jan. We will now move on to the Q&A, and we also have the CEO of Norway, Dag Skipperud Johansen, who will be joining the Q&A. Please step onto the stage, Jan, Dag, and Sindre, and then I will ask the questions.
Thanks. Yeah
Okay. First, the question is related to the OpEx development. How should we think about that going forward?
Yeah. I can answer on that question, and as we wrote in the quarterly report, our OpEx is consisting of three major costs. First of all is marketing, where we're investing in building the brand. Second is, of course, sales cost, related to, for example, field agents. These are the two major cost components of a company for us. Then, of course, you have salary and benefits and administrative cost. If you look on the marketing expenses, we are preparing for more broad marketing activities in the Nordic to build the Sunshine Delights brand, connect the dot between the taste and the brand. That will increase cost during the third quarter and the fourth quarter of this year, and also more in the second quarter.
Mostly the cost will come during the third quarter and the fourth quarter when we're running large commercial campaigns in the Nordics. For sales expenses, they are kind of flat throughout the year, but we have taken that level up given that there is more need for activities in the market now as the market is becoming more and more products are competing for the same shelf space and impulse locations. Third, salary and benefits will increase also during the year gradually, where we're adding on new people, also related to the integration of Kirirom.
Thank you, Jan. Then there's also a question on how much of the Q1 OpEx that was related to the integration work for Kirirom.
Maybe you answer that, Sindre.
Yeah. The main part of the expense on Kirirom will incur around the closing time, which is in Q3. We have incurred some expenses in Q1 as well, just about NOK 1 million.
Yeah.
Thank you. Another question on employees. You had 40 employees at the end of Q1. How many employees do you expect to have by the end of Q2?
By end of Q2, that's a short period. Let's look on the whole year, right? We are in process of recruiting and interviewing people and building the organization, strengthening the team within economy and finance, within sales, sustainability, and so on. We are adding around 10 new employees to the company. By year-end, we will be around 50 people in Europe. Also including China, also in Dellia. Dellia as a group, around 50 people. Of course, we also have the Kirirom organization joining, which is a massive organization. We will then work on integrating the Kirirom team together with the Chinese team and the European team. Dellia, as a group, will have around 50 employees by year-end.
Thank you. Next question, should we expect any use of air freight in Q2 and going forward?
I think we leave that to Dag here.
We should always expect some air freights, but I don't think we will have any more quarters like Q1 and the Q4. Q4 last year was massive. Q4, a little less, but still massive. We expect to not have these huge amounts of air freight.
If I may add in there, Thea, as well. Our category is booming. We have a massive growth in the category. We are booming, we've gone from NOK 100 million turnover in 2023 to NOK 260 million in 2024, NOK 640 million last year, and this quarter we're doing more than NOK 212 million, NOK 214 million turnover. Of course, this tremendous growth, it is hard to predict. One of the most difficult part is actually predict the right quantity and volume at all time when you have such kind of growth. Also you have listing windows, right? We are applying for new innovation, new product, we have listing windows. From you get confirmation of a listing window till you have to deliver is a very short period of time as well. That can also impact the air freight.
Alternatively, we have to run higher stock level, and that's also we are working on, right, is working on optimizing the stock in the company to have at least stock as possible and supply mostly just in time and reduce the capital tied up in both receivables, as well as in inventory. It's always a balance here between that, so I think we can expect to have air freight during that tremendous growth phase. Of course, we are working to minimize air freight.
I have one comment. For those who followed the Q4 presentation, we highlighted that we had some supply issues.
Yeah
....with the Dippies.
That's correct.
That is also why we had this, suddenly we got the volumes from the factory of Dippies, then all the stores in Norway were empty, all in January. When we suddenly started to get containers ready, we chosen to take them in by air just to fill up the stores again, that's the cost. Dippies is a more mature products than all new launches. We knew that the volumes needed for Dippies were quite massive.
Thank you. Next question. Have you previously conducted trials that did not result in a commercial agreement?
No. So far, we have had a very good strike on that. We have done trials. Very often when we start a new market, it start with trials. That means we get a selected number of stores, from 300, 400, 500 stores, where we then do a commercial trial for four weeks, five weeks, six weeks, and that's for the retailers to see the rate of sales, the ROS, how many units the consumers buy per week per store. If the ROS then exceeding normally the level, which is normally about seven, eight or 10 units, or above five is considered a good threshold. If you achieve that rate of sales, then normally you get central listings. We have had very good rate of sales for our products. As you can see, I also presented some of the numbers here for Sweden.
Now in Coop in Switzerland, we have very good rate of sales where we do campaigns now, more sometimes about 30, I think.
Yeah. This was a long answer. I think we have approximately 100% hit rate on our test sales.
Yeah. That is not a guarantee, though, that we will score. For example, I think the question maybe relates to the trial we're doing now in Tesco, for example, which is a massive opportunity, but there is no guarantee that we will get central listing in Tesco. We are working towards and do our best to get central listing in Tesco.
