Good morning, everybody. My name is Gavin O'Dowd. I've been the CEO of Haypp Group for just under six years. Prior to that, I worked in the nicotine and tobacco industry for an additional nine years, with my last role being the General Manager for British American Tobacco for Scandinavia. Many of you may not know who we are, and I guess for those of you who do know, there might be a couple of sort of snippets that you have different perspectives on us. I guess from one perspective, there might be an angling of saying, well, we're currently valued at roughly 5x our earnings for our Scandinavian business. There's probably another perspective of that we are remaining growing quite fast, whereby our nicotine pouches continues to grow by just over 40% year-on-year in volumes.
There's probably another perspective on us, which is as regards to the social impact that we have, where we have managed to get over a quarter of a million people off cigarettes over the last five years. We believe, many universities have substantiated our data here, that we have extended human life expectancy by just over two and a half million years. Lastly, I guess there's often the perspective that because of the category that we remain within, we are somewhat more resilient to more difficult economic times. I think each of these points we will touch on in a little bit more depth as we go through the story today, I look forward to answering any questions you guys have at the end. Maybe the starting point, first of all, is why do we exist? What is the higher purpose of this company?
Our role is to inspire healthier enjoyment to millions. Originally, this was about moving people from cigarettes towards snus. More recently, in the last two to three years, it's been about moving people from cigarettes to nicotine pouches, or what's often known in Sweden as the quiet snus. When it comes to healthier and how we define healthier and where we are on this space, we take a look at the World Health Organization's tobacco and nicotine risk continuum, where they rate all products between zero and 100, subject to the harm it has on that consumer. We will only operate with products which are sub 5% the harm of a cigarette, and the vast majority of the products we sell are sub 2% the harm of a cigarette.
Our objective is to get people who are already using more harmful products and move them to that space. When it comes to the category itself and what the outlook for the category has been, this was the forecast we did in 2020, and it is mapping exactly in line with that so far. What you can see here is that the traditional snus, which is more consumed in Sweden and Norway, is actually moving into decline, and all of the growth is coming from nicotine pouches, partly driven by Scandinavia, but much more so driven by the U.S., the U.K., and German-speaking Europe. This is the forecast that we're tracking at the moment for this space. What we can see is that by the time we get to 2025, traditional snus is not going to be a relevant part of the category anymore.
This has been driven by a few different factors. Firstly is there's 1.1 billion smokers in the world, the vast majority of whom do not want to smoke, and they are looking for healthier alternatives. On the back of that, the government has been standing back and recognizing that they've spent 30-40 years telling people to simply stop smoking with very limited success. There's more smokers in the world today than there's ever been at any time in history. The introduction from the mid-2010s of the concept of harm reduction is becoming very well established, where the governments are now starting to support the concept of can you move the consumer to something which is much less harmful for them rather than getting them to give up nicotine completely, because they've failed on that space.
On the back of these two trends, we see the industry in general, the large manufacturers are starting to invest very heavily into this space, which in turn is creating ever better products coming to the market, which in turn is accelerating that migration from cigarettes to less harmful products. Quick sort of summary as regards to what we do and where we are within the mix. We do not make any products. We are an e-commerce player who buys products directly from all of the manufacturers and sells them directly to the consumers. I think that part is really evident to anybody in the outset.
There's a second part to our business as well, which I will touch on a little bit later, which is we collect a lot of data from the consumers as regards to what their preferences are, what they're buying, what they're using, and why. We package that together, and we offer it back to the manufacturers, so they can provide much better products for the future and even reposition the existing products that they have. It's on the back of that we are the largest insights provider for the category globally. When it comes to our market positions and where we are, we break our markets down into two different groupings.
The first grouping is the original markets which we're in, which was Sweden and Norway, who we've been in those for more than five years at this point in time, and the growth markets of the U.S. and non-Scandinavian Europe, where we're very much in the infancy in those markets. When it comes to Sweden and Norway, if we look at the combined market of traditional snus and nicotine pouches, we're operating with just over 10% and 15% respectively as a share of the total market in these markets. However, if we look at the growing, rapidly growing category, which is nicotine pouches, we have a much higher share of the total market in this space, where we have over 25% here in Sweden. When it comes to online, we're pretty much the undisputed market leader online globally.
