Earnings call transcript: Bang & Olufsen Q4 2025 revenue beats forecasts

Bang & Olufsen (B&O) reported its fourth-quarter earnings, revealing a revenue of DKK 680 million, surpassing the forecast of 665.5 million. Despite this revenue beat, the company’s stock price fell by 1.21% in pre-market trading, reflecting a complex investor sentiment influenced by broader market conditions and operational challenges.

Key Takeaways

• Revenue exceeded expectations at DKK 680 million, a 4% increase in local currencies.
• Stock price declined by 1.21% in pre-market trading.
• Record high gross margin of 55.8% in Q4.
• Strategic partnerships with Ferrari and Hyundai highlight market positioning.
• Concerns over potential tariff impacts and U.S. market uncertainty.

Company Performance

Bang & Olufsen demonstrated resilience in challenging market conditions by achieving a 4% revenue growth in local currencies for the fourth quarter. The company continues to focus on luxury audio products, leveraging strategic partnerships and a refined product lineup to drive growth. However, the full-year revenue saw a slight decline of 1% in local currencies, indicating areas for improvement.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: DKK 680 million, a 4% increase in local currencies.
• EBIT margin: 1% for the year.
• Free cash flow: €16 million.
• Gross margin: Record high of 55.8% in Q4.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Bang & Olufsen’s revenue of DKK 680 million exceeded the forecasted 665.5 million, a positive indicator of the company’s market performance. The EPS forecast was 0.085, but actual EPS data was not available to determine if expectations were met or surpassed.

Market Reaction

Despite the revenue beat, Bang & Olufsen’s stock experienced a 1.21% decline in pre-market trading. This movement might be influenced by broader market trends and investor concerns about operational margins and potential tariff impacts.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, Bang & Olufsen projects a revenue growth range of 1% to 8% for 2025-2026, with an EBIT margin between -3% and +1%. The company is preparing for its 100-year anniversary and expects to face potential tariff impacts of up to DKK 40 million.

Executive Commentary

Christian, CEO, stated, "We are now scaling brand-led growth," emphasizing the company’s focus on leveraging its luxury and timeless technology strategy. CFO Nikolay highlighted, "We expect to see a continued expansion in gross margin," indicating a positive outlook for operational efficiency.

Risks and Challenges

• Tariff impacts and U.S. market uncertainty could affect profitability.
• Operational challenges reflected in a modest EBIT margin of 1%.
• The full-year revenue decline suggests potential market saturation or competitive pressures.
• Potential macroeconomic pressures could influence consumer spending.

Q&A

Analysts expressed concerns about tariffs and U.S. market uncertainties during the earnings call. The company expects stronger growth in the second half of the year and is focusing on optimizing its retail network and scaling marketing strategies to mitigate these risks.

Full transcript - Bang & Olufsen (BO) Q4 2025:

Call Moderator: Welcome to Bank and Olufsen Full Year and Q4 Financial Presentation for twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five. For the first part of this call, all participants are in a listen only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. This call is being recorded. And I will now hand the call over to your speakers.

Please begin.

Christian, CEO, Bang & Olufsen: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. With me today is our CFO, Nikolay Wendelbuch. I will begin by outlining our key highlights for the past year and providing an overview of our business performance as it aligns to our strategy. Following that, Nikolay will take us through the financials and our outlook in more detail. I will then offer some closing remarks before we open the session for questions.

Please move to the next slide. Q4 highlights, a year of transition achieving record high gross margin, positive operating profit and strengthened branded channel performance is the headline. So let us begin by looking at our fourth quarter and full year performance. Overall, during this past year of transition, we have been focused on continued efforts to build a solid foundation for the future and ensure a resilient business as we move ahead with our strategic plans. In quarter four twenty fourtwenty five, product sales delivered revenue growth of 9%, which led to our revenue increasing by 4% during the quarter despite a decline in brand partnering.

This meant that we landed at minus one in revenue for the full year in local currencies closing the year in accordance with our initial outlook. We continued the upward trajectory for our gross margin, once again achieving a record high gross margin of 55.8% in quarter four, leading to a gross margin of 55 for the full year. The EBIT margin of 1% for the year is mainly due to an increase in OpEx investments as part of our strategy acceleration. Free cash flow ended at €16,000,000 The positive level was mainly due to timing and collection efforts at the end of the year. Looking at sell out numbers.

