Good afternoon and warmly welcome to this investor update from Byggmax Group. This update is on strategic process on new sustainability initiatives and, of course, on the way forward, the goals moving ahead for Byggmax. You will meet the CEO, Mattias Ankarberg, who will present, followed by Q&A, also together with the CFO, Helena Nathhorst, and the sustainability head, Per Haraldsson. My name is Mia Odabas. I'm a business journalist with experience from print, television and radio, and I'll be your moderator and guide you through the coming Q&A session. Just a couple of practical things before we set off. Now, I think you'd like to view this event in full-screen mode. That's probably the best way. But when you want to pose questions, which I'm sure you will, you need to exit the full-screen mode, and you'll find a question field at the bottom of the screen.
Exit full-screen mode, and the question field is at the bottom of the screen, and you can already now start posing questions and make comments, and they'll end up in an iPad that I will have together with me here on stage for the Q&A session. It's time for me to introduce Byggmax CEO, Mattias Ankarberg. Welcome, Mattias, to your own update.
Thank you, Mia.
I was reading Dagens Industri this morning, and I was reading that almost half of the Swedish companies, 48%, they say that the war in Ukraine will affect them. They talk about different effects, like uncertainty, lots of uncertainty in the world right now. They talk about inflation, of course, raising prices. Energy prices are rising. Supply chain constraints. In what way would you say that the war affects Byggmax?
Well, first of all, of course, the war is a horrible humanitarian tragedy, but in terms of business impact, there is very little direct impact on Byggmax. We obviously have no business or operations there, and we don't source any products from Russia, Belarus or the Ukraine. I think the big, big thing to your point is the uncertainty that could increase in general going forward. No direct impact for Byggmax.
No direct impact, but uncertainty affects all of us, of course. We might come back to that in the Q&A session. It's time for the strategic update.
Again, welcome everybody. We will start this presentation by providing an update on our strategic progress. I will kick that off by a short introduction of Byggmax. Byggmax was founded almost 30 years ago with a business idea to sell building materials to consumers at the lowest possible prices. At the time, that was a new idea that didn't exist in the market. Much has happened since, of course, but the low price concept is still very fundamental to our business. Today, we express the business idea as everybody has the right to a fantastic home, and we are, of course, a much bigger company. Last year, we turned SEK 7.6 billion, growth of 12% versus the year before. We had an operating margin or an EBITA margin of 11.7%.
We remain the price leader in the Nordic market, and we continue to have a very good sales momentum on e-commerce, which accounted for 22% of the business last year. Almost exactly a year ago, we had a capital markets day, where we had three main things to convey. The first one was that there had been some old mishaps in the business history of Byggmax that the current management team now had fixed. The second point we shared was that we had been working hard on modernizing the customer offer in Byggmax, and that was taking a lot of market share. Thirdly, we presented some new financial targets. Today, we have three other key points to share with you. Firstly, the market share gains continue. Secondly, we see a lot of potential for continued organic growth.
Actually, even more potential than we did a year ago. Part of this is due to the fact that we made two acquisitions last year that have good growth potential going forward. Lastly, today, we will share a quite ambitious climate agenda where we believe that what we're doing has the potential to change Byggmax to actually have what we call a positive climate impact. We will come back to what that means, but there are two main parts to that. One is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the other one is to actively on our own work with circular products through something we call Byggmax Green Ventures. Initiating the strategic update, we start with the big picture and the journey here. It's really been a journey.
A lot of success stories have happened over these almost 30 years, and some of them I can take absolutely no credit for because it was before my time. For example, we entered Norway in 2007. It has become a really important and good business for us. Byggmax was really early with e-commerce in 2008, also a very good driver for us going forward. As happens in business, there were some things that did not turn out as well, and we covered these mishaps, as we call them, quite expensively at the Capital Markets Day last year. I will not cover them today.
Just note that we had a bit of a turnaround time during 2017 and 2018 when these were fixed, and we started building the modern customer offer that we see in Byggmax going forward. That has given really good results. As you can see on the right-hand side of this graph, sales has increased a lot during the last couple of years. It is, of course, important to be really transparent and honest that we are one of these companies that have been impacted positively by the COVID-19 pandemic in the sense that people were home and everything basically that related to the home increased in sales.
However, it's also really important to underline that a lot of this growth has come through our own work, through our own initiatives. This is very visible when comparing our sales performance versus the market development. In 2020, on the left-hand side of this chart, you can see that the market increased a lot, 20%, the B2C DIY market in the Nordic countries. Byggmax Group, at the same time, increased sales by 32%, so 12 percentage points better than the market. Last year, I think some people expected the market to decline or go back. The market was actually flat, and then Byggmax Group increased another 12%. Another year of growing 12% faster than the market.
This growth, as I mentioned earlier, comes from a set of specific growth initiatives that we've been driving for a couple of years now. We focus primarily on organic growth. We have three main drivers that we've been working on for a few years. The first one is what we call store upgrades. We have a new store concept that we call Store 3.0, that we are converting all of our stores towards. We know that that gives another 6% of sales per store. The reason is because we add some new assortment that is more relevant for today's DIYers, but we also change the whole customer experience in the store. Secondly, we've been focusing a lot on e-commerce, and a lot of time and effort have gone into that area and also given good results.
