Welcome to the presentation of Swedencare's Q1 reports, led by our CEO Håkan Lagerberg and CFO Jenny Graflind. We are pleased to have NaturVet's CEO Geoff Granger joining us with the presentation during today's webinar. As usual, we will have a Q&A after the presentations, so please raise your hand if you have any questions, and we will answer them in the end. Over to you, Jenny and Håkan.
Thank you so much, Emma. Yes, welcome to you all. Thank you for your interest. It's not only the Q1 report today. We also have our AGM here in Malmö at 1:00 P.M. today, so I'm happy to say that I will meet some of our precious shareholders today. Let's start with the Q1 2025 highlights. A solid quarter, 7% growth, 5% organic, and 19.4% EBITDA, operational EBITDA, and strong cash flow. Growth a bit softer than where we want to be, but I mentioned that in the Q4 report that we expected a softer Q1 in preparation for lots of things that will happen, and it was like that. Jenny will explain the lower EBITDA, but we expect us to keep on improving over the year to come. Lots of talks and questions about the new tariffs from the U.S. and how that will impact Swedencare.
As many of you know, we have had a strategy of investing both in manufacturing and sales forces locally or on every continent. We ship very few products over the Atlantic, and we are not impacted basically at all. We ship our, let's say, raw material for ProDen PlaqueOff. We ship that from Europe, but still that's a high, high margin product. The effect on our margin is more or less negligible. Of course, going forward, you never know what happens and how it will affect the economy as a whole. As I wrote in my comments in the report, the pet industry has been a very solid industry since 1945 with growth every year. We have had lots of crises over those 80 years, basically. It is a sturdy industry, and we expect it to continue, and we have not seen any signs of weakness really due to that.
Furthermore, launch of NaturVet's new brand design as Global Pet, a big event for us, and invested a lot in that. I will not talk a lot about that because, as you heard, Geoff Granger is joining us today, and he will be talking and showing some exciting, sighting pictures about that. He will also convey the first in-store launch in the big box retail that we have been talking about and preparing for a year, basically. We are very happy about that. That will take place in Q2. We had a sneak and small launch in Q1, but the big one is coming now in Q2. We make a biannual employee survey, and we're happy to say that we had excellent results two years ago. We had 41 in the eNPS score then, and over 20 is actually deemed as a good result.
W e managed to improve from 41 to 44, and I'm especially happy since we increased the response rates a lot from just over 60% to over 80% this year. I'm really happy about both, of course, getting a higher response rate, but managed to improve the eNPS score is really great. I know, I mean, all of the group companies have been working a lot with these questions to improve, and also Jenny and I from leadership have been working a lot to be more transparent and informative to all of the group companies and employees. Really happy with that.
And also I'm proud to say that our 2024 Annual Report was completely in-house produced. We have a great team for that, and basically added those tasks to the normal tasks. I am really impressed by the work that we performed internally. There is some really exciting news when it comes to acquisitions. They both took place now in Q2, but we announced the acquisition and the signing of U.K. Summit Vet, and we have also just concluded the takeover of the seller account and operations for NaturVet. As you know, that was supposed to happen in the beginning of next year, but we managed to come to an agreement to take it over prior. Yes. I will explain a bit about Summit Vet. We are going into a new type of business where we have not been present.
It's called animal health specials company, or in the U.S., it's more known under the name compounding pharmacy. It's actually pharmaceutical products that are compounded and made due to, let's say, orders from veterinarians. It's special pharmacies, so it's not drugs that are sold under a label. It's specially put together products that there is a demand for. Summit's working on a batch size, and there's only one other company doing that in the U.K. as well. Otherwise, it's pharmacies that make these types of products one by one, and that's very costly, of course. If you make it batch size and have the demand for it, it becomes a very financially good operation. In 2024, Summit had a sales of GBP 7.3 million and an EBITDA of GBP 2.7 million, 37% margin, so good and over our target. That's a great addition.
The purchase price was GBP 30 million and a two-year earn-out of maximum GBP 15 million, primarily based on growth. We do see lots of potential for growth for Summit Vet. Looking at the setup of the company, culturally, they're very aligned with us, and that's really why we managed to strike this deal. It's the setup that we have and the values that we have in our group that align very well with Summit Vet. The main focus for Summit Vet as of today and the bulk of the sales are directed to products for pets, dogs, and cats. They have some equine products, and there's opportunities specifically in the equine sector for new and unique products to the market. Other synergies between us and them, since we haven't been active in this, is of course Vetio North.