We delivered an overall increase of 4% year on year, largely driven by a 9% growth in branded channels, which covers company owned and monobrand stores and e commerce. Like for like sell out growth for the full year was fueled by growth in Europe and in The Americas, while APAC decreased by 1%. Our four win cities collectively reported solid sellout growth of 30% year on year and 38% for quarter four, with all cities reporting double digit growth. With our capital resource at €600,000,000 at year end, following the capital raise and the refinancing and increase of our revolving credit facility, the funding secured will be used for value creating investments helping us realize profitable growth. Please move to the next slide.

And now we’re moving into the strategy update. We have made positive progress with our strategic acceleration, while also improving our company and financial stability and we laid a lot of groundwork in 2024, 2025. We have four pillars under our Luxury Timeless technology strategy that are critical building blocks to help us accelerate profitable growth. These pillars are brand positioning, channel development, elevated product portfolio and partnership expansion. Our focus on brand positioning is all about elevating our brand and global awareness.

Our marketing strategy focuses on strategic priority areas: firstly, deepening our cultural relevance through global aligned campaigns that are locally activated, high impact storytelling and best practice three sixty activations that all contribute to commercial impact. Secondly, we are prioritizing data driven decision making to optimize customer acquisition and build even deeper relationships through personalization and scaled clienteling to drive long term loyalty. This approach is designed to strengthen our connection with our communities and international audiences and ensure that BANG and OLSEN brand is synonymous with timeless luxury. Our focus on channel development ensures a continued attention to elevating our branded retail network. Our aim is to drive growth across win cities by optimizing our retail network and expanding our presence in key cities globally, while guaranteeing our in store experiences and have true luxury feel in line with customer expectations.

Our focus on elevated product portfolio reflects our delivery of the best product experiences that are timeless, collectible and redefining categories. We continue to push the boundaries of what technology can achieve in terms of sound, design and longevity. We create iconic design and craftsmanship with superior acoustic performance across a seamlessly connected product portfolio. And this unique combination is what positions us as the forefront of luxury audio. Under this area, we’re also focusing on our Atelier program for those clients who are looking for pieces that are completely unique to them.

We will invest more resources into our product creation and engineering to ensure we can deliver on our existing platform and portfolio roadmap. Our focus on partnership expansion has particular emphasis on growth of our licensing partnerships, which today covers premium audio experiences for TV and automotive sound systems through the dedicated Audio by Bang and Olufsen proposition with potential to expand to wider categories. These four focus areas are of course underpinned by robust business foundation. We continue to strengthen the backbone of the business by improving systems and processes and ensuring end to end integration. We believe that combined with a strong focus on our people and capabilities and our work to shape a client focused organization, we will support our growth yearning.

If we can now move on to the next slide, we will look at some key progress points for twenty fourtwenty five. As mentioned, we have made positive progress and believe that we are now standing on strong foundation for our strategy acceleration. We are pleased to continue the uptick in gross margin to a record high 55%, having generated a gross margin of above 50% over the last consecutive nine quarters since Q4 twenty twenty two-twenty twenty three. We have also been improving the underlying quality of revenue through the optimization of our retail network, growing the share and improving the performance of our branded channels and reducing the presence of our multi brand network. In November 2024, we completed a capital raise with net proceeds of €217,000,000 which was a critical step for our growth plans become more fully realized.

In addition, by refinancing and increasing our revolving credit facility in May 2025 to €300,000,000 we brought our total capital resources to €600,000,000 at year end. Please move to the next slide. Turning to our first pillar. Reinforcing our position as a culturally relevant brand within the luxury audio market has continued to be a key priority for the year, as we continue to pursue strong collaborations with like minded partners. And as part of our continued partnership with Ferrari, we delivered a second special edition Ferrari collection in October with three new product collaboration and a made to order collection that creates an unmissable connection between Bang Odlesen and the motorsport icon.

Our partnership with the yacht maker Riva, which is focused on shared excellence in artisanship and performance, resulted in two exclusive product collaborations, the BioSound A5 and BioSound two. We have been very proud to have prominent F1 driver Charles Leclerc representing our brand as our global brand ambassador for 2024 and 2025 and to collaborate on a fast selling limited edition of our H100 headphone. Through strong collaborations with prestigious partners in the luxury sector, we meet one of our key strategic priorities to deepen and broaden our audience engagement while expanding our customer base. In support of this, we also delivered a series of locally anchored events serving as powerful touch points to connect with new audiences, strengthen existing relationships and amplify brand visibility in key markets. Please turn to next slide.

