Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Clas Ohlson Q2 report presentation. My name is Kristofer Tonström. I'm the President and CEO, and with me, Pär Christiansen, our CFO. I'll start with a short business update. Pär will take us through the financial development and events after the reporting period.
Then I'll wrap it up before we move into a Q&A. Headlining the second quarter, it's another quarter where we deliver strong profitability, excluding IFRS, but also excluding a one-time payment from Fora of SEK 25 million. We're delivering SEK 160 million operating profit. On a rolling 12 months basis, that gives us a margin of 6.6% versus our range and the commitment of 6%-8%.
Looking at the quarter, we've been growing total sales 4%, of which online is 36%. In terms of customer acquisition, we're growing our customer base, most notably in Norway. We have now more than 1 million members in our Club Clas program just one year after launch, which is encouraging. Looking at the November sales that we're also reporting today, we're growing in total 6% and delivering a little bit more than SEK 1 billion in November. Digging a little bit more into the details of the second quarter, organic sales and like-for-like was up 3%, and our total sales 4%+.
Traffic has continuously been a little bit lower to our stores, but we've been able to drive higher conversion and meeting the customers better and better. Also looking at online, we've delivered 36% sales growth and our gross margin is also improving to 43.1%. Obviously, it's the currency effect helping us, but also mix and other things, and Pär will come back to that. Looking at the EBIT margin for the quarter, it's 9.6%. Again, we'll come back to this, but we received this one-time payment from Fora of SEK 25 million that a lot of companies like us have received over the last few months.
Our cash position remains strong with a net-to-EBITDA ratio of -0.8. Net-net, looking at the quarter, it's obviously been a quarter where very much the Clas Ohlson team have done a tremendous job from everybody working in transports in terms of fighting for containers, getting chartered boats, getting the products to us, an amazing team in our distribution center in Insjön that have done everything and beaten records every week in terms of getting products in and out in quick speed. Last but not least, everybody in store being agile and rebuilding stores as much as needed to compensate where there are a few shortages of products to show others.
All in all, a solid quarter, very much based on the focus from the highly engaged team. Looking a little bit at the year then versus our focus areas that we've been talking about for a few quarters. The first focus area is strengthening our key product categories. As I said earlier, we see conversion increasing, but also in terms of our average ticket value.
The good thing is that the destination categories that we are focusing on disproportionately are growing disproportionately. We've talked about organized many times before, but it keeps on growing double digits. Looking at this season now leading up to Christmas, it's also encouraging to see our lighting assortment with everything from solar lights to garden lighting showing strong growth.
We've been able to really have the right assortment in place for the quarter. Looking at the second focus area, capturing traffic, again, here we see in terms of brand that our strength in Norway is proven by the fact that, as I said earlier, we've added 1 million members over the last year. Also we were awarded the number one brand across Norwegian retail. That shows the strength there. Also, we've had approximately 30 million visits to our online in the second quarter. We, for the first time in November this year, see a slight increase in physical store traffic. Looking at the third focus area, which is about growing eCom.
Obviously, these three things work very much in synchronization, but looking and double-clicking a bit more on eCom, we have been able to increase the capacity for really handling high amounts of orders. Again, we've been driving conversion rates effectively in the second quarter. Double-clicking a little bit on the ability to sell online, I would say we now have a very robust customer-centric logistics structure in place, a great combination of our distribution center in Insjön, where we have done investments on automation and other things, we've increased the capacity, and we have increased also speed of delivery. What you see on the slide here is two to five days on average. Looking at Sweden, which is obviously close by, we've been able to deliver within one to two days.
Norway, Finland, for obvious reasons, takes a little bit more time. That's why it's great that we have the combination of our store network with distribution centers basically spread across Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Both feeder store is growing, i.e., where we ship products directly home to consumers from a few physical stores.
Here we have same day, next day delivery. Also the click and collect service is still popular among customers. With this robustness in terms of customer-centric logistics, it gives us an ability to deliver on our customer promises. We see that in our customer satisfaction. Looking at NPS, we are on a solid level versus all retail average benchmarks.
