Good morning, everyone. Thank you for listening in to this presentation, and sorry for the delay. We are the management of Humble Group, and today we will present the results for the Q1 of 2024. My name is Simon Petrén. I'm the CEO of the group, and with me today, I have Johan Lennartsson, our CFO.
Hello, everyone.
At first, we will do some overview of Humble Group at a glance. We will then dig into the financial highlights for the quarter. We will continue with the cash flow, and then do some deep dive into each of the segments, and to round things up with some focus for 2024. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to send them in to us, and we will take them with the Q&A by the end of the presentation. To summarize the start of the year and the period, I think Q1 has been a strong start for the group. We have maintained the momentum that we have seen throughout the last years with dedicated sales growth in all of our markets.
We reached net sales of SEK 1.8 billion, so it's a steady improvement from last year, fueled by both some acquisitive growth, but also organic growth. Mainly, we could actually start seeing the results from our efficiency work that we have done to improve the profitability. But let's start a bit with Humble Group at a glance, for those that don't know us as well. We are a modern FMCG group focusing on developing products within this industry that are focused on health and sustainability. We help our companies drive transformation and to become a bigger and better version of themselves prior to the acquisition. Our mission here is to really be a challenger within this industry and to help drive change globally.
It is one of the world's biggest industries, and it's on steady transformation and improvement towards, these trends. This is something that we have really seen throughout the year. When we started this journey, it was clear to me that this is something that is going to happen and needs to happen. I can happily say that we have higher demand and requests from customers and retailers and new countries than we've ever had before. Our way of doing this is to continuously improve our offering. We are developing new products, and we are bringing new products and brands to new customers and markets, globally.
So the trend for health and well-being, as well as sustainability, it is here to stay, and it's also driven by how consumers are aware of themselves and, you know, with the digitalization and awareness through social media, the consumers are more and more demanding of products that meet their personal and their benefits. So let's look at the platform that we have established throughout the years. I've been talking a lot about this before, but now I can proudly say that across the group, we have a central platform where we are supporting our companies with financing solution, HR support, which is something that can be very tedious for any entrepreneur to run. We have a state-of-the-art business intelligence system, and we also help driving business system changes and IT solutions.
We also run several strategic initiatives that might be quite demanding for an entrepreneur to run themselves. We currently have 18 different work streams, centrally, that is, bigger initiatives that we are driving to support further growth and improve profitability. And then on top of this, we have a track record of doing M&A. We have been taking it cool for a while, and I think we're gonna continue to do so until we feel that we organically are able to continue to grow with acquisitions that would fit the group. So this is the central sort of functions and support that we mainly provide, to our entrepreneurs and our CEOs and management out in our subsidiaries, to make it easier and more, more fun and rewarding to be an entrepreneur.
On top of this, we have three growth drivers that we are able to scale with synergies across the group. First one is product development. I dare say that we are one of the better FMCG groups out there in developing products. We have developed many new novelties through ourselves, but also good at looking at what is a trending product. If we see another company doing a success product, we're quite quick to copy that and launch it into new markets with one of our own brands or a new brand. We are also really strong in sourcing.
We have more than 300 contract manufacturers that we work with, and we have more than 10 own manufacturing companies within the group that are very well positioned to continue to scale with innovation and being a dynamic partner to our own brands, but also external brands. On top of this, we have distribution in more than 100 markets. In Sweden, we have one of the strongest platforms to try new products, to bring it out into all channels, and to really, you know, refine the success recipe. Sweden is a great market to be in when it comes to innovation because we are in the forefront for health and sustainability products in FMCG. So if we're able to succeed here, we know that it's a great product that we can bring out internationally.
So those two value drivers is something that we really focus on to help our companies and our entrepreneurs, to grow their businesses, and this is a way for us to create value within the group. So enough talk about that. Let's dig into some of the financial highlights for the Q1 of this year.
... Yes, and, as Simon already mentioned, we have noticed a strong demand for our, our goods and our products overall. The net sales for the quarter amounted to just around SEK 1.8 billion, and comprising a total growth of 15%. The organic growth amounted to 11%, which was a little bit negatively impacted by the calendar impact. And, the last 12 months, the total net sales now reached just around SEK 7.3 billion.