Turning to our second pillar, channel development. This year, we have been concentrating on retail excellence, ensuring our global retail channel are more intentionally curated for luxury customer experiences. This has meant progressing on our plan to close, relocate and open new stores. Key actions for twenty twenty fourtwenty twenty five have been the optimization of the EMEA network, while expanding our footprint across APAC and Americas, preparing for several planned store openings for twenty twenty fivetwenty twenty six. In total, we reduced the number of monobrand stores by 41 net, with this network now compromising three forty six stores globally at year end after 15 new store openings, nine uplifts, seven relocations over the past year.

We also continued the more selective approach towards multi brand channels and reduced the number of multi brand stores. With a strategic city focus, we are pleased to report strong performance in our Win City concept with 30% sell out growth total and 38% for Q4 alone. We have initiated the Win City concept also in L. A. And Tokyo and we roll out the concept to more cities in the future.

We have also been able to enhance our store experience through refreshed visual merchandising, improved store design and dedicated staff training across client touch points ensuring a luxury service. Our main priority for these spaces is to create magical moments and experiences for our clients. Through new openings and uplifts, we elevate our branded network. The opening of our new flagship store in Milan in the prestigious retail avenue Corso Matteotti and the recent upgrade to our space in Harrods London are testament to this. We are crafting spaces with meticulous attention to detail, timeless craftsmanship and showcasing personalized services such as Atelier ensuring that they are destinations that act as true expression of our brand and our values that will be a visit to joy.

For us, product excellence and longevity is a consistent pursuit. To reflect these ambitions, a range of new product innovations were launched this year. The H100, our new flagship headphone with our highest quality sound to date, were our first on the go product built on our own proprietary software platform Amadeus showcasing our software expertise. This platform will be critical for our future product pipeline. We also launched BeoPlay 11, the next generation of the successful BeoPlay EX earphones, BeoSound A1 third generation, a reimagining of our award winning Bluetooth speaker and BeoSystem 3,000, the third release in our recreated classic series, which gives iconic products a second life through restoration, remanufacturing and reinterpretation.

A luxury bespoke offer atelier was introduced, designed to cater clients looking for pieces more personalized and unique to them than ever before. Throughout this program, we give our clients the opportunity to create custom made products in collaboration with our master artisans in Struer. Clients can choose from over 500,000 possible combinations of materials and finishes, and we can create completely one off creations too. We wanted this special experience for our clients to reflect our legacy of unmatched sound and personal expression. We also continued our circularity journey, which is critical to our pursuit of Luxury Timeless technology, achieving cradle to cradle certifications for six products this year, including H100 and the BeoSound Theater, which was the first soundbar in the world to achieve this.

These results take us up to a total of eight certified products, which we are very proud of and will continue to focus on as an integrated part of our approach to product design. Let’s move to the next slide. Under our final pillar, we focused on powering growth through our strategic business partnerships and licensing and and in 2024, 2025, secured new important partnerships. Predominantly, our six year technology licensing partnership with TCL will be key for elevating the audio experiences in TCL’s premium TV portfolio through our audio Baibang and Olofsen proposition. Considering TCL’s wide reach as one of the largest consumer electronic companies in the world, we consider this a very impactful long term partnership and this is a positive indication of the scale and type of partnerships we would like to continue developing in the future.

We also expanded the Harman Automotive partnership to the Hyundai Group introducing Audio by Bangalusen in car proposition and are looking forward to combining Hyundai’s tech forward vision with our expertise in digital audio. Overall, we have continued to focus on further developing our technology propositions to expand our offerings also to the hospitality industry. Please move to the next slide. Underpinning the four pillars that we just outlined is a commitment to making sure that all these products and experiences are developed and delivered responsibly, not only to make sure that we are creating what we are creating has a timeless longevity, but also to reduce our environmental impact. This year, our integrated annual reporting aligns to the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards for the first time.

