Hello, everyone, and welcome to the presentation of the second quarter, 2024. My name is Magnus Larsson, and I'm the CEO of Pricer. And with me today, I have Claes Wenthzel, our acting CFO. We are delighted to be here and get the opportunity to present the quarterly result. And it's a pleasure that we get once a quarter, and I've so far enjoyed it every time. I would like to start with our vision, and for those that have followed our presentations, you know that this is something we do all the time. Our vision is to become retail's first choice in in-store automation and communication. That basically means that when any retailer speak about their suppliers within the retail tech community, we want them to say that out of all the suppliers, Pricer is number one.
We want them to get this feeling from every single interaction they have with us, from the first meeting, to the first offer that we send them, to the first deal that we make, to the first delivery, when the way we conduct support, we send a faulty invoice and the way we handle it. We basically want them to say that through the entire journey they have with Pricer, from day one until the day they, well, hopefully not decide to do something else, but we see it's a continuous journey, that they say that out of the vendors that we work with, within the ESL business, display business, within anything retail tech, Pricer is the first one. Then what does that mean from our point of view? Does that mean that we wanna be number one in every single market?
Well, that would be nice, but actually, we want to be number one in selected markets. So first, we want our customers to say that Pricer is our first choice, and then we will actually say that these are the conditions under which we will actually conduct business jointly. So that's our vision. But what about Pricer? We've been around since the 1990s. By today, we have deployed and equipped more than 25,000 stores with our technology. Since last time I presented, we have grown the number of stores on our SaaS service, which we call Plaza. So we have more than 3,500 connected stores.
Having the stores connected is one of the fundamentals to be able to do the upsells and continue to work with the customer and give them more, more products and more services and more functionality to actually serve their customers in a better way and to make more profit. Looking at the market and the market development, I would like to start with the North American market. It's a market that we've been following for a long time, and that we can actually see that it's about to happen. I think one year ago or one and a half year ago, I started to speak about the North American market, that something is happening.
I think we can conclude that during the first half, and more importantly, now in the second quarter, we can really see that there are big changes on the North American market. We see it in the U.S., we see it in Canada as well. We see that large retailers, and especially grocery retailers, with ourselves and with others, are actually starting to move from planning into actually doing. It was really nice, and it was after a lot of hard work, that we could actually announce the major Tier 1 grocery retailer in North America that has now placed an initial order for 50 stores with us. It's actually the first and the largest store deployment of its kind. It's an initial order of 50 stores.
It's Plaza-based on our SaaS, Plaza SaaS service, and it's also based on full store deployments of four color labels, which probably makes it the largest four color deploy of this kind in pretty much any market, but it's definitely the largest one on the North American market. Ambition is actually to do the full deployment of these 50 stores by the end of the year. So it's a highly strategic win, and to us, it's a sign that what's the work that we've done, it's now leading to really win the kind of customers that we do want.
Of course, we want to have any segment, but if we look back on history, the retailers that actually been the first to adopt the ESL technology have been the grocery retailers, because the gain they get out of using them has been so obvious. So it's extremely pleasing, and but we also- it's not only that deal. We see that there are more movements on different places in the North American market, on different markets within the U.S., on different markets within- on areas within Canada, and also across different segments. So expect more on the development in North America. In the U.K., two years ago, we could conclude that we had this retail technology show in 2022, and it was not a lot of attendance. It was actually very poor attendance.
2023, we could actually see that it really changed. The deals that we announced in the first quarter, the Co-op stores, the O&CC stores, they were the result of the interaction in 2023. What we can see now after the retail show that we had now in April is that there is ongoing discussions with pretty much every single leading U.K. retailer. We speak to the largest grocery retailers, we speak do-it-yourself retailers, we speak general retailers. I've rarely seen this much interaction and that this fast uptake in these kind of discussions.
And of course, as much as I want to land it all, that will probably not happen, but we can actually see that the chances are that we will, ourselves and others, will be successful in the market are very high, given the fact that you could call it, I should probably not say revolution, but the development is very fast. And it's been driven by the inflation, which is still high in the U.K. market. It's been driven by the lack of resources, especially after Brexit, but also the fact that they have now increased the minimum salaries for, for example, store clerks and store staff in the U.K. So we do expect to see much more on the U.K. market over the coming couple of years. So it's a very positive development.
