Welcome to the presentation of Axfood Q3 2017. The results will be presented by our President and CEO, Klas Balkow, and CFO, Anders Lexmon. After the presentation, there will be time for questions from you here in the audience, but also from those of you who are following us on the webcall or on the conference call. With this word, I hand over to the first presentation, Klas Balkow.
Thank you. Let me welcome you to our Hemköp record store, as well as to our financial reports for the third quarter in Axfood. Our rolling 12 sales is now past SEK 45 billion. We have over 4 million customers every week in our different retail outlets and stores. We have now 374 group-owned stores, 119 stores in the franchise concept with Hemköp, 24 Axfood Snabbgross, and we operate today with 4 online retailers or online services.
Moving into today's agenda, it's a fairly full agenda as you can see, as we, of course, would like to cover the financials for the quarter, for the first nine months, but also would like to provide you all with an update on our way forward, as well as inform about the restructuring we plan to do now within Axfood as well. Let me start by providing three highlights for this report in terms of our performance. First of all, I think we have a clear momentum in our sales with strong growth across the line. We have a solid profit in the quarter, specifically, I would say, driven by our chain, Willys, who's really leading the way.
We have outlined a clear agenda for our way forward as we are doing a significantly big investment today for the long-term growth, and we have now also outlined the way forward. I'll come back to that later on. Let's now go into the key ratios for the report and starting then with sales. Overall net sales close to 8%, 7.7%, and like-for-like growth of strong +4.5% across Axfood. I would say that all segments, as you can see on the slide, contributes to our growth, specifically on the like-for-like side. I'll come back to the Hemköp group on this later on. If you compare this growth with our growth, and I have to say the number is exactly the same, so don't get too confused. But from January to September, our store sales is also 7.7%.
I think if you see this, it's clear to see that if you compare that to the market growth, we are gaining market share as overall the market was growing 3.2% up to August. We still have not seen the numbers for the market for September. Moving into the profitability and profits for Axfood. Our profit in the quarter is about 600 million SEK to 604 million SEK. Actually, it is an all-time high profit for the quarter for Axfood this year. It's driven by a positive like-for-like, but also clear to see that we have some negative impact from the investments we are making on our online business as well as some of the investments we are planning to do in Hemköp in terms of their stores, new stores, and also for the service program.
Our operating margin is at 5.2%, overall, we have a stable underlying margin in all our groups. I'll come back to the Hemköp part, which is somewhat down in this past year. Moving then into each of our segments and starting with the star in the quarter, Willys, is reporting a very strong sales of over 12%. Like-for-like, as you can see, it's almost 5% within Willys. More customers are appreciating what Willys has to offer, and we've seen also a higher average ticket value within Willys, which is very pleasing to note. Obviously, within the numbers we have from the total growth perspective, we have Eurocash, and Eurocash is supporting our growth, and it's also been somewhat more significant growth in this quarter due to the positive seasonal effects that we have in Eurocash.
There are more sales during the summer period in Eurocash, which is normal. We've opened up our 200th store in Willys, and we have an online growth, which is very positive. We are starting with coming from low numbers. We have added more cities, and we've added more stores for online growth, online platform, and we see a very positive growth, specifically on the Click & Collect business within Willys, which is pleasing for us and good to see the customer appreciate Click & Collect offer that we have. We are recording a record profit in Willys at 323 million SEK in this quarter. Moving then to Hemköp. It's also positive, but we have some clear impacts in this period in Hemköp. First of all, we are also in Hemköp seeing a healthy growth of above 4%, 4.4% as a total.
Like-for-like, we see a strong growth of 3.6%. We've opened up one new store in the quarter, and we closed one and sold one to one of our franchising partners. Also on online in Hemköp, we've added our business from online. We are now in seven cities with Hemköp and have 17 connected stores with Hemköp on the online business. Now, as you can see, our margin has a clear dip in the quarter. Let me quickly go through the reasons behind this. As there are clearly three areas that is impacting our Hemköp margins today, and they are very much related to our long-term investment strategy for Hemköp. First of all, the refurbishment program.
