Welcome to the ITAB Shop Concept Q1 report. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. I will hand the conference over to CEO Andréas Elgaard and CFO Ulrika Bergmo Sköld. Please go ahead.
Warm welcome to this presentation of ITAB's interim report Q1 2023. My name is Mats Karlqvist, and I'm the head of IR at ITAB. We will end the presentation with a Q&A session, where you can ask your questions in the conference call, or if you want to submit them via the webcast, we will read them through in the call. The presentation, including the Q&A session, is recorded and will be available at our website afterwards. With that, I am delighted to hand over to today's speakers, Andréas Elgaard and Ulrika Bergmo Sköld. Go ahead, Andréas.
Thank you, Mats. Welcome everybody. I will try to repeat what we have done in the past, to help you to get a little bit better feeling of who ITAB is. We have an agenda today where I will start with that, introducing a little bit to ITAB. We work in the retail space supporting retailers. We'll go in a little bit and touching on how retail is transforming. We are going to talk briefly about the growth opportunity, and then we are going to end up talking a little bit about what it means to be the leading solution provider. We will also then, of course, get into the details of the Q1 report and then open up the floor for questions and answers.
Since this slide deck also will be made available, I will not go into all the details, but it's much appreciated to have those details available. I will do more of a voice-over to these slides and be rather quick on some of them. I hope that's okay. Let's get into ITAB. We, we like to say that we are very much what we create together with our customers. As you can see on this picture, we do all sorts of retail. Of course, we are, we are specialized in certain kinds of retail, but we're really working with all types of retail, and we have a good understanding of what's going on in the consumers' minds and what dilemmas the retailers have in order to stay relevant to meet the consumers.
Depending on our interaction with the retailer, the outcome looks very different. That's why we our impact is very different depending on that interaction. Today, we are a leader in Europe. We have a global reach. We also have production and sales in Asia Pacific. We have manufacturing in South America. Of course, the main volume and the main activity is in Europe. Some of the European retailers, we help them in their global ambitions to reach out and in Middle East, in India, in Australia, in North America, South America, et cetera. We are truly a global company supporting the global consumer through our retail customers. You can see also on this slide that we are predominantly a grocery and home improvement/do-it-yourself company.
That's our biggest segments where we're focusing. Fashion is number three in size of segments. During 2022, fashion started growing again after being hit more clearly during the COVID period. Of course, the other segments are, it's a quite big pot of others. There we have consumer electronics, pharmacies, et cetera, cafes, restaurants, service stations, that type of retail as well. What we do is that we co-create solutions together with the retailers to help them reach the desired outcome that they have. That could be that they need to improve their efficiency, they need to really be able to manifest their brand experience, et cetera. We help them to do that.
When we are at our best, we are truly a strategic partner that helps them to design and install and deliver the solutions. Sometimes we are only requested to be a supplier, and the relationship is more transactional. We can add less value, and we don't come to our strength in the same way as we do when we're part of the more holistic work. As I said on the previous slide, we support multiple retailing sectors. I want to highlight that we are around 2,900 employees, the 2022 figures. We have operations in 24 countries, and we have 50 in production facilities. Retail is going through a transformation. This is not something that is happening as a...
This has been a gradual increase, and it's not something that we see is slowing down. It's something that is more accelerating. Of course, consumer expectations are very dynamic, and they are rapidly changing these expectations. The expectations are not coming from experiences that you have with other retailers. They often come from TikTok, all sorts of online experiences, also shopping experiences online, but mainly from. The personalization that new technology offers to provide guided experiences and that are available when the consumer wants to. This puts a lot of demands on the retailer to stay relevant. Retailers, they need to figure out how to best serve the consumers and meet these changing demands.
They need to invest online, they need to invest in their stores, and they need to adjust to the size of their stores. They need to adjust maybe their concepts and what they're offering. It's a very dynamic landscape, and it's not as easy as it once used to be that you could kind of project three years into the future and do much of the same, and you would be certain which result you would have. The market has really, really changed. For our industry and for ITAB, it means that we need to be really, really well in tuned with understanding consumer demands and, our, retail demands.
