Electrolux Professional Aktie

Good morning, and welcome to Electrolux Professional Q2 report results. My name is Jacob Broberg. I'm heading up Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. With me, I have Paolo Schira, our new CEO; and also Fabio Zarpellon, our CFO. And I leave the floor to you, Paolo, please go ahead.

Thank you, Jacob. Good morning, everybody. And I think probably since I started 2 months ago in my role, it could be good to give a few words a little bit about my agenda. I'm using the last couple of months -- I've been using to travel across the different countries, meeting many of the colleagues. And I'm very happy and energized after this interaction because I saw a lot of energy, a lot of passion and willingness from the different colleagues to move Electrolux Professional to new heights. So very, very energizing. And I took the chance of this interaction with the colleagues also to share a little bit what is my agenda moving forward.

Now we are a company with a very long legacy more than 100 years. And as every established companies, we've been expanding work in many areas. And that's why I want to bring forward what we call the accelerate and simplify mantra. So the idea is fundamentally to refocus on fewer things, significantly fewer things, but then secure the magnitude, the impact and the speed that we execute on those fewer priorities are amplified.

And of course, this has to come strategically from the areas where we are stronger, where we have more chances to win, where also our margins are higher. So, the first element is really about define, sharpen and better the core and then double down in this initiative.

Now having outstanding solution as we have, having a strong value proposition as we have is not enough, then if we don't reinforce the front end, if you don't work in what I call the commercial excellence and the customer proximity. We have already an advantage that we are present in many countries, close to many customers. But clearly, we can make a major impact over there. Now these things will call for investments.

And I want to allocate early that we want to fund this investment, these double down by subtraction. So fundamentally to redistribute, refocus the investment we do in these fewer bets we want to work on. This also requires that we work in a more disciplined way in our portfolio and in our cost management overall. So that's a little bit, Jacob, the first introduction. And of course, I will share more of my vision and the next steps as we move forward. But I think it's the right time to get to the quarter 2 results.

The picture on quarter 2 is a little bit mixed. So top line has been decreasing 3.8%, mainly driven by U.S. and Middle East, Africa and Asia. With different dynamics in Middle East, Africa and Asia, main reason of the decrease of the top line has been some postponed projects we count to invoice now in quarter 3. Still on the top line projection, I think it's good to mention that we have a positive ordering intake overall for the group as well as a healthy order stock entering quarter 3. Now the positive part, I said, mixed picture on quarter 2 is about the overall profitability.

So EBITA has been slightly improving compared to prior year quarter 2. In full transparency, a contributor to the profitability increase has been a tariff refund in North America. But even if we were to remove this SEK 21 million of contribution, the overall underlying profitability has been robust, which is positive. This is despite the overall situation of what we call inflationary item being the input material, being the logistic cost, have seen an increase in trend.

Now to be reported in this quarter also that the currency that in the previous quarter had a negative effect has been neutral. And since I mentioned about inflationary items or somehow inbound rising cost. I also want to mention clearly we've been very disciplined in the price increases.

And we expect with the price increases and with in some part of the business, surcharges that we are introducing as we speak, we count to cover all this negative effect throughout the full year 2026.

The other element I'm very keen to mention and as announced previously, we have been launching last year an efficiency program impacting resources, impacting manufacturing footprint. And this is progressing according to plan. So year-to-date, we are -- we can declare saving up to SEK 45 million, SEK 25 million in the quarter and the full year projection of SEK 80 million is confirmed and then this is going to grow also in 2027. So also this part is contributing positively to keep the robustness of the business.

Now giving a perspective on the different regions in the different businesses, you see here as well somehow a mixed picture, probably starting from U.S., a decrease overall in the U.S. business. Probably with different drivers and different dynamics. Maybe a touch of color on the part of the laundry business. Last year, in quarter 2, we were anticipating some deliveries to U.S. in anticipation of the U.S. tariffs. So this decrease somehow is related to this effect. If you were to look on the units delivered to the market, actually, it is growing. So the overall situation there is in a good place.

On Asia, I think I mentioned earlier, there are somehow a couple of components contributing to the lower net sales. Part of it is the known geopolitical situation in Middle East. But we don't have canceled orders there. For sure, there are some logistic challenges to get to the different location. The other one, some major project in the Asian region where from the customer side, there have been a request to postpone the delivery and invoicing. So this will count to invoice in quarter 3.

Overall, Europe and I remind you, Europe represents 60% of the total business for Electrolux Professional. There's been a moderate growth driven mostly by laundry that is continuing delivering very well in the European region. In food and beverage in Europe after several quarters of growth, we had a stabilization, but we expect them to continue in the trajectory we have seen previously. Giving then a bit more perspective, Jacob on the different business segments. So food & beverage is the area where we saw softer growth, so the decrease of almost 6%, I think I mentioned already the contributors being mainly U.S. and a smaller extent, APAC-MEA. What is -- I believe, very important to acknowledge is here the performance of the profitability. In the case of food & beverage, there is only SEK 3 million of contribution for tariffs refund in the U.S. So the overall business is defending very well despite some of the rising costs I mentioned earlier.

Here to mention among the different activities done well by the team to deliver this profitability has been a normalization of R&D cost. I think this you have been hearing in the past. We reach a peak in the past, now it's more normalizing, but normalizing it doesn't mean that we decelerate our agenda, the opposite -- we have really exciting products coming to market the beginning of next year, and we are really keen to see the benefits out of this introduction.

Overall, in the food and beverage, the order stock is healthy. So we start quarter 3 with a good amount of orders we are very keen to invoice throughout the quarter 3.

Last but not least, is about the laundry situation moderate growth in laundry, driven a lot by Europe. I mentioned about the U.S. situation and Asia, almost stable. Good profitability, development. Here is where actually we see most of the contribution of the tariff refund. But overall, the underlying margin, the situation seems to be positive. And Laundry is the area, not the only area, but the main area we're introducing surcharges.

So on top of the price increase we introduced beginning of the year. In laundry, we introduced now in the summer months, the surcharges in the different markets. The reason why surcharges are mainly introduced in laundary are very simple is the business where most of these rising costs are impacting right now, the logistics, the input costs, et cetera. And that's why we are implementing them.

Overall, the reaction from the customer has been accepting. So it's been a fairly positive or not negative reaction. Overall, in laundry, we do see a strong order intake and order stock. So overall, a positive situation. I think with that said is probably the time for you, Fabio to give us more color on the detail of the numbers.

Thank you, Paolo, and good morning to everybody. As Paolo previously mentioned, Q2 profit was negatively affected by lower volumes as the main offender particularly in U.S. as well as material tariffs and higher logistics costs. However, and I believe it is a good achievement. We were able to maintain the EBITDA margin. Now let me elaborate around the different components that sustained the profitability in the quarter. Currency translation was still negative affecting our top and bottom line, but no material impact in terms of EBITDA margin. The strengthening of SEK has been somehow reduced. So if I look at the currency translation effect in EBITDA value was reduced to roughly SEK 10 million for the quarter.

Currency transaction instead finally turned positive. We have a few million positive impact on the EBITDA in the quarter. Tariff cost, higher than last year, but we were able to fully compensate them in the quarter with the price increase, not only as Paolo anticipated that we got this SEK 21 million of tariffs refund in the quarter. The quarter, as such, has been also positive impacted by the benefit from the execution of our restructuring program. In quarter 2, the gross margin and EBITDA was positively impacted by overall SEK 25 million in cost saving. And the program, as anticipated, by Paolo is proceeding according to plan and the contribution for the overall year is confirmed in the area of SEK 80 million or roughly 0.6 points in margin.

Going forward, moving into 2027, the guidance we have given earlier of cost saving is confirmed. So the expectation is next year, we will further increase the benefit to SEK 175 million or 1.4 points in margin. In the quarter, we continued to invest in R&D, but the spending was somehow reduced compared to the high level we have reached in quarter 2 last year.

Going through the remaining of the P&L, finance net was SEK 16 million lower than last year, thanks to reduced overall average borrowing and a cost-efficient funding structure. The tax rate in the quarter, no surprise was 25%, in line with the guidance.

Let me say lower cost of funding, lower tax cost allow us to increase the EPS to SEK 0.8 per share compared to SEK 0.75 per share despite lower EBITDA and EBIT. Positive cash flow generation in the quarter. somehow but lower than last year. This comes definitely from lower EBITDA, increased inventory and the payment related to the execution of our restructuring program.

Now let me give you more flavor in particular when we move into the asset part. So this picture shows somehow still a good asset management for the group and a solid balance sheet. Rolling 12-month operating working capital increased to 17% compared to 16.3% of December last year. Here, let me say, 2 major offenders that I see them definitely as a temporary one. One is inventory and the second is AR. A portion of inventory increase in the last 2 quarters due to delay in project sales deliveries. We have the goods in-house ready to be shipped. We need the green light from the customers. And what I see a temporary stock increase due to production transfer from the facility that we are closing to the existing one.

So both, let me say, are temporary increase in working capital requirement at expected somehow to reduce and come to the end -- towards the end of the year. The increase of receivable is mainly related to country mix. We have grew in the quarter in country with a longer payment term.

I have no concern on the quality of the receivable. Overall, as you see in the ratio net debt on EBITDA, our financial position is strong. We have an increase of the net debt in the quarter 2, but this is due to large specific payment we had in the quarter. In the quarter, we have roughly SEK 400 million of cash-out, SEK 270 million, if you remember, are related to payment of dividend, we have roughly SEK 60 million related to final purchasing price payment for Royal Range and similar amount for a refund of medium-term loan.

So overall, a solid company with a robust P&L and a strong balance sheet. And with that, back to you, Paolo.

Thank you, Fabio. And probably before going to the conclusion and then open up for the Q&A. Just one comment on an initiative I'm very proud of that we recently introduced in the Laundry segment. It is called R+vive and it is, I think, representing the essence of Electrolux Professional Group. As you all know, Electrolux Professional is proud to be a leader in innovation, but also a leader in what we call the sustainability.

So what it is this R+vive all about? This is about the initiative of Electrolux Professional Laundry to remanufacture machines. So the word remanufacture is picked intentionally. So it's not refurbished, it's not just cleaning and make some fix. It's really to take machine out of the market and machines that can have more than 10 years and to replace visual parts whenever they are damaged as well as functional parts.

Now why I'm proud of this initiative first? Because thanks to the modular platform introduced in laundry years back, it is possible actually to do this work of remanufacturing in a seamless and smooth way. It is possible to utilize more than 60% of the weight of the machine. So the overall environmental impact of our machine in terms of the components, the material is significantly reduced. But even more important is by remanufacturing the machines, we are able to introduce all the energy devices, all the innovation we have been developing in the last years.

So in terms of greenhouse emissions or the scope -- the famous Scope 3, this machine are actually as good as a completely new machine with amazing savings for the customer and for the planet. So we just introduced this initiative, starting from some markets and the idea is to make a real business out of it. So very excited, looking forward to see it as one of the pillars for our future development.

Now with that said, probably it's the time to go on in the summary. So I think I repeat myself and what Fabio said, a little bit of a mixed picture. So decrease of top line driven by U.S. and to a smaller extent, to Asia Pac. But the positive part is the profitability that remain very solid, partially supported by tariff refund, but even without tariff refund, I think the underlying business is positive. Specifically, some parts of the business have been growing. We mentioned laundry also keen to mention that on our Japanese business with TOSEI, we had the second quarter in a row with the growth and also bottom line development, so positive.

And overall looking forward, the positive situation is that the order stock is in a good level. And of course, it is our task with our teams to make sure we invoice it in quarter 3. And there is no order cancellation, which is also very positive. So it is a good order stock. Having said so, Jacob, I give back the word to you.

Thank you, Paolo. Thank you, Fabio. With that, we open up for questions. Operator, please go ahead.

[Operator Instructions]

We have the first question from Fred Johan, SEB.

Starting off with a question on the U.S. tariff refund. Is there any remaining refund to be recognized in H2 as well? Or was this solely a Q2 refund?

We have a submitted request for additional fund. This will go through the scrutiny of the U.S. government authorities, but the expectation is that there will be some more positive refund also in the second part of the year.

And in terms of magnitude, is the level you recognized SEK 21 million here in Q2. Is this in line with what you expect for sort of if we see it in Q2 -- either with Q3 or Q4 as well? Or is this sort of a -- yes, how should we think about the magnitude.

Okay. What I can say is that we have submitted additional requests. So far, our requests have been positively scrutinized, but we are not going to give order of magnitude for the remaining part of the year.

And the second question on the sales decline in APAC, EMEA. This was, as I interpreted, attributed to postponed project deliveries. Could you give any more color on the size of this backlog and the time of delivery? You mentioned Q3. Is that sort of confirmed? Or is that your best estimate currently?

So yes -- so I think I alluded to it earlier. So there are 2 somehow components to this slippage to quarter 3. One of it is the known Middle East situation. The other one is some major projects we had roughly, we estimate in the surrounding of the SEK 30 million, the amount of orders we have not been able to invoice and ship during the quarter. We count to ship them and invoice them in the coming months. The positive, as I mentioned earlier, is we don't have any relevance on about order cancellation and other things. So it is as it is now a good order stock, and we count to invoice it now in quarter 3 mostly.

Very clear. And if I may continue. So the U.S. food and beverage business has been weak since essentially last summer. What specifically is driving the prolonged weakness here? Is it end market demand, competitive dynamics, inventory or something else? And what are some of the leading indicators that you are watching for a recovery here?

Sure. So I think, Johan, what you're reporting is factual. And we already started seeing it last year with a kind of 2-gear, 2-step, 2-speed pattern, first half rather strong, then second half is weak and this weakness has been prolonging now in the first half of '26. Now no wonder that I've been in one of my first trips in the new role visiting the U.S., working with the team. And I see there are a lot of good activities happening. So a bit of weakness on our side, we believe the market probably is not a booming market, but it is a positive market. I think in both the kind of market segments we identify that are called the chains and the general market. I think we have opportunity to capture better growth than what we have been doing. So I think it's up to us, Johan, to your question to revert this trend. And I think we have the means to do it. It is a lot about hard work. It's a lot about execution and the like.

Specifically on your question on the leading indicators. Now they vary depending on the part of the market, as I described, general chains. If I were to pick one for illustration purposes, the chain market is typically based on rollouts. So it's about delivering units in test for some of the big chains, the American chains. And then once you are approved, then you can move on to the next phase that is about delivering many units. So first test and then roll out. So here, the leading indicator is we are doing several tests with several of the big groups. Probably in the first half, we've seen some of the big groups on the test they were doing with us because of the instability, geopolitical, et cetera, to probably wait a little longer. But that's the kind of work we are doing. So continuing feeding this funnel this pipeline, and there are several tests ongoing and account that some of them will be converted into sales in the second half.

Very clear. And a final 1 maybe from my side here. So again, on food & bev. So order intake, you described as decreased somewhat while the order stock is higher. Could you give a more precise indication of the order intake, sort of growth/decline year-on-year here in food and bev? And yes, that is my final question. .

So the overall order intake has even within the food and beverage are kind of a mixed picture. So in some areas, improving some areas a little bit lower. But it's not materially very negative. The positive thing is, it is higher than -- has been higher than our invoicing. So the reason of our significantly higher order stock entering the quarter 3 is the fact that actually we got more orders than what we've been able to ship and invoice. So despite the nuanced picture between territories and other things, broadly across the different businesses, the order stock is in a healthy situation. Order stock again, very basically, the orders we have in-house qualified that are not yet being shipped and invoiced. So I think the start for quarter 3 has this significant order stock that we are keen now to invoice in the coming months.

Very clear. Maybe if I can squeeze in 1 final, maybe just a clarifying question. You stated, of course, price increases and surcharges are expecting to offset currency tariff and sort of logistics headwind into H2. I interpret this as predominantly relating to laundry, but is there -- are you implementing similar surcharges in food and bev as well?

So the biggest part of surcharges is going to be in laundry, though there are some part of surcharges in also some areas in food & bev not in a broader scale as it is in laundry. And somehow the reason is what we discussed earlier. So laundry is somehow the most impacted about the tariffs and some of the logistics and inbound cost.

On the other side, in the food & bev, this has been managed. It is possible also there to mitigate this rising cost because the price increase we did at the beginning of the year, which is now fully rolling out as we speak is creating the result to compensate. So different dynamics between the reported business segment, but the net effect is the same on both. So the good price and overall also cost management is helping then to mitigate -- to compensate these headwinds.

Thank you, Johan. Jacob here, and I have one before going back to the operator, I have 1 question or 2 questions from the web. That's from Stefan Stjernholm at Handelsbanken. The first question is R&D costs are lower year-over-year in Q2. Can we expect a further year-over-year decrease in the second half? And the second question is, given your positive comments on order intake, order stock, is it fair to assume at least flat organic sales growth in the second half. So we start with the question on R&D.

Okay. As we have discussed also during the previous call, during 2025, we have reached somehow historical peak for what concern the R&D cost in absolute terms but also in percentage of sales to support some major product launches one in laundry and the other one in food, in particular, in the cooking area.

We were anticipating resize of the R&D spending in the second part of this year. As anticipated earlier, we start to see already the positive impact in quarter 2. And this is related to the food & beverage segment. Whilst in the laundry one, we are still on par with last year in preparation of the product launch that will be finalized and executed at the end of the summer.

When I look into the second part of the year, I can confirm the previous given guidance of resize of the R&D spending, both in absolute term and in percentage for both segments.

Thank you, Fabio. And Paolo, the question on, if we should assume flat organic sales growth in H2 or not?

So Stefan, as you well know, we don't provide forward-looking statements on the quarter. So I'll probably try to stick a little bit more on where we sit. So we started the quarter with a strong organic order stock. And I think it is in our hands now to secure that we convert it into sales.

And I add on this one that clearly, it is my priority as the new CEO really to work with the different teams to work on the top line development. I think it's an area where we can make an impact. And I think we have amazing solution that we can market to the different customer groups. So I think that we have all the elements to work and improve and the starting point of this quarter is in the right foot if you may allow me to say that.

Thank you. Please, I move back to you, operator, if there are further questions.

Next question from Emanuel Jansson, Danske Bank.

Questions from my side as well, and I hope you can hear me. Regarding sales growth in the quarter, could you perhaps also give us some colors on the sales momentum that you experienced during the quarter? Do you see an acceleration or de-acceleration throughout the quarter i.e., stronger in the beginning or vice versa stronger at the end of the quarter?

Thank you, Emanuel. If I got right, your question about what is the short-term trend we see now in beginning of quarter 3. So what...

Sorry, I think it was more during the quarter -- during the quarter.