The e-commerce has doubled in sales over the last two years. Thirdly, there are still a lot of locations out there that don't have a low price offer still. We open new stores, and that also contributes to sales growth, of course. Last year, we also started doing some add-on acquisitions, businesses that fit with our low price, low cost model. Those I will come back to in a few minutes, but they also clearly contribute to growth already last year. Now, all these initiatives are also aiming to build what we call the modern discount offer, and it's quite an important concept, so let me explain what we mean by that. For many years in retail, the low price phenomenon has been strong and taken market share across basically retail categories and countries.
Today's consumers want a bit more. Just low prices is not enough. They also want to have a great experience. To take an example from the Byggmax's world, on the left-hand side of this page, you see the flooring department in the new store a few years ago, 2017. Here we had the most important flooring products at the best possible prices, which was great, but that was it. To the right-hand side is a flooring department in our new store concept. You still have the best and most important products at the very best prices, but you also have more brands, better product information, a nicer store experience, and which you may be able to see on your screens.
Below the products, there are flooring samples that you can take home and decide if you would like to have the product picked up at store or delivered to your door. We try to keep the same low price, but add a more relevant assortment and a higher quality perception. Since we've been working on this now for a few years, we can see the effects. The consumers really appreciate this. There are two things that I think is worth to highlight. First of all, we are still seen as the price leader in the market, which is, of course, crucial for us. Secondly, we're starting to mean more for more customers. We see that in our internal brand metrics, we see that customers increasingly appreciate us for things like service, having many brands, having good selection, quality, et cetera.
We also see it in external surveys and some recognitions and awards where we nowadays still get recognized for having the lowest prices on the market, but also for the best store experience or product quality. In addition to developing a more modern and relevant customer offer and driving organic sales growth, we have become pretty good at converting that sales growth into additional profit, what we call scale effects. For those of you who are particularly interested about the financial details of Byggmax and perhaps thinking about the expectations going forward, this could be a good page to think twice about. Here we see the financial development since the end of 2018. On the orange bars, there is the sales development.
As you can see, the sales has grown a lot, and again, as you may remember, partly because the market has increased, but as you may also remember, even more so because we've taken market share. The top line, the gray line, is the gross margin development, which is now structurally at a new level for us as a company. The reasons are mainly that we have a new kind of level of scale as a company, but also we have a new product mix which is more profitable. The dotted line below is the OpEx share of sales or the cost share of sales. Cost efficiency is sort of in our DNA. As we say internally, you need to have the lowest costs to be able to offer the lowest prices.
Even during the periods of really good sales development, we have still kept our efficiency initiatives and improved our cost position even further. In all, that of course means a very nice development for the operating margin, which has more than doubled and almost tripled over the last three years. The last part of the strategy update, which is to some extent the best part, at least in some of our minds, is that there is much more to get where this comes from. There is much more room for organic growth. Firstly, we can mention that these three main initiatives that we've been driving still have more to give all of them. In fact, the two acquisitions we did last year have added to this. I'll comment quickly on both of them.
The first one is we entered Denmark through acquiring a business called Næstved Lavpristræ in January last year. The Danish business has developed nicely in 2021, and we see that by using the Byggmax supply chain, we get synergies and higher profitability in the business. Now we can expand further into Denmark. Already this summer, we will have the first Byggmax-branded store opening in Denmark. It's our latest and biggest store concept that we have now adapted to the Danish market. That opens up more growth opportunities compared to where we were before. The other acquisition we did was a company called Right Price Tiles, a Norwegian company that has developed a really strong offer in, of course, particularly tiles. Both a great product private label portfolio, but also a good go-to-market approach.
This autumn, we will be opening the first tiles-focused store in Sweden under the Byggmax brand. Another opportunity for us to continue to grow. All in all, when we do the math and sum things up, we see an organic growth potential of SEK 5 billion going forward, which is more than enough to meet our sales target that we've set for ourselves. That summarizes the strategy update part, and we'll now shift to the climate agenda. Let me introduce the climate agenda, which is also today where I will share some news. We at Byggmax have decided to make climate the biggest priority of our sustainability work. The climate topic hardly needs to be introduced.
It is perhaps the biggest topic of our time, and it's a topic that I believe all companies will find a way to relate to in the coming years or decades. The good news for us in our industry is that our customers are really wanting this. They're wanting to find climate-friendly solutions. In fact, our own research shows that 66% of today's DIYers would appreciate being able to make more sustainable product choices. Good news. The bad news is that the retail industry hasn't come very far. Today, only 5% of global retail revenues have targets that align with the Paris Agreement. To us, this means opportunity. That means that if we move fast and are future-proofing our business, so to speak, we can get an advantage with the customers, of course.
We believe that this topic is also very important when it comes to recruiting people. We think we will have new and interesting conversations with our suppliers, perhaps even a bit more proud shareholders. We are engaging in this topic both because it is the right thing to do, but also we see a clear business opportunity. We have decided to take this challenge on with two main initiatives. The first initiative is about minimizing greenhouse gas emissions. We have a particularly radical target to reduce emissions that happen in our own operations. We also engage in the full value chain to reduce activities across the value chain and reach what's called a net zero value chain by 2040.