The third bullet is something we've seen over the years that once a retailer actually do a full store deployment of ESLs, and once they do the store-to-store digitalization, they very rarely go back. As a matter of fact, I cannot think of one single customer that has done a full store deployment that's gone back to paper and less than said that we will actually do it, a trial for the entire chain. If we cannot find the findings, we might actually take it off. And normally, the few times where I've seen that happen, the store staff has been extremely unhappy because they have experienced firsthand the benefits of doing it.
But just like we know that anyone with an ESL deploy will stay on ESL, what we see now is that chains where there's been a partial chain deployment, let's say that out of 1,000 stores, they've had 500 deployed. On the headquarters side, they see the benefit of ESL. They see the use cases they can do, they see the benefit of the store digitalization, they see how they actually can do more with less staff. They see how they get the efficiency up and the cost down. They also now see the ability to get control and visibility of what's actually happening within these stores from a headquarter point of view. So we can say that we see two different movements here.
One is that the chain with a big chunk of the stores on deployment, let's say they have half of their stores deployed in the chain. They are now taking measures to actually make sure that all stores will be deployed with ESL. Because managing paper and ESL at the same time makes it both difficult, but it also is taking away some of the chain's benefit they get out of it. This is something I expect that we will see more of, and that there will be an acceleration in this kind of changes.
But we also see that there are a lot of franchisees chains or chains that are actually turning their own operated stores into franchisees, that they want to have them connected, and they want them to have the stores digitized, and they want to have ESL. Because that gives them a visibility of whatever is happening in the store. It gives them the possibility to do central pricing. It gives them the chance to actually see what other products that sell well. Do they follow the planogram design? So basically, how they plan on a central level that the store should be built.
So I think over the coming couple of years, we'll see from the existing retail customers that done a lot of deployment, but not near being fully deployed in the chains, that they will actually take this action. And the way it will happen is probably that through changes of the way they, they run their in-store processes. Sure, you can... It's your choice. You can do paper or you can do ESL, but you will get more out of an ESL deploy because we're changing some processes. It could also be that it's mandatory, saying that, "Now we're moving on, and we will actually do it this way, so you will actually have to comply.
It's part of our standard setup for a store." Something we've seen as well is that many of the traditional grocery retailers, some of the large chains, they are facing an increased competition from hard discounters. It could be hard discounters like Lidl or someone else. And to meet this and meet the lower consumer pricing, they, of course, on some market, they lower the prices as well, to make sure they do not lose out on the market share. The way they do it is actually they look at the cost, they do maybe cost reduction programs. They try to see how they can actually minimize the overall spend to be able to also then fund some of this, or discount the actual prices on their consumer products.
So, does that mean that they don't see the value of what we do or competition do? No, not at all. It merely means that we can see that it's actually delaying some of the investments they are planning for. We can see that in these areas, when it happens, we still have really good dialogue with our customers. And we know when they actually will start to deploy again. But I think we will see more of this one, and it will be interesting to see at large how grocery retailers, the traditional ones, will actually respond on the hard discounters. We can see that some are starting to have their own hard discount form or low price every day type format. But right now, we have seen that this have been affecting some markets.
We've seen it in France, we've seen it in Spain. To a certain extent, you can also see it—say that we've seen it in Sweden. But what we've also seen is that the need for four-color labels, which from our point of view, delivers, of course, a better experience in the store, better shopper experience. It delivers a better ability to promote, a better ability to sell for the retailer. For us, it means also better profitability. Of course, that's a development we're happy to see. So what we do to actually meet this increased need is that we add capacity now in our production facility in Germany. So by the fourth quarter this year, we will actually produce four-color labels out of the factory in Germany, which also now is running on full speed.
So a lot of good news here, and interesting market development movements. So now you heard a little bit about the future and then reflections on the market. So now I will hand over to my colleague, Claes, who will actually go through the highlights, the financial highlights of the second quarter. So Claes?
Yes.
Over to you.