Okay. Sorry. Sorry, I missed that. So somehow we saw an incremental improvement during quarter 2. So probably the quarter started a little bit weaker. And then we had a pattern towards the end of June with a stronger pattern, and that's why we ended the quarter with a good order stock.

Now July is a bit of a peculiar month and other things, but somehow the trend we ended quarter 2, we see it also in the first few weeks of July. Obviously, very early to comment and say anything else, but at least on this part, we do see a positive.

Perfect. That's very clear. And could you also perhaps give us some color on where is that improvement mainly coming from? Is it APAC, EMEA, Europe or the U.S.?

So the overall I would call it, sequential improvement of the business as well as the order stock development has been, I would say, a common pattern across the reported business segment and across the different geographies. Of course, there are areas where it is more clear, more visible. But overall, it's a broader pattern we have been seeing .

And on perhaps price versus volume in the quarter? You said the price contribution was positive in quarter 2. Is it possible to quantify that?

So yes, the price contribution was positive. And thanks to the price contribution, as we anticipated, we were able to compensate the tariffs and the inflationary items we faced in the quarter, in particular, the increase of transportation cost were the major offender in terms of inflationary item. Clearly, in the picture when we do the bridge between quarter 2 last year and quarter 2 this year, the volumes had the largest impact in terms of absolute value and let me say, the creation effect on the EBITDA of the group.

And looking at the gross margin, it looks like a quite good improvement. Is that primarily driven by the price increase and the cost saving program? Or is it anything else that we missed?

It's exactly, the area that you mentioned, meaning price management being able to compensate tariffs inflationary items is about cost benefit that we have in our operation because part of the SEK 24 million benefit are into the operation and it on the gross margin. But I would add also a positive mix up that we have seen in both segments growth on the high-margin machine in laundry as well as in the food & beverages. So the focus of the organization towards the high-margin product categories and segment starts to pay off even in a situation where we decline sales volumes.

And the last question is from my side. On the product side, could you give us an update on the new platform and product launches more broadly? And are you seeing any early customer response or our order intake contribution? And is there any -- basically any new data that you can share with us on the new product development.

Sure, Emanuel. I can give you some updates on the subject. So behind the significant investment that we did in R&D in the last several quarters, there are some exciting product introduction that we are planning to make. We will start after summer with the first part of the range of the line 7000, so the line of laundry machines. So we start with the small chassis and then followed in '27 by the bigger capacity. So now, it's not yet started the production. So there is obviously not yet sales on it. The overall early signal from customers who got exposed in the internal launches, et cetera, in the testing phase is positive.

So we have a leading position in an laundry in terms of technology, and we want to further enforce it and deploy it further. So I think the early signs are positive. And then as soon as we will have data from financials, we'll be very keen to share with all of you. And that's one part on the laundry.

Then also on food and bev, we have a very exciting pipeline. We did some introduction this year, but there are exciting introduction starting from beginning of next year, so in the food side. As well there, the work is progressing well. And also here, the feedback we are getting from the commercial teams and the external customers are encouraging. So we will start seeing the impact with a bit of impact in laundry end of this year and then food the next year and the early signs are encouraging.

[Operator Instructions]

Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at the moment. Sorry, we just have a registration from Igor Tubic, DNB Carnegie.

I just have a couple of more questions. Can you just -- I maybe missed this, but should we expect further price increases going forward as well in the coming quarters? Or...

So Igor what we are planning to do is to introduce and we already did it in reality, some surcharges. This has a broader extent in laundry. Main reason because laundry is the most impacted by what we call the inflationary items, but also selectively in some areas in the food and beverage, we have introduced them. So the answer is yes. Additional price impact expected to come on top of the compounded effect from the price increase introduced on beginning of the year. And the expectation is to have this to offset the headwinds we have coming from the different dimensions we described.

And are your competitors doing the same? Or are you the leaders, I would say, with those surcharges?

So, the feeling is that overall, also the rest of the market is going to do it because factually is logistic costs are increasing, plastic costs are increasing, steel costs are increasing. So I would expect some of them announce them, and I would expect many others to follow given the macroeconomical situation.

Regardless of what the other are doing, I think we are very analytical and thorough in the work on pricing. And we do our assessment, and I can give you feedback specifically from the laundry part with surcharges, the overall reaction of the market has not been negative. I think people see what's happening, and they are somehow expecting this to happen.

That's clear. And just a final one. Yes, on the back of these surcharges, have you experienced that you have lost any market share due to that if you are the first mover, so to say.

I don't think so. At least my experience is not in this way. Also we do it in a good way in a commercially sound way. So we don't expect this overall price dynamic approach to have an impact on volume. And in parallel, as I mentioned, I think we have a duty as an organization to accelerate on our top line work in our commercial activities. So this is a clear priority in my agenda.

Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered.

Okay. Then I would say, thank you, everyone, for having listened in. Thank you to Paolo and Fabio, and I wish you all a great summer. Thank you, and goodbye.

Good morning, and welcome to Electrolux Professional Group Q1 Results Presentation. My name is Jacob Broberg. I'm heading up Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. And with me, as always, I have Alberto Zanata, CEO; and Fabio Zarpellon, CFO. And let's get started immediately.

Alberto, please, I hand over to you.

Thank you, Jacob, and morning to everybody. Q1 -- we closed Q1 with challenging results. We reported declining sales and declining profitability compared to Q1 of last year. Looking into the results, not everything was negative. Indeed, we had a very good performance in Europe and Food Europe, in particular, where we continue to grow sales and profitability along the trend -- the last year trend.

In the quarter, we also finally reported a changing trend in Japan. Japan market was challenging all along 2025. And in the quarter, growth -- slight growth was back both in Laundry and in Food & Beverage. The performance in Asia Pac, not impacted yet by the Middle East crisis, we reported declining sales, but just because of a comparison with the previous year quarter where we had the large orders that did not repeat in 2026. Reality, the underlying business is improving in the APAC-MEA region.

The only area where we have the -- two areas where we had declining profitability -- declining performance is U.S. Food & Beverage where the negative trend started after the summer 2025 continued also in Q1 this year and Laundry.

But in Laundry, it is important to mention that the underlying performance is -- has been positive. We grew volume, and we reported a negative sales and margin only because of the impact of tariff and currency not yet compensated with price.

Also, this one is a comment that is important to underline. We have in place price increases that will compensate currency and tariffs on a full-year basis, not yet in Q1, but that is what is always happening in the meaning that the first quarter is a quarter where we typically invoice the product that we have in stock in the order stock from the previous year.

The other element that is on the positive side is our efficiency program, the program that we launched in September, program that is progressing very well, both in terms of people that are leaving the company, but also they move of the production. I was in Aubusson a couple of weeks ago, and the full production of coffee has been transferred that the lines are working. Production is there, benefits are expected. Already in the quarter, we have roughly SEK 19 million of savings, and these savings will increase quarter-by-quarter all along the year.

I think I already mentioned by geographies, the different trends. U.S. is the challenging area with 2 different dynamics related to the result of Food & Beverage and Laundry, as I already said earlier.

If we go into the detail of the Food & Beverage business is the one we have the largest impact of the U.S. result. So with declining sales and profitability. In this result, we have also to consider that we have the acquisition cost of Royal Range that are reported inside acquisition or integration now of the acquired company in the U.S. that is also in this case, progressing well.

Moving on the Laundry business. Here, it is important to underline that the underlying results are positive. We are delivering more units in the market overall, in particular in the United States, we are growing sales in the United States. Still the prices that have been applied has been already executed are not compensating yet the negative effect of tariffs and currency.

On this matter, tariffs, just a word because you know that the rule has been changed. But what we can say is that according to the new directive, there will not be change basically compared to last year in the meaning that it will be slightly worse for Laundry and slightly better for Food & Beverage. All in all, nothing changed basically compared to last year with the difference that this year, the negative effect will be compensated by price, as already mentioned.

With this said, I believe Fabio.

Thank you, Alberto, and good morning to everybody.

As you have heard from Alberto, quarter 1 was a challenging quarter where we faced volumes decline in Food & Beverage and mainly U.S. And the profitability of Laundry was significantly affected by currency transaction effect. At the same time, we have continued to execute our plan, put in place the condition to restart the profitable growth journey.

But let me dig into the P&L, starting talking about currency. Currency since roughly 1 year has started to largely affect our P&L. First, a few data points regarding quarter 1. Currency translation, we are reporting our performance in SEK, reduced top line roughly 7% and bottom line EBITDA roughly by the same amount with no material impact in terms of percentage but a significant impact in terms of absolute value in terms of EBITDA. At equal currency of last year, currency translation, our EBITDA this year would have been absolute roughly SEK 30 million higher.

On top of currency translation, we had a significant impact also to currency transaction that affected both sales and in this case, margin. Currency transaction in sales affected also the top line. Our organic growth would have been roughly 0.7% higher without the currency transaction effect. And our EBITDA value margin would have been roughly SEK 25 million or 0.9% if we would have been able to invoice the same currency of last year. So a significant impact, both translation and transaction.

Going through the P&L and this you see reflected also into GP3 volume, as Alberto mentioned, mainly related to Food & Beverage in U.S. where the major disruption ingredient into our profitability. At the same time, we did continue to work to offset this negative impact and build for a better performance into the future.

Price contributed positively in the quarter, specifically the price increase in U.S. We were able to cover the tariff impact with a neutral effect in the quarter, so a remarkable achievement. The restructuring cost that mentioned delivered a significant fixed cost saving, making the company even more agile going forward and expected improvement in terms of benefit will come in the remaining part of this year and in 2027.

We continue to invest. We invest in digitalization of our offer and in bringing new product to the market. Last year, we reached the peak of R&D cost. And as we anticipated, we were foreseeing a decrease of R&D cost for this year, in particular, starting in the second half. We see this already happening in Food & Beverage, not yet in Laundry because Laundry is working hard, the laundry colleagues working out to bring remarkable innovation into the market during the summer.

In the remaining part of the P&L, good development of the finance net, significant lower than last year, thanks to reduced borrowing and cost-efficient funding structure. Tax rate, no particular comment in line with the guidance of 26%.

Last comment on EPS. EPS was down roughly 20%, reflecting the income performance. Just a reminder to everybody, 1/3 of this reduction is due to currency translation effect. So currency is really impacting our representation of performance on top of the other business, more business-related ingredients I mentioned earlier.

Cash flow. Cash flow was positive but roughly SEK 100 million in value below last year. Two ingredients I would like to point it out. One that is the main source of cash flow that is earning EBITDA was roughly SEK 90 million below last year. But I want to mention that we have had cash out of roughly SEK 50 million related to the payment of the restructuring initiative that we have put in place.

No particular comment on the CapEx. Let me say, SEK 45 million was spending this quarter. I confirm the guidance of higher than average historical average spending for the remaining part of the year where we are going to complete major product introduction.

What about capital efficiency? Here, you see the development of the operating working capital. We are somehow increasing compared to March last year and compared to the level of we achieved in December.

A few comments about the ingredients. Inventory is stable on the same level of the previous quarter in terms of weight on sales. I believe this is a remarkable achievement considering that we have additional good in transit due to the -- what is happening in the Middle East, making our transportation heavier in terms of capital on sea.

Our account receivable portfolio is with a good quality. We have seen the data for March, we have reached the lower value of past due on sales we have had historically since we measure. The offender on the operating working capital is related to the development of account payable. This is due to the fact that we bought [lesser], the conscious decision. But also we are facing a situation where in some jurisdictions, one example is Japan, local authorities, in particular, for smaller supplier imposing standard and shorter payment condition. And we are good citizens and we apply it.

So overall, higher weight -- somehow higher weight of operating working capital on sales, but within, let me say, a good capital efficiency ratio.

Last word on the financial position. Ratio net debt to EBITDA is 1.2x after the acquisition of Range. I would say, pretty strong situation, we start second quarter. In terms of borrowing structure, we have a bond that is expiring after the summer, and we are fully equipped to manage it.

With that, back to you, Alberto.

Thank you, Fabio. And a few words about the efficiency program. The efficiency program, as I mentioned earlier, is progressing well. Factory in Carros has been still open because we will pay the cost of the factory until the end of June. But now there is no production anymore. Everything has been moved to the other factory, the Aubusson, where we concentrated food preparation and coffee in one facility. The same apply to what is happening to the Sursee factory that will operate until the end of the year. But already, the line of -- one line of cooking has been moved to Vallenoncello and those, in this case, is operating in the product has been delivered already from this facility.

What is important is that we already generated savings in the range of SEK 19 million in Q1. This is giving us confidence that the objective in terms of savings will be achieved because if SEK 19 million is this quarter, then quarter-by-quarter, the number of people and as consequence, cost will decrease. And from July, we will not have the cost of the factory down in France.

In some ways also working the upskilling. When we announced this program, we said that obviously, one part is the saving, but the second one is to prepare the organization to the new challenging with both from the commercial point of view to sell the new products that we will bring to market and also the digitalization of the operations. This is also proceeding pretty well, and we have already brought in people with the different capabilities.

Moving on, Fabio mentioned that we continue to invest in innovation. The big thing is the launch of the cooking already done in place, and we are growing sales of horizontal cooking in Europe in Q1, preparing now for the launch of the laundry and the multifunctional cooker after the summer. But if these are the big ranges that are launched, nevertheless, we have new product also in the other regions. This is the case of the United States, where at the coming show in Chicago, we received the Kitchen Innovation Awards for these new features that are again, creating benefit to customers.

And the other thing is also about sustainability. We are very proud to be already on the 2030 targets now more or less. But the other important thing is that we start to create value for our customers that in the end means additional business for us with our -- thanks to our sustainability leadership. And this is very, very important.

So to conclude, challenging quarter -- challenging quarter with declining sales and profitability. Decline in sales and profitability mainly related to 3 things: The business performance in the United States, Currency and Tariffs. But at the same time, prices in place to mitigate currency and tariffs, and it will be mitigated at the current condition on a yearly basis.

Efficiency program generating savings gradually increasing quarter after quarter, new product coming to market, some already in the market, some close to come. And all of this resulting in positive order intake at the end of March continuing into April and as a consequence, a richer order stock.

With this said, back to you, Jacob.

Thank you, Alberto. And with that, we open up for questions. Please go ahead, operator.

[Operator Instructions]

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no questions from the phone. I would now like to turn the conference back over.

There is now one question from the phone coming from Fred Johan from SEB.

A follow-up on your comments around the new tariffs, the Section 232 here. As I interpreted, you said that there is no impact on the group as a whole, i.e., but slightly worse for Laundry, but slightly better for Food & Beverage, so net neutral. Is that correct?

Exactly. It is this one. And follow-up comment is that this is the last quarter where we have a comparison between last year where there was not the negative impact of tariff and currency and this year where there is and the price increase already implemented from January 1 will compensate both elements on a yearly basis.

So the price increases already implemented would also offset the new tariffs.

Yes, because there is no difference compared to last year.

[Operator Instructions]

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to the webcast for any further remarks.

Thank you. A few questions. That means that we were clear in our presentation. And with that, I would like to say a special thank you to Alberto for his 25th quarterly report. It has been a great journey over the years. So special thank you and all the best of luck to you. It's been a great pleasure for us and the investor community to work together with you. Thank you, and goodbye.

Good morning, and welcome to Electrolux Professional Group Q4 and full year results presentation. My name is Jacob Broberg. I'm heading up Investor Relations and Corporate Communication. And with me, as always, I have Fabio Zarpellon, our CFO; and Alberto Zanata, our CEO.

And I hand over to you, Alberto, please.

Thank you, Jacob, and morning to everybody. And before starting the usual presentation, let me add a comment because I'm sure that you already saw the announcement that was posted yesterday night, where it has been announced that Paolo Schira, the current President of the Laundry business is stepping up and has been appointed as my successor following the decision to retire.

Everything has to come to an end. And after the year that I spent in this company, I think it is the right time to hand over the baton to a person that I've been working with for many, many years and that have been instrumental together with all the colleagues in the group management to build the company for what it is today. So I'm very happy that he's taking over this responsibility. I'm confident that together with the team, he will build an even stronger Electrolux professional organization.

With this said, I would move on. And before commenting the quarter, let me spend a couple of words on the year because clearly, we closed also the year, not only the Q4. And the year has been another year characterized by uncertainty and geopolitical and macroeconomical headwinds. They have been very significant these headwinds, in particular, for what currency and tariffs are concerned, but also for the indirect effect of currency and tariffs with the business in the U.S. and in China.

Despite all these headwinds, we have been able to deliver another year with a profitable growth. We improved organic sales. We improved the profitability. We improved margin, and we took down the ratio between net debt and EBITDA to 1%. So another year in the -- along the path to deliver the result that we all expect to deliver.

But you know what, more than the result in itself, I believe this year is characterized by the fact that while performing, we continue to transform and invest for transforming this organization. We continue to invest in R&D starting to bring to market some of the products that we have been developing for years, starting with the cooking lines during Q1. And then even more important during the summer, we will start to bring to market again new cooking product, but also the first batch of the laundry machine that are part of the big program that will revolutionize the portfolio of laundry.

We also continue to invest to grow the business in North America and with the chains acquiring Royal Range. It is a small company, but it is an important step, an important add-on to our organization because of the product portfolio, because of the margin and because of the kind of customers that they are currently serving.

And last but not least, the third big pillar of the transformation that was significant in 2025 is the efficiency program that we launched in September, a program that is progressing very well, a program that is expected to generate significant savings already this year, but even more next year, a program that will redesign our footprint, concentrating the production of 2 factories into others that will generate efficiency, productivities and [ there's ] a consequent benefit both for the organization and the P&L, but also a program that is allowing us to upskill the organization to make sure that we get people into the organization that are more focus on the front end because that is the shift that we want to have in 2026 to move from back to front to start using all the things that we have been developing during the years to grow sales and win the preference of the customer in the market.

With this said, we move to the quarter. And in summary, I would say that the quarter -- we closed the quarter with a strong growth of the margin despite all the headwinds that we had to face. Just to quantify, we are talking about 1.3 percentage point that is the negative impact of currency, in particular, currency in the quarter. So quite significant about that. In the numbers, we also include the SEK 10 million of the acquisition cost. So if you look at the underlying profitability, it's even stronger than what it is -- what you see on papers.

The quarter has declining organic growth. But let me see that inside of this one, the decline comes mainly from the U.S. food and beverage market that has been weakening just after the summer, after being very strong in the first part of the year has been weakening during the summer, is coming from Japan that is still a weak market. And in some way, we had also declining sales in North America Laundry, and we will comment later.

