Good morning, everyone. Thank you for tuning in to our presentation of the results for the second quarter, 2024. My name is Simon Petrén. I'm the Group CEO of Humble Group, and with me today to support the presentation, we have our CFO, Johan Lennartsson.
Good morning, everyone.
So just to give a brief overview of the quarter, I think it's been a really great start, the full first 6 months of the year. We had a really strong improvement in the gross margin and the profitability margin this second quarter of the year. And we could also see that we have been able to maintain the growth with primarily driven by volume, despite having some negligible effect just from the price that we have seen with the historical years. I'm really happy to see also that the initiatives that we have been working on for the last 12-18 months to improve the profitability are starting to yield results. With that being said, let's start talking about the net sales for the quarter.
Yeah, in terms of net sales, we noted a somewhat weaker demand from the consumers during the second quarter, but all in all, we grew the net sales with 9% for the quarter and reached SEK 1.8 billion. The organic growth for the quarter amounted to 9%, and we noted a limited impact from currency effects and no impact from acquisitions. For the first six months, we reached SEK 3.7 billion, and total growth of 12%, whereof 9%-10% were organic growth and 2% came from acquisitions that were finalized in the first quarter, 2023. The last twelve months, the net sales reached SEK 7.5 billion, and that comprises a total increase of 19%.
So to just get an idea of what's happened during the first six months and what we see going forward, I mean, looking back at the last three years, it's clear that basically all of the FMCG companies had a quite big impact from price. And as I have historically communicated, price has been a smaller part, less than a majority of our growth. But this is the first time, this first six months, that we really see that the price basically had no effect on the growth at all. But we continue to grow the volume as we have done historically. We get new market share, and we are expanding into new markets. What's really, really good to see, and what I'm really happy about, is also to see the international growth.
And we had a really strong increase there of 15%, that I also mentioned in the CEO letter in the quarterly report. What's moreover interesting is that, I mean, we have been able to keep this volume-driven growth, but also been looking over some part of the product portfolio to see, okay, what products aren't really profitable? Where can we invest our capital more efficiently going forward? So of course, that had a bit of an impact as well in with the mix effect. But I'm really confident about the future. As Johan mentioned, we had a strong start in April, as I mentioned in the last quarterly report. May and middle of June, up until the middle of June, was a little bit weaker, actually.
But what we could see is the last weeks of June, the consumer really came back, and we had really strong. We had a record week, the last week of June, and now in July, we have some really solid growth numbers in the high teens. So, I'm confident about the future. And also, mind you all, like we have explained also in the report, that a lot of the initiatives that we have been working on, we have only seen a small and marginal effect. For instance, with the Grahns and Franssons, I will mention later on the Future Snacking. We had delays with the molding forms, and we just started to increase it in the middle of June. So I'm confident about our growth going forward. We are gonna get back to double digit.
I'm not worried about that. What I'm happy to see is that it is volume-driven growth, and we have still been capacity constrained in our factories. You know, that is an upside that we see going forward and also something that we have been investing in, both on the cost side, but also in terms of the network and capital that we will talk about later in this presentation. So overall, I mean, we closed the first half year with 10% increase, which I think is quite all right. But we are aiming for higher numbers, and we have a plan to get there. So let's talk a bit about the gross profit.
Yes, in the profitability terms, gross profit is a key ratio for us, and we reached SEK 586 million for the second quarter, comprising a gross margin of 31.5%. That is an increase from previous year with 2.2 percentage units. And in for the first six months, we reached just around 31% compared to 30% in gross margin last year. And we are happy with the development. We start to see that the price increases that we announced previous periods have now been implemented with full effect, and the initiatives that we've taken to strengthen the overall gross profit has started to give some effects in the financials.
Yeah, and once again, I mean, this is what makes me really happy about what we have done this quarter. If you look at Q1, I mean, we still had some acquisitive growth in the gross profit. Looking at the difference here in Q2, it's actually the same percentage growth, and we almost doubled the net sales with the gross profit increase. And I think that really showcases that we have been able to earn more money on the sales growth that we are actually driving and also improving the profitability. And as I mentioned, historically, this is one of the key factors for us to drive profitability. And it's really exciting to see that a lot of the gross profit actually, a higher percentage has turned into profitability.
