Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of Komplett Group's for the Q3 results. My name is Kristin Hovland, and I'm Head of Communication. We will start today's presentation with our CEO, Jaan Ivar Semlitsch, who will go through the highlights for the quarter. Then our CFO, Thomas Røkke, will give you some more details on the financials, and at the end, Jaan Ivar will summarize the quarter.
The presentation will take approximately 25 minutes, and you are welcome to pose questions via web, and we will answer them at the end, together with questions from the audience. Jaan Ivar, the audience is yours.
Thank you, Kristin, and good morning, and welcome to Komplett's Q3 presentation. I'm here together with my CFO, Thomas Røkke, and we'll give you the recent events and the details of the quarter. The results presented today were impacted by the prolonged market weakness from cautious consumer spending, intense competition, and limited new product launches. But in this challenging trading environment, Komplett Group managed to further improve its working capital and liquidity position, as well as making good progress on its strategic agenda.
So let me start with a few comments in our core categories and core markets. As you can see from the graphs on the left, we see limited improvements in our key markets, and the market in Sweden remains particularly soft. The development over the period has been volatile and also varies between categories. Our core categories, computing and gaming, had another tough quarter, with weak demand lingering for longer than expected. With that said, headwinds are easing, and we are seeing positive effects from our sales initiatives.
Strong competition require us to continue with price investments and campaign activities to defend our market positions. So far, this strategy is proving effective. Lastly, the market outlook is supported by improving household economics, improved consumer buying behavior, as well as more positive product cycles. Looking at some of the key financials, sales increased from Q2, but declined by 3.1% from Q3 last year.
As mentioned earlier, this results from weak demand in both our core markets, and in efforts to defend our market positions in key categories, we have selectively deployed campaign activities and price investments. As a result, the gross margin ended at 12.7%, which is a 0.8 percentage point decline. Increased operating costs, including marketing efforts to support brand recognition and brand building, have been largely offset by cost reduction measures, and in constant currency, our operating costs have increased by 0.6%.
As a result of lower sales and margin pressure, including high depreciation in previous IT investments, our adjusted EBIT for the quarter ended at negative NOK 46 million. Our commercial efforts have translated into improved working capital, which continues to benefit from disciplined inventory management and improved supplier terms. Moreover, our liquidity position has improved and remained solid, with good headroom against the financial covenants for the quarter.
Lastly, I want to emphasize that the outlook is supported by improving market dynamics and sales initiatives, complemented by accelerated cost benefits from consolidation. Now, moving on to how we plan to meet the targets we set out during the Capital Markets Day earlier this year. Let me start by saying that we are making good progress on the strategic agenda, and we are putting even more power behind our commercial, strategic, and cost-reducing initiatives. More specifically than for NetOnNet, we can report that NetOnNet is gaining ground in Norway with good growth and gaining market share.
We have also experienced strong traction with the recent store reopenings. Harnessing this momentum, another two stores are signed to open in Bergen during Q4 and Södertälje in Sweden during Q4. We have also delivered even better online checkout experience for our customers, while managing prices more actively through our updated pricing tool. For Webhallen, we have expanded the product range for private label and components, and we have good growth in services. In parallel, we are implementing additional cost-saving measures.
Heading into Q4, we have a better range of products and a refined store concept, which has been very well received by our customers. Now looking at Komplett. We have rebuilt the assembly line in Sandefjord for Komplett PCs and increased the production capacity of our private label range by 40%. And as well as shipping to our own internal brands, we have also made the first shipments of Komplett PCs outside the group as part of a new agreement with a larger external retailer outside our core markets.
We have also expanded our supplier and product offerings in categories major and small domestic appliances. And the customer journey has been improved by adding new features, such as services and attachments, and we have a new search engine in place, working very well. And lastly, we have launched a new B2B loyalty program, and we see that loyalty club members shop more frequently than other customers, and their basket size is bigger. And we also recruit new B2B customers. Very encouraging.
Finally, we are working towards utilizing our group-wide platform to share both functions and capabilities. In practice, that means that we have renegotiated new supplier agreements with improved credit and payment conditions across the group, expanded our supplier network to provide an even more comprehensive range of products and services in adjacent categories, now also building up for peak. And as a leading online first retailer, we are using our scale to achieve further accelerated cost benefits, and this now includes consolidation of logistics in Sweden.
So we will be merging the warehouse facilities of Webhallen into NetOnNet logistics center during 2025. As we are nearing peak season, we are also in peak mode and are on track with a well-managed stock situation. With that introduction, I would like to leave the floor to Thomas, who will take you through the details of the quarter. The floor is yours, Thomas.
