Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to Oriola's Q2 audiocast. I am Tua Stenius-Örnhjelm from Oriola's Investor Relations. With me today I have our CEO, Katarina Gabrielson, and CFO, Mats Danielsson. We'll start with Katarina's presentation, followed by Mats' financial review. After the presentation, we open up for your questions. As a kind reminder, in the Q&A we will focus on questions relating to Oriola's business and financial performance. Like always, you can start posting questions to us already during the presentation through the chat. Finally, please note that we are recording this audiocast, and the recording will be available on our website later today. Before handing over to Katarina, here is the disclaimer that we all should be aware of. Now, without further ado, Katarina, please go ahead. Thank you, Tua, and welcome also on my behalf, and good morning. In Oriola, we could see a positive sales development in the wholesale business in Finland during the second quarter. This is a development that we have seen since the end of last year, so I'm really pleased to see that it has continued also in the second quarter. Also, the volumes in the specialty flows has been remaining on the high levels. In the specialty flows, we see, for example, vaccine and export volumes going from Sweden as well as in Finland. We could also see that demand for Oriola's pharmaceutical distribution services was somewhat weaker than anticipated during the second quarter. The profitability landed on last year's level, despite that we had higher freight costs driven by increased fuel prices. We have taken measures during the quarter to mitigate the impact more effectively going forward, and especially when it comes to the fuel prices. In Q2, the net sales was growing by 1.7% and landed on EUR 51.8 million, and adjusted EBITDA was EUR 8.1 million, which was in line with last year's level. In the supply chain, I'm pleased to see that the operations remain stable, and we have made important improvements during the quarter that will make positive effects going into the second half of the year. One example is that we have moved the vaccine distribution for the Northern Sweden from Gothenburg area to the Stockholm area, which means that we can take down the air freight and go with road transportation instead. That will lessen up our costs and will also be positive for environmental footprint. Kronans Apotek delivered a quarter of revenue growth as well as the profitability has improved. This has been based on the execution of the short-term actions that we talked about earlier this year, but also about [CMD]. Kronans will now continue to execute on the commercial and operations improvement to further strengthen the profitability. In Oriola, we are continuing to replanning our ERP program, and we are taking into the learnings that we made with the first deployment in Sweden. We are in the design phase for the second deployment, and that's ongoing and we'll continue more on this further when it's ready to be commented. If we then look at operating environment, our market share was stable both in Finland and Sweden. We could see that in the second quarter, the value of the pharmaceutical distribution market was growing in Sweden with around 10%, while the growth in Finland remained quite flat. We are affected by the geopolitical development that we can see during the quarter has continued to contribute to uncertain operating environments. One example is the higher fuel prices that I already have mentioned, but there is also some inflationary pressure. Like I said before, when it's coming to the fuel prices, we are taking actions to mitigate the high fuel prices. The pharmaceutical companies is also continuing to building inventories in both Sweden and Finland, and that is to ensure the availability in both markets, which is benefiting us positively since we have higher volumes to expect for the future. In advisory services, it continue to be cautious customers, and we can see that in the decision-making. There is longer lead times, and there is also taking more time than to get the contracts and the new engagement signed with the customers in this area. This is mainly based on what happened in the U.S. and how the product is then coming to Europe. The consumer confidence indicator is weak in Finland as well as in Sweden. We could see some improvements during the end of the quarter. Like I've said before, also in these sessions, this is affecting mainly the traded goods and especially the traded goods and over-the-counter products, since this is the out-of-the-pocket spend from the customers in the pharmacies. It's also so that there will be changes then from more expensive products to lower priced products. If we then look at our segments, the service segments has a decline in the net sales with 2%. The decline is due to the weaker quarter, especially in the pharmaceutical distribution in Sweden, but also in advisory services. If you look at the pharmaceutical distribution part in Sweden. We have continued to see that the weight loss products has increased in volumes. The increase here is based on that it's going to be parallel imported products in Sweden. We are less strong in this customer portfolio, which is affecting the volumes in the distribution area in Sweden. The volumes in the specialty flows, such as vaccine exports and animal health, remain high level for Oriola, and that is something we have seen for a while now and we are expecting that will continue for the future. In advisory services, we have taken restructuring measures based on the longer lead time with the contracts, and we have also by that implemented to reduce the personnel costs, which will be positive for the second