So I'm really happy about this. I mean, we can get it even higher. If the sales would have been higher, we could have had a higher gross profit increase. But we have been working on this. We still haven't been really favored by the macro environment yet in terms of currency or the freight costs from Asia. We've been working to handle that well, but you know, the macro environment has still been tough. And despite all of these factors, we are increasing the gross profit significantly in this quarter. So I think this really pave way for a strong continued improvement in this part of the P&L, if we are able to continue the growth, like we really feel we will be able to do, but also continue to improve the margin.
When I look at the figures for the nine last months, we have had a really solid trend shift. So basically, every month we are improving the gross margin, which is something that we monitor very closely in our companies. And we are trying to support all of the business sales with detailed analysis. What products should we focus on? How can we further drive value here? And as Johan said, I mean, we have started to see, I wouldn't say the full effect, but a majority of the effect from the price increases might still find some there in some of the factories where we are capacity constrained. But in general, I think we've done a great job here, and I'm confident about the future.
Looking at the profitability with the adjusted EBITDA, developed to SEK 168 million, compared to SEK 149 million in the second quarter last year. That comprises on a year-on-year growth of 13%, and for the adjusted EBITDA development, we came in on SEK 141 million, comprising a growth of 18%. We are, of course, happy to see that, the initiatives on the gross margin increase have also taken effect on the overall profitability lines. We have had a few costs related to capacity increases in the production sites in Sweden. But despite this, we see this growth year-on-year for the quarters, which is, of course, satisfying, for now. The last 12 months, adjusted EBITDA came in on SEK 551 million, and we are happy with these results.
Yeah, just to share some color on that, to explain, I mean, I'm writing, I'm talking a lot about that, but, to give all of you listeners an idea how the cost dynamic work. When you are scaling up in a shift in a factory, you need to hire additional personnel, you need to maybe improve the different part of the value chain and the process. You need to actually increase the overhead cost. And it is costly to do that in order to be able to go into an additional shift. But we have done so simultaneously in seven different factories, and we are still able to show these numbers.
We haven't seen the effect from the outcome here, because once you have the fixed costs taken, like we have done in most of the factories, we still have a few more personnel that we need to add in some of the sites. But once you have that fixed cost covered, you will just add the revenue, and you have a really, really strong, you know, fallout from the gross margin down to profitability. So I'm actually very proud of this, to see that we are able to improve the EBITDA with 18% in this quarter. And that's also taking into consideration, we have now finalized this full sale leaseback that we had as boosting the profitability last year, with SEK 4 million for the quarter.
So the actual improvement organically in our companies that we own now, excluding the properties, is actually 22%. So I think we have been working hard on this. I think it's great to see that the gross profit is translating down to profitability, and despite all of the extra overhead costs that we have taken for the last nine months, and we haven't really seen the full effect of it. We have started to see some effect, but I'm really excited to see what can we do in Q3, ramping up the factories. Q4, most of them should be fully up and running. And 2025, we should be a different unit in terms of actually having all of the factories up and running and not needing to increase the overhead like we've done historically here.
Talking about the cash flow, we, we can see that the cash flow from operating cash flow before changing net working capital came in on SEK 138 million. We did, however, see an increase in the net working capital with SEK 186 million. So the total operating cash flow of the change in net working capital amounted to -SEK 49 million. And we will elaborate a little bit further on the, on the change in net working capital later on.
Yeah, so let's talk a bit about the growth here. I mean, we are a growth company. We are gonna aim to continue to grow, and of course, that will tie a bit of net working capital. For the first six months here, we have really invested in the companies that we know will have a strong growth going forward, and we want to support them. They shouldn't be out of stock. We should be able to maintain high service level and bring the goods to our customers. That's how we really capitalize long term on the growth that we are seeing inherently in our companies. So with this slide, I just wanted to demonstrate that, you know, we have tied up SEK 199 million the first six months.