We need to be less passionate about what we have done in the past and more focused on how we can create new solutions that meets the dilemmas for today and for the future. This is easier said than done, but it really acquires a mindset shift in how you create solutions and how you do your selling, and how you leverage also your own supplier base. Most of all, it means that you need to be much more agile than what historically was needed. I will just touch briefly on this because we all know that the macro trends that we have in the current or in the current day is really challenging.
I mean, digitalization and the democratization of information is kind of the undercurrent, the fuel, for a lot of change that we see. Of course, political polarization with war in Europe, all the supply chain disturbances that were induced by COVID, the ongoing climate change and the, and the need to transform business to become purposeful and relevant and have a positive climate impact. All these things are big changes. Then on top of that, of course, the cost of capital is going up, as a response to inflation going up, energy crisis. There's a lot of things that are putting new context for consumers to behave. We see that consumers are adapting and changing their behavior rapidly, which also impacts retailers, that they need to, be agile in their turnaround.
We see a lot of pressure coming to retail from the ongoing economic climate and the, I would say, political macroclimate. Of course, there is also this digitalization is also evolving from brick and mortar to multichannel, omnichannel, and more seamless experiences. With this slide, I just want to say that data is playing already a big part in, also in physical retail. It's going to play an even bigger part where data from online will be leveraged in the physical space, and vice versa. To kind of sum it up, it's not so easy to know what's right or wrong for retail anymore. You need to really rethink retail, and you need to do that together. ITAB together with our customers and also together with our...
with the width and breadth of our experiences across all markets that we are in, that's one of our strengths, and also with our supplier base to make sure that we together create the solutions that help retailers to adapt to the changing needs. Retailers really have a dilemma of the costs increasing and they need to reduce their operating expenses. It truly creates a dilemma because if they do nothing, they are caught and they will be irrelevant, and that's not a good place to be as a retailer. ITAB then, if I change gear, we talk about that our ambition strategically is to become the leading solution provider, and I will talk a little bit about that in the coming few slides.
Three years ago now, we started executing on our new strategy, and this strategy is really focused on transforming ITAB into becoming the leading solution provider for retailers. In order to do that, we need to build a number of new capabilities, some foundational, but also a number of differentiating capabilities. Of course, when COVID hit, we had to focus our efforts on making sure that we took out costs before we start investing. If your wallet is empty, you need to fill it up before you can start spending. That is what we have been doing. If you want to know more about our strategy, we have videos in our website where you can see how we present the different strategic priorities and what they mean for us.
I just want to point out that we are very well-positioned to help retailers to adapt to this changing environment and to stay relevant in order to improve their business. We talk about that we have an outcome-based value proposition. We focus less on what we have in our portfolio, and we focus more on what are the strategic dilemmas that the retailer has. Some of them have the same dilemmas, but some of them, due to their ownership structure or their market position, they have different challenges. You cannot just apply one size fits all. You need to be very humble, you need to listen, and you need to co-create this because also the retailers don't have a clear answer on what they need.
We are focusing our work on delivering true value in four dimensions. One is to make sure the retailer's brand gets the desired brand experience. Because you don't want as a grocery retailer to have the same experience as your competitor. You want to differentiate, you want to be known for your values and what your brand stands for. That's the physical retail is the place where the brand experience is communicated in the strongest way. That is very important. Then of course, to help drive increased sales and conversion, so there is more in each basket that the consumer shops with the retailer. That is super important.
It is important to improve the efficiency in the store, to have seamless journeys, to make sure that the consumers are serviced in the way that they think is relevant, and to do that in an efficient way. Of course, all these things that I just went through usually cost money. Can you at the same time reduce the operational cost and deliver efficiency also to the staff and the value chain operations of the retailer? If you deliver on these four dimensions, you're truly delivering outcome-based value for the retailer, and we are well-positioned to help them to do that.
As a solution provider, it's really all about strengthening our position in the eyes of the retailer and to build relationships that goes across several functions in order to understand their dilemma, but also to be able to provide value to them. We think that this is the biggest movement that we are doing. It's a movement where we feel confident because we already do this in pockets of excellence and in parts of our business. This is the natural way of working. We need to do that in a more consistent way in order to be able to change the perception of us being a strong solution provider for them. There's plenty of opportunities for us to do this, and we are also moving the needle in this direction in a really good way.