The dotted line is the ambition, so we still have a way to go in terms of pushing this upwards. We're measuring this every day across customer care, all stores and eCom. Obviously within our physical stores and on customer care, we are on very high levels, and on eCom, we are constantly improving.
Looking then at the second point, which is the product reviews, this is really the quality of our consumers basically rating our products. Here we see that we are above target and we are improving, which is encouraging, and again, links back to the whole focus on strengthening the assortment of what we sell to drive conversion and ATV. Then last but not least, we are progressing on our sustainability agenda. We have lots of examples from across categories.
One that for the season is particularly relevant is the shift we did a few years ago from paraffin to stearin in all the candles that we sell. Just in the last 12 months, we've been able to actually save 350 tons of fossil fuels just because of that shift. That's one small example, but it's those examples that are relevant for our customers, so they know how they can act in order to make a positive difference for themselves, while also a positive impact on the planet. We've also signed an agreement to install solar panels across the roof of our distribution center in Insjön.
We keep working hard in terms of our audits of suppliers, both environmental audits, but also in terms of ensuring everybody we work with delivers on our code of conduct principles. Last but not least, we've been ranked now the seventh most sustainable consumer goods company on the Nasdaq Stockholm Exchange. With that short intro, I'll hand over to Pär to take us through a bit more details on the financial development and the events after the reporting period. Pär.
Thank you, Kristofer. Good morning, everyone. Looking at sales in the second quarter, we grew 4%. Like-for-like was up 3%, and organic sales was up 3%. The store network was unchanged compared to last year. If we take a look back two years, we can see that sales per country have a little bit different development. Looking at Sweden, we have had a flattish growth over two years, but the last year we had 6% growth. Looking at Norway, we still have a decline, looking back two years of 1%, but the last year we have grown 3%. At last, Finland, we have grown 2% last year, but over two years, we have still a decline of 13%.
If we look at the online channel in the second quarter, looking back two years, we have grown 70% over two years and 36%, as Kristofer said, in the last quarter, so that is encouraging. If we look at the sales development for the first half year, total sales is up 2%, organic sales is up 1%, and like-for-like sales is unchanged.
We have online sales up 27% and unchanged number of stores. The gross margin in the second quarter grew to 43.1%. It was positively impacted by the weaker purchasing currency, the U.S. dollar, and little bit reduced sourcing cost, and also a much stronger sales currency in the NOK. On the negative side, we were impacted by the currency hedges then.
That little bit offset the sales currency, and also from future hedging and the exchange rate effects from inventory delays. Net, we had a positive impact on the gross margin, as you see. The share of selling expenses a little bit flattish. It increased by 0.1 percentage point to 32.1%. The administrative expenses grew by SEK 1 million to SEK 51 million.
We still have a continuous cost focus on our agenda to maintain and maybe also slightly decrease the cost. Looking at the operating profit in the second quarter, it increased to SEK 204 million compared to SEK 148 the year before. If we look at the EBIT margin, including IFRS, it was 9.6%, and excluding IFRS, it was 8.7%.
The earnings per share in the quarter was SEK 2.34 . Including in this, we have the SEK 25 million non-recurring payment from Fora, as mentioned by Kristofer. Looking at the first half year, operating profit increased to SEK 351 million compared to SEK 340 million the year before. EBIT margin increased to 8.4%.
Looking at the EBIT margin excluding IFRS, it was 7.5%. Earnings per share for the first half year is SEK 3.97 . Investments for the first half year amounted to SEK 83 million, compared to SEK 150 million the year before. Investments was mainly into new stores and refurbishment, IT systems, and also investments related to our distribution system.
The inventory level in the second quarter grew to SEK 2,114 million. At the end of the period, and that should be seen as preparation for the important November and December sales period. Looking at cash flow, we had a very strong cash flow in the quarter, amounted to SEK 412 million compared to SEK 368 million the year before. And we have, as Kristofer says, net cash position in the quarter. Net debt to EBITDA amounted to -0.8, and we right now have approved credit facilities of SEK 650 million, of which we used zero. Moving on to the events after the reporting period. Today we also announced November sales, strong sales with 6% up to SEK 1,021 million.