Might look like a lot, but it's actually concentrated around a few entities, and I want to explain the rationale behind the investments that we have done here. Solent and Go Superfoods, I mean, Solent is a machine. It's growing very nicely. Mind you, I mean, their forecast is very, very set, and the order stock is set, so they are planning the orders for 2025. So the increase in stock here is actually on orders that we have and will be delivered in the second part of the year. And looking at their cash conversion, I'm very, very positive about that. They have provided us with a lot of dividends throughout the last few years. True Gum, very excited about that one. We did launch the dates in Q2.
We have already started to see some really interesting results, and now with a pace of around 35,000 packages a day, when we get it right, we're actually starting to see some significant turnover. We have also several thousand store listings already for the autumn. So I'm excited to see what we can do with that. It's a great product. The customer response has been amazing. Body Science, our Australian champion, I mean, they are the leader in the market. We did launch the energy drink line and the protein beverage line, which we have invested quite significantly into, but also the soft bar, like I mentioned in the last quarterly report, that won the award for the best bar in Australia. Of course, launching products like this, several new product lines, is tying some netw orking capital, but we will start be able to see the results from that.
We have gained great listings and quite excited about the coming six months here to what we can do with these product lines. Delsbo Candle, I mean, this is not a surprise for us. This is just the way this company looks like. They are selling candles, and the 75%-80% of the sales are in the winter months here. So this is how it always looks like in this company. Ewalco, here we have increased the shifts with powders, and we have moved the colonial sites, so we are ramping up the production here, and we need more raw materials enabled to do so. Quite excited to see what we will be able to do with that additional output.
Our customers have been demanding it for ages, and we haven't taken on new customers for almost 1.5 years, so really excited to see what's gonna happen now when we actually are able to increase the capacity with up to 80% in that business. GSD, I mean, we are. We have our own products there, but we also sell a lot of third-party products. We are one of the best companies to provide products to the gray market and discounters. Here we actually strategically did some extra purchases of chocolate products, before the price increases in May and June, that came in from a lot of the other companies. So, here we have been a bit opportunistic, in a strategic manner.
Last one, Amber House, pretty much the same as Solent and Go Superfoods, are seeing a great trajectory. The company is on a very strong growth, and they're with that same sort of business model, they have a great visibility on what stock they need in order to be able to deliver on the orders from their customers. Just want to showcase a lot of SEK 199 million might seem like a lot, but this is decision that we have taken, and we have a, a really good belief in those investments, that it will bring value, for me and you, all of you shareholders out there. Okay, so let's talk a bit about the segments overall. Start with Future Snacking.
Yeah, Future Snacking, the net sales grew to SEK 250 million compared to SEK 234 million . We also see here some of the initiatives on the gross margin started taking effect, the price increases that Simon mentioned, and the gross margin reached 46% compared to 44% last year. Yeah, so as previously said as well, we have taken a few costs related to capacity increase in the production sites in this segment, but despite that, we reached SEK 28 million in adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter.
Yeah, so let's talk a bit about the initiatives. I already mentioned Grahns and Franssons. I mean, I'm really happy to see that we have been enabled to increase the output of the sugar-reduced candy. As you can see in the lowest bullet point here, Pändy is doing really well. I mean, the candy has basically exploded in terms of growth in our international markets. We can see higher part of the total volume in the category in Norway, for instance, than we have in Sweden, that we have been in for many years. So really excited about that. We just sent the first containers to U.S. as well, so we're now launching after the summer. Some great margins to be had there.
Yeah, we've been really, really pulling the strings here to try to increase the output of packed bags with Grahns and Franssons. But also now with the additional shift coming into play, there's a lot of opportunity to grow here, but I mean, we could have grown a lot more in this segment if we wouldn't have been capacity constrained. One of the highlights, True Gum, of course, with the new dates, fantastic response from the market. It's pretty much the same story here. We need to increase the output. I mean, going from zero to almost 35,000 products a day, I think we've done a great job, but you know, there is still additional upside here, and we will probably open a new line also in Q3, Q4, if we get all the machinery in place.
