Great! Well, I think we're ready to kick off. Hi, everyone. As a reminder, I'm Alexander Duval, heading up the hardware team and research at Goldman Sachs in Europe. I'm delighted to be joined, on stage by Matteo Anversa, CFO of Logitech. Matteo, thank you so much for joining.
Alex, thank you so much for having us. Great, great venue.
Thanks so much again. Just to state that this conversation is not intended for the media and is off the record. Great. Perhaps we can kick off with fiscal year 2027 demand trends. It'd be great to get your sense on the latest dynamics across your various segments. Perhaps you could touch on some puts and takes that have been salient in terms of your demand in the past year. Maybe you could help us think about how to think about the consumer and enterprise demand trending in the coming year.
Yeah, sure. Alex, I think it's maybe a little early for me to comment in details around our, you know, fiscal year 2027, which starts, as you know, in April. Overall, what we have seen also in the last quarter is let me start with the consumer side. I think we called it resilient but choiceful, particularly in the U.S. We saw really the consumer looking for quality products, but at the right price. Particularly on the medium to low-end spectrum of the product portfolio. On the other side, the premium, so for us, the Pro line, the MX, the Ergo, we continue to see a very, very strong demand.
They all grew double digit. Simulation was up in the high single digit. The— it translated back to your consumer question, the, you know, hardcore gamers, the individuals that are focused on ergonomics, on efficiency, they continue to spend money pretty much unchanged compared to what we have seen in the past several quarters. The demand continues to be very, very strong. On the enterprise side, look, we had a greater quarter, our VC sales were up about 8% year-over-year in constant currency.
We continue to see very strong demand of both us and our competitors, of all the video conferencing products, and we can talk more later about the dynamics. Overall, I think we, on the B2B side, has been different from the consumer, with a pretty clear line of sight toward the deals that are coming up, and we feel pretty bullish about the trend.
Super helpful. Matteo, I think you won't be shocked to hear that I'd like to know about memory shortages.
What a surprise!
Specifically, maybe we could just touch on your ability to deliver products and to what degree that has an impact.
In a way, we are lucky, right, as a company, because the vast majority of our products do not use the memory that is in shortage today. The just a portion of our VC product uses this type of memory. I have to say, our operating team, Sri, as always, has been doing a fantastic job. They saw this coming, so a few quarters ago, we secured supply, so we are pretty much protected through the end of the first half of fiscal year 2027, and we are currently working with our sourcing partners through our supplier ecosystem to continue to improve the supply situation for us.
You know, obviously, we are seeing memory cost increases like everybody is. Right now, we think we can probably continue to mitigate the cost through our product cost reduction activities that we always do every year. If that's not the case, then obviously we are ready to take actions on the pricing front, as we have seen starting to see some of our competitors doing. Back to our pricing experience that we had in North America as a result of tariffs, we also saw pretty limited elasticity on the VC side, so I think we have room to act on that if the cost of memory continues to be inflated.
Very helpful. Obviously, the next part of the question would pertain to PC units as we see some of these third parties talk about a low single-digit to mid-single-digit decline, in calendar 2026. It'd be great to get a sense of what that means to your growth aspirations. I know sort of historically, I think you've talked about the 300– 400 basis points outperformance, versus the PC unit. Some people say, "Okay, let me take that, then I add that on to the high single-digit decline, and that must mean that Logitech will decline mid-single-digit." Please, can you put into context how we should think about these units?
Sure. You, you know the company very well. A couple of things, I think, to put things into perspective. First of all, in a way, our attach rate on a new PC sale is about 10%-11%. We are kind of insulated, in a way, from what PC sales really does, because the attach rate is pretty limited. As we, you know, outlined in the last earnings call, the focus of the company, historically and today, is really on the installed base. Today, basically, of all the notebook that have been sold, less than half have a separate mouse attached, and less than a third have a separate keyboard.