This illustration might look a bit messy, but it's more on the left-hand side you have today and the influence that we have on the consumer journey and on retail operations. Of course, we support with solutions that are holistic, but they're often circling around lighting solutions to help put focus on the assortment that you want to sell in the right way, but also to reduce energy consumption. The interiors is the best way to create a brand experience and to differentiate. Of course, retail technology is an area that is growing more and more to help you to create those seamless and more guided and personal experiences. Today, that's our influence, both on the store experience for the consumer, but also how to operate the store.
In the future, we believe that we are going to continue to do that, but we will need to add more services to retailers because they will need to do more things than what they're doing today in order to satisfy the customers. We also believe that there will be even more technology and there will be more insights coming from online and the physical store. These insights needs to be turned into actions that you can execute, and not just in the consumer experience and the consumer journey and in the store operations, but across the value chain into the supplier's value chain. That's a way for the retailers to reduce cost of operations and increase value for the consumer. All of this needs to be really focused on creating the right Return on Investment.
I mentioned previously that when the COVID hit, we had to kind of pause some of the investments and focus on taking out cost, and we did that. You could say that we have kind of ticked that phase, the stabilized phase, that is really about creating financial stability for ITAB. The build and invest phase, we have already started. We started during 2021. We are going full steam ahead. We have just taken a decision on a group-wide ERP system that we're investing in, and that is going to deliver further efficiencies as we go ahead the coming next few years. Of course, all this is aimed at creating a more scalable ITAB.
When we grow, we can grow on a scalable base, so we don't need to add as much costs as we add turnover like we did historically. That's kind of the what all this is going at. If I sum up a little bit, the stabilized phase is done. That box is ticked. The factories have been moved, the warehouses has been closed. We closed and moved 5 factories. We have reduced a lot of our fixed costs, and we delivered on the guidance to the market that we said that we would do. We are now facing the build and invest and then going into the expand phase. I want to highlight the right-hand side of this slide, that is the threat.
That is really, as we all know, the inflation and the cost of capital, because that is really, it's something new. It's something that has changed the preconditions rapidly, started slowly in 2021, was full-blown in 2022, and it has taken us and many others some time to adapt and to be, I would say, get used to living in this type of economy that is more volatile than before. Agility, as always, is required and adapting quickly to challenges and stay focused on this. We are well on our way. If we compare 2019 when we set out and to where we are today, we have strengthened our position in the grocery sector. That's part of our strategy. We have strengthened the segment of retail technology as percentage of sales.
That growth has been ongoing. During COVID, we grew our retail technology. We have dramatically reduced our net debt. Of course, we raised the external equity, but that's only part of the story. The other part of the story is that we have released capital internally, and we have improved our EBIT margin in the process. We are well on our way, but we're not there yet, where we want to be, so we're not satisfied. All of this is aiming up to us becoming the leading solution provider. There is a growth opportunity, and that growth opportunity is clear. I don't want to put too much kind of... These figures that we have here are a little bit old. It's a little bit difficult to find relevant figures.
I just want to highlight this is just the European market, so not looking into North America or Asia-Pacific, where we're also active. The market is vast. It's enormous. Our segment is very, very fragmented. Also across Europe, it's a very fragmented industry. We're one of the three largest companies in Europe or in the world, and we still don't have a market share that is above 10%. There's so much room for growth, there's so much opportunity to expand, and that's what I will talk about in the coming couple of slides. Our focus is really on profitable growth and maximizing our know-how that we have across the group and the expertise. We say that this is in three dimensions.
It's our core market, it's new offerings, and new markets and segments. I will go into that in the coming couple of slides. To penetrate our core market further, to existing customers, that's all about leveraging the opportunity to sell additional, already existing offerings to the customers that we have through cross-selling, through adding more services, through adding also connected products, design services, aftermarket services, and so on. There is a true growth potential by just focusing on the customers that we already have. We sit with a portfolio of some really strong customers. Of course, there's fierce competition. There's a clear and obvious opportunity for us to grow there.