We have, during the whole 2017, refurbished 9 stores and one of them, Hemköp City, that we have reported on, is obviously a unique one, where we had to close the store for some time and has had a big impact. But in total, it's not only the Hemköp City. In overall, we have a refurbishment program that has an impact. If you compare that to last year, we had 3 stores, now we see 9. The new stores also an important area for us. We are continuously expand the Hemköp concept. We've added 4 new stores this year compared to zero last year, none last year. Obviously the online part, where we are going and adding more cities as well as more stores connected to our online. This is long-term investment.
It always will take time to build this up and it's also somewhat high fixed costs in this part of the business. The volume build initially will impact the margin. Moving on to Närlivs. Närlivs shows a solid sales and profit in this quarter. We have to say we are performing this and doing a strong performance, I would say in Närlivs, as Närlivs with the customer base significantly out in the convenience sector, has been during this summer impacted by the somewhat chilly summer. Overall, a solid performance in the quarter in Närlivs. Looking at Dagab, I would say the same thing. It shows a solid quarter in positive sales, supported obviously by the overall space we have at Hemköp and Närlivs. It's also supported by the acquisition of Mat.se.
In terms of profitability, I would say it's a solid quarter as we're also handling these recent efficiencies we are managing to handle some of these losses or all the losses we have within Mat.se. Finally, during Dagab, I have to say it's pleasing to see that our private labels are doing really good. We've added more brands into our private label portfolio, and pleasing to see that the consumers are rewarding us for that. Our growth rate is just healthy, and we are now at approximately 29% share of sales in terms of our private labels. That was the first part regarding our key numbers and key ratios for the quarter. I will hand now over to our CFO, Anders Lexmon, who will cover the 9 months and some of the financials. Anders Lexmon?
Thank you, Klas. To summarize the first 9 months, we had a steady good growth of 6.9%, and our like-for-like store sales increased 5.4% in the period. The operating profit amounted to 1,488,000,000 SEK, which is in line with our full-year forecast. The operating margin is mainly affected by our online operations, future ventures, and acquisitions. As you can see, the operating margin is well in line with our long-term goal of 4%. Then take a look at the cash flow in the quarter. We have a very strong cash flow in the quarter, which is explained by the good underlying results. In the third quarter, Norgesgruppen got approval from the European Commission to acquire 49% of Eurocash. This transaction had a positive impact in the investment activities in Q3 as well.
We have also managed to reduce our net debt furthermore in this quarter. At the end of September, we had a net receivable position of SEK 300 million. If we then take a look at the net debt development over a little longer time, we can see that we have a net payable position in the quarters, except for the third quarter. It's explained by the dividend and of investment, especially this year. We have acquisitions that have affected the first quarter. We can see in the chart our EBITDA ratio follow the same pattern. We have a long-term goal of the EBITDA ratio to be about 25%, and that is well met even in the first quarter. We go over to the investments in the quarter.
We have additionally invested SEK 204 million in the third quarter. For the whole period, we have a total investment of approximately SEK 1.6 billion, of which SEK 1.1 billion is for acquisitions. The remaining SEK 518 million is a little bit higher level than the recent years, and it's both in the stores and in the wholesale. We reiterate the guidance for the full year to be between SEK 800 million and SEK 900 million, and that is to be in the low range. With that, Rolf, I hand over to you.
Thank you, Anders. Let me now continue and move into the strategic outlook for Axfood. I have to say, first of all, now I've been with the company for approximately seven months, and I also have to say it's been a very stimulating but also intense period. Intensive as you have seen, and I think you noted that full speed in many of our initiatives in the company. Also as we, as everyone else in the food retail business today is in a very interesting time with some clear trends going on for the future. Trends that create some challenges, but also very much some large opportunities. I'm not going to cover all these trends in detail. We will have a Capital Markets Day later on in November that will see a bit more.