Yes, and, I mean, I think we have sustained strong growth. We had a really good Q1 last year. I think it was the highest organic growth for all of the quarters last year. But we were still able to grow quite nicely. As Johan mentioned, we had a negative effect of the early Easter with the goods deliverable business days. But in return, you know, we have seen that April has started fantastic, not only because of the calendar effect, but because we also have a strong momentum. Some of the strategic initiatives that we will talk about later in detail within the segment overview is starting to having an effect. But also in general, I think the consumers really like our products.
We have been focusing on a lot of innovation, and some of that innovation is now rolling out. And we're also expanding into new market. We will also talk more about that later. So I think in general, the momentum is really good within the group. I'm confident throughout the rest of the year that we will continue to grow at a nice pace. But of course, I mean, we are a growth company, and I'm happy to see that we're sustaining that growth with growth every month. So we are on a good track here, but you know, the growth could have been higher, but I'm hoping that we will recoup it throughout the coming quarters of the year.
And looking at the gross profit, we've communicated that earlier, that this is a key area for us. We increased the gross profit to SEK 566 million, comprising a gross margin of just around 31%, which is an increase with 1% from previous year. And this is, of course, something that we are satisfied with, to show progress on the profitability levels. The last four months, the gross profit amounted to just around SEK 2.2 billion, and is also on the right path.
Absolutely. What I'm happy about here is to see that we are actually increasing the gross profit more than the net sales, which is something we haven't really done historically with the margin trend we've had. We have seen a clear trend shift here in our gross margin that we month-over-month are actually able to improve it. But as I've said, historically, we've been at much higher level when we look on the pro forma basis, so we still have a lot of work to do here. But I'm happy to see that actually in Q4 and Q1 now, the last two quarters, we have been able to start showing some gross margin improvements.
This is something we have started to do, but it remains a high focus for us to continue to improve, because we can also see that when we're able to drive more gross profit, it actually translate into nice profitability for the group.
Talking about the profitability, we noticed an increase in the adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITA levels. For the quarter, adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 152 million, and compared to previous quarter of SEK 128 million. The adjusted EBITA grew with 25% and reached SEK 128 million for the quarter. We made a reassessed judgment of the accounting principles for Capitalized Development Cost, which affected the comparison numbers. Do you wanna share some reflections?
Yeah, I mean, I'm really happy to see these improvements. It is one of the best quarter, like, on a percentage-wise base we've had in a long time, where also when looking pro forma, that I've actually organically are able to improve the profitability this much. And it's not only driven by the increased gross profit, but actually we're getting some scale with the size of the group. And I think this also is a very good indicator of what's gonna happen going forward, if we're able to scale with initiatives that we are working on to improve utilization within our manufacturers with additional shifts and increased output.
So, I think this is showing really well that, you know, we have started to invest in the platform throughout the last few years, and now we are actually gonna start seeing the results from that now, when we are continuing to grow. Of course, it's important to have a nice balance here between, you know, improving the profitability, but also continuing to invest, because there is so much demand out there for our products and brands, so we need to continue to do that as well. But, I'm happy about the results here and the strong improvement.
Regarding the capitalized expenses, I think this is something that actually will improve the cash flow, since we will have less tax for the group, and it's also less administrative cost now when we have done the new assessment. So I'm positive about the results and then the improved profitability. This is something that we wanna continue to see throughout the coming periods of the year. But of course, we need to maintain this gross profit improvement to see that happening.
And just looking at the cash flow also, we noticed a strong operating cash flow before changing net working capital with SEK 127 million. And we're of course happy with those levels. We can also see that we took some strategic decisions regarding the inventory and we had a net working capital decrease of SEK 67 million that reduced the total operating cash flow after changing net working capital to SEK 60 million. And this has, of course, been a strategic decision from our side in order to improve the gross margin, for example, as Simon mentioned, to avoid, for example, some price increases that we had in the beginning of the year. Some reflection, Simon?
Yeah, I mean, as Johan said, some of our distribution companies, we do sell a lot of products with cacao, so we knew that, you know, we got some price increases corresponded to us, and we know that they're gonna take into effect in Q2, so it's better for us to stock up with these products at lower levels and then potentially have a better margin when we raise our prices in return to our customers. Mind you also that, I mean, we did have a great cash release last year from net working capital. We do have further potential to continue to release net working capital, but naturally also, with the growth that we are having around, you know, 10%-15% should be a natural tie-up in net working capital. So, this is something that we have seen.
