Welcome to Haypp Group Q4 Presentation 2025. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to CEO, Gavin O'Dowd, and CFO, Peter Deli. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning to everybody in the U.S., and welcome to our Q4 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 pouch Q4 volume, year-over-year growth of 28%. Nicotine pouches now accounts for over 2/3 of our volume, and strong acceleration in the U.S., supported by the return of ZYN and strong acceleration in the U.K., were important drivers of the acceleration. Our growth segment now accounts for over 40% of our nicotine pouch volumes. Second point, net sales grew 19% for the period at constant rates, despite continued decline in the traditional snus segment.
Thirdly, gross margin percentage reached 17.4% for the quarter, and the gross margin amount rose by 29% in 2025 versus 2024. Lastly, we completed our infrastructure overhaul in December, and we can already see rapid deployment of features in January, which are valued by the consumer. Moving to the next slide, slide five. The growth in sales is underpinned by robust growth in nicotine pouch active consumers, which in turn has been driven by both an acceleration in new consumers and continued improvements in our robust retention rates, reflecting high consumer satisfaction rates. Moving to the U.S., I would like to cover the environment, our plans, and our performance. Starting with the U.S. environment on slide six. Category growth remained strong, with circa 35% increase in volume during Q4, off an already sizable base.
The FDA's pilot program to accelerate the PMTA process has already led to marketing granted orders being granted for six products in December 2025. Other manufacturers are expected to have their products processed in the first half of this year. However, we must note that this doesn't guarantee that they will receive a marketing granted order. A broader suite of improved products not only supports the category growth, but greatly enhances the value of the Haypp offer, both to both our consumers and to the brand owners. The rapid growth of the nicotine pouch category is leading to state tax proposals across a range of states. Among the highest of these tax levels is New York State, which is proposing a 75% tax on the wholesale price and would equate to approximately $2 per can.
In our experience across multiple markets, the step change in the consumer price tends to trigger consumers to search for better value, from which Haypp benefits greatly. Haypp believes that the taxes on nicotine pouches increase the fiscal relevance of the category for state governments, and as such, are beneficial, so long as the tax rates reflect the risk differential of nicotine pouches. Moving to the next slide, slide seven, which shows how the different components of our U.S. plan are fitting together. During the second half of 2025, we built up the competencies of our local U.S. organization to drive accelerated growth. In parallel, in Q4, we completed a detailed analysis of the offline nicotine pouch consumer to fully understand both their trigger points and friction points for buying nicotine pouches online.
This process was very insightful in highlighting the potential of our offer to large and growing consumer segments, and how we can refine our offer and our messaging to accelerate our growth. Some of the findings are already implemented, positively impacting the results, which I will share on the next slide, and many more refinements are planned to be implemented in the coming months relating to both consumer experience and messaging. These changes should further boost our growth rates in addition... Sorry, should further boost our growth rates. In addition, we intend to further accelerate new consumer onboarding in the second half of 2026 with broader consumer communication activities. Moving to the next slide, slide eight, which looks at our performance in the U.S. The continued acceleration in quarter-on-quarter growth led to a year-on-year volume growth of 95% for the quarter.
The acceleration continued into this year, with circa 120% year-on-year growth in January. But part of this growth was driven by the reactivation of old consumers, who have shown strong retention rates since their return. The stronger signal of sustained growth comes from the rapid acceleration in new consumers, which grew almost 200% year-on-year in the quarter and continued to accelerate to circa 250% year-on-year in January. This, combined with our highest ever Net Promoter Score of 82%, provides us with high confidence in the overall growth trajectory for 2026 and beyond. I would like to reiterate that the U.S. is our top priority market. Moving to slide nine and the U.K., which is our second priority market.