You know that's our CDMO business in Canada, where we have lots of experience in developing and manufacturing pharmaceutical products. Also, I've mentioned NutraVet here. It's more based on that we have a sales force in NutraVet working directly to veterinarian clinics, and that is something that Summit Vet also has. I don't see immediately that they will continue to work separately, but from references and experience, we can have lots of knowledge transfer between the two organizations. We have really kicked off in a fast pace. The most important immediate project that we've started is the transfer and setup of Vetio's patented soft chew technology. There is a demand and opening for having Summit Vet's products or new products in the format of soft chews instead. We really kicked that off from start.
Coming to the Amazon account, that's really a setup that we've been working with a partner for NaturVet's Amazon sales for many years, five years, I think, so at least five years prior to us acquiring NaturVet. That agreement was set to expire on 31 December 2021, and as some of you may recall, we had some negotiations of taking back the sales last year, but at that point of time, we were not really negotiating about taking over the account. We were more negotiating of ending our agreement prior to 2026 or end of 2025. That didn't work out due to just coming to terms of how to compensate our partner. We reopened the negotiations this year, and it was actually based on that we are taking over their legacy account, selling the products.
They do sell some other products there, but the majority of the sales was or is NaturVet products. We were not expecting our partner to be interested in selling, but we have had talks this year and managed to strike a very good agreement for us. Why we are able to strike this deal is really that we have an organization within the Pet MD structure being able to take it over. We basically paid the annualized additional profit, and that profit is on a good margin, not diluting our group profitability. The reason for that is really that we can add it into the Pet MD team, handling lots of brands already. We, as of yesterday, took over the account and the stock.
I mean, it's good from the perspective that we take it over earlier and that we basically pay the same price as the profits. The main goal for us, and really that could have affected us very negatively, is really taking over the account as is. If we would have taken it over in 1 January 2025, we would have had a situation of transferring all of the sales to a completely new account, and there's a risk of losing Subscribe & Save customers. That's a part of the business that's basically a majority of the sales on Amazon. Even though the processes for that have improved in the Amazon setup, there's always a risk.
Definitely, when creating a new account, we would be hit by higher marketing costs, at least for a quarter, then coming back to the more preferential rates due to the size of the business. It is a fantastic agreement for us, and it has been a team working from NaturVet and from Pet MD, and also the team from Swedencare North America have been working a lot with this together with me. I am really happy to announce this deal and looking forward to handling it ourselves. Jenny, some financial comments from you.
Yes. Revenue for this quarter amounted to GBP 641 million. Like Håkan said, 7% growth, 5% was organic, 2% was currency, and of course, we have some acquired growth, but it was rounded down to zero. The acquired growth mainly came from MedVant, a Canadian business that we acquired in August last year. Our operating gross margin is stable. It's 58.1% this quarter compared to 57.9%. I would say very stable within a percentage. The internal cost has been increasing. As we mentioned before, with the growth of Amazon, we have costs that are directly linked to sales, so it would automatically increase. However, in addition to that, like Håkan mentioned about the expos, we have invested more money this year compared to last year.
This year was about GBP 7 million compared to GBP 3 million last year. Our personnel cost has also increased as a percentage of sales in Q1 compared to last year. Partly was due to this cautious sales growth that we had in the quarter, but it was also affected by overtime. We have written in the report that, for example, NaturVet had very slow first two months of the quarter and then a record month in March. That, of course, impacted overtime. There is also additional benefit cost in Q1 compared to last year. However, the organization is now structured for the expected revenue increase in the coming quarters. I expect this ratio to come down again. As a result, EBITDA is reaching GBP 124.5 million this quarter.
It is a decrease of 10% compared to Q1 last year, and it is a margin of 19.4%. Interest expense on loan has decreased. In Q1 last year, it was GBP 20 million, and this quarter, it was GBP 12 million. This is both due to lower interest rates and, of course, a lower debt level that we have. We continue to decrease our net debt to EBITDA. It is now at 2.0 compared to 2.4 one year ago. This quarter, we have increased our loans with a net of GBP 300 million. We took out GBP 325 million right at the end of the quarter because we prepared for the acquisition of Summit, which we closed on 1 April 2025 . That explains the high cash level we had at the quarter end.