We see also that more and more of the offer needs to be connected, and we see that many of the retailers are struggling with dealing with technology. For us, it's also an opportunity to help them to, when they invest in products from ITAB, that they know that they can scale that further into other areas. Of course, we want to expand our offer. We already have probably the market's widest capability and portfolio, but we still see that there are areas of growth that we can add on that are very, very, I would say that adds a lot of value and that doesn't increase the complexity for ITAB.
I've already mentioned a couple of services, but there are also services that are more connected to the digital area where we can help them to better leverage and have better business cases and better return on investment when they invest in technology. We also see that there are additional offerings that we could add to our portfolio that will make us even more relevant and our right to play and our position even stronger. Of course, we are mainly in Europe today, but still there is opportunity to grow. Of course, the market is fragmented, but also you could say that we have wide spots in across Europe where we can invest. Of course, we want to consolidate the market, but we also see an opportunity to grow in Southwest Europe and in Eastern Europe.
The focus that retailers have today on reducing costs and protecting their stores against theft and shrinkage has created significant opportunities for us within retail technology. Within lighting, we are seeing a strong need to reduce the energy and to improve the efficiency of the lighting solutions. We've seen this in Europe, and we've seen that also across America and Asia-Pacific. We believe that we still are just in the beginning of our growth in Asia-Pacific. We have some really interesting opportunities there where we usually follow key customers. We don't go out with a wide offer to everybody because the market is so vast and there's so much competition.
We follow already existing customers or we follow customers that are interested in getting the same type of service as we have to our European customers. These are the three dimensions of growth, and this slide is more kind of summing up what to expect from ITAB. Of course, we have our existing core and then we see that there is an opportunity to grow into new segments, into new markets, but also into new offerings. We are going to do that on our own, but we might also do that through partnerships or through acquisitions. It's all about rethinking retail, doing that together, and also rethinking ITAB and ITAB's role in this very dynamic landscape. With that, we go into the interim reports for Q1 2023. I hand over to Ulrika.
Yes. Good morning to everybody. Looking at ITAB's overall yearly development, it was impacted by a Q1 that was weaker in sales, affected by our customers being more hesitant towards investments. Our result was negatively impacted by lower volumes. Adjusted EBIT rolling 12 months amounted to SEK 406 million, which corresponds to an EBIT margin of 6.1%. If we look at the rolling 12 months cash flow, it increased to almost SEK 600 million, and our net debt position is still on a low level. The net sales decrease in the Q1 was 12% compared to last year. It was driven by customers being more hesitant towards investments due to the economic development. Our sales were, however, positively affected by a continued strong growth in loss prevention solutions where ITAB is well-positioned.
All customer sectors are declining in the first quarter. Looking at our sales by geographic area, rest of the world is increasing while we see the most significant sales decline in Northern Europe and UK and Ireland. Looking at our result, we see continued improving gross margin due to the favorable product mix in loss prevention solutions driven by our technology leadership in this segment, as well as a favorable market outlook. The price increases we done the last year and better balanced relative cost development also had a positive impact on the gross margin. Result is, however, under pressure in the first quarter and negatively impacted by lower volumes and cost from our participation at EuroShop.
Adjusted EBIT is somewhat below last year. If we look at the reported EBIT of SEK 70 million, we've had a positive development in recent quarters as we completed the restructuring phase of our transformation in quarter two last year. To strengthen our earnings performance going forward, we are continuously adopting our cost related to production, but also working to reduce our administration and sales cost. During the end of 2022, after a challenging time with supply chain disturbances, during the second half of 2021 and beginning of 2022, our operating capital started to reduce. In quarter one, 2023, we have a more stable operating capital situation where inventory levels are more normalized. First quarter, our cash flow was negatively impacted by SEK 70 million settling tax debts.
Looking at rolling 12 months, we had improved cash flow from our low point in Q1 last year with over SEK 900 million. Our initiatives and actions to increase capital efficiency will continue to be a strong focus for us onwards.