Clearly, urbanization, the consumer shift towards more meal solutions, increased price transparency, digitalization, and a clearly more conscious consumer in regards to sustainability are clear trends that we need to address. When it comes to sustainability, it's not only the awareness and interest on how food impacts our health, but also how food is produced and what impact it makes on the planet. With this in mind, we in our leadership team have revisited our business concepts, our vision, our mission, our strategy framework to address our way forward. I will keep coming back to these strategic areas further down the road. Today I would like to take the opportunity to briefly walk you through the updates, what we have done and what we have completed.
Started then with the heart of our business, our business concept, and for us it's really part of the house of brand strategies, one can say. Our business concept of a family of successful and distinctive food concepts in close collaboration. As you can see on the slide here, we now have a family of strong brands. We've added some concepts as well to this portfolio. One of the strengths we have obviously is that we are collaborating with, particularly within Dagab, with the logistics, with the sourcing, with the range. Also our IT platform is a core strength for us as well as business development where we learn from each other and take opportunities with that. This is clearly a concept for us that we can see winning for the future.
Moving on from the business concept into the mission or the purpose of our business. We are clearly dedicated to a mission to the customers in terms of that we believe that every customer can and should enjoy an affordable, good and sustainable food. Obviously, this is important today, but we think it will be even more important for the future. How can we help the customers and everyone that the customer should be able to afford good and sustainable food within all our brands? That leads to our ambition in terms of our vision as a next, that we want to take a lead in this. We think it is important today, but it will be even more important as we go along and as the customer is becoming more and more aware of sustainability and what we are eating.
Our vision is that we will be the leader in good and sustainable food. Moving on to our strategic areas, which obviously is there to help us deliver our mission and our mission statement. What we have done, we have divided our strategic into six focus areas which is clearly divided into how we are meeting the business. Within these six areas, obviously sustainability goes across the lines. We will come back to this more and more later on. The areas are in terms of our customer offer, our customer meeting, our expansion, our supply chain, our work approach, and obviously the most important asset we have, our people.
I'm not going to go through all of them in detail today. If you look at our customer offer, obviously what is important for us is that we offer an attractive, efficient range within the sustainability that is broad and affordable in terms of goods and service. Looking at the customer meeting, which we all think is clear, if you're in the retail business, is one of the most important things you have. We want to, through our different brands and concepts, meet the customer's different needs, obviously, anytime, anywhere, in the channel of their choice. We want to be flexible and be able to meet them on their needs.
Expansion, you've seen several areas recently in terms of Axfood, how we are expanding. It's clear for us that we want to grow and expand in our existing markets, but also do that through establishing new stores, but also it could be new segments or new sales channels, like the online. We want to develop new categories and new services as well. Being on the retail, the supply chain part is very much driven for us from the start to the end in terms of sustainable focus, but also obviously with high focus on efficiency and quality across the whole value chain working. The work approach for us is obviously to develop an innovative customer and change-oriented organization that works efficiently, where cost control remains very much in focus.
We are stepping into this area as well in the digital world, where we are getting more and more digital skills in terms of our work effect. Finally, it's very easily said, Axfood will attract, recruit, and develop the best people in our business in terms of focus on our people. Now, these are the strategic frameworks. What will be more important, obviously, what we put into this. That's where we're working in terms of how we are assessing every year what are the key areas, how we're going to prioritize it so we make the prioritization across the line more efficient as well as we go more together and get, by that, a bigger impact.
We'll come back to this more later on, obviously, but just to give you a few examples in terms of some of the progress we've done in some of these areas and starting then with the customer offer. Recently, the Hemköp vary with veggie has been an important part, where we are now making more alternatives for the vegan, veggie, vegetarian alternatives and making it easier for the consumers to find these products. We also launched more veggie alternatives where we have been more innovative through our home brand, Garant.
