Welcome everyone to BHG's Capital Markets Day 2026. Our theme today is continue profitable growth. You'll be hearing insights on our strategy today, and our new targets. You'll hear presentations from our CEO and CFO, as well as deep dives on important aspects of the group strategy. We will end the afternoon with a Q&A, so please do send in your questions at any time throughout the program, via the question field that you see there online, and we'll be sure to get to as many as we can, at the end of the program today. We're going to start with our CEO, Gustaf Öhrn, who is going to give us a strategy overview. While we wait for him to join us, let's take a look at behind the scenes during Black Friday 2025.
It has been almost two years since our last Capital Markets Day in Kalmar in the spring of 2024. At that time, we communicated a clear strategy focused on stabilizing the business, improving profitability, and strengthening the balance sheet. I am pleased to say that we have delivered on what we set out to do. Since then, we have achieved five quarters of growth, nine consecutive quarters of profitability improvements, and significant group consolidation, and a significantly stronger balance sheet, reaching a leverage target of 2.5x. At the same time, the external outlook is brighter today than it was two years ago. The market is gradually improving, online penetration continues to increase, and perhaps more importantly, AI is now creating new opportunities for digital retail. In short, we have executed on our plan, the strategy has delivered, and the outlook has improved.
This is why we believe the time is right to update our financial targets and outline the next phase for BHG. Our ambitions are clear. We have raised the bar. First, to return to sustainable growth after the restructuring period. Done. Second, to clarify the path towards our profitability ambitions of 15% and 7% EBIT. Third, with a stronger balance sheet to reactivate M&A as a growth driver. Before we go forward, let's briefly step back and remind ourselves what BHG and our strategic fundamentals are. We operate in the home and household market. We are online. Our strategy is built around category leadership executed through a multi-banner model with more than 100 online destinations. Today, we are the largest online retail group in the Nordics with more than SEK 10 billion in revenue.
We're organized in three business units, each with a distinct customer proposition and a business model to support it. We're operating through a highly decentralized model with culture built on entrepreneurial accountability. Our focus markets are primarily in the Nordics, but also in Northern and Eastern Europe. Across many of our categories, we already hold leading online positions, and we see strong opportunities to extend that leadership, and this is enabled by three key factors. First, strong market positions in our core geographies. Second, a technology and data-driven operating model. Third, the structural shift that continues to benefit us, the migration from physical retail to online retail. On top of this, as we will show today, AI is accelerating the advantages of online retail, improving customer experience, conversion, and operational efficiency. The home and household market is a very large European market.
We have a strong position in Nordic online, but with that said, the long-term opportunity remains substantial. Over the past 12 months, we have seen a gradual market improvement, and we expect this trend to continue. In Sweden, our largest market, key drivers include increasing disposable income from fiscal policies, such as tax cuts and VAT reductions on food, and also a recovery in housing transactions from easing of amortization rules, both being important demand drivers for our categories. Retail ultimately comes down to three things, price, choice, and convenience. To win in retail, you must be superior in at least one, while remaining competitive in the two others. Online retail has gained share because it naturally delivers advantages across all three.
Lower fixed cost enabling better prices, unlimited digital shelf space enabling larger assortments, and improved logistics enabling convenient home deliveries, especially important for us delivering bulky products to your doorstep. What is particularly interesting today is that AI strengthens all these three advantages. It enables better pricing through the efficiencies enabling a superior cost structure. It enables better choice through simplified product selection enabled by superior product information and through conversational search on product level. We will show great examples of this later today. Also greater convenience through such as AI-enabled customer service, which we will also showcase later today. Online penetration surged during the pandemic and later normalized as physical retail reopened. Today, penetration is back to the pandemic levels.
It's growing again, but still remains relatively low in our categories, especially compared to other categories and maybe more importantly, to other online mature markets like the U.S. and the U.K. This gives us significantly long-term potential, and several structural drivers support continued further penetration. Fast and convenient last mile deliveries and payment infrastructure continues to improve. Better personalization tools enabling the relevant offer to each consumer. A new generation of digital native consumers entering their peak spending years, and the fact that virtually everything is now available online. As mentioned, AI further enhancing the digital purchase experience. As mentioned, focus is back on growth. What are our key growth levers? We focus on five levers of growth that together make up our growth ambitions and our growth projections. They're also the main structures of today's capital markets day.
First, we have two external layers of expanding the total market and continued online penetration. This, I have already mentioned, and Jesper will expand on this in a minute. We have three layers of growth that make up the structure of today's presentation. First, Mikael Hagman will, together with two of our platform CEOs, Anders from Hafa and Emma from Bygghemma Sweden, expand on how we use the first growth layer of operational excellence, the daily grind of being a retailer, as well as the growth ambitions of category, geography, and customer segment to drive growth. Secondly, I will expand on the second layer of internal growth drivers, the strategic initiatives, including a deep dive on AI and how it is used to drive innovation, customer experience, and growth, as well as efficiency.
Lastly, Mikael and Jesper will clarify how our third international growth layer of M&A is back on the agenda and how we use it to drive growth. BHG is after the consolidation, evolving into a group of seven key platforms. The role of the group is to define strategy, set financial targets, and ensure the best allocation of capital. It also to co-drive strategic initiatives to secure innovation and competitiveness, to secure the best talent and appoint the best CEOs to our platforms, and through our centers of excellence, support our platforms in areas online marketing and ESG, and also sourcing and support in M&A. We also support the platform CEOs with our hands-on experience. Business unit leads all coming from CEO positions in retail businesses.
One of the major advantages of the group structure is the ability to pilot new initiatives in one platform and then scale them across the entire group through best practice. This is particularly relevant today as we explore AI-driven innovation. Our three business units each operate with a clear and differentiated value proposition enabled by the right business model. Home Improvement with Bygghemma as its main brand. The key value proposition is unbeatable range at best price. This is enabled by a capital light, low cost drop ship model, where the number of SKUs can be endless and is today approaching 1.5 million with a Nordic focus. Value Home with its main brand, Chilli. A value model winning by best price and very low cost structure, enabled by the private label model.
No middlemen ensuring strong margins and uniqueness in product and thereby avoiding direct price competition, securing a high-end margin business. Currently with a key focus on the Nordics and Eastern Europe. Premium Living, targeting the more affluent consumer and creating access to Scandinavian designs in the global market. This enabled by a stock keeping business model, premium brands, and best price, and with a razor-sharp focus on customer experience. AI is transforming retail, and we're already using it to improve both customer experience and thereby drive growth and efficiency. AI in retail creates many advantages, both for the consumer with functions like enabled personalized guidance and product information, enabling the relevant offering and simplified purchase decisions. As well as from a retailer's perspective, creating efficiency from product content to customer service. BHG is being online pure play by birth, well-positioned to benefit from this shift.
We have, as a consequence of our background, rich and well-structured data in place across destinations, this being the fundamental for what we call AI readiness. In short, making sure that we have high visibility in LLM-based search from the ChatGPTs to Gemini and the likes. Across the group, we're currently piloting a wide range of AI tools and AI agents and scaling ones that creates the most value. Now I will let Martin Leo, our CTO, explain more about how we work with AI.
At BHG Group, we're building the destination of the future of home improvement and furniture. As an online-first company, we are uniquely positioned to capture the benefits of AI. It is no longer experimental. AI sits at the core of our strategy to drive profitable growth. Our AI strategy rests on two main pillars. The first is customer experience driving growth. Through advanced analytics, we're able to understand our customers better than ever before. By identifying our customer's intent, we are able to deliver personalized experiences in real time. Our AI solutions also help customers visualize their products, provide personalized recommendations, as well as provide access to product expert agents, as demonstrated in a separate video. By improving our customer experience, we make living easy. By simplifying for our customers, we drive higher conversions, stronger loyalty, and lower return rates, supporting both margin resilience and profitable growth.