The second initiative, which is a bit maybe unusual and above and beyond minimizing emissions, is to engage in creating circular products that avoid greenhouse gas emissions in the first place. We do this through what we call Byggmax Green Ventures. This is a little bit of a change in business model for us in the sense that as a retailer, we particularly primarily sell others' products. But here we will move into developing and manufacturing and selling own products, but only circular products and products that meet some specific criteria. They should fit with our customer offer, which basically means that we can sell them in our own stores and e-commerce. They should have a positive benefit for the climate, but they should also be commercially viable products that generate sales and profit. In all, we hope to do more good than harm.
We see a potential for our company to have what we call a positive climate impact, which means that the climate benefits of the circular products would exceed the emissions. As a first step, exceed the emissions from our own operations, which we believe could happen actually already in next year. As a second step, exceed the emissions in our total value chain. Let me now go through these initiatives in a little bit more detail. Firstly, as said, we have set ambitious targets to minimize greenhouse gas emissions in the first place. Before I mention the specific targets, let me say something about how we have approached this, because there are some important principles that we have decided to follow. Three.
Firstly, we stick to what's sometimes called the first order of climate business or climate mitigation hierarchies, which basically says that in order for the world to have the maximum amount of impact on reducing carbon dioxide at the maximum possible speed, it's important that companies start with minimizing emissions in their own operations rather than the indirect operations of somebody else's. We have put extra focus on that. The second one is that we have decided to make all the impact in our own value chain. We will buy no carbon credits, we will make no offsets. The last one is that we, of course, want to be data-driven and externally validated. We follow the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which is the world's leading standard for carbon accounting.
We follow the methodology of the Science Based Targets initiative, which is the world's leading organization for validating climate targets. Those were long sentences. Now I will move forward to the targets. There are specifically three. The first one is what I mentioned briefly on the previous page. We have a quite ambitious target to reduce what's called emissions in our own operations or own emissions. This is sometimes called Scope 1 and 2. It's a new target that we haven't had before. Our ambition is to reduce those emissions by 90% in just over five years, by 2027. The second target is a target that relates to emissions from transportation, and this is our suppliers' transportation. This is in what's called Scope 3.
This is actually a target we had for quite some time, already since 2010, that are making good progress on. The last target is a target for the entire value chain, Scope 1, 2, and 3, which then, of course, includes the previous two targets, and that is also a new target. Here we have a target of reaching what's called net zero value chain by 2040. I will now briefly describe where we are on these targets because the good news is we already started working and making progress. On the own emissions, the whole game here is about electrification and moving to renewable energy.
The two most operationally important things we can do is to shift to 100% electric forklifts, we are today just below half, and to move the entire store fleet or at least 90% to renewable energy. We are over 70% today. The second target regarding transportation is about optimizing logistics, routes, and fill rates, and improving vehicles and also shifting from, for example, truck to boat. Here we've come quite far, already at -41%, targeting -70%. The last part, the value chain emissions, includes all indirect emissions, and the biggest part is the emissions that happen when the suppliers produce the products. It's important to work with the suppliers and the product choices.
Here we have, since last year, started asking all our suppliers of product-level greenhouse data, and we've also set climate agenda into all our category strategies. If you're interested in reading more about our climate footprint and actions, I would suggest reading our new sustainability report that will be available on Thursday this week. Now, the second initiative, which is, a bit different, and perhaps more exciting, is what we call the Green Ventures. We have decided to move into circular products, developing and manufacturing and selling own circular products. Again, products should have a good fit with Byggmax customer offer. We sell them in our own channels. They should have a positive climate benefit. That means they should avoid greenhouse gases in the first place, and they should be commercially viable, generating sales and profit.
In terms of setup and financial implications, this means that we will make investments into fully or partly owned entities. We've actually already made the first investment. We are looking at three more right now and, of course, welcome more ideas. We can already now see that the opportunities that we are looking at have potential to either meet or exceed the profitability target for the group. Let's look at the first investment. We have invested in a company called MoreWood, a Swedish startup founded by two gentlemen with a long experience from the DIY and home improvement sector in Sweden and in many other European countries. The aim of this company is to produce timber beams out of what's called cross-laminated timber, more specifically scrap from cross-laminated timber. Scrap that is today burned for heat, thereby releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
We at Byggmax act as sort of an anchor for the company. We have been part of the funding. We've invested SEK 7 million. We are the main customer, and we support the company operationally in a few ways, and we have an option to become the majority owner if we would so like. This idea has the potential to avoid a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, which we think is fun, actually can do it pretty fast because we can have the first products in our stores already this autumn. To describe a bit more about this initiative and idea, my colleague Per will explain that in more detail.