We expect that the U.K. will be the largest nicotine pouch market in Europe by the end of this decade. In parallel, the pending regulatory changes bode well for both the category sustainability and especially for Haypp, as it will force all retailers to raise the bar on youth access prevention and product standards to be in line with where Haypp currently stands. We continue to see acceleration in the quarter-on-quarter growth rates, driven by both increases in the new consumer inflow and excellent retention rates. Much of this acceleration is attributed to a combination of dedicated resources to the market, combined with the structural advantages of the investment in infrastructure across the group in 2025. Feeding on from there to slide 10 and infrastructure. At various points in recent quarters, I provided an update on our progress on our infrastructure overhaul.
I'm happy to say that the last piece of the jigsaw went live in December. Already, we can see significant improvements in our ability to launch features, which bring meaningful value to our consumers and rapidly scale them across our markets. I have picked out three examples from the past months. One, subscriptions. We have already improved the user experience on the subscription feature on our Scandinavian sites, creating a notable uptick in new subscribers, and then launched this subscription service across the U.K. and Germany. Secondly, payments. We have easily onboarded a range of payment services, again, across a range of markets, effectively, simultaneously. These services are clearly appreciated by our consumers, given the take-up rates in the early weeks. Lastly, we launched Vape on our Nettotobak store in Sweden, using our new architecture and our content creation tools to populate the majority of the content.
The result has been our fastest ever growth in traffic for a new category on the site, resulting in excellent sales performance. While I highlight these as some of the many examples of what we have seen in recent weeks, I would like to highlight that the significant effort which went into building a bespoke architecture for the nicotine category is expected to support many more such examples in the months and years ahead. Moving to slide 11 and looking at the regulatory outlook across Europe. For the U.K., I would like to reiterate the positive signs the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is moving the industry in line with the standards which Haypp implemented many years ago. In the EU, we expect drafts of the Tobacco Tax Directive and the Tobacco Products Directive to be released in H1 of this year.
We expect this draft to undergo significant revision in the coming years as member states and the European Parliament enter into negotiations, and we intend to keep you abreast of these negotiations. In Austria, due to legislation classifying nicotine pouches as tobacco products, sales will only be allowed via the national monopoly in licensed physical tobacconist shops from mid-2026. Haypp expects to exit Austria at the end of June. Austrian sales account for less than 1% of the group sales. In Sweden, the decision to revoke the Snusbolaget Norden AB's license to sell traditional snus was upheld. Haypp fundamentally disagrees with the ruling and is appealing to the Supreme Administrative Court. We do not expect any material, financial or operational impact on our Swedish business. With that, I will now hand over to Peter for an update on our financial performance.
Thank you, Gavin. Good morning, everyone. Let me walk you through the financial section of our Q4 results. We conclude the year with continued momentum across all key markets, supported by strong nicotine pouch demand, meaningful progress in infrastructure and ongoing scaling investments, particularly in the U.S., that positions us well for 2026. On slide 12, let me begin with our sales development. We crossed an important milestone this quarter. Net sales surpassed SEK 1 billion for the first time in a single quarter, growing 15% reported and 19%, excluding the negative exchange impact. Supplier finance discounting in the U.S. reduced our reported sales by around 2.6 percentage points versus Q4 2024. We do expect price competitiveness to remain on the U.S. market, which allows us to present a more and more attractive offers to our consumers.
Separating the ZYN impact is not straightforward in this quarter, particularly due to a sustained, very attractive ZYN offer since relaunch. We saw a clear impact on other brands' performance. A big portion of our consumers who bought other brands from us before switched to ZYN. So simply comparing Q4, excluding ZYN, versus Q4 2024 is not giving us a clear picture. Snus revenue decline moderated in Q4 compared to Q3, as the Swedish excise-driven price effects rolled off. Nicotine pouches remained the clear growth engine, contributing 21%, excluding FX to growth, while vape and heat-not-burn contributed modestly at around 2%. So overall, the top line is strong, and we are confident to maintain or even to accelerate this momentum into 2026. On slide 13, you can see our long-term gross margin development.