The second pillar is efficiency. Managing millions of products, we leverage AI agents to automate processes across the value chain, from product onboarding, data enrichment to categorization, to real-time dynamic pricing and translations across markets. AI agents also streamline our customer service, enabling us to scale volume without linear increase in resources, all while providing chat and voice support 24/7. Our group structure sets us apart as we're able to build and test multiple proprietary AI agents and scale the successful ones across the group as best practice. This enables faster time to market and creates platforms designed for profitable growth today and in the future.
Thank you, Martin. We'll come back and show more concrete examples later today. To summarize, and before leaving the word to Jesper, we have done our homework, and we have completed the restructuring and strengthened the business. We are ready for the next phase of value creation. We are today financially stronger. We're back to growth and profitability improvements. We have a significantly stronger balance sheet with leverage down to sustainable levels. We're structurally supported by an improving macro environment, driven by disposable income and housing transactions, continued online penetration, still low in our categories and further accelerated by AI. We have an operationally scalable model with category leadership in key categories in our key markets and with AI acceleration, productivity, and conversion.
Finally, we are well-positioned to win with above market growth, where we continue to take market share and further fueled by reactivating M&A as a proactive, disciplined growth driver. With that, I will hand the word over to Jesper, who will take us through the financials and also present today's presented financial targets. Thank you.
Thank you, Gustaf. The financial part of our presentation will cover three areas. First, a few reflections on development since our last Capital Markets Day, then on to financial profile and the market environment. Finally, I will walk you through our updated financial targets and how we plan to achieve them. Let me start by putting the last two years into perspective. When we met two years ago, we expected the market to recover gradually. That recovery took longer than expected. We have seen growth over the past five quarters with a clear acceleration since last summer. Still, we have taken out more costs than planned and significantly improved profitability. At the same time, leverage has improved more than expected. We have increased inventory turnover, reduced capital tied up, and strengthened cash flow.
Let's take a closer look at the numbers. As the bridge shows, the EBIT margin improved by 2.9 percentage points to 3.7% in 2025. Gross margin has been under pressure, but improvements in direct selling costs and a lower fixed cost base have more than compensated. The improvement in direct selling cost is evenly split between lower inventory handling and lower last mile delivery costs. Within SG&A, about half of the improvement come from divestments while the other half reflects cost adjustments in the remaining business. If we look at the right-hand side of the slide, leverage has decreased significantly from 4.0x to 2.4 x and by the end of last year, we were below our financial target. Let's continue with financial profile. Our business model combines scalability with capital efficiency. First, the model is scalable.
We have shown that we can grow sales faster than costs, creating operating leverage and improving profitability over time. Second, we are capital efficient. Net working capital is less than 1% of sales. The model generates a strong cash flow without requiring much capital to grow. Third, we operate in a structurally growing market, as clearly seen in the numbers on the next slide. Looking at developments in 2017, we see a clear long-term increase in online penetration. During the pandemic, the trend accelerated, followed by a period of normalization. On average, penetration has increased by around 0.9 percentage points per year. We're now back at the levels we saw during the pandemic. Our view is that this trend will continue in the coming years.
Online penetration in our categories is already significantly higher in more mature markets as the U.S. and the U.K. For us, this means that even in a stable market, we as an online player can continue to grow. Finally, before we turn to the forward-looking part of the presentation, a few comments on our seasonality. Sales-wise, Q4 is our largest quarter driven by the so-called Black period, which started as a single day but has become a much longer promotional period. This creates a clear sales peak toward the end of the year. Q2 and Q3 are larger than Q1, mainly due to seasonal demand in outdoor furniture and garden-related categories. From a cash flow perspective, Q4 is typically the strongest quarter driven by working capital movements with inventory reductions and higher supplier payables following the sales peak.
Q1 is essentially the opposite with supplier payments related to Q4 sales and inventory build-up ahead of the outdoor season. That was the past. Let's now look at the future and starting with our updated financial targets. As we communicated yesterday, we have revised the targets to create greater clarity around both our ambition and the expected time horizon. The new target reflects where we are today and the development we believe is achievable going forward. Let's take them one by one. Our ambition is to grow 10%-15% annually over a business cycle through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions. Compared with our previous targets, we have increased our growth ambition and made M&A a clearer driver of growth. We also aim to reach an adjusted EBIT margin of 5% in the short term and 7% in the medium term.
This clarifies when we expect to reach these targets. At the same time, we will operate with net debt to EBITDA below 2x at the end of each financial year, compared with the previous target of 2.5x. Finally, the dividend policy remains unchanged. When free cash flow exceeds available investments in profitable growth and provided that the capital structure target is met, surplus capital will be distributed to shareholders. How do we get there, and how far are we from the target today? Over the past two years, we have already moved more than halfway toward a medium-term EBIT margin target of 7%. Today, we stand at 3.7%, meaning we need to improve profitability by roughly another three percentage points.
Growth will be an important part of that journey, and with annual growth of 10%-15%, we benefit from scale. Growth alone will not get us there. To reach 7%, we also need further improvements in the business. On the next slides, I will zoom in on the initiatives that will move us toward the 7% target. Let's start with growth. The underlying total market in our categories grows by around 3% per year. At the same time, online penetration continues to increase, and our view is that it will follow the historical trend of around 0.9 percentage points per year. Combined, this means that the online market grows by roughly 8%, and that is the structural market growth we stand on.
Of course, it won't be exactly 8% every year, but over time, that's roughly how we see the market growing. On top, we have three internal layers that allow us to grow faster than the market. The first layer is operational excellence, where we continuously develop our assortment, geographic reach, and customer base. A good example from last year is the robotic lawnmower, Mammotion. At the beginning of the year, this was not the brand either we or our consumers really had on the radar. We quickly identified the trend, made the products available to our customers, and with a lower price point, the category also opens up to a broader customer group. In 2025, sales reached almost SEK 100 million, and is a really good example of operational excellence in practice.
Operational excellence also means gradually expanding our geographic reach, either by launching local sites in new markets or by opening up existing sites to international customers. A capital light way to grow using the platforms we already have. The second layer consists of group-wide strategic initiatives, and we focus on four areas. First, unique assortment, building a more differentiated and relevant product range. Second, additional revenue streams, such as retail media, where suppliers can promote their products through our channels, and we can further monetize our traffic. Third, improvements in cost structure, which allows a stronger and more competitive customer offering. Finally, investments in data and AI to create more relevant and personalized offers to improve both conversion and customer experience. The third layer is M&A. Through disciplined and selective bolt-on acquisitions, we can accelerate growth and strengthen our platforms.
I will not go into more details here, as we will come back to M&A later today. This is how we plan to deliver our ambition of 10%-15% annual growth, and now let's look at the initiatives that will further improve profitability. As I mentioned earlier, we're already more than halfway toward our 7% EBIT margin target. Getting the rest of the way will not come from a single initiative. It will come from improvements across the entire P&L. The first component is product margin, and here, unique assortment is a key driver. Our ambition is to increase the share of unique assortment from around 30% of sales by roughly 10 percentage points. This assortment has structurally higher margins. Increasing their share could add around 1 percentage point to gross margin or roughly 0.5 percentage points at the EBIT level.
The next component is direct selling cost, and here we see two main improvement areas. The first is inventory handling, where we have invested in automation over the past few years. As volumes grow, we will capture more of the benefits from this investment. The second area is freight. We have significantly improved freight costs through group agreements and by using our scale. At the same time, we have improved our delivery offering, increasing customers' willingness to pay and lifting freight income by more than 1 percentage point. We still see opportunities to improve the freight net. SG&A. Within SG&A, improvements will come from both scale benefits and efficiency initiatives. One area with strong potential is AI-driven automation, especially in customer service and content creation. Today, we spend just over SEK 200 million in these areas.
With today's technology, we believe this cost can be reduced by more than 20% over time, and we already see this in practice. At Nordic Nest, the AI assistant, Nestor, handled more than 40% of incoming errands in February and has reduced customer service costs by 17% over the past 12 months. Finally, we also see improvements in D&A. Over the past 24 months, we have improved inventory efficiency and reduced days in stock from 66 to 57. This allows us to reduce warehouse space and lower depreciation related to warehouse infrastructure. We're not done yet. We still see opportunities to improve efficiency. Together, these initiatives will help us to reach our 7% EBIT margin target. Finally, a brief comment on cash conversion. Our capital light model means that a large share of earnings converts into cash.