The overview of our achievements and path forward is comprehensive. So here we are delighted to also share selected highlights from our full year sustainability efforts. Firstly, for climate change. We continue to make tangible progress towards our climate commitments, which is anchored in our science based targets and net zero by 2040 ambition. We made measurable improvements across operations, value chain collaborations and product innovation, which led us to achieve a reduction in our emission across scopes one, two and three.

As part of this work, we achieved our 100% renewable electricity target a year ahead of schedule. Secondly, we advanced our circularity agenda with meaningful results across design, certification, innovation and advocacy. This progress supports our ambition to lead the consumer electronics industry towards a more regenerative future and it becomes an increasingly intuitive part of our work. Among other achievements during twenty fourtwenty five financial year, we were particularly proud that ’6 new products were cradle to cradle certified at bronze level, bringing our certified portfolio to eight products. And we expanded our ReCreated Classic program with the launch of the ReCreated BioSystem 3,000 turntable, continuing their remanufacturing of iconic legacy products to extend their lifespan and reduce waste.

Our overall goal is to create long term environmental business value through the integration of circular design within all stages of our product development. Moving on to the next slide. Moving from now from last year’s success to looking ahead to an incredible milestone. On November, Bangor Olsen turns 100, and we will celebrate a century at the forefront of audio luxury audio. To honor this special milestone, we will run an extensive global campaign that will unveil a new look and feel of the brand and will spotlight our excellence in sound.

We will curate brand experiences and continue to showcase our retail excellence while adding iconic pieces to our luxury product portfolio. We are filled with enthusiasm for the future. With globally resonant centenary campaign and the focused plan, we will elevate brand perception, grow awareness and turn cultural impact into commercial value. With the foundation already in place, we are now scaling brand led growth with a focus on meeting our audiences where they are based through our retail excellence initiatives, and elevated product offering, deeper customer relationships and globally consistent storytelling. I will now hand over to Nikolay to take us through our outlook and financial results more in detail.

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: Thank you, Christian. Now please move to page 15. Now let me start by taking you through our Q4 performance in more detail. In Q4 our like for like seller grew by 7% compared to last year. Growth was seen across regions and for branded channels like for like sellout grew by 8%.

For our wind cities sellout grew by 38% with double digit growth across all the four cities. Like for like sellout in EMEA grew by 5%. Branded channels generated sellout growth supported by double digit growth from our company owned stores. Sellout in The Americas grew by 20%. The branded channels combined reported double digit growth year on year across all product categories, while sellout in E tail declined.

Please note that the like for like seller growth excludes the California stores while they are included in the comparison figures on revenue growth. For the APAC region like for like seller grew by 6% driven by double digit growth of branded channels. In China like for like seller declined by 4%, sellout from the Munro Brand channel declined single digit. Across regions like for like sellout for The States category grew by 2% while Flexible Living declined by 2% and the Undergo category grew by 29%. This mainly reflected the change in channel mix towards our branded channels as well as the performance of our three launches in the Undergo category.

Please move to the next page. Reported revenue for the quarter was DKK680 million. This was an increase of 4% in local currencies compared to Q4 of last year. We are pleased to see that growth rates improved quarter by quarter throughout the year. The increase in reported revenue can be attributed to an increase in product sales of 9% while brand partnering and other activities experienced a decline of 21% in local currencies.

The development in product revenue was driven by reported growth of 14% in branded channels. The Stage category grew by 3% mainly driven by increased revenue from TVs and sound bars. Flexible Living declined 3%. Last year BioSound two had a strong performance due to the Foray collection which was partly offset by higher sales of BioSound A5 and A9. The Undergo category increased by 31.

Growth was mainly driven by the successful launch of H100, BioPlay 11 and A1 third generation. The decline to 82,000,000 in brand partnering and other activities was mainly due to lower revenue from co branded products and an expected fall in license income from HP though partly offset by increased revenue from automotive. We continued the planned ramp up of the TCL license partnership. Please turn to the next page. Now moving to revenue per region.

Revenue from the EMEA region grew by 9% in local currencies and growth was reported across all branded channels in the regions. Revenue grew across most of the European markets although Germany saw a decline in revenue due to lower market momentum. The gross margin was up 1.3 percentage points to 50.9%. In The Americas revenue grew by 3% in local currencies driven by double digit growth from company owned stores in ecom. The growth level also reflects some partner hesitance in The U.