Another highlight is, FCB that launched their own soft bar with Pro!Brands. And this is a product that we started developing almost two years ago when we acquired Bars Production, and now we have our very own soft bar. The market response has been amazing. We have got one of the best listings in FCB history with this product, so really excited what that can do for the brand. We have a lot of new products also coming into H2. So if we can get the capacity in place here, I'm really positive about this whole segment, and we are doing everything we can to really support and see how can we increase the output from our factories.
Looking at the Sustainable Care segment, we noted a strong demand for our products, and the net sales grew to SEK 555 million, compared to SEK 493 million, which is a total growth of 13% for the quarter. Here as well, we see that the gross margin increased by 3 percentage points to 38%, and the adjusted EBITDA reached 84%, 84 million, sorry, for the second quarter. As Simon has mentioned, Solent is one of the strongest performers in this segment. We're happy to see them continue that performance over also in 2025 for the forecast that they see now.
Yeah. What's moreover really satisfying to see here is that both Humble Co. and Naty, two companies that has been struggling a bit in this macro environment, I mean, Germany has been terrible for a lot of companies within personal care. We have been able to turn it around. So Naty are back on solid growth and profitability, which I'm really happy to see. I think the CEO and the management team there has done a great job, and I'm really confident about the trajectory for that business going forward. So it is a two-year trend that we have been able to turn around during these first six months, and especially now in Q2. Same with the Humble Co. We did the reorganization in autumn last year, and now we're seeing some really strong profitability numbers and actually growing faster.
So I think these two companies, combined with Solent, is really, you know, driving value in this segment, and we have a really good forecast going forward for all of them. So, I mean, this segment could have been better historically with some of our biggest acquisitions in it, but now we are starting to see the results from all the work to turn the premium brands around. I mean, premium and personal care is, you know, the products that has been hit the hardest in our portfolio, and now we're also starting to see the increase out from stores for the first time in two years. We are seeing that from our customers, that the rotation is actually increasing. So, it's a positive sign. Let's hope it continues like that.
Looking at the Quality Nutrition, the net sales grew to SEK 376 million for the second quarter, compared to SEK 354 million. The gross margin also increased to 31%, compared to 28%, and the Adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 27 million, compared to SEK 14 million for the second quarter previous year. What we're worth mentioning here is that we know that Body Science, included in this segment, had a really strong comparatives for the previous year, and they've had a little bit more challenging to reach the same profitability levels this year.
Yeah. So mentioning Body Science, I mean, we have been launching a lot of pure products. We are the market leader in Australia, and we have significantly improved our marketing efforts in that market. And that is something that's gonna drive a lot of long-term value, and that's always a challenge when you have fast-growing brands like this. You want to invest for growth, but it might cost a bit short term, so I'm not worried about that. Also in this segment, we have three big factors that we are scaling up at the same time. We have the Ewalco, where we have moved the colonial site and renovated and built new sort of processes for the increased powder production. We have Bars Production, where we have hired so many new people just to be able to scale up to two shifts with all of the lines.
Also have a new line coming in here in Q3. On top of that, we have the Dream line, which has been costly, but we are set to start with the first production now in the middle of the third quarter. So I mean, all of these investments cost money, but we are confident that it will bring value going forward. So I think we have taken strategic investments in this segment. I'm not worried about the profitability long term, and we are seeing strong growth, and the gross margin is there, and the improvements are also clearly showed. I think we are on the right track, and we just need to make sure that the investments are starting to return capital and profitability to us.
Looking at the last segment, we have Nordic Distribution, which came in on SEK 680 million in net sales for the second quarter, compared to SEK 629 million for the previous quarter. The gross margin increased with 1 percentage unit, compared to, to the previous quarter, and reached 21%, and the adjusted EBITDA came in on SEK 25 million, compared to SEK 31 million for the, for the comparison period. End comments?