This gives us strong financial flexibility to fund growth, including acquisitions. Thank you.
Welcome, Gustaf and Jesper.
Thank you.
Let's take a few minutes to discuss a few aspects of what we heard about in your presentations. We'll start with you, Gustaf. If you could just reiterate why is it the right time to update the financial targets now?
We feel the timing is right. We're firmly out of the restructuring phase. We're firmly in the profitable growth phase. We have executed our strategy, and we're proud of what we achieved in the last two years. We have a well-defined strategy looking forward. We have defined what we want to do, and we have quantified the effects of those actions. We also see an improving market, and penetration is back to growth. In summary, I think it's a very good time to sort of communicate our new growth ambitions and our new growth plan.
Thank you. Jesper, you mentioned for the targets a short term and a medium term horizon. Can you be a little more specific?
I think I can be super clear. Short term means within 24 months, and medium term three to five years.
Okay. Also, Jesper, you have lowered the leverage targets from two and a half to two. Can you elaborate on why?
I think there's three reasons. First, it reflects a stronger financial position, and second, we're also so confident that we can reach our financial targets, both the growth and the EBIT target, while operating at a lower level. The third, given the recent history, we think this is the right and prudent level to aim for.
Okay. Let's talk more about how AI is influencing the retail industry. Gustaf, what would you say are the most important changes happening now?
There's so many things happening. It's super exciting. It's going really, really fast. Two things that has happened really short term that I find very interesting is, one is the tailor-made AI agents. If I go back sort of one year or maybe 18 months, we were implementing AI solutions, but it was more that we were implementing AI based tools for content creation, for CRM, et cetera. What has really happened in the last six months is the ability to build our own tailor-made AI agents for specific purposes. What is surprising is how fast it is to be done and at how low cost levels it can be done. I think that is really exciting. The other one I would mention is coding. Same thing there.
It's almost mind-blowing at the moment, how we get, you know, ideas and proposals from smart employees who don't really know coding, but they can produce interesting software just by the ability to today code without being, you know, an educated coder.
Mm.
I would single out those two, tailor-made AI agents and the speed of coding.
Okay, interesting. A final question. There is a lot of volatility in the world at the moment. How is the current geopolitical situation affecting you?
Nobody can deny that is very relevant today. I would say the effect on us is limited. We have no direct effects so far. We haven't seen any changes to prices. Our sort of shipping routes are unchanged and unaffected. We've sort of been going through around Africa for quite some time. From that perspective, very little. I think, you know, if the oil prices keep on being very high, then we will see effects on our shipping cost.
Mm-hmm.
With that said, that's a fairly small cost component for us, and it's also a fairly small part of our assortment that actually is shipped from Asia. The effects are small, too limited and no direct effects, but I think you should also mention that consumer sentiment is always to some extent affected when you get geopolitical unrest as we're getting right now.
Mm-hmm.
Our experience is that you get some effect, but it's very short-lived. I can compare to last year, then it was around Liberation Day. We got some effect, but it was also very short-lived. That would be my conclusion. We monitor it super close, of course, but we see very limited or no direct effects at the moment.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Gustaf and Jesper.
Thank you.
Now it's time for our first strategy deep dive, where we're going to focus on operational excellence. Mikael Hagman, BHG's Deputy CEO and Head of the Home Improvement section, welcome to stage.
Thank you, Emily, and good afternoon. I'm here to speak about how we create value in operational excellence today. At first glance, BHG is a collection of diverse brands in varied markets. However, beneath the surface, the operational DNA is remarkably consistent. We don't just manage a portfolio, we manage platforms with similar needs. Now some of the key points. Shared challenges. Regardless of the end consumer pain points, customer acquisition cost, logistics complexity, the need for an asset light footprint, they are all identical between our platforms. We provide an additional advantage, the BHG advantage, where we can provide centers of excellence where needed. We benchmark best practices across the group so that a win in one company becomes a blueprint for the others.
Our size also allows us to negotiate tier one terms for last mile delivery and payment processing that for a standalone brand are overhead cost. For BHG, they're sources of margin improvement. This structural advantage is what allows us to consistently execute on the core drivers of e-commerce profitability. Now as many of you know, success in our sector is dictated by price, choice, and convenience. In a competitive environment, the how matters more than the what and for us, the how is many times centered around data. If we start with competitive pricing, which we call the efficiency engine. At BHG, competitive pricing isn't about a race to the bottom. It's the result of our structural discipline. Our guiding principles are low cost base, high efficiency, low capital employed. This lean setup is an armor. It allows us to be competitive even in adverse conditions.
Coming to the data edge, we don't guess on what price to put. We use data to find the optimal level where we can maximize our margins without losing volume, even under heavy market pressure. Price only matters if you have the right product. Because of our scale, we sit on many times more the customer data than our competitors. We know what they want and what they'll want tomorrow. One key point is that we use our multi-banner strategy that includes specialists at the forefront of each category understanding the future needs. We'll take it even one step further. Through our partnerships with, for example, Google, we look outside our own walls to understand the search intent and the problems customers are trying to solve even before they reach our shops.
We utilize operational synergy, for example, by using a shared warehouse, we make a single SKU available across multiple sales channels. This keeps our inventory lean, ensuring that the customer always sees an outstanding selection. Finally, the retention engine, which is the best shopping experience. Now, the experience starts with an intuitive web shop but always ends at the customer's front door. We focus on frictionless payments and home delivery solutions that bring people back. Looking ahead, AI will no doubt play a bigger role. We are deploying AI to personalize the journey, enhance customer care, ensuring that convenience isn't just a promise, but a constant reality. Efficiency provides the stability, but our operational excellence is ultimately the fuel for our top line growth. Our growth strategy starts with defending and expanding our primary categories. We call this the core.
This is the foundation, but it's far from the ceiling. We are successful in exporting our model into near neighbor categories like home appliances and outdoor. These sectors mirror many of our core dynamics, allowing us to be competitive in an increasing number of categories. Coming to the geographical side, our geographical expansion is disciplined. We utilize a staged entry, often starting with a local BHG company to test the waters in a certain category with low risk. Once we prove the competitive advantage, we lean in with stepwise investments. We still see significant white spots in the Nordics. With Nordic Nest, we have a proven vehicle for international scale beyond our home markets. A critical component of scalability is the internal collaboration that allows us to move faster than the market.
The ultimate stress test of how our model works is how well our companies collaborate. By pairing our generalist traffic brands with our specialist house brands, we create a closed loop ecosystem. We take raw data, basket analysis, or price elasticity and turn it into physical products with higher margins and better hit rates in our own sales channels. This then produces new data that we can leverage. To give you a concrete look at this in action, I'm joined by Emma, the CEO of Bygghemma Nordic, and Anders, the CEO of Hafa. They have co-created a new bathroom assortment that perfectly illustrate how BHG captures value through vertical integration.
Today, we will share how we operate together, creating structural advantage and increased value for our customers and owners by utilizing and combining our core strengths as two separate business units within BHG Group. Starting with Bygghemma, we are the online home improvement player with an unbeatable range to the home improvement customer. We have the customers that buy for the small fixes to the larger renovations in more or less any parts of the customer's home or gardens. With more than 10 x larger assortment than our closest competitor in the bathroom category, we are the market leader in this category specifically. What turns our scale and size into true value is data.
Every month, more than 2.6 million customers interact with our platform, and this gives us real-time insight into customer behaviors, so we know what colors they like, the sizes they prefer, what product categories or to what price points, and how they like to mix and match. On top of this, our own in-house digital team continuously analyzes external data, which enables us to be really quick to catch trends. In other words, we have the insights built on actual customer behavior, no surveys or lagging reports, and we spot the trends early. The value that we bring to Anders and Hafa is that we know what sells to what price in the total market today, and we spot what will sell tomorrow.