Just to kind of, then, before we end, what are my main takeaways from the Q1 report? Of course, we are in a recession. That's clear. We see it stronger in the northern part of Europe. It has impacted our sales, and I think, I'm super proud to see that, we have managed to still protect our profit by keeping margin high. We do that in areas that are really market relevant and that are attractive, so we believe that we'll be able to continue to protect our margin also going forward. That's our best guess at the current, at the current moment.
We have some really unique and customer adaptable solutions that helps retailers to very quickly get a grip on their, on the shrinkage that they see. Theft in retail have increased due to inflation and due to the cost of living crisis. People are squeezed and have thinner margins, and this is seen by retailers of all sorts that they see that theft and shrinkage is increasing. We have some really good solutions that are not intrusive to the consumer that is really supporting and drives efficiency with a very clear return on investment. We see that being very interesting to the market, and we see it for the future, but we also see it in the current sales.
I want to highlight that during the quarter we participated in the EuroShop Fair. For those who are not initiated, EuroShop happens every three years. It's the world's largest retail industry trade fair for everybody that is supporting retailers. This year there were some 80,000 plus visitors and thousands of exhibitors. ITAB was voted by the visitors to be best in class during the show. We had a lot of customers and created a lot of interest. On our webpage, there is more information about EuroShop. There is also a scan of the booth and movies that tells you about the different things that we showcased. Basically you could say that in EuroShop was the first time that our strategy of being a solution provider took physical form and shape.
It was something that coworkers realized and that customers realized in a very concrete way. It has been difficult, as you know, to connect during the COVID years, and this was the first time that the whole industry came together, and we were very pleased with the outcome and the interest that we have generated. We're working on turning the interest into sales for the future. Our efforts to reduce the working capital is in place. We have a strong focus on that. We also know that, regardless of what we are doing ourselves, the world right now is a very uncertain place, and it's hard to predict what will happen. We are staying very agile, and we have developed also, I would say, a capability in the team and in our people to quickly take actions.
Of course, it's sometimes tough when you need to take cost reduction actions. We have developed a very agile way of doing this, and we are constantly focused on making sure that we protect the financial stability of ITAB. I just want to end with this. It has already been mentioned, I think it's good to end on a really positive note, that's the trends in the current market really underpins areas of growth where ITAB is well-positioned. You say the macro environment is just accelerating the consumer demands and the consumer expectations that we have set out to meet in our strategy. That is positive. Retailers right now are really consolidating their supply chain to reduce costs.
They are really shifting their store investments from new store programs and expansion to refurbishment in order to drive quicker and faster and more secure return on investment. They're really cautious with their CapEx. The use of technology in retail continues to increase, and it continues to be focused on providing efficiency, providing a more convenient experience and also a more inspiring experience. Energy efficiency is, of course, a huge topic, and we have seen this in our lighting sales, but we are one of the most capable companies in the world when it comes to retail lighting and when it comes to delivering efficiency. We're best in class there. That's super important, not just in order to reduce your cost, but also to improve the environment in your carbon emissions.
Right now people are changing... There's a really strong business case to go from first generation LED to the current generation of LED lighting. Of course, adoption of our wider differentiating experiences with suppliers to support the reduction of operating costs. That's super important. Retailers are doing that. They're trying to reduce the amount of suppliers that they have and go more into consolidation and fulfillment and getting more one-stop shop and maybe one to put more pressure on when that is required. We're really well-positioned to do that. By that, we open up the floor for questions and answers.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, Andréas and Ulrika. Sorry, I have a fire test going on in the background here, so if it's a little noisy, then you have to excuse me. Thanks for all the color, Andréas. If you look at the start of this year and how you see your, say, leads with customers coming in, what is your feeling? Is that I guess Q1 still had a difficult year-on-year comparison against a good start to last year. Is the volume trend something like -15%? Is that a good kind of target for the full year as well, you think?
We don't do forecasting for the full year, I mean, we don't do that when the market is more stable, we would certainly not do it right now. We saw already. I think we communicated it in our Q3 that we saw some hesitation in the market. In Q4, we communicated it a little bit more clearly that there was hesitation in the market. I think that is what we have seen during Q1. I think that also there was quite a big rush in the autumn, like it is. Our market is from year to year, it's a bit seasonal. We believe that we will be able.