Yeah, so in this segment, we have done a lot of consolidation, and there is quite a lot of cost in combination with that. So I think that's why we see the slightly lower profitability. I'm really happy to announce that the Privab companies are now one unit. We bought five different companies, and now they are one. We have digitalized the full sort of setup and have a new platform and ERP system in place, and we have a new CEO to run this group. Niklas, who used to be the CEO and the seller of Privab Trollhättan, is now gonna, you know, run this ship, and we have strong belief that he will be able to bring good value to us for the Privab entities. GSD continues to perform really well.
We have invested in several new product concepts that we are launching together with the retail chains. And here we have an opportunity to copy the business model of Solent, which we are looking to do. We have great network of suppliers within the group, and we want to utilize that and become very much like Solent and Amber House are doing in U.K., and South Africa, and Australia. We want to become the great dynamic retail partner in the Nordics. So that is one of the initiatives we are running here, and hopefully it will bring good value to us in the future. Vitalkost is our Norwegian company, just wanna highlight that.
It's quite small business, but they have done an amazing job improving their profitability and seeing some really strong growth, and are starting to become a bigger player in the Norwegian market, that we wanna utilize for our brands to really expand quickly into the retailers. For instance, they've taken the True Dates and launched there, and we have several great listings with the retailers through Vitalkost, so happy to see some value creation there from our companies working together. Okay, so to round things up here, what do we expect going forward into the last six months of 2024? We will continue to focus on improving the margin. That has been the objective for the last 12-18 months, and we are starting to see the results, but we are far from happy.
There is more to be gained and, you know, leveraging the platform and the investments and all of our factories now is something that we'll be able to improve the margin if we're able to execute it. So that is something that we will focus on and continue to see. We will also continue to look at the product portfolio. If there are products that aren't as profitable, we might stop selling them and focusing more on the products that we really feel have the greatest potential. Might hit the revenues a bit, but it will improve the profitability. And as I've said, historically, I'm not worried about the growth. We should be able to maintain a solid double-digit growth in the coming period in 2025. We will continue to invest.
I mean, as a growth company like this, there's so many interesting opportunities. I just wrote about it also in the report. For instance, Swedish Candy has exploded in social media among the younger generation, and we were quick to acquire swedishcandy.com. We have confirmed the project and already established a plan on how can we capitalize on owning the domain that everybody refers to, and start selling traditional candy across the globe. So that is just one of the sort of opportunities that comes up and that we are able to act on quickly, and we are gonna see the results from, hopefully, in the near term. And then the listing, I mean, we've been working on that.
We have more than 100 companies across the globe, so it has been a tedious task to get into place, but we can probably say now that we are done with most of it, and we are looking to enter the list if everything goes as planned during the third quarter. So, a milestone for the group to do that. And the last, I mean, we see many opportunities in the world opening up for us. The U.S. is a very interesting market. We have a new country manager into place, and we have a plan to roll out the most exciting products that we have the strongest traction with in our home markets. You know, we do take that opportunity with caution because there is a lot of cost involved if you do it wrong.
We have started, and we're gonna scale it up successfully over time, but some really interesting opportunities. Same with Europe. I wanna bring more of our products into Central Europe, Germany, and Switzerland, and Austria, but also South and Central Europe. We still have so much left to do, and we are a couple of years ahead in Northern Europe in terms of the trend. But actually a lot of our products are starting to get out to distributors there, and we are meeting the retailers, so hopefully that is something that will be able to drive value for us as well in the future. With that being said, I want to thank you all for listening in to this presentation in the middle of the summer, and we want to open up for some Q&A.
Yes, thank you, Simon, and, as you who are attending this presentation already might have noted, we have started to publish the questions or realize that we can publish the questions that's coming in as well. And I will try to navigate through all them, all of them, and make sure that we cover all the questions that have come in. First of all, Hans asks about the EUREBA, is it implemented in all the 100 products, or is it used by any other manufacturers like partners?