Thank you. Hafa, part of BHG Group, has more than 60 years experience in developing bathroom products. Over time, we have built strong in-house capabilities with designers, engineers, and product developers working together to create innovative interior solutions. We're relevant, we protect those innovations through patents and design protection, but equally important is our focus on quality, compliance, and sustainability. We stay close to market trends through more than 2,000 external customers, global trend fairs, and a large supplier network across both Europe and Asia. This gives us a very strong understanding of design trends, but also technological development. However, what Emma just described adds something extremely powerful to that foundation. With direct insight to real customer behavior, we can identify trends earlier. We can optimize the product portfolio more precisely. For example, colors, sizes, combinations. We can even improve our purchasing decisions.
In short, we combined decades of product expertise with real-time market data that creates value for Bygghemma, for Hafa, for our external customers, and ultimately for the end consumer. How do we turn this strong product development into a compelling offer for the end consumer? Hafa has the same long heritage in brand building and concept development as we have in product development. Today, we manage 12 different brands, three of which are BHG exclusive, meaning that we have a unique assortment for those. Hafa remains our most well-known brand, but internally one of the most successful collaborations in recent year has been Bathlife, a brand developed together with Bygghemma. Through our unique setup, we can identify high volume product opportunities, develop them together, and bring them to market at a very competitive price point. This collaboration has been very successful.
In fact, Bathlife is today the single largest bathroom brand on Bygghemma's platform. Brand building, that is something for us that's very closely related to content and visual storytelling. In addition to a strong marketing team, we operate our own state-of-the-art photo studio. We produce digital content in-house and work with a strong network of external parties to communicate our concepts to the market. Operationally, almost all our products are stocked in our central warehouse in Halmstad, and through our tailor-made drop shipment model, we deliver daily shipments across all Nordic markets. In addition to our own brands, we also distribute a wide range of products for Bygghemma, helping them secure competitive pricing and strong service levels on those. One challenge for traditional product companies like ours has been long time to market. This is something where modern go-to-market channels like Bygghemma have really transformed this industry. Emma?
Thank you. Yeah, at Bygghemma we operate the market-leading digital sales channel, and we support our online sales with showrooms for those customers in need of that physical support. We have a nationwide coverage with an impressive tailor-made logistics. There are other e-commerce players doing an okay job with the smaller or lighter deliveries. We handle full market coverage, everything from the small parcels to the heavy, complex deliveries. It's reliable, it's efficient, and it's smooth. With current stable level hitting above 90% deliver to promise, we get great customer feedback, and this removes friction from the buying decision and enables larger, higher value projects. We also operate with highly advanced price matching tools, always to secure the relevant price at that specific time. Again, looking into the bathroom category specifically, we have over 80% shopping impression share in this category.
To put a reference to that 80% visibility, another very big player within home improvement is visible below 50% of the times, and other bathroom experts in this market, also the more digitally advanced experts, they are visible between 25%-30% of the times. This means when you search for anything within bathroom, we will be there more than 80% of the times, and the competitors are quite far behind. We control visibility, demand, and margins in a way that traditional retailers cannot. Overall, this combined, the result is highly efficient, a fully controlled go-to-market engine, and a very powerful sales channel for all bathroom products.
In addition to the benefits already described, our collaboration has recently enabled us to unlock very exciting new types of synergies. Through our shared approach to product development, brand building, and sales, we have developed a new coherent design concept across both bathroom and kitchen under the brand name Westerbergs. This is a category with high search volumes and strong consumer demand. Compared to traditional players, we have launched a broader concept built around the most commercially attractive design trends. This becomes more unique when we combine this with a direct-to-consumer model and Bygghemma platform.
This is really where the strength of the BHG ecosystem becomes very clear. Together, we have a unique model where we control the entire customer proposition from product development and brand building all the way to the end consumer. With no intermediaries, we create a structure where margins become more attractive while pricing for the consumer becomes significantly better, in many cases 30%-40% lower than traditional retail models. What has historically been a slow-moving home interior market, this allows us to launch new concepts faster and with more precision than anyone else. We have seen similar transformations like this in other industries, for example, FMCG and fashion, and we believe that the home improvement market is now entering a similar phase. With our combined capabilities, BHG is very well positioned to capture that opportunity.
Welcome to the sofa, Emma and Anders.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll spend a few minutes to go a little deeper into what we just heard you present. We'll start with you're both sister companies in a group. What is the single biggest competitive advantage, would you say, in this setup as opposed to being a standalone company?
Want to start? I would say that total value of utilizing our two core strengths and that we actually get to focus and develop within our core areas of expertise.
Mm-hmm.
For my side, Bygghemma, we get direct access to the best product development and best brands with reliable deliveries directly from Anders' warehouse without us having to focus on product development or brand building or even having our own warehouse.
Mm-hmm.
I'd say the biggest competitive advantage is that total value of utilizing our core strengths.
Mm-hmm.
For me, I think I need to mention what we just spent a couple of minutes talking about, the strength in the product development model, how we've been able to improve that through combining all these years of experience into product development together with this customer insights, the real-time customer data, that enables us to make better assortment decisions. It enables us to make better purchasing decision, which adds value to everyone. The end consumer, of course, but even also Bygghemma, also for Hafa-
Mm-hmm
also for our external customers.
You're talking about the value of this integrated model. Why not integrate even further then? Why should you keep the independent business?
I think, as you mentioned, you know, we benefit a lot from the shared synergies. I think it's very, very important to understand that for Hafa, the most important task we have is to operate as an independent partner to our 2,000 external customers. That means that we focus a lot of our efforts on synergies into areas that will benefit everyone. Operationally, I think it's very, very important that we maintain our standalone decision structure and commercial independence to serve as a strong partner to our customers.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
To build on that, for Bygghemma, we would never compromise on our customer promise, and our customer promise is greater and bigger than Hafa alone. We have an unbeatable range. We have a breadth and depth in our offer to our home improvement customers, and in order for us to honor and live up to that customer promise, we need to strengthen and develop our partnerships with several suppliers. I would say that the current ecosystem that we have created suits our operating model very well.
Mm-hmm.
I think you could say that today we found a model where we can really realize group synergies without losing that important entrepreneurial focus.
Okay, thank you. Now we've talked about strategic benefits of the group, if we can move to financial benefits. If we focus on the increased margins that you mentioned in your presentation, walk us through how the partnership adds extra value. Is it primarily, by just removing the intermediaries, or can you tell me a little more?
I can start on this one. Of course, it adds a lot of value from removing intermediaries. It enable us to lower prices for the consumer. It enables us to have stronger margins. At the same time, that is only part of the equation. For example, the cost efficiency of the go-to-market model, that's another part. With platforms like Bygghemma have a much lower customer acquisition cost due to the benefit of scale, and also a very high amount of organic traffic. That is something, of course, as a supplier, that gives you a stronger and better market access.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
To add to that improves speed in capturing trends fast and the commercial sharpness that we are co-creating here. Although it doesn't have an immediate margin improvement per product, the improved sales growth and success rate when launching new concepts will for sure improve. The total financial benefits are indeed the margin improvements, but also the improved sales growth.
Okay. Well, thank you both for your insights here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Now we will move to our second deep dive, focusing on BHG's strategic initiatives. Gustaf Öhrn, welcome back to stage.
Thank you, Emma, and thank you, Anders. So far today, we've talked about operational excellence, the foundation of our business. I will now move on to the second internal growth layer of strategic initiatives. Strategic initiatives, let me first put it into context. Strategic initiatives is what we from group identify and co-drive across platforms to ensure innovation, long-term competitiveness, and accelerating growth. The nature of strategic initiatives evolves with the pace of the company. During the restructuring period, the focus was very much on consolidation, cost reduction, and inventory discipline. Now, as we have moved into the phase of profitable growth, our focus has shifted. Today, we concentrate on four key initiatives, unique assortment, AI and data, cost structure, and additional revenue streams. Together, these initiatives strengthen both our customer proposition and our structural competitiveness. Each of these initiatives play a distinct role in our development of BHG.