However, we have done a repayment, and we have also completed a smaller acquisition of Pack Approved during the quarter, and that impacted cash with about GBP 24 million. With the acquisition of Summit, we expect this net debt to EBITDA ratio to increase some. Everything else being the same, I would expect it to be at 2.5. Our operating cash flow was really strong for the quarter, GBP 96.7 million, cash conversion of 78%, and that is despite the fact that we have higher inventory levels. Like I said, with a record March for NaturVet, for example.
We also have a higher level of accounts receivable after a very strong March. CAPEX remains less than 2% of sales. This one looks a little bit different with the new year, historical and trend of revenue and EBITDA since 2020. Now this shows the annual increase and also the trend of the Q1. Product and brand split. Nutraceuticals, which you know is our largest category, is about 50% of the revenue. It increased with 3%, and this is mainly connected with NaturVet then who sells products in this category. Pharma had a small decrease. This is explained partly by the planned maintenance work that we did. We put the production on pause for a couple of weeks at two facilities. Dental is always nice to see. It mainly includes the ProDen PlaqueOff and a few other dental products. It grew with 51% this quarter.
This category is now at 21% of the group's total revenue. The main contributors in this is the powder, the original one, and also the soft chews that is one of the latest launches. The treat product group is still growing very strong, 90%, even though it's from small levels. It's nice to see. This is mainly Riley, one of our new acquisitions. And also, the newest acquisition, not the newest one because that's Summit, but Pack Approved is also included in this product group. If we look on the right-hand side where we have the brands, I can mention Innovet, which have had a fantastic 2024. They had a 15% decline compared to Q1 last year. This is due to they had abnormally high orders from the largest customer in Q1 last year.
On a positive note, NutraVet, which is mainly selling on the veterinary market in the U.K., is back on double-digit growth after a weak 2024. That is nice to see. Before we move over to the next slide, which Håkan is going to talk about, I just want to mention, I will just move to there and just tell you. I want to explain that in the past, we have divided the group's net revenue by geographical market. That would be North America, Europe, and rest of the world. From this report, we will instead report our net sales in line with our segments, which are North America, Europe, and production. Note that the segments also have sales in other geographical markets, but more details about that you can find in the report.
Thank you, Jenny. Yes, some highlights from North America. SEK 414 million, 5% growth, and 65% of our total revenue. Veterinary solid growth for all customers except for our two big distributors involved in renegotiating our exclusive agreements. As some of you may know, we have exclusive agreements with MWI for the Stratford brand, and with Patterson for the Animal Pharm brand. We have not been fully satisfied with the setup of these agreements. We have been renegotiating those in Q1 and they will take effect from Q2 with a different setup that will both, let's say, improve our volumes due to inventory agreements and also some new, let's say, sales approaches and adding new products.
Happy to say that we have come to new and good agreements, and I expect both of those to show growth in the rest of 2025 and onwards. Pet retail, low-digit growth except for ProDen PlaqueOff. Stronger growth expected across the board in Q2. As you know, pet retail is primarily the NaturVet brand, and all of our existing customers making lots of resets in Q2 and onwards. Of course, awaiting the new design and labels for NaturVet. More to come on that. Online, a bit soft start of the quarter, both due to some reorganizations we had when it comes to warehousing and inventory, and also some product and product launches for Pet MD. It was really a strong last half of the quarter and started off really well in Q2 as well.
More to come in the year. We have introduced a completely new product that we have started off with one version of it, finger wipes, and it immediately got the bestseller badge, and that's really, really impressive and not very common. Looking forward to introducing four or five more SKUs in the finger wipes version, and that will become an important product or product assortment for us. Main channels, Amazon, Chewy, and TikTok, no difference there. Amazon keeps on growing for us a bit faster than the others, but doing well on all three channels.
Europe continue as it's been last three, four quarters. Really good growth in Europe, 14%. Strongest countries, U.K., both vet and online, as Jenny mentioned, really happy for the growth in the veterinary sector with NutraVet. Nordics, primarily online, but also, of course, affecting pet retail when we do make campaigns online. Veterinary has been strong in the Nordics and U.K., as I said, a bit slower in Southern Europe.
I mean, I would say that Greece is solid, Spain and France a bit weaker, but there we have new sales agreements with partners in both Spain and France going forward. I expect more things to happen this year. Italy, as Jenny explained, it was a special setup. Basically, all customers grew except one, the biggest customer. There were some reasons that they ordered a lot in Q1 last year. Italy will come back to growth in Q2. Look at pet retail, new agreement with the biggest chain in Spain. Really happy for that. Also, as I said, the online campaigns we've been making both on platforms, but also utilizing TikTok and Instagram and influencers has really had a strong effect on the Nordic sales.