half. The adjusted EBITDA decreased in this segment to EUR 9 million. The main reason for the decline was the high freight costs. Going to the product segment. In this segment, the net sales was growing by 11% and landed on EUR 16.9 million. The growth was supported by both the wholesale and the dose dispensing business in Finland. We could see that the positive development in the wholesale business, like I mentioned before, has continued, and it's supported by the growth, both in the e-commerce as well as the retailers and in the pharmacy channels. The renewal of our own brands that we have talked about earlier during the year has progressed. We can see that the renewal of the brands which we have done is now growing in some areas with double digits. We can also see new listings that will contribute more in the second half of the year. The sales of the specialized medicines were also strong during quarter. We have succeeded in capturing market opportunities in this area, which is something we will continue to strive for. The adjusted EBITDA was EUR 1 million. That's a small decline compared to last year, and that is mainly due to higher operating expenses. Let's now go more into the financial figures. Mats will do some presentation on those. So please, Mats. Thank you, Katarina, and welcome also from my side. I will start from the invoicing and net sales. This quarter was a bit softer than quarter one. If we start by looking at the invoicing for the quarter, of course, the main part of the invoicing is coming from the service segment, where we had a low volume growth in the segment. Still, invoicing grew by 5.3%. If we then look at net sales, we have a growth of 1.7%. The low net sales growth is directly linked to the volume growth in the service segment. Service segment is about 70% of net sales. I will come back to that a bit more in the services segment. If you look at the year-to-date numbers, pretty much the same development as in quarter one. If we eliminate for the Swedish dose dispensing business year to date, we have had a net sales growth of 3.5%, a bit better in the first quarter and now a bit softer in the second quarter. Looking at the EBITDA, we stayed at the same level in the quarter as in 2025. The EBITDA margin of 15.6% compared to 15.8%, adjusting items a bit lower than last year. This is mainly due to the fact that we are more in a planning phase than execution right now. We have used less consultants during the quarter. EBITDA year to date is slightly higher, and the EBITDA margin also 15.5% compared to 15.3%. In general, if we look at the quarter two EBITDA staying flat, of course, it's the volume growth that is lacking, and that don't give us the opportunity to grow profitability. We have some headwind in the advisory, especially in, or both in the full H1. We have the, like Katarina mentioned, we have some extra freight cost at the latter part of quarter two. We have some more cost and not good enough pass-through margin on in the product segment. That affected the profitability to stay at the same level. If we move into the services segment, here we had a low volume growth. As Katarina said, the growth was mainly coming from, for example, vaccines and export and the invoicing growing 5.2% and 6.8% year to date. If we look at the net sales, this volume growth is directly impacting the net sales due to the fact that we have, especially on the growing categories, there was a transaction-related pricing and that means that regardless of the price increases we get paid by the transaction volume. We have a headwind in the advisory that gives a small decline in the net sales, and that compared to the growth still in the invoicing. Year to date, 0.7% growth in net sales. Looking at the adjusted EBITDA, like Katarina said, we have the freight cost now hitting us as a delay in quarter two. We also have the low net sales and the volume growth that is affecting the EBITDA. We have the slowness in the advisory business. A slight decrease in profitability both in the quarter and year to date. In the product segment, we have a good development that continued from quarter one. If we adjust for the Swedish dose dispensing business, we have an 11% growth in quarter two, but also with the correction, it is around 11% year to date. Looking at the adjusted EBITDA for the quarter, it was a bit small disappointment, not reaching the level of last year. Some more cost operating expenses, some freight, the pass-through margin was a bit lower than we had expected. Still, year to date, we are well ahead of 2025, both in EUR and in the EBITDA percentage that is 9.7% compared to 6.9%. Looking at the bridge for the net profit, we have improved the net profit and just a few highlights on that. As said before, we had some less adjusting items this year compared to last year, so the EBITDA was higher. Another thing is that last year we had a write-down on the Swedish dose dispensing business that hit the depreciations. Of course, Kronans had a better first half year than last year. That gives us a loss of minus EUR 3.2 million compared to EUR 11 million last year, which is a clear improvement. We look at the cash flow. A few comments on the cash flow. We have the change in the working capital is -EUR 35.2 million. Here we have a few things that have happened. We have decreased one of the factoring customers in Sweden. We are using factoring for pharmaceutical retail chains, pharmacy retail chains, and we have now taken out one customer from that, which has had an impact that is roughly one third of this -EUR 35 million. From the customer mix in the invoicing growth, we have had some impact also on the change. The main point here is that this is a kind of a normal volatility. We still have