First, unique assortment drives differentiation, drives pricing power, and secures margins. Second, AI and data improves customer experience, growth, and efficiency. Third, cost structure is what enables the best offer to the consumer and long term will be the key differentiator for success. Lastly, additional revenue streams allow us to monetize the traffic and the scale that we have already built and created. I will deep dive these four strategic initiatives, and with the help of my colleagues, also add concrete examples. Let me start with unique assortment. Historically, this has often been referred to as private label, but for us it is broader than that. At its core, it's about creating a distinct and differentiating offering. This allows us to remove intermediaries and create strong entry margins. It also avoids
A way to avoid direct price comparison and thereby secure high-end margins, and through uniqueness, secure differentiation and brand identity. Looking ahead, this will become even more important. In an increasingly AI-driven retail environment, product uniqueness will be key to visibility, relevance, and brand values. Now I will let David Olhed, our CEO of Home Furnishing Nordic, expand on how they use unique assortment as a key value driver in their business.
At Home Furnishing Nordic, we create a unique assortment in a structured and repeatable way. It all starts with data. We analyze what customers are searching for, both words and images. Using AI-driven tools, we study trends, demand patterns, and gaps in the market. This allows us to identify opportunities early and develop products that customers are already looking for. AI helps us translate large volumes of search behavior data into product decisions. We design our products in-house and work closely with selected suppliers in Asia and Eastern Europe. Because we control the development process and collaborate closely across the value chain, we can combine good quality, attractive design, and competitive cost with short lead times. By working directly with selected manufacturers, we secure strong entry margins from the start. Every efficiency we create in sourcing and production strengthen our margins and enables a better price to the customer.
That combination is key. The same data-driven approach also enable us to hold inventory in categories that traditionally not have been able to be online. Because our product development is based on real demand signals, we can do so with limited inventory risk. A good example is our sofa, Manar. By analyzing search data, we saw a clear demand for a certain style that was mainly available at a higher price point. By developing our own version, we can now offer a comparable design, quality, at a price roughly 30% lower. That creates clear value for the customer. This is not a one-off success. The model has driven over 30% growth in sofa and bed categories over the past year, demonstrating how well the model works in practice. It's a repeatable way of building competitive advantage. Because we develop our own product, our products are not directly comparable.
We therefore avoid direct price competition and can protect our margins over time, while also maintaining higher margins due to the uniqueness of our assortment. In short, our model allows us to create products customers want, keep prices attractive, and build stronger margins. At Home Furnishing Nordic, unique assortment is not just a concept, it is a data-driven and scalable way of creating long-term value. In addition, our model is AI-enabled from identifying demand signals to supporting design and developing our ability to scale a new and unique assortment efficiently.
Thank you, David. Our second initiative is AI and data. This is an area we're currently very active and where we see significant upside. As a digital native business, we have a strong starting point, large volumes of structured data across multiple platforms. We are using this to drive value across several areas, with our current key focus on in customer service. We are implementing AI solutions to improve both efficiency and customer experience, and we'll show more of a concrete example of this in a minute. In automation, we are using AI agents for tasks such as supplier onboarding and product content creation. Conversion optimization, one of the most exciting AI enablers for driving growth by enabling better and more accurate product information and conversational information on product level.
This to me is one of the areas where AI can enable product information and guidance now superior to the physical channel, and one of the things that I believe will drive continued and increased online penetration. In analytics, we are improving decision-making, particularly in areas like demand forecasting, where even small improvements can have a significant impact on both sales and margins. We're also investing in what we call AI readiness, ensuring that our content and data are optimized for visibility in LLM-based search environments. This is already becoming increasingly important traffic source for us. Finally, over time, we see strong potential in leveraging our data across platforms for hyper-personalization marketing supported by AI-enabled deeper understanding of the customer journeys. Now I will let Alexander Ljung, BHG's marketing manager, show a very powerful tool of AI-enabled product information.
Most online shoppers land directly on a product page. That means they do not start at the homepage, browse through the store. They land on a specific product with a clear purchase intent, and that is where they decide, "Do I buy this or not?" Also, that's where the question arises. It could be a simple question like, "Does this bathtub fit my bathroom?" Or a more technical one like, "60 decibel, what does that even sound like?" If customers don't get an immediate answer, they'll leave. That means they open up a new tab, start a new search, comparing sources and contacting customer service, and every additional step creates friction, and friction reduces conversion. Our product question agent acts as a product expert directly on the page. It's a conversational chat on the product page itself, integrated where the purchase decision happens.
It explains complex specification in very simple terms. For example, 60 decibels sounds like a normal conversation, but it does not stop at the information already shown. The agent searches not only information available on our site, including manuals and product data sheets, but also retrieves validated information from supplier specifications, when needed. It clearly shows where the information comes from. This allow us to provide verified answers to questions that used to drive customers away. Instead of forcing customers to leave the product page to find answers, we bring all relevant information into the same environment where the purchase decision happens, visually and interactively on the product page. In physical retail, knowledgeable staff have traditionally provided this level of expertise at shelf. With AI, we can now offer the same product knowledge digitally, consistently, and at scale.
This is how we eliminate friction of uncertainty by putting an expert on every digital shelf. We ensure that customers that land on our page, they don't just find the product, they find the confidence to buy.
Thank you, Alex. Super exciting and will be launched within short in selected categories. One of the key advantages of being a group is how we work with innovation. We can pilot new tools in one platform, we can test their impact, and we can scale what works across the group. This, what we call pilot, trial, and scale approach, allows us to move quickly while managing risk and cost efficiently. We're already applying this model across several AI initiatives. The third initiative is cost structure. Cost has always been important in retail. In a world of increasing price transparency, it becomes a huge strategic differentiator. A superior cost structure is what enables us to offer competitive prices while maintaining sustainable margins and what enables enables flexibility in challenging times.
Examples of key initiatives in cost structure is, for example, automating customer service through AI, consolidating warehouses and fulfillment automation, and reducing administrative costs through automation and AI agents. This is about building a structurally efficient business, not just reducing cost in the short term. To give some perspective, customer service is a significant cost base for the group. We today spend around SEK 200 million annually on customer service. By applying AI, we can reduce both cost and improve service levels. We believe that we can reduce costs by approximately 20% short term, and with these new agents and long term, the potential is even higher. We can respond faster, we can scale more easily, and during peak periods, we can reduce backlogs, all of which directly improves the customer experience.
Now I will let Bank Bergström, CEO of Nordic Nest, show a concrete example of using AI in automating customer service.
Hi, a warm welcome to Nordic Nest Group's customer service team. In this office, our amazing team members are helping customers around our 70 markets globally. One of our team members aren't visible here in the office. It's our colleague, Nestor. Our journey with Nestor started two years ago, learning, adapting, and slowly improving. Today, Nestor stands for 44% of the incoming tickets. That's a huge improvement compared to just a year ago, where we were at 15%. It means that Nestor is helping us taking out a chunk of the daily workload. Most importantly, we still remain on the high customer satisfaction levels as before. If you were to see it side by side, whether it's a human agent or Nestor helping the customer, you would see that the outcome is still the same. Clear, helpful support that solves the customer's problem.
There's no compromising quality, just faster responses and a seamless experience. Nestor is just not a tool. It represents a structural way on how we can scale customer care, allowing us to grow globally without increasing cost at the same pace. One of the key reasons behind the success of Nestor is how the project was set up. It was led by our head of customer care and driven together with our customer care team. Our approach is very clear. All AI projects should be driven from the business, ensuring the level of customer satisfaction that we need and meeting our business targets. Technology should be enabler, not the starting point. We have the business impact. With the help of Nestor, we've been able to reduce cost by 30% with our current sales volumes that translate to SEK 7 million yearly saving.