As far as we know right now, we believe that we will be able to manage the challenges in the year in a good way, given the circumstances. That's what we can say at this moment.
You indicated a good interest from client from loss protection opportunities and let's say particularly the technology side. Is that how we should see this year, that it's maybe more gonna be driven by technology lighting than the interior part of the company?
I think we're going to see retailers being really cautious on their CapEx, and they need to have a strong return on investment. Of course, that's why we're seeing that those products are really attractive right now. You can never say that the rest will then not be sold because that's not true either. You know that each time you refurbish or improve your store experience, there is a clear uptake in sales. We believe that the product mix is going to vary from quarter to quarter. We also believe that depending on who the customer is and what their financial situation is, that affects also how they will behave with their CapEx. Some retailers are really unaffected of the current market situation.
Some are maybe a little bit affected, but those who are, I would say, where we see a trend shift in their behavior is where they are more careful due to their financial situation, how much debt they have or how squeezed their margins are. If they are really squeezed under debt or margin and with the cost of capital, they are being more reluctant to invest, so. I think we are going to see that it will vary a little bit quarter by quarter. As most others in the industry, we see that the uncertainty is a little bit was bigger, I would say some months ago. It's starting to become more clear, but depending on what happens in Ukraine, this year could take all sorts of turns.
It could be dramatically improved, and it could be, of course, continue in this way. Yeah, it's very hard to predict. We're really the ongoing economic climate has a huge impact on consumers. We know that from the cost of living crisis, and that impacts retailers and what they can do and where they put their focus. It's a long answer, and I hope it helps you to put a more kind of flavor on the market dynamics.
That's excellent. That's excellent. Ulrika, you alluded to the gross margin being on the level where you have got through the pricing initiatives that you wanted. Is there more to come there? Maybe if you could indicate how you feel the pricing component is in the gross for the moment?
Yes, we said we feel that we have implemented the price increases and are more balanced. Of course, since we still are in an inflation economy, we continuously adopt and our prices as well during this year. I think if we look at the gross margin, it's both driven by the balance of price increases, but also by the product mix where we see that we have a better gross margin in loss prevention products.
It's all things are really at play. It's sales volume, it's product mix, and it's customer mix.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Excellent. Ulrika, on your comment on the tax in the quarter from a working capital perspective, is that really the catch up from the earnings improvements last year that is coming through? There was some sort of other special item that hit the quarter.
Yeah. It's both that and also some settlements of taxes where we had delayed payments connected to different countries having different rules in tax. That was part of that as well.
That is fully balanced with this or is there more to come?
No, it's balanced, from previous year at this point, I would say.
On the working capital side, the other parts of that equation, looking at it sounded like you are more comfortable about the inventory level and the level of creditors and liabilities.
Yes. We can see that from the peak and the big buildup we had in inventory levels that were more related to both price increases, but also to lack of components and we had unbalanced inventories as well. We are more normalized, but we still focus ongoing because we think we have potential to increase the capital efficiency further on in the group.
I guess that ties into where the volume turns up in the full year as well, doesn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's still opportunity to improve.
Andréas, you mentioned the ERP, group ERP systems. Have you come up with a budget timetable and maybe even potential savings you can get of getting everybody on the same structure? It, I guess you must have still, inherited quite a varied structure across the group given the history of a lot of acquisitions.
Yeah. We have 40 different installations of ERP across the group. I think it's only 5 that are common today. Of course, there's a huge opportunity not only on, I would say, to drive efficiency, but also to share knowledge, know-how, and to improve margin. We believe that this is going to be... As everybody knows, it's a huge undertaking, but it's part of our strategy to change the operating model, how we work to become more transparent, more collaborative, more able to work in parallel processes, and to do that across the group. That will be fueled by ERP and other IT investments. We already started in 2021 to roll out common CRM across the group, and we are leveraging this more and more as we go.
It is a big part of us reaching our financial targets. Of course, we have made some estimates on this internally, but it's not something that we have communicated to the markets. It's part of our plan to reach our financial targets.
I guess the timing for it is gonna be a continuous roll out over maybe the next three years, or how do you see that playing out?