We are launching that now, I think this month or early next in the U.K., and France is next in line for that. Excited to see the results of that if we can get the same type of results in other markets. Amazon U.K., really, really strong, both due to the fact that they've been doing a good job, but also that the comps were low comparing Q1 as last year because that was a transition year for a quarter for us when it comes to taking back the sales ourselves instead of using the vendor setup on Amazon. We are in the process of making that same switch for the other European markets. That will happen, hopefully, this second half in 2025. Zooplus collaboration keeps on growing. Come after a good start, and they have increased their expected volumes for the year.
We're happy with that, both when it comes to ProDen PlaqueOff, but also NaturVet by Swedencare is starting to pick up a lot. Happy with that. Also, all of our online marketing has had an effect on our own D2C webshops. The new, or new, but the production segment, so now this includes both our production manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. and in Europe, has had an increase in customers reaching out with RFPs. If it's due to the fact that all of these trade wars and uncertainties, not all of them, I don't think so, but definitely for some. We have actually had some Canadian brands reaching out to the U.K., not customers of ours, but that have bought products from the U.S., wanting to buy from Europe instead.
We have had some U.S. customers that have bought from outside of the U.S. asking for RFPs to our U.S. facilities. There is definitely an effect of that. Let's see how it pans out, but we have a strong pipeline on both sides of the pond. We had some planned manufacturing stops in Vetio North and South, longer in Vetio North. We are in the process of setting up a more efficient production line. We are also in the phase of expanding into steroid liquids, a feature we have not had in Vetio North before, but we have had increased customer demand for that. We are in the process of setting up that and expect to have projects manufactured in those lines second half of this year.
We have also continued to increase the capacity in the U.K. and Ireland due to demand, and that will continue, but we keep it at, let's say, fairly low CAPEX spend. We do not expect it to have an effect to be higher than what we've indicated that we will be around 2% to 3% for the year. We have just signed an agreement for an ingredient called Mesoporosil, a unique silica-based product for bone strength and mobility. We have an exclusivity for the pet sector. We will both be manufacturing products for our brands using this ingredient, but also for external customers and also, let's say, selling the actual ingredient to outside as well. The priorities for 2025 have not changed since last time. We will continue our strong growth trajectory, focusing on present main markets and geographic expansion into Asia and South America.
I will be traveling with my export director in a couple of weeks to Hong Kong and China and looking for expansions there. Of course, a bit special situation right now. Since we have been discussing some of our U.S. brands, and that's a special setup right now. Now we will focus the discussions on our European brands or European manufactured products when it comes to China, of course. Long term, hopefully, it will pan out good. We will be introducing some of our U.S. brands into China as well. Enhance operational efficiencies, particularly in production and supply chain optimization. That's a continuous project for lots of our group companies. We also see some opportunities. We will continue the collaboration between the Tampa Group companies, and we have more synergies and utilizing the organizations for all the group companies from different individual ones.
Strengthening our online platforms and D2C sales, of course. Online is our biggest channel, still around 40% and the other two, 30%, 30.% I expect online to grow faster this year than the others. As we have just informed you about, to pursue new acquisitions that align with our vision, with premium science-based and pet health products. For the near future, we will definitely focus on taking good care of Summit Vet and also the new big operations that we have introduced into the Pet MD organization with the NaturVet Amazon sales. I expect the coming months to be definitely more focused on working with that instead of introducing new acquisitions. That will probably not happen this side of half year.
With that, the most exciting presentation this day, I introduce Geoff Granger to you. Please fire away.
Got audio. Join us. Okay. Sorry, I had to join as a panelist here. There we go. Some video on here. That does not want to work. Okay. All right. Good morning. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to provide you with an update on our NaturVet growth journey. It has been exactly a year since I last had the opportunity to speak to all of you. At that time, my focus was on the people and process investments that we were on the verge of executing. We have made all those changes and then some. As I will share in a moment, we continue to make transformational changes as we continue to set the table for meaningful and sustained growth.