My name is Per Haraldsson, and I'm Commercial Director and Head of Sustainability at Byggmax. Byggmax has just announced the launch of our green venture initiative. We believe that our knowledge of what products the customer wants to buy in combination with modern techniques for production of circular products can make a big impact in reduction of emissions in the DIY sector. Being Head of Commercial Development at Byggmax but also Head of Sustainability made it really easy for me to see the benefits and the potential in investing in manufacture of green circular products. As you can see, the store I'm standing in is a very new store. It's less than one year old. It's from our latest version, 3.0, and it's realizing our vision of being a modern discounter.
Now please come on with me outside, and I will show you the first product from the Green Ventures initiative. This is a beam built in our MoreWood factory. It's made from scraps into new products. Every year, we at Byggmax sell millions of meters of beams in different dimensions. As a product, this new beam is superior to traditional beams. It's made by exact standards, it's completely straight, and it's constructed from CLT timber, which means it's stronger than traditional beams. All in all, commercially, it's just better. In Sweden, we have recently started constructing large houses from timber frameworks instead of from concrete. When these big building blocks of timber frameworks, CLT frameworks, are produced, there are cutouts from windows and doors that remain as leftovers. Today, those cutouts are burnt, thus creating CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
Instead of burning those cutouts, we can use those cutouts, those scrap products, into making new products. By recycling this material and creating new products from it, we create two benefits. First of all, we avoid emissions from when the scrap is burnt. Second, we avoid cutting down trees for creating new beams. We can basically create and manufacture any size of beams. Also, it's possible for us to create any variety of wooden products, and we will retail it at the same low prices that we always do at Byggmax. Byggmax customers get the fantastic products that they will enjoy a lot. It's as simple as that.
Thank you, Per. How much of a difference could this Green Ventures initiatives have in terms of climate impact? Let's look at some data and some scenarios. First of all, the entire value chain emissions in Byggmax Group was just below 225,000 tons last year. Now, this is the total value chain. This is all the way from the emissions that happen when the supplier produced the product, to our own handling of the product, to actually the consumer's use of the product. If we were to continue to grow according to our sales target and the same trend forward with the existing value chain footprint, in the year 2030, our emissions would almost have doubled, 420,000 tons.
The good news is, of course, that there's a lot of policies and actions happening to mitigate this. If we model out national policies, industry policies, actions that we are taking, and we draw a line in the year 2030, we have around 230,000 emissions in the year 2030 in the Byggmax entire value chain. How does Green Ventures stack up against this? If we look at the first four initiatives, the investment we have made and the three we are reviewing, and assess the potential of those, they have a potential to avoid about 250,000 tons of emissions by the year 2030. It is, of course, the case that maybe not all these initiatives are successful.
Of course, we just started, so we hope that there will be more than four ideas by the time we get to 2030. The point is that circular products that avoid greenhouse gas emissions in the first place, can make a real contribution to the climate challenge. We see that it also is commercially viable and have therefore decided to invest in this area. Summing up the climate agenda, we have decided to be part of the solution, both because it's the right thing to do, but also we believe there's a great business opportunity. We do it through two main initiatives, reduce emissions, particularly focused on our own emissions, but also engage in the full value chain, and through launching Byggmax Green Ventures to produce climate-friendly products.
In all, I think we, as a company and definitely myself, believe that if we can combine sort of the low prices that are the hallmark of the Byggmax business with the better quality experience that we're now building and climate-friendly solutions, that would really strengthen our brand and our business going forward. Let me summarize the presentation part of this event with just 2 or 3 pages to describe what all this means for us going forward. How to think about Byggmax given what you just heard. Well, first of all, the business idea hasn't changed. We still believe that everybody has the right to a fantastic home. We think you should think about Byggmax in 3 important points, particularly. Firstly, we are a retailer. We are a modern discounter that takes market share.
We are the leading discounter in the DIY sector in the Nordics, in a big consumer market, SEK 120 billion in market size. We have an offer that is taking market share, and we are now successful in four Nordic countries, which means we can continue to grow. Secondly, we aim to have what we then call positive climate impact. We will try to future-proof our business by trying to do more good than harm, focusing a lot on minimizing the emissions and moving into circular products. In all, that means that we are here to drive what we call sustainable, profitable growth. In addition to what's mentioned, we have organic growth initiatives that we know have a lot of potential left. We have the lowest cost in the industry, and we also have opportunities to do some add-on acquisitions that fit in.
We also are a very cash generative business. That means we generate cash to sufficiently fund our own growth and its investments and investments in Green Ventures while still being able to pay dividends to our shareholders. A year ago, as I mentioned in the beginning, we set new financial targets. We've since had a very good business momentum and are currently trending above those targets. Let me say a few comments around that. On the sales side first, where we aim for SEK 10 billion, we continued to see a good momentum last year, good growth with a still good market and gaining market share, as mentioned. The operating margin, EBITA margin, we are clearly above.
7%-8% is the target, and we are 11.7%, which also gives us opportunities to continue investing growth to reach the sales target. Similarly, for the leverage target, we are clearly below the net debt/EBITA target, which also gives room to invest in growth initiatives and in further Green Ventures. The dividend target is set to pay 50% of net income. Last year, we paid out 35%, plus we did some buybacks of shares. This year, the board of directors have asked the AGM to approve a dividend of SEK 4 per share compared to the SEK 2.75 that happened last year. Lastly, those of you who follow us know that we've actually had a climate target for quite some time that we always share when we talk about financial targets.
