Welcome to ITAB Shop Concept Q1 Report 2026 presentation. During the Q&A session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers, Interim President & CEO, Glauco Frascaroli, and CFO, Andreas Helmersson. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Good morning, everyone. We are here today to present our Q1 2026. I just want to give you some information for the people that doesn't know ITAB. I want just to tell you about our production facilities, that we have around 22 production facilities in 16 countries. We are operating in more than 30 countries with around 5,300 employees. Our net sales is around SEK 13 billion with our EBIT of around SEK 835 million. Our EBITDA margin is 6.3%. Our division are grocery, that is around 51% of our sales. We have fashion, that is around 12% of our net sales. We have DIY home improvement, around 10%.
We have health and beauty, 6%. Other customer groups, that is around 21%, where we have consumer electronics, travel retails, sport and leisure, services, stations, hotels, offices, and brand industries. Our solutions are Retail Interior, Retail Technology, Retail Lighting, Retail Services. We think for sure Our brand, our strong brand is Rethink Retail Together, so we could create a retail experience that connect people with the brands they love. I want just give you some highlights of the Q1 2026. We had a solid start of the year in the caution market. Our Q1 net sale are around SEK 2.9 billion . That is around 7% currency adjusted, -7%.
Adjusted EBITDA is around SEK 164 million, SEK 192 million with the previous year, excluding non-recurring items, amortization of acquisition related to immaterial assets. Net profit is SEK 70 million, is higher comparing to last year, to last quarter 2025, Q1 2025. Our cash flow operation is SEK 214 million. We improved margins with purchasing synergies and lower SG&A expenses with a strong cash flow and profitable growth in focus.
Here I want to underline that I think that in Q1 we have done a great job because I think we have to be positive on what we have done in Q1 because we know, all of us know that we are facing a difficult situation in the economy worldwide due to the war in Ukraine and other, and other things that are not helping us a lot. I think we really are proud of what we have done. We can do better for sure in the future, but we are positive what we have done. If we look to the rolling 12 months, net sales are SEK 12.8 billion comparing to 13.2 billion SEK in 2025.
Our adjusted EBITDA is around SEK 800 million comparing to SEK 835 million in 2025. We have our plan of EUR 30 million in synergies that we have to complete by end of 2027, and we are working, and we are also positive on that. Saying this, I pass the floor to Andreas Helmersson, our CFO.
Thank you, Glauco. To give a representative view of the development of the group, we have, as usual, focused on the pro forma development in this presentation. In the interim report published, you will of course find all the details, including reported figures with HMY consolidated from February 2025. In the historical performance overview, we are comparing EBITDA development over time, and this is very similar to the EBIT figure that we previously showed during 2025, where we also excluded amortization of acquisition related intangible assets, which is more an accounting term than it is not an actual cash flow or cost in a sense. So we will look more at EBITDA onwards. Adjusted EBITDA in Q1 came in at 164 million SEK relative to 204 million SEK last year.
Q1 is normally a softer quarter for us due to seasonality of store operations, and this year we also see a general slowdown across sectors. It's not in one country or in one sector, but across many sectors. At the same time, we have managed to sustain margins due to synergy execution and initiatives. Q1 pro forma sales development of -12%, but if excluding currency effect, it's -7%. This is the main sort of driver of the drop in EBITA for the quarter. In the report, you can also see that our net profit was SEK 70 million, and this relate is higher than last year, coming in at SEK 41 million, driven by lower adjustments of non-recurring costs, but also an improved tax rate.
Net debt was also further lowered in Q1 and is now at SEK 2.1 billion, down from SEK 2.3 billion end of 2025. Looking at the quarterly development over time, we can see that despite an organic sales decline of -7%, gross margin was actually sustained and also EBITDA margin if adjusting for extraordinary costs and provisions affecting comparability. This, the impact from the sales decline is hence mitigated by impact of synergy execution, where we estimate to be circa one-third into the program from a P&L perspective. Zooming in on the sales development, our organic growth rate, currency adjusted now, we see that sales were lower across most of the sectors, reflecting a hesitant market where projects have been either put on hold or pushed into Q2 or Q3.