And if you start to the left, where we have the order intake, and as you can see, it can vary a lot between quarters. We had a very strong order intake the first quarter, and now it's SEK 500. But it's still up 6% compared to last year, and the order intake is, of course, very dependent on all the projects we have and when these projects are turning into real orders. If you look at the sales then, even there we can see that we see some pushed sales from some of our big customers. That's why it's maybe a little bit lower in this quarter, but after the first half, it's still up 4% compared to last year.
But the most important thing for us just now is that we have much better control over our margins. As you see, the gross profit is up, and it's, of course, related to long, genuine work with our suppliers. We have also an effect from the product mix during the quarter, and now after the first six months, we have a margin of 21%. Then we can go to the next slide. Here you see our EBIT result each quarter, and it continues to go up, and it's mainly related to margins improvement, lower cost, much better cost control. That explains the main part of what we can see this very positive development in the company just now. And if you go to the next slide, you see the rolling twelve-month result.
As you can see, the rolling twelve months now, it's up SEK 52 million compared to what we had last year. And you can also see that this is the 5th quarter in a row where the rolling twelve months result continue to go up. And the same goes for our net profit. Here, if you look at the PNL, and you see the margin, of course, but we have also an effect, as you can see, from our operating cost. We started a project already last year, but we have effect of it now in the first half year, but not full effect yet. But the cost is down compared to last year by more than 8%, so it's SEK 18.8 million this quarter.
And if you then look at the next slide, you see the strong cash flow we had the first, the first half of this year. It's of course driven by the high result, but it's also much more focused now on our operating capital and on our accounts receivables. One thing to note here is also that we had a lot of factoring historically, and we are lowering our factoring part all the time, and we will go all the way out of it now during Q3. And even if the, the factoring is going down significantly, we have been able to increase our cash flow. So that's really strong. Yeah.
All right. Thank you, Claes. So let me then summarize our second quarter. I'll do the popular summarizing of what Claes said. I think that the cost reductions that we've done, it's been a long-term work. We started already in 2022. We've been looking at our suppliers, we've been looking at the products that we use, we've been looking at the design of our products, we've been minimizing the number of variations and products with very little difference, where we could actually just replace it with one or actually more products into one. We have been spending a lot of time looking at the pricing, how we set the pricing with the customers. When we do the sales, very often when you do sales, it's easier that your salespeople can end up in a cost discussion.
It's banned within the company. We always speak about investment, 'cause if it wasn't an investment from the customer point of view, well, they shouldn't do it at all if it's just a cost. So from that point of view, we have changed the way we also communicate with the customers, which is helping us to also defend our pricing, because that forces us to be more vocal about the benefits our customers will actually get from using our technology. And as I said before, my ask to our head of sales is that we should always be 10% on top of the market price, or on average, we should be 10% on top of the market price.
And then with that mentality and spending a little bit more time on the sales, well, that will have a good impact also on the gross margin. Then, of course, selling last generation four color labels is also improving gross margin, just like the recurring revenues are. So very nice, and I was very happy to have the 22.8% gross margin in the quarter. But of course, when we look at gross margin, we should look over several quarters to see the development, to make sure development over time. The cost control, Claes mentioned the cost reduction program, that we are aligned with it, and that we expect now early Q3 to have the full effect of the program.
That together with the cost control, together with the gross margin improvement, led to the third highest EBIT and net profit in Pricer history in absolute terms. So after last year losses, it feels good now for three consecutive quarters to have actually delivered an EBIT profit, and now this year on net profit as well. Order intake was, of course, disappointing, looking only at the quarter, but yet I'm actually here presenting without looking too concerned. We see that two of our largest customers, they have had delays. We are in discussion with both of them. We are doing joint plans, and we know how the year will play out. So we do expect orders, good orders from them now during the second half.
So what I see now is that this has been more of a, I wouldn't like to call it a lumpiness. I don't really like that word, but it, it's clear that these are orders that could have come now into this quarter. Now they will come during Q3 and Q4. The corporate transformation I communicated before, so we've had the cost reduction, but the corporate transformation is equally important. That's the part that will actually will ensure that we don't start to build cost the same way, organizational cost the same way as we did before. So we have a very hard focus on just cost management in general, but we have been looking a lot at the organization. We made a larger reorganization from a management point of view, where to really clarify roles, responsibilities, and mandates.