This represents a huge opportunity for us, and that's where the focus has really been. How we historically have been outpacing the trend on PC sales is really through a couple of things. Number one, we focused on the attach rate on the installed base, and if you look at the last decade, our attach rate on the installed base grew by about eight points, right. Roughly call it almost a point a year, a little shy of that. That's action number one. We have successfully proven that we can improve the attach rate on the installed base just because people realize how much more productive they can be with a separate mouse.
Or how much better is the experience when you use a separate mouse and a keyboard versus the, you know, what you buy with a laptop. Second is share, right. We have been historically gaining share a little bit every year. When you look at mice and keyboards on the personal workspace, in the last decade, our share went from the mid-40s to above 50%, particularly in mice. Continued focus on product innovation that gave us share gain is aspect number two. The third one is really the fact that through innovation, we have been focused on the premiumization of our portfolio.
If you look at our, you know, average net ASP, the average selling price of the product, net of promotion, we saw a quite dramatic increase in the last decade. Mice went up more than 20%, and keyboards more than 50%. That's really what allowed us to continuously outpace the PC sales. I would add another aspect. The number that you quoted, the 300– 500 basis points, is what you see of our performance on average, but the spread is pretty high, right? You have years where PC sales go significantly down, and peripheral sales are growing low, mid-single digit. The reverse is also true.
You have years where PC sales grow high single digit or double digit, but peripheral sales remains pretty consistent into the low, mid-single digit growth, so that's important to keep that in mind. Ultimately, it's very interesting for me when I come to these conferences, because if I rewind the tape to one year ago, I was getting asked, "Okay, with the PC refresh, your peripheral sales should go through the roof?" We say, "Well, not really, because they're not really correlated to the new PC sales, and the same applies when PC sales go down." It's pretty stable. That's why I'm not too, you know, concerned about what the new PC sales really is gonna do.
That's super helpful. Maybe just to clarify as well, you talked about innovation and sort of being able to increase that attach of the installed base. Is there anything that's changed or anything that you're seeing which would suggest that can't be the case, going forward?
No. Look, we had, I'll give you just, Alex, a couple of examples. MX Master 4, the new mouse that we launched in September, was the biggest mouse launch in the history of the company. This is for the personal workspace case. On gaming, if you, any of you in the room are, you know, hardcore gamers, we launched two weeks ago, the SUPERSTRIKE, that has this haptic technology, that is perfect for FPS type of gamers, that significantly reduces the latency when you press the button, and we click the button on an FPS game, has been extremely successful. The technology engine of the company is a key focus for us and is not gonna go away.
Super helpful. I guess if we also look back over the last sort of five or six years, obviously during COVID, there was a big pull forward of demand, obviously some new TAMS opened up, and then there was a normalization period. Fast forward to now, is there also an opportunity there that you may need to do some refresh of that installed base?
Very good question. Generally, the refresh cycle for our products is between four and five years, depending if you look at peripherals versus versus the video conferencing. We're getting really into that space, right? If you bought something new during COVID, now it's due for a replacement. That's the general rule. Even more importantly, what we are seeing our customers do is they really buy peripherals almost independently from a new PC or a new game being launched.
It's the new experience, it's the new feature of the product that ultimately drives the replacement. That's why the focus on NPI and keeping always being ahead of our competition on the feature that we give into our products is not something that we negotiate. Is a key focus of the company, exactly to the point that you were making.
Super helpful, Matteo. I think one of the features of recent results has been the sort of geographical bifurcation. We obviously saw continued momentum in Asia-Pacific. You know, North America, it's been a slightly different picture. I wondered if you could just help disaggregate different dynamics we've been seeing.
Sure. You said it right. If I look at, let's take the third quarter, Asia-Pacific grew in the mid-teens. For us, AP is really China, right? That's our biggest market. The dynamic in China is, the momentum is terrific, particularly in gaming. Hanneke and I actually were in China a couple of weeks ago. I came home extremely energized and with a sense that really what is happening in gaming in China is unique. I don't think there is a sign of slowdown in the gaming market in China for quite some time. I would expect the tailwind to continue.