Organic sales was up 4% and like-for-like 4%. We had growth in online by 9% and the store network was unchanged compared to November last year. Also, we have an encouraging trend now with increasing store traffic in November for the first time in a long period. Looking a little bit at macro trends, we can see that the container freight prices and shipping costs are a bit flattening out, and that is encouraging going forward, that we hopefully have reached the peak. Looking at the currencies, we have got a little bit strengthened NOK/SEK relationship, and U.S. dollar has improved. In the latest period, it has done a little bit, got worse.
Looking closer to that, we need to look at what we need to do to then offset these things. The cost for the freight cost will probably hit third and fourth quarter more strongly than it did in the second quarter. As we said before, we will take the counteractive measures in pricing, looking at sourcing, and of course optimizing sales mix, and look at products and packaging to keep or improve the gross margin going forward. Handing back to Kristofer.
Thank you very much, Pär. A short summary and outlook before we move into the Q&A. Basically, we will continue to build on our strengths. As we talked about before, only 20 out of a million companies actually survive for more than 100 years, and we are one of those few companies. We have a lot of strengths, but also obviously a lot of things we wanna do to move forward. First of all, we are playing in a very attractive market, valued at approximately SEK 90 billion in terms of home improvement. We have shown this quarter, but also previous quarters, that we have a strong financial and solid base and a strong track record.
We're becoming more and more of a leader in terms of sustainability across our industry, and we see that is extremely important to our customers moving forward, apart from just being the right thing to do as a company. We also have an incredibly strong brand. We saw examples of being the number one brand in Norway.
Apart from that, we have actually 200 million customer visits every single year with a mix of our online and offline channels. We have enormous household penetration, about 90% across the market. We have a strong, solid position also from a brand customer point of view. Of course, our job is to capture value and go for compelling growth opportunities within that attractive market.
We believe that we are equipped with the relevant capabilities now to take the next big step. We are guided by our strategy, the blue heart strategy, the blue heart in the middle, which really signals the high engagement and the passion for Clas Ohlson as a company, both within our coworkers, and I think, as I said earlier, we have really proven that in this quarter and in November, a team that really does everything to deliver on our customer promises and to make Clas Ohlson better and better. Then the second thing, our customer satisfaction that we also show that that's moving in the right direction.
We believe that if we can focus on our purpose of simplifying life in all kinds of homes and work across building a winning team and driving customer satisfaction, we will translate that into sustainable, profitable growth and long-term shareholder value. The financial targets remains the 5% top-line growth and delivering 6%-8% in terms of EBIT margin moving forward.
To reiterate these focus areas that we've been talking about over the last few quarters, it's really about strengthening our key product categories to find more ways to simplify life for our customers across categories. Seasons will always be important, but we need to have more reasons to visit Clas Ohlson, and that's really about the destinations.
You should come to us when you wanna organize your home, as said earlier, if you want lighting, whatever type of support in terms of lighting up your home. That's two examples of that. It's all about solving the customer's most relevant problems and thereby growing destination categories.
The second point is capturing traffic, and that's very much linked into leveraging our strong brand, but also keep working on strengthening and not taking that for granted. That's very much linked into optimizing our marketing efforts, but also of course, capturing and leveraging the traffic that we get and ensure we can create value and be commercial in everything that we do versus our customer base.
The Club Clas membership program is and will be one of the most important cornerstones for us because that's where we collect first-hand customer data, and it's really about building long-term relevance with our customers. Again, we have seen growth in that area. Last but not least, if we do the first two well, we will also continuously grow eCom, and then we need to keep working on the things that have improved eCom over the last couple of years.
That's, you know, lead times, working on the digital customer meeting, and integrating the edge that we have of 230 physical touch points whereby our stores as both logistics hubs, but also to drive customer satisfaction on a personal level. We believe that's important, and it's a strength.
Looking forward, we have now preparedness to take on also the future. Our job is now to ensure that we become better and better. Growth is very much a focus for us, while, of course, ensuring that we deliver on our profitability targets. Of course, we need to be, as always, very agile and closely monitor what's going on now with the pandemic across our countries.