And we concluded by having a kickoff for the, you can say, the new expanded leadership team in June. I feel a lot of confident. I feel that we're on the right way. We are all marching in the same direction. We have the same mindset, and we know what are the key things, what are the key triggers that we need to do in order to successfully ensure the long-term profitability and competitiveness. And it was well-received also by the managers, and for some of the older timers, they said that this is the first time that we do something on this level, and it was really appreciated.
Of course, finally, I would like to end with just reminding and do some additional bragging on the deal that we got with this North American grocery retailers. 50 initial stores, they have 1,500 stores. It's one of the Tier 1s in the North American market. Its full deployment of four colors will be the largest deployed to date when it's done. So, extremely good, very strategic, and I look forward to actually develop the relationship with this customer. It's been, as you've seen from the press release, it's been. It's a deal that we've taken together with our partner, but it's also what I would call a direct touch deal. So our partner, together with our local and actually global salespeople, have been working jointly to make this deal happen.
That's pretty much what I would like to present, and I would actually now like to hand over to Cecilia for some Q&A.
We have some questions. You touched upon the prices. Are you generally satisfied with the prices on the customer contracts, or can customers be picky sometimes?
Of course, that's a difficult-to-answer question to answer. I'm happy for every contract that we win, and very often, what I've seen selling for many years is that the contract that you might not have been very happy with before, at some point of time, as you get more efficient, that you will actually make sure you get more out of it. And it's above all a possibility to do more. Having said that, yes, sure, there are contracts where I feel that the price is too low, and we look at ways of actually renegotiating and increasing them. And very often, that would actually be through introduction of a maybe new generation products or a new approach. So that's something that's on the strategic plan for some of our key accounts and with our salespeople.
We have contracts where I'm really happy with the pricing, where it's very clear that the value we deliver with our products has been well articulated, and customers have been willing to pay it. I think I might have mentioned it before, but I'd like to do it again. We had a major win last year. At the time we were closing the deal, we know it was the last week. We know they would actually make up their mind. I asked Mats, our Global Head of Sales, and I asked him, "So what's your feeling?" And he said, "Our pricing is maybe a bit too high." So I asked him, "What do you want to do?" And he said, "Nothing, because we have done exactly what we should from a sales point of view.
We have to stay our ground." And I was extremely happy for that response, even though, of course, it does give you a bit of a sense of uncertainty. What happened was that Friday, I got a message from the customer saying, "Thank you, you've been selected. Really appreciate the teamwork." And then a couple of weeks later, our key account manager ask the customers, so how come you selected us, and then what was the rationale? And they say, "Well, you demonstrated the value so clearly of what you actually deliver, so to us, there was no other option." So I mean, I think it's a good example also that if you do the sales work properly, this is the result.
Not always, but it will actually increase your chances of actually getting the price that you want and that you actually deserve, given the value you give to our customers. Because I still think that despite I ask Mats to be 10% on top of the general market price or the average market price, I am confident that we are the cheapest solution for the customer, because we will deliver a higher value in terms of the saving they make, but also in terms of the additional sales they can get to the customer experience in the store, and the potential upsells they can do by doing different kind of promotions on our four color labels or the signage solutions that we offer. Just a very long answer to a fairly short question, so thanks.
And there are several questions on the two largest customers that you mentioned that have postponed their orders. Could you elaborate on the revenue decline from your two largest customers, and also the drivers for the expected recovery in the second half of the year?
The size of the impact, well, it's, I would say it's sizable. And how much is sizable? I don't want to give any exact numbers because we don't do that kind of forecasting, but it's on a level where you could clearly see it. The impact was visible in the order intake specifically. And then you have... As listeners now, you have to try to make up your mind what that really means, so sorry for not giving any more details. On the drivers, well, the key driver is digitalization. We can say that one of them, they have a large installed base already. They do wish to continue. We actually know that they will continue to deploy in their stores.