Indeed, also when we outlined the outlook for the fourth quarter, we said, "Look, AP, we think, is gonna continue to grow in the teens." Europe has been a good market for us. We continue to grow low single digit, and we are expecting that to continue also in the fourth quarter. North America was, I think, an interesting dynamic. What we have seen, particularly in the third quarter, was a, you know, sizable decline of the gaming market, and we can talk more about the different reasons. On the other side, particularly towards the end of the third quarter, we saw an uptick, a recovery.
Sequentially, our AMR results in the third quarter improved compared to the prior couple of quarters. We are overall, you know, cautiously optimistic. When we, you know, describe the outlook for the fourth quarter, we said, "Look, AP is gonna be, you know, in line with the third quarter. Europe is gonna be in line with the third quarter. The real swing factor is gonna be the AMR." At the midpoint of range, we are expecting AMR to continue to be flattish. On the higher end of the range is AMR continue the positive momentum that we have seen in the last part of the third quarter and grow into low mid-single digit. That's all. We'll have to wait until we post the results, but that's our assumption right now.
Very helpful. Is there a way to sort of help quantify or give confidence in terms of the visibility you have in these different regions?
Yeah.
That would be very helpful, I think.
Yeah. Obviously, we look at, you know, different data, right? The consumer behavior, consumer sentiment, what happens to the gaming market, what we hear from our sales force on the B2B, on the enterprise channel. That's generally how we form our opinions. Based on the information that we collected, that's what we think the future is going to be, at least for the next quarter.
Super. Then double-clicking on North America, it sounds like some of this was to do with caution, given the sort of cohorts of people who are spending on things like gaming. Is that how I should think about?
I think the —if you look at North America, you go through our own product lines, we saw very strong growth in the personal workspace. Personal workspace was, I think, up 7%-8% in AMR in the quarter. And for sure, the launch of the MX Master 4 that I mentioned earlier, also, you know, really supported the growth. Pointing devices was up significantly. We and we also gained a few points of share in personal workspace across all the regions. VC continued to grow. The decline was in gaming. Share was consistent, so we basically declined in line with the market.
Our interpretation of what is happening in gaming in the U.S. is really a combination of two things. Number one, as I said, the age of people that are really gamers between 25 and 40 that are mostly concerned about the state of the economy and what's going to happen. The fact that no big Triple-A titles have come out now for quite some time in the Western world, and overall price of consoles remain pretty elevated, so that depressed demand. At the same time, all these factors are ultimately temporary.
If there is a bright line on this thing, is that we believe that gaming is not gonna go away. Actually, people continue to grow, gamers continue to grow also in the U.S. It's just a matter of time. As long as we remain focused on new product, like the SUPERSTRIKE, the SUPERLIGHT that we launched a few quarters ago, I think, you will continue to see growth.
Very helpful, and perhaps also focusing on China. That's been fascinating how it's gone from being a drag on growth to actually delivering mid-teens growth. If we look out over the next year, could we assume similar growth rates?
Look, I as I said, I was really impressed by two things out of my trip. Number one, the market. The gaming is a social phenomenon in China. It's definitely a, you know, less mature market than what we have in the Western world, so that's one of the reasons. The innovation is going at a very, very fast pace. There are new trends like iCafes. We went to visit iCafes, and they're becoming a new trend where people book a room and with their friends, and they game. I remember when I was in China, I lived in China, you know, several years ago, KTV was the big thing. You go there and do karaoke. Now it's iCafes, right?
This plays really in the sweet spot for us, right? As I said earlier, I think the growth in gaming will continue for quite some time. We have a natural tailwind of the market. On top of it, our China for China strategy that we, you know, instituted about a year and a half ago, which is really centered around developing products in China for the Chinese market at China speed really helped us, not only in gaming, but also on the personal workspace. We saw really good momentum on our share, particularly on mice and keyboard, both on the personal workspace and in gaming. That also compounded on top of the natural market growth that we have seen in gaming.