We have 80% and 90% share of the Swedish and Norwegian online markets at this point in time, and we've had that certainly for the last five-six years. If I move along and take a look at the other markets, which is where the category is growing quite rapidly, such as the non-Scandinavian Europe and the U.S., we have much lower shares of the total markets. We're a little bit later getting stuck in on it. We are getting reasonably good traction and growing very fast in those markets, and we have a very healthy share of the online channel, and it continues to grow rapidly quarter-on-quarter.
With that as an overview on the market, I'd like to take a few minutes and take a look, first of all, as regards to how we interact with our consumers, and then afterwards I'll take a look at how we interact with our suppliers, which are the two parts that we're sort of in the middle of. Firstly, when it comes to our consumers, and firstly How we gather new consumers into the market or into our platforms. Because of the category that we're in, we are somewhat different versus the vast majority of e-commerce players. Nicotine is a very complex category and very contentious category in some spaces, so you cannot buy advertising for most of the products within nicotine. For that reason, we always aim to gather all of our new consumers organically.
When we say organically, how we get them is we get them out of organic rankings within Google. Somebody goes to Google, types in either the name of a brand or they type in snus, or they type in nicotine pouches, we will always have first, second and third places, ideally within any search term around that space. We do this by making sure we always have the organic rankings within Google. We always optimize what's referred to as our SEO or search engine optimization. Google will alter their algorithm on any given day, but there's one thing that's always a core principle to how Google and every other search engine works. They will always optimize for the benefit of the consumer, and within that, they will tend to measure three or four key things.
The first thing that they will look at is your platform particularly structured for SEO? Is it easy for the consumer to land? Is there quick load times? Is it easy for them to navigate? We build all of our platforms ourselves when SEO was a primary chromosome within it. The second piece they will look at is the content on your platform unique to your platform, and does the consumer interact with it? Do they read the articles? Do they watch the videos? Do they check out the different sort of filters and where you have? Because of our scale, we were able to create a level of content. When I say because of our scale, we're about 11 times larger than any other player in the space.
We're able to create a level of content which nobody else can, because of our relationship with suppliers, they generate a substantial amount of content for us here. Once Google turns onto back and takes a look at, "Okay, is your platform architecture robust? Is your content unique and of high quality that the consumer interacts with?" The next thing they look at if you're within the e-commerce space is what is your conversion rate? Do people actually go to the checkout and convert? Our conversion rates are in the 20s as %, so it's much higher than any other player, so we get a very good boost from that as well.
The fourth and final thing which Google tend to take a look at, because they track all of our consumer movement over an extended period is, does that consumer not just come in, navigate your platform, consume your content, check out? Do they come back a month later and check out again and a month later, and a month later? This gives great credibility to Google that we are the ones that they should be sending all of the traffic to, and hence why our positions are so strong. This creates a couple of dynamics within our business. One dynamic is that the vast, vast majority, over 98% of the traffic we get on any given day, we do not pay for. We get it organically. Because of that, it creates two side effects.
One is it means that our marketing expenses are extremely low. We did take a spike in marketing expenses back in 2019, which was when we expanded across Europe and the U.S., and there was a brief window where Google didn't necessarily grasp what this category was and allowed digital spending. We can see those holes being tightened up more and more and more, and our marketing expenses keeps coming down and down and down because we simply cannot find ways to invest in marketing within it. The second piece is it creates a moat around the business. When somebody else can come along and create a platform which will sell, get all their permits, get all their licenses, all their agreements in place where they can sell nicotine pouches to consumers.
What they can't get is traffic to their site, and this is why we optimize for SEO within it. When it comes to, once we have the consumer, what does the consumer retention rates look like? I think before I get into the retention rates, I'm gonna touch on why do consumers use us and why do they come back to us. I guess there's three key reasons for its USPs, and it's not that dissimilar to a lot of e-commerce players. Assortment. We carry an assortment of almost 1,000 SKUs, which is roughly 40 times more than you would get in any brick-and-mortar store. Many of the consumers want to get a broader range of products, whether it's flavor, format, strength, et cetera here. The second one is price. We tend to operate at roughly a 20% discount versus brick-and-mortar.