I mean, we do sell 37,000 products, so I don't think it'd ever be implemented in all of the products. But I can probably say that most of our candy brands are utilizing it at success. I mean, some of them don't do it because it's not their brand niche, but it is a really interesting raw material. Our own factories love using it, and we are actually doing a big job here to see how can we scale EUREBA further by utilizing Ewalco and the size of that business. I mean, it's a plus SEK 500 million business. They have a great capacity to increase the sales of an ingredient. So that is one of the initiatives we will invest in now, actually in the future, to see how can we sell it to more other suppliers.
But in terms of candy, we want to keep it for ourselves. I mean, we get some of the biggest companies in the world want our candy. Why, why should we sell the gold to them when we can capitalize it with our own brands?
Viktor from Carnegie asks if you've seen any effects from the higher cocoa price? You mentioned the Grahns, for example, they have acquired some inventory to avoid increased prices, but can you elaborate a little bit on that one?
Yeah, I mean, in terms of the candy, we use mostly chocolate compound, that is not so significantly impacted by it. But we have seen it a bit, actually, I would say it's been more about getting the volumes. So I mentioned the Soft Bar with Pro!Brands. We have a great listing, but we need the cacao to produce it with Bars Production. So we went out in the whole group and tried to help sourcing that and be able to produce the product. So, but of course, I mean, it has hit the profitability a bit for I would say, our Quality Nutrition segment, where we use cacao in some of the bars.
Yeah. Also, Viktor from Carnegie mentioned sales in Sweden grew 1% year-over-year, while international grew 17%. What's behind the large differences between the markets? And we've already mentioned that in the call, that sustainable care is one of the strongest growth segments for the quarter.
No, so, I, I mean, as I've mentioned, we have had capacity constraint in a lot of our Swedish companies. I would say also on top of that, we have been seeing over the product assortment. But mind you all, if you look at the general Nordic, and especially Swedish FMCG market, the peers have, on an average, negative organic growth, and we still are able to maintain a growth. So, I think about, I'm not a macro expert, but it has been a little bit weaker market for consumers in general. We could see that in May and the beginning of June. But, you know, last few weeks in June and July has been really good, so I'm not worried about the Swedish market. We are far from done here.
Some of our companies are just starting to scale up. We have some really interesting dialogues with the retailers, because they want to speak with us as one group and see, how can we take a bigger part of your portfolio and work with that as a concept? So, I'm not worried about Sweden, but yeah, it was a bit weaker this quarter.
Okay. Johan asks if we can elaborate on the complexities around the U.S. expansion mentioned in the report, and if there is some specific market segment or phase or target.
Luckily, we have a company, The Humble Co. NA, that has been started from scratch, basically, and now, you know, they do around $10 million with toothbrushes. Mind you, an American changes toothbrush every nine months on average, and we are presently in more than 40,000 stores. If we would have candy in 40,000 stores, that would be more than $100 million sales in dollars, $100 million sales. So we have the expertise within that company, we have done the journey, but on top of that, we have actually also invested in a country manager coming from healthy snacking category to support mainly Pändy, mainly True Dates. I think that's the two products that we are wanting to launch in the U.S. So, I mean, it is a huge market. It's basically as the whole Europe.
But if you get it right, you can get some really nice national coverage with the retailers. And as always, we are gonna do this sustainably, so we will start with the, the retailers that we really feel have a great fit with our products, and over time, we're gonna scale up with the mass retailers. But we need to make sure we have the supply chain in place to do that, so we don't, you know, take great orders but can't deliver. I think that it's all about that balance for us.
Phil asks, 18 months ago, any thoughts about financial goals, if they are still valid?
Yes. I mean, they are still valid, and we haven't communicated anything different, so that's all I can say about that.
Yeah. Also, Phil, when do you expect to see improved gross margins in the Nordic distribution that we spoke about in Q1?