And then the other one, they also have large deployment, but we see that here there are possibilities to actually do much more within the chain. So I, I realize that what I'm saying is pretty vague-ish, but, but in essence, we have two happy customers. For different reasons, they have, they have delayed the orders, but the, we have a joint target and a joint goal, and that is to continue the digitalization further, and, and that we actually do have the plans on, on the way it will be done. So that's, I guess that's what I can say.
Okay, thank you. And just this is a question about the gross margin. So you state that the gross margin was positively affected by both your internal efforts as well as customer and product mix. So how much of this should be considered temporary effects? How should we think about the run rate for the gross margin?
I think that we can see that some of the order intake or and net sales that was missing, I would like to refer to it as a product mix rather than something else. We can see that some of the orders that we have been missing has been on products where we haven't had the same gross margin, so there will be an impact. I'm not sure it will be a very large impact, but I think there will be an impact. On the other hand, I also see for the second half, I'll try not to actually guide, but I think there are reason to believe that if we, I don't know, Claes, would you like to say something? I'll probably just try to hand over this to you now.
No, well, we don't give that type of forecast, as you know. But, of course, if the sales are... It's a lot depending on different type of products, but also we have an effect that will continue to be there from better prices from our suppliers. One other important thing is, of course, our recurring revenues, where the margins are totally different compared to when you buy in raw material and produce a product.
Yeah. No, I think that we can expect a good gross margin also during the second half, or we will expect that. Exact what level it will be on, that we cannot guide on.
Thank you. A question on the working capital: so are you comfortable with today's working capital, or are you planning to make it more efficient through lower inventory levels and higher accounts payable for better liquidity?
You're never satisfied with how much capital you are tying up in operating capital. One thing that we're working a lot with is, of course, the inventory. Inventory levels, we should be able to turn over the inventory quicker than we have done, but that is something we are working hard with. So the goal is, of course, to get it lower compared to our sales volumes.
Here I think we can also say that sometimes there is a belief that there is a contradiction or there is some kind of conflict between sales and finance. In essence, they both want the same thing, and what I can see here is that we have an extremely good and constructive dialogue within the management team, both from sales, finance, and but also other parts. We all agree that we want to look at the payment terms from our customers. We all want to look at all the parameters that's actually affecting the working capital and like inventory. And here we, of course, have the product team involved, we have the supply chain involved, to make sure that we have a setup where we actually minimize inventory. And there are many different levers that we are looking at.
... Thank you. Now we have a question on the four-color labels. So what proportion of sales do you expect to head for four-color labels? Will that impact the gross margin?
We see that it has an impact on gross margin, but we actually see that, at large, we have two generations of ESL out right now, the SmartTAG and SmartTAG Power, and the color labels are based on the Power. We can actually see that for customers that choose to work more on the Power and use the Power label, regardless if it's a three-color or four-color, they get much more out of it, and they get a higher benefit, but we also get a better gross margin on these customers. So I think our task now is to actually gradually shift our customers from old generation to the new generation labels, as on different ways, and try to do it as much as possible. When it comes to volumes, we see a clear trend that four-color is growing.
We see that the Power labels are growing. It will depend a little bit on the forthcoming deals and then negotiations with the customers that we're having right now. So it's a bit too early to say, but we can see that the growth of four-color will continue, and it will continue outside the markets that has been strong before. Almost all labels we sell in Sweden, in New Zealand, in Australia, and in the UK are four colors. Now, with the North American retailer, it's also a breakthrough from the fact that they are only going for four color. So of course, this is something that we hope and expect will continue.
Thank you. And the question on the EBIT margin that took a giant leap from Q1 to Q2. And the comment on that, the Q2 is almost on the long-term target of 8%. And of course, you should look at this over a longer time, but not one quarter, but can you comment on this? How much is a trend, and how much is short-term effects in Q2?
Claes, would you like to take that?
Yeah, well, it's not so easy to answer. It's, of course, an effect of if we have reduced our cost, and we will continue to do that compared to last year. And that, of course, if the gross profit is increasing, then our margins or operating margin will continue to increase. But now, after the first half year, we are not as high as 7.5% as we was in the second quarter, so we and we don't give that type of forecast. But the goal is, of course, to be above 8% over time.