Thank you. So good morning. Jumping straight into the figures, not to repeat too much of what Jaan Ivar has been saying, you can see that this has been a fairly difficult quarter. It's been a volatile quarter, and this time around, it's also been a difficult quarter across the business segments, and I'll come into some of the details of that. Overall, it's also been strongly influenced by currency effects, and that has also influenced the sales line. As Jaan Ivar alluded to, while the nominal decline is 3.1%, the real underlying decline has been closer to 6%, which is in line with the previous quarter.
That is obviously driven by both, you know, an extended weakness in the markets we are working on, but also that the innovation cycles have taken so much more time than we had originally anticipated. On the margin side, that has also been a difficult quarter again. You know, a market environment like this is reflected in the competitive behavior, and needless to say, we have had to invest to defend many of our positions, and we've also done so successfully.
On top of that, we are seeing some minor effects from renewing our assortment, both from, you know, the innovation cycles themselves, but also from the technological changes inferring at the need to renew your assortment.
On the positive side, we do still manage the cost base, while in nominal terms going up, in real terms it remains relatively constant, and if you adjust for the significant uplift in marketing we have had to do during the quarter, it actually has gone down in real terms, and also being influenced by the depreciations, as Jaan Ivar alluded to, quite a lot of that, approximately half is also FX effects. So if you look into the figures for the month, the real underlying driver for the decline year-on-year is actually sales and margin, rather than the cost base.
Jumping into the B2C segment, which is, you know, one of our key segments, that has been definitely impacted by the continued weak market environment, and across the various geographies and brands. One of the underlying reasons is obviously the weak consumer demand, which has been more prolonged than we anticipated, and while the underlying economics of the households are improving in line with expectations, including income, consumption, et cetera, it has not yet turned towards capital goods, which is the category we are kind of working in.
And that process has taken so much more time than it has, we've seen so far. On a positive note, we can see in some of our, you know, key segments of this business, i.e. gaming and computing that the underlying trends are improving in the sense that we see renewals in the gaming segment. I think PlayStation 5 Pro has been announced. That has actually had a positive development, and we expect that to actually improve into Q4, and also going by hearsay and rumors, we do also expect that NVIDIA will launch its new series early in the next year.
On top of that, the comparables year- on- year, i.e., the levels of the positive impact last year, is declining over the quarter, so overall, in the underlying market and underlying segments we are working on, we do see some positive signs of development, and last but not least, we are also seeing that in the computing segment. I'll come back to that a bit later. But also here, we have extended our product range in the computing segment, and that has also contributed to an uplift in recent periods.
Again, here, obviously, this is the B2C segment, where the price competition has been fierce, and where the margin decline also is the largest. It's also on one of the areas where we, in the cost base, see the biggest effect of currency effects, but where the cost base on the line actually has improved. When it comes to the B2B segment, there is a combination of one large contract last year and also a generally underlying weak demand.
It should be said, and I think we discussed that during last year, that the educational segment was unusually strong during that period, and that could be traced back to a certain contract. That contract was a little bit out of the ordinary of what we actually offer in this category, and has not been renewed this year due to the competitive pressure on pricing, and that is actually the main contributor to the decline year-on-year.
That said, there is obviously still a market pressure around here, but also here we do see an improving demand environment when it comes to the PC, which is critical for this business going into Q4. Also driven by the need to renew PCs and also the innovations around the AI PCs. Gross margin in this segment is affected by a number of factors, both positive and negative mix effects, overlaying the underlying price pressures, but while there has been a mix towards the telecom segment, which actually reduces margins, there's also a positive effect from the fact that there is less educational sales,
And therefore it has a slightly smaller margin fall than you will find in the B2C segment. Here is also an area where we have reallocated resources, so the cost is in real term gone up, both from marketing, but also from more sales resources being allocated to this important segment, and in effect, that has reduced the EBIT year-on-year quite substantially.
The distribution segment, also being strongly dependent on the telecom and computing segment, has also had a difficult period. In this case, the underlying market development has been overlaid by the fact that we saw last year an unusual high availability of some of the key product launches during this period, which has moved into Q4, and we expect to recapture during that period. Whereas the underlying demand environment here obviously remains slightly difficult, also negatively affecting the EBIT.
On the cash flow side, you can see that we have a positive development from the operational side, mainly driven by better high levels of supplier outstandings, and this has been the result of p artly the result of renegotiations with the suppliers of bringing the payment terms in line with the industry norm, and that is progressing continuously and successfully.
The remainder part of the cash flow is mainly of investments that has gone into IT, most of all, which is kind of part of the regular maintenance of the IT system, but also related to an IT upgrade in one of our subsidiaries, and last but not least, on the finance side, it's more mainly the leasing repayments and interest payments this time, and whereas in year-to-date figures, there is also a element of rebalancing of facilities, that has not been taking place in Q3, given that we have been cash positive all along. On the inventory side, we are at the same level as last year.