As I will cover in a moment, the growth that we committed to is beginning to transpire, again, with a record Q1 and our biggest volume month ever in March. We can go to that. Go to the next slide here. All right. Actually, real quick before we get to that one, let's go. Yep. Again, 2024 was a challenging year, a transitional year. In that time, we've made transformational changes, and we've bucketed our 2024 achievements across three key segments: human capital, nothing else downstream matters unless we have the best people in place and a clear plan for retaining them; financial capital, this is all about implementing tools and processes that will make us more efficient; and pivoting investments to make us more competitive; and intellectual capital.
This is an extension of financial capital, but the level of category data, insights, and recommendations that we are now able to share with new and established retail partners truly setting us apart from our competition. You can stay on that slide there. All right. Double-clicking into human capital, we completely transformed our sales and marketing organizations, bringing on a pet health and wellness space veteran as our first Chief Commercial Officer, and subsequently recruiting a handful of industry leaders with over 200 years of cumulative experience across sales leadership, insights and analytics management, brand management, private label management, supply chain management, trade and customer marketing, and media planning.
They have all been with the companies that we see there, that we are all very familiar with those companies. A lot of experience with great companies. This included bringing on a true marketer into our organization, into the newly created role of Executive Director of Marketing. We also created a new Executive Director of Product Development role, and we filled a big gap in our operations leadership with the addition of our first Chief Operating Officer.
Lastly, and I'd say this is really the most important thing because if we don't do this right, we can't do the rest right. Lastly, we leveraged the feedback from the 2023 Swedencare employee satisfaction survey, along with a number of informal internal assessments, to map out a plan for transforming our culture. Our results from the most recent February company survey illustrate the significant progress that we've made over the last 18 months, generating a record high employee net promoter score that I will cover in a moment. We go to the next slide. Financial capital. We've optimized how we're leveraging our financial capital through the implementation of new tools and processes that improve efficiency, generate cost savings, and most importantly, allow us to invest in mission-critical initiatives.
New tools like Expensify, DocLink, and Acumatica provide enhanced oversight and more efficient management of expenses, documents, and inventory. We severed ties with duplicative and underperforming third-party resources to reinvest that spend into new third-party partnerships to acquire and leverage essential data and analytics. By optimizing where we are investing, this has allowed us to begin to exponentially increase our investment in social, digital, and influencer media as we push to drive meaningful and sustained growth. Go to the next slide. Intellectual capital. Lastly, it was imperative that we were able to identify and leverage an immediate key differentiator that would allow us to secure new business and expand with existing accounts. That differentiator is thought leadership, leveraging data and analytics to help retailers make informed decisions for our complicated and underpenetrated category and positioning ourselves as a trusted advisor and essential resource.
I was on the retail side for managing the pet health and wellness business at Petco for over six years, and the level of guidance and insights and recommendation that we are able to provide was never available from our competition. It is a major differentiator. Through our partnership with Plus One Insights and our investment in premier data resources like Numerator and Nielsen IQ, we've become the go-to resource for current and exhaustive assessment of the supplements market. With the partnerships that we've secured with the Sirak Group and Zappi, we're able to dig deep into consumer behavior and preference, helping our retail partners make informed decisions and ultimately informing our own innovation initiatives as well.
Along the way, we also established essential core disciplines that we simply did not have before with our customers that drive credibility, financial predictability, and overall efficiency, such as collaborative forecasting, annual business planning, and having joint branded and private label engagements. If we go to the next slide. As I noted at the top of the presentation, the transformational changes that we have made over the past year are now driving improvement across multiple segments. I will be covering the next wave of transformational changes in a moment, but I think it is important to note that even before our new rebrand kicks off and before massive account expansion, we are already seeing meaningful sales growth. We generated total Q1 of 2025 year-over-year growth. It was a record volume Q1.
We just happened to go up a really strong quarter last year after a very challenging Q3 and Q4 in our forecasting double-digit growth for Q2 and beyond. In March, again, was our highest volume single month ever for the company at almost $9.5 million in wholesale sales, plus up over 36% year-over-year. As I noted earlier, we improved our employee net promoter score by 20 points, from 33 July of 2023 to 53 points in the most recent February 2025 company survey. A score of 50 or above is considered excellent. An excellent rating indicates that our hyper-focus on our culture is paying off. What makes this improvement even more impressive is our survey participation rate increased by over 20 points to 85% from 64% in 2023, meaning that even with more participation, our score still significantly increased.