Particularly in this era, the consumer tends to be very conscious and sort of aware and appreciative of that. The last one is convenience. We invest very heavily in making sure that we have warehouses across all of our key geographies. The nature of products that we have means that when people order them, they want to have them within the next 24 hours. What we can see is that the dark blue line here is the new customers that we acquire in any given quarter, with the gray line being the retention rates within it. Here on the left, or on your right, I'm breaking it down into what the cohorts are, and there is a little bit of a contraction in the cohorts as regards to the consumers who joined us in 2020.
That was driven by Norway, where we had an excessive amount. We grew 300% overnight in Norway when COVID came in because 30% of the consumption in Norway is actually bought either at the Swedish border or the airports, which were shut down. Those consumers reverted back to those spaces afterwards. If you adapt for that, you can see that effectively, once consumers come and join our platform, they tend to stay with us. I think if I was to take away our relationships here with consumers, there's probably three key things within it. One, the vast majority of the consumers we get in any given month, we get for free. two, when they join us, they stay with us.
Not only, three, not only do they stay with us, we get a much higher share of their annual consumption in their second year and their third year as they become more and more accustomed to the benefits of buying with us. Now, moving along from our consumer, I'm gonna take a little bit of look as regards to what we do for our suppliers and what the benefits are and why our business partnerships are so close in that space. There are two key things that we do for our suppliers. The first of which is insights. We often get asked the question as regards to why are we a relatively small e-commerce business in Scandinavia, the largest insights provider for what is the most rapidly growing nicotine category globally? I think it hinges back to a couple of different factors.
One is the access to data we have. We have about 1.3 million visits in any given month across our stores. We have, we carry all of the brands, and we carry all of the geographies within us. This gives us an immense amount of data. On top of that, in 2018, we made a very conscious call that we would invest heavily in how we structure our data, so we could utilize machine learning across our data, both for our own business and then indirectly for our suppliers as well. Our data architecture, our data construct is second to none in this space. On the back of that, we offer two key services to our suppliers, one of which we call the quantitative research, and the other of which we call the qualitative.
On the quantitative space, for example, we offer front ends to our data that manufacturers can buy licenses to for the year, and it will give them insights such as which consumers and which subsegments are prepared to consider their product but not try it, which ones consider their product, do try it. When consumers move to their brand, where do they move from? When they move away from their brand, why are they moving to? What's the price elasticity per consumer segment, per brand? All of this aspect, where are the growing segments? Which will be the massive segments in a couple of years? All of that space they get access to within what's referred to as the qualitative space, which is very scalable. We simply build the front ends to it, they buy licenses to it, and it's extremely profitable.
On the back of that question, they often get the question of, why? That's the qualitative space. They may realize there's 1,000 people which are leaving their brand and going to a competitor brand, but the data doesn't necessarily explain to you why. There we will run focus groups, home placement tests, blind product testing, et cetera. We are able to guarantee that the people that we are running these tests across are people who have behaved in exactly that way. Because of that, we can do this at a fraction of the cost of an Ipsos or a Kantar or a McCann or anybody else, and we can do it in a fraction of the time. It's this combined infrastructure which means we have the leading insights offering for the category globally.
The second thing that we do for our suppliers is we provide media for them launching new products. Now, there is a huge number of new products being launched in this space on any given quarter. For anybody which is launching a new product, there's two things they generally want. The first one is to create awareness of the new product, and the second one is to create trial. We have a full range down through our platforms of how to be able to provide that. At the upper end of the space, we do a lot of media whereby we can do a lot of brand-building activities regarding what's unique to the product, what's the heritage of the product, et cetera. This ties in heavily to the content that I referred to, which was unique to our platforms for driving the SEO with Google.
Down towards being able to create trials. When people are at the checkout, they've come in and they've bought 20 cans of a different product, they have the opportunity to put at a very low cost one additional can of a product which has just recently been launched or is about to be launched into the general market into their basket and try it in the comfort of their own homes. We can see that we are capable of bringing brands from 0% to 10%-15% market share over a matter of weeks. That is something which is only feasible over a matter of years when it comes to the brick-and-mortar space.
Just to put this in perspective, on any given day, more than 20% of the sales that we have are of products which did not exist 12 months ago. We are very much the platform which brings all of the large brands and the small brands to the market on any given day. When it comes to what's our performance and what's our sales, we can see that the future is very much not about traditional snus. It's all about nicotine pouches at this stage. We are pretty comfortable with the growth rates we have. At this point in time, we're growing by, in our last quarter, we grew by 41% year-on-year.