We don't see signals of losing market share. That doesn't happen very quickly and very often at all in this, in this industry, but we do see a weak, general market, temperature. Our largest sector, grocery, is holding up somewhat better. This is normally what we see when uncertainty increases in the economy, that grocery is still a bit stronger and less cyclical. The US-Iran conflict is, of course, impacting the decision power of our customers in general through higher transport costs and inflation and uncertainty, general uncertainty about the outlook of and the impact in our economy. At the same time, efficiency and loss prevention solutions are really driving growth for us, also in Q1, and it remains a pocket of growth.
We see this strong interest, especially in gates and self-checkouts and not the least as a result of our participation at the EuroShop, where we saw strong interest in this part of our offering. In general, those product segments were of highest interest across the visitors we had at the EuroShop. From a geographic standpoint, we saw a mixed development in Q1 with strong growth in some regions, such as the Nordics, where we can also see that underlying growth in the market is very strong.
While Southern Europe is down 9% here, we actually saw a mixed picture also there where Spain and France were very strong, with France being due to some local market dynamics through acquisitions, especially in the grocery market where they are rebranding stores, and also the fact that we are sort of gaining some market share due to very local or local production facilities, but also strong relations in this sector. That's been great to see. Spain has also been very strong, while Italy has been very weak. It's not just one sector, but it's across customers and across sectors.
Eastern Europe is down quite significantly here, 35%, but it's mainly driven by a few larger customers where the rollouts have slowed down compared to last year. On the contrary, we see growth in Australia, driving the rest of the world market, where we continue to grow our portfolio of customers, which is great to see, and at the same time also increasing the depth of these relations. They're buying more products and more wider part of our portfolio, and especially in the Retail Tech segment. Looking at the development of EBITA a bit closer and comparing it to the quarter one last year, we see that sales volume is impacting us negatively with circa 59 million SEK, while margin and mix is holding up despite lower volume in the factories.
SG&A is also neutral despite inflation and some extraordinary costs in this quarter. Actually, our result is in line with last year if we adjust for extraordinary costs and items affecting comparability. We see this as a signal that our synergies are being realized and that we're on the right path towards continued execution of the synergies, which will prepare us to capitalize on the market when the growth returns. Our operating cash flow for Q1 came in at SEK 240 million and rolling twelve at SEK 973 million. This is impacted positively by working capital development, where we have continued to see a release of accounts receivables and a strong focus on inventory management and payment terms generally across the group.
Our net debt is also down in the quarter, now at SEK 2.1 million versus SEK 2.3 million in Q4. This is driven by our profitabilityLower non-recurring costs and improved working capital as we saw on the last slide. In Q1, we estimate that we are circa one-third into the execution of our synergy program, as previously stated. The total synergy potential remains where we have communicated EUR 30 million per year with full effect in 2027. Synergies come EUR 20 million from cost efficiency and EUR 10 million from commercial synergies. Cost overlaps as well as some of the larger procurement categories has been the low-hanging fruit that we prioritize so far. In parallel, we have assessed our manufacturing and logistics network to make sure we can capture opportunities.
We've also spent time building the foundation for commercial synergies by investing in sales force training, showrooms, and cross-selling plans. Of course, we're looking forward to continuing updating you on this progress and our general business performance onwards. With that, I hand over to you, Glauco Frascaroli.
Thank you very much. Going forward, which are our main priorities today is the profitable growth by capitalizing on all the positive outcome from EuroShop in February with a focus on our solution for loss prevention and store efficiency. Measures to improve our profitability continuously assessed and implemented in all parts of the group and mitigate the impact of higher costs due to the current situation in the Middle East, as everybody knows. Continued focus on integration in our effort to achieve the EUR 30 million as just Andreas mentioned before. Effort to reduce our tied-up capital and debts and that we have done already, I think, a good job. Launch of shared value and culture, ways of working and strategic teams and priority for ITAB Group 2026. Before to close our presentation, I just want to give you some words about to.
I think we have to think that ITAB today is the largest group in Europe and maybe in the world with the last acquisition of HMY. Due also to our very strong portfolio of products, we have really a lot of chance. We know that the customer now are hesitant because the global situation, we have really a lot of opportunities as soon as the market, I'm sure the market will start to move very soon. We have really, thanks to our product portfolio, we can really be very successful and this is really my opinion. I'm very strong convinced that our future is good. Thanks to all of you for listening.