But in reality, the big business for food and beverage have been growing. We have been growing in Europe. We have been growing in -- excluding Japan in the other Asian market. And Laundry has been growing in general, excluding the United States and Asia in that case. That is again Japan.

So, a good quarter, a quarter also solid in term of cash flow and that gave us the possibility to reduce the ratio between net debt and EBITDA. And again, a quarter marked by the signing of the acquisition of Royal Range that was completed in January this year. With all these things said, we are also proposing dividends that are increasing the dividend per share according to our objective to continue to remunerate the shareholders.

Specifically about the market, I think I said it. So Europe strong, that is good because it is still more than half of our business, geographically speaking; a relatively weak North American market, but we will comment later about Laundry because the dynamics between the 2 segments are completely different. And you see a declining business in Asia Pac, but it is entirely related to Japan.

If we look at the specific trend in Food and Beverage, Food and Beverage has been growing organically, and this is thanks to Europe. Europe is doing extremely well, extremely well, improving, growing sales, gaining market share and improving profitability. And if you think that now Europe is also launching new product, you can imagine how positive it can be about the European business.

U.S. is weakening. It has been weakening during -- as I said, during the fall, where we were flattish, but we saw this happening also in Q4. And as I said, the Asia Pac is mainly Japan.

Despite this, profitability improved. Profitability improved, is above 10%, including acquisition cost. So the underlying profitability is even stronger. To be noted, and I think it is completing just the comment that I had about Europe is that the order intake for Europe is higher. So not only strong sales in Europe, but also a strong collection of orders.

If we move on to Laundry, here, you see that we reported declining organic sales. And it is mainly related to North America and Japan, so Asia Pac, Middle East, but mainly Japan. Two comments about that one. Japan, I believe we believe -- or at least this is the feeling we have, is that we touched the bottom of the decline. And the other thing is that -- and this is we know because Japan is one of the market where we have hard numbers.

We know that we didn't lose market share. So having maintained the market share that we have, that is slightly below 50%, so very strong market share in this large market. And having known that the decline should come to an end. Also in this case, the feeling is that we could see the future in a positive way.

North America is a different story. Yes, we had a decline, but we have to consider that last year was a super strong last quarter -- last year, I'm sorry, I'm referring to 2024. In the last quarter of 2024 was a very strong quarter where our distributor built up a stock. I still remember that call 1 year ago, exactly this call I was asking if that strong growth would have been replicated? And I said, no, it can't be because it was a buildup of stock.

Okay. In this quarter, the same distributor normalized the inventory that he has in North America. So the difference between generated a negative for us, and that is what you see reflected in the overall sales. Nevertheless, the business in North America, that is an important business for our Laundry segment, is a healthy business. It's a healthy business, completely different compared to the situation of Food and Beverage, and that is reassuring.

The other important thing that I want to underline for Laundry is that despite the headwinds that we have been talking about, the currency in particular, but also tariff, we improved margin. And this is, again, showing the strength of this business -- the strength of the business.

Also in this case, I think that if I look at the magnitude of the headwinds, it would have been a 3 percentage point better in terms of margin and profitability. Looking ahead, also Laundry as well as Food and Beverage Europe, the order intake at the end of the year was higher than what we had the year before.

With this said, I would pass to Fabio to comment the financials.

Thank you, Alberto, and good morning to everybody. Before I deep dive into quarter 4 financials, let me give you overall a perspective from a financial perspective of 2025. Overall, we grew sales organically by 0.5% and the EBITDA margin before the provision we did in September last year for restructuring increased from 11.6% of 2024 to 12.1% at year-end despite the large impact from tariff and currency that Alberto mentioned.

Food and Beverage, the larger operating segment, grew 1.5 points overall, same currency and margin is close to 11%, 10.7% we closed the year. Laundry overall sales, the same currency, were flat, but not only the quarter, but full year margin increased, and we closed the year 17.4%, over 1 point better than 2024. Overall, if we look at how we generate the sales, I would say we have a pretty well balanced from a geographical perspective with America that is roughly around 24%; Asia Pac, 60%; and Europe around 60%.

So, then moving from the yearly perspective to the quarter. As anticipated by Alberto, Q4 was another step towards our margin expansion, in line with our plan. EBITDA margin moved from 12% of last year to 12.6% of this year. The margin expansion overall was sustained by positive contribution from price, lower material cost and better productivity in our operations.

To be noticed that good price management in U.S. compensated most of the tariff impact in the quarter. And let me say, provided there will be no additional change in the tariff award as anticipated during our Capital Market Day, we are confident to be able to fully compensate it in 2026.

But before moving on, let me spend 2 words about currency. I mean, we are living in a period of unprecedented volatility for what concern currency. And I would like to develop through 2 dimensions, currency translation and currency transaction. When it comes to currency translation, SEK has been strengthening last year against, I would say, most of the currency.

And currency -- all the rest equal, currency translation has reduced the top line by roughly 7 points and the EBITDA value in absolute term more or less by the same amount. So, with no change in what is the EBITDA margin. This also means that our EBITDA generated in quarter 4, if I look at it the same currency of the previous year, we are not deteriorated. So where you see a negative reduction in reality at the same currency, it is even a plus.

On the other side, currency translation affected the underlying performance of the business, no doubt about it. And it touched sales, but also profit and profitability. On sales, I would say, mainly for Laundry where we invoice our U.S. distributor in U.S. dollar from our Swedish operation, SEK got stronger, meaning for the same $100 we get less SEK. And the impact is such that the group organic growth in the quarter net also of the currency transaction effect on sales instead of being negative would have been somehow positive, 0.6%, but positive.

But I would say the main impact is on the profitability. The currency transaction, and it is mainly related to U.S. dollar, has hit our P&L by roughly SEK 45 million, 1.3 point in margin. So the underlying business performance is much better than what the reported numbers are showing. Currency transaction that was not important just for the quarter, but on a full year base, the impact is roughly SEK 100 million or roughly 0.8 point in margin.

Alberto anticipated about the plan to reorganize and restructure our organization and improve our operation agility and profitability. The plan is proceeding according to plan and the anticipated saving, meaning over SEK 80 million for this year 2026 and over SEK 170 million for 2027, are confirmed.

Going through the remaining part of the P&L, you see that the finance net was pretty low, SEK 80 million, lower than same quarter of the previous year, thanks to reduced borrowing, but I would say, even a more cost-efficient funding structure.

To be noted in the quarter that the tax rate was pretty low, 11%. And this is due to a non-recurring, let me say, change of the funding structure that we put in place to finance our U.S. operation that led us to review the deferred tax asset and therefore, a non-recurring reduction on the tax cost.

On a -- As a consequence of this, the overall tax rate for the year was in the range of 21%. But let me say this is not changing going forward the guidance that we gave in the past of roughly 26% of tax rate on income before taxes. Overall, this led to, I would say, a pretty strong earnings per share at SEK 0.98. That is roughly 30% up compared to the same quarter of last year.

Cash flow generation was solid, slightly below -- somehow below last year. And this is due, I would say, from 3 components. We delivered somehow a slightly lower EBITA. We have had higher CapEx, and we started to have a cash out related to the execution of our restructuring activity.

CapEx year-to-date we concluded the year with a CapEx over SEK 360 million. It's roughly 3% of sales. And as anticipated also during Capital Market Day, I expect it to remain around this level also for 2026, where as we anticipated, we are bringing to market very important product innovation, both in Food and in Laundry.

Last word on capital efficiency. We have further improved the operating working capital on sales, meaning the utilization of it. We have seen a slight increase to the rolling 12 that we had in September. This is mainly related to a marginal increase in inventory.

Our financial position at the end of the year is, I would say, pretty strong. You see that since the acquisition that we performed in the first part of 2024, we progressively reduced net debt, and we end up a year in a very, very strong financial position.

And with that, back to you, Alberto.

Thank you, Fabio. And as I mentioned at the beginning, in a quarter with very strong headwind or even a full year, but a quarter with strong headwinds. But despite that solid performance and even stronger underlying performances, we continue to transform to bring to market new products that will surely generate additional sales.

During the quarter, we launched the new cooking line in Europe. It will be sold also in Asia Pac, Middle East and Africa, but it's mainly the heart of the program of our European food organization. That is in line with what we always do. So more efficient product, product with higher productivity, product with the innovation that makes us different from competitors.

But at the same time, we also -- despite the weak market conditions, we continue to innovate also in Japan. And this is a new product that is coming from the Tosei company, the one that we acquired. Also this one, pretty unique in the market. There are no similar stacking solution with a combo and a dryer in the market anywhere in the world. And this is, again, looking at a trend -- combining the trend of smaller spaces and lower investments to open a launderette.

Part of this transformation is to create a new tool for the organic growth as the new products are, but also continue to make use of the cash that we are generating, investing in inorganic acquisition. I already mentioned the Royal Range, that has been completed. We are already working with the team -- [ of ] the Royal Range team to start generating value from this acquisition.

So I'm very pleased about that one as well as the investment that we have been doing in this start-up. This is not significant for sale and EBIT today, but we [ count it ] to make use of the technology that the start-up is using to further increase the innovation path of our company.

With this said, I would say that we are at the summary. And I have to say that we closed the quarter with profitability improvement. The profitability is mainly driven by the European business -- Food and Beverage, European business and by the Laundry business in general. And this improved profitability has been achieved, and we have been underlining more than once during the call, has been achieved despite of the strong headwinds that we had to face.

We also closed the quarter with an improving order intake for Food and Beverage in Europe and for Laundry. And Food and Beverage and Laundry, they account for roughly 70% of our total business and -- you also know that for -- even more in terms of profitability, in terms of EBITA. We closed the quarter with the acquisition of the assets in the company in the United States, a company that we count to make use of this acquisition already in '26 or at least to start. And then for sure, it is something that will come next year.

We closed a quarter starting to introduce to market the new cooking product and preparing for the Laundry platform. It is a quarter where we accelerated the execution of the efficiency program presented in September. I mentioned already that in the -- during the first quarter of 2026, we count to already move most of the production of the coffee from one factory to the other.

And I think it is a [ counter ] that in a summary is another step in the building blocks path that we have been also presenting to reach our targets. It's a quarter where, thanks to the result of the quarter and the full year, bring us to propose the dividend and improved dividend per share according to our target and to our ambition to remunerate the shareholder.

If I look at the first quarter of 2026, what we see, also thanks to the order intake that was reported at the end of Q4, we expect that the trend that we experienced in Q4 for what the Food and Beverage business in Europe and for what the Laundry business are concerned, should continue also in Q1. And this should compensate the U.S. Food and Beverage business that is -- that we saw relatively weak during the quarter. So that is what at least we can say today.

With this said, Jacob, back to you.

Thank you, Alberto. Thank you, Fabio. With that, we open up for questions. Please go ahead, operator.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Johan Eliason from SB1.

This is Johan at SB1 [indiscernible]. I have just a question. You talked about the positive Europe. Do you think there are some temporary impacts from the Olympic Games coming up in Milan in Q4 -- Q3, Q4?

Let's say that we have obviously some good businesses as usual for the Olympic Games. But first, the Winter Olympic games are not as large or as impactful as the Summer Olympic games. And secondly, no, it is not because it is not only Italy. The European market, all the Mediterranean market are doing well. And the good things in Q4 is that also the Nordic market started to perform much better. So some sales, yes, but not as such that they could be considered a spike in the trend of Europe.

Okay. Good. Excellent. And then I'm wondering a little bit, I mean, you are generating pretty good cash flows here and your net debt is quite rapidly coming down and then probably closer to 0 at the end of this year than to 1x net debt to EBITDA, obviously, depending on what you are doing on the M&A side. How is the M&A pipeline? Is it sort of more of these smaller potentially attractive acquisitions that we should expect? Or do you still have something more sizable that could or could not materialize in the coming year?

I believe you know that my answer will not be a straightforward answer on the matter. The only thing that I can tell you is that we are working on acquisitions. We are working on acquisitions. We just completed one, and I can tell you that we are working in parallel on many other opportunities. If I look around, clearly, there are more opportunity for mid-mall (sic) [ small ] sized company than for large one. The larger not so many all around. But for sure, we are looking for any possible additions -- inorganic addition that is instrumental to our strategy.

Good. And then you mentioned market share gains. I can't remember if that was related to Europe or where you said that. But is it any product category or geographic area? Or can you say any details on that?

Okay. Yes, I was referring to Europe, in particular the food business in Europe. I'm referring to the cooking, and that is very good because remember that we are launching also the new line of cooking where we are the leading company in this market. So we are reinforcing our stronghold.

So geography wise, let's say that as during the past quarters or here, so the South European market, in particular Italy, they've been overperforming. They've been above the average. But as I said, the pleasing thing is that also the Nordic started to move well. So -- but it is hot, so cooking in some way. And I would say that it's across Europe more or less now. So it's a very good and promising thing.

Excellent. And then I just have a detailed question to Fabio. In the cash flow statement, we see that the change in other operating assets, liabilities and provision was quite negative in the quarter. Is that the release of the provisions you took on the restructuring? Or what is that?

I would say -- I believe you touched on the point. I would say the remarkable things that is somehow sort of discontinuity to the normal path is the cash out related to the execution of the restructuring. The rest is normal business development.

[Operator Instructions] There are no questions at this time.

Okay. Thank you very much, operator. Glad that we have been clear in our presentation. So with that, I would say thank you very much for listening in, and see you next time. Thank you, and goodbye.

Welcome, everyone, to Electrolux Professional Group Investor Day 2025. Happy to see so many of you here at our Stockholm head office. Also welcome to those of you who watch this event online. The mission of Electrolux Professional Group is to make our customers' lives easier, more profitable and truly sustainable. And I hope that you, after having listened to us today, also should see that we should be able to also make your life as shareholders, investors, analysts, a little bit easier and more profitable, exactly like our mission.

Over the last years, we have moved step-by-step towards our financial targets. It's been a tough market, many external challenges over the years, as you know. But we also increased the investment to future-proof the success of our company. And today, we will give you some more insights into how we think we will -- or how we will reach our targets. But we have also increased the investments to future-proof the company. And today, we will focus on 2 important areas in our business. It's our Laundry business, but also our Food Europe business.

Let's take a look at the agenda before we kick off. You see it here. We have kick off with Alberto Zanata, our CEO. Then we, of course, we have a coffee break. Everyone is looking forward to the coffee break. And of course, we conclude with the lunch. For those of you who are here, it will be served by the Swedish culinary team.

So with that, I would like to welcome our first speaker, Alberto Zanata, up on stage. Please, Alberto.

Thank you, Jacob, and morning to everybody. Good morning, and welcome to our home here in Stockholm. And one point about the agenda first. So what I like you to bring home after the half a day that we will spend together is to get familiar with all the things that we have been [ preaching ] these days. We said that we are investing, that we are in a peak of our history in terms of R&D cost, in terms of CapEx that we do all these things because we are going to bring to market a product that will help us to increase the profitability, to gain market share in the market to win competition and to increase profitability. Again, I say this 2 times. Because at the end of the day, it's really important that you get the trust on the things we are doing and in particular, the path that we are following to reach the financial target because in some way, everything is about that. And we start exactly and probably my part will be more about the past, what we have been doing, and what we are doing. And I will have the colleagues, Paolo, who is running the Laundry business and Camilla, who is running the Food European business and then obviously, Fabio that will crunch the numbers, putting the things together, and that you probably know being the CFO.

But before introducing them that they will talk about how this is becoming a reality nowadays in some way, let me talk a little bit about the things that are behind. And these are the years that we have been going through, years of profitable growth, we can discuss about the speed, but we have also to consider this performance in an environment that since we started our journey walking on our legs has been full of events, changing the routes that we are going to follow. Many times, I'm using the example of a sailing boat. I don't know if you are a sailor, but if you want to go there, many times, you can't go straight. You have to follow the winds. And on these days, all these things have been the winds against us, the things changing, forcing us to go around obstacles. But the important thing is to know where we want to go. And that is at least is our strength. We know what we want to do, what we want to achieve and even more important, how to achieve it.

But despite all these things happening, I would like to start from the basic, our market. I think probably I'm boring with this picture because I'm using this one more than once. Nevertheless, the percentages are slightly different, but the percentages are showing that this industry, the so-called hospitality industry in a wider sense that is including the kitchen, the restaurant, the hotels, the bedding, whatever we do out of home, you are today fueling this industry because you are out of home. You have breakfast here, out of home, even if, okay, it was internally produced, but nevertheless, it is a breakfast. But in any case, you will eat them. Some of you will travel. We are traveling. We are in hotels. This is the industry that is at the base of our business. And it is an industry that is evolving. These are general trends. I would say some of them are not applicable only to our industry. If we talk about digitalization, digitalization is digitalization. Everything is digital. We were discussing with Jacob to print the hard copy of the material. Now everything is digital. Most probably if you would have printed, you would have left on the chairs because you don't want to bring paper with you. Everything is digital. But digital is shaping or reshaping also our industry as well as concern about the space, less and less or concern about the availability of power, people, that is the main concern in particular in the hospitality industry or other things that are related to that one, like the electrification of this industry, there is a trend, not only at home, but also in this industry to move to electric appliances. And the important thing is that we embed all these trends, macro trend on what we want to do, on what we are doing from the product and service side. And if I go more specific on the things, the important thing is that the out-of-home spending, you know what it is, is what I said at the beginning, what we are spending every time we are out of home to get a coffee, breakfast, a dinner with friends, traveling for business or for pleasure. This is what we call out-of-home spending. If you watch also your starts out-of-home is out-of-home spending. The out-of-home spending is a growing trend. People are spending more and more out of home. And by the way, if you eat at home, but you buy the already cooked food in a shop or you make it a delivery or whatever is out-of-home also that one. And this is growing, and it's steadily growing. It is steadily growing. Sorry, if I go back, I told you that I will talk a little bit about the past too. But if I go back to the COVID year, one of the most common things I heard on those days that were our first days was that this industry is over. Nobody will travel anymore. They are afraid we are locked at home, really dark clouds on our industry. Reality is that we are stronger than before. The COVID had the opposite effect on people. They push people to even spend more for travel, more for enjoying time out of home.