A more— maybe a smarter way of approaching marketing, particularly in China, where I think we, a couple of years ago, we missed a little bit the boat. We went the traditional Western way. China is much more social media, so we diverted our dollar more to social media. That also paid, was very helpful for us. We're bullish on Asia Pacific. We're bullish on China. I think, we keep focused on China for China is—our strategy is paying out to be correct.
Super helpful. Do you think there are sort of learnings that you could take from China and apply perhaps to some of the other developing markets and even developed markets?
Absolutely. Even the developed, exactly. If you take the Alto Keys, right, the mechanical keyboard that we launched in China, because that's where really the new wave of mechanical keyboards started. This keyboard, we just started to sell it also in the U.S. and Europe, is going very, very well. That's a perfect example of how we can develop a product for the Chinese market, and then if it works, we can transfer it to also the developing market. We have still, I think, headroom to do on the share side. I talked about, I'm happy with the mice, keyboard. I think we have a little bit more room to grow on headsets in China.
We have emerging markets, which for us, is still a huge opportunity where we can focus on. We had that, Hanneke and I went to Brazil, November of last year. The team is great. There are so much great opportunities for us to capitalize on. I think the experience of the modus operandi that we developed for the China for China strategy can be really applied also to some of the other regions, and that's where we're working on. More to come.
Very clear. You mentioned video collaboration before and how you're sort of really focused on the enterprise side of things, which I think historically has been very important in terms of gross margin. You know, post-COVID, there was some uncertainty about how people would particularly implement, you know, back to office policies and so on. How do you think about the demand environment right now and the sort of visibility, have we sort of moved beyond that level of uncertainty? Perhaps related to that, there's so much enterprise spend that one might think will go towards AI. How does that leave the sort of demand that you can benefit from?
Sure. Look, we are very pleased with the results. We had a great first three quarters of the fiscal year 2026. We were up BC 8% in constant currency last quarter. Can't expect every quarter to have a double digit or high single digit, but because, you know, B2B tends to be a little lumpy. Overall, we are very optimistic about the future of our B2B, first of all, because we are building a fantastic team. Second, because there is, I think, still a natural tailwind in the market. If you look at worldwide, you have a few dynamics happening. Number one, if you look at the conference rooms, still, only 30% of the conference room worldwide are video-enabled, right?
Many companies that are going back to the office, both in Europe and in the U.S., are finding themselves with a pretty archaic and old office structure that requires an upgrade, particularly when you don't mandate which days people need to be in the office. Inevitably, you're going to have a member of your team that is not going to be in the room with you, that needs to join via video. The companies need to upgrade their office space, and that's— we play right in the sweet spot on that, right? There is the refresh cycle that we talked about. B2B is about five years, roughly. Some of the rooms that are video-enabled are due for a change.
And then, you know, it's interesting, you mention AI. That's why B2B tends to be a little bumpy. Overall, actually, AI, I consider AI a tailwind for VC, and here's why: The products that we are launching today that have AI feature, so really software feature, right? Like the Sight, which is like the producer in the room that we talked about, right? That you use smart framing, which is an AI software type of feature. The Rally Board 65, which is the portable video conferencing device that creates a cocoon, is perfect for open spaces. It cuts off anybody who's not part of the conversation.
All these product that use AI feature make the product much better than the earlier version or the experience that people used to have with the prior version of the product. That's why we think these are really the top two, three reasons why overall, we really want to double down on B2B. Obviously, selfishly speaking, being the finance person, obviously, to your point, B2B has a higher gross margin rate compared to the average, so it's also good for the margin of the company. I think it's a great opportunity to rebalance a little bit more the split of the company from 60% consumer, 40% B2B to a more 50/50 split. That's really what we are aspiring.