Now we, of course, update this to include the points that were covered earlier today. Lastly, short term, what's ahead in this year, in 2022? Well, in the last quarterly report, we were quite optimistic on the 2022 outlook, both in terms of the market and our own ability to continue to drive growth. Of course, there is now a lot of uncertainty in the world, but so far we see no reason to revise that optimistic outlook. That means we are positive on the market development. We continue to see a DIY market that is larger, significantly larger after the pandemic that boosted than before the pandemic, although not as large as during the pandemic.
Importantly, we continue to see an acceleration of a shift to low price, particularly in the higher sort of inflationary environment. It's probably as simple as more customers take the time to make price comparisons on the internet and shows the cheaper option. We've never had so much activity for growth in our own company as we have right now. We are upgrading stores at the highest pace we've ever done this quarter. We have the biggest ambition for improving e-commerce and adding e-commerce assortment that we've ever had. We aim to open 15 new stores this year, and we already made the first add-on acquisition. A small Danish e-commerce company, which we will include in the group as of January 2022. Lastly, we are now quite excited about embarking on the climate journey that we have set out.
We have already actions in place to start reducing emissions, and we hope to see the first circular timber beams in our stores and e-commerce already this autumn, 2022. That summarizes the presentation part of this event, so now we'll turn over to moderator to take questions.
Thank you very much, Mattias, for your presentation. Before we move into the Q&A session, just a couple of follow-up questions.
Yep.
End of your presentation. Now, Byggmax is a success story in many ways. You showed it here in numbers. Looking at the stock market and the share price, I was watching, it has fallen from SEK 90, like in the beginning of the year, low 60s in March here, and now I just checked SEK 67.50. What is it here that the investors don't understand?
Well, I think I will leave it for the investors and the market to assess the share price and refrain from commenting on that. I think in the last couple of months, there's been a lot of uncertainty in the world and a lot of shares have tumbled. In the longer view, I think it's also been a lot of change in Byggmax. I think it's probably difficult as an investor to separate what is our own performance and what is COVID and other market busts.
Mm-hmm.
Have to do a little bit of work to try to make the analysis.
Time may bring clarity to this. Now, you mentioned inflation in your presentation. I was wondering, you say that you're a modern discounter. How will inflation, that is rising prices, affect you? You said, like, it might actually spur your business.
Yeah. Well, there's never a guarantee for anything. If we look historically, all the macroeconomic shifts that have happened during my time, which have increased costs, have actually led to increased consumer prices. Now, that's both a good and a bad thing because, of course, we as a low price company would like the customers to buy at low prices. For business, it's good because sales go up if we have higher prices, and then, you have to look at the world in an optimistic way. When everything is more expensive, we also see that more customers choose the low price option.
Mm-hmm.
two reasons for why that actually has helped our business the last couple of years.
Okay, interesting. Now, the COVID situation, it's kind of post-pandemic, not in China, but in our part of the world. It has been a COVID bump for you, a very good year 2020, record year, thanks to the pandemic effect. If you compare 2022 to 2020, where will 2022 land, you think?
No, I think we have to be really honest to say we had a really big boost of that. What we see now, which actually started happening already this autumn when the, I think, situation opened up a bit, is that some of the habits that people have gotten are sticky. The DIY and other sectors related to the home are decreasing compared to the pandemic, but not as much as before the pandemic. We see that the housing market is still strong. People have summer houses, they have boats and pets, and the DIY market is actually continuing very nicely.
It's kind of a sticky effect because you said after Q4 that when society opens up, people would do other things.
Yes.
We are not doing other things.
No, but we're doing other things compared to the sort of pandemic. Compared to before the pandemic, we are not traveling as much and more people have summer homes, et cetera.
Kind of a sticky effect.
In between, yes.
Okay. Thank you, Mattias. Let's move on to the Q&A session. Welcome, also the CFO, Helena Nathhorst.
Thank you.
Also the Commercial Director and the Head of Sustainability, Per Haraldsson. Welcome to-
Thank you.
Thank you all three of you for this Q&A session. Just a couple of questions for you before I look into my iPad. Already, a lot of questions for you there. Now, Helena, Mattias was talking about the Green Ventures, the new initiative from Byggmax. What will be the financial consequences of the Green Ventures for Byggmax?
We see a lot of positive consequences from Green Ventures. As mentioned in the presentation, 66% of our customers are interested in more sustainable alternatives. Internally in the organization, sustainable targets are positively received. In combination with the commercial aspects and our long-term initiatives, this will over time give a positive impact on our financials.
How will you fund these new investments? Where will you take the money from?
We have a solid balance sheet and very strong cash flow. In 2021 we invested more than SEK 200 million in our growth initiatives. We had a dividend to our shareholders, we had two acquisitions, and we concluded a share buyback program. We foresee that going forward, we will have sufficient cash flow to combine these investments with continued dividend to our shareholders.
You have money to invest.
Yes.
Now, will these Green Ventures in any way change your financial targets?