Just in the last few weeks, we now have restrictions again across our sales markets, and it's all about focusing on the things that we can influence. I must say that I feel confident in the team. There are so many blue hearts out there, and we have learned over the last two years that it's all about adapting to what happens to us. We can't change that.
It's about working on the things we can influence and ensure that we meet the customer and give great service no matter what happens in terms of restrictions. We need to monitor that closely. With that, we summarize the presentation part, and then we will move into our Q&A. Niklas.
Thank you and good morning. Let's start by asking if we have any questions from the telephone conference.
Yes. Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing star two to cancel. Our first question comes from Carl Deijenberg with Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and good morning, Pär and Kristofer. First, a question here on current trading and also going into sort of the seasonally most important period here. You already said sort of development seemed to be doing well here in November and also positive development in the traffic to stores. Could you say anything or sort of elaborate a bit on potential COVID restrictions here? What kind of risks do you see maybe particularly in Norway? Could you share anything about what you've seen here in the first week of December as this positive trend that you saw in November also continued, or have consumers started being a bit more cautious here in the early days of December?
Yeah, good morning, Carl. On that, as said, we saw in November for the first time a slight increase on traffic to stores. That said, we started to see the first restrictions coming both in Norway and Finland already in the end of November, and we could see a little bit of an impact there. Relating to December, it's still a little bit too early to tell.
Obviously here it's about Pär, you know, optimizing the impact between channels and quickly adapting if things changes. There are no stores closed today, but obviously the restrictions over the last few days have increased. We do see some, you know, consumers being a little bit more careful in terms of moving around city centers, et cetera.
Too early to tell on December. Again, the focus is working on the things that we can influence. The good thing is, as you could see from Pär's inventory numbers, that we have products to sell. Now it's about to welcome customers no matter what channel they choose to support that. Still a bit early to tell on December.
Okay. Very well. My second question is on the gross margin here. I mean, we're talking about a quite substantial gross margin expansion here of 130 basis points year-on-year. Is there any way you could sort of quantify the different effects a bit here just to understand sort of the mix here and the gross margin expansion? That would be very helpful.
Pär, do you wanna take that?
Yeah, I can take that. I mean, as we write the report, there are some different factors influencing the gross margin. If you want to take out one of the positive, main positive things is the currency, the U.S. dollar that influence products that's been purchased way back and then now go into the inventory, into the sales, has a positive effect. Also, the NOK sales is impacting us positively. We have not yet seen the big impacts of the freight cost that will probably hit us in Q3 and Q4. How we will offset that will still remain a discussion within the company, you know, in terms of pricing and other means.
I think the currency effect is the biggest one. The other thing is a mix effect from the channels, where you see some of the cost taken in the gross margin if we sell it through stores. The gross margin then includes everything from taking the cost to the shelf. In the eCom, the actual transportation cost to the customer goes into the selling cost. So that could be a little bit difference, where you probably expected a better selling cost maybe and a worse gross margin. So that could be a little bit of where the cost actually hit the P&L in the way we distribute it. So that's the short answer.
Yeah. Very well. A follow-up on that, I mean, going into Q3 now on the topic of freight cost, will that sort of the lagging effect you were talking about, is that starting from sort of the beginning of Q3, or will there be a sort of a lagged effect coming in from, for example, the middle of Q3 and onwards, or when do you anticipate that effect to sort of have the full power, so to say?
It's all affecting in the second quarter, but it was not that big. You know, it was not the biggest effect. I think given that the sales period, I mean, it's percentage of sales, so of course the third quarter in millions will be probably hit most for us. Then the fourth quarter is a weaker sales quarter, so maybe that will be a higher impact in percentage points, but not in millions. It depends a little bit how you phrase the question. I think it will then a little bit even out.
Of course, there's new restrictions right now, but if we look at the freight cost we get, if we want a price one year from now or two years from now, it goes down quite quick. We perceive that we have reached the peak of the freight cost period now, and everything then will go down from here.