We are also, as we're gonna go into later in the segment overview, scaling many of our companies into an additional shift and positioning them for further growth. And if we're gonna do that, we also need the raw materials to scale that production. So I think this is quite natural for us, and I'm happy to tie some net working capital if it's a way for us to fuel further growth. That being said, you know, my ambition and the team's ambition is not that we should have this sort of tie-up like we have seen this quarter, which has been significantly higher than the total levels of net working capital to sales that we have in the group, by the year end last year.
I think overall, the cash flow is still looking strong and solid from the operation. It's a steady improvement, and it's one of our highest priorities for the coming periods, to maintain a strong cash flow and utilizing that to delever the business further. So let's dig into the segment overview. Those who have been with us for some time, sorry for the repetition, but, we have four business segments in the company. We have Nordic Distribution, which is a catalyst segment for mainly the Swedish market, where we have a really strong access through all of the different sales channels. We then have three different product segments. The first one is Future Snacking, where we focus on snacking, both standard and conventional snacking, but also a sugar-reduced, mainly candy and chewing gums, et cetera.
So it's a really interesting high growth segments, where we have taken the market from 0.5% to more than 3% of packed jelly confectionery. Very interesting. We then have Quality Nutrition, which is our nutrition segment, where we are the leading Nordic B2B manufacturer of nutrition products. We also have the leading brand in Australia, Body Science, which has done tremendously well the last two years. And then we have the last segment, which is Sustainable Care, which is a mix of brands within sustainability, personal care, and home care products, Humble Co and Naty. And then we have some companies which we internally call dynamic retail partners, that are specialists working with the retailers to co-develop brands exclusively for the retailers, which is a very interesting segment.
It's also the biggest company in the group, Solent, positioned in that segment. So this is the overall group, and in all of the segments we have, as I mentioned earlier, our platform, we have research and development, we have our own manufacturing, we have our own brands, and also the distribution to access, the customers directly.
And looking at the first segment, Future Snacking, we had a quite stable net sales development compared to previous quarter. And this was negatively impacted by True Gum, which had an extremely good quarter last year, and the total effect was SEK 18 million. And we also divested the Bayn Production in January 2024, which has had a negative impact on the sales with SEK 4 million. So adjusted for these two effects, the growth of the segment was 11% in regards of net sales. And in terms of gross profit, we managed to increase the gross profit, and the gross margin also increased with one percentage unit. Simon?
Yeah, so I mean, Future Snacking is one of the segments that's really close to my heart. I think it's very exciting to see what we are doing here. Looking at the net sales development for the quarter, it might not look like that exciting, but it's actually really exciting. I mean, we have tremendous response from the market. Pändy, one of the companies that was early on in the group, has done a fantastic job and development throughout the year. We launched into Norway beginning of this year, and it's just, you know, blasting over there. So, this is a really, really exciting opportunity to see that what we have done in Sweden with sugar-reduced confectionery, taking it from 0.5% to more than 3%, we have all of the leading brands in this segment.
So if we're able to do this internationally, you know, the market for this is tremendous. So this is really exciting, and we're starting to see the results now when we're scaling into new markets. True Gum, as Johan mentioned, I mean, they had an extraordinary Q1 last year due to a conflict between one of their competitors and the main retailers in Germany. So that was a bit of an outlier, but actually the company is in a good momentum overall, and we have a really exciting new product line that we're gonna launch in, I think, next week. So keep your eyes out for that and look at their Instagram, and you will see that. I think it's gonna be a real hit. And it's a really exciting project, so look out for that.
And overall, I mean, in this segment, we have a lot of strategic initiatives ongoing. As I mentioned, really strong trajectory with Pändy. We did move Tweek from historically Bayn Production, which we divested in Q4, into Grahns now and starting the production, which has been sort of a setback with that, you know, delayed transfer. So that also impacted the segment a bit, but now we're sending the first products to FCB, who's the distributor for those products in Sweden, so we're on pace with that. But looking at some of the growth initiatives in this segment, just to give an idea of what we have ahead of us.