It has been, we call it, disciplined and managed for the fact that there is a difficult market to manage your inventory in with continuous decline in the market and surprises. It's also a period where we transition our assortment, as we said, harmonization and also renewal of the assortment, which means that you need to manage two assortments parallel, and last but not least, we need to ensure a sufficient availability into peak, and we think we have tried, and we think we have managed to achieve that combination. So overall, the net working capital has contributed positively.
But if you look at the net working capital in total, we have also been granted a thirty-six-month extension on the outstanding tax payments in Sweden, which we therefore have reallocated, partly influencing the numbers here. So the numbers you see between last year and this year is not like for like. We have also, given the good development in the working capital, managed to improve liquidity, and that remains on a solid level with approximately NOK 1-1.2 billion. It also masks the fact that we have discontinued a liquidity facility versus last year, which means that the last year's figures are not entirely comparable.
So in reality, we have increased the levels quite nicely. On the net interest-bearing debt, that has increased in the quarter. The main factor there is obviously the extended tax payment in Sweden, where we have reallocated part of that to long-term debt, and therefore also included in the net debt calculation. That was also foreseen when we restated the covenants during the last quarter. And, as you can see, we do remain with 3.9, well within the boundaries of 4.5. Also from the fact that, additionally to the tax payments, we did also anticipate a weak quarter.
We may have had a weaker quarter than we originally anticipated, and that has obviously reduced some of our headroom going into the next quarters. But we think, you know, from where we stand right now and also remembering that the peak season is also a very uncertain period, that is a situation that we can overall handle in a sensible way. On that note, I'll pass the word back to Jaan Ivar, and thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you, Thomas, and before jumping into the Q&A session, just to summarize from the presentation today. Looking at the current state, there are several external factors that have impacted our results for the third quarter, including the innovation-led product cycles, weak market, and intense competition. These factors have proven to last beyond what we expected earlier this year, as also Thomas mentioned.
However, what remains within our control is the level of campaigning activities and price investments, which has helped us meet competition and defend our market position. Our ongoing cost savings measures continue to offset cost inflation, marketing investments, and expansion. But, in sum, lower sales in core categories and margin effects have led to a negative EBIT result of NOK 46 million. The final takeaway is the continued solid and improved liquidity, which represents a comfortable headroom against the financial covenants in the quarter.
Looking ahead, we are seeing good progress with the strategic initiatives launched earlier this year, which are finding their footing in anticipation of a market recovery. Peak Season, including Black Week and Christmas, is approaching fast, and we have put together a solid commercial plan and carefully calibrated inventory to ensure that we have the right availability of the right products, but as always, we expect competition during this time to remain intense, which will require further price investments and campaigns to defend our market positions, but in a disciplined but still competitive manner,
and as of late, we have observed improved consumer sentiment and more favorable product cycles, and Thomas gave some very important examples, and we expect this to gradually translate into an improved trading environment. We expect several commercial initiatives, including renegotiated supplier agreements, to impact product availability and sourcing terms positively. This is also likely to gain further importance over time, and with the group continuing to align its cost base to the market environment, we will also see accelerated cost benefits, including consolidation of logistics in Sweden.
And lastly, we are committed to maintaining an industry-leading cost position. That also goes for our strong brand recognition, our high customer satisfaction, and the ways to leverage our efficient and scalable platform as a group. The way I see it, Komplett Group is well positioned in fundamentally attractive channels and categories and is supported by strong underlying growth drivers, so while we wait for the strategic tide to turn, we are committed to our agenda in order to be in a strong position once the market recovers, and then just a final slide before moving into the Q&A.
This is our latest commercial, and it's given a lot of attention in the market, and it builds on our recognition and being top of mind now before peak. And this is what we do in our marketing investments, but still defending our cost base. So with that, we open up for Q&A.
So starting off, are there any questions in the audience? Yep.
What about the revenue? Last quarter, the decline was most prominent in Sweden, but this quarter it's Norway that is reduced the most. Could you put some flavor on the development in the two different geographies, please?
Well, I think if you look at the Norwegian business, it's actually much more driven by computing and the gaming segment than the Swedish business, which is more generalized through the NetOnNet business. So whereas you see in Sweden, you know, a more general market weakness across the segments, as NetOnNet will actually follow that development, and also partly Webhallen. In Norway, you will predominantly have seen the weakness in the core segments like PCs, computing, and gaming, and that kind of explains the difference.
... I could also add that within computing, we have taken market share in Norway during Q3, both with our entry PCs and also with our, you know, gaming machines. But the market within gaming has been rather soft in Norway, also waiting for the graphics cards and the new launches to come up. So, you know, we're comfortable with our market position, but it's been a tough sort of computing market in general in Norway during Q3, as such, and bearing in mind that, as Thomas said, computing is a large category in the Komplett services proposition of the different categories.