So this is the picture about the market, a market I spent all my life that I love. I think is beautiful is enjoyable because at the end, you are enjoy life when you are parting out of home or also sometimes when you are traveling. But the important thing is that, okay, if this is the market, how do we address how we make sure that we continue or even accelerate the path that I showed with you at the beginning because at the end, this is all about. And that is another important thing. And that is, again, I'm back to the sailing example. Now the important thing is to know where we want to arrive. And these are the things that we said since the beginning. We said that we want to focus on innovative solution. And guys, to have innovative solution, you have to spend in R&D. You have to spend in research and development in innovation. We said that we want to have -- or we want to develop, or we want to mix up. Why? Because we have a portfolio of product with some exception, and we will see this picture where there are company focused on one product, but we -- and it is us, it is our DNA, it is our [indiscernible] (00:10:11) [ construction. ] By the way, all the large corporations that are competing with us, they have a pretty large portfolio. But nevertheless, it is important to focus investments and also marketing efforts on the high-margin product that are driving profitability and growth and differentiation. We want to have customer care not only because it's high-margin business. It's also because it's a way to retain customers. Remember that in the big markets, I'm talking about North America, I'm talking about Europe, Japan, majority of the business is replacement. Replacement means there is a kitchen like the one you saw here, and then I replace a product inside of the kitchen. And if you have a strong customer care, if you have been providing strong service, then the selection or the customer will continue to select that brand. So to have a strong customer care service is fundamental, not only because we are improving margin, but because we secure a recurring business for years and years. And last but not least, and here, it is not just because it's very fashionable and the company cannot avoid to talk about digital, but because really digital is in some way reshaping our industry.

Let's have a couple of talk about all these 4 pillars, I call them. Sorry, let me step back one because I was so used to go ahead with the 4 pillars that I forgot the base that we added because that is new in this picture. It was not at the beginning. And we added a picture about the cost structure of this organization. And what I want to make sure you understand is that we didn't add this line or this activity because the line in itself is just a printing box, but the activity has not been added because we have a critical situation that has to be addressed cutting cost, not at all. I showed you earlier. And I show you also that the market is positive friendly. But the reality is that since we started our journey, we always said that one of the things that we should have reviewed was the structure of our processes. You know our history. And our history is a history coming from a group with great processes, safe processes, but much larger company. And those processes were heavy for us because we are competing more than 90% of our competitors are privately owned company, where there is a person taking a decision on the spot. And on these days, again, sorry to be back to the sailing example, if the wind is changing, you have to be faster in adapting your route. You have to be very fast. You have to be agile. And sometimes heavy processes are not helping. So we said it since the beginning that one important thing would have been to make this company faster, more agile, flexible. And due to the things that have been happening in the COVID, the war tariffs, we always had other things to focus on. And now the time is came. We have now the possibility, and that is what we announced in September, a plan to really make use of the investment in digitalization, heavy investment in digitalization because now we have the tool to automatize some processes, to make this company leaner, more flexible and agile. And by the way, we also took the opportunity to say, yes, but this company also needs different competencies. So it is not only a way to reduce cost, but it's also a way to make a competence shift in the area that have to be addressed because more digital it is, different competencies will be needed. Now that we develop the product, more competencies or skills will be needed in pushing sales. So it's a great opportunity. It's not just a line, but it's something that is fundamentally important to support the other 4 boxes.

So let's move, as I said earlier, to very quickly go through the 4 boxes in some way. And the first one is innovation. I'm coming from the product. So sorry for that. I love the product. But I also think that in our industry, we sell services, we sell solutions, but everything is around the product. I'm convinced that in some years from now, the element that will make our company different from the other will not be necessarily the product in itself, but whatever is around the product, the software, the digital features, the solution we provide with them, in some way, even the business model. But to do all these things, you need the product. And you need a product that is constantly evolving. That is the reason why we are investing so much. 4.5 is high. If you compare with the data of our competitor, I'm already anticipating possible question, why do you spend more than what the competitor does? Because we bet on innovation, because we have the fortune also to have the possibility to perform while transforming, not being focused only on the short term, but looking at also what is going to happen in some years, perform today, every quarter, every month, every week, but also make sure that you prepare the company for the future challenges, transforming the company. And that is what is about innovation. And we've been investing. We will invest also next year. The peak is not completely over, but it's already when you are now moving from sailing to mountain, when you reach the top, then you start to go down. And it's normally easier to descend than to go up. And we -- and why we -- and now without anticipating anything because I have Paolo and Camilla here to talk, but I'm so excited to start bringing to market the new product that will create an additional gap versus competition. Laundry, we are the leading company for what innovation is concerned. Nevertheless, we don't sleep on that. We want to create another gap because competitors are not waiting, are not there just looking around. They are also working to catch up. So we create another step to make sure that when they, if, get to the same level, there will be another gap in between. And the other beautiful things that I really like you to consider during an underline in your notes when you will get from Paolo and Camilla, with these things, we are not just replacing a product present in a category because we are talking about mature market. Remember, you saw there the growing rate. We are also thinking about products that will give us the possibility to enter or to serve new segments. This could be seen as an acceleration of the sales. And the same apply, by the way, to cooking, very exciting. This is coming even earlier than that. And it's coming bringing, again, following the trend that we have been talking about electrification. We have been talking about productivity, efficiency, gas from electricity from 50% productivity to 95% productivity, wow, double, double. This is touching the pocket of our customers. No question about that. And by the way, here, we are also showing you how we are leveraging acquisition because a year ago, we acquired a company producing induction, a tiny company that probably -- I don't know if you noticed it because it was so small that didn't change our numbers. But it was -- it is instrumental to bring to market product with unique features, product that will make a difference that will give us the possibility to accelerate the growth of the largest category and most profitable category that we have in Europe. So innovation is first.

The second point I told you is to focus on the mix up. A mix up means it doesn't mean forget something. It means focus on growing the product, the segment, the countries with higher margin. And here, we have been working in several dimensions. The first one is get rid of the product that are not strategic, that are commodity that are not giving us the possibility to differentiate ourselves versus competition, and they have low margin. Sorry to be brutal, but the semi-professional refrigerators is a category where it's difficult to differentiate. It's like when you go to Elgiganten here, our neighbor, and you look at the product that are displaying, and you are in front of -- sorry for our friends over there, 20 refrigerators, they look the same. What are you looking? By the way, you're not even able to see the brand. What -- how do you choose one or the other? How do you? Price. So we want to win where we can talk to customers, differentiate from competitors. And I know that you like the [indiscernible] (00:21:23) drip coffee of the [ filter as one, ] but there is a clear trend that is showing a shift of taste of people towards other kind of coffee. I don't mean that you have to change your taste, not at all, please. Nevertheless, it's hard to differentiate with a [ drip ] coffee machine. But it's not only that one. And there are other ways to improve or to mix up. For instance, the activities that we are making with the program that we announced in September, closing two factories, reducing our footprint, concentrating production, more product in the same factory means better absorption, higher margin. If then you are also moving production from less cost-effective country to more cost-effective country, then you get an additional spin. And we do this because the product we move in reality today, they don't deliver high margin. But potentially, they do it. We know that they are in the trend of growing. They are instrumental to our positioning. And the other mix up is geographical customer segment. Big thing you know our competitor, I'm sure you look at them. I got comments why aren't you professional? Aren't you as profitable as the other American companies. 70% of the business in the United States, 50% of the business with [indiscernible] (00:23:02) [ chains. ] But we like it or not, and by the way, it's not only this industry, selling in the United States is more profitable than selling outside the United States for many reasons. The first one is that it is one market. Camilla will tell you about the structure we have in Europe. Europe is not one market. It's the aggregation of several markets where I have to have a different organization to address customers that in some way are different in terms of desire or other things. We try to make one, but one solution fits all doesn't work so much, in particular, in a trend that was written also earlier, the regionalization. You can call it a nationalization, whatever you want. So there are trends about mixing chains, geography, product, eliminating the undifferentiated one, but growing on the others. And we do this. I would like to spend a couple of words on chains, for instance, because first, if I look at the chain business in the United States, I said it is not as large as our competitor. It is 50% of our sales in the United States. It is on the same level as a percentage. But the thing is that these companies are larger than us, they have 70% with [indiscernible] (00:24:44) [ chains. ] But we are growing 13% that is much more than what the market does. And the other important thing that we always said it is a strength, or I will say it should, but it is a strength. I strongly believe it is, is that most of these chains are growing outside the United States. And now that we are present in the United States, they follow us outside the United States. And by the way, these chains have been also fueling the growth of local chains. And the picture that you see on the bottom showing that [indiscernible] (00:25:27) Yum. Yum is the largest with all the brands that they have chains. They buy from us in China. We are the supplier of Yum in China. And you know that the Chinese local companies, now they are in the range of thousands of restaurants, they are not talking about hundreds. Some of them are even larger than the American chains. And the growth in that part of the world is exponential. And we are in China. We have a factory in China. We have product produced in China. We are enlarging the production in China. So I would say, yes, we grow, we know -- and we will continue in the United States. We have been going through tough years in the past, it is over. Let's make clear about that because I've got some questions. It is over. We are doing extremely well in the United States. If you read also, some of our competitors have been suffering. We are growing. Also in the first quarter, where you see the zero, Food was growing. Chains was up 8%. It was the general market that is a little bit, let's call it, cold, as you all know, the things happening in the United States. So we are working what has -- or doing what has to be done to mix up, eliminating low-margin product, moving production to improve the margin, expanding in chains in North America.

The third pillar is customer care. And as I said, customer care is not just a matter of improving margin. The margin of customer care is by far higher than the average of the company and the target that we have, or we want to achieve. But it's also a matter of better serving the customer, retaining customer preference. We are measuring the Net Promoter Score. And you see it's one of the key indicators. I'm looking at that one, sometimes even more than net sales and EBITA because net sales is what I did. The Net Promoter Score is telling me how many customers I will have in the future. It's very important. And it's very important to know that we have a strength in customer care. Our service organization directly or indirectly managed is a strength of Electrolux Professional in the eyes of many customers. But also in this case, we are going through a shift, a change of transformation. I think this is one of the biggest transformation we are going through. And this is the competence shift that I mentioned beginning that will be instrumental to not only serve the customers because what we are recognized is the block on the left. We have super good technicians, well trained that are fixing the problems on the spot, sooner the better to eliminate the downtime. But the transformation will be when we will not only wait to be called by the customers, but we will be able to encircle the customer with a service. Beginning, I said not only product but solutions, services. The dream is that we will visit the customer without waiting for his call or her call because the product is down, but we will tell the customer, your product is going to be down. And as a consequence, we are here to make sure that you will continue to operate the product because this is a transformational. So this is the one that despite the constant growth, and you see that it's different than the trend of the sales is clearly different than the trend of the sales is much faster. So we are mixing up also, thanks to customer care. But this will be instrumental to have a step change here. In other industry, there are companies where majority of the business is this one. For sure, majority of the profit. So it's not impossible. It can be done. But to be done, I have to continue to work on the fourth pillar that is the digitalization. The digitalization is everything in some way. I know that probably this picture could be used by everybody. You change the brand on the right, and it is good for other industry. But in reality that it works very well for us. And now I don't want to talk about everything, but just mention 2 things that are really changing that is what we call the digital platform is a platform that we make available to service, sales, customers, obviously, us connecting the product, making information available, but in particular, giving us the possibility to process transactions through the platform, eliminating the manual work, leaving the possibility to people to do valuable activities. It is important. And what I look a lot -- very much is the numbers. We are in the process. Half of our business is digitalized means we are dealing with dealers through the platform. We have to convince also them. But the best way to convince is to create value for them. And gradually, we are improving the platform. You saw the number 85%, but look at the last installation that was done in the largest market that we have in Europe. And by the way, it's the second in the world after United States. 94% and probably the 6 is because they did a mistake. 94% of the transactions are going through the digital. This means they are not obliged. This means that it is creating value for them. And we [indiscernible] (00:32:44) want it's not finished. And you know that I cannot -- there is no presentation where we cannot talk about artificial intelligence. Otherwise, we are old fashioned. So we are continuously improving. If you want, you can read it. But look at one number that is I think is the most important. You know what's the challenge of having artificial intelligence while working in the company. Guess, so it's the quality of the data. Because if you have bad data coming in, you will have even worse data coming out. 70% of the data that we are processing are clean. Probably you are saying, you are looking at the 30 as usual, on to the negative side, believe me, 70% is a big number. 70% is a great number, considering the history, considering the acquisition, considering whatever we have been doing. We are ready. And there are some projects that are already in place and that will make even the digital platform more intelligent because at the end, whatever works, including the connectivity of the product, including whatever we are going to serve, will work only if we create value for us, but also for our customers. And that is the way to go with the connectivity, connecting the dots going through the service.

Good. These are the 4 pillars. But let's talk about -- because not everything is around this one. I'm sure you have question I already got this morning some questions about TOSEI. I said how we are making use of Adventys. A couple of words about TOSEI. TOSEI, we are facing a challenging market condition, yes. Not entirely expected, but it is a business cycle, in particular in Laundry, more than Food, but also Food, I would say, it happens. And we go down, and we go up. The important thing, and we know this by facts in Japan because in Japan, you know exactly the market share that we are not losing market share. We still have more than 50% market share in Laundry, and more than 50% of market share in the [indiscernible] (00:35:23) category, that is a small portion of the Food & Beverage segment. But what is also important, we are really making use of this company because we are making use of the unique technology that was developed in Japan, the combo machine. We got the award as the most innovative product in the United States. This says a lot, by the way, because it's a product that has been in the market for years in Japan. But in the United States, it has been awarded as the most innovative product. And we are bringing this outside Japan. And we've been replacing the product we were buying with the one already done. Last time, a couple of weeks ago, I was there, and I saw the tumble dryer produced in [indiscernible] (00:36:08) [ Rayong ] that will replace the production done in Japan because we are improving margin, because they are more cost efficient. They have better features. We are one company. We closed from two office to one, from two IT systems to one. So we are working to create the base, to have a profitable -- highly profitable business because this is what is expected to be higher than our target. And the other thing that I cannot miss is the sustainability, but okay, we are always pleasing ourselves with the award that we receive, and we claim to be the most sustainable company in the world, okay. But so what? The what is that we are creating value for the customers. If I save 50% of the energy that you use to boil water, I'm sustainable, but I create value for you. If I reduce the operating cost in a laundry because I reduce water and electricity and detergent, I'm sustainable, but I create value for you. And I tell you that more and more customers are looking for these things. More and more, this is becoming a criteria to select products. And then we are well positioned. Today, yes; everywhere, no; today and tomorrow, absolutely, yes. It is an unstoppable trend. But again, it's not because you just be green. It's important. But in some places, still not the main criteria. It's because we create value for the customer and value for a customer in this industry is money in the pocket.

And with this, we said we have been talking about how we are going to grow organically this company. But you know that -- and also this one is probably boring you quite a bit. I tell you that we are focused on working to bring home companies that are instrumental to accelerate the growth. We are not looking for any company available in the market. I tell you, there have been a situation where we dropped the possibility to participate because we were not taking the core criteria, profitability accretive to our target, cultural fit ability to make it working and instrumental to reach our -- or to accelerate the growth in our pillars. And here is where we are focusing more. We are focused on technology, the acquisition of Adventys last year. I told you that more we grow in the United States and more we grow with chains, easier will be to increase the profitability. So by definition, we have focused activities in looking for possible acquisition in that part of the world and companies serving that kind of customers.

And last but not least, also products that are in the higher part, the product with a higher margin. We are working on this one. The problem is that while I can stand in front of you and tell you that from January 1st, we will start selling the cooking. In end of Q2, beginning of July next year, we will start introducing to market the new laundry product. I can tell you that we are working to take down the cost. We are working to implement the digital platform. Here it's hard to tell you when this is going to happen, hours, days, weeks, months. The only thing is that we are hardly working to look at that one. We are working this means it is not that there are no possibility. But this is hard. It's like a wedding. Both have to say yes, at least in my word.

And also a couple of words, but this will be very quick because I believe Fabio will tell more about, is the program that we have been launching to streamline this organization. Don't under evaluate this one. It is important. And this doesn't mean when you will see the [ bridge ] to the 15%, it doesn't mean that we are giving up the volume growth, the sales growth, not at all. I think I've been talking about growing the business until now, right? So everything is about growing the business. Nevertheless, we learned if it was necessary, by the way, that there are also external elements that could slow down the business development. And it is safer to intervene also on the cost side, considering that we want to be leaner, more agile, more flexible. Intervene on the cost side in a way that is generating point of EBIT, more than that, more than that. And while sales is not like a wedding, but it's similar to that, I mean somebody say yes and buying my product. Here it's entirely up to us. And the only message I want to deliver to you is that we are progressing very well. I'm very pleased because they were challenging situation. I don't know if you ever had an experience with production facility in France, we are done -- sorry, we are not done. But it is said it is agreed. We have to work on the detail and the guy that is running the project, if you hear me telling details, he will be very scared. But nevertheless, we are -- we have the agreement. It is important this one.

And with this said, I believe I'm at the end of this introduction because you should consider this one the introduction of the really core topics that will be the one presented by the colleagues. The industry is still evolving. It is still evolving with different speed in the different market. And now United States is not really the booster. Yes, it is true. How long? Normally, I'm always saying the United States is like a V. So going down sharply coming back very quickly. Europe is more a large U, going down slowly and then coming up slowly. But Europe is doing well. Asia is still doing well. So the industry is moving. And all our activities now, we have been reaching. We have been investing. And as I said, it's at the top of the mountains. I'm not expecting. I tell you, we are not increasing. We will start to take down the cost of R&D. Normalize, we call it. That is more or less another point of EBIT. It will not -- it will be a little bit large V, if you want, but it will not be a U of years. But now we are starting to make use of the product that we have been developing during these years. And that is the beauty because this will help us to grow the business with unique solutions that will win competition in the market. And to secure that we are prepared for whatever comes, we also launched a program that is reducing the operating cost. And this program will also be used to upskill our people, to help in the transformation either digital sales or customer care. So I'm really convinced that we will continue on the path that I showed you at the beginning, and there are the conditions to even accelerate and hopefully, but it's not hopefully, really making sure that we close the bridge between what we are, and what we want to be.

Thank you very much. And Jacob, we are yours.

Thank you, Alberto. We will now open up for questions. [Operator Instructions] But we will start with the questions from the room. So please raise your hand, and we will give you a microphone and then you can state your name and where you come from.

I think the first one comes from Gustav Hageus.

Gustav here with SEB. If I might start with what you finished off with the R&D spend coming down versus that an absolute number? Does that reflect your sales budget mainly? And secondly, I mean one way to see is obviously that it's possible that your margins will come up as R&D comes down, but one could also question if perhaps that money would also be useful to stay in R&D to accelerate and maybe you have good returns in actually keeping the level at current. So how do you balance that between trying to accelerate returns through your own R&D versus coming down to 3.5%. Is that a magical number for you, 3.5? Or how did you end up with that number?