We've done a big job with gathering all the confectionery manufacturers under one umbrella called Arena Confectionery, and here we're starting now to gather all the procurement of, like, sugar, glucose, and gelatin, et cetera, to maximize first of all the pricing power, but also second of all to have the volume available. We're also doing sort of an adjustment between those companies of what they produce. So Franssons, for instance, we're taking the hard-boiled caramels, and we're now taking them into Grahns instead. So Grahns will go from one shift of the hard-boiled caramels into two shifts, increasing their capacity output with 100%. This will also enable Franssons to do foam candy and jelly candy. So we're now stepping up from one to two shifts in Franssons, which will also increase that capacity to 100%.
This change is now actually happening as we speak, so, from May, June, and forward, we should be up and running in Franssons with that second shift, which is really exciting. Grahns, who's the biggest manufacturers here, we don't have an additional shift, but rather a shift, sort of a prolonging. So we're increasing the length of the shift, which will bring us additional 40% capacity into confectionery of the jellies, and that's also really, really exciting to see. So we have some big plans over here, and we're actually, you know, prospecting, increasing with an additional facility for Grahns because we are... You know, if we would have the capacity available, we would have, you know, significant improvements in the net sales for these segments. Solent Group received a B Corp certification, which I think is great to see.
It's the second company that has been B Corp certified since our acquisition, and on a really good track and has been since we started the journey together with them. So a lot of exciting things happening here. I think the main focus going forward is to, you know, continue to scale with our sugar-reduced candy internationally. Pändy has the leading flag there with, with, you know, fantastic trajectory, almost 100% growth year to date, which is great to see. And then also to make sure we are able to deliver the products. So here it's clearly been some capacity constraints that we... You know, it takes some time to do this. Like, we've been working on it for more than a year.
We've invested in additional personnel, et cetera, to make sure it happens, and I'm really exciting now because it's in Q2 and Q3 is when we're gonna start seeing the effect from those strategic initiatives rolling out.
Looking at the sustainable care segment, we noticed a stable growth. Solent is our machine in terms of deliverance. The net sales amounted to SEK 522 million, increased from SEK 484 million the previous quarter. Most significant, we also managed to increase the gross margin to 36% from 34%, which we're of course satisfied with. Simon, comments?
Yeah, so, Solent is the biggest company in this segment, and they're just doing a fantastic job. It's also the biggest company within the group, so it's quite, rewarding to have that sort of business growing at solid double-digit figures and also seeing this margin improvement now when the freight cost has come down significantly compared to, you know, 2022. So this is very reassuring to see. What we're also doing with Solent is that we have now invested in a new team, so we're actually, you know, making it the sort of Humble Group powerhouse for U.K. We have an integration that is now finalized, where Go Superfoods actually is a part of Solent Group going forward. So we really see some strong development in this segment, thanks to Solent. As you're aware, we have Humble Co.
and Naty, which is, you know, two brands in the premium segment for personal care and home care. That sort of positioning has been quite tough to have with the pricing situations for consumers in Europe, but we're actually starting to see some really good results here. Both Humble Co. and Naty are on a good track to start improving their growth again, but also mainly the profitability. So, I'm quite happy with the development in this segment, and I think it's a good segment for us because the cash conversion is really high, and we're starting to see the results from the initiatives that we've been doing throughout the last two years to pay for some strong growth now when the market is starting to be strong again.
We are also doing some strategic development in Fancystage to streamline the production there, and it's also a way for us to mitigate the geopolitical risk with Asia that we have. So overall, I think the development in this segment is strong. We don't have that many strategic initiatives here, but I think the companies is more like company-focused to make those companies grow even faster and make the right strategic decisions to take them to the next level.
Looking at Quality Nutrition, we notice a strong solid growth here as well. Net sales amounted to SEK 389 million for the quarter, compared to SEK 345 million. We managed to grow the gross profit to SEK 122 million, reaching a total gross margin for the quarter of 31%, compared to 26% for the previous quarter. And this is, of course, in line with what we are working on, on a daily basis. You want to comment on the strategic initiatives?
Yeah. So I mean, first of all, let's talk about Body Science. I mean, when we acquired this company, I think they were number 3 in the market. Now we're actually number 1 in the Australian market. It's a market that the size of Scandinavia, so it's actually a very nice position to have. And I mean, this company is just doing a fantastic job growing, which is really rewarding to see for us.