Yeah, and I think it's also when we, when we communicated around the transformation activities we have, we have had the focus, we had the efficiency, but it's also about building new capability. So we are doing select investments, both in staff and within other areas, to be better in actually addressing the market. So it could be within portfolio, it could be within strengthening the sales team. So we will also increase our costs. But the intention is if we, if we employ salespeople, that it will be offset by additional gross profit. But then we have the investments that we do on the product side, for example, that will be also offset, but it might take a little bit longer.
Thank you. A question about production: So when will Pricer have labels with Made in the U.S.?
Well, let's see. Well, it's once again, depending on market uptake. When we see that there is a point that it would make sense to actually have something, in, in the U.S., or North America, then we'll do it. Right now, we, we have no immediate plans to do that. We see that we can do the supply and the orders from the factories that we have. But, but given the size of the deals, that we hope to win into the future, well, then, then will certainly be something that we need to look into.
Thank you. A lot of questions on the German factory. I'll pick a few of them. What type of labels are we producing in Germany?
So what we've done so far has been three-color labels. It's been limited amount of sizes. Now we increased the number of sizes we produce, and we will produce both three and four-color labels, as of the fourth quarter. Actually, we'll do more sizes, I think, already in the third quarter, and then both four and three colors in, as of the fourth quarter.
Thank you. So, several questions on Plaza. I tried to compile them. So, the Pricer Plaza has been bought by approximately 3,000 stores. The other stores have server-based solutions that you want to migrate to Plaza. How is the migration to Plaza going?
It's going well. Not as fast as I would want to, but we have a program in place. We have good traction. So it's going well. But we are looking at ways to actually speed it up. We are working together with Google as well, to actually use them also in this work, to do something jointly on to make sure we can speed it up. But we have dialogue with a lot of our larger customers.
What has been sometimes limiting is if there has been a chain, and they want to do something on the chain level, which they say that, "Yes, we see all the benefits we get out of it, but we will not do it until next year - we will not start the discussion until next year, because we have some other projects." Because when they decide to do it on a full chain scale, of course, then they will need to look at how the entire IT team set up, and they have to make sure that all parameters are in place.
But if you take Carrefour, for example, when I discussed with Miguel, the global head of technology, we agreed that we wanted to transform as many of the Carrefour stores from something server-based in the store to a cloud solution or SaaS solution as possible, and that has progressing really, really well. We have a couple of hundred, more than a couple of hundreds of Carrefour store that's been transformed quite recently.
Thank you. So, also regarding Plaza, can we assume that the recurring revenue will increase substantially when other stores are moving to Plaza?
It will increase, but it does take time. Since we're not invoicing, it's not like when you invoice a big product sale, that you get everything at once and you invoice it. It's the gradual invoice. It will be- it's cumulative, so you will see a continuous improvement on Plaza. And of course, almost all new stores and all new chains, there are almost 100% Plaza-based. I think, actually, if they don't have a previous- sitting in a previous chain, and then there is a principle to go with the in-store, it's all Plaza. So then it's the migration. So you will see a continuous growth of the Plaza revenues.
Thank you. 3M has recently implemented Pricer labels in manufacturing process. Is the industrial market segment something you intend to pursue?
I would say not really. It's interesting in the sense that you get to work with brand names that are well-known. So there is a certain value from a branding point of view, saying that these brands, like 3M, they see the benefit of working with ourselves. But from a volume point of view, very rarely they have the size that would make it attractive from a deployment point of view. Then it's better to actually address, let's say, the chain of grocery retailers, because if we win them, we know, like with this North American one that we just announced, we know they have 1,500 stores.
So that's, of course, the target we've given to the key account manager, that this is your job now to make sure we win as much as possible, which is much easier than actually going for the industrial segment. So in essence, the volume in the industrial segment is too low to make it really interesting.
Thank you. And how much of the revenue is from old customers, I mean, existing customers, and how much is from new customers? And will this change over time with Plaza?
It's a good question. I don't have any exact figure, actually. We've been winning quite a lot over the last year, so we have a lot of customers, but also we have had a lot of orders from existing customers. I don't know whether you, you got any comment?
No, no, no, I don't have that number. But, as you know, it's, it's just a small part of the whole market that is penetrated. So of course, the market is growing, and, it's growing by new customers coming in.