Traditionally, as the participation rate increases, the overall score actually is negatively impacted, but it was just the opposite for us. Our expanded marketing activation has increased our exposure in the market and delivered us multiple industry awards for product excellence just in the Q1 of this year, including recognition for Product of the Year as the top product in the pet health category, specifically our NaturVet Advanced Probiotics and Enzymes, was voted on by 40,000 American shoppers conducted in partnership with Kantar, which is a global leader in consumer insights. Product of the year is the largest consumer-voted awards program dedicated to highlighting groundbreaking products. Go to the next. The transformation continues. As I noted earlier, the transformation continues into 2025, led by our new rebrand and significant account expansion. We're going to spend a little time on the rebrand right now.
We go to the next slide. All right. It became very clear to us last year that our packaging update from mid-2023 was not resonating with consumers or retailers. We were not standing out in the crowd of emerging competitors within the pet supplement space. We came to a bit of a crossroads last year with both current and prospective retail partners expressing concern over our packaging. Using a major pet retailer where we have historically had a limited presence as an example, they were very, very clear that they were not going to expand us until we updated our packaging and our overall architecture. Ultimately, we discovered that the packaging change and the overall rebranding was absolute table stakes to get into completely new accounts as well. To drive meaningful, sustained growth, we must aggressively drive consumer acquisition.
In order to increase consumer acquisition, we need to expand points of distribution. In order to expand, we had to refresh our brand in a way that addresses retailer challenges and, most importantly, clearly differentiates us in the eyes of the consumer. Next slide. All right. The first thing we did was leverage the shopper insights data that we get from Sirak in order to better understand the barriers associated with our current packaging architecture. The key findings were, number one, we needed to get more credit for the NaturVet brand. It shows up extremely small on the current packaging. When we surveyed consumers, they thought the brand was the name of the product. We need to make sure that product names clearly correspond with what the product actually does. We are moving away from sub-brands and whimsical names.
In most cases, we're protecting them where they matter. We need to ensure that species is called out more clearly. We need to ensure that product benefit callouts are clear and understandable. This next one, we need a more prominent callout, flavor. Flavor was a major important detail for the consumer because it means if it's the flavor my pet likes, my pet's going to actually consume it, right? You don't go anywhere if they're not going to consume it. We need to ensure that we have consistent architecture across all product category segments. Without further ado, we'll go to the next slide. Here's where we landed. After months of consumer and retailer feedback, as you can see here, we've addressed all the opportunities identified on the prior slide, with the most prominent being a strong callout for the NaturVet brand.
Now, everything if we go to the next slide, everything that we have done here has been rooted in three waves of comprehensive consumer insights. The first wave was an online study that focused on determining preference between the current and proposed designs. Key learning was that the new design was disproportionately favored, generating a score that historically indicates a positive sales outcome. We went to the second wave. The second wave consisted of in-person focus groups across existing and new consumers that provided feedback on multiple packaging designs. This wave affirmed the packaging architecture, identified preferred claims and taglines, confirmed that we need to maintain some legacy elements in the packaging, which was key, and informed the direction for lifestyle imagery, product shots, and then flavor preference.
The third wave, another online study, ultimately confirmed we were on the right track with the optimized design, with significant buy-in from both current and new to consumers. Okay. Go to the next one. All right. As I noted earlier, we had no choice but to make this change if we wanted to grow with our current partners and expand into these spaces. These are exact quotes from some key current and new partners. I personally enjoyed the concise nature of Walmart's response. Very nicely done. This was not just about getting consumers on board. This was about getting our current folks on board and our new prospective partners on board as well. We go to the next slide. All right. The official unveiling of our new look was at Global Pet Expo in late March, such as about a month ago, the premier pet trade show.
Our focus for the event was, of course, our rebrand, but we also unveiled our two new product innovations and our new celebrity ambassador partnership with Mario Lopez and his wife, Courtney. If any of you are familiar with how we've showed up in the past, this was a significantly elevated experience. I personally had two instances where competitors pulled me aside to express how impressed they were by our transformation. Overall, the show was a great success, further strengthening our partnerships with both existing and prospective retail partners. Next slide. I am not going to go into this in detail, but just wanted to, you know, so how do we get credit for this, right? I wanted to flash our 360-degree approach to driving consumer acquisition by leveraging shopper education, innovation, influencer marketing, public relations, customer marketing, and digital social media.