invoicing of more than EUR 300 million each month. They are small and very large payments. This will always fluctuate a bit. Another point here is that our investments EUR 7.6 million. This consists of the Järvenpää land area and some automation in Enköping that we have also talked about earlier. Looking at the net debt, -EUR 35 million. If we compare this to the last year without the sold receivables, we would be at the same level as we were last year. No big change. The financial position, we have no big changes in gearing or equity ratio. Gearing as compared to last quarter is a bit lower due to the cash flow. Compared to last year, we are at quite the same level. If we look at Kronans. Kronans had a very good quarter. Net sales in local currency grew by 5.3%. Kronans had some really successful activities in the pharmacies. They have had a good cost control. If you look at the adjusted EBIT, we have now an improvement of more than EUR 4 million from the quarter last year. Also, even though Kronans had a quite bad first quarter, we are now ahead of in the adjusted EBIT compared to last year. If we look at the outlook, we keep the same outlook as before. We expect the adjusted EBITDA to increase from the previous year. This is very much related that we believe in the growing market and then the strategy execution and the actions that we have related to that. That was my part. Thank you. Thank you, Mats. If we go down for the key takeaways before we go to the questions, we will continue with the net sales growth like Mats mentioned here, in the product segments. We can also see that the volumes in the specialty flows remained at a high level. That is something that has been done during the quarter two specifically, and also going forward, we believe in this. The supply chain during quarter two remained stable, despite operating environment uncertainties that we can see and also some higher costs. In the second half, the net sales growth and efficiency improvements is expected to continue. One of our key priorities is the cost discipline, both to get the costs to the customers, as well as looking at all the costs that we can work on in Oriola itself. That's the key takeaways from the quarter. Now we open up for questions. Thank you, Katarina and Mats, for your presentations. As a reminder, please use the chat to send in your questions. In the Q&A, we will first focus on the questions relating to Oriola's business and financial development, and then take the questions about the joint venture. We already have quite a few questions in the chat, and I will do my best to group those questions that are relating to the same topic. Let's start with the first questions that we have received. There are a few questions relating to the ERP program. Could you estimate what is the remaining amount of ERP costs to be booked as one-time costs? Has the original amount of ERP costs changed? If yes, how much? Like Katarina mentioned in the beginning, we have now been, and I noted that also that we have taken the learnings from the release one, and now we have, during the first and the second, mainly the second quarter, we are now planning and designing the release two. That of course will have some impact, but we don't have any numbers to rely on yet. That we'll have to come back to later. Okay. Relating to the cost, do you want to comment anything about how the costs will be divided between H2 2026 and the years 2027, 2028? That is very much dependent on the planning and the details that we are doing right now. Okay. There are two other questions relating to the ERP costs, maybe we take this one that you have booked EUR 6 million cost for H1, for the ERP project. Is the level expected to be similar for H2? Well, the level might be close to that, the details are to be still developed. Okay. Have the findings from the first deployment of ERP in Sweden caused any costs? I would say like this, the findings, it's hard to say exactly what cost. It's the learnings we are taking from the findings now. We should also remember that we're infrastructure critical, when we go into the next phases, we need to be able to deliver on that once. Findings, how do we then both look at the cost of course, going forward, how can we also make sure that we make a secure deployment when we go to the next releases? Okay, thanks. I think those were all the questions related to the ERP that we had. Let's continue with the other ones. In addition to the buyback program, Oriola has paid EUR 0.4 million when purchasing own shares. Could you describe more detail what kind of payments these have been related to what purchases? These are mainly related to the incentive programs and also for the board compensations that we pay. Those are the items. Good. Thank you. There's a question relating to the cash position. You continue to run a sizable cash position while paying meaningful financial costs. When are you planning to optimize this to decrease the financial costs? We still have the quite the volatility in the cash balance, and that is something that we work on all the time. It's a bit dependent on things that we cannot affect, and therefore at the end of the month, it looks quite different than during the middle of the month. We are working on this and like I said, we have now discontinued with one customer, the factoring program also to take the interest cost down. Okay. Questions relating to the free cash flow. Free cash flow was -EUR 35 million in H1, driven by the working capital swing, and you cite fewer factoring program customers as one driver. First, is the reduction in factoring participation structural or temporary? Should we expect sold receivables to recover toward the EUR 120 million level or stabilize lower? This is