S. The mono brand channel declined due to a strong quarter in Q4 of last year and uncertainty related to tariffs which is an area we are monitoring closely going into the new financial year. The gross margin decreased by 1.3 percentage points to 48.7%. Adjusting for tariff costs the gross margin was overall flat in The Americas. Revenue in APAC was DKK182 million which is an increase of 13% in local currencies.

Revenue from our Chinese market grew by 7% in local currencies and account for approximately 46% of total revenue in APAC. In late April we took over the online flagship store on the e tail platform Tmall. Thus we are now operating the two largest e tail platforms in China directly which we expect will improve the overall brand control and performance in the market. Overall for the APAC region the gross margin grew to 54.7% up 2.9 percentage points from Q4 last year. Please move to the next page.

On group level, the gross margin rose to a record high 55.8% and was up 1.5 percentage points compared to last year. The gross margin for product sales was 51.7% an increase from 50.2% while the gross margin for brand partnering increased to 84.9% due to a higher share of license income. EBIT margin before special items was 1% compared to 1.8% in Q4 last year. Please turn to the next page. Moving on to capacity cost and net working capital.

Capacity cost decreased by DKK5 million year on year. Looking at the composition of capacity costs, development costs increased by DKK12 million. The incurred development costs before capitalization ratio was 16.7% compared to 15.6% last year. Distribution and marketing costs decreased by CHF21 million and our marketing cost ratio was 8.7% compared to 10% last year. Administrative costs increased by CHF4 million driven by employee bonus accrual at year end.

Net working capital decreased by CHF39 million during the quarter to CHF216 million. Trade receivables increased by CHF79 million and payables increased by CHF132 million due to higher activity and timing of payments. The improved net working capital over the past two years is mainly due to a focus on branded channels and reduced inventory levels. Inventories increased by million during the quarter to million, which was in line with last year. Over the last three years we have seen an inventory reduction of DKK182 million.

Please move to the next page. Free cash flow for Q4 was DKK4 million and declined by DKK39 million compared to last year. The positive level was primarily due to timing of payments and collection efforts at year end. CapEx was DKK86 million for Q4 and mainly related to intangible assets and investments in new products and platforms. The increased level was expected and going forward we expect further increases and with more retail related CapEx in the mix.

Capital resources amounted to DKK600 million at the end of Q4 of which available liquidity was DKK350 million. This was driven by directed issue of net DKK217 million received in December 24 and the refinancing and increase of our revolving credit facility. Please turn to the next page. Before I present the outlook for twenty twenty fivetwenty twenty six I would like to give a bit of detail on how we currently see traffic levels are impacting our business. For the recent quarter we saw an impact of around CHF3 million This also equals the full year effect.

For the year revenue in The Americas was around 12% of total revenue. Our production spans globally with the majority of production in China and in Europe and a small share in other Asian countries. Looking at The Americas revenue, we can estimate around one third of the sales from products produced in Europe and two third produced in China. We do not have any production in The U. S.

We have assessed an approximate impact on an annual basis. We’re looking into different scenarios depending on the outcome of the current tariff negotiations with deadline this week for Europe and next month for China. We have estimated a gross tariff cost impact of up to DKK40 million which our outlook is based on. I have to stress that is unknown territory that we are navigating in and any assessment would be subject to uncertainties. We have mitigated the estimated gross tariff cost through price increases implemented on May 1 and June 1.

In addition our margin structures with our U. S. Dealers have been adjusted and these mitigations but these mitigations are however very uncertain as the impact on demand is unknown. And in addition the impact from tariffs on the global economy could be severe. If our estimation is correct the net impact on our gross margin is negative with around 0.5 to one point zero percentage points.

We’re also looking into further mitigating actions such as looking at our supply chain and our production setup. Now please move to the next page. So moving to the outlook for the financial year twenty twenty five-twenty six. The challenging macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties seems to persist and navigating ongoing change will remain a key priority for us. We will closely monitor the tariff changes and market developments in the coming period while staying focused on the next step of our strategic acceleration.

Overall, we are affected by higher uncertainty than last year when we published the outlook for twenty fourtwenty five. In particular in terms of tariffs and the outlook for The U. S. Market in general, we are currently seeing some hesitance and concerns from our dealers. Despite uncertainty, we remain focused on the execution of our strategy.

