Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the afternoon variant of our Q3 2025 conference call. Our CFO, Peter Deli, and I, Gavin O'Dowd, will take you through our results. Starting at slide four, I would like to focus on four key aspects of our operational highlights, beginning first with our nicotine pouches Q3 volume, year-on-year growth of 21% on a like-for-like basis. It should be noted that Q3 last year had an exceptionally high traffic base in the U.S., which I will provide more details on in the next slide. Secondly, like-for-like sales grew 15% for the period, impacted by the accelerated decline in snus sales during the period. Thirdly, gross margin continued to increase to a record high of 18.8%, reflecting the strength of our operating model.
Lastly, we have continued to make strides forward in our infrastructure overhaul, having successfully migrated our largest site onto our new infrastructure. By year-end, we expect to have the two remaining smaller sites completed, bringing the overall project to an end. This new infrastructure is already enabling much more speed and agility and creates an excellent foundation for future growth. Moving to the next slide, slide five, and focusing on the U.S. performance. Our like-for-like sales volumes in the U.S. grew by 40% year-on-year, despite the high comparators from last year, which is evident in the chart here, where you can see both the robust growth from Q1 to Q2 in 2024 and again from Q2 to Q3. In addition, we recognize the strong development in our new consumers in recent quarters. Lastly, in mid-September, we resumed sales of ZYN in the U.S.
This comes on the back of a mutually beneficial agreement where the brand will also avail of our Media & Insights services. We recognize that there are many ZYN-loyal consumers who were forced to buy from other retailers over the past year, and we are now placing an emphasis on reactivating those consumers. Moving to slide six and the U.S. outlook. The FDA are piloting a new approval process which aims to process products from four of the leading manufacturers before the end of 2025. While this process doesn't guarantee that each product will be approved, it may signal an acceleration in the range of new products entering the market. On the back of the ever-improving landscape in the U.S., Haypp Group are preparing to accelerate new consumer inflow. Haypp Group initiated a deep market analysis during Q3 with a third-party specialist firm.
The goal of the analysis is to identify the evolving needs of different offline consumer segments and how to overcome impediments to them shopping online. This work is expected to be completed by the end of this year. In conjunction with this, Haypp Group have commissioned a marketing agency with specific expertise relating to our business, with the intent of engaging key consumer segments to accelerate our new consumer inflow. The learnings from our pilots this year, such as same-day delivery, out-of-store advertising, referral programs, and loyalty programs, are feeding into this marketing plan, and we expect it to be operational in early 2026. Moving to slide seven with an update on our regulatory and legal.
Starting with the U.S., in addition to the point on the prior slide regarding the FDA's pilot program to process a range of SKUs before year-end, we expect the most notable changes to occur around state-level taxes on nicotine pouches during 2026. As more information becomes available, we will continue to update you. It should also be noted that there is a referendum underway in Denver, Colorado, on tobacco products flavor ban. Nicotine pouches is included in this category. Regarding the EU, in addition to the TTE, which we spoke of last quarter, the European Commission is preparing a submission for the FCTC. These discussions are likely to generate a variety of headlines that over time will likely moderate, and we remain optimistic about the regulatory outlook in Europe, where the more aggressive positions are imposed by member states led by Sweden.
In the U.K., the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is currently being discussed in Parliament. We hope the bill will implement nicotine pouch product standards in line with Haypp Group's policies. Regarding litigation, Haypp's legal proceedings in Stockholm are expected to take between three to nine months, and regarding San Francisco, a settlement was reached during October, removing the U.S. litigation risk. With that, I will now hand over to Peter for an update on our financial performance.
Thank you, Gavin. Good afternoon, everyone. Before going into the details, I just would like to highlight that we concluded a solid quarter. As Gavin already elaborated on, we successfully relaunched ZYN, the market-leading brand on our U.S. storefronts, and we maintained our strong gross margin levels. This allowed us to initiate the necessary investment primarily towards the U.S. market to lay the foundation for the next growth chapter. Despite the increased level of investments, our Adjusted EBIT remained flat versus the same period last year at 3.5%. On slide eight, let me begin with our sales development. Like-for-like comparison became even more complex because we had to adjust our 2025 Q3 reported numbers as well to make the numbers comparable. In 2024 Q3, we had ZYN in the U.S. for the full quarter, while in 2025 Q3, we sold this brand only for 19 days.