Recently we've done some steps in our sustainability in terms of packaging, and we are one of the first out, we're actually the first out in terms of the food bags that you find in all retail or food stores today that we are now moving from into biomaterials, which obviously is a good step at reducing our impact on the planet. Moving on then to some examples on the customer meeting, and I'm sure this will be something we'll come back to later on. Just a few comments regarding this. This is about, for us, an omni-channel structure, obviously, where we're continuing to invest in terms of how are we meeting our customers in the stores, where you've seen that we are refurbishing a lot, and we continue to do that as it's an important part for us.
We also initiated some of the work regarding the last mile as we have acquired Mat.se, which is their transportation called Cargo. We are starting to now collaborate that with some of our other retailers where we are using the same transportation. This is a step-by-step approach where we are getting more and more integrated in these parts. Last mile is and will continue to be an important part for us. We are also rolling out the online offer to more cities and to more consumers and small parts. Still, we are seeing that we are starting to develop synergies across the brands where if you are a customer of Mat.se, you will now start to find some of the range from our Urban Deli range in terms of some of the products that we offer. You can also start to buy them online as a customer.
That was part of the strategy and some of the way forward. If I now turn pace, We have today also announced a reorganization plan that we have signed this agreement with Axfood Närlivs. To state this, it is more of an internal with limited impact on Axfood as a whole. In the long term, obviously, we think this will put us in an even better position to drive our business with our customers in a better way. For some of the audience here, it obviously will have some impact on our reporting segment. I will try to cover this so you follow what we are planning to do. Let me just give you a quick background on Axfood Närlivs. Today, this is how the structure looks like, where we have three business areas. We have Tempo and Handlar'n.
We have a clear business-to-business where, as I shared before, this convenience sector is very much linked into. Then the third part is from Snabbgross which is focusing very much on the customer and the restaurant business. The reason why we are looking into this is very clear. We want to strengthen our business. Very clear on that. We want also to capitalize on the strengths that we have in Dagab, which is a very strong nationwide wholesale operation, and we want to capitalize on that and use that strength. We also want to increase our efficiency, and we also see an opportunity for us to improve in our reporting line. In short, what are we doing? The Tempo business today, representing approximately 150 stores, will be included into our Hemköp operation from back to recent time.
Närlivs customers, the other ones, mainly convenience stores and related to their business-to-business, will move into a new business area within Dagab that will handle external customers. Snabbgross, finally, will be reporting as an own segment, reporting directly upwards towards the CEO, reporting to me, myself. Step by step in detail, will be more in detail. Tempo. Already today, we have a lot of collaborations between Tempo and Hemköp where we are using some of the resources we have, and obviously by linking them together, we see even further opportunities in this where we can strengthen the resources that we use for both Hemköp and Tempo, and we will be even stronger out in the market. We think this will benefit both the brands that are very strong.
Snabbgross, by putting Snabbgross as own segment, and placing our managing director today from Närlivs as managing director for Snabbgross. Snabbgross puts the focus for us in terms of how we want and how we can accelerate this part of the business. It's a very clear link for Snabbgross for us into the fast-growing cafe and restaurant business that we can see an interesting future here that we want to pursue further and focus on. Finally, as I mentioned, we have a very strong wholesale operation within Dagab. We have been seeing that this has been handled in different areas within Axfood. We are now gathering all the external customers into one new business area within Dagab. Because this is also very much related to logistical work for this segment, how we can improve logistics as more of a wholesale operation.
This is now, we are setting this up, and obviously, we are of strong belief that with these steps, we will improve our customer support and also become more efficient over time in the company. For some of you here in terms of what is the impact of this? Well, first of all, it's more or less neutral for Axfood as a whole. Long term, as I stated, we think this will improve Axfood. Now, by detail on this, Tempo profits will go into Hemköp that is previously then with Närlivs. For sales, has always been Dagab, so that is good to discuss. B2B, so business-to-business, will then be as to the profit as it goes to Dagab, same sales as it is today within Dagab. That's only just the profit and sales is one entity.