Thank you. A question on Sweden. Sweden delivered 47% sales growth below the 120% average over the past two quarters. Could you share what drove the slowdown and how you view the competitive landscape? Is pressure mainly from private label, branded products, or both? Are competitors becoming more aggressive on pricing and promotions?
That question I was going very carefully through during my presentation just now. If you look on the Swedish market, which is an interesting market to look at because it used to be our biggest market, now Norway has basically so far passed Sweden. Sweden is a big market. What have happened in Sweden is, first of all, they had a tremendous growth from 2023, 2024 and 2025. The category of tropical fruits grew from NOK 60 million to almost NOK 400 million. Massive growth of the category. We are building that pathway of the growth. More and more companies are going in, and as you can see that, for example, Mango SKUs have increased from being normally around 25 listed in Nielsen, to this quarter reaching up to 47. Almost the doubled number of SKUs.
You have then double number of products, both private label and other entrepreneurs and other companies who wants to sell products like we do. That combination and the shelf space then not have changed, the shelf space is the same as before. That of course, makes some pressure on our growth rate, and therefore you can see that the growth rate is not as large as other markets. That's what I addressed in the presentation on that slide. You also look on the rate of sales in Sweden, how many units they sell per week. It's still a good level. We even increased up to 28 from 27 on the Mango 200g of units sold per week per store. For the Mango 100 g, we had a small drop for about 43 down to 39.
The rate of sales is remaining on a very high level, but as the category is booming and more and more product are going in, we are some way of hitting a little bit, ceiling in terms of fast growth rates. Therefore we have-
I think it's important to say that Dellia in Sweden is still the main, number one contributor to growth in Sweden as well as in Denmark and Norway.
That's right. We drew the category 40%.
Yeah.
That means more companies also drive in the category. Now there's like a big field drive in the category, but we are number one drive in the category. We are working now strategically in Sweden with cooperation agreements, with all the Swedish retail chains for defining how the category will evolve and develop, looking forward, and what kind of shelf space will be dedicated to better choice snacking.
Thank you. Could you give an update on Kirirom? Last update was 2025 figures.
Once we have integrated the company, we got more understanding of integration of Kirirom, we will come back with a new outlook for the whole group as a consolidated company. That will be after we have completed the transaction, which we are working on now. We are doing great progress on it. It's going very smooth, there's a lot of paperwork to be done, we are working as fast as we can to get all those paperwork completed. Once the transaction has been completed, now we're estimating to complete that transaction in August. After that, we can come back with an update, for financial targets for the whole group, which of course will impact the numbers when we integrating the whole company.
Thank you. There's a question on currency. What is the effect on gross margin given the weak U.S. dollar in percent?
You comment on that, Sindre, when you made your presentation just now, maybe you want to repeat a little bit about that?
The effect on the U.S. dollar is more an effect that we expect going forward because we have purchased products to a low weak U.S. dollar this quarter. When we purchase the product, there are two months on the boat, and there are one month or more in inventory. It takes three to four months before we see the positive effect of U.S. dollar for this quarter. There are slightly some positive effects from the U.S. dollar development in late 2025, but quite minimal.
The currency also impacting our revenue, though, when we are consolidating the revenue. Dellia has many of kind of revenue. We have revenue in Swedish krona. We have revenue in euro. We have revenue in pound. We have revenue in Norwegian krona. When we are consolidating everything, also when the NOK is our reporting consolidated currency. A strong krona also make our revenue become less when we are integrating foreign currencies also into our group. The currency goes both ways on impacting the company revenue, margin, or profit. We are kind of multi-currency company right now. The effects is coming both ways.
Thank you. Another question on OpEx. Is the increase in OpEx driven by the need to deliver NOK 950 million in revenue in 2026? Is it intended to build an organization capable of sustainable supporting revenues significantly higher than NOK 950 million?
Yeah. Can I answer that question, guys?
Yeah.
That's a very good question to have. There's something I also addressed when I had my presentation just now, is that the company has been growing. I would say the business has been growing faster than people, and that's very beautiful. That also make a lot of pressure on the organization for the people working in the company. We have to strengthen the company organization to maintain and preserve what we have built. Ignore the growth. We have to build an organization to preserve the NOK 900 million that is our target in the outlook, which we are maintaining. We're not changing the outlook. That organization, when we are taking that lift, and that's what I wrote about in my CEO letter and also in outlook, that this cost is front-loaded.
We have to take that cost now, but that organization we have built with that people and those systems, that organization can sustain also the next level of growth phase. That's important of particularly two reasons. One, we see very good commercial traction in Europe. Second, we have to consider integration as a core capability of the company. We will have a lot of people, more than 1,000 people working in Cambodia. We have Shanghai as an operational hub, where all the European office, all this organization here has to be integrated together. That require a backbone of people and organization. We hope and believe that the target to increase another 10 people up to 50 would make that organization complete to preserve and take care of that revenue, but also sustain the further growth. Said that, we are a very fast evolving company.