Yeah. Yeah. Very well. A follow-up on that. I mean, mitigation strategies on that topic. Could you discuss a bit on your pricing strategy here in Q2? Have you been forced to sort of raise prices substantially? Is that within certain product categories? Is it more tilted towards your private label assortment? Or is that still, you're expecting that to be sort of later on going into Q3 instead? Or has that already sort of started to happen?
Yeah. Looking at pricing and our pricing strategy, we are obviously working extremely, you know, actively with our pricing on a going basis every month and week, basically. Looking at the pricing is obviously driven by lots of different things. Higher pricing will of course also be one variable. The way we look at pricing is across key categories and across key product groups. We always wanna ensure that we deliver great customer value, so we need to be competitive, very competitive in some areas, and we can allow ourselves to be less competitive in others. It's really about playing the accurate mix. There has been some pricing effects already, and we keep working actively on that.
The key thing is ensuring that we do it customer-centric, so we don't run off and do pricing just to offset short-term price increases in. It's working actively with that, but I think we've proven at least across this quarter that as part of everything else, we've done a fairly good job there. We will continue to monitor that and market price is obviously one of those factors.
For our next question, we have Andreas Lundberg with SEB. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Good morning. Well, some of the questions were already asked, but you mentioned a more efficient logistics as a positive on the gross margin. Can you explain what that means and how do you see that going forward?
I mean, the logistics network, as Kristofer described, is you know everything from where we buy the product to the end customer. I think now we have created the ability to be more customer-centric. Of course, at the end of the day, it's the customer that picks you know the last mile or the way they want to purchase it.
Now when we have invested both in to more closely feed the store network and also the distribution center with more automated picking and packing, we have a more resilient system. If volumes increase like they do in November, we're much more efficient with a low cost than to deliver on the customer promise short lead times.
I guess in the past it was more linear or even, you know, worse than linear. If the volumes increased, it was very hard to handle those volume and then come back with a good lead time. Now we have a more efficient and more resilient system that can handle, you know, volume increases and decreases much better because the demand is going up and down now dependent on, you know, campaigns and when the customers choose to buy, which means that you need to be resilient in high and low volumes.
Got it. Could you also say how much of your online volumes, you know, in some way goes through your store network, either click and collect or feeder stores, you know, et cetera?
Yeah. It's, I think, approximately half of the volumes go via the store network in one way or the other, and the other half from this. It also fluctuates a little bit. We do see, as shown in the graphs earlier, that feeder store is increasing fast. We also see that consumers are becoming more and more not demanding, but they're used to actually getting more and more home deliveries, et cetera. They're of course both DC and our feeder stores help with that.
That said, still, a big part of the sales comes from click and collect, and that's again the central nature of a lot of our stores is a benefit there, where a lot of consumers still prefer that even when our other alternatives have now improved significantly. Still, a lot of customers choose to go and pick it up themselves.
Mm-hmm. Okay, cool. Lastly, on your cash position, yes, you won't comment on it, but what you plan to do or what you think is a reasonable level of net cash for Clas Ohlson. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Andreas. So obviously, it's a good thing that we are strong and stable, especially as things change. We have the second part of this year's dividend going out now in January. Then any alternatives after that will be something the board will look at. But no news on that today.
Okay. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Nicklas Skogman with Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning. I thought I heard you say that you expect the gross margin to be flat or increasing slightly going forward. I don't know if that was a guidance or more of an ambition, 'cause, I mean, considering the higher freight costs, the raw material price inflation and the dollar strengthening recently, as well as maybe more of the growth will come from your stores, which will not see that sort of accounting technical impact that you see when you sell online versus in store. Is that more of an ambition or is it a target? I guess the question is, holding the gross margin flat or increasing in the quarters ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, sir.
Good morning, Niklas. I think from the position it is, of course, an ambition that we want to have a flattish or increased gross margin. It's fundamental for our business model to have a good gross margin. Short term, of course, there are factors, as you mentioned, in the freight cost or the cost for purchasing product that are tougher and tougher, and maybe the dollar will go the wrong way. Having said that, of course, our ambition is to keep the gross margin, you know, at as high as we can because that is fundamental for you know, creating a sustainable growing and also profitable business. It depends on the timescale here, I guess. Short term, we'll probably have a tougher time to defend it, but over time, I guess it's our ambition to always keep or increase the gross margin.