Very, very clear. Can you just help us think about how the premiumization sort of dovetails with this aspiration to improve, ASPs? I assume it's not purely about gaining volume share at this point.
It's really generally the product, particularly if they have a software which we feel is better than what our competition has, we drive a premium on the average selling price, which helps obviously, the gross margin of the B2B team and the company.
Very clear. I think you, talked about gaming and how, you know, there have been some products which may have been a bit delayed in terms of the actual games. If we think about the consoles, you know, there have been some news items talking about delays there. To what degree do you think that will have an impact in the next year?
You're spot on. I think what happened in the third quarter, the console pricing being a little elevated also as a result of the, you know, tariff actions that many company took, including us, that impacted demand. The, you know, the good news for us, and this is, I have to compliment Ujesh , and the gaming team. In a way, we built a gaming franchise, which is completely independent from the any titles being launched, right? We have our G family that we continue to evolve through our Logi PLAY, you know, events, and that's our own community.
That's why—look , if there are game, new games, Triple-A title coming up, generally is a tailwind, but we never count on it. We learned, and this is really credit to Ujesh and the team, to build our own community. That's why, you know, combined with the continuous product innovation, we I think that's all we can do, and that's what will continue to drive gaming growth. In spite of, you know, being the gaming market down, mid-single digit in Europe, high single digit in AMR last quarter, we still grew gaming, you know, in the low single digits. That's a testament to the work, innovation, and this culture of the Logi family and gaming family that the team has built.
Very clear. I think if we take a step back, from a strategic perspective, you talked about doubling down on enterprise. I'd just be curious, if you could talk a bit more about this strategic approach of going into new verticals. I think you talked about education, healthcare. How do you think about the scale of the opportunity, and where are we in that journey?
If I go back to what we said on Investor Day, right? We are expecting us expanding into these verticals to add one to two points of growth to the growth of the company, right? When we are all done with all our work. We identified these three verticals, you said it right, education, healthcare, and the public sector. The reason why we focus on these three is because of two primary reasons. Number one, these are areas where our products have already a proven relevance and superiority. B, these are fast-growing markets. Now, we can do other ones, right?
It requires a little bit of investment from the company, not too much on the product side, but more on the sales force. We need more boots on the ground. We need new tools. Last year, we implemented, for example, CPQ in North America. That made us going much faster in answering to requests for quotation and addressing requests from quotation from our customers. We did in North America last year, now we're expanding this to Europe and emerging markets. We're starting to build a dedicated sales force for these verticals. We are done in North America, a little bit more work to do in Europe, and we are in our infancy in emerging markets.
That's where we are. That's a key focus for us. Education, I'll give you an example. The demand in B2B, the sell-through in B2B in the last quarter was up in the mid-teens. Education was the main driver of that because we already have good products, particularly in the K-12. That's, that's why this is a key focus for us and the company. One to two points of growth, that's the expectation for the future. A little bit of work to do on the product and on the sales force, but I think the initial results that we had for the last few quarters, as you've seen from the numbers that we printed are very encouraging and we are pretty happy where we are.
Encouraging start.
Encouraging start, correct.
Characterizes. Super. I think, maybe on pricing, if we could touch again on that. You know, clearly you've had to navigate through this sort of tariff situation.
We did.
Moving, you know, very significant amount of production to different geographies, and it seems like pricing and pricing power has been an important part of that. You know, are there any regions where sort of higher pricing has sort of created a headwind? You know, to what degree do you think you can maintain and perhaps even increase your pricing across the broader portfolio?
I think, you know, overall, I think the team did a great job. We will close the year with about 43.5 % gross margin rate, which is gonna be flat year-over-year. We were able to, you know, offset entirely the impact of the tariffs through, exactly as you said, the pricing actions that we took in April. If I look back—first of all, just to remind everybody, we only increased prices in the U.S., right? And when I look at the product portfolio, we saw very limited elasticity in the B2B side and on the premium side of the product lines, and a little bit more elasticity on the low end and in gaming.