Q4 adjusted gross margin increased by nearly 0.6 percentage point, year-over-year, reaching 17%, in line with the structural trend. The key drivers remain unchanged, increased contribution of Media & Insights and scale efficiencies in fulfillment. Part of this was offset by increased U.S. fulfillment costs and the vape inventory write-off of a specific brand in Sweden, but the overall trajectory remains firmly positive. Our annual negotiations for Media & Insights and campaign pricing support for the brand owners was completed in late 2025 for calendar year 2026. The demand for our enhanced service continues to grow significantly, enabling us to provide even better consumer offers in 2026. As I underlined in earlier quarters, the sustainability of our margin is the foundation for our global and U.S. growth strategy, enabling the investments required to build the next chapter.
I also want to reiterate the core principle of our business model. The value we create is shared among our consumers, business partners, and shareholders. Our constant priority is to increase the value we deliver to consumers, which in turn depends on strengthening the value we provide to our business partners. By continually enhancing our media and insights offerings, we can offer greater convenience and value to consumers while supporting healthier profit margins. Moving to slide 14. Our overhead base increased to SEK 130 million, up 29% versus Q4 last year. The main drivers mirror what we highlighted in Q3, strengthening our U.S. local team and capabilities, ongoing investments in media and insights, and brand building and online channel awareness initiatives. Just as in previous quarters, these increases are both planned and necessary.
The U.S. business requires elevated investment intensity at this stage, but the underlying return profile, supported by strong consumer acquisition and retention, remains highly attractive. This is the first quarter when we can see the sight of scaling positively impacting the overhead as percentage of sales ratio. Over time, scale will reduce this ratio in the PNL. Moving to next slide, slide 15. Our adjusted EBIT amounted to SEK 31.3 million, a 16% reduction year-over-year, with margin rates reduced from 4%-3%. Looking on the chart on the left, let me start from a segmental EBITDA view. In our core markets, where we operate at scale, we improved our profitability versus the same period last year.
The reduction was mainly driven by the increased investments into the U.S. and U.K. markets within our growth segment and the temporary increase of investments into our emerging segment. Looking at the composition of our PNL, as we saw earlier, we maintained our robust gross margin, lifting versus last year, which enabled us to invest into the foundation of future growth, manifested in the increase in marketing investments and overheads. Depreciation also increased, tied to our infrastructure overhaul completed during 2024 and 2025. Our emerging segment investments reduced group-adjusted EBIT by around 1.5 percentage points in the quarter. Underlying EBIT margin for core and growth remained robust. The change is driven by the previously mentioned investments into the growth segment. Overall profitability remains well aligned with our investment priorities and aligned with our investment plans and long-term ambitions.
With this, let me move to slide 16, to core markets. Net sales increased to SEK 732 million, up 6% or 8% in constant currency. EBITDA grew 27% to SEK 77 million, lifting EBITDA margin to 10.5%. Nicotine pouches continue to reshape the segment mix. NP accounted for 57% of core volume, up markedly from last year. Smooth volume decline, as expected, still impacted by underlying category contraction, but this is the first quarter where the Swedish tax-driven price reduction does not influence the comparison base. The shift towards fast-growing nicotine pouch support improve future growth rates. Within the consumer base, we see the same dynamics. Nicotine pouch user base grew, while Swedish snus user base declining, offsetting the NP growth.
We also seeing an increase in our share of wallet from our consumers, supporting volume and top-line growth. Media revenues again supported EBITDA expansion, similar to the trend we highlighted in Q3. On slide 17, you can see the summary of our growth markets. Net sales grew 41% year-over-year to SEK 279 million, with nicotine pouch volume up 61%. The growth segment, nicotine pouch volume now represent 40% of the total group NP volume. You can see the difference between volume and sales growth. The net negative price mix is mainly driven by U.S., where we saw a significant increase in supplier finance discounting, negatively impacting our sales, however, keeping our gross margin intact. Active consumers increased 52% to 169,000. The U.S. and U.K. were the standout performers.