The North Star of our acquisition strategy is what we call A Step Ahead, which is all about empowering pet parents to take a proactive approach to their pet's health and wellness, giving pet parents the knowledge and confidence to take action before issues arise. With clear guidance and expert-backed insights, we are making proactive pet health an easy and everyday choice. Activations will start to kick off in May with a little more aggressive activation starting in July, concurrent with two big box launches that I'll touch on in a moment. All right. Moving on to customer engagement. I'm going to cover new account expansion on the next slide, but I want to first reiterate that growth with existing accounts has been a key part of our journey as well.
We've made significant progress with PetSmart, recently securing the very first inline and off-shelf NaturVet supplements placement in approximately 1,500 stores. Up to this point, prior to Q1, we had not had NaturVet supplements placement in PetSmart. With a further expansion planned for the back half of the year, it's important to understand that to date, our partnership with PetSmart has been limited and only included ProDen PlaqueOff and some of NaturVet yard products. Big strides. Obviously, account acquisition is a big one, but to be able to start to significantly grow in PetSmart is key. Our partnership with Petco remains strong with them taking all of our new innovation for their annual reset that's actually happening this month in April. Moreover, Petco continues to expand our off-shelf presence, and they've also agreed to relaunch private label supplements with us, targeting a late 2025 initial ship.
Our partnership with Tractor Supply is stronger than ever, executing a significant NaturVet and private label expansion at their Q1 reset and including us in a new 2,200 location private label supplements and food combo in cap later this year. All right. What's new? I got some nice logos on here. As you can see here, we have made significant progress with Walmart, securing our first in-store off-shelf placement earlier this year, a modest entry into the retailer. We are expanding into their inline supplement set in the coming months, and we'll have more to share on that in the next 60 to 90 days. Now that we have on-site placement with both Costco and Sam's Club, that's prerequisite. We are now in active dialogue around potential in-club placement opportunities, and I hope to have more to share there very soon as well.
We have also secured NaturVet in-store placement in a national drugstore chain. This one is a little fresher, so we're not quite as sharing what this is, but we will be able to share more on this very soon. It's lots of really good progress here with new accounts. If we go to the next slide. Now, what's the potential value of doing all these things that we just walked through? Without showing exact numbers, this visual illustrates the look at this as if this is a bar chart. The visual illustrates relative dollar volume of a single point of market share across current NaturVet consumers. That's the far left bar, the little thin bar. Consumers who are already purchasing pet supplements but are not purchasing NaturVet, so we call that new to brand. That's the middle bar.
Consumers who are regularly purchasing other core pet categories, such as food and treats, but are not purchasing pet supplements, that's what we call new to category. That is the biggest opportunity. As you can see here, the upside is significant, with only one share point of new to brand users equating to 23 points of current NaturVet users and only one share point of new to category users equating to 76 points of current NaturVet users. In conclusion, the rebranding effort, in combination with our marketing activation and account expansion, is anticipated again to drive double-digit growth in Q2 and beyond. I will thank all of you again for giving me the opportunity to provide you with an update on the NaturVet growth journey.
Thank you, Geoff. By that, we are open for questions. The first one comes from Rick. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good day, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Starting off, Håkan, you mentioned in the CEO letter that you will achieve double-digit organic growth by the end of 2025. Does that mean for the full year 2025 or just in Q4? Just how should we interpret the guidance here?
For the full year 2025.
Okay. Good. Also a little bit on EBITDA. I think it is a Q4 in a row where EBITDA comes in double digits below consensus. Could you help us set expectations for the operating profit and sort of margins here, both for the year and in the coming quarters?
Like I said, there have been some extraordinary costs and some extra investments, and we have also set an organization that is now ready for growth. I think with the double-digit growth that we are expecting in the coming quarters, this ratio will be more positive.
Okay. Previously, you mentioned adjusted EBITDA margin of around 25% as a sort of a first target to reach. When do you think you will be able to reach that?
I don't know a quarter that we will reach it, but I mean, it should be improving quarter- after- quarter from this quarter, I think.
Okay.
Also, full year, we expect improvement from 2024.
Yes.
Okay. That's clear. The acquisition of the Amazon partner for NaturVet here is said to improve margins. What magnitude and timing of that? Should we see an impact already in Q2? Can you say anything about the magnitude or sort of the financial dynamics there? Also, if there's any stocking impact we should keep in mind?
We're acquiring the stock that our partner had. I don't think that that will affect our profitability. What I mean, it will not be as I try to explain, is that normally Amazon sales are at a lower margin, but this project, when we take that over, we will handle it with present organization. Our partner had, for being, let's say, a setup selling on Amazon, they had a good agreement with high profitability when they ran it. Now we're running it with a lower organization and OPEX. That will basically have effect from when we take it over. Of course, some initial setup costs. I would say from Q3 and onwards, it will be a good contributor to our profitability.