The results are very clear. We have been able to increase efficiency and at the same time protecting our high level of customer satisfaction. Nestor isn't here to replace people. It will help us with repetitive tasks, freeing up time for more complex topics where human expertise really brings value to the customer. This is just the beginning. What started in customer care is becoming a blueprint for how we can scale AI across the group. By combining business ownership, human expertise, and smart technology, we can scale sustainably, improve our margins, and enhance customer experience across every part of our organization.
Thank you, Bank. The final strategic initiative on our key priority list is in additional revenue streams. Across our platforms, we generate more than 250 million visits annually. This creates an opportunity to monetize traffic beyond traditional product sales. Our current focus areas include postage and logistics services, retail media, where we sell advertising primarily to our suppliers, and also over time, additional platform-based revenue opportunities. These are typically high-margin revenues built on the infrastructure and the traffic that we have already created. To summarize, our strategic initiatives are designed to drive innovation, to strengthen our competitiveness, to improve our customer offering, and to unlock new sources of growth and profitability. Together with operational excellence and M&A, they are the foundation of our growth strategy going forward.
Martin, please join me and Emily for continued discussions on strategic initiatives.
Welcome, Gustaf Öhrn and then Martin Leo, Group CTO in person. Nice to see you. We'll start with you, Gustaf Öhrn. You mentioned that a certain assortment, unique assortment is critical. Can you expand on what concrete actions you're doing to achieve this, and if anything else is needed?
Yes, happy to. On a general level, as always, when we say something is critical and we name it as a strategic initiative, we put a higher focus on it, we set targets, we follow up, and we make sure that we develop. What we also do on unique assortment is adding resources and adding competence, and then I'm talking about both resources and competence, both in product development and in buying these type of products.
Mm-hmm.
Those are two concrete things. On top of that, with our M&A strategy, which you will hear more about from Jesper and Mikael, we will also be looking for potential targets to acquire, both that could be, you know, private label brands or private label businesses that fit into our platforms to expand the leverage and our share of unique assortment in our total business.
Thank you. Now moving to AI, if you could summarize where you see the biggest potential in AI improvements.
I think some of the samples we've seen sums it up fairly well, and if I were to single out two as I think examples with big potential, and if I started in the where I see the biggest potential in what we call customer experience and growth, then I would start on this product information. I think the ability to sort of have a conversation, a discussion with a product, getting access to all the questions you want to ask is to me a big step removing a lot of the historical friction for online buying.
Mm-hmm
is super exciting. That would be my key one I think on experience and growth. If I were to single out one on efficiencies, it would be the one Bank spoke about.
Mm-hmm
automating customer service.
Mm-hmm.
First, because it's a big cost that we can build efficiencies in, but also because you can get good answers, high quality answers, timely, and also reduce and create the flexibility that we sometimes lack. Because one of the big challenges in retail in general is the changes in capacity, and being able to scale up in peak selling seasons and make sure that we can handle all consumers also in those-
Mm-hmm
seasons, that is critical.
Mm-hmm.
Super excited about that as well.
Mm-hmm. Martin, how will we make this happen in practice? What are some of the challenges there?
Well, obviously, it's exciting times to work in BHG and to work in tech. New technology is allowing us to now build proprietary agents across our group utilizing different LLMs for different purposes. In the near future, I would say that we will see a case for managing as many AI agents as we will have staff members.
Mm-hmm
Across our business, not least in the areas that Gustav mentioned, such as product data management, as well as in customer service. I think those are. They're key in many aspects. I think in order to manage that many agents, we will also build, as we are building now, agentic frameworks that allows us to manage, monitor, and ensure that we get the performance and the results out of our agents that we deploy.
Mm-hmm. How are you in terms of competitive position on this?
I think I briefly mentioned it in the video. I think we get the best of two worlds in BHG. We are able to get the speed and the nimbleness out of our platforms while providing the scale and the vast amount of data that the group can provide. I mean, innovation as such happens close to the customer in our platforms, and we're able to test a number of initiatives in parallel, and being able to scale the successful ones as best practice across the group. If I summarize it, I think we're in a sweet spot. We have the speed through our platforms and the ability to scale through our group structure. I think that's what sets us apart.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good insights. Thank you.
Thank you.
Now time for our third and last deep dive, which is on M&A, and we will welcome back Mikael Hagman and Jesper Flemme.
Thank you, Emily. Jesper and I will talk about our M&A strategy. At BHG, we just don't buy companies, we make them better. BHG was built on bringing great companies together. For us, the deal is just the start. Our real strength is in developing companies we buy, to make them grow faster than they could do on their own. One important aspect is keeping the talent. We make sure that the founders and leaders stay with us. We aren't just buying warehouses and websites, we're keeping the entrepreneurial spirit and the expertise that made those businesses successful in the first place. Now that we are better organized as a group, we have gotten much better at our ability to add new companies to our system. We have the plumbing, so a new business can plug in and start growing immediately.
Because we have this solid system in place, we can be much more selective and surgical about the specific types of companies that we bring on board next. We are not looking to buy new massive platforms right now. We're looking for add-on companies that can help us improve our margins and revenues immediately in our platforms. Around this, we have created three core pillars that we devise our M&A strategy on. It's product choice, and the core question here is, can this give us a better range of products faster than we could build it ourselves? Our own brand, our unique offering, we focus on companies that have their own unique offering. This is a major advantage because it protects our profit and fortifies our position in the category. Finally, they need to fit the system.
The new company must be able to integrate into our platforms and not become isolated islands. This is where we save money and create value. To see how this strategically actually creates a market-leading position, let's look at how we built our number one position in the bathroom category online. We started with one site, Bygghemma, but we added layers to protect our lead over time. We bought companies to cover all of the Nordic countries. This gives us a pan-Nordic footprint that today is the foundation of Bygghemma Nordics. In addition, we bought several different websites and shopping windows, so that when a customer searches on Google, they find us no matter which link they click. We call this owning the shopping street.
We bought Hafa to get our own high-quality brand in the category, and we bought Golvpoolen to get the high-end brands that we had been unable to secure before. The result is that today we are the clear leader. No one else has the same variety or depth. Whether a customer wants a bargain or a specialty service they're buying from a BHG company. This is a blueprint for us. We're doing the same thing across more categories, and it is the key to our future success. Jesper?
Thank you, Mikael. How do we approach M&A? We run a proactive group-led process to identify bolt-on acquisitions that can build on existing platforms. Discipline is key, both strategically and financially. To stay disciplined, we follow a clear set of criteria. To echo what Mikael just said, strategically, we look for companies based in the Nordics that can strengthen us from a category perspective. If they also bring unique assortment, that's a big plus. Financially, we focus on growing in profitable businesses with clear synergies. Operationally, we prefer online or online-first businesses that can benefit from our platforms and have come with strong management teams to build on. Let's look at how the model has evolved over time. As Mikael said, M&A is a part of who we are and has played an important role in building this group.
The objective has always been to support growth and create scale. It started with geographic expansion, then moved into category expansion, and followed by larger platform acquisitions. More recently, we have returned to focusing on bolt-ons and assortment, and over the years, we have learned from both successes and mistakes and refined our playbook. Today, we believe that the best way to create value is by focusing on smaller businesses with strong niche positions and lower integration complexity. Our latest acquisition, KitchenTime, is a really good example of what we're looking at. With that, I will hand it back over to you, Emalee, to continue the discussion.
Welcome to the sofa, and we have Bank Bergström in person joining us, who we saw in the film. You're the Head of Premium Living and CEO of Nordic Nest, and also Mikael Hagman. Let's take some time just to delve in a few elements of the M&A strategy that we heard about. Mikael, if we start off with the strategy as a whole, why do we actually have to do acquisitions, and why not just expand organically?
That's a good question. I think one has to start with sort of bursting the bubble on the organic myth. It does take resources, it does take time, and it takes a lot of complexity within an organization. Sometimes it's actually faster to purchase something from the outside. I think importantly, we are now able to add value almost immediately to any company that comes into our system. We have better processes, we understand the market better through our data, and we have collective agreements which they can utilize from the beginning. Speed is often a factor.