As we have previously mentioned our midterm plan includes an ambitious plan for store openings uplift relocations and closings in twenty twenty fivetwenty twenty six and we expect these initiatives to drive growth in especially the second half of the midterm period. Within our outlook we assume the launch of three or more products in the coming year. While being fewer than previous years we believe that they will be key drivers of growth mainly in the second half of the year. The outlook for twenty twenty fivetwenty twenty six is as follows: Revenue growth is expected to be in the range of 1% to 8%. EBIT margin before special items is expected to range from minus 3% to plus 1% and the free cash flow expected to be in the range of minus DKK100 million to zero.

With the proceeds from the capital raise we will continue the investment program of strategic execution. In addition to channel development we will invest further in our product portfolio, our software development and increased marketing spend. This means that CapEx is expected to increase to around DKK320 million to DKK360 million and capacity costs are expected to increase as well by around DKK150 million compared to twenty fourtwenty five. And before I hand back to Christian for closing remarks let me also briefly update you that in the year ahead we will be making a formal change to a reporting for twenty fivetwenty six. We will move into a trading statement approach for Q1 and Q3, which will of course still be supported by our usual webcast.

For the half year and full year results, our reporting will remain as today. Now back over to you Christian.

Christian, CEO, Bang & Olufsen: Thank you, Nikolay. So let me summarize our presentation today. We saw a strong Q4 with a revenue increase of 4% during the quarter, which meant we ended the year with a total revenue of minus 1% in line with our initial outlook. We were pleased to once again achieve a record high gross margin of 55.8% in Q4 and a positive EBIT margin. Our 4% increase in like for like sell out year on year was largely driven by growth in branded channels and we were delighted to see solid collective performance across our win cities.

Over the past year, we have made solid progress with our strategic acceleration including optimization of our retail network and building strong partnerships that will maximize our business and customer offer as well as our overall luxury brand position. Despite the need to navigate ongoing market uncertainties in the year ahead, we look forward to implementing value creating investments to keep building momentum. Our Luxury Timeless technology strategy will help us to realize Bangor Olufsen’s growth potential as we step into our next century on a strong foundation as the world’s leading luxury audio brand. I would like to thank our employees, partners, suppliers, brand ambassadors, customers and clients for their continued support and trust in B and O. And we’ll now go into the Q and A session.

Niels Ned, Analyst, BNB: Thank

Call Moderator: The first question is from the line of Niels Ned from BNB. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Niels Ned, Analyst, BNB: Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. So Nikolay, on the gross margin outlook for next year, you mentioned that tariffs is expected to have a negative effect of half to one percentage point. So would you say that’s also the absolute gross margin development that we should be looking into for the coming year, so a decline of zero five to one percentage point? Secondly, could you be could you talk a little bit about the phasing of growth for the coming year? So should we expect a slow beginning to the year followed by a stronger ending?

And then just finally, what’s the effect of the insourcing of your e tail administration in The U. S. On your APAC region? Thank you.

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: So thank you, Niels. So first of all, in terms of gross margin development, we are not guiding on gross margin. So that’s going to be my first comment. But the impact we are expecting from the tariff of between zero five and one percentage points, we feel still leave rooms for an overall expansion of the gross margin next year or this year that we’re entering now as well. The price increases that we have done together with our continued focus on expanding in branded channels as well as the products that we are launching during the year will also be launched at gross margins that are higher than our sort of general product portfolio on average and the products that they potentially are replacing.

So it’s our aim to see a continued expansion in gross margin. I think the main risk to this calculation around is that we don’t know where the tariffs will end. The assumptions we have is that the tariff cost will end in a place where the price increases that we have already implemented and the other mitigation actions that we have are enough. But if we end up in a situation where let’s just say we go back to 145 percent tariffs from China then we have a different situation and then we would also be much more tricky and difficult to see expansion of the gross margin as well. So I think really what’s going to come out of these negotiations between U.

S. And EU and U. S. And China is going to determine how we’re going to see that. But right now, we don’t know anything about that other than what we can read in the press.

So everything anything on that is speculations at this point in time.

Niels Ned, Analyst, BNB: So the DKK40 million is based on 30% tariff?

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: It’s based on the current 30% to 37% tariff that we see in China and with room to also cover a small increase in that. And in Europe, it’s based on the situation that we had on tariffs before the ninety day standstill, which is a 20% situation. So that’s how we are that’s what we have built enough assumptions.