If you wish to ask a question please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Erik Sandstedt from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Yeah, Erik Sandstedt from Kepler Cheuvreux here. A few questions, please. Firstly, in terms of organic sales, how much of this 7% decline is attributable to the legacy ITAB versus HMY, roughly?
Yes, I can try to answer that. I think, I mean, it's more related to where we have our market exposure. We can see that France is quite strong. That's the market where legacy HMY was significantly stronger than the legacy ITAB. Legacy HMY also had a strong foothold in Spain. Both France and Spain are very strong in Q1 this year. I think.
Okay. That's interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. Thanks. Then I'm not sure, you probably don't have a lot of market data yet, but do you think that the decline is largely sort of attributable to weak markets, or do you think that you have lost some share in the quarter?
I can answer. I think no, we didn't lose any shares in the market because I think the only problem is that the situation is, as I say before, the customer are hesitant. Also we have to say that when we have EuroShop, normally industry people are waiting to place new orders to see all the new products that we present. I have to remember that, to all of you, that we had more than 50,000 visitors in EuroShop. The results of EuroShop will come in the next months. I don't see any. We didn't lose any customer. We didn't see any. We don't lose any market position. This is my feeling.
Thanks. Given the geopolitical tensions here and weak markets, is it fair to assume that trading conditions deteriorated throughout the quarter and that the exit rate was quite soft? How should we think about the dynamics within the quarter?
I think we have, generally, I would say when we meet the sales people and talk about, if we talk about Q2 and Q3, I think it's too early to say yet. We do see some early signals that there are some light in the tunnel. Some of that is also coming as a result of the EuroShop. We can definitely see that EuroShop is a great way to meet existing customers, but it's also a great way to enlarge the relationships we have.
Some of these customers, they are now inviting us to really as experts in fields like loss prevention, we're actually invited to group management meetings and we are setting up showrooms in customer headquarters just to really to, as a testimony to that, we are taking the lead when it comes to store efficiency and loss prevention. I think there are some good signals, but it's too early to say, and there's a big, you know, dark cloud on the sky as well, being the U.S.-Iran conflict, which we are exposed to CapEx, you know, investment logic. That means that you need to feel safe before taking large CapEx decisions that the economy will not, you know, suffer.
Although we see some positive signals, it's too early to say where it will take us.
Just to follow up on that. This is my last question. Looking at your order backlog, because just the other day you announced a fairly big order in the U.K. with a total value of EUR 12 million, right? Could you comment on how long you have worked to secure such a deal? What's the lead times from start of discussion to signing the deal? What I'm curious about, of course, is how the sort of order backlog looks right now and how much visibility you have for the remainder of the year.
It's a good question. I mean, we are not yet presenting order backlog or normally communicating anything around it. It's something we're looking into, yeah, to see if we can start doing that in the future. I think generally, it differs a lot depending on the project. I mean, some of the framework agreements we have with customers, we have pretty good outlook for the remaining part of the year. They have a budget normally, they communicate that budget and it, you know, there's no volume commitments, but we see very stable, you know, maintenance of stores or replacing shelving.
There are things like loss prevention and that can take anything from three months to nine months to secure because we need to go through a series of customization of product technologies and testing. Pilot. They start with 1 store and then go into next store, and then they are testing 10 stores, and then they evaluate the business case, right. We go into rollout. So it is difficult to say a guideline here, but we normally have quite good outlook for the next month and a half and a decent outlook for the coming three months. You know, it goes down.
Yeah, understand. That's helpful. Perfect. Thanks. That's all I had.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, Glauco Frascaroli and Andreas. Sorry, my connection is quite poor. I hope you hear me.
Yeah, we can hear you.
Excellent. Excellent. There's a couple of follow-up questions from me as well. As you said, you're not really want to talk about order backlog, but if you look at your commentary about clients that are for the moment maybe putting orders on hold and delaying rollouts. If you compare it to a year ago or maybe at the start of the year, looking at the load that you saw ahead in the factories, how does it compare? Is it pretty stable or is it better or worse?