Any good examples of to illustrate this value?
I think Jesper mentioned KitchenTime, which is the latest acquisition within Nordic Nest Group, and we acquired KitchenTime in 2024. Already in 2021, we set a target to increase the focus on kitchen and cookware. We were really struggling in 2023, before the acquisition, we reached 6.4% in sales share in kitchen and cooking. In 2025, a year after the acquisition, we have doubled the sales share.
Mm.
In that category. I think that exemplifies.
Mm.
Yeah
where we can actually accelerate with an acquisition.
Good example. Do you have any, takeaways, key learnings from the shift in the M&A strategy?
I think so, because in the beginning, we were actually building the house. The house is now ready. It's ready for upgrades and additions, so I think that infrastructure is in place. The other thing is that now we don't feel the same pressure to buy volume. We can be more surgically precise in what is interesting for us. Again, it's one tool in the box that we utilize. I feel we have more tools in our hands right now.
Mm-hmm
that we did before.
Not all M&As are successful, right? If we continue with learnings.
Yeah, yeah
What have you learned from past experience to take forward?
Thanks. Thanks for pointing that out. No, that's right. Not every one is a home run, of course. That's true. I think we've put in place some key measures in order for that not to happen in the future. One is sort of the geography scope, where we focus on our home markets of the Nordics. The second is the support infrastructure that we built in our platform. As Jesper mentioned, we have some strict sort of filters in there as well on what we are actually buying. You know, battle scars has its advantage. We were many who have been here for a long time, and we've been here through the good times and the bad times, and we've learned from that.
Mm.
Mm.
I think that's a good experience.
Mm.
I think if I may add, I think one thing we should never underestimate is the work it takes to consolidate not only the business, but the team. You know, the bigger the company that we acquire, the bigger also the team, and different cultures and different ways of working will slow down the possibility to get the synergies out.
Okay. Thank you. Bank, as head of your business unit, and as you mentioned, CEO of Nordic Nest, are there any dream targets that you have or categories that you have your eyes on?
I have a shortlist for sure.
Mm
I think I will just avoid to mention any names here in the studio. What we're looking for is either geographical expansion or category expansion, and there are a lot of great opportunities out there. For us, being very strict, make sure that we are increasing profitability with the acquisition we do is I would say the main pillar.
Okay. Mikael, what's your top priority going forward?
I think going forward one should see us strengthening our core in terms of geography and category. We've heard many times unique assortment, so that would probably be a big part of our playbook as well. Again, geography, keeping it close to home in the Nordic markets I think will be key to our future success.
Okay. Well, thank you both for your insights here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Now over to Gustaf for his final remarks.
Thank you, Mikael. Thank you, Bank. Now it's my job to do my best to wrap this up and to summarize it. After this, I will be joined by Jesper and Mikael, and we will together do our very best to answer your questions. A short summary of what we have tried to convey in today's Capital Markets Day. We have done our homework, we have completed the restructuring, and we have strengthened the business, and we are ready for the next phase of value creation, the profitable growth phase. We are today financially stronger, we are back to growth, we have strengthened our profitability continuously over the last two years, we have a significantly stronger balance sheet with leverage down to sustainable levels.
We're structurally supported by improving macro environment, driven by disposable income and housing transactions, and also continued online penetration, still low in our categories, and now further accelerated by AI. We have an operational, scalable model with category leadership in key categories in our key markets, and with AI acceleration, productivity, and conversion. Finally, we are well positioned to win. We have above-market growth, where we continue to take market share, and now further fueled by reactivating M&A as a proactive, disciplined growth driver. Thank you. Now please, Jesper and Mikael, join me for the Q&A session.
Great. Welcome to then our Q&A. Thank you so much for you sending in your questions. We've got quite a few here that have come in, so we'll jump right in. We'll start with a question: what gives you confidence in the path to 7% EBIT?
If I may start, as I think we've said, we have delivered on what we set out to do. We feel that our strategy is working. We have seen solid profitability improvement and growth lately. We have consolidated our business, but maybe more than anything else, we have a well-defined plan with quantified actions, and we have an improving market, so we are confident in our way to take us to 7% that we have set in the financial targets.
Thank you. Okay, next question. You've said the restructuring is behind you. What defines success in 2026?
I would ta-
So-
... say two things. One is growth,
Mm-hmm
To continue to deliver growth above the market, which means that we continue to take market share. Secondly, I would say that we are delivering on our strategy, taking us to the profitability goals we have defined, and following the plan we have laid out, and continue to improve on our profitability.
Okay, thank you. Another question here: given Middle East tensions, how exposed are you to higher freight costs?
I think that's.
you, Jesper.
I think that's, it's a tricky one, but if we start with just emphasizing that what we're seeing right now is not even close to what we saw during the pandemic with real capacity constraints. If we don't look at 2026, I think for this season we have the products that we intend to sell, either in our inventories or on the boats, so we feel we're not overly concerned. We feel somewhat shielded by the agreements that we have. If we take a step back and try to give you some kind of numbers.
Mm-hmm
It's below 10% of the products that we sell that are directly sourced by us from Asia. Again, not overly concerned, but of course, if this continues, freight rates will go up.
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Okay, thank you. Next question here: what gross margin impact do you associate with the shift to increased share of unique assortment? Would that be you again, Jesper?
No, as I said in the presentation.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm
The share of sales is roughly 30% today, and we intend to increase by 10 percentage points, and that could add 1 percentage point to the gross margin, or 0.5 percentage points at the EBIT level.
Okay. Next question here: what are the biggest challenges in the current M&A market? Mikael, I guess that's for you.
Yeah. There is a good deal flow. There are a number of interesting candidates for us. We strictly adhere to our strategy, which sort of weeds out a lot of the volume that's coming in. I think valuations are at an acceptable level right now. It's not, you know, a big hurdle. I don't really see, you know, great challenges.
Mm.
It's more up to our own discipline and strategy.
Okay, thank you. Question's come in. You target a 10 percentage point higher unique assortment share, and talk about a 0.5-1 percentage point uplift in gross margins as part of your margin targets, implying a 5-10 percentage point higher gross margin for unique products versus others. Is this a fair assumption, or what are we missing?
I hope I got the question right. I think the comparison is between external brands and unique assortment.
Mm
Unique assortment has roughly a 10 percentage point higher gross margin than external brands. If that was the question, I think at least I tried to answer it.
There's a fair assumption. Good.
Yes.
Okay. Thank you very much. Regarding M&A strategy, how confident are you that bolt-ons expand margins?
I'm very confident if we stick to our strategy.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the core target of companies that we're looking for. We have a proven track record in that case as well. I think, yeah, I'm very confident in that.
Mm-hmm.
I can just emphasize that, you know, we have defined the target lists and in what platforms it is relevant to do acquisitions.
Mm-hmm.
Just as Mikael says, if we follow that strategy, we should be doing that.
Okay. Another question: When you talk about 4%-7% market share gains, how would you split this between M&A and organic initiatives?
If I start.
Please.
I don't think I can split it because it will be different throughout the years. I mean, we want to have a meaningful contribution from an M&A every year but, you know, I can't give the exact split.
No.
Can you?
No.
No, no.
No. I think what is implied in the growth strategy we are explaining is that we are being profitable, we're generating a positive cash flow, and we're using that cash flow for acquisitions.
Okay. Next question. If the market outperforms in migration to online, could we expect over 7% EBIT in a stronger market?
Very positive problem. No, it could always be better, but I think we should be humble and be very clear that we are focused on our strategy, we are focused on delivering all our targets. As I said, I'm confident that we can achieve the 7%, but that is the key focus, to deliver on the strategy, deliver on the 7% we have set out to do.
All right. Next question. You've had a competitive advantage in search traffic. Could AI actually reduce your traffic by AI replacing traditional searching?
I think you have to take it, you know, one step back and look at the customer. The customer wants product or price, choice, and convenience. As long as we focus on delivering those aspects, if the vehicle is AI or if it's a traditional Google search, it won't really matter. We have a number of initiatives as Gustaf and Martin explained, targeting these areas, making sure that we're on top of things.