Over a two-year basis, we've grown by just over 100%, and we see no fundamental reason for this growth not to continue as the category continues to grow quite fast and as the migration from offline to online tends to continue because of the benefits of online as well. While our origins were very much around snus, which is the last gray, dark gray section here, we're now up to almost 45% of our sales being nicotine pouches, and we envisage that before we get to Christmas, more than 1/2 of our sales will be nicotine pouches, and over time, we will become a nicotine pouch only business rather than that of snus. Perhaps a quick look at the financials on where we are. We've been growing relatively fast over the number of years.
We have just released our Q1 results maybe four weeks ago. It was our first time to cross three quarters of a billion SEK on a quarterly basis. We're seeing relatively healthy growth in this space. Our net sales is only up by 22% because the snus space itself is no longer growing. It's all very much around driven by the growth of nicotine pouches. We can see our growth varies across different markets. In our Swedish and Norwegian markets, we are growing by roughly 14%, again, closer to 30% on nicotine pouches. In our growth markets, whereby it's effectively all nicotine pouches that we're selling, we're seeing growth rates in the high 60s.
When it comes to our profitability, we've been very much driving this business where once we get established well in a market, we generate profit out of it. We've been utilizing that profit to expand our footprint into new geographies as we go forward. What we can see is that in our core markets, we're dropping out just over 8% of EBITDA at this point in time, which is what brings us back to almost SEK 200 million of EBITDA in the last 12 months within our Swedish and Norwegian markets, and hence why I say we're often trading at 5%, sorry, at five times that, placing zero value on our North American or non-Scandinavian European businesses. In our growth markets, we have invested very heavily over the last couple of years. We were losing almost 20% a year ago.
We're now losing just over 10% when it comes to negative EBITDA. We are propelling ourselves towards profitability in those markets in the not too distant future. We have invested heavily in those markets in order to be able to handle the scale that we anticipate coming in 2024, 2025 and 2026. When it comes to it being a quite capital efficient business model, this is, you know, we buy the products and we turn them around roughly 15 times a year. We don't require excessive amounts of capital in either tech development or in warehouse development. We have launched quite an extended sort of warehouse footprint over the last two years, but we believe we have the infrastructure to be able to bring ourselves forward at this point in time.
Occasionally, you will see a spike in our working capital across quarter ends or year ends, where manufacturers will often ask us to take substantial amounts of volume in order that they can hit targets. Over the long term, we are a very working capital efficient business, and we tend to convert the vast majority of our EBIT into free cash flow. Our targets, these were the targets we went live with 17, sorry, 19 months ago when we IPO'd. Our targets was that by 2025 we would have SEK 5 billion in revenue, predominantly through organic growth. We're marching very well towards that as we speak. We will prioritize growth over profitability because of the potential we see in this category over the medium term.
However, we still commit that we will deliver a high single-digit EBIT by the medium term, which could be also viewed as 2025, and we're already in that space in our Swedish and Norwegian markets. Although we are generating substantial amounts of free cash in any given year, we do not envisage that we will issue a dividend for the foreseeable future because we can see such high returns for our capital, either via organic or non-organic opportunities. If I was to paraphrase the overall story on where we are, one, there's just over one billion people and smokers in the world, the vast majority of whom are looking for a safer alternative. Nicotine pouches is the fastest growing alternative in that space at this point in time. It is a perfect product for online.
It is very light in weight, recurring consumer base, extremely low returns. We are an undisputed global online market leader. We have a symbiotic relationship with our suppliers, so we tend to not be concerned. We have very healthy sort of long-term dynamics there. We have a track record of benefiting from regulation. The more regulation that tends to come in, the more restrictive the market is, the more relevant our platforms are. We have impressive growth economics. Once we get established under critical mass within a market, the lifetime value of the consumers is quite robust, and we have an excellent team in place with both deep experience of within the nicotine space and within the digital space to bring us forward. With that, I'm going to, I'm gonna pass over to you guys and see if you have any questions.
All right. Time for questions. The first one comes here. Microphone is coming. Go ahead.