Our reported sales grew by 1%. Excluding the FX impact, the increase was 3%. Like-for-like sales growth was 15%. There is no change in the product composition of growth drivers. The 15% like-for-like growth is mainly driven by nicotine pouches, with snus remaining in decline mainly in Sweden, impacting our performance negatively by 5%, partly offset by the emerging segment contribution to growth of 2%. The snus decline accelerated during the quarter. However, on a going-forward basis, we expect it to moderate. Moving to the next slide, slide nine, and going into more details about our like-for-like sales development, you can find the key drivers. The net impact included in the reported sales driven by U.S. ZYN, tobacco discontinuation, and closing states in the U.S. was SEK 92 million. As said before, FX also created a headwind.
The impact of the foreign exchange movements remained in line with the first half of the year. The depreciation of the Norwegian krone and the US dollar against the Swedish krona have negatively affected reported sales. Zooming in to the operational performance, all reporting segments contributed to the growth on a like-for-like basis. Growth segment, US particularly, remained the biggest driver, accounting for 54% of the operational growth. Core segment represented 29%, while the emerging segment was 17%. Moving to slide 10 and going down a few lines in the P&L, you can find the long-term quarterly development of Haypp Group's gross margin, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of net sales. Q3's margin level remained in line with the first half of 2025. Compared to last year, not only in terms of the margin rate, but also the key drivers of the increase are the same.
Year after year, we managed to increase our gross margin driven by consistent volume and top-line growth and the increase in contribution of our Media & Insights business. The sustained robust margin performance is the foundation for the execution of our growth strategy in the U.S. This allows us to make the investment required to set the foundation of the next growth chapter. Important to highlight that going forward, the return of ZYN is not expected to negatively impact our margin levels. Sustaining a strong Media & Insights business will remain important, and the continued development of those products is pivotal. I would like to reaffirm the foundational principles of our business model. We allocate the value created by our company across our consumers, business partners, and shareholders.
Our ongoing priority is to enhance the value we provide to consumers, which in turn requires us to strengthen the value we generate for our business partners. By continuously improving our Media & Insights offerings, we are able to deliver greater value and convenience to our consumers while also driving healthier profit margins over the medium term. On slide 11, you can find an overview of our overhead-based development, which increased to SEK 126 million for the third quarter. The increase is mainly driven by the U.S. team development. We further strengthened our Media & Insights teams and also invested into activation to increase the online channel and Haypp Group's brand awareness. On slide 12, you can find key figures around our profitability. Adjusted EBIT for the third quarter grew by 0.9%, reaching SEK 33.4 million. The adjusted EBIT margin remained flat at 3.5%.
We benefited from the increase in gross margin. However, we invested this increase into overheads and marginally into paid marketing. The increase in depreciation, similar to previous quarters, is driven by the U.S. automation, which we installed in mid-December last year. We maintained our investment into the emerging segment. This quarter, the investment amounted to SEK 13.1 million and reduced the overall Adjusted EBIT of the group by 1.6 percentage points. Adjusted EBIT for the core and growth business was 5.1%, 0.7% higher than the same period last year. Moving into page 13 and core markets. This segment delivered an overall 5% constant currency net sales growth. The quarter started slow with some acceleration during the second half. Behind the sales growth, two completely different dynamics remained. The nicotine pouch segment, which accounted for 57% of the volume for our core markets, maintained its growth and consistently gaining share.