Yeah.
But the numbers we have, I don't have notes on that.
No, and I think it's a good answer, because we can actually see that now as, like, the North American and UK markets are growing, these customers are all new. So and, and I think we are... Sometimes I felt that we have had, if you look at the uptake of the market, it feels like we've been on a very long early adopter phase of the market. And we've reached a point now, the tipping point, where we move into mass market. And I think there's quite a lot of, of indicators showing that this is about to happen. We can look at some of the announcement in North America, we can see what's happening in the UK. We see on some of the other markets that things are, are turning big, and it's actually going quite fast.
So, having said that, yes, it would be nice to see if a lot of the revenue will come from new customers, but of course, that we see and continuous increase of subscription and Plaza revenues over the years to come.
Thank you. This is a question from a person in Sweden who talks to retailers, and some of them don't know Pricer. What is your comment on that?
Well, so I'm happy to hear that they don't know Pricer. They should all know Pricer. The way we sell in Sweden, and we sell through partners, so I'm sure they know our partners. So in Sweden, we're actually doing the field sales through StrongPoint. So my expectation is that we are exposed on a daily basis to the retailers in Sweden. So the way we work is that in some of our countries, we have our own field sales. In France, in Italy, in Belgium, we actually have field sales people, so we have a frame agreement with the customer, and then we have people out knocking doors. And doing really closing business with the franchisees, because then we're mainly addressing the franchisees.
Or we have a partner doing that, like someone more like StrongPoint, or it could be NZESL in Australia and New Zealand. Sometimes we address the large retailers, and then they will help out with facilitating the contact with their stores. So it's a little bit depending from country to country what kind of model we have. But yes, I would want all retailers in Sweden to know who we are, because we want to be their first choice, and it's difficult to be the first choice if they don't even know us. So that has to be the target.
Thank you, Magnus. There are several questions on the future of technology and solutions and products. So, we see other players in the market go beyond ESLs. What are your thoughts on enriching and expanding the product offering and technology advancements going forward?
I think we will see that when we start, and when the retailers start, sorry, digitizing the store, well, they have a point of sales. They will have their back office, they... The store staff will have the PDAs, where they have the necessary applications to run the store. They have the displays, and they have the ESLs. So then I think a lot of them will ask: "What's next?" They wanna have different kind of devices in the store. It could be thermometers, or it could be, let's say, automatic locks. It could be sensors to see is someone passing by, sensors to see was the product lifted by a customer, not to give insights in the store. It could be cameras.
So I think there will be a lot of these products required into the future, and it's a natural next step. So expanding the portfolio, I think that that's one thing that it's something we actually do look at. What are the complementary products, or what are the products that we believe would fit really well with our product offering? What we've done over the last year is that we're focused, or the last two years, actually, we are focused on our core business. Now we've come to a point where actually we show that we actually do grow the company, and we do it profitably. So building new capabilities that I've spoken as a part of the transformation, that also does include looking at the product portfolio, looking at the future.
What are the products that we want to take to market further on? So I think it's a natural development. What we've seen also, it's been a lot of talks about computer vision on the market. We have a camera solution. The reason why we haven't been really pushing it to the market and to our customers is that we haven't seen the business case yet. We haven't seen any major retailer do a major deploy, so we're sort of waiting for that trigger point as well. We are ready, but since we don't see the market, then we want to focus on doing the gospel of store digitalization in general, while we make sure that we get the basics. But I believe having additional software functionality or source functionality on top of Pricer Plaza, that's a must.
That, that's part of the, the roadmap and part of our focus areas. And then the complementary areas with different products that you can actually deploy in a store, more like an IoT device, I think that's an area that's also very interesting. So, we, we haven't finalized our products, right? We're in the strategy phase right now, but it's something we definitely look at.
Thank you, Magnus and Claes, and these were the last question.
Thank you very much, Cecilia, for facilitation, and I would like to thank everyone that has participated, for actually participating and watching this fairly by now long webcast. Thanks to all of you that posted questions. It's much appreciated, and please continue the same way. So thanks for this, and I will look forward to actually meet you again in three months' time. Thank you. Bye-bye.