We are developing extremely fast also in a category, also internationally. It is a little bit difficult to predict exactly the number of people or exactly the kind of right organization because the market is changing and evolving also very fast.
Thank you. A follow-up question to that. Will 2027 become a year where you can leverage those investments and see stronger operating leverage?
Definitely, that's the plan. That's exactly the plan. The plan is that 2026 is a year where we are investing in the company, and we have some personal targets. Complete organizational build-out, one. Second, of course, we are working to make more international markets contribute positively to the EBIT. We are focusing very much on conversion of EBIT to cash, which mean focus on receivable and inventory.
Building a robust, strong organization that can take care and preserve what we have built, and then just create that effect of leverage in 2027, where we then can see real fruits of the investments we had in foreign market, can see the real fruits of having a more strong organization, which also help us to get more visibility, to get more internal control, better inventory and planning, better operation, which is part of all the systems we have to improve and get better as we are growing. We are doing many things this year. We are having a tremendous growth. We are building brand equity, and we are building organization, and we are building international market.
All this cost money to do. If we are not taking these investments now, we will not be able to utilize and get the benefits of the platform we actually have built because we have built a vertically integrated platform where we have the whole supply chain now from the tree to the shelf in an evolving. With that developing and creating a new grocery category in the Nordics and also planning to do that in Europe.
Thank you. There is a question on the U.S. What can you tell about further market expansion into new markets, for example, the U.S., and was the expo in Las Vegas a good experience? Any positive signals?
The expo in Vegas was an amazing experience for our company. The hurdle we have right now is that we have to get our brand completed registration in the U.S. That's why we did not comment and write about it in our quarterly report, because we have to get the brand registered. We are in late phase of doing that. We hope to have that completed in July. There's another company there that also has a brand. We have to make an agreement with them. We have to solve those issues. When the brand can be registered in the U.S., definitely our plan is then to look at the U.S. market. The U.S. market is very interesting. What we learned on the exhibition in Las Vegas is that the U.S. market is very fragmented.
There's more than 250,000 grocery retailers, grocery stores, and selling outlets, and it's very fragmented, and there's a lot of wholesalers and distributors supplying those. We are already supplying U.S. market with private label for Costco through Kirirom, which is a massive retailer, but there are a lot of smaller and fragmented retailers that are very interested in working with us if and once we can get our brand in U.S. registration. The bottleneck there is the brand registration, and we haven't got that brand registered yet, and we are working on that. The exhibition in U.S. is our preparation to understand more about the market, learn about the market, in the parallel, working as hard as we can to get the brand registered and then continue working on that market. Like we also do in many markets, we got the brand also now registered in China, for example.
Now we have started selling in the Chinese market or trying to sell in the Chinese market, opening a new market. Before we're opening a new market, we have to get the brand registered.
Thank you. There's a question on the Tesco deal. If you can say anything more about that, and how large is Tesco, and what is the plan for rollout?
We are just doing the trial. There is absolutely no guarantee to get our listing in Tesco. That's very important that we're not giving any guarantee for that. We are working now with a trial for Tesco, and then we have to see the results of that trial, and that trial can turn out that they become nothing, or that trial can turn out to further central listings. That depends on the rate of sales we can achieve during that trial and Tesco's decision then, of course, if they want to give the product space in the stores.
Thank you. There's a question on Dippies. How is demand for Dippies developing currently, and are you seeing any material differences in demand trends across the Nordic markets for Dippies?
Maybe you want to answer that, Dag?
The demand looks good. This quarter, we had especially good growth in Denmark, partly in Norway. Denmark, I think, was above 120% growth on the Dippies Q1. In Sweden, the focus will be to expand the portfolio of the Dippies. We have many different Dippies now. I think it's Denmark and Norway has launched most SKUs within the Dippies area. Sweden will come. I think Sweden is lagging a little behind on the Dippies in terms of.
Yeah, the challenge we had there, Dag, was actually that we were out of stock for Dippies for quite a while, and when we're out of stock, of course, the shelf space is not standing waiting for us, then we're losing the space.
Yeah.
Now when we have the capacity of Dippies finally built, we have to also then go back and rebuild the distribution, so to say, because there is limited shelf space.
Yeah
...better short snacking.
Yeah. As an example, I did have a reference to the Q4 presentation when we talked a lot about Dippies. Norway got very little Dippies in Q4 last year. We also had almost zero in January, and when it suddenly was available again, we had to rebuild all the distribution in Norway. We had the listing, we had the stores, we had our placement, we took it by air, and now it's peaking again. We have a steady supply now. That's very important to see. Steady supply by sea.
Thank you. That was our last question. Thank you for answering all the Q&As, and then, yeah, we can wrap it up.
Yeah. Thank you very much.
Thank you.