We updated our targets last year, and we still see that meeting our targets is an achievement. We are not updating them now, but absolutely, we are on a good path. In time we will revise the targets if needed.
Mm-hmm. Well, that was actually the answer to my next question, which is Mattias said you're already trending above the financial targets, good way there. Are you being too modest? Is it already now time to raise the financial targets?
As mentioned, I think still it's an achievement to reach these targets for the moment.
Per, a couple of questions for you.
Yes.
Mattias was talking about the Green Ventures, the MoreWood, the first investment you've done. What is the business plan for this?
Well, the business plan is to build the first factory, which will be located in Hässleholm in Skåne, south of Sweden. It's being built as we speak. Machinery is being purchased and installed right now. Production will start in limited quantity in May or June. In June, I think.
Mm-hmm.
That is the first factory. We see potential for more factories over time. We'll see. Right now it's the first factory. The business plan is to run it on one shift, which produces around 12,000 cubic meters of wood products.
Mm-hmm. Okay. This was your first investment.
Yes.
Now, Mattias was mentioning that this is not the last investment.
No.
Could you elaborate a little bit on what's coming up ahead?
Yeah. Well, we have, like Mattias said, a few initiatives. I don't want to go into detail exactly on the details of what they are. I can say this much, it's a lot of them have to do with the circular wooden fibers. We believe that reusing wooden fibers instead of burning them and instead of making new product from them is a great opportunity.
More initiatives coming up ahead.
Absolutely.
Mm-hmm. Mattias also talking about your own emissions. Now you're promising radical cuts, quite radical cuts there. What would you say is the main risk that you won't succeed?
Well, to be frank, I think it's not that difficult. It's about electrification, and that technology is already there. Electrification of forklifts, electrification of cars. Then of course we have the production of the renewable energy, electricity. That is probably, if I need to choose one that is more risky or difficult than the others, that's probably the one. Because about a quarter of all electricity is purchased through our landlords. We need to have them change their energy production or how they buy the energy. Some of our landlords still heat with gas or oil, for example, so some investments will be needed. I don't think it's very difficult, but of course that may take some more time compared to electrification of forklifts.
Well, if it isn't difficult, why haven't you done it so far?
Well, we just now have this strategy and we're proud to present it, and now we have realized that it's high time for us to have very aggressive targets on this, and now we decide to do it. We have been pursuing electrification of forklifts, which is one of the major parts of CO2 emission from us for four years. Now we see that there are reasons for us to proceed with more initiatives in this area.
Mm-hmm. It's full steam ahead on cutting emissions.
Absolutely.
Now Mattias, question on M&As you were talking about. You are now present in 4 countries, almost 200 stores, and you made acquisitions, 2 last year, 1 this February.
Yep.
The Danish Byggmax. You talked about also organic growth potential of SEK 5 billion.
Yes.
What would you say is the potential for the M&A agenda? What's the coming M&A agenda?
No, I think the main potential is the organic growth, the SEK 5 billion in organic growth that we see. M&A is sort of a, as they say, a lumpy business. It's zero or one, so if you want to buy something big then you can go really big. We are not interested in making a huge acquisition. We buy smaller businesses that fit into our strategic agenda. I would expect that the vast majority of our growth going forward comes from organic growth.
Mm-hmm. Also other M&As in pipeline. Are you doing M&As both geographically and product-wise?
Yes.
Will it continue?
Yeah, we have chosen to.
Okay.
Yes, actually, exactly so. There are two main reasons we do M&A. One is geographical footprint, and the other one is to strengthen in new categories.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That will go on. Now, lots of questions coming in here. Let's pick one about the margin target, 7.5% or 7%-8% is quite a bit below the margins in 2021. How will that impact the profits, Helena?
Yes, we spoke a lot about it in the presentation, that it has been a period of high economies of scale and growth in this period. We still see that investments going forward could sort of have some impact on the margins. As said, we are on a good way and trading above those margins.
Coming back to the M&A situation, Mattias, what differences do you see in terms of price competition comparing Denmark, Sweden and Norway?
Well, good question. Maybe I will start and then, Per, you can add to this. I think in general, Denmark is a very price-driven market. That is my experience also from other retail sectors. We actually like that because that's something that speaks to our favor. We're good at keeping costs down and prices low, we are quite optimistic on that. I think in our sector, we have quite aggressive price competitors almost all our markets. Don't you say, Per?
I agree. We can see a clear position for us on the Danish market, that we aim to fulfill, and I think, price-wise and margin-wise, I think it will be okay.
Mm-hmm.
I'm looking forward to the first store to see that being proven.
You're looking forward to this competition. Now, coming back to the circular products here for you, Per, will circular products be available in all stores or only in selected ones?
It's absolutely our ambition to have circular products available in all stores. Like I said, the first initiative, MoreWood. We're setting up the first factory now, and volumes need to be ramped up. Over time, it will be available in all stores.
Over time, when is that? A little bit more exact.
It could be in a year's time or something like that, if everything goes well.
Another one on the climate agenda. How much of a competitive advantage do you see that the climate agenda will give Byggmax versus the competitors?