Niels Ned, Analyst, BNB: Thank you.

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: Then around phasing of growth, we should definitely think about the second half of the year growing much more than the first half of the year, this is first of all Q1 is of course always a quarter of less activity. But secondly, the products that we are launching will come in the second half of the year or at least in the second half of Q2. So that’s what you should expect. I don’t think I can give more precise details to that. But that’s the expectations on the phasing.

Did you have one more question? E tail Tmall. Yeah. So Yeah. On E tail and Tmall, so we expect that we will be able to grow the Tmall business overall compared to what we saw last year for two factors.

One of them being that we are going from having wholesale revenue on the platform to having the retail revenue in our books. And secondly, because we feel we can drive more business in the right way. So we expect that to help the Chinese market come into a growth situation for next year. Then of course what’s happening in the Chinese economy overall may give us headwinds as well. But when we look at sort of all else being equal on Tmall, that should help us grow the Chinese business in this year.

Niels Ned, Analyst, BNB: Okay. Thank you. And just as a question on your future trading statements, do you expect to announce revenue in quarter one and quarter three? Or would it only be a written statement on the business development?

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: Expect to announce revenue. We also expect to announce earnings as well and a lot of the data points that you are getting today. But we will the written format will be shortened down to basically two pages instead of today where they are 15 pages written. So I think you will still feel that you are getting the same a lot of the same information that you’re getting today, but we are shortening the writing down and so we can expand a little bit in Q2 and full year on strategic developments.

Niels Ned, Analyst, BNB: Thank you.

Call Moderator: The next question is from Paul Jesten from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: Yes. Thank you for taking my questions. First, a follow-up on missus question about facing on the year. Isn’t it fair to assume that the new product launches you’re coming will be ahead of your anniversary in November, so it will be late Q1 or during Q2?

Christian, CEO, Bang & Olufsen: Yes. Maybe I start, Niels. We don’t want to give precise guidance on the portfolio development, but of course, we will make something exciting for the anniversary.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. Then about I don’t know, I just shoot from event here on the CapEx increase by about a 100,000,000 year over year. Can you put a little on this that the r and d capitalization, is it a company owned stores or where is the additional money being spent?

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: CapEx, yeah, so the additional money is being spent on both. So it’s both R and D capitalizations and more investments into our products. But it’s equally an increase in the spend on retail development. So we expect in the coming year to open and uplift more stores during the year. We already announced that we’re opening more stores in California together with a partner and part of that CapEx will also be with us.

But we also have plans in other parts of both The U. S. And the rest of the world do more stores. There will be a relative increase on retail compared to the levels today that are quite low actually. And then there will also be more investments into our backbone and our IT transformation, as Christian talked about, in creating this robust foundation and making sure our data and systems are integrated end to end from front end back to inventories and everything.

These investments are ongoing and will increase also in this financial year. And then finally, as part of our atelier setup, there will also be a higher level of investments into production tools and machinery in our factories and with our partners as well to make sure we can deliver the best products and the best quality to our clients.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. Just from modeling purchases of R and D spend, how much of the increase will be on the product development?

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: So I would say it’s probably forty-sixty.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: So, 40 on the interest shared on the other

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: forty-forty on intangible and 60 on tangible. That’s probably the way I would look at it because yeah.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. Then that’s more for for Christian then. Looking into to the coming year, you mentioned these action points. Which ones are the most essential? And you also said that you are now going to the scaling phase.

Will that mean that you would think that the place is now the base is now in place and then you have to to more scale going forward than the building blocks that you have already cleared up? And then secondly, on the last year, which which we leave, are you are there any positives or negatives versus the ambition you had when the year started on where you have delivered internally on the plans and where you still have to do or are behind the plans?

Christian, CEO, Bang & Olufsen: Okay. Thank you, Paul. When it comes to the three pillars we talk about, it is marketing, it is product and it is retail. And they are all important. And when we get them right, we see that in the WinCity execution.

We have good results from that with 38% now in this quarter and 30% for the full year. And when we look at the even more detailed data, it confirms that that is working. But we need to get all of them working. And we are working on a new marketing strategy that is containing like I said much more global brand building, which is culture relevant and that is also going to be executed locally. Like I also said much more data driven.