That's where we used some of the promotional dollars also during the holiday quarter to make sure that demand it was, you know, appropriate. Very limited elasticity on the VC. Back to, you know, the where we started the conversation, that's why we feel that if memory cost stays elevated, I think we have room to take additional pricing actions on the VC side, particularly. That's where, you know, the memory issue is prevalent for us. That's our, you know, lesson learned on the pricing action post-Liberation Day. I think the team did a great job, to your point, in making our supply chain very, very flexible.
You know, we closed the calendar year, calendar year 2025 with less than 10% of the products that are sold in the U.S. coming from China. I think we are very happy where we are. We are now in a China plus five, you know, supply chain situation, and we really love the flexibility. As you have seen over the weekend, you know, the tariff, you know, environment remains fluid, I think having the supply chain flexibility that we created last year, it really puts us in a perfect spot.
Super helpful. In terms of the change we've seen in the past week, you know, to what degree does that have a meaningful impact?
Very limited. No impact for the fourth quarter. You know, you know, based on what, you know, now there is 10% or 15%, the debate, you know, as long as the exemptions remain in place, which is what we have today, the impact for fiscal year 2027 is immaterial.
Great. I think we're coming to the last couple of minutes. I think we had a question from the floor. Perfect.
I'm just curious about what's basically changed in China, because if you go a couple of years back, the Chinese government put in place pretty strict restrictions.
You're absolutely right.
Time spent, et cetera, releases of new games, right?
Yeah.
What has changed?
Yeah. Maybe, I don't know if. Let me repeat the question. The question is around what changed in China, right, in terms of the, you know, the behavior of the government. It was 180 degree. My wife is Chinese. I remember a couple of years ago at the dinner table, all our friends were all, you know, talking about the how they had to limit the time their kids had to spend on the social media, on the games, that they created an issue, and this was completely changed. The— for sure, that created a tailwind, these iCafes. I remember, you know, KTV were a big thing many years ago. Now, iCafes are a big thing.
Also, the other thing to remember, the pace of Triple-A titles that are, you know, launched in China, specifically for the Chinese culture, Chinese game, is a much faster pace than what we are seeing in the Western world. It's a complete change of how the teams in China are behaving compared to 24 months ago. For us, is a great tailwind from the market, exactly as you state, plus our the effect of our China for China strategy that then, you know, helped us grow.
If you don't, that they can change their minds again, because I think the starting point was that we would like people to spend less time gaming, spend more time working and studying, which seems like a rational target.
Based on what we are, you know, talking to our teams, on the ground literally a couple of weeks ago, we are not seeing the growth in gaming in China, you know, being substantially reduced for the foreseeable future.
Thank you.
Great, great question.
Time for one more question.
It's just in terms of thinking about the balance sheet, when you think about, in terms of cash returns, when you think about cash returns versus growth opportunities, think about cash on.
Yeah. The question is, cash on the balance sheet, so more, you know, paraphrasing capital allocation, basically.
Yeah.
We are very happy with the cash that we have in the balance sheet. I think it's good to have a strong balance sheet, particularly when you have this uncertain world that we are living in. Our capital allocation strategy is unchanged. First priority for us is reinvest the cash that we generate into the organic growth of the company, through NPI, as we discussed. Our return on investment capital is greater than 25%, so that's money really well spent. Second, we want to continue to increase the dividend. We did that now consistently for the last couple of years. The last one was in last September. Third, M&A. We put some very clear boundaries.
We are not looking for large transformational deals, because we are very confident about the organic growth of the company. We are more looking for tuck-in bolt-ons that can expand our product reach in the areas of work and play, where we play in. Fourth, is returning cash to the shareholders in the form of share repurchases. We are committed to the share repurchase, you know, plan that we announced last year on Investor Day, which is $2 billion in three years. That's really the framework.
Great. Well, I think we're out of time. Matteo, thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Extremely, interesting discussion, and thank you all for joining.