That's a good question. I think going back to Mattias's presentation, for us it's first of all, and again, it's the right thing to do. We need to have a climate agenda because it's the right thing to do. Once, now that we decided to take on this agenda, we decided to do something really positive and good from it. Investing in this sort of businesses is right for us.
Mm-hmm.
You want to add to that, Mattias?
I think, obviously it's sought after by customers and such, but I think there's a really important part, which is actually my own experience also from before, that, I mean, young people and people that are looking for jobs today are really passionate about this topic. I remember last week when we have quarterly reports, we always do an internal presentation afterwards, and it was one of the last few quarters, we had like a really, really great quarter, and the first question was, what do we do on sustainability. I think being able to recruit and keep people is, you know, a really important core of our business, and that can help to be a bit-
Mm-hmm
At the forefront on the sustainability part.
To show your feat here on the sustainability agenda. Now, we talked about financials, Helena, about these new circular products. What about the margins? How will they affect the margins, the new circular products? Can you say something more about it?
Over time, hopefully a more positive impact, but I'd say to begin with, they are in line with what we have today.
Okay. It's in line with today. Will the new sustainability investments have any tangible impact on the CapEx profiles? Is that for you?
That's for Helena.
Helena.
Helena can start.
Yes.
Will it have an impact on the-
On CapEx profile, capital expenditures.
Yes. As said, we do invest already a lot in our growth, and I think that this should be seen as a normal part of our growth investments, going forward.
Mm-hmm.
We will have cash flow to finance this. It's prioritized between all other investments.
Mm-hmm. A question on price also, maybe Mattias, this is for you. The pricing power, that is how you can actually make the higher costs come over to the consumer.
Yep.
You've been fairly good on that already. Can you get full compensation also moving forward for increased costs?
Well, there's never any guarantee, but it's sort of always been the case the last couple of years. We have a little bit of a special situation because we have a pricing strategy that is quite simple, and Per can explain the details, but it's. Actually, I can probably do it because it's so simple. It's so we have the lowest price on every product compared to every competitor. For us, it's more about following the market. What happened, you look at the NOK development in Norway two, three years ago, everything became more expensive in Norwegian krone. All the prices went up on the costs and the consumer prices. When it happened on timber prices last year, it was the same. When it happens to some logistics prices, it was the same.
When it happens now with some products that are impacted by heat costs, for example, it happens. I think it's very much a pattern that we have seen.
Mm-hmm.
Based on that, yes, it seems very plausible.
It seems you can go on with this. Okay. Consumer behavior, we were talking about this, Mattias, a little bit before. What do you see in terms of consumer behavior as of late, as the Nordic customer returns to their workplaces now-
Mm-hmm
We can go back to work?
Yeah.
We cannot be at home, building on our own houses during the lunch break.
Exactly. Constrained to the hammers.
Yes.
No, I think this is something we were actually really curious about internally. What will happen when, you know, things normalize? We have seen very limited change. I think the biggest change in behavior was probably, I would say, during summer, when people were starting to sort of travel domestically and meet outdoors again. Since then, the market is below the pandemic level but still much better than it was before. That has just sort of continued, I think is the-
Yeah
my experience.
I can add to that also. Last year, we saw, especially some periods when a lot of stores were closed, for example, we saw, of course, naturally a very large expansion of the e-commerce because that was the way how you could buy it. Today, it's still higher than it was the previous years, but the e-commerce share has adapted depending on where the consumer is at for the moment, so to speak.
Following up on e-commerce, now, do you have a target for e-commerce? Today, it's 22%, around 22%, no?
No specific targets.
No
It's a really important prioritized growth area for us.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
22%, is that kind of where you wanna be or?
We think, talking target, it's no secret. We think 25% or 30% is more realistic. Maybe it will be even 35% at some point, but obviously it's a growing consumer behavior that will also continue to grow. We also see by far the fastest growth the last two years in the combination of stores and e-commerce or click and collect, for example, is growing almost double the pace of sort of regular e-commerce.
Is it click and collect? Because, what are the key factors that will drive e-commerce, do you think?
Would you like to start?
I think, of course, having a relevant assortment to the customers is really important, so that's something that we are prioritizing a lot. Also to have the right distribution channels, so that you can have an offer for the customer to have the products easily delivered home quickly and in a way that is very plannable, if you will, that you know when things are gonna come and so on. Really work on the fundamentals of the offer is really important.
Mm.
I think something that is interesting when it comes to Byggmax and e-commerce, which is very different from almost any other retailer, is that we are coming from a situation where we had low prices on just a few products to have high volume on those products. With e-commerce, we can offer a lot of products because we can have them at our central warehouse or at our suppliers. It is a big opportunity for us to mean more for the customers, so we've increased the assortment a lot compared to where we were just a few years ago. That also of course helps the growth.
It does, certainly. A question on buybacks. What do you say, Mattias? Can we expect more share buybacks?
Well, it's a question for the board, obviously.
Yes, obviously.