We wanted to -- first, Fabio will talk more about the numbers. So showing you the numbers for the trend and what is coming there. But we wanted also to show the absolute number because the percentage is obviously related to the development of the top line. I'll give you an example, despite having done things in the 2020 with a drop of 25% of the sales, clearly, you have an increase of the percentages, even if we didn't spend more, we didn't cut, but we didn't spend more. So percentages is related to this one.

3.5 is a sort of magic number because it's what you need to keep going with a very healthy product portfolio. The innovation project that we developed for Laundry, in particular [indiscernible] are talking about and the laundry, we are talking about basically 80% to 90% of the laundry production. We talk about everything and it is, I don't mean for scratch because nevertheless, but it's a completely new platform, completely different.

The cooking. We are talking about a large portion of our food business in Europe, food and beverage business in Europe is, by far, the largest portion. So that is the reason why it's a peak because the variety, the wide, how wide is portfolio and the importance of these 2 product categories. This doesn't mean that we will not continue to innovate. We will and we believe that with the number, we will have the resources to do this.

Can I have a follow-up on sort of the innovation cycle then? I assume that the laundry platform is like a decade or 2 decades, probably. But a few of these are, I guess the induction line will be shorter lived maybe perhaps. But where do you see sort of the -- the payback for these innovations, is that like a 3-year, 4-year cycle? Or how long should we assume that you will benefit from this recent peak done in R&D?

Okay. The laundry is a 30-year cycle. Now to tell you that this platform will last for 30 years is a little bit a -- little bit too much. I don't know. For what we know, there is no -- there are no reason not to believe in these things. 30 years ago, when the platform was developed, we have a platform. It was the first modular design product, great that we did these things years ago. But then during the years, and you will see this, we had many new upgrading. Like in the car, many times, you have the version of the New Year, where you work where, electronics, for instance, most of the things are in the electronic evolution.

And the cooking, I believe the cooking platform that we are renovating is a 20 years old platform. So the life of the product in this industry is pretty long. If you ask me, is it going to be so long also in the future, probably the structure of the product, yes, what will be evolving quicker than in the past is the controlling side, the electronic and the digital features.

I have one more question over there.

Henrik Christiansson from DNB Carnegie. A question on the customer care business. You talked about the Net Promoter Score, and they look at that as much because that's the future of the business. Can you talk a bit about how that has trended? And also on the retention side, if you could give us some stats around what do you retain and whatnot and if we can view that as an installed base or what it is really?

I [indiscernible] expecting the moment I start talking about Net Promoter Score. We are not disclosing this fund, but I'm convinced that sooner or later, we will do it. And we don't do it because it is not -- the vast majority, we are not collecting the data as we want to have a truly statistical base. It is good in some countries, but to give you the data in 1, 2, 10 countries, it doesn't mean so much, but we are working on that. We are working to get this information. And it is really important.

And the good thing is that also the sales company are not perceiving this one as just. I don't know a way to control or other things. But it is again creating value. And you know the number we are looking, in particular, in the number of the detractors. The number of the detractors because we follow up, we understand them, we want to understand why you are not promoting the [indiscernible]. I cannot rely on that in every family, there is something not working. But we follow up.

You know what, at least my experience is the most of the cases, the detractor, they become the best promoter. You can turn them and you turn them, thanks to customer care, thanks to showing that you care about them and you address their problems.

Thank you. Do we have any more questions? Yes, you one at the back.

Johan Eliason at SB1. M&A is part of your strategy, obviously, and you can't say so much about what will happen going forward. But you have done a number of larger acquisitions over the past few years, like Grindmaster, UV and then [indiscernible]. And now you're closing down the drip coffee from Grindmaster. You had a bit of an issue starting up with you in the first year. And to say you seem to have been surprised how the Japanese market develop. Are there any lessons learned from these activities that you have done recently?

Yes. But Grindmaster, we knew it. We knew about that. But remember that Grindmaster -- it was the drip coffee, but majority of the business was the cold beverage, okay? Cold beverage became one of the core product line with one of the highest margin that we have. One of the tool to enter chains, one of the best tools to enter chains in the U.S. Cracker, that is the brand used on the cold beverage product is by far the market leader for beverage solution. And beverage -- within the food and beverage nowadays so and so, not because of the United States, but it's one of the fastest-growing categories because the payback is very short.

If you buy the product and we have some of them here, I can show them to you, when they are installed in the chains, we know that they pay back in months -- in month. You sell water with some sugar, months. TOSEI -- now before TOSEI, you said the Unified Brand. Unified Brand, we had a problem. And the lesson learned is that we were so focused on the fact that UB was much larger than a natural professional, if you want to call it, the 2 teams of the 2 communities. And it was a reverse takeover, if you want to say so. And the focus was internal driven. Let's make sure that we merged the office, we closed the office. We have one IT system, one process, [indiscernible], and we neglected the customer outside.

The customer outside that were in questioning what is going to happen? Are you going to kill the brand, the Electrolux Professional brand, in this case, what are you going to do? Are you merging? Remember that in the same year, there was also -- our major competitor, [indiscernible] doing the same things, and it was pretty noisy what they were doing in terms of merger, firing reps.

So the lesson learned is that when we run an acquisition, we have to make sure that the customer is not perceiving anything negatively from what we are doing internally. We have to work on our synergy development cost, but we have to make sure that the customer is not seeing anything of that. And that is what exactly are doing with TOSEI. Because TOSEI came after that one. And we have been -- it was very similar in the meaning that the acquired business was much larger than the original business of laterals professional. But first, we have to make sure that we have the right leaders in place to run the things. And secondly, the focus was only on the customer side.

We eventually delayed merger and other things. It came after roughly 2 years to make sure that we set the customers. Then, as I said, the market is what it is, but we focus on the market. And the reality is that, yes, some problem that is unavoidable, but it is the big lesson learned about these things.

Thank you. Unfortunately, we need to end the Q&A session there. Thank you, Alberto.

Thanks to you.

So the next presentation will be about one of our largest businesses, Food Europe. So I -- we will be especially focused on cookies. I welcome Camilla Monefeldt-Kirstein on stage. Camilla is the President of Food Europe. She's been with the company since 3 years back. So the rest is yours, please Camilla.

Thank you, Jacob. I'm very happy to be here today. I think it's the first time we present the food business in Europe. And I'm honored. This is a very exciting part of the business and I'm honored to represent the team and the business.

I'm going to talk about 3 things. First, to give a brief introduction to our business and the markets we operate in. Then I'm going to share our ambition and our strategic priorities and also explain why we believe we are uniquely positioned to capture future profitable growth as the undisputed innovation leader in horizontal cooking. So let's start by looking at the market.

The global food and beverage equipment market is large. Last year, it was estimated to be worth USD 32 billion, and Europe represents 1/3 roughly of this market. And even though in the recent years, growth in Europe has been slightly lower than in Americas and in Far East. Europe still represents a large and significant market.

A few words on the food business in Europe and our setup. The Food Europe is part of the food and beverage segment of the group, and we represent roughly 1/3 of the group revenues. Europe, you mentioned it, Alberto. Europe is our largest market. It's also the second largest market of the group, but we have significant sales across Europe and other key markets are Spain, Switzerland, France and also the Nordics.

For example, cooking, dish washing and ovens are our 3 largest categories, and we serve customers in both the public and the private sector. So hospitals -- sorry, hotels, restaurants and public institutions are our main category or customer segments.

In Europe, Electrolux Professional has a distinct position as a single multi-category brand, facing both specialists and multibrand players. We have a broad portfolio. Our portfolio covers all 3 categories, wet dish washing, cold refrigeration and fast cooking. And if we look at competition, they typically -- I mean, specialist by nature, but also multibrands, they serve these categories by several separate brands. So the fact that we have the full solution under one, the same brand distinguishes us from the rest. And Electrolux Professional is the largest brand -- we're not the second largest, I wish, second-largest brand in Europe, in Southern Europe with a very high penetration.

We are launching a new vision for horizontal cooking, setting the stage for innovation in the years to come. So before going into our strategic priorities, let's have a look at what we want to achieve.

[Presentation]

Horizontal cooking is our core. That's where we are strong, that's where we have a leadership position. And we not only want to defend that position, but we want to strengthen it and drive the development of our industry, be shaping life in the kitchen.

But we don't want to lose our multi-category edge, but we want to decomplexify the business. Alberto was talking about it and streamlining our portfolio, focusing on high-margin products. So this ambition is anchored on 2 strategic priorities. The first being to accelerate growth of high-margin products in key markets and the second is about reigniting our innovation journey. Future proofing in the cooking offering.

So we -- what have we done, what are we doing to accelerate growth of high-margin products in markets. The [indiscernible] areas how we drive or optimize our go-to-market effectiveness and drive commercial excellence is all about making it easy to buy and easy to sell, getting closer to the end customer and creating a pull fire brand. So here, we have activities we be working on refining -- already defining our dealer network, working with the right partners, consultants, enabling us to enter the right segments. It's about shifting or strengthening and empowering our sales organization, shifting from a farmer to a hunter mindset, a lot of things. And it's all -- but it's all aimed to actually make it easy to buy is itself.

And the feedback or the this process and the findings from this process feeds back to how can we better serve our customers. So the last area is about simplify and serve better. And here, we're talking about actually streamlining our business, both the business or the commercial offering as well as operations. And we are doing just to give some examples. You were talking about whether exiting certain categories. We are rationalizing our assortment, focusing on star products, which is in [indiscernible] in other words, for high-margin products with clear USPs. We are also redefining our logistics setup to get for faster deliveries, and we are optimizing our production footprint, moving production, thermal production to optimize our margins.

And some words on the relocation of Thermaline. Thermaline is trusted and well appreciated product line in the premium segment. And a few months ago, we announced that we wanted to evaluate to move the production from Switzerland to Italy. The decision have been made, and we are in process of moving production to Avantel where more than 90% of our production of the horizontal range is already produced. So this move will enable us to recover profitability, but also unlock synergies in -- or across the horizontal cooking range production. And on top of that, we will free up resources for us to reinvest in growth markets and in innovation.

So I'll talk about how we -- our innovation, our recognition of the innovation journey. But before doing that, I would like to explain why we choose to focus on horizontal cooking. So horizontal cooking, it's not only our core, but it's also the heart of any kitchen. The market or this segment is large, and it has showed a solid growth trend. You see to the left that the growth rate is higher than the market in general. And within this segment, induction technology is the fastest-growing technology, growing twice the speed as gas. And we are -- we have -- we are the largest player in horizontal cooking in Europe, both across modular and customer made measure. And we have a very strong position. Horizontal cooking is the biggest revenue contributor and has with very high margin. So that's the reason why.

So our strategy is simple. We're matching our core strengths with the biggest market trends. We see a rapid shift from gas to electric and induction equipment, mentioned twice the speed. And we see customers are increasingly [indiscernible] where we see customers are increasingly prioritizing sustainability and efficiency and also adopting digital solutions.

So a few words on -- to elaborate on sustainability. You mentioned it and probably you will talk more about it for the larger sake. In food, sustainability is still not a very important decision-making factor. However, we see that there is a trend going on. There's a shift going on. In the other European countries, it's increasingly being a factor in tender business, and it's just a matter of time before that behavior also reaches the southern parts of Europe. And when it does, we are ready, we are in now.

And also, you mentioned at Alberto that from the customer's point of view, they might not talk about sustainability, but they do talk about energy savings, and they do talk about cost of fixes. And just as an example, induction, the annual energy consumption of an induction hub if you compare to the annual energy consumption of electric hub is 30% less and 40% less than the gas.

We have already secured induction -- advanced induction technology expertise through the acquisition of Adventys last year. We now not only we own the technology, we are not depending on external or other suppliers. And we have also refocused our resources already towards cooking. And then I talked about both horizontal cooking and ovens because if you look at these 2 together, they complete the professional kitchen. Owens is also a segment where which is growing. The development is driven by new technologies, demand for energy-efficient solutions, connectivity and also ease of use appliances. So by looking at them together, we can innovate and develop integrated solutions that fits or meets the needs of our customers.

Last year, we also launched an internal transformation program to accelerate innovation and speed up time to market. And I am super, super, super excited and happy to say that, that is paying off. Because already now, 1 year later, we have new products to launch to market. We're launching the e-XP line, LiberoLight and Thermaline free-zone induction. Next year, we are bringing -- we are launching the compact multifunctional cooker. This is a new segment to us, but is an unsaturated segment in the market dominated by 1 player. And we are bringing something which is unique, both in terms of the product itself is compact, it satisfies the needs of the customer's limited space, utilizing every inch of the kitchen. And important factor, this product can be integrated into our other horizontal cooking. So it can be used as a standalone, but also as an integrated part of horizontal cooking, which is a unique to market.

We are also working on what is to come, the next generation model cooking, but the new features. I cannot talk about too much about what long-term plans, but what I can do is that I can give you some more flavor of the next year's innovation pipeline? And how these launches will help us target margin growth in key segments. At the bottom of this slide, you see our segment coverage, current and then where we aim to end up after these launches. And with the LiberoLight, LiberoLight Pro is our plug-in range, compact and flexible plug-in range. And with the LiberoLight, we are launching super efficient holding and cooking solutions powered by induction to broaden our reach in the light-duty segment of hotels, bars and restaurants.

With e-XP and Thermaline free-zone induction, we are turbocharging our induction offering, really penetrating the medium and for the mass and premium segment of restaurants and hotels. The multifunction cooker, I already talked about new segment, unsaturated unique solution, big opportunities.

So to summarize, key takeaways. We are operating in a large and resilient market with a distinct position as the single multi-category brand. And we have a leadership -- leadership position, both in core markets and in key categories. We have already improved and we are working on to further strengthen our go-to-market and our commercial excellence, making it easy to buy and easy to sell and creating pull for the brand. And lastly, we are strengthening our foundation. We have and we are strengthening our foundation, streamlining operations, and stepping up the game, revamping our ambition in innovation. And we have already proven that we are able -- capable of to grow profitably. And I hope you see why we are uniquely positioned to secure future possible growth.

And also, I hope you see that we've already taken significant steps on this journey towards reshaping life in the kitchen, and really cementing our position as the leading undisputed innovation leader in horizontal cooking. So as the launch of the new e-HP line, it's a significant -- most significant step on this journey. Let's end or close with sneak peek of what is to come. We're now not just offer induction, we own it.

Thank you, Camilla. We will now open up for a very short Q&A session. So if you have any questions as before, please raise your hand or post them online. We have the first question, 2 questions over there.

Camilla, could you talk a bit about the replacement cycle because I remember before the spinoff from the old company, there was something going on with the replacement, then we had COVID and so on. So now you have a lot of new products. So are you coming into a positive replacement cycle with your clients, restaurants, hotels and so on? That's my first question.

And my second question is, is the European market actually better than media anecdotes because everybody -- we read everywhere that Europe is not doing very well. But are Europe doing better for you than the anecdotes we read about?

I'll start with the last question. As Alberto said, Europe is very heterogenic. It's not 1 market. So we have different situations across Europe. We have -- but anyway, we have growth opportunities despite that market. It's in some cases, challenging. We believe we can still grow. We have something in the market.

And then you've talked about the cycle, the replacement cycle. We are constantly -- as we're growing, we're constantly adding -- we are entering new segments, new customers, new markets. So it's kind of -- is it not easy to explain with what or answer you would say yes or no, because I think it's -- we're constantly filling up with new customers and hence, entering new cycles. But what we see is that our business, we are serving are both project business and unit replacement business. And we are focusing a lot on the unit replacement business to boost that and be less depend on projects, but we are still -- we still want to play and win in the public business. So answer to your question.

Henrik from DNB Carnegie. A question on the launch and what we can learn from history. When you listed the company talked a lot about the [indiscernible] on these launches is that they will address new markets as well. So the sort of, as you mentioned, sort of a turbo boost. So it's not only getting a new product out, which is the self drive sales and mix, but also addressing new markets. Is that rightly understood? Or what are the differences between them?

The launches that we do already now are kind of strengthening our offering in the markets where we're in today and segments. The multi-functional cooking is definitely opening up a new segment for us. And lessons learned, yes, there are lessons learned even though it was before my time, but in this case, this kind of products that we will plan to launch next year requires a different approach, the more the hunting approach.

So that's why we're also working now on the commercial excellence is preparing for kind of from farmers to hunters. And when -- also when we plan the launch for next year, we already now started to talk a long time ago to prepare the go-to-market part of it. So to your question, yes, lessons learned, maybe, and we are focused on securing it in the future. I actually forgot to say that because I didn't talk so much about the launches, even though the film showed all the new features and functions. I'm sure it's for the it's hard to catch, but we can have a look at the kind of the advanced -- there is a prototype of the induction hub, the kind of the advent freezone induction, which is kind of the key out in the showrooms, we can -- for the interested among you, we can have a talk about it during the break.

This is Gustav. I guess with SEB. On the -- it's a hard word multifunctional cooking system.

I assume -- so the main competitor would be [indiscernible] Iberio, I assume. And if I recall correctly, they're generating some EUR 140 million, growing double digits. What would you consider to be a success for this product line? And in what time frame do you think it's fair to start evaluating it?

I will start by saying that even if you look at RASAL's number, they are still only taking a small proportion of the big market. So there's huge growth opportunities also for us. I will not give you a number on kind of what we have as a target. We have internal targets, but there are huge opportunities by launching this product.

Sure. And so the connectivity with the rest of your products is obviously a key feature then versus your competitors?

In the multifunctional cook, yes.

Sure. But are there other features that you think is worth highlighting compared to your competitor that would allow you to take? Is it a cheaper product? Or is there more?

We have ambitious plans to enter the market with a unique and competitive product also when it comes to the price. But the uniqueness is, I would say, what I would highlight is that this is a product we can integrate it into the cooking blocks. It can be an integrated part of the horizontal cooking lines that we have, both EXP and Thermal line.

And most -- we have high installed base. We have -- so we have already a foot in into that into the market.

And I'm going to try another way in here. If I look at the Iberia development, you obviously launched a product in a less mature market than you're launching. So one would assume that more kitchens are aware of this type of -- is it fair to assume that a successful launch would indicate a more rapid growth than Rational?

Yes, we could hope for that. They have opened the market for us. It's is more bullish than me.

I think that was it. And then I think it's time for a coffee break. So we'll be back again 10:50, that's 25 minutes from now. Thank you, and see you on 10:50 again.