What we have done here is to look at, okay, what is actually working here in Europe and Scandinavia, and how can we utilize our product knowledge and help, you know, Body Science further in Australia? So if you know about the Soft Bar, which is a soft protein bar, it has been a fantastic success in the market. Tremendous growth and taking a big market share in a record time.
So we've taken the recipe that we've also developed a version for ourselves in Bars Production, so we contract manufacturing that for other companies now, which has been very hard to find in Europe for several years now. But we've taken that recipe and knowledge, and we brought it to Australia. In addition to that, last year, as you know, we acquired a bar line from a bankruptcy. We've gotten that bar line up and running in basically 6 months' time, and now already in Q1, we started to roll out our only produced soft bars in Australia. We are the only ones doing it in that market, and we are first with it. So this is really, really exciting.
I think it's a way for us capitalizing on the product development knowledge within the group, but also bringing a new innovation on sort of like exclusivity base to Australia with the leading brands. So this is a really exciting opportunity. And also on top of that, it's our own production, where we have it vertically integrated, so it's actually very profitable for us to do so as well. Let's talk about Sweden then, and our contract manufacturing here. I mean, bars, as I've mentioned historically, is also really exciting. I mean, we have tremendous demand. We sold out basically the entire production for 2024 early on in 2023, and we have been investing significantly throughout the last two years to be able to scale.
I mean, Bars Production did around SEK 100 million last year, and, you know, we're basically flat because of the capacity constraints. But with the different steps we're taking now, stepping on into an additional shift in all of the bar lines, which is now ramping up here in Q1, but mainly in Q2, we have a double line coming in Q3, and we have an additional double line coming in Q1 next year. We will be able to increase the sales of Bars Production with several hundred%, during the year and next year. So that's really exciting. We have already sold all the capacity for 2024, so looking forward to see what we can do in 2025 there. We also have Ewalco, which is one of the biggest companies in this segment.
Pretty much the same story here. We've been capacity constraints. We've been moving machinery to separate the collagen and the powders, which is still ongoing, and we're also gonna step up into an additional shift, which would give us around 80% extra. So this is something that we're rolling out in Q3, is our estimate, which will also drive additional sales within the segment. So a lot of things happening here. The third thing I want to mention is the energy drink line. I mean, we started this project in Q2 last year. I think we've done it at a quite good pace because we have a plan to get it started now in the end of Q2, and it's a really, really interesting opportunity.
We can do up to 60 million cans here, and we have really strong demand from external customers that wants to come and produce with us, but also to bring in-house many of the cans that we produce externally. We do more than 20 million cans externally today, so this will be a nice margin improvement to take that and vertically integrate it into the group and produce for our own brands. So overall, I think it's... There is a lot of things happening here, and pretty much the same story as Future Snacking.
You know, we've been a bit constrained with capacity, but our mission here is to support our companies with the strategic competence to see, okay, how can we take your business and make it many times bigger in the coming 5 years? If we're able to do that, invest in the right sort of machinery, automation, I think it's gonna be one of the winners for us going forward.
Yes, and looking at the last segment of the group, Nordic Distribution, we noticed a strong growth here as well, of 691 million SEK, compared to 526 percent, 526 million. And this was a little bit, the growth was a little bit fueled by acquisitions as we acquired the last parts of Privab in March 2023, which was fully consolidated now during the Q1 of 2024. And we noticed a gross margin decrease of the segment to 22% from 24%, and this was a little bit impacted by this full consolidated effect, which took place in the Q1. Do you wanna comment something on the strategic initiatives?
Yeah, I mean, in this segment, we've done a lot of integration, Nordfood into GSD. We have, Privab Stockholm and Ystad going into Privab Nässjö. And, outside of that, I think there is a lot of work still to be done. I mean, we're now being able to get all the Privab entities together, and we're starting to work as one. We've done a big implementation of the IT infrastructure, which is almost done, which will improve the efficiency quite significantly in Privab in general. So we want to really build a modern setup here for distribution for our own brands, but also external brands that work with us. And as Johan mentioned, I mean, the gross margin here is, is, is not a positive development.