Yeah. I mean, to our best knowledge, I would say it's a three to five-year initiative. If I get my say-so, it will be more on the three-year side. We all know that you should not make too firm promises in the beginning of this type of process. We have been very thorough before we decided on what to do. We have engaged a lot of people across the group and done our really good homework. We feel very confident in the partner we have chosen, and we feel very confident in the plan that we have set out. More to come from that in the future.
Excellent. Congratulations to the award at EuroShop. I think you had an amazing stand down there. Looking at it felt like it was as important to, as you put it, to get your internal resources working in the same direction as maybe getting the clients to appreciate the thing there. Now, I guess when that thing is behind, how do you see the sales lead that you managed to get out of the trade fair? Was it up to where it should be to justify the investment you did?
I would say that, I mean, there was a huge need to reconnect after the COVID years. You know, everybody has kind of transitioned into working online and having Teams meetings and so on. Internally, of course, but also with suppliers and customers. There was a huge need to reconnect. That was one part of the energy that you could feel. The other part, as I tried to say before, to talk about becoming a solution provider, for some, is quite abstract. That's why when it takes physical shape, it becomes very concrete. As you mentioned, it was really clear for some coworkers that maybe were struggling in their part of ITAB with what other colleagues in another part of ITAB were telling them. It became super clear at the EuroShop fair.
We measure what we're doing, so we're measuring the perception of our customers, we're measuring the interest and so on. I would say all the parameters we set out to measure, we have been positively surprised in how our customers, new and existing perceive us and their intentions to work with us for the future. We felt that that was a true energy boost, and it was needed in this, I mean, in these difficult days. We were happy with the investment. I just want to... I mean, since this only happens every three years, part of that investment is being activated, and part of it is taking in the P&L.
I would say, yeah, and we are not taking that as adjusted cost or non-recurring. If we had done that, then the result would have been... If we didn't have EuroShop, we would have a reported result similar to last year for this quarter. We think this has been a super strong and important investment, so we're happy to take that.
I guess it was also the first time where you really showcased your ecosystem of partners for the first time. Maybe you can describe to me how you see you can monetize that cooperation over time. If you get a sales lead for an ecosystem partner, how does that impact your revenue stream, so to say? Or does it all come to the partner structure in that respect?
I think that, I mean, we announced a number of partnerships. Most of them were already ongoing, but since we made them public, we felt that we should announce them. Of course, it is often we who own the relationship and we that create the solution, then we invite partners to be part of that. How we transact between us is, I mean, that's part of our intellectual property almost, but proprietary information, so we don't share that. Of course, you should not make. Even if those, if the partners are important, you shouldn't make too much of a thing out of the ones that we presented because they were examples. There are other partners as well that we use.
It's all about being agile in creating solutions where, the need of the retailer comes first, and then the capability to deliver might be, from ITAB and our partners. Already, I mean, that's part of our history. We don't produce everything we deliver. We produce parts of our delivery. What you could see in EuroShop that was so clear was that we are connecting the experiences from different parts of retail, so you can leverage the same technology, the same data insight, the same network. I mean, we displayed our technology platform that with one customer manages hundreds of thousands of transactions every month. It's hundreds of millions of GBP, in this example, that goes through that system every year.
We are not just showing a kind of a playbook, we're showing something that is deployed at scale, and we showed how we can connect and keep the experience together for the consumer, but also how we then can, for the retailer, gain insight and leverage efficiency. You don't need to invest in network and hardware and data processing capability each time you add a new piece of technology if you work with something more agnostic like our OnRed platform.
Oh, very clear. Very clear. Just to sum it up, when I look at the picture you showed on growth opportunity across customers and geographies, you obviously highlight the ecosystem of partners there. Where do you see the additional opportunities to bring more partners on board, so to say? Is there any particular areas, any particular technologies that you would say, highlight as a greatest opportunity?
I mean, I think that everything that is connected to efficiency and service and environmental, I would say, help the retailers to reduce their environmental impact, those types of services and technologies and partnerships are part of our roadmap going forward. Of course, we don't want to go into specifics because then we might hinder ourselves in acquiring those partners or leveraging partnerships or maybe acquiring companies.
Excellent. Thank you very much, and all the best out there.
Thanks.
Thank you.
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