The snus segment's volume remained in decline, and the decline was accelerated in Q3 versus the first half of the year. The decline was driven by the reduction of the underlying consumer demand, but on sales level, it's also important to note that Q3 is the last quarter where the tax reduction-driven price decrease drove a negative price mix in the Swedish market. The opposite dynamics in nicotine pouches and snus means that nicotine pouches are gaining share, which over time helping the overall growth rates of the segment. The changes in the purchasing customer numbers are also showing the different dynamics. While we are building our nicotine pouch consumer base, the decline in the Swedish snus consumers offset this. Adjusted EBIT remains strong for this segment. The 10% Q3 result is 1.3 percentage points above last year. The driver behind the increase is the Media & Insights revenue growth.
On the next slide, slide 14, you can find our growth market's performance. Net sales, excluding currency impact on a like-for-like basis, is up by 39%. While all markets increased their sales, we are very pleased with the high double-digit growth rates of the U.S. and the nicotine pouch volume development in the U.K. Adjusted EBIT moved into the negative territory, driven by increased investment levels, mainly to the U.S. In absolute terms, it amounted to minus SEK 1.4 million, and the adjusted EBIT rate is minus 0.6%. While the profitability is down versus the same period last year, important to note that gross margin remains stable for the segment. The overhead increase, mainly driven by the U.S., negatively impacted the business unit. On slide 15 and our emerging segment, the sequential sales growth continued, and we are particularly pleased with the Swedish and German market performance.
Unfortunately, operating in the UK vape market remained challenging due to the absence of regulatory enforcement across the entire spectrum of market participants. Haypp Group was and always will be committed to comply with regulation. However, this can create a significant competitive disadvantage in case other retailers are not doing so. On markets and segments where we are market leaders, we can compensate with our weight, but in the UK market as a challenger, the uneven playing field prohibits us from achieving our ambitions. As you can see on the bottom chart, while Sweden and Germany net sales maintained its growing trend, this was not the case in the UK. Despite the heavy investments, we made both into our consumer offer and also into our internal capabilities.
This is the reason why we decided throughout Q4 2025 we are going to discontinue our vape and heat-not-burn sales in the U.K. market. On page 16, I would like to highlight three or four selected KPIs. The full list of KPIs is available in the appendix of this presentation. Starting with inventory, the increase versus Q2 is driven by ZYN in the U.S., with slight reduction in other inventories in other locations. The inventory increase didn't fully translate into an increase in our working capital, driven by improvements in other components. Net debt to adjusted EBIT ratio remained at 0.4 times. With this, I would like to hand back to Gavin.
Thank you, Peter. Moving on to our outlook slide, slide 18. In our view, the long-term future for risk-reduced nicotine products, the online channel, and Haypp Group, with its many strengths, remains very encouraging.
Conditions within the U.S. continue to evolve in a positive direction for Haypp. Haypp Group's operating model continues to generate increasing value for consumers, the suppliers, while also providing margin expansion opportunities over the medium term. The expected increase in regulatory requirements is beginning to manifest, which further differentiates us given our sustained focus on investment and long-term compliance. Finally, on slide 19, I would like to touch upon our medium-term guidance from the Capital Markets Day in April, which runs out to 2028. We envision revenue growth rates of 18%-25% CAGR over the period, with the U.S. market being a material contributor. This reflects the lower expected growth rates for 2025 due to the comparatively narrower consumer base in the U.S. We also guide towards 5.5% EBIT at the end of the period, plus or minus 150 basis points.
While we have been materially increasing our EBIT over the past two years, we intend to reinvest into the U.S. to accelerate our market share growth over this period. I would kindly direct your attention to our CMD material, which is available on our group site. This provides more detail behind these targets, and lastly, the company does not intend to issue a dividend over this period, instead reinvesting surplus cash flows into the company's further expansion. Before I open up for questions, I would like to take the opportunity to thank our team for the dedicated and hard work in delivering these strong results. With that, I will hand over to the operator for questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Roderick van Zuylen from Night Watch Investment Management. Please go ahead.
Hi guys. Thanks for organizing the second call to allow your U.S.-based investors to ask questions. Much appreciated. I have a couple of questions. There was this comment from Peter that the return of ZYN is not expected to negatively impact your margin levels, and I think historically, ZYN margins were a bit lower, so I'm just wondering whether this is a result of a better procurement contract that you have in place with Philip Morris, or whether you expect them to spend more on Media & Insights as they have in the past, which would also improve the margins.