[Break]

So welcome back to Electrolux Professional Investor Day. Next presentation will be about one of our most profitable parts of the business, our Laundry business to talk to us about this. I invite Paolo Skira on stage. Paolo has been with the company since 2006, running the Laundry business, but you have also been running food business before. Please, the stage is yours, Paolo.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I'm super excited to be here because there is really a lot going on in Laundry. I'm very keen to give you -- convey a little bit of my passion on what's going on. In today's session, we will cover 3 topics. The first one is about to give you an update on the market, the global laundry professional market. You probably are aware that a month ago, exactly one of our biggest competitor got listed. And I think it's good to confront and see how we position ourselves and what we can achieve in this marketplace, point number one.

Point number two is about a very exciting initiative we are working on for a while is a project -- a product initiative, not yet in the market, but I'm keen to give you a sneak preview of what's coming from next year. Third topic is very, very, very fresh. I think some of you asked earlier about M&A moving forward. And soon, you will receive a press release because as 1027, so very little time ago, we announced the investment in a start-up in Sweden.

So I will give you some color because it is a small business, but it is super exciting for the future. So I'm going to give you some color, some nuances on what's going to happen. You are the first one to hear about it, so feel privileged. Good. So let me move on the first slide. Here is the picture we have from the professional laundry market. as we presented in the previous occasion, we believe the market is roughly split in 1/3, 1/3 North America, 1/3 Europe, 1/3 the rest with a big bulk in Asia. In terms of evolution of the market, we -- on a historical level, we consider the market growing roughly 2%, 3% every year. It changes by year and changes by geography.

The last couple of years, objectively, North America has been growing a little bit more. But in the going trend, we believe Asia probably will grow faster because of the trends of urbanization, middle class and so forth. So that's a little bit the perspective we have. In terms of market share and cluster of segments in the market, we believe we have been growing faster than the market for quite a few years. and I will give you evidence of it in a slide or 2.

We believe we are good #2. There is an American company that is bigger. I just want to put a caveat an attention point here. In the number represented in the percentages, there are only comparable numbers to ours. So we act only in the out-of-home business, as Alberto was mentioning. We don't work on the consumer business, whereas some of our competitors, the American and the German one are reporting also turnover in the consumer business.

This is not what we do. So that's the first attention point. In terms of how do we see the market in terms of clusters, there is the huge machines, the heavy duty as professional laundry. We used to be there 20-plus years ago. We are not any longer there in that part of the market. Our core, our bread and butter is the truly professional part of the business. And then there is an attractive additional part of the market is what we call semi commercial.

So still out-of-home customers, but with a product that often is derived from consumer. Historically, we were not acting in this domain, but we are growing fast there. It's an attractive part of the market. So let's have a look at our 2024 numbers or perspective in terms of the business. So what you see here are 2 perspective on [indiscernible] Professional Laundry business. One is about the product perspective and the other one is the geographical perspective. On the product perspective, you see we have the traditional laundry, professional laundry categories, washer and dryers and additional products.

What I want to highlight for your attention is the 20% of customer care turnover we do in Laundry. Why I want to highlight it. We believe it's a strong asset we have. Consider we believe the average of the market is around 10%, 10%, 11%. So we are significantly better than the average of the market. We are working to accelerate even faster. And why we are so keen is because it's giving further resilience to our business.

And it's, by the way, typically in customer care across industries, there are higher margins, and it is the same for us. So by growing this part of the market, by this element, we are able to grow profitably our business. The geographic split, still, we are a company with a strong footprint in Europe, with a long history in Europe. But if you were to look at the picture 10 years ago, you would have seen that Europe would have represented 80% of our business. So we are rapidly expanding outside of Europe and the growth rate we had in U.S. and Asia has been very significant. So we are becoming even more resilient from the geographical standpoint. I told you earlier I'm convinced we have been growing faster than the market.

And to give you evidence of it, here, you have 2 pictures, one on net sales and the other one on profitability or profit evolution over time. I took as a reference, 2019, we were still part of another company at that time, but was before the pandemic. And then 2024 and rolling quarter 3 this year. What you can see here is that in terms of compounded annual growth rate, we did very well. This number contains both organic and inorganic. But even if we were to exclude the inorganic part of the acquisition of [ Tosei ], we would see more than the market growth over the years. That's the first point.

The other point I'm very proud of what the team has been achieving is about the resilience. You see during the pandemic years, 2020 and 2021, we only reduced by 10% the turnover and the profitability kept pretty positive. So overall, the message I want to give you with this picture is we have now a decent number of years of track record on delivering growth and delivering profit expansion. And this is our trajectory also with the new investment we want to do. We want to continue.

Now you heard at the beginning with the introduction of Alberto that one of the customer groups we prioritize as a company is the chains. Chains historically is the food chains, commercial restaurant chains. But in reality, also in laundry, there is a trend, a trend that have been appearing probably in the last 5-ish years of multi-outlet customers. So we call them also enterprise customers. So customers that are opening more than one location. Here, we talk about customers with hundreds of locations.

And I have to admit that this has been a major growth for us in several geographies, among which North America and Europe. So behind the numbers you saw earlier, there is clearly a strong contribution from this chain customer of laundry. Here, a picture from U.S. and Europe from some of our customers. Why this customer typically appreciate our value proposition compared to other suppliers, we believe we have a lot of assets that are palatable for these customer groups.

One is about customer care. The customers of the multi-location, multinational, and we can support them everywhere. They really look at the business as a return on investment proposition. So the digital offering we have is considered very palatable and then also in terms of running costs. So we can prove all the time that we can have a better return on investment than all the other competitors in the marketplace.

So we have a strong value proposition. So let's move closing with the first part of the presentation on the market and where we are and our trajectory. I'm very keen to give you some color on the new product platform we are launching from next year, what we have been working on already for a while. What you have here in the picture is a little bit the last 20 years history of Electrolux Professional laundry platforms in the marketplace. And we have more than 120 years in this market.

And I have to say we are proud to say that most of the innovation, you even see in the consumer industry comes from our company. Even a small thing you may see today. In your home, you probably have a washing machine that is spinning clockwise and counter clockwise. We were the first company in the planet to introduce it in the 60s in the professional domain, then port it down to the consumer. So we shape the industry, both for professional and the consumer part of the business. So what is this new product about? Zinc produced, so I will not give you too many details, a bit too early. But the key point of this new product is a completely new platform with a strong standardization, so fewer components. A big asset of this platform will be that will help us to reduce the production cost, so the cost of the products and will help us to combine the different modules to offer different value proposition, different solutions.

So in practical terms, we are going to able still expanding the margins to serve new customer groups. As information, as of today, we believe we are the clear leader in the premium part of the market. So when there is something that is a high level, high-return investment, probably a bit more expensive, we are the leader in undisputed. Probably we're not the leader in what I will call it the value part of the market.

And with this new platform, we believe we can really aggressively grow in this very sizable part of the market, still expanding the margin. That's for me the critical element. And as everybody would expect from us being the leader in innovation and sustainability, the products will be just amazing. The best productivity, the best sustainability, the greatest return on investment you can imagine. So we're very, very excited, as you can feel from my voice. We will start end of quarter 2, beginning of July next year. And the idea of the program is to continue throughout 2027. So we don't launch everything in the same moment. It will be also wise from management point of view, but we start in the second half of next year. So why we decided to invest now into this major project? There are different drivers.

For sure, it's -- despite the laundry industry is a rather consolidated industry with a few big players. We see pressure from competition. So we want to still lead the way. Alberto and [indiscernible] mentioned sustainability for us is not only the good thing on the planet, but it's also for profit. So people turn the profit, we always say about sustainability. And this product will help us to drive further the bar for everybody to follow.

And of course, we believe we can accelerate our growth. Laundry has been doing decently well for the last few years. We believe we can accelerate thanks to this product because of these new markets, new segments we can target. So very, very cool and exciting. So to summarize what is going to happen, one completely new platform. This new platform will impact mostly 2 of our 4 factories. So it will impact Sweden, [indiscernible], not far from here in Stockholm and in Thailand. And again, for us, it's really a way to future-proof our business, our profitability, our development over time.

Now naturally, with every new product we do, we strongly focus on digital and connectivity. So the new products will be natively connected. And as of today, we already do decently well on connecting appliances. We have around the globe, roughly 40,000-plus machines connected. And we want to more or less cover all our installed base, the future, but also the old one we connected. Why we want to do so? Well, the reason is very simple. Especially in the B2B environment, especially in laundry, if you have machines connected, you can reinforce your value proposition around customer care, around new business model, digital offering to the customer and so forth.

So for us, it is just the right thing to do to continue encompassing in the customer in this perspective. Then to close with the last flag on the new products. Already as of today, we are the best-in-class in terms of performances. So a machine from Professional on average is using 20% to 30% less energy than competitors, less water, less chemicals and so forth, and it is proven by many, many customers. With the new platform, we are going to stretch the limit even further. So we bring really the sustainability level to, again, e side of our closest competitors.

And this for me is the perfect hook to introduce to the fresh news I was telling you that is about our investment in a start-up. So we are investing in a minority stake of a company that is called [indiscernible]. [indiscernible] is a Swedish start-up. And the reason why we did it is because for us, it makes a lot of sense, a lot of strategic fit to work in the areas where the company has been working for quite a few years.

They are on the third iteration of their product. So what do they do? What is their business they do? They have 2 major value proposition. So they develop a box. You see a picture close to our machine in this chart. There are 2 elements of their value proposition. One is water recycling. So they have a water reservoir and they reuse, filter and clean the water coming from the washing machine.

So instead of what you do in a typical washing machine that you drain in the sewage, the water after a cycle, what they do is they collect the water, they filter it, they assess the quality of the water and then with a very intelligent way, they bring back the water in the washing machine. And they do it without human intervention. So you don't need to go be a scientist or whatever because the machine is doing everything by yourself.

So you know automatically that you get the best amount of recycled water that you could imagine. The performances are impressive. They can go up to 80% of water recycling in a usage of machine -- washing machine are using a lot of water. So you heard from me before, our machine already best-in-class with 20%, 30% less water than competitors. With the new platform, we will be even better. Adding this device, I mean, we are going to be virtually using very, very little water, which is fantastic because water is expensive because it's good for the environment, because you don't need to heat up the water and so forth.

And that's the first, I would call it, the short-term opportunity with this company. The other one that I judge even more exciting is that they are pioneering advanced technology to manage microplastics. Probably some of you are familiar, probably some less, but it's a big issue in the planet that is microplastics and the washing machine are making them visible. There will be regulations between 2028 and 2030 across Europe, California, Canada and other countries that are limiting severely the amount of microplastic a washing machine can discharge. So it will become mandatory by law. dates are not certain, but this is the trend, the feeling we have.

By partnering and collaborating with this company, integrating their solution in our machines will help us to lead the way. So we believe short term, big advantage on the water. But midterm, we have a major advantage or several years of advantage to any competitors in this kind of microplastictration. So small acquisition, still I'm very excited. So that's the point. Just to conclude out of this short presentation, I just want to convey a little bit or repeat the messages I said. So first, the laundry industry, maybe it's not a huge industry, but it's rather consolidated. It still is growing across different cycles, different turbulences. We've been doing well. And I believe we are really positioned very well to capture further profitable growth.

You understood that for us, everything is about sustainability that is, yes, the planet, the people, but also the profit because our customers are business-to-business customers. So these are customers that care for their bottom line, their wallet, et cetera. And then I told you about the last 2 things. So one, the new platform, very exciting, huge initiative. Many people have been working hard for long that will help us to enter the new segments. Again, the benefits will start coming from second half of next year. So there is still a little bit of time. And then this acquisition -- sorry, this investment in this start-up company that is exciting. It's small in magnitude, but in terms of potential and future fit is very attractive. So that's my summary.

Thank you, Paolo. We have a few minutes for questions to Paolo. [Operator Instructions].

My question is more on the organization. Earlier today, we heard that you're moving production to Switzerland and you're trying to refocus your staff to be more aligned with the current environment. But I'm thinking about [indiscernible] as a strategic fit in where this laundry market seemingly is heading towards more digitization, more front end, more chains moving in. Is that the -- is that where you want to invest personnel going forward? Or would it make sense over time to perhaps move some of that personnel to, say, more more dense areas where it may be easier to find digital competence and so forth?

So very valid question. So probably start in an adjacent point, Gustav, that is for us, UMB is a major manufacturing site, being Sweden, not the lowest cost country for us to remain competitive as we are, we've been -- keep investing in automation. So the reason why we can be very competitive out of Sweden is, I believe, it's probably the most advanced factory in the industry, what we have in DNB.

So the manufacturing part, I believe we are really in a good place there, and we can afford also having a big business in Europe, so close to the final market. What we highlighted is in terms of future competencies, unfolding a pathway where the future is going more to electronic software and digital, do we want to invest in UMB? And the answer is probably not. So we initiated already last year a major shift and focus of resources in lower-cost countries. We have an innovation hub and R&D hub in India.

And we are using these resources because, first, it's easier to pull the right talent, and then it is easier also to deploy faster the solution. And this is one element. The other element is probably in the past, we've been very conservative in our approach to develop everything in-house. And I think the world today is moving much faster in many directions.

So defining strategic alliances, take also this acquisition with this start-up. I think it's towards this direction for us to be more agile that we need to own the core competencies, own the last mile with the customer, but then we can use flexibly different partners to develop stuff. So I believe the future looks pretty positive in this approach because we are not any longer looking only on a small domain in a small city in Sweden.

If I can ask one more question. It's with this apparent change, especially in U.S. then from mom-and-pop shops to enterprises rolling out, it appears as if financing will become a greater need for your customers or a key selling point. Then on the other hand, maybe opening up for more asset-light recurring revenues from the digitization. But where do you see -- do you expect to be able to have to offer more financing or become more of a bank to your customers or your dealers to really take part of this transition?

So a very good question. So financing is an instrumental element of the value proposition for a specific segment, that is the laundromat. So if you take U.S., if you take Asia, some countries in Europe, Typically, customers don't buy a [indiscernible], but they go -- they have investor time, small or big, and they look for getting finance business and then they calculate the cash on cash and all the financial returns.

So the way we have been doing it so far and have been so far has been rather successful is we work well with external parties to provide -- to remain asset lean, if you wish, but then to have companies integrated seamlessly with ourselves to provide the financing component of the value proposition. In U.S., it's done by our major distributor and a couple of banks. We have another major part of our model that is on rental in Germany, where we do it with a specific bank that is integrated with our operations.

So, so far, I'm not saying that down the line in 10 years, we should not review our policy. But right now, I think with this seamless integration with third party, we are able to accomplish the finance value proposition without burdening our balance sheet with too much assets, and we are happy about being the balance sheet that is giving us strength for doing many things. I don't know if I've been clear in my...

Sure. Any other questions from the room? No one online either.

Thank you, Paolo, for your presentation. So next on stage is Fabio Satolon, CFO, that will walk us through the numbers. Please, Fabio.

So good morning to everybody. Very happy to be here with you today. During my session today, I'm going to cover 3 topics. First, I will give you an update where we are in our journey to deliver the financial targets. I'm going to give you some light and trends for 2026 tomorrow. And then I will give you an update about our bridge to reach an important goal that is the 15% EBITDA margin.

So let me start with our financial goals. Financial goals are confirmed. It's about profitably growing this business with a business model that is asset-light leveraging and keeping a balance sheet with a low leverage and overall, with a combination of profitable growth and asset-light business model, being able to deliver consistent dividend to our shareholders. Where are we in this journey?

We get listed in 2020, the year of COVID, if you remember. Our sales dropped over 20% this company in 2020 was still able to deliver solid EBITDA and cash flow. And since the COVID time, you see our development. We continue both organically catching up what we lost in 2020 and then with acquisition, being able to continue the journey to profitable grow this business. And on a rolling 12-month base, we see that we are already at 12% EBITDA margin. And this, I would say, is a considerable achievement considering in particular the headwinds we have faced this year, both about currency and tariffs that I'm going to touch in a while. The journey was delivered in Food & Beverage and Laundry.

Here our performance in Food & Beverage. First, 2020, Food & Beverage was a business we suffered the most. We declined sales close to 30%. But you see that in the following years, we have been able to swiftly catch up in terms of sales and turn in profitability. And now we are running above 10% EBITDA margin. Here in the picture, we see somehow a slowdown in terms of profitability, slightly slowdown. And this is mainly related to the fact that we are investing more than the year before. in bringing new innovation in the market. [indiscernible] a few minutes ago explained to us the big undertaking that we are taking to bring new cooking solution, high-profit cooking solution into the market. This combined, I would say, to a mix down we are facing in the food and beverage category is somehow keeping the development of the expansion of the margin some old. This category is cold.

You remember earlier, we were mentioning about Grandmaster acquisition. With Grandmaster, we bring on board a very, very profitable cold category and somehow this year performance related to the development of the U.S. market in beverage is somehow slowing down. Paolo and I don't believe I need to repeat more about the journey of laundry. It is impressive. Here, we talk about the business above 17%, being able this year to compensate and mitigate the impact from tariff, currency and still expanding the margin. Behind this, whilst in Food and Beverage, I was talking about mixing down due to the decrease of sales of cold beverage. Here in Laundry, we are enjoying a significant mixing up because within the product category, the highs, high profitable machine are growing faster than the rest of the range. I was mentioning about tariffs.

Well, tariffs have been a big for us this year. We have been able to mitigate most of the impact, but I have to say it has not been an easy journey for us. Tariffs are covering roughly 12%, 13% of our business in the United States. So overall, the business in United States is 25% of the group turnover, less than half is subject to tariffs. We are serving the market via 2 channels, for laundry via an importer in food and beverage with our sales company in United States.

To give you an order of magnitude, either paid directly by our sales company or by our importer on a yearly basis, the impact of the tariffs based on current condition is in the area of SEK 130 million per year, more than SEK 10 million per month. So big, big impact. But as we have announced in the -- also in the earlier call, thanks to activities that we have performed to reduce our sourcing purchasing cost, thanks to price increase that we have been putting in place in the market, we have been able this year to, I would say, compensate majority of it. Did we compensate it all?

No, because in quarter 3, we have mentioned that we have still a gap between the tariffs that the chain and what we recovered in pricing in the area of SEK 10 million and so far is SEK 25 million. But with the price increase that we have announced already in the U.S. market for 2026, the additional cost of tariffs will be fully compensated. The second important piece that affected our profitability is currency. We are a company listed in the NASDAQ Stockholm market. We are a Swedish company.