We have been drilling into our data and into our target audiences and the segmentation of those in much more detail. So we know them much better and we know how we become culturally relevant for them. Also like Nikolay alluded to on the IT investments, CRM systems and clienteling systems, we know that that is working when we do that right. So I don’t think you can single one or the other out. We need to do them collectively in a good way.

But it’s for sure that we have, I think, a good opportunity in the marketing and creating awareness. The stores obviously you have seen. We have rolled out new Bond Street with a new Culture store. We have upgraded Harrods opened I think two weeks ago with already good results. We have done Milan as well.

We have done Seoul as well. We had a pop up in the Zurich Airport as well. And obviously this retail culture store rollout will continue and is giving us the opportunity to express what the brand and what the company is all about by sharing the heritage story, by sharing the craftsmanship story, showing the acoustical capabilities that we have, the Atelier capabilities that we have and create a completely different relation with our clients where we get much closer to them. So all of this together is helping to drive the growth. And of course the product portfolio as well is we invest a lot into that as well.

And of course we have news coming out on the portfolio side as well. They’re all important, Paul. With regard to your second question on last year, like we said, it is a transition year where we have strengthened our foundation and what we stand on. And of course, there are surprises like the tariffs and other things that we have always had that I think throughout our time here. And I think there will continue to be surprises, but I think it’s up to us and the ability for us to mitigate them and deal with them as they come, which of course also includes tariffs.

But I feel that the strategy that we put in place, backbone, the foundation that we’re building is stronger I think than ever before and should also make us more resilient for the future. What I’m extremely proud about is obviously the products that we’re doing and the passion from the people that are working with us not only within Bang and Olufsen, but also our partners and our clients as well. There is an enormous love for the brand in the world and among our partners. And many of them are doing very well also when they are copy pasting what we are doing in the wind cities. So we’re full of excitement around that.

And obviously, if you look at this year now getting ready for the one hundred year anniversary, it’s amazing.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: And on the market structure, competition in the market, Harman, Samsung were out acquire Boston workings and a lot of other brands in May. This consolidation of a lot of brands over on the Harmon side, is that impacting your way of thinking or how you have to position yourself thinking about scale benefits here on the development and production? Or are you just following the strategy and then say it’s more on your side to deliver than looking at what’s happening around you?

Christian, CEO, Bang & Olufsen: So obviously, we’re aware of what is happening and we’re following it and learning from it. We feel, however, that we have a good, solid strategy with a lot of opportunity. And I think it’s very difficult for any other brand to copy what we are doing. I guess if you take the retail network, they don’t have a retail network. They don’t have the same they don’t can’t create the same consistent experiences out in the world.

They don’t have a same portfolio breadth and width that we have. So if we get our customers to fall in love with us, which is what we are of course aiming to do, we can serve them in many more places I think than the other brands that you are referring to. But of course, we keep an eye on that and we may have to fine tune some pieces of our strategy, but there’s nothing at this point in time that we see that forces us to change our thinking.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. And then the last one just now. The price increases you had in the in The US on June 1, has that resulted in stores being empty in the last month? Or have you seen any changes to traffic for the stores?

Christian, CEO, Bang & Olufsen: If you look at sell out, that has continued to actually be positive. But obviously, when we look at individual products, there are different impacts on different products as such. And then what we see is of course also the dealers are free to set the price and of course they can continue to sell and they have had contracts in place and orders in place. But there is a hesitancy to replenish from our partners as well. You don’t want to end up replenishing in the wrong time, because if the tariff is gone tomorrow and then you have replenished at this point in time then obviously paid too much for it.

So we are cautious in that and then some of our partners of course are as well. But The U. S. Strategy as such, we believe that if you look at long term, California is a great opportunity. Florida, Miami is a great opportunity for us and a few other places as well.

So we will continue to execute on that. But should it get worse, we also have other places, other countries, other cities that we can turn to and accelerate in.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. I’ll step back and see if there are other questions from others. I’m going to the queue again.

Call Moderator: And the next question is from, Nils Lipp again from BNP. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Niels Ned, Analyst, BNB: Hi. Christian, perhaps you could talk a little bit about the current consumer sentiment in Europe and North America given the geopolitical situation. What’s the footfall like in your stores? And could you also talk about what’s going to be the effect of store closings in the coming here in