But not so much on the margin level.
Okay.
We will continue on the if you think about the EBITDA margin, I do not expect the EBITDA margin to have an impact of this because, like Håkan said, we can keep our existing EBITDA margin with this additional Amazon sales.
Okay. The final one for me, could you quantify the sales volume of the 1,400-plus Walmart stores here in Q2? Could you elaborate on the magnitude of the launch? How many categories or unique products will be rolled out? Thank you.
Yeah. At this point, I do not have the volume to share. The bottom line is it is going to contribute to our double-digit growth that we talked about that will be in Q2 and beyond. The actual sales we will get will be the initial load-in, which will be at the end of this quarter, the very last month of this quarter. Then we'll start to see the result of turn. It will be going to the back half. In terms of the scale of the launch, I'm going to stay general here, but it's between 15 and 20 items in an average of 1,100 stores each. There are a few items that are in lesser store counts. It's a relatively significant expansion.
Thanks, Geoff. Just to follow up, did I hear correctly? You saw 36% growth in March in NaturVet?
Yes. Yes.
Okay.
I'm sorry. Yes. 36% growth in March. Yes.
Very clear. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking my questions.
Yes. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Christian. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I hope you can hear me.
Yes.
Okay. Great. Just one follow-up on the double-digit growth for the full year. Do you expect double-digit growth in all markets? All geographies?
Yeah. Our main geographies, Europe and North America. Yes.
Okay. Great. As Geoff mentioned, NaturVet reached the highest volume in a single month ever in March. Do you expect the momentum to continue in the Q2, or do you see a risk of stocking effect at the start of the quarter?
Yeah. Within the quarter as a whole, we anticipate again, there'll be double-digit growth in Q2. It will then, as we get deeper into the year, the growth will be larger. Within the quarter itself, we are anticipating the continued strong growth. You'll have months that'll ebb and flow, but as a quarter, we are anticipating strong growth.
Yeah. As we've said, I mean, it's normally last month of a quarter is normally the strongest. It could be that also end of Q2 will be a record month for NaturVet.
Yeah. Yeah. Correct. At this point, we're looking at it could be even higher than the 9.5 that we did in March. Yeah.
Okay. Perfect. One last question here. How should we consider the margin impact when you are scaling up the big box business in the second half of this year?
I want to be careful how I answer this. It should be a neutral to slightly positive impact, just the way that we have our pricing models. It should not be a, in terms of margin, it should not be a detriment.
Great. Thank you very much. That's all for me.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Adrian. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Adrian here from Nordea. Thank you for the presentation. I think I have two questions here. Maybe I'll start off with you, Jenny. Should we expect to see the personnel cost and the other OPEX cost ratios to already decline in Q2? Are you still suffering from high overtime costs now in April as well, or was this mainly a March thing?
No, I expect it to go down a little bit in Q2 with the increased revenue.
Right. Okay. Perfect. Thanks. Maybe a question here regarding Summit. How sustainable do you expect the 37% EBITDA margins to be maybe a few years out? Also, how stable are the margins on, let's say, a quarterly basis?
I mean, the outlook is that it should be stable or improved. I expect good margins from Summit. As I said, there is only one competitor on the market. We are looking for expansions. We are looking for perhaps new geographies, not this year, but going forward. Over the years to come, I expect both growth and the margins to be as is or even better.
No particular seasonality effect there?
No, not really.
Okay. Perfect. Maybe a last question here. I do not know if you can answer this really, but I recall that last conference call you gave us, Håkan, a picture on the pipeline that you have for NaturVet in Q2, Q3 especially. Now we got some pipeline from Mr. Geoff Granger here. Is there anything new here in particular that we should take note of?
No, I would say not so much new, but more confirmed than when I presented last time. More secure. Some new volumes, perhaps. As customers, it is basically as is. Like Geoff said, now it's one thing to have an agreement that we will be present in a store or online, but now we actually see it and can see the results of sales. Yeah.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you for answering my questions.
Thank you. That concludes our Q&A session. Back to you guys for any closing comments.
Thank you so much for the interest and congratulations to the whole organization. I think working really hard to develop our group. I'm looking forward to our next call in July.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Geoff.