We report in SEK, and SEK strengthen against the other currency. To give an order of magnitude, we are really a global company. 95% of our sales are outside Sweden. So we report in U.S. dollar, euro, GB pound and so on. SEK strengthening has reduced our top line by roughly 3% and the bottom line equivalent. So when I look into the currency translation effect, it does impact top and bottom line value, but not the margin. Currency transaction effect has really affected our performance. On a year-to-date basis, it represents roughly SEK 60 million or roughly 0.6% on total sales.

An example of currency transaction is I go back to the -- our U.S. business. We are invoicing in U.S. dollar out of Sweden. Last year, $100 was SEK 110,000. This year is 10% less. So this is, I would say, the major impact. Two important piece. And here you see in the chart on your right, if I look at the 2 years in comparable term, same currency and neutralizing the currency transaction effect, you see that we have a business that is already at 12.5% margin.

And here is a good news because with the price increase that we are putting in place in the U.S. market and in the other market, we are counting to fully compensate also the currency effect in 2026. This morning, I believe you heard a lot about product innovation. Product innovation is a big undertaking from an R&D perspective, but also is an undertaking from a capital perspective. Historically, this group has been managing the CapEx in area of below 2% of sales. We had a peak back in 2020, '21 because we did the investment in the factory in Thailand.

And you see we are trending towards the 3%. This value will remain also during 2026, but it's not expected to materially affect our cash flow capabilities. And from 2018 onwards, I expect it will return to what is a normal historical level. A few words about our balance sheet and the way we manage it. As I mentioned, this is an asset-light business model in which we are operating it.

And not only is an asset-light, but you see we continue to improve it. Also in this, I would like just to bring to your attention, we talk about digitalization on the product. We talk about digitalization in the in the relation with the customer in terms of product connectivity Digitalization is also in our processes. And here, I would like to bring to your attention an area that we have been digitalized during last year and this year that is the area of credit collection where we have been standardized, automatized the process, introducing a tool where all the transaction manual activity that were done before by man transaction people to a digitalized relation.

And this has brought productivity improvement and faster collection process. This is a picture of our cash flow over the year. I would say that is a remarkable picture showing the capabilities of this group to generate profit and transform the profit into cash. Also in 2020, the year of really the COVID cash flow generation has been even stronger than the EBITDA generation. And strong cash flow means ability to repay debt. If I take the last couple of years, we have been investing a couple of billion SEK, mainly the acquisition of Tosei, but also for Advantis. And you see the speed that we had in reducing the debt. So a company with a solid balance sheet ratio, net debt on EBITDA around 1.2x and a swift repayment of the debt.

So I would say that when I look also into the future, the commitment to repay the debt, I would say we have a pretty sound debt maturity profile that we can manage relatively easily. And when it comes to opportunity to grow organically and via acquisition, we have already established good tools to make it happen. We have just renewed the revolving credit facility for 240 million, and we have tools to access the capital market for over SEK 5 billion. So we are well equipped to fund the organic and inorganic growth of this group. Last but not least, you see that since the listing, we have been respected fully our policy and ambition for what concerns dividend distribution that have been not only consistent with the policy, but also growing year-over-year. So now I have talked a lot about the past. It's time I start talking about the future.

And the future start from next year. So how do I look into 2026. First, inflationary items are expected somehow to stay. Expectation is that they stay at a lower, let me say, weight compared to the historical part, both for what concerns salary and other service costs. We should see a positive contribution from direct material. I should, but I could say we will see because we have been somehow already lock in, I would say, half of the purchasing that we are going to do next year.

And thanks to the restructuring program that we announced, we will see before inflationary item and salary increase, a reduction of our operating cost, both in terms of absolute term and in terms of percentage of sales. And within the operational cost, let me spend a few words about our R&D cost. First, starting mainly last year, we have been increasing our R&D cost of sales. Last year is a year when we started the major investment in Laundry. And we have a level of R&D cost on sales in the area of SEK 550 million. This year, we are increasing that amount. We are increasing that investment. We are -- we will end up the year in the area of SEK 580 million, roughly 4.6%, 4.7% in terms of weight on net sales. The expectation is that towards the end of next year, majority of our effort to bring both the laundry and the cooking new product to market will somehow end up in terms of peak and expect that we will enter more normalized level with an R&D cost value below SEK 500 million in an area roughly 1 percentage point below to where we are this year that represent a peak in terms of effort from our organ.

The second part that I wanted to give you an update is about the restructuring program that we have launched. It is a large undertaking from our organization. It is a program that is going to affect roughly 350 people in our group. The net in terms of decrease of people will be lower because we are going to read people where we are going to move the production on the existing side, and we will add new resources, as Alberto was mentioning, in particular on the front-end resources.

The total effort of this plan is over SEK 200 million that we have booked as item affecting comparability in September. 7% of this effort is in food and beverage, 30% is in laundry. Happy to confirm that execution is moving according to plan. We have already signed agreement with several people to leave the organization. And the 2 large, let me say, structural change in terms of footprint and production setup that is about the production in Switzerland and the production in France for what concern the high productivity cooking and for coffee have been finalized, meaning we have had the agreement with the workers representative, the local government authorities. So now we can move into the execution. So larger contribution and program moving according to plan.

And this is important because you see from the slides, the program will start to deliver material cost savings already in 2026 and more will come in 2027. So now I believe it's time to give you an update where we are and how we are going to deliver the 15%. What is different compared to the past? First, our starting point is stronger. We are now running a business at 12% EBITDA margin. And what is different to the past is that you see from the chart that more than half of the gap that now is 3 points will come from cost reduction initiative, the restructuring program that I mentioned and a normalized level of R&D spending on sales.

So we are somehow derisking, if I can call it in that way, the gap to 15%. And this is one part. The other important part is that volumes will be still important, but I believe you have heard this morning that we are bringing to the market really distinctive innovation in food and in laundry in high-margin product categories. And last but not least, when it comes to pricing, we expect to be able to fully compensate with price as we have done and we have been proving the last years tariffs, currency and inflationary item. So let me say, more solid, more structure and more ready to execute plan. Then at least my conclusion.

When I was looking to the slides, let me say I was personally impressed about our journey. If I think about 2019, I was here in Sweden, start working to prepare this group or this time was a division of Electrolux to become an independent group. During that period, we create the structure to be listed. We did not have communication, legal, group accounting. We did not have our own legal entities in the country.

So we have been investing a lot to make this working as an independent group, meaning also we have to face to be independent means more cost than before. We entered into 2020, COVID came, plus minus 20% in sales. But you see that despite all this we have been having an impressive development. More than 30% more in sales, more than 30% more in profit, generating cash flow, a balance sheet that is, I would say, super, super solid. So I would say, in my perspective, a remarkable development. And when I look into 2026, I look at the near future because 2026 is near future is tomorrow for me with positive eyes and confidence.

And because it's coming from 2 important pillars. We are going to get the benefit of a large cost reduction program, and we are bringing to the market high-margin distinct product categories. So very confident looking into tomorrow.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you, Fabio. We have a few minutes for questions. [Operator Instructions]. So please, Henrik?

Yes. So one question there on the bridge. What sort of market growth assumptions do you have in that number in terms of organic growth? And what -- yes, what part is helped by the new product launches?

I would say the market assumption somehow is in line with what was presented at the beginning by our colleagues. Short term, we expect somehow to be softer and the majority of the growth has to come from the new product that we are bringing to the market. And this is somehow the rationale why we have been working more on the cost side. I mean we are living in an environment. Let's look at our history in the last 5 years. It is more or less impossible to predict the market. 2022 was COVID. 2022 -- '21 and '22, we have the disruption of the supply chain, difficult. But what we can do in the existing market is create the condition to deliver I would say, not regardless, also in difficult market conditions, cost and new product, new distinct high-margin product categories.

Then the second question on the shorter term for next year, very excited to see the product launches and the result of that. But from a margin point of view, obviously, new products, higher profitability, better growth, we heard. But will it be another sort of marketing push, which will add to costs? And then also, of course, you have to depreciate the assets and amortize the R&D.

Two things. Together with the product investment, we are also investing in front resources to bring the product to the market. Alberto mentioned that also to present to explain the new feature, we will need different capabilities. So there will be also a shuffle not only in terms of quantity, but profile of the sales organization. So yes, we are investing also in front-end resources. Second, and it is included into this number. Next year, we are going to have additional depreciation, but they are already embedded here.

So just to clarify, will it be net positive with the new product launches?

Absolutely, yes. Otherwise, we would really make a wrong decision.

Gustav over here.

This is Gustav A with SEB, again. On the balance sheet, 1.2x net debt EBITDA Q4, as you said on the conference call, typically a strong quarter. You have a target on the upside, but not on the downside. Is there anywhere where you consider yourself overcapitalized and would consider to return some of that through buybacks or extra dividends?

Okay. First, we have a strong balance sheet. We are generating cash flow. The mandate we got from the Board and the shareholders is to grow this business. And we really count that with the cash generating, we will be able to find opportunity to further expand this business. At the moment, there is no in agenda extra dividend or other form of distributing, but our focus and our goal is to continue to invest in this business.

And on the M&A targets, the scope that you have at the moment for the leads you have, how big are they? Is there -- is there a scenario where you would go -- have to go to a leverage above 2.5 to acquire some of these potential assets?

Let me say, first, we don't disclose our pipeline, of course, but I would say that we are well equipped and I was mentioned earlier about our funding capacity to finance even more than the threshold is same. And we have also by policy with, of course, Board approval that we can temporarily go beyond the 2.5x provided that we have a clear path to the leverage below that level. But also in terms of funding capacity, you see earlier, I was mentioning close to SEK 6 billion funding capacity in terms of that capital market. So I would say we are equipped to deliver on it. We need, as Alberto was mentioning earlier, to get with more and large opportunities to get there.

Any other questions from the room? None? Then I think I would say thank you to Fabio, and I will welcome Alberto back on stage to summarize today.

Thank you, Jacob.

Okay. Thanks to all of you for having been here for listen. Hopefully, I got the target or the ambition that I had at the beginning when I said I would love to have you leaving this room with a clear picture of what we are doing, how we are performing and in particular, how we are transforming this company to bring it to the to the level and the situation where I believe with the server.

So we have been talking about this. I think ending up with the numbers we show you that first, yes, we have been investing. But now the investments are getting to a stage where we can start bringing to market the new product. And whatever we bring to market, thanks for the question, whoever asked if the net will be positive. We or next year in the year to come.

We don't even start a project. if with the new product, we are not improving the margin. It is the basic. And the other thing that I think is important, and I'm sure we deliver also to you is that it's not just a matter of replacing. This is an industry. If you look at the kitchen, there is everything inside of a kitchen, right? There are some -- nevertheless, there are some, we call it, unsaturated spots. One very famous is the [indiscernible].

And we know that is faster growing and why it's not in Europe, but in U.S., in Asia. But now we are bringing to market other products that are present. So this means I can sell this product not only to replace an old one, not only in a new project that is opening up, but I can also sell this product in existing installation or I can address customers that today are not buying those products. So it is opening up, is enlarging the scope and the target of our market. I think it's important to this. And the other comment I want to make is, let's be clear also about the program that we launched in September. This doesn't mean that the focus is not on growing business. Our focus, as Fabio said, is to grow business organically first, accelerating it with acquisitions.

But considering the environment, considering everything, but also considering that there is a clear shift in competencies that are required in service and in sales, in administration and back office, we need to upgrade our teams. It is important. If you look at the net, in September, when we published, we also disclosed the number of people affected by this program. And when we talk about people, we talk about people.

But you see that the net is less than the total number of people affected. Why? Because there is a competent shift that is going on inside of this organization. And with all these things together, I think we are really building a much more solid, not because it was not before, please don't get me wrong. But I think we are solidifying the activities that are giving us the possibility to continue the profitable growth in some way accelerating this profitable growth. And this is the reason why I still believe that this is the company where I spent all my professional life. I don't tell you the years, it's better not to talk about that. But it's a company that I love. It's a company that is in a beautiful industry. It's a company that is strong, that has been changing, and I can say so because of the years that I spent in this company, change completely the profile. being global and being global, having factoring facility in China, in Japan, in Thailand, in Europe, in the U.S., believe it or not, is important because if you remember the trends, we have been talking about globalization of our customer, but nationalization or regionalization of many rules imposing barriers. It is a company that has all the requisites to deliver against the target that we have.

And the main thing that is not on the paper here, but I really think that we deliver to you is that there are the human resources and enthusiasm. I think you had the possibility to see [indiscernible] on stage, Paul on stage, Fabio, who is even passionate about numbers. So you saw these things. And that is trust me, is what you will get talking to whoever is inside of this organization. And I think this is the base, and it is the strong driver that will bring us to reach the target that we have in our profitable growth path. So thank you very much really for being here the all day. I believe if there are other questions that you want to ask -- we are here. Otherwise, we can get them outside, right?

Yes. Thank you, Alberto. That concludes the program here on stage today. Thank you to all of you who are here, and also thank you to our presenters. And thank you also to those of you who have viewed us online. A recorded version of this day will be uploaded on our website later today. Thank you.

Good morning, and welcome to Electrolux Professional Group, the result presentation of the third quarter of this year. My name is Jacob Broberg. I'm heading up Investor Relations. With me, as always, have Fabio Zarpellon, the CFO; and Alberto Zanata, CEO. And as always, also Alberto starts. Please go ahead, Alberto.

Thank you, Jacob. Good morning to everybody. I would describe the third quarter of 2025 as a good quarter considering the context. The context is a context where the market condition are still not stabilized. There is still the uncertainty, in particular in the United States, and in particular, after the tariff announcement in July, the market in the United States has full of uncertainty and the decision, in particular, if we talk about chain rollout, a big project has been put on hold or postponed.

It is an environment that is clearly marked by tariffs and currency and that have been negatively impacting our business. Despite all these things, and that is the reason why I consider it a positive quarter, we performed delivering organic growth, delivering improved margin, delivering improve EBITA. Currency impacted for a 0.5 percentage points, so quite significant in the quarter.

It is a quarter where we delivered solid cash flow, operating cash flow. Also in this case, are continuing to invest. I mentioned more than once perform while transforming. And these are the quarters where this company is going through big transformation in terms of new products that we are finally -- we will finally start to bring to market from January 2026. But it's a transformation that is not only considering the investments and the new product, but is considering also the organization.

Beginning of the year -- beginning of September, sorry, we launched program that has the objective to streamline the operation, reducing the operating cost, but also has the objective to change the skills of the company. We are -- we launched this program that has an impact of roughly SEK 85 million in terms of cost reduction already next year, is a program that is impacting a quite significant number of employees, 350 employees. Even if the net, as you see is not the total number of affected employees. And why is that? Because an objective of the program is also to transform our organization. Next year, we want to move more resources after having invested so much in R&D and developing product in investing in the automatization of our factory in the digitalization of our operation.

Next year, we want also to invest to make use of these investments and to focus on the front end on the sales. The program, by the way, is progressing pretty well. is according to our expectations, and we believe we will be able to deliver what we have been promising. If we move about the market, I think I already commented the U.S. where you see that we are basically flattish on Food & Beverage, with the food still growing, in particular the chains. Chain business is still growing.

And I believe it's 7, 8, 9 quarters in a row that we are growing chains. They are not the big chains. They are the mid- small-sized chains. They are not big rollouts, but it is the replacement business, new openings or as I said, small chains, but it's growing. One comment is to Laundry. You see Laundry here down, but I'm repeating things that I said also in the past, here, you should read these numbers considering that in the U.S., we have a large importer that is a stocking the product, and the fluctuation of the inventory and the shipment to this importer are clearly affecting the number that you see.

The thing that I can say is that the external sales because we have visibility on the external sales of our distributor, our partner in the United States are healthy. We have an order stock or our distributor has an order stock in the United States, that is at the historical peak. So there is good business. And indeed, the order intake during the month of October is basically on the double level of last year. That was expected considering this number for Q3.

What is good and I'd like to underline is the trend in Europe. At the beginning of this year, we have been talking about Europe saying that we would have expected a slowdown after years of growth, in particular in the South European markets, in the Mediterranean region, reality is that Europe is still holding very well. Both Laundry and food are holding well. And we see also not only the Mediterranean region contributing, but also the Central and Nordic region doing positive. And I think this is important because despite the fact that we have a clearly global business, Europe still remains a very important part of our business with roughly 50% of the sales executed in this part of the world.

A few words also about the 2 segments, Food & Beverage. So Food & Beverage delivered organic growth. Food & Beverage delivered improved profitability and improved margin. Food & Beverage is also partially affected by tariffs and currency, in particular for what the beverage business is concerned, that is produced in Thailand, most of the product in Thailand and Italy, and the main market is United States.

Nevertheless, despite these things, I repeat, organic growth, improved earnings, EBITA and improved margin. With Europe being the main market, delivering the positive results, U.S. food, in particular, while we had a decline in Asia and Middle East and Africa, but that is -- again, is these are regions with many projects. And it is similar to the discussion we had even if not affecting the inventory, but the fluctuation of the order that can change the number pretty well. In that area, we are sitting on a good order stock, so we should be able to have the results done. Positive notice about this segment is that the order intake was positive for Food & Beverage.

If we move to the Laundry, that is the segment that is more impacted by tariffs and currency because a large portion of this Laundry business is in the United States. Organic sales are unchanged. So we have basically a flat development, with the order intake that was down, but remember the comment I made earlier is mainly because of this fluctuation. We already see this in the month of October, we are close to the end of the month, and the order intake is very good in Laundry, in particular, in the United States.

Despite the significant impact close to 1 point of EBIT due to the currency. The margin in Laundry in the quarter improved, EBITA in absolute values was more or less flat, but the margin improved. And this is significant in relation to the -- how healthy is the underlying business of this segment.

With this said, I believe we can get a little bit more into the details and Fabio, they're yours.

Thank you, Alberto, and good morning to everybody. As Alberto mentioned, in the quarter, we made an additional step in our profitable growth journey. Sales grew organically. We improve profitability before the provision for restructuring cost. Despite the headwinds we had to face both from currency tariffs, and by the way, was to continue to invest in product innovation and digitalization of our group.

From a geographical perspective, we continue to have a pretty well-balanced situation with Americas contributing roughly 26% of the total sales, APAC 16% and now Europe below the 16%. When it looks to the margin development in the quarter, we got a positive contribution from price, lower material cost and the operational costs were more and less in line with last year with a different mix, meaning we continue to increase the investment for innovation and digitalization of the group.

Thanks to this good price management. I'm happy to report that we have been able to compensate, I would say, not all, but at least the majority of the tariffs impact in the quarter. Few more words instead on the current development that continue to affect negatively our financial. And here, 2 pieces, currency translation and currency transaction. Currency translation affecting negative our top line by roughly 4.5%. And in value more or less the bottom line, but no material impact for what concern the margin. Instead, currency transaction do also here to the strengthening of SEK versus, I would say, mainly U.S. dollar and euro has reduced our, let me say, margin by 0.5 percentage point.