I should state that I have a medical background. Nicotine is a very addictive substance. The jury is still out as to how harmful nicotine is. If you convert smokers or snus users to nicotine pouches, that's a good thing. If you, on the other hand, convert non-users to nicotine pouch users in the millions, then it's clearly not a good thing. My question is, of your customers, percentage-wise, how many are smokers or snus users that you have converted, and how many relatively are non-users that have turned to users of nicotine pouches?
Absolutely. I think it's a great question. I think first of all, if I take a look at where this category is getting a good foothold at the moment, such as the U.S., U.K., and non-Scandinavian or German-speaking Europe, the vast, vast majority, and I'm talking in the over 90% of consumers which are entering this category are ex-smokers. If we take a look at the average age of our profiles coming into that space, our consumers are in their mid-30s. Nobody gets out of bed in their mid-30s and says, "You know, I'm actually going to take up nicotine today." These are people which have often been smoking for a number of years and often face some sort of a lifestyle choice.
It often corresponds with a baby is on the way, and they're deciding that they're going to give up cigarettes for health purposes, and they understand the struggle that comes with that, and they move to nicotine pouches with it. I'm actually an example of this myself. I used snus and more recently nicotine pouches to get off cigarettes. Just to clarify, we're not moving snus users to nicotine pouches. That will happen automatically. Snus in itself is substantially safer than cigarettes. Our focus is on moving cigarette smokers to there. When you come back to the likes of Sweden and Norway, it becomes a more complex space here. It's often not particularly well appreciated, I often feel, within Sweden.
Sweden has the lowest smoking rates of any country in the OECD, and it is on track to be the first smoke-free country in the world, whereby the World Health Organization defined that as any market where less than 5% of the adults are smoking. It was also the only country, along with Norway, where there was more female smokers than there was male smokers, and has been the case for about 25 years since the onset of snus, because traditional snus didn't necessarily meet the needs of females. It was much more of a male-centric product which went through. What we can see is nicotine pouches is having a massive impact in Sweden when it comes to removing particularly the female grouping away from smoking, and you can see the contractions within that space.
There will inevitably be a space where consumers will go to nicotine pouches, not on our platforms. Nobody gets out of bed in the morning and goes online and says, "I'm going to take up nicotine." There will, as a category, inevitably be a space where people will take up nicotine within Sweden who weren't previously smokers. I think that needs to be borne in mind as well as regards to the 18-22-year-old population. The % of people which are using nicotine in Sweden is almost identical to the % of people which are using nicotine in Germany. Only difference is that the vast majority of those people in Germany are using cigarettes. The vast majority of those people in Sweden are using harm reduced products.
I think there is a sort of discussion here as regards to, yes, it would be great to get everybody off nicotine over the long run, and that is the ambition that we need to be going to as a society. I think there's also a benefit in keeping people away from cigarettes for those formative years as they go through. I think as an industry, it's playing quite a good space in there. We are never going to be in the space where people actually start using nicotine because of our platform. You don't go online and decide you're going to try nicotine there for the first stage. I don't know if that goes some way towards answering the question.
On the question of ESG, that's a big question overall.
Yes
... of today, of course. Is that part of the answer on how your business model aligns with ESG and the questions you get on that topic?
Absolutely. It varies hugely on different parts of the world as it goes to what the perspective on this one is. I always feel that within, as you guys can probably grasp, I'm not Scandinavian. Within Scandinavia, where this has been extremely successful, it's probably something which is least well-recognized relative to other countries. When I speak to people in the U.K., I'm originally Irish myself, or in the U.S., people are much more appreciative. There's actually a concept which is called the Swedish experience, where the data on how well or how successful Sweden has been at removing cigarettes is something which is greatly appreciated, envied, and wants to be copied by many other countries. That's why I can see so many governments bringing in regulation to support this.
For example, in the U.K., the National Health Service, they effectively, the medical, the health body within the U.K. have started to actually offer these products free to smokers to try and get them off cigarettes because of the benefit it has to society, to the health of the individuals, and to the long-term health of the economy within these spaces as well. I feel as though it's a complex space when it comes to ESG, but it's definitely a space that those which are more closely involved in it are very appreciative of the work we're doing.
Hmm.
Does the perception from Swedish investors differ from international investors, the perception of your business? Absolutely. I think the international investors are much more positive towards taking a look at the realities as it regards to the data of the impact we're having on society rather than simply the tagline of what category are you in.