All right. Good. Then you said you made some price increases already. What has been the customer reception to those? Is it notable in your sales or have customers been accepting them?
No. Again, it's obviously very category dependent. During this time we have done some increases. We have actually taken a few prices down, and it's really about working on the right category and product combinations. All in all, looking at the sales numbers across November, we saw, you know, a little bit of growth and same thing for the quarter.
We have not seen that impacting the customer satisfaction or sales. That's of course the objective to always ensure that we balance optimal volume with optimal price. Then of course, apart from just the black prices, we also have promotions and Club Clas offers and other things to work with to find optimal mix. But our, t he key job is always to ensure that we do not harm the customer value proposition because again, as with margin, that's the long-term most important thing. You should always feel that you get you know a great offer when you visit Clas Ohlson. That's the balancing act. We haven't seen anything on that.
Right. Then finally, I think your Club Days shifted from October to November this year, where you normally see, you know, more promotions. Did that have an impact on the gross margin for Q2, a positive impact?
As you say, yeah, we moved the Club Days, but we also didn't do the DNB Days that we have done in the past in a way which have been pretty big. Net, the Club Days were, you know, supporting sales, et cetera. And of course, that's part of the margin development as well, but I don't know whether we wanna comment specifically on the impact on the margin during the quarter on Club Days. I don't know, Pär, whether you wanna say anything.
As you say, we moved some of the sales to November, obviously, from October, as you see in the numbers. Of course, if we have a Club Day, the margin is somewhat lower than it is on a normal day. Of course, there's effect from that.
Also the reason we are doing more Club Days rather than other type of activities is of course for the longer term, customer lifetime value, i.e., there might be again month-to-month and transaction-by-transaction margin impacting. We only do that if we believe it's gonna build the longer term value of that customer group. That's of course the benefit with the Club Clas Days that we actually sit on the first-hand data ourselves to monitor that.
Yeah. One could mention that one of the reasons we did not have the Club Days in October, you know, and we could change it, is of course there's a decision now that's a little bit independent on the supply chain. In the past, we were more dependent to look at the supply chain, whether we could manage to have a campaign day in terms of, you know, deliveries and lead time.
That chain is much more resilient now, so it's more a commercial decision when to have a Club Day than a system decision. In the past, we had to a little bit balance whether we have the capacity to really keep the customer promise, and that is, you know, moving towards more and more customer driven and Club driven campaign system.
All right. Perfect. Thank you very much.
Next up, we have a follow-up question from Carl Deijenberg with Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. I just had a follow-up here on these one-off payments that you had here in the quarter. If I understood correctly, that is a total of SEK 27 million, if we include the sort of COVID, the COVID support, but also the insurance payout here. I'm just thinking about going into Q3 here. Are you expecting any other sort of one-off payment, negative or positive, of that size that we should be aware of, going into Q3?
No.
Okay, perfect. Thank you.
We have no further questions. I hand back to you, Niklas.
Thank you. We also have a couple of questions from the webcast. Some of them might overlap a bit with the questions we heard earlier because these arrived before the telephone conference questions, but I'll ask them anyway. First one from Stefan Stjernholm, Nordea. He's also asking about the cash position with CapEx need in coming years or any larger investments that we see going forward.
Yeah. Good morning, Stefan. Yeah, I think we've commented on that. Nothing else to add unless you wanna say anything more about the investments, Pär.
No, but the investment, as we usually comment, we expect them to be around, you know, SEK 300-SEK 350 as they've been in the past. You know, sometimes going up a little bit and sometimes going down, dependent on when some of the IT investments or store investments actually happen. That's the level we look at.
He's also asking about any potential to increase dividend.
Yeah. As said, I mean, now we have the dividend going out in January, and then any other considerations and discussions the board will look at later. So no, nothing on that.
The final question from Stefan Stjernholm is, what's the logic to own MatHem long term?