It's a little bit about the consolidation, but I still think there, there is a lot of work to be done here to start negotiating as one group instead of the entities doing it themselves like they've done historically. And this is one of the initiatives that we are driving to see how can we do that? We have also been, throughout last year, almost 12 months, doing a big freight negotiation, which will not only impact this segment, but it will have a bigger impact in this segment than the other ones, to get a framework agreement for freights. So that is also a way for us to improve the profitability and efficiency here. But I think overall, I mean, the segment is on a strong growth. We have a few companies here, like GSD, Beson, etc.
They've been doing this for many years and have really stable growth, and I think the Privab Group as a whole, there is so much untapped potential there with the retailers, MyWay, for instance. So we are working here to make it even better, but I still think we're in a good trajectory. But of course, as we also mentioned historically on the cash flow, we need to be mindful about the inventory tie-up. I'm not worried about scrapping or anything because we have really high stock turnover in this segment, but of course, we wanna, you know, release that working capital to be able to utilize it for better purposes. Okay, so before we're rounding things up for the Q&A, just wanna mention our focus for 2024 going forward.
I've talked quite a lot today about the strategic initiatives. I'm really excited to see what we are gonna do on the remainder of this year and next year. It's time to see, like, what are the investments that we have done actually gonna resolve with? And I'm really excited to see actually what's gonna happen. I mean, now we're gonna be able to scale into additional shifts, and not having to increase the fixed cost, but rather working with just the increased output. So that's really, really exciting, but then again, we also need to make sure it happens, and there's a lot of initiatives ongoing simultaneously. So our focus is, and our top priority, is to make sure that we are able to execute on those initiatives in a good manner.
Second of all, we need to maintain a high cash conversion. I think it's great to see the strong cash flow from the operations, but we need to be able to maintain that and also make sure that it's run through after the net working capital, so that is also one of the main focuses for the year. Improved gross margin, a lot of the input prices have started to come down, but then we have some input prices, like the cacao prices, that went up significantly, now it's down again. So, you know, we need to work on our margins here and be able to see what can we do with the COGS and how can we work with the pricing, especially out towards the customers, where we have capacity constraints.
I mean, we shouldn't be capped at capacity if we don't have the right prices. So there's still a lot of work to be done here, also in the Nordic distribution, like we mentioned historically. And then the fourth pillar, which is the incubator, I mean, we launched in Q1 the initiative with Babblarna, like you've seen in a press release, that's really exciting. We are looking to have several of those major initiatives, where we partner with an existing brand or a profile, an influencer of a global scale, where we are actually the machinery that are able to launch a new brand or product line into FMCG, which we have the capacity to do because we are entrepreneurs, but we also have the platform available within Humble Group. So I think this is really exciting.
We're gonna look to launch 2-4 of these initiatives per year. When I talk about initiatives in this, it's meaningful initiatives that actually can make a difference on our total group growth, given the size of Humble today. Then the last point is actually about internationalization. It has been a lot of work to really get the group together throughout 2023 and now 2024, but now we are pushing the pedal on growth, and we're gonna start expanding into the U.S. market. We have an ongoing initiatives to see how we can rapidly scale, mainly in our future snacking brands, because we know we have a competitive advantage versus the products that is available in the U.S. market, and it's vastly bigger than the Swedish and European one even.
So that's really exciting, but also to seeing the potential to scale into Asia, Australia, and Europe with the brands that aren't in Europe. So, we are working a lot with our hero brands here to make sure that they have the right resources and right opportunities to scale internationally faster than they would have been able to do themselves. So these are the top five priorities that we centrally are working on, and driving throughout our subsidiaries across, the group. Thank you, everyone, for listening in to this presentation, and let's do some Q&A.
Thank you, Simon. And, yeah, the first question coming in is regarding the inventory buildup during Q1. If we can comment on which segments this inventory buildup is related to, and are any possibilities to say something about price versus volume?
We don't have the price versus volume today for the full group. We have it on a major level for the ones that we have in Power BI, which is 97%. And looking at that, it's almost all volume. We've seen that trend through last year, where we went from beginning of last year, like 2023, in Q1 we had quite a lot of price. But looking at the last six months, it's almost only been volume growth. That's what I can say about that. About the inventory, as I've already mentioned, Nordic Distribution is the major. It's like 80% of the tie-up, so there we will have a run-through in the inventory.