Related to the financing, you are within the covenants this quarter, but if we move to the first quarter of 2025, the same ratio would imply that you are not within the covenants. How do you think about the development in the net debt going forward, in relation to the fact that the covenants is getting more strict next quarter and the quarter after, which is probably the worst quarter in terms of compliance?
First of all, there is still quite a reserve in our balance sheet, as we have alluded to on several occasions, when it comes to the net working capital, and we are still aligning that level to the overall industry standards, so to speak, and that will actually contribute positively to the debt levels. We do also have, you know, a peak season now coming up, which we hope will actually contribute to actually alleviating some of the situation.
But last but not least, I think we also have seen that, you know, given the retail experience and know-how of our financing partners, that this is, you know, a situation that we will manage to come through on those terms.
All right, any other questions? Nope. We'll move on to the online Q&A. So the first question is: What are the OpEx reduction plans going forward?
Yeah, so we are working hard on costs every day, but we are accelerating our cost plans with the merging the logistics facilities. We have two warehouses in Webhallen today. That will be moved into one warehouse with the NetOnNet in Viared. The launch plan is 1st of July next year. That will have a significant impact to our cost base. This was also announced internally this morning, and we will deliver on that. On top of that, we are going through all cost items, as we always do, but we will accelerate in certain areas to make sure that we have a balanced budget and that we are on the right spot.
Who will win in the retail space first when the interest rate drops?
It's a very open-ended question. But, you know, first of all, and that makes me very comfortable, we have the best customer proposition. We have the most satisfied customers, not just in our industry, but, you know, among many retailers. So when you now move into peak, it's not just about the wallet of the customers within our industry, but in total. And the fact that there is a lot of attention around our products, launches, that's a positive.
Within this sort of industry, we have a leading cost position. We have a scalable platform. We can take much more volume from our out-of-store setup in Sandefjord and from our warehouse setup in NetOnNet. So it's very scalable. And we are now also building more on our services platform. So when you now buy a TV at Komplett, you will also get the wall mount as part of the offering very quickly on the website.
And that's, believe it or not, we haven't had that before. But that's now live, also with a very efficient and intelligent search engine, artificial intelligent search engine, working very well, easier for the customer to navigate. So I'm very committed to our proposition and our positioning. And with the market easing, at some point, product launches coming up, and also our own sales initiatives, there are many opportunities for 2025 and onwards.
Will you launch a Komplett private label computer in NetOnNet, and what's the sales potential?
That's already happening. We are selling Komplett PCs from NetOnNet and from Webhallen with good momentum. So that's already... The shipments are already happening, so yeah.
What's the third-party PC sales potential, and when will this drive sales?
Yeah, so it's driving sales already, but very small volumes right now. It's a large retailer. So, but we haven't sort of, and we won't sort of state any official numbers, as this is a partnership, and also for competitive reasons, we are not sort of revealing which market we do operate with that partner in. So we might come back to that at a later stage, in terms of sales numbers. This was launched two weeks ago, so you won't see this in any of the Q3 figures.
So last question: Are you happy with the inventory quality going into 2025 ?
I think the inventory, as we said, is healthy. It's with A-runners, what we call the A-list, the most frequent and most important SKUs. It can always be better, but I think we have managed the inventory in a very disciplined manner. Also, as Thomas, you know, showed the working capital development. We have a good inventory set up now for peak, which is very important. And our plan is also to be in a good inventory position after peak, which is as important than during peak. Not sure, Thomas, if you would like to add anything on the inventory question.
No, I think you covered it perfectly well.
Great! Well, that concludes the Q&A session and concludes today's presentation. Oh, it does not. We have another question in the audience.
[inaudible].
Yeah.
Thank you. Just a follow-up question on the revenue side. I think you had in your presentation that like for like in the business to consumer segment was a minus five point five, which I believe relates to the shops or stores, I would assume. That's a pretty negative number. Could you shed some light on the development there? Why this is... What are the driving forces behind that, and if you plan to do something because of that?
I could perhaps just start off, and, first of all, it's been varying across months and across categories. So that's number one. Number two, telecom has been particularly hit with quite, you know, negative sales numbers. The Apple launch has been very successful, but the delivery is more taking place of those phones during November and December. If you look at, let's say, the home category, we do see some signs of improvement during the quarter in terms of sales or market numbers.
So it varies quite a lot between the categories, and I would say, in particular, telecom has had a, let's say, tougher quarter than what we anticipated earlier this year.
I think with that, it concludes today's Q&A session and the presentation. We will see you all again in February next year. Thank you.
Thank you.