Mm.
I think, you know, finally, we are online first. That's our home turf. We will be first in that category.
Thank you. Next question. Which of the three strategic layers in the growth strategy will be most important this year, in 2026?
If I start on that one.
Mm
I would say that there's no difference any year. They're all super important, of course. But the most important one will always be operational excellence. I think it's super important that we never forget that we are retailers, and being a retailer is about managing price, product, and the customer journey. We have to do that well. That is always the most important focus in our business.
Mm-hmm.
I fully agree. I mean, getting the basics right-
Yes
the things we do every day, that's
Most important.
Retail fundamentals will always come first.
Mm.
I think that is key.
Thank you. Okay, another question. How significant are retail media revenues today, and what potential do you see medium term?
Should I go, and then you can support me?
Yes.
It is a substantial part of our revenue stream today, not in all platforms, but in some platforms. We have the biggest revenues from that stream in Bygghemma Sweden. What we're doing now is professionalizing that and also expanding it to more entities.
Mm-hmm.
It's also important to keep this distinction what we call trade marketing and retail media. Those are two revenue sources, and it's important we do that is, that we really create incremental revenue on top of what we've had in the past, and that's what we're trying to secure. It is a not unimportant revenue stream, but we see potential for more.
I think maybe even more important than the sales contribution will be the profit contribution.
Yes
from these activities.
Mm-hmm.
Because it's a very high margin business, so it comes on top, basically.
Okay.
Good point.
Thank you. What is the key reason for the lowered EBITDA target?
No, no, as I said earlier, I think it's three things. We have a stronger financial position, that's one. Two, we see that we can achieve the growth and the EBIT target operating at the lower level. Three, given our recent history, that hasn't been without bumps in the road, we think this is the right and prudent level.
All right. Next question. It is likely that your competitors are using AI as well. Can you clarify how or why you expect to outperform the competition in AI usage specifically? Which we touched a bit on the
Yeah
on the sofa, but please.
I can mention two things.
Mm.
One, as I think we've said, we are digital natives. I mean, we are digital from birth, so we have the data. We have the data well structured, so that's one of the points. I think the other one which we also mentioned is the ability to trial and scale. I think we call it pilot, trial, and scale. We have the ability to trial AI agents, and what works we can scale in more platforms. I think that right now might be the biggest advantage for us.
Okay. Good. Thank you. If we move on here, how far have you come in the integration of your platforms, Project Olympia?
Should I answer that?
Mm.
Yeah. I think we've come very far in certain areas or with certain platforms. They're more or less complete or completed. We still have some work to do in Bygghemma Nordics, which is sort of the biggest one, and we also knew that would be the most difficult one to integrate. When I say we have a ways to go, I'm talking more about the IT infrastructure. Work-wise, it is a company right now.
Mm.
They're working together. There's shared management positions. There's shared functions. They're purchasing together, et cetera. This leverage and scale is there, but we have not yet reached the point where we can take full efficiency from that. That will come shortly.
Okay.
I can just add that, you know.
Mm-hmm
It's a huge effort that has been done out in the companies. We came out of the pandemic, we were roughly 25 entities, and now we have six platforms fully in place, and I would say the seventh platform, as Mikael mentioned, Bygghemma Nordics, we have a lot of the advantages, but it's not fully in place. We are very close to finalizing that consolidation. With that said, there's still some synergies to be taken out still.
Mm
in some of the other platforms as well.
Okay. Thank you. Next question: To what extent have you been able to automate your fulfillment footprint? Can you provide any numbers, total number of warehouses, for example, and what technology installed?
Hard one to answer. We have reduced the number of warehouses quite significantly. I must admit I don't have an exact number in my head today, but we have reduced. I think we have some reductions left still to be done.
Mm-hmm.
There's some consolidations left to be done. We have done automation in some of them, but it's also important to be mindful that, in the sort of parcel goods it's very efficient to automate, and the smaller ones.
Mm.
It's much, much harder to automate in the bulky products. There it's more about working on processes and routine and building efficiencies.
Mm.
Some of the automation techniques we're using, as in Nordic Nest, is with AutoStore.
Yeah.
You could add that a large portion of our business is drop ship as well.
Yes
which,
Mm.
Completely reduces the need for warehouses, so that's a huge-
Mm.
Advantage as well.
Mm-hmm.
Another addition is, of course, that when it comes to reducing square meters and thereby reducing costs, there are more to be done.
Yes.
Okay, thank you. Next question: How many AI agents do you have active in your company today, and what is the split between cost-saving and improved sales?
Well, that was a tricky one. To be honest, I don't know how many AI agents we have.
There's a lot.
There's a lot of them.
Yeah.
Some are bigger, some are very small. We just encourage the company and the people, you know, the employees to be creative, to come up with ideas, to trial, measure, and then we can expand. I must admit that I have no idea how many trials we're currently doing.
Mm.
I don't think I should, because then we'd probably have too few.
All right, next question: To what extent, if any, do you experience competitive pressure from Chinese direct sellers? Do you know about initiatives from EU or local countries that will relieve this pressure?
Do you want to go?
Yeah, I could go. I wouldn't say we're feeling any direct pressure. I mean, to a certain degree, they are there, and they sell some, but we are trusted Nordic websites predominantly, where people have a relationship and they want to continue to buy. As far as EU, or any other institution trying to limit them, I only hear what I hear on the news.
Mm.
No insider information.
Okay.
There is some legislation coming, but it's not in place yet.
Mm-hmm.
some limitations, I should probably say.
Yeah.
Okay, thank you. Next question: Has the market become more promotional or less as of recently?
I think, you know, the market is always price driven. It's always promotional. There was one stage after the pandemic where there in some categories was a lot of excess inventory, and then it became even more.
Mm.
I would say that has normalized, probably since two years back. I think it's also important to point out that the most important price driver is not promotional pressure, it's actually price matching. Price matching is crucial today, and we do it in all our businesses because we want to ensure the best offer to the consumer, and we need to ensure the best offer to the consumer. I would say that price matching is a bigger challenge than promotional activity.
Mm.
I mean, if the question is related to price pressure, I think that's. There's always going to be price pressure and we solve that through a high efficiency, low cost, asset light operations and we'll just continue to do that.
Mm.
That's the only way to do, to deal with it.
Okay, thank you. Next question: Savings on customer service, if realized, equals 0.3 percentage point on the margin. What will the remaining 1.2-1.7 on SG&A come from?
Well, I think.
That must be a Jesper one. Thank you. I think savings on SG&A were in these presentations illustrated by the potential in customer service, but it doesn't end there. I mean, we are constantly going through, making sure that we have a best in class cost structure, as Mikael said, to enable the best offer to the consumer. I you know, I don't have three, four, five other initiatives to share right now, but you know, it's a continuous work and it's really illustrated by the example with customer service and content creation.
Okay.
I can just add that, you know, our key focus is unchained profitability, but the biggest and most important driver of profitability is growth.
Okay, thank you. I think we've managed to cover the questions that have come in today, and I'm, I'll perhaps ask the final question here, which is: How confident are you on this strategy that's been presented today?
If I may. I am actually very confident. I think we're in a strong financial position. I think we have a well laid out plan. I think we have a team in place that I have the biggest respect for and is very confident with. I would definitely say that I'm more confident than ever that we can deliver on this plan.
I agree. One component to the team, I think, is that we've managed to keep our entrepreneurial spirit while becoming more structured, so they're entrepreneurial within a structured environment, and that's a big benefit, I think, for our strategy going forward.
Yeah.
Mm.
Very good addition, because I think that entrepreneurial spirit is key, has been key to our success, and will be key to our success continue going forward.
Very good. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
for this session here.
Thank you very much.
Thank you all for joining us for BHG's Capital Markets Day 2026. Please note that this entire presentation was recorded today, and you'll be able to find it on BHG's website. With that, thank you very much and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.