Axfood Snabbgross will have its own reporting segment. Then combining also the fact that we are now losing the Mathem business, so we don't see for you when you look at this any large variations due to this. We will come back later on in further quarters regarding some of the differences of how we see or see how this has impacted. Overall, again, there are not any major changes from an external point of view. Internally, we have a lot of energy for this step. That was the restructuring part in terms of Närlivs. If you look at the outlook for 2017, well, our forecast, we are restating our forecast as we are focusing on growth and the investment, and the forecast is an operating profit in 2017 to be in level with the outcome of 2016.
As you know, it is the same as we said previously for 2017. If I then summarize my and Anders' presentation in terms of Axfood, I think we are leaving a strong quarter behind us, both in terms of overall growth, but also clearly in terms of our like-for-like performance. We're actually delivering an all-time high profit for one quarter, which includes some clear investment for the future as well, that is hampering our profit, but it's also clear an important part for our agenda overall, how to drive Axfood way forward. As our CFO, Mr. Lexmon, reported, we have a very strong financial position as a company, which obviously is important as we said today. That concludes my part, Cecilia.
Thank you so much for the presentation. We start with questions here from the audience. Niklas, please go ahead.
Yes. Niklas Ekman here from Carnegie. A couple of questions. Firstly, I'm curious about the investments that you're talking about that you've done that have hampered earnings or hampered margins in this quarter. How do you see these playing out over the coming quarters, given that, I mean, margins are down 35 basis points, but we're still above your 4% margin target. Over the next few quarters, do you expect investments to be of a similar magnitude, or should they gradually decrease?
I think it's a mix, clearly. If you look at Hemköp, which has been some of the impacted from a margin point of view, clearly we are not going to see the Hemköp system impact its Two-thirds of the quarter, more or less, we had the stores closed, and it takes some time to ramp up stores, really. The refurbishment program has been big this year. We still have work to do with the refurbishment program going on, actually, so we continue to drive that. New stores, then you need to compare that to last year, no new stores at all. Now we have four, maybe five stores later on. We'll continue to open up new stores. We'll come back with a guide here in terms of number of new stores. We have obviously said. That's one part. The other part is online business in general.
That has impacted on all, both in terms of the pure online player, Mat.se especially, as well as Willys, as well as Hemköp, has a negative impact, and it's very much volume driven. We see a very healthy growth in these areas. The more growth we get, obviously, the better it becomes in terms of handling some of our fixed costs. The answer in that is somewhat related to the growth that we will have. Over.
can I ask you specifically, in this quarter, you mentioned three things that hampered margin. How-
Hemköp's margin.
Hemköp's margin. How big share of that was related to the online business? That specific one.
The Hemköp business.
The Hemköp business.
Even if I'm not specifying the other part, from the magnitude of the numbers, you see the profit in quarters, somewhere about SEK 40 million, as we've seen. Just the Hemköp specifically, as we had around SEK 15 million impact last quarter, and it's around SEK 10 million impact this quarter.
Can I ask about your relative performance as well? It's very strong top line here, particularly for Willys. We've seen the numbers from ICA Sweden, with a 2.5% like-for-like, 2 percentage points stronger. What do you see in terms of other peers? Not exact numbers, but what kind of trends are you seeing? Is there anyone who is improving, deteriorating? Any changes?
I think you see some of the numbers we deliver as we do. If I look at our performance, the low price segment for Willys is staying and is having a positive result, and we are pleased to be the best in that part. In general terms, where we can benchmark against is the total market, and also we see some of these players who are also reporting similarly or not. From a total perspective, we are growing faster than the market. We are pleased to see that. I would also say that the low price segment continues to have a positive growth.