U.S., driven by new consumer inflow and retention, the U.K. by accelerating NP penetration, as Gavin explained earlier. EBITDA was -SEK 4.4 million, with a margin of -1.6%.... As in Q3, profitability reflects increased U.S. investments. This is exactly the pattern we expected at this stage. Strong revenue scaling, rising MP penetration, and elevated capability investments that we reuse as percentage of sales as we expand. On slide 18, our emerging segment financials. Net sales increased 40% to SEK 71 million from SEK 41 million, driven by strong Swedish and German performance. During Q4, we scaled down and ceased all operations in U.K.. We focused on inventory sell-off without replenishing sold-out SKUs. This resulted in a weak U.K. sales performance, a decline versus Q3, and also versus last year. In contrast, the Swedish and German vape performance remained robust.
We see solid new customer intake and a growing consumer base on these markets. Net sales for Sweden and Germany grew by 89% versus same period last year. EBITDA was -SEK 15.5 million, reflecting both commercial investment, stock write-offs, and a disproportionately high share of fixed costs for the current scale of this business. On slide 19, turning to our selected KPIs. Inventory increased during Q4, similar to previous years. The increase manifested across all markets where we expected inbound price increases affected January first and focused on brands with the highest level of increases. This stock build allowed us to decide either to increase our price competitiveness or realize a higher gross margin during the sell-out period. Importantly, this is a temporary increase. The inventory level is going back to normal during Q1.
Our accounts receivable growth was driven by the media and insights revenue growth, while our closing accounts payable balance increase was driven by the inventory purchases. Net debt remained low at 0.6x last 12 months adjusted EBITDA, consistent with our long-standing capital discipline. Financially, we exit 2025 in a strong position with continued growth, stable gross margins, healthy working capital, and ample capacity to support expansion. With this, I will hand it back to Gavin.
Thank you. Moving to our outlook on slide 21. In our view, the long-term future for nicotine pouches, the online channel, and the Haypp Group, with its many strengths, remains encouraging. Conditions within the U.S. and U.K. in particular, continue to evolve in a positive direction for Haypp, and Haypp's operating model continues to generate increasing value for consumers and suppliers, while also providing margin expansion opportunities over the medium term. The expected increase in regulatory requirements are manifesting, which further differentiates us, given our sustained focus and investment on long-term compliance. As we execute on the priorities outlined in our April 2025 Capital Markets Day, we remain confident that our regulatory preparedness, operational discipline, and consumer-centric approach, and major growth opportunities, notably in the U.S. and the U.K., position us to create long-term value and strengthen our leadership in the category.
Building on from there, on slide 22, we would like to touch upon the medium-term guidance from our CMD in April 2025, 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 takes into account the lower reported growth rates for 2025 due to the comparatively narrower consumer base in the U.S. We also guided towards 5.5% EBIT at the end of the period, ±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. We would kindly direct your attention to our CMD material, which is available on the group site, and this provides more detail behind these targets.
Lastly, the company does not intend to issue a dividend over this period, instead reinvesting surplus cash flows into the company's future expansion. Before I open up for questions, I would like to take the opportunity to thank my colleagues for their dedication and hard work in delivering these strong results. With that, I will hand over to the moderator 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 Nightwatch Investment Management. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thank you so much for taking my questions. I've got a couple, if I may. To start with, the 120% volume growth rate in the U.S. is very impressive. And I just wanna make sure I fully understand whether this growth rate is still without the full benefit of the marketing expenses you're planning for this year. And just sort of how you're planning on ramping those marketing expenses throughout the year. So, when we might even see a further acceleration from that point?
Yeah. Good morning, Roderick, and very clear question. Yes, so all of the growth we've seen so far is coming with de minimis amounts of marketing expenses so far. We have no intent of pushing hard on marketing expenses at this point in time. We have been working on refining some of the key consumer journeys on our websites, and then refining some of the key messages on the site, and making sure that we have messages which clearly resonate with the outside consumer base before we plan on doing any incremental marketing, much incremental marketing from here. I envisage that we will continue to improve on both our conversion rates, as we've seen over the recent month or two, within the U.S., and maintain those very robust and continuously improving retention rates.