Currency transaction that as we have reported previous quarter has not affected just this quarter, but it's somehow a negative contribution we face along this year and then if I sum up the currency transaction effect on EBITA in the year-to-date data, we are close to SEK 16 million or 0.6 points in terms of margin.

A few more words then on the program we have launched to streamline our operation and improve the profitability. Total costs, as you know, was SEK 235 million, we treat it as item affecting comparability, partially booking gross margin, and this is the reason why you see a reported decline of gross margin impacting SG&A. The program is affecting both segment. Food & Beverage represent roughly 70% of the cost and the remaining of Laundry. So you see that is more in line with the size of the 2 businesses. Execution started is proceeding according to plan and we expect to receive material saving out of it. Based on current sales development already in 2026 about anticipated the SEK 80 million. They are equivalent to 0.6 point in margin and for 2027, where we are going to enjoy, I would say, the full contribution from the plan, we talk about 1.4 points of margin. So execution according to plan material contribution to our margin expansion.

A few words then on the other component of our income finance net was SEK 21 million, significantly lower than last year, thanks to the fact that we continue to reduce our borrowing thanks to the good cash generation. A peculiarity in the quarter, we have positive contribution to income from tax. What happened in the quarter, the income before tax was pretty low due to the restructuring provision, and we have some previous period adjustment that brought the overall tax to positive. If we exclude this, let me say, one-off situation, the underlying tax rate is in line with the guidance we gave in the past that is around 26%.

EPS was pretty low in the quarter, SEK 0.14 per share, and this is due to the restructuring provision. Without it, we are in line with the previous year earnings per share. Our cash flow generation continued to be solid over SEK 400 million was the cash flow delivered in the quarter, somehow lower than last year due to lower contribution from working capital and higher CapEx. A few more words than on CapEx. We anticipated an increase of CapEx, it is happening year-to-date, we are close to 2%. But I will say we see more CapEx in absolute terms and in percentage of sales coming in coming quarters this year and next year due to the investment we are doing in product innovation.

This said, it is something that we can manage and will not affect materially our capacity to generate cash quarter-on-quarter. Capacity that is supported by a positive development on operating working capital. We are definitely well below last year. We somehow temporary stop the increase -- the decrease, sorry, compared to June. This is a temporary effect due to some stock pile-up, due to production movement, particularly in Laundry.

Few last word on our financial position that you see the graphs is strong and continue to be stronger. So we continue to repeat that our net debt-to-EBITDA is reduced now to 1.2x. So solid group with solid performance and with ingredients to continue to profitable growth the journey. And with that, back to you, Alberto.

Thank you, Fabio. And as usual, some words about the quarterly events. And I'm very proud to report back or to inform you about the award, the product innovation award that we won. It's not the first time, but this year is important because it is in the U.S., first. And secondly, because we got these awards, thanks to the technology that we have been embedded in the Electrolux product, Electrolux Professional product and presented in the U.S. by technology that we got from TOSEI.

So from the Japanese company, we acquired 1.5 years ago, close to 2 years ago now. I think this is an example of how we've been able to leverage the acquisition. The TOSEI business is not performing as we were expecting in particular, on the food area, I would say, and nevertheless -- and it is not because the performance of the company, it’s because of the market conditions that are -- that have been deteriorated during the past 18 months.

Nevertheless, we developed the Electrolux Professional version of the Combo machine. Combo machine is peculiar technology where you're combining 1 machine at the washer and dryer cycle, you are probably used to have it home in some situation, in the professional environment it's only used in Japan because of the space constraint that they have there. And the big challenge is to have the 2 cycles in a way that the time is not so long as you probably has experience, if you had been using this machine at home.

The technology that we have in Japan is great. It works. And it was a great success also in the U.S. because the reality, space constrained, you have also in a country like U.S., if you think about the big city. So we got the award, is confirming our innovation is -- these are products that now we are marketing also outside the United States. In the synergy plan, it was only supposed to replace the external supplier that we use in the -- in Japan, we did it. It's already done this one. But now we are also marketing this product outside Japan.

So great things. Even if it is not here, we are also using the technology of the Adventys, the other company we acquired last year, we are embedding in the cooking lines that we presented last week, and we start selling in January, and we will talk about that next week during the Capital Market Day.

With this said, if we have to summarize the quarter, as I said, I believe it's a quarter where we perform while transforming the organization, we performed because we improved our organic sales growing organically. We improved the underlying profitability, the margin and EBITA. It is another step. I consider this one an additional step in our journey towards the financial target that we have is mainly driven by the large businesses, so the Food & Beverage and Laundry in Europe and the food in the United States.

We ended the quarter with a positive order intake for Food & Beverage. I would consider positive also the Laundry one, if I look at the number month today. So the order intake is still positive, it's still positive despite the uncertainty that we have to recognize and acknowledge in the market. And exactly to face possible downturn, but not only for that, we launched a program that is in the execution phase to reduce our operating cost. And as I said, clearly, it's giving us the possibility to be leaner, more flexible, agile, ready eventually for situation that we don't see in front of us today, but we could and we should be prepared for.

But it's also a program that is giving us the possibility to have a shift in competencies in our organization to invest in resources that will make use of the product that we develop to further accelerate the growth of the sales. It is a quarter also where we have been working hardly and we will talk more about that next week during the Capital Market Day, to prepare for -- to prepare the launches of this product. We had a peak -- we are in the middle of a peak of investment, both in R&D and industrial investments, so tooling factory lines, that obviously, they have to bring the fruits. They have to generate something. And these are the products that we will start selling from January 1, 2026.

With this said, back to you, Jacob.

Thank you, Alberto. Thank you, Fabio. With that, we open up for questions. Operator, please go ahead.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Hageus Gustav from SEB.

This is Gustav Hageus with SEB. Might I start with the comments on the R&D spend into the second half of next year. Could you remind us where you are at, at the moment in terms of R&D to sales? And would you think this business commence or if not, where you've been historically in that relationship to get some sense of what the margin potential uplift could be here going into end of '26?

Okay. Gustav. So the average R&D spending on net sales is at 4.5%. I mean average and the underlining average because it is higher, in particular, for what the business area, Food and Laundry are concerned. It is a peak, as I said, because we mentioned this more than once that we are renovating the complete platform of Laundry and the platform of cooking in Europe.

We expect that we will continue to spend this level slightly lower probably, also during the first part of next year, starting to bring it back to normal -- we call it a normalized level that is still high for the average of the industry, but it's part of what we do always during the second part of the year and going on into 2027. What's the normalized level? it's roughly 1 point less than what I said.

That's helpful. And if I can stay on that with the developments you're doing in the facilities, some with the new product, could you help us a bit understand firstly, if there will be sort of the phasing of the new versus old products, is there going to be a gap here of prebuying, do you think from -- based from experience as you roll out the new platform? And secondly, in terms of margin and the mix from the new products versus the old?

And if depreciations will be a factor here going to -- as you roll these new products from the new facilities out to the new lineup, that would be helpful.

Okay. So I don't believe that there will be so much prebuying of all product for several reasons. First, the first line coming to market is the cooking line that will come in Q1 next year, so from January on. And it is an important line because it's basically 1/3 of the business in Food Europe. It is the line, the highest margin, so we are relaunching that we are expecting a push of sales clearly for the product that have the best margin in our European product portfolio.

It is not only what we call horizontal cooking, so the stoves, but it is in addition to the stoves also relaunch of the Combi Oven with new features, and you know that the Combi Oven are high-margin product and the tabletop cooking. So it's all -- whatever is hot, let me say, in our portfolio. So it's an important part and we are expecting to have an impact all along the year. So to launch it in the beginning of the year is very, very important. And I repeat, these are product -- these are the most profitable product in our European portfolio.

They are a replacement, so they are going to replace the product that today have in production. The launch that will happen during the second quarter, that is the first batch of laundry is at 30% of the laundry sales. It's also important, it's partially replacing something that we have in the portfolio today, but it's also giving us the possibility to be much more competitive mainly in Europe again with a small capacity washers. I don't have to say that Laundry is high margin product category.

The third line is -- the third product that we will bring during the summer is again in Europe, and it is cooking, and this is a completely new product for new segments. So there are no replacement that will be only added sales in an unsaturated segment of the market. But I think probably I'm talking too much about these things because there will be a lot to say next week during the Capital Market Day.

Okay. But -- and could you just remind us sort of what the delta will be from the potential gross margin uplift then from these products versus I guess, more efficient production with the new line versus higher depreciations from whatever you have invested in the new lines. What -- is the delta positive as you see it on operating margins from this?

Yes. So this -- we expect this product to positively contribute to the margin expansion. Yes, we are going to have additional depreciation due to the investment we are doing on this product. At the same time, this will be compensated by a better other -- lower production cost in other items and better price and mix. So we expect a gross profit expansion and EBITA expansion all included.

That's very clear. And if I can continue a little bit on the nitty-gritty with the cash flow. Maybe you can help me sort out the discrepancy between the cash taxes and the reported taxes, both quite big in the quarter and almost SEK 300 million right in year-to-date. It seems like you're paying more taxes than you account for. Will there be a reversal at some stage here? Or is there anything I'm missing?

Yes. So this is mainly related to the provision for the restructuring. Somehow that has an impact on the tax and with no material yet on the cash flow. So temporary, we have been reducing the cash payment, but this one will come step by step.

So you should have a lower tax cash tax in Q4 2016 or how do I read it?

No, that all the rest equal, the tax rate for quarter 4 onwards is expected to be line with the guidance I gave earlier of the 26%. In the quarter, the tax rate was, let me say, even positive because, as I mentioned, due to the restructuring provision, the income before tax was pretty tiny. So we have a tax cost pretty small in the quarter. And we have a couple of positive previous period adjustment that brought the tax amount to a positive roughly SEK 25 million in the quarter.

This was temporary related to the provision for restructuring this previous period adjustment, the tax rate and tax impact going forward is confirmed in line with what I mentioned, the 26% guidance .

Okay. And -- but in general, then cash flow into Q4, it seems like last year at least was quite strong. Can you comment on the seasonality that you see this year for the cash flow into Q4?

Seasonality.

Seasonality of cash flow. Yes, if we go through the different quarters, normally, we have relatively quarter 1 and quarter 3 are somehow the ones that compared to EBITDA, they are lower in terms of seasonality, normally stronger in quarter 2 and quarter 4, and we expect also this year quarter 4 to be in that line.

Perfect. And then that brings me to my last question, on capital prioritization, 1.2x EBITDA now gearing if I read correctly, target is 2.5. So how do you -- I appreciate that you're looking to buy companies, but it's been some time now. So how do -- would you see that you prioritize between M&A, dividends, buybacks, further investments in organic growth?

We are still targeting to buy companies. So we are still targeting to make use of this cash to buy companies. So that is still our priorities. We have been working. I always said that it's hard to predict when it's going to happen. But still, this is a full-time activity, let me say, for some people, some resources in our organization. .

To be added here, Alberto. If we look at the past, this group since COVID has been able to combine acquisition, investment in product innovation, in organic growth and pay dividend. So let me say, we have the strength in place to be able to act on these 3 dimensions. And somehow, the trend of our net debt on EBITDA development is confirming that we have the ingredients to continue to perform on these 3 important aspects.

I think I will take 2 questions from the web. One is from Stefan Stjernholm at Handelsbanken related to TOSEI. If we can give an update on TOSEI sales margin development and synergies. And also you had a question about R&D cost, but I think you answered that before, Alberto. So TOSEI update, please.

TOSEI, we have -- we are experiencing 2 different dynamics. In Laundry, the business has been weakening, but it seems to recover a good level with the profitability more or less in line with what it was a different situation in food, the Vacuum business, that due to the fact that the post-COVID a season of large subsidies from the government and now the market stabilized on a lower level. We know and that we clearly see this because Japan is one of the few markets where there are statistic that we didn't lose market share.

Remember that we have roughly 50% market share in vacuum and 50% in Laundry. We didn't lose market share. Nevertheless, the market, in particular, on the vacuum side is smaller. So how -- what we are doing and the synergies are jumping in, in this discussion is because, in particular, on the food, let's talk about the food first. We launched the Electrolux produced product in the TOSEI business. It is with the Electrolux Professional brand, but it's going through TOSEI.

And I tell you that I experienced personally a couple of weeks ago when I was there, when all the products that are coming from abroad, like, by the way, for our competitor, they are typically tested by the distributor. In our case, we are adding a brand or a brand -- sorry, a mark where is tested by TOSEI that is, in some way, giving trust to the customer that this is exactly the product fitting the request of the market in Japan.

So we launched the food preparation, a lot of activities over there with the distributors. And these days, we are also introducing the Combi Oven. So from the business synergies point of view, we are doing the things that we said, yes, it's not super fast, but the Japanese market is progressing much lower than other regions. On the Laundry side, I think I mentioned earlier, when I was commenting the award that we got in the United States, we already replaced the external supplier that we had for the combo machine with a combo machine producing TOSEI and branded Electrolux Professional, we are also selling that product in the Asian market, in other Asian markets under the Electrolux Professional brand.

And we also, at least a couple of weeks ago when I was there, I saw the TOSEI dryers that have been produced in the Thai factory and that should be sold in Japan replacing the local production with clearly higher margin and higher performances. From the cost point of view, TOSEI is also part of our program because now we merged the 2 organization. We have 1 office, so we close 1 office. We have only 1 office, 1 legal entity, 1 system, sharing all the showrooms around the country that are many, by the way, in Japan. And so we are starting to see the benefit also from the cost point of view.

Then I have 2 more questions related to the efficiency program. One was from [indiscernible] Capital. What was the impact on the gross margin of the SEK 235 million in items affecting comparability. And how much of this amount was below the gross profit line.

And then there is another question from Henrik Christiansson, DNB Carnegie. The underlying gross margin, what was that margin. Those were the questions. Fabio.

So overall, the provision was SEK 235 million, roughly SEK 135 million was included into the gross profit. So the underlying gross profit margin, excluding this provision was in line with last year, meaning the 34.5%, to be said that when we talk about the currency impact, currency transaction impact of 0.5 points, the tariffs impact, these are affecting the gross profit. So the underlying gross profit, excluding these, let me say, items is expanding. It's expanding thanks to what I mentioned earlier, good pricing, reduction of product cost, mainly in the area of material.

Yes, we are not yet able in the quarter to compensate fully the tariffs and the currency, but we have put in place action in terms of pricing to be able to do so over time in the coming quarters.

Thank you. Operator, please go ahead if there are any other questions from the phone?

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Christiansson Henrik from Carnegie.

Yes. So a follow-up on that because I noticed they're on the slides that you said that you've taken action on pricing to offset FX. And I think you said, Fabio, that there was a SEK 60 million negative currency impact year-to-date, and you now said you have announced price increases as well. When do you expect that to go into effect?

The price have been already announced, they will take effect January 1 in some -- for some product categories. The last ones will be March 1. It's a matter of timing, seasonality, habits, let me say, in the different region. But during the first 2, 3 months, all the price will be effective, as I said, already announced. And we know that with this one, we will cover the gap that this year we were not able to cover because of the combination of the negative impact of tariffs and currency.

And a follow-up on that. So what is the total gap? So the SEK 60 million negative currency? And then is there tariffs on top? And do you expect to close that fully next year?

Yes. The tariffs is on top of it and with the action that Alberto mentioned regarding price, we expect in 2026 to compensate both.

And how much is the tariff impact that you haven't been able to close?

The tariffs, if the order of magnitude, just to give a sort of guidance in the quarter, meaning quarter 3 is in the area of roughly SEK 10 million. So it is negative -- this SEK 10 million is net of the price increase. So this is somehow the net. It is there, not negative effect but not really material when you think that we deliver over SEK 300 million in EBITDA in the quarter.

The next question comes from the line of Johan Eliason from SB1.

I have just a minor follow-up. You mentioned in Food & Bev that beverage declined in the U.S. How big is beverage of Food & Bev in the U.S. today? And what was the reason for the decline?

Okay. I go by memories because half of it -- half of the Food & Beverage business is, I would say, less than 1/3 is beverage and it's 100% imported, majority from Thailand and some from Italy. The frozen from Italy, the cold from Thailand. The reason is that it is the food -- the beverage business because we said the food, we grew while the beverage was declining, is that because it's 100% a chain business. The beverage business in U.S. is chain business. It is a chain business, and as I mentioned, most of the rollout, they've been put on hold. So it is a peculiar situation, the one that we are facing in the United States with the beverage business .

And is this -- I remember you had this big contract some years ago. Is that one big chain that is sort of behind most of the beverage business in the U.S.?

Okay. That was -- but it is already 5 years ago. So I have to say that eventually, I can expect that we are going to replace this product relatively soon. But besides that, now the beverage business, we have -- today, in the beverage business, in particular, the business we're having are many midsized chains. So some hundreds of restaurants, not the -- as it was in that case, the 17,000, 18,000 restaurant chain.

So -- but United States is full of regional restaurants -- regional chains with some hundred outlets. So it is still a profitable, healthy business that is -- beginning of the year, it was good, beverage, it was good until the spring, I would say. And then suddenly, everything was on hold.

And we discussed TOSEI say on how the integration and work on that is ongoing. How would you characterize the Unified Brands business today in the U.S.? Is it where you wanted it to be? Because you had some issues, obviously, in the initial year?

Yes. Okay. U.S., we had the record year in the U.S. was 2022. I tell you that this is a year where we will do probably better. So we are improving all the issues that we have been addressing -- have been addressed. We opened several places where we can host reps, dealers, customers. We have our own new place in Mississippi. That is a brand-new one that we opened in March. I think we are doing well, honestly. We are reestablishing the position that we have in this country growing, both the imported and non-imported products, so the locally manufactured, building around some strong brand.

So Groen, Randell, Electrolux Professional and Crathco. Crathco is the beverage. These are the 4 pillars of our strategy that is driven by brand and product. So hot for growing technology in Electrolux Professionals, the beverage leading market, leading brand in called Randell, that is the preferred choice for blue chips chains for what the prep tables are concerned. So I would say that now it's clear, the strategy, the way to go. And we have the setup that is able to support these things. We went through some years of difficulty, as you said, but I believe they are behind us right now.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no more questions. I would like now to turn the conference back over to Jacob Broberg. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much for listening in. And hopefully, I will meet all of you next week on our Investor Day here in Stockholm on November 6. Thank you, and goodbye. .