There are no dramatic changes in any of your peers' behavior? No one is significantly slowing or picking up?
Well, in terms of the colleagues or competitors, we have, I refer to them in terms of what they are doing. Obviously, we are keeping tabs on the whole market and are focusing on our own part.
Can I ask about private label sales as well? You mentioned here a record high number in this quarter of over 29%. A couple of years ago, you had a target of 25%. You've obviously surpassed that quite a while ago. You have a new target for private label sales. It's been growing now at a pace of around one percentage point per year. Is that likely to continue over the next five, 10 years?
Well, if I look at the history books, I think it was around 2012, we passed the target of 25%. The fast answer is no, I don't have a new target to provide to you today. I have the same view on this as I've always had in terms of private label. We need to focus on developing quality, innovation in our own private label. The better we do that, and obviously we have a strong price preference for the consumers when they move into the private label segment. The better we do that, obviously, if the customer is rewarding us for that is positive. That said, the mix is also very important for Axfood. It varies somewhat, obviously, also in the different channels. We see somewhat lower private label share in Hemköp than in Willys.
The mix is important, and we will continue to drive that mix. Have we seen the maximum for our sales of private labels? Most likely not. Do I see that something maybe jumps? Most likely not. I think we will roll with and further continue to drive with that part of the business as successful, pointing out mix is important. We also see these very strong quarters as well. We have a strong quarter this quarter as opposed to various seasonality effects.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Maybe we now take some questions from the conference call. Operator, do we have any questions?
Ladies and gentlemen, if you do have a question for the speakers, please press 01 on your telephone keypad now.
If we don't have any immediate questions, we continue with the questions from the audience. Please, Per, go ahead.
Could you give some color on your development mobile? How fast is the growth, and maybe You said which of your concepts
Well, we are not sharing that in deeper more than in general terms, that we have a very high growth, but also have to say, and it's fair to say that we also come from somewhat lower levels. We started Hemköp just a year ago. Willys in May last year. We are ramping up and obviously then it's easy to talk about high growth. Mat.se has been in the market for some longer time. We're continuing to have a positive growth. Overall we have a healthy growth. If I give you one number on one area, that is different from the base that they are coming.
The online market is obviously growing and I guess that it is much more so affected by what competitors are doing. I don't know. There have been some of your largest competitors remove price support for delivery, and is that something that you are affected by?
I think you currently see that you have, the way you have it, essentially in your delivery costs, you have one cost of delivery, then you have a packing cost as well. If you look at Willys, they're clear on their pricing model that they have a clear model in terms of delivery as well as packing, I think is doing really good in the market. You have some players out there that is having a free delivery above a certain level or a free packaging cost above a certain level. You need to dig into the numbers in terms of how it looks for free. I think the last mile is important part, and it's evolving.
I also think that every one of us who's working right now on the online for food, is looking at the last mile in terms of how to handle that and how this works as a source. It's, of course, it is a complex part. You have three temperature zones, and it's a cost part as well for everyone today. Obviously we are following the market and looking at the market in that respect. Also have different solutions. If you look at Hemköp, they have a 24-hour home delivery. It's not a major difference in the work.
Finally, also on Axfood positively impacted by seasonal effects there. Say it from how big is this insight, what is the difference between stores?
Obviously, that's a very good question, since maybe it's easy for me to come back to you on that next year when we've seen the full year, since we've had it on board for eight months. What we learned from the history, the absences will not have an impact this year, this has been a very good one. By natural, we have strong receipts quarter with summer period due to the travel.
Yes. This is for Thompson from SEB.
Thanks. One follow-up on Eurocash. Could you please provide us with some flavor? Did Eurocash add or subtract the margins from Axfood as a whole?
That's a very good question, as we're not disclosing Eurocash, if you've seen the historical numbers, they're very close to each other. That's kind of the background.
Okay, great. Regarding Dagab, could you give us some flavor on the effect of the past 12 months on deliveries to Mathem and Linas Matkasse? Some sense on where that's going then for the second period.