I expect to see them going forward now with Niklas in there. I mean, he, he's a great operator. Trollhättan is one of the companies that has the best gross margins. And, yeah, we have a clear ambition to really oversee the portfolio in the companies there, to improve the gross margin and also capital turnover. We want to increase the return on capital in those companies, and I think it's very doable. Also, mind you, that all the entities here have been negotiating prices themselves historically. Now, we gather all that volume, we come as one to the suppliers and say, "Hey, we are actually negotiating for a volume of +SEK 2 billion, rather than a few hundred million SEK." So, I'm hopeful that will bring some good value. When and how much? I mean, that's to be seen.
Thank you, Simon. And then, some questions just combined here about the future M&A. Do we have any specific segments we target, or can we say anything about M&A outlook?
I mean, it's six months to Christmas, and I have a wish list. There are some really interesting companies. We have a great dialogue with probably 10 companies that we think would fit strategically, perfectly into the group. But, it's all about capacity, and as I've also mentioned, we want to continue to strengthen our balance sheet. We aren't there yet. I think with a good capital release from the net working capital that we expect in the coming six months, for sure, we will be able to do that. And once we do that, we will ramp up and see what companies do we think that we have the best value creation opportunities once they become part of the group.
But I would say quality nutrition, very exciting opportunities there. Future snacking, the same. I mean, we've been capacity-constrained for a long time. We don't have sort of a full range of all the confectionery you could make, so adding new product technologies would be interesting. And then bolt-on acquisitions to Solent. They've done that historically, just integrated such as Go Superfoods successfully. So to do a great bolt-on acquisition at low multiples and then, you know, cut a lot of the overhead and do some synergies with that and their already existing overhead could be really attractive. So I would say those three sectors, those three segments in the group would be where we would focus on.
Tia is coming in with three questions here, and I'm just trying to bundle them. Which international markets do you think has the biggest opportunity to grow percentage-wise, like in the second quarter, the second half of the year?
Oh, that's a tough one.
You mentioned U.S.
Yeah, but I don't think U.S. is gonna take longer time. I would say U.K., really exciting. We have been there for quite some time with our brands, and we're now having some interesting dialogues with the retailers. Internationally, if you talk outside of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland is gonna be big for us. We have great listings and get new listings for some of our best products, so that is very exciting. Also Germany, mind you, if you look at the figures, Germany has been bad for us, the last two years, and it is a huge market. I think the retailers have been trending away from brands and a lot of own private label, and now they're starting to go back, and we are starting to see some increased velocity out from the stores. I would say the Nordics, U.K., and Germany. That's my bet.
All right. He also wonders about inventory that was sent to U.S. How big was the sale approximately that we mentioned?
So it was just a trial order of SEK 2 million, so it's not that big. But mind you, great gross margin, and I mean, it's just actually to trial it in a few stores. But the response and the feedback, we have been doing some trade shows there, we have been meeting with retailers, and it's a really positive feedback. I think we have an edge with our IP and the products that we will be able to provide, and that's also one of the things that we will be very cautious about. We will only bring products that we know that any modern customer would like. And we have a few of those products in the group. If we take the best products, we put them in the store, we know it's gonna sell. That's the kind of products that we will launch in the U.S.
Last question from Tia here is, which European markets do you see having the longest runway in short, midterm, except from Scandinavia and U.K.? Any thoughts about the European market?
I think it's been, as I previously said one interesting sector is, of course, Benelux. The Netherlands is, there's a lot of opportunity there as well, but I will, you know, remain with my answer to the previous question.
Last question here is from Hans-Marius , DNB. Can you share any colors or thoughts about the Babblarna project?
I mean, I think the products are actually in our warehouse now, so it's getting launched in Q3. So it's taken a bit longer, but we have great dialogues with the retailers. I think they're maybe not as excited because we are very excited about it, but they're excited about the product launch. And I think the products look great. We're launching a big range, not only diapers, but shampoo, and lotion, and plasters, and everything. So yeah. I think in Q3, you will start seeing the first product in store.
All right. Thank you so much. We've covered all the questions coming in, and you wanna add something?
No. As I said, thank you for listening in. Hope you have a great summer. We for sure will, and we are really excited about the coming months here. So take care, everyone, and see you in a few months.
Thank you. Bye-bye.