As we get that further and further through the first half of this year, we'll continue to be testing some marketing activities, and we'll come back in the middle of the year with a clearer understanding on that and what we expect marketing activities for the second half of the year to add to our existing acceleration and growth rates.
All right. And then, like I said, I think 100% volume growth is quite impressive. That sentiment isn't necessarily shared, it seems, by either the market or your current analyst coverage on the sell side. I'm just wondering, with a growing U.S. shareholder base, maybe the U.S. might be a slightly different market where investing for growth is more appreciated. I know you've got a lot on your plate for 2026, but maybe looking beyond to 2027, does it at some point make sense to pursue a U.S. listing as opposed to your current Swedish one?
Yeah, look, it's, it's a good point. And especially as our business is becoming more and more non-Scandinavian-based. As I kinda highlighted earlier, over 40% of our nicotine pouches that we sold in Q4 has come from our growth category. So it is... And as I kind of lay out in the priorities, as you sort of rightly point out here, the vast majority of the growth we see going forward is gonna come firstly from the U.S., and then secondly, even after the U.S., albeit significantly lower, from the U.K. And there is, of course, a balancing act then as it relates to those who often remember us as a Scandinavian-based company and are perhaps a little bit more focused on how we're performing within Scandinavia, may not necessarily be grasping the potential of where we are within the U.S. at this time.
However, having said that, and I do think it's a valid point as regards to, you know, reflecting the increasing shareholder base that we have within the company based in the U.S., but there are no plans at this point in time for a U.S. listing. I think we will continue to evaluate it and where we're getting to, and we feel as though it wouldn't be an unnatural decision for us to make. But we feel as though the main focus for 2026 will be in driving on this growth and getting towards critical mass within the U.S. as soon as possible, and we will maintain all energy for there. I think as we move in towards 2027, I think this will be an interesting topic to discuss again, as we're getting towards there.
Sounds good. I'll, I'll make sure to raise the topic again in a future call. One final question, if I may. On the emerging markets business, it sounds like the growth driver has shifted from UK vape, which you're exiting, more to German and Swedish vape. How does that opportunity compare to, to your growth opportunity in nicotine pouches in the U.K. and the U.S.? And if you have a, you, you have a limited amount of resources, but just wondering, allocating more capital to the emerging markets business as opposed to your nicotine pouch business, U.S., U.K., which is more attractive, and at what point should we see the losses in the emerging markets business be, start to, see them moderate a bit?
Yeah. So I think you're spot on. The scale of the opportunity in the U.S. and the U.K. is multiples of what we can see for vaping, particularly in Sweden and to an extent within Germany as well. I think on the positive side here, it requires very limited resources from us in order to be able to drive this through, because it is, certainly for Sweden, it is. We're benefiting from the same infrastructure of warehouse activities like that as it goes through. We believe we are reasonably close towards critical mass within Sweden at this point in time, to be able to stand back and take a look at what profitability in that market should look like. I think we're showing very strong growth rates, as you can see, across both markets over the last 12 months.
So I think it is coming towards the time for us to stand back and start to understand when is the right time to extract capital out of it. I think Germany is a little bit earlier on in the stage. It's quite a significant market, with about 3.5 million vape consumers in that market at this point in time, and I don't think we're close enough towards scale yet there. We certainly would never get to a stage where we would allocate capital to the emerging segment that we feel we are prepared to invest within the U.S. and, and that we're ready to invest effectively within the U.S.
So we're very, very clear in our capital allocation principles here that the return we can get on any money we can spend within the U.S., we will, and is that we will never ration the U.S. in order to drive growth in the emerging segment.
All right, that sounds good. Once again, really encouraging growth rates in the U.S., U.K., thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you.
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.
I'd like to thank you all for taking the time to listen to our Q4 results. We look forward to speaking to you soon, for our Q1 results. Thank you very much.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.