I mean, we see a fairly stable situation still. I mean, seasonality-wise, Q1 is a bit softer than remaining. Then there can be, I mean, certain pockets of exceptional development where I highlighted Italy as one of those now where we see. I mean, Italy is one of those places where we have a really strong position and we don't have, you know, one or two. We have a large customer base and it's a slowdown across most customers. I mean, partially driven by government subsidies being a bit slower, also market development and them being a bit closer to Middle East. I think it's too early to say where it will take us.
We do see a mixed bag of some customers really being strong, having strong financials, having, I mean, we see in, as I, as I mentioned in the report as well, self-checkouts and some loss prevention products being very, you know, already in the order books and signaling a strong year. While some of the interior projects and some other projects, they are, they're still pushing decisions. You know, we thought we would have it in March perhaps, and then they're pushing it into Q2 partially because they haven't got maybe the budgets confirmed internally. There's different reasons depending on customers and so.
It sounds like it's pretty much how you described it earlier, that it's stable at a low level, and there's not really any change to it at this stage.
Yeah.
good to hear the, France being back on slightly a stronger footing. Could you elaborate on what has been put in place, during the second half of the year to say, re-establish that operation?
Yeah, I think I can answer. We have done a lot of. We launch a lot of projects to reduce the cost and to improve the production facilities, and also, and this bring a lot of good synergies and good results that we start to see already at the end of Q4. Then also we start the Q1 in a very good way because we start to take the market start in a very good way. The customers are moving a lot, so the sales are improving quite a lot. Let's say that was not only the sales that are improving and increasing, but really this project that we launch last year start to give the results that we expect.
This is why today France is performing very well. We are really happy with this because we thought since the beginning of the acquisition of HMY that France was a very important opportunity and upside for us, and this is something that we start to see in the reality, and this is, this make us, make up very positive thinking and look into the future.
Yeah, no doubt it's a huge market for you these days. It's good to hear.
Yeah
that it's back on firmer footing. I see you not talking either about say, maybe Turkey being such a challenge here at this stage as it was during second half of this year. Has been underlying business improvements there as well?
Yeah, yeah. In Turkey, yes, for sure. We are thinking about how we launch already a plan last year to restructure the company in Turkey, so we have plan to improve, reduce the cost. Also what I want to say that sometime not only reducing cost is the final results that you can get from, but you have also to think about the market, the customers. Also we are improving our customer network. We are back again in the Turkish market when we lost in the past some customer, now we regain quite few customers in the market.
Let's say going together in parallel with the reducing cost and synergies and improving the customers network that we expect in the second part of 2026 in Turkey that we will bring the company in a, again, positive results.
Excellent. I saw and hear your comments about Middle East maybe impacting you with higher costs for energy, transportation and potentially increasing lead times. Which is the biggest challenge of those three when you try to say, disseminate it?
I would say, it creates some uncertainty in the supply chain, so it means that we need to stay closer to our suppliers and our customers. I mean, there's high expectations on us delivering in time and on quality. If one article is missing, then, that creates a complexity for us, which means additional costs in the installation of a project. I think it's the overall sort of project management, making sure that, things are on timing. Then, of course, working heavily to mitigate cost increases, both, internally, but also, through our partners, both, customers and suppliers. It, it creates some additional efforts, from us to make sure we protect our synergies and, our margins in the end.
Yeah. Thank you very much for the very good split down on how you see the synergy evolving in the deal. When you look at the commercial potential in this, I guess, the cost side of this is on more of a firm timeline, as I understand it. When you look at the commercial synergies, how important was EuroShop to really get the HMY side to be on top and be able to sell your Retail Lighting products and your Retail Technology products?
Yes. EuroShop was a fantastic opportunity for us because it was the first time that we came together with HMY in the biggest fair in the world, that as I said before, we had more than 50,000 visitors, and that was unexpected, these results really. It was a great success, and I think this is the starting point together with HMY, where we saw also customers from HMY very interested to our product portfolio that was not before in HMY. So we are starting in many countries now to promote these products. We are launching new showrooms in these countries with all our products. For sure, the reaction on our Retail Tech portfolio is very, very interesting and very positive.