structural, it's not temporary. We have reduced one. Of course, we had EUR 120 million in end of quarter one. It, of course, depends on the sales to the chains, how much we sell. With the current level, we are lower than that. Okay. If it would have remained with this customer also, it would have been higher. Okay, a follow-up question: Does the H1 outcome change the 80%-100% cash conversion target you presented at the Capital Markets Day, or do you still expect that range for the full year 2026? We still believe in the full year. Let's say that the working capital and the free cash flow in a quarter is maybe not reflecting. We have big swings between the months also. We still believe in a very good cash flow. We believe in stronger growth and a better cash conversion and cash flow. Okay. There are two questions that are relating to the freight costs. It looks like clients are good at pricing as invoicing goes up. Transportation costs have been going up for five months due to the war. It should not be a surprise. Do you see freight cost headwind existing into H2, or have you been able to compensate by higher prices? I would say that, no, I agree. It's not a surprise. We also have some contractual parts that is meaning what we can do with our customers in this aspect. Going forward, we have mitigated the freight cost as much as we can, and I will not see that it's going to be as a surprise as we have had or on these levels as we have had now. We are mitigating most of it going forward. We actually knew from the beginning that there will be a small delay due to the fact that the contracts are set up in a certain manner. Okay, good. There's a question relating to advisory services. You mentioned longer sales cycles and cautious decision making within advisory services. What concrete signs are you seeing that demand may normalize during the second half of the year? What commercial actions are you taking to accelerate the growth? You can say that, of course, when there is longer lead times, it's also so that for the second half we will benefit from the parts that has been longer will now also then go into decision. That is something that is an upside for the second half. That's the same as with the freight price to some extent. There is a delay in the beginning and then it's normalizing, and that's what we can see also in the decision making parts. There is some tenders now up for decisions. What we do overall is, of course, to be more active together with the customers, to try to persuade them to come to us. We have seen, in fact, also during the quarter some more Nordic contracts coming to us, but we also need the bigger ones in our portfolio, and that's where we normally see that more delay. There is some new customers also in advisory. Good. There is a question relating to the guidance. What are the main drivers for H2 in order to reach your higher adjusted EBITDA guidance for the year? Well, we strongly believe in the market growth. We have a good growth in the specialty flows and have had during the beginning of the first half year, for example, vaccine distribution. We know that we have a more efficient supply chain for some of the flows also now for this latter part of the year. We believe also in the sale of the value-added services that we do, and the advisory services, of course, catching up. On the other hand, we also focus a lot on the cost side, and that's a priority that we work on all the time and are trying to improve on in all areas with the costs. That gives a good ground for a basis for the full year outlook also. Great. There's a question relating to employees. The number of employees has decreased in Sweden and Denmark, but gone up in Finland. Why is this? If you look for Denmark and Sweden, it's mainly based on the restructuring of advisory. Denmark is even fully advisory with what we have there. Going up in Finland is to some extent also based on the Skyway program, where we have also what's called backfilled a little bit, and we have done it a little bit more in Finland than we have done in Sweden. Okay. Just to be clear, the Skyway is related to the ERP program. It's an internal term. Yeah. No worries. Okay. Just a reminder that please send any questions that you have to us through the chat. Now there are two questions that are relating to the joint venture. It looks that the measures in Kronans Apotek are improving its profitability. When do the measures presented in CMD concerning Oriola improve its profitability? Is Oriola still on the road to achieve its financial targets? It was more on Oriola, this one. Yes. I would say yes, absolutely. Even if we have a little bit softer Q2 compared to maybe the expectations, we are absolutely there. We should also remember that we are now on par with last year, and normally we also have a much stronger second half of the year. That's absolutely something that is going in the right direction here. Okay. This would be for the time now the last question. There was an inter-group change in the ownership of shares within other share owner of a joint venture during the spring. Does Oriola see that the commitment of other shareholder is on the same level as before, despite the structural change in ownership? The short answer in this is yes. What they have done is to make change in the group composition, they have assured us, and I can't see any changes in their engagements in the joint venture. Yes. Good. All right. Now it looks like there are no more questions in the chat. I would like to thank everyone for joining us today. If you have any follow-up questions, please don't hesitate to be in contact with us. Enjoy, everyone, the summer, and have a good weekend. Thank you
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