Good morning, Roderick. I hope all is going well. Yes. So of course, there's sort of a limitation of what I can say here regarding a relationship with a third party. But what we can say is that we feel the terms that we are now working with that brand owner on is one which is very mutually beneficial to both sides. So we consider it to be quite healthy as regards to where the terms are for both parties on this one. And we hope that we envisage that it will be quite a constructive arrangement over the medium term when it comes to overall gross margin within the U.S.
All right. Understood. And then I just finished listening to the call you did earlier today, and you gave quite a bit of insight there in the steep ramp-up that you're seeing now that ZYN is swung off again on your website. Just trying to understand it a bit better, I think the key data point was that you're seeing 60% volume growth year on year in the US. To start with, is that the overall growth? Because I guess there's a bit of cannibalization. People moved from ZYN to VELO or something else, and maybe now back to ZYN. If we're putting it all together, then you're seeing 60% volume growth. Is that the way to look at it?
Yeah. So absolutely. So there was a question on that one earlier today, and the question was, what sort of growth performance were we seeing during October? And I'd said that our volume growth for October in the U.S. was coming in around about 60% year on year. It's made up of probably three factors on this one. One is the continued growth of the non-ZYN sales. However, dampening that down is a significant number of non-ZYN consumers moving back to ZYN now that we have the products in as well. And then in addition to that, there is the factor of new ZYN consumers coming to our platform, both new that haven't been with us before and consumers that we have reactivated that were with us before.
So I think where you can probably get to it there is that saying that maybe 40% of that 60 or a little bit more is going towards ZYN itself, but recognizing that a portion of that were consumers who were already loyal to us, but have changed what they're putting in the basket from being a non-ZYN product to a ZYN product. And when I say 40%, I mean 40%.
Percentage points. Got it.
Yeah.
If you're seeing 60% volume growth, would the revenue growth be in the same order of magnitude? And I guess the moving targets there are Media & Insights going sort of in line with that number or at a lower rate?
In general, what we can see is that Media & Insights across all markets in the U.S., I think, is certainly the growth markets in particular, and the U.S. is no exception to this, tends to be growing slightly faster than that of product sales. And that's something that we've experienced for a number of years going through on it. And then when it comes to the actual product sales themselves, there seems to be, at this point in time, there's a very close relationship between volume growth and revenue growth as pricing is reasonably comparable to what we were experiencing last quarter. But that can change a little bit from month to month, especially as you're getting through months where there's often quite high promotions, such as November with Black Friday and pieces like that.
Right. How should I look at the contribution margin? If I start modeling all of this and probably modeling an 18% gross profit margin on the incremental sales, just wondering if there's anything in between gross profit and your EBIT line that would go up in Q4 as you increase the sales volumes.
I think we will continue to invest in the organization within the U.S., and so there will be a degree of that. I'm also conscious of not giving too much guidance on this one. We generally don't give too much guidance looking forward anyway, but particularly not giving too much guidance on the U.S. specifically at this stage since the environment is moving quite fast. It hasn't been particularly long since we got ZYN in, and we're also starting to lean into seeing how we can further accelerate the inflow of new consumers. So I think there's actually a fair few moving parts on this one, Roderick, when it comes to modeling it out into a quarterly number.
I think it's something that we probably wouldn't mind another quarter or two for things to settle down, and then it'll become a little bit clearer on what the trajectory of it is from there.
I totally get that. I think your third quarter was a quarter where investments in the U.S. had moved up without seeing any corresponding revenue, and it just seems like we're going to see a lot of that revenue in Q4, yeah, coming in at a decent margin. There's a lot of fixed costs, I think, also in your warehouse in Texas. So a lot to be excited about.
Exactly. And the way I view this one, Roderick, is that most of the uptick you will see in Q4 is probably more coming from having the full portfolio back in again. And much of the investment which we've been putting in in the form of overheads, I don't expect to necessarily be having a material impact in Q4, but more starting to have a notable impact as we get through 2026 when it comes to overall growth rates.