Really concretely, we start to have already get orders and sales. This is, the most important things to say.
Fantastic. Well, thank you very much for all and the good management of the company, Glauco, on your interim period, and all the best out there in the new assignment.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
The next question comes from Anton Lund from SB1 Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. First off, on working capital, I see that inventory was built by SEK 170 million in the quarter. I'm just a bit curious, I mean, comparing this to 7% organic growth decline, can you walk us through what's behind the inventory build in the quarter? Is it that volumes are left on your shelves or higher raw material prices or is it a mix?
Inventory is, it's generally not impacted that quickly from, you know, cost increases in the supply. It goes a bit slower. To some extent, it's more project driven, where we see, we have projects that are, you know, waiting. Some projects we need to build up inventory to make sure we can really succeed with installation in time. Partially also driven by EuroShop because we build up some inventory to be able to really be now in Q2, to have some of the high sellers sort of in stock to be really be able to capitalize on short-term demand. Apart from that, we see working capital as being, you know, really developing well in according to plans.
It's normal that, I mean, Q4 is normally our lowest level in the year, and then you should expect to see a build up over the year. Of course, the sales slowdown in Q1 is helping that in general, but you should expect Q2 and Q3 to be a bit higher and then to go down again in Q4.
Understood. Thank you. Then on CapEx, it was down about SEK 25 million year-over-year here in Q1. Is this sort of your budgeted run rate for this year, or is there something else that we should keep in mind?
It is a bit lower. We also had a positive effect from selling real estate, which was EUR 1 million. The net is then EUR 1 million lower. We're continuing with the CapEx levels that we've had historically as well, and continue to invest in a similar pattern. It's more a seasonality when exactly these cash flows comes in.
Very good. Then I have a question on. I mean, we've talked about your operational footprint, and it's been mentioned again today. You, as you say, you divested this property in Finland. Since we're talking about Turkish restructuring, are you considering any property divestments there? If so, what kind of cash proceeds would you expect from.
Hmm
... such transactions?
Yeah. I think we are from a synergy perspective, we have spent some time analyzing the sort of network that we have from a factory, and that will continue. I think Ukraine, most of this optimization, I don't think you should expect to see cash in, but it could mitigate some of the restructuring costs that we see if we now decide to, in places where we have two factories, as an example, and we think we can consolidate, then, we're also investing at the same time in the new factory to make sure we can fit the volumes into that. I think we are continuing to.
We see great progress in some of this, especially France, which Glauco mentioned, but we'll also continue to evaluate, I mean, to really make sure we optimize the footprint and the cost efficiency, both in Turkey and France and a few other places where we have mutual sites.
Very good. One final one from me. The tax rate down to 24% this quarter, I believe. What do you expect to see ahead? I guess this is partially due to the better performance in France or how do you view this ahead?
I agree. France is. No, it's a bit on the low side. You can't expect us to already be at 24. I think that's more of a long-term target to reach. I think we're still in a transition year to make sure we optimize depth across the group and optimize these flows. But you should see a clear improvement versus last year. That's for sure. But it will take us another year to really make sure we optimize these flows. That's the plan. It's a bit on the low side, but you should definitely see an impact from France. You should see an impact from optimizing the debt structure across the group. We also have lower, of course, acquisition costs this year, which is non-deductible.
It's an impact from that as well.
Very good. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no more phone questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.
Yes. We have only received one written question. It's in line with one of the other questions that we've already answered. Could you give some color on the development during the quarter? How did the year start off in January and February compared to March?
Yeah. I think, both January, February, and March were slightly behind last year. You don't normally see shifts that fast in the market. Q1 is more a result of November, December last year, and it's a result of market conditions and some customer customer programs, which doesn't shift too quickly from month to month. Yeah.
Okay. We've answered all the written questions, so I hand over to Andreas and Glauco to maybe some final remarks before we close the conference call.
I just want to say that this is my last day as interim CEO. From tomorrow, Björn Borgman will be the new CEO of the ITAB Group. Very welcome to Björn and great success. Thank you to everybody.
Thank you very much.