Well, it's been some time since we handled Linas in some deals. They are buying the goods for Dagab and deliver it back. They will handle that part. Mathem is moving over to Dagab as of November. We started to see already that we're starting this transformation. As for next year, we will not have Mathem, and we are not disclosing Mathem's earned mark. Obviously they're big customers and large volumes, as well as some earnings as well that are valuable.
Okay. Final for me, at least when we estimate internally your price points online compared to some of your peers who seem to be pretty centered below in terms of pricing since they're doing delivery costs. Are you happy with this price point, and do you expect this to continue or do you expect others to follow?
Well, I think it varies, and if you look at the various concepts that we have, Willys are very clear in terms of their price position, and they follow the same prices online as they do in the stores. We are, I think, well-equipped in that. I also pointed out that we have a very strong Click & Collect part within Willys, which I think is very competitive. It's possible for us, it's possible for the concept. The price position in the others, it varies. As you would say, Matöppet is somewhere in the middle of that and so forth.
Yes. A couple of more questions for me, Niklas here from Carnegie. Following up on the online business, you mentioned here in the presentation, you said that you had the 23 Willys stores with Click & Collect offers and 17 Hemköp with Click & Collect. What does that mean? Does that mean you have 40 stores with Click & Collect and only a part of them have home delivery?
No. What that means in terms of Click & Collect offer is the number of stores. Now, as you know, in Willys and Hemköp, the stores also work as a dark store where you're handling all the online or the home delivery part as well. Obviously one store could cover a larger area. In one way, we should not look at stores, we should more look in terms of the number of the Click & Collect for each of them.
Okay, that's clear. I'm curious on Willys now, where you have passed 200 stores. Do you have any idea of where you want that to progress going forward? Do you see a continued strong expansion of Willys, or is it nearing saturation?
Well, we are following, obviously, the market and seeing opportunities, continue to see opportunities for Willys over time. In terms of guidance, the store expansion, that will be fixed.
Well, I was thinking more in the longer term and looking three to five years ahead.
I think, if you look at the Willys concept today, we, as I pointed out, we are very pleased to see that more and more customers are appreciating Willys. We have strong momentum in the business. Obviously, we are looking at white spaces in terms of Willys where we see opportunities. Again, that also links into the market development and how that goes. Currently, it's a very close track on these in terms of where do we see growth opportunities, where do we have white space, and is there an opportunity for us to add on that? That's all.
Okay. Also, can you say a little bit about this pharmacy business that you've acquired? This is obviously very small, will take a long time before it has a significant impact, and it's only 20% that you have bought. I'm still curious about the rationale for the acquisition, if you see that Axfood going forward is looking at making more similar acquisitions, if you want to branch out into other areas.
No, of course, it's not an acquisition to start that we are a part of. The news that came out yesterday is that we have a name, Apohem. The team there is very pleased with that, and we are. Again, it's very early, as you know, we said. The reason for Axfood in it is obviously the pharmacy market is a very interesting market. I also have a strong belief that it's a very interesting for an online part of the market going forward. We have a strong customer base. Compared to some of the other pharmacies we have in the market, we want to also include the pharmacy offer as a whole to our customers as well over time. That's the rationale behind this part of the story.
In terms of future acquisitions, this last year has been quite busy for you, a lot of activity. Do you see a lot of
It's been an intense period, an intensely one, the answer there, of course, we're always open for new ideas and acquisitions. I also, it's clear, particularly both externally but also internally, that we now have a lot to handle, and we're focused on the one that we've done.
Thank you.
Operators, do we have any questions from the conference call?
Just as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you do wish to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad now.
Don't have any questions from the web call. If there are no more questions from the audience here, I would thank you for the interest today, and I hope to see you on the 28th of November at our Capital Markets Day here in Stockholm. Thank you, and have a good day.