All right. I could keep going with questions, but I don't know how many other people there are on the call. Less than four, not that many, but I'll hand it over to the next person.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
The next question comes from Eben Hudson from Hudson 215 Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello, Gavin. Hello, Peter. I have three or four questions. First, ZYN pricing on Nicokick and Northerner is very aggressive at the moment, but there are also significant promotions for ZYN in brick-and-mortar locations in Q3. Your price advantage then might have been smaller than usual last quarter. Do you foresee continued nicotine pouch price competition among industry players, and how do you foresee your advantage developing over the next few quarters? Thank you.
Good morning, Eben. Yes, it's been a dynamic environment, particularly over the last, I would say, particularly from late August through September, to an extent through October as well, but it seems to be starting to take a slightly different shape out there. I think if I take a look at the average pricing of what's going through on the market for some of the products out there, and particularly the market leader, there has been aggressive promotion. But that promotion, if you take a look at the weighted numbers coming through on it, I believe is reflecting also a lot of buy one, get one free promotions which are going through there, whereby the original product doesn't necessarily need to be a ZYN product in order to get a ZYN free can as it goes through.
So it is very difficult, actually, to get a full read on what's happening in the market because it's occurring in certain locations and in certain retailers as it runs through. However, we do believe that $2.79, which is what it costs for the most common unit size, which has been put into a basket, which is 10 cans, is quite a compelling price for the consumer. I think what's occurring at the moment is that there's just a lot of moving parts from the consumer's perspective as regards to different promotions occurring in different chains, and I think we need to see how this settles down as we get through further into Q4 and see where this manifests through to.
But we are pretty happy with the offer that we have on the table at this point in time, and we can see that it is resonating with consumers that come to the site.
Thank you. Secondly, you stated in your Q3 report that in the United States, state and local regulations also continue to develop with the primary focus on nicotine pouch taxation. Now, states like Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee have raised nicotine pouches in 2025. What are the early indications on Haypp's revenue and volumes in U.S. states that have raised nicotine taxes? Thank you.
Yes. So we've been looking through the data on this one as different state taxes have come in. In general, most of the state taxes are being structured up as a percentage of wholesale pricing, which effectively means that they are a fixed price per unit as it's added on to each product, irrespective of what channel they're being sold through. The scenario that that creates is effectively where it just raises the watermark for everybody involved within the state. So whatever the price gap was prior to the tax remains the price gap after the tax. And in that environment, we generally see very minimal impact when it comes to either the consumers or the inflow of consumers or the inflow of new.
There is a little bit of noise often around the edge, whereby on one hand, some of our existing consumers may find this increase somewhat discomforting, but they generally get past that quite quickly when they see it's also happened offline, and on the counter side, you often see a bit of an uptick in new customers coming from those locations, whereby a price shock within the market is often a very good encouragement for people to come to online in the first place, but in general, if you look through that noisy phase at the beginning, we generally see that those states are progressing comparable to where they were beforehand.
Thank you, Gavin. Peter, the rate of growth of your capitalized development costs moderated in 2023 was high 30% year-over-year growth. In 2024, it was high 20s%. And now in Q3 2025, the capitalized development costs grew 21% year-over-year. You've just finished an SAP project. Should we expect further moderation in these capitalized costs? Thank you.
Absolutely. There are a few components that we have to consider, right? It's not only the ERP implementation that we are working on, but we started the ERP implementation combined with the middle layer, and this year, as Gavin alluded to the operational highlight, we are about to finish the front-end overhaul for the European markets. As soon as that finishes, obviously, we will have a state-of-the-art infrastructure which will require significantly less development to be made. So that will obviously drive the capitalized development cost going down.
Thank you. Thank you again for holding the call at this time. I'll let others ask questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Eben.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. There are no more phone questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions or closing comments.
Thank you all very much for your time today. Greatly appreciate you taking it. Look forward to speaking soon. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.