I would be surprised if the board did not ask the AGM for a mandate and the AGM approved the mandate last year, so if that happens again, the board has the tool. Necessarily, as we are generating a lot of cash flow and have opportunity to do last year, sort of everything we wanted basically, or could do with the cash. I'm sure it'll be part of the toolbox, and then the board have to decide.
It's up to the board. Back to your geographical expansion here. How much of your sales growth target of the SEK 10 billion you mentioned do you see taking place outside of Sweden?
Well, for the next sort of few years, there's still a lot of potential in the Swedish markets. It's also because we have developed more store formats to be able to address more types of towns. When we approach 2025 and beyond, it's much more focused on the other markets that we're in.
Mostly Sweden as of now, but, more-
Shifting forward, yes.
Okay. What's the prediction for the growth of the overall DIY market for 2022?
I don't know if there is such a prediction. I think I was on a meeting last week with a lot of CEOs of different European DIY retailers, and I think everybody is expecting somewhat of a sort of shift back given the COVID boost.
Mm
first half of last year. I don't have a number. Have you guys seen any? No.
Haven't seen any. Sorry.
Back to the Nordic markets here. You mentioned the price competition, you talked a little bit about that. What about the competition overall, not just price? What does it look like? What's your strategy?
We have two main sets of competitors. We're a little bit of a niche company in between the two blocks, you could say. On the one hand side, we have the companies that we call big boxes that pretty much have everything under one roof. Here in Sweden, it's sort of Bauhaus and Hornbach, and there are different players in the different markets. K-rauta is really big in Finland, for example. That's one set of competitors. The other one is what's called, typically called trade players in English, focused on craftsmen or professional players. There are a lot of these kind of companies, and they are, again, not that focused on the consumers, but of course, the consumers are allowed to shop. We are a little bit in between those two.
On the versus the big boxes, we have a quicker and faster experience and you know, a more focused offer, and versus the trade players, we are of course much lower prices.
A little bit in between, when it comes to the Nordic competitors. Now, Per, coming back to this, caps on emissions, will it be controlled by any outside experts or how will you manage?
That's a very good question. I think it's first of all the calculations that we do are based on the best standards, the greenhouse gas standards, the GHG. Of course, the targets are set together with SBTi, Science Based Targets initiative. Of course, there's a world around us that is evolving very quickly. At this time right now, there's a lot of mechanisms that still are not in place. We're looking forward to having more details on how these sort of emissions should be measured, because currently it's not clear.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
We will follow that and of course do our best to calculate and follow and do it by the book, so to speak.
On the sustainability agenda, we're talking about ESG. What is Byggmax doing on the S and the G, the social and governance?
Well, we do a lot, of course. We have, if you take the S, the social aspect of it first. For us, it's about the employees and the suppliers in this case. We have substantial reporting since 10 years, where we do a lot of calculations and we show all the data very transparently. For us, it's about working on health and security for the employees in this case. On the supplier side, first of all, I'd like to say that we have a lot of our suppliers based within the EU, so very few of our suppliers are outside the EU.
We don't have a lot of risk suppliers, but those risk suppliers we have, we have strategies and we have code of conduct, and we do visits on the premises of those suppliers also.
That's for the S. For the G, well, that's a different story. Of course, it's for us to have the whole way of governing the company set up properly with the board and the instructions for all the employees and how they should work and so on. All of that is in place for us.
Mm-hmm.
That should be okay.
Mm-hmm. It's time to sum up here. Mattias, what would you say now? You have a good position in many ways. You've described this during this investor update. Moving forward now in 2022, what are your main focus points?
Well, our main focus points is getting towards the sort of longer-term targets that we've set in 2025 and actually not be that focused on 2022, to be honest.
2022 is already.
No, but we have to be. We can talk every quarter and every year, but you know, have to be a little bit more long-term than that. We have a really ambitious growth target. We definitely feel that we have the potential to get there, and we have the record amount of activities to build for growth this year. That I'm really looking forward to in 2022, and of course, embarking on this climate journey is really, really fun.
Mm-hmm. With the new circular products. Now, I was reading in Dagens Industri, you got the question if you should choose another career, and you said, "Oh, maybe I want to become a professional soccer player, or maybe I want to play guitar in a hard rock band.
Yes.
You were thinking that it might be too late, and you said, soccer coach.
Yeah.
I don't think I don't get the feeling that you're changing career here.
No, I'm not. I was so hoping you would say you have the opportunity for me to become. No, I do not. I have a lot of fun where I am. Yes.
Well, the soccer coach is probably not too late for that.
Could be.
Okay. Thank you very much, Per. Thank you very much, Helena. Thank you very much, Mattias.
Thank you.
Also, of course, thank you to you posing questions and listening to this update. Just a bit of information before we close this update. Now, the sustainability report, Mattias was mentioning that in his presentation, it will be published on the Byggmax Group website already on Thursday, March 21. The questions that we didn't have time to answer, but I actually think we answered them all, but if there are questions that you didn't get your answer to, that you will find the answers also on Byggmax Group website, as well as this film, if you wanna review parts of this update. The next good opportunity to follow up on these questions and other ones will be the Q1 report, the first quarterly report for Byggmax, which is on April 21. Thank you very much for attending and listening to this update.