Yeah, the decision to invest in MatHem a few years back was very much closely linked to the commercial collaboration. As we have said before, now there is, you know, no real link between the investment and the commercial. We have a good commercial collaboration. We see that every fifth bag of MatHem products also contains a Clas Ohlson product, so they are not tied longer term. There's no news though on the investment side. We haven't participated in the last couple of rounds from MatHem, but we still remain an owner and I don't have any plans to change that here.
That was it from Stefan Stjernholm. We have another couple of questions from Jan Phanthom from Investor AB, also about the cash position and plans for capital allocation, and if buybacks is an option going forward.
Yeah. No. I think we've said everything on that topic for today. Then, yeah, we'll come back if any news on that.
Also talking about asking about the number of stores. Will that be the same going forward? You see any changes there?
All in all, I mean, right now we have around, you know, we have 230 stores and as we see every quarter, there are some openings, there are some closures, there are some movements. Our job is of course to ensure we optimize the network, going forward. For us, the store needs to serve many more purposes than just the transaction in the store, and I think we proved that with the feeder store capability, et cetera. We do see the store network as a huge strength for Clas Ohlson. That said, every store needs to carry its own cost and be contributing to the business and the company, which means we will continue to see changes.
We're not expecting dramatic increases of new stores, but also not dramatic changes of decreased and closed stores. There's always gonna be an optimization, and it's the balance act between the financial acumen of each store versus also then the value it delivers in the customer journey.
Next one is, how do you see the balance between online and offline going forward?
Yeah. Looking at our online business today, it's been around 10. We took a leap up to 10%, and now rolling 12 months online sales is approximately 12% of total sales. We believe though that balance is not the most useful number to look at. Our objective is to grow Clas Ohlson and grow the total business with our customers. Within that, of course, online plays a crucial part, and more and more so as the customer behavior keeps changing in that direction. That's why I think we've shown here today that, you know, we have done a great job in terms of logistics, having a very customer-centric model, working well on fulfillment.
Looking at the focus areas for us as a company in terms of what we're selling, our key destination categories and keep leveraging our strong brand and our customer base, that is of course very relevant for online. We believe and expect that to continue to grow, and that's what we work on. The exact balance, you know, we focus more on growing the total than optimizing the percent of sales of online versus physical.
Are there any other remarkable trends that you see in the retail landscape?
No, I think we have looked at a few of them. I think one big trend that of course we have looked a lot at is the kind of home nesting, i.e., there's been a lot of discussions, of course, during the pandemic that people have spent much more time in their homes during the last couple of years, and the question is, what will happen forward?
I mean, our belief, also based on the data we see, is that the home is gonna continuously be a very crucial part of people's lives over the next few years. We see a lot of reports showing that on average, people across Europe might work two and a half days a week from home, which means that, you know, you're almost doubling the amount of time spent at home versus, you know, pre-pandemic.
Looking at trends, for us, the home is more important than ever, and that gives us a lot of opportunities to evolve, because our purpose is to help people simplifying their life at home, and that spans across so many categories. I think that's one very relevant trend for us, and our hypothesis is that that's not gonna just go back after the pandemic.
Finally then, who do you consider to be your biggest competitor?
Yeah, I think that's, you know, also looking at benchmarks, I think we are playing a little bit in our own universe and Clas Ohlson cosmos, if you like. The good news is that we have a breadth of categories and offers, which means that we don't have one single competitor. You have to break it down on our destination categories and then find a range of competitors.
We believe that's a strength, and we have seen that over the last months and the last quarter, where we can adapt. If we see outliers on some products, we can, you know, focus on something else. Again, the key is focusing on our destination categories and for each of the destinations we have very clear competitors. Of course, we always wanna serve our customers better than anyone else to win. But it's hard to pinpoint one, and I think that's actually a strength for us. It forces us to focus on our customers.
By that, we don't have any more questions from the webcast. I think by that we'll also close the Q&A session.
That concludes this morning's presentation. Thank you very much for taking the time to tune in and for the great questions. We look forward to seeing you again during the next presentation. Until then, very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and see all of you again soon.