But also on top of that, of course, in the nutrition and the Future Snacking, where we have the additional, you know, capacity with the bars, the powders, and in Grahns & Franssons where we do the, the hard-boiled candy and the foam candy and the jelly candy, we need the raw materials because we're almost gonna, you know, double the output, of course. So, that is something that's happening now, and, but mainly in the Distribution segment.
There's also one question here about if you can comment something on our 2025 goals in terms of, how should the investors think about them?
So the 2025 goals remains in place, until we communicate anything different. We are seeing a really, really strong organic growth, and as I mentioned, a lot of the initiatives that we have shown today is something that will add more growth than we have seen historically. We also have an active M&A agenda going forward, when we feel that it's a good timing for us in the market in terms of pricing on the acquisitions, but also, you know, the pricing of, of the group. So, that's all I can say at this point.
Thank you, Simon. One question about the list change, if we have any timing about that. Can you comment something?
So I'll stand with my comment in the CEO letter. I mean, as I've said, we've had it as a priority lately now to make sure it happens quickly. But as you understand from the presentation today, it has been a strategic decision for the board and management that, you know, those operational initiatives that we have in place that can vastly impact our ability to grow and improve the profitability; it has been more prioritized. But as I said in the CEO letter, we're soon finalized, and it shouldn't be too long until we're... until there.
Okay, we got a comment here. "Good morning, and well done again. Could you quantify something about the Babblarna product line? What is the... Perhaps you can quantify something about growth or group sales, or what we think about it.
I mean, as of today, we have zero sales because we haven't launched it yet. But they have had some products out in the FMCG market already before we started the initiative with them, and those products have seen tremendous potential. So now we've developed a full line. It's not launched yet, but I think we have around 25 products that we have already sourced and designed together. So, hopefully we will be able to see some products before Q2 is finalized out in the market.
One of the last questions here, someone is writing, "Humble Group is run by entrepreneurs who love development and growth. How—what do we do in order to keep that spirit of the group in the future?
I mean, that's always a challenge. But I think a testimony to what we've done is that we haven't lost a single entrepreneur that we feel that we have wanted to keep within the group. So... And we have very, very low turnover of entrepreneurs. I know a couple of years ago, many investors asked me, like, "Oh, what happens when the earn-out is over," et cetera. It's not about that. I mean, we are on a journey together with entrepreneurs, and we are gonna build something fantastic here. So of course, we need to do our best to be a good owner, but they are also owners, being shareholders in the group. And I dare say that our entrepreneurs are really proud to be part of this group, and it hasn't been an issue so far.
If there is somebody that would want to leave, of course, we would have to make a succession. But of the successions we've made so far, I'm not disappointed with any of the cases. So, that's not something that we worry about.
All right, two more questions. One is, "Regarding the capitalized development, which level should you expect going forward?
I think it's gonna be the same as this quarter, like SEK 1-2 million.
Okay. And lastly, "Regarding Gross Margin for the group, do you see a continued improvement in Q2, or is it too early to say?
I mean, it is too early to say. We are a complex group to monetize, despite our really strong systems. We have more than 37,000 products, and it's all about, you know, the COGS and the prices out. But it is a high priority for all of our companies, and it has been for some time now. So, I'm hopeful we will be able to improve it, but I can't tell already. What I can tell, and like I wrote in the CEO letter, April has started really, really strong, and usually when we have strong sales growth, we're actually seeing a higher gross margin also. You know, unless we have any campaigns driving that, which we are not aware of, I think it's a positive development, but we'll see.
Yeah, but of course, as we've seen this quarter, we increased the gross margin with 0.4 percentage points. It's... And with a good cost control of the group, that will fall down on the profitability levels as well. So of course, it's a high-focus area for us to maintain a increasing gross margin.
Yeah, and that's also what I'd like to see, that we sequentially are able to continuously improve the gross margin quarter by quarter. If we're able to do that for the coming three years, you know, we're gonna be in a really good place, so that's our focus.
Good. Yeah, we've covered all the questions coming in, so, yeah, I think we should summarize it there.
Okay. Thank you, everyone, for listening in, and as always, if you have any other further questions, feel free to reach out at any time. Have a great week.
Thank you.