How have you been affected by the acquisition of Swedish Match from Philip Morris? It was, of course, a big, very big company.
Yeah
... included in the OMXS30 study. You have one less proxy.
Yes
this space now. How have you been affected?
I think it undoubtedly creates a lot less interest in the category from a media perspective within Sweden. However, on the flip side, when somebody stands up and pays $17 billion for a business, it did start to raise a lot more interest around our category from more of the international players. We can see, for example, that many of the London institutions have started coverage of us on the back of recognition of where the category will be simply based on the price tag that Philip Morris paid for Swedish Match.
The Swedish Match vision was a world without smokers, and then they were acquired by a company that sells cigarettes.
That sells more cigarettes than any other company in the world.
Well, yes. Which are the most common questions from investors?
I think the most common question perhaps two, three years ago was very much hinging around, but this is, you know, popping something under your lip is a very Scandinavian concept. Could that ever get to a level that it will operate outside of Scandinavia? We now see, for example, that there's more nicotine pouches being sold in California today than there is in Sweden. We see the growth rates going through the U.K., we see the progress that it's making in Switzerland. I think that question has very much been put to bed as regards to perhaps international consumers weren't prepared to use traditional snus, but they're very much prepared to use nicotine pouches because when they do the research, they see the health benefits that they can get from that space.
I think the other question is often around regulation as regards to how will this category be regulated in the future. I think that's where it's very interesting to engage with the core principles that many of the ministers of health are working with at this point in time of the drive towards harm reduction and how perfectly that fits hand in hand with our vision and our higher purpose along the way here.
Also another
Being a non-smoker, I don't even know the terms, but what happened to what I think we call e-cigarettes? You don't see them in this country, luckily enough, but in Europe and the world outside of Sweden, how is the competition, your position as to them? I think e-cigarettes is also in the harm reduced space. You don't have the same epidemiology behind e-cigarettes as you do behind snus, where you have 200 years of epidemiology, and if there was any health effects behind it would be well documented at this stage. I think there's still a bit of a journey to be done on e-cigarettes to get to there.
There's generally a belief as well from the World Health Organization that e-cigarettes have played a very successful role in reducing smoking rates across some countries as well. For example, it's perceived as though four million less smokers exist in the U.K. today than did a decade ago because of e-cigarettes. I think from a consumer perspective, there's going to be a different range of offers as regards to what they're prepared to use to get off. We hope that over time, they will keep going further and further down towards the zero harm space. Nicotine pouches is as close to that zero harm as is available in the market today. If any new products manifest tomorrow, which is even lower harm, we will make sure that we engage around that category also. Competition-wise between you, pouches, and e-cigarettes?
Well, we're quite positive towards e-cigarettes because it has a big impact on getting people into the concept of harm reduction. Our role is to explain to people when you're on e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches is an even safer bet. You've stepped across the Rubicon. Maybe it's time to go all the way to Rome
Okay, we have kept the time budget pretty well. I just have one question from online, we will postpone the ending of this day roughly two or three minutes maybe. Michael says, "How do you target the Chinese market? The majority of the one billion are from there.
Yeah, 400 million are from China. We don't target the Chinese market. We have, well, we have 48 million smokers within the E.U. and U.K. at this point in time. We have another 37 million smokers within the U.S. We're starting off with targeting that 76 million at the beginning. Once we get to there, then we will look for other geographies. I feel as though we have enough to do for the foreseeable future and focus on that 76 million.
Gavin, thank you very much.
Sorry, was there one question from there as well?
I'm sorry. Okay.
One question. I understood it as you are the global online market leader in this, but not knowing the industry, the producer of the product, are they selling directly as well?
Yeah.
Do you see a trend that they will improve their margins by increasing the direct sell and which will impact you as a, as a reseller, et cetera? Or how is that ecosystem working?
Yes. Many of the large players have been online for at least five, six years at this space. What we see is that the consumer tends to jump between brands quite rapidly and often consume many different brands in a single basket. That's the main reason why the direct-to-consumer platforms have not been successful over the past five - six years. It's that appetite among the consumer to have a repertoire of products that a single direct-to-consumer store cannot meet. That's why despite the heavy investment that's gone into D2C over the last five to six years, it is still minuscule relative to our size in the market.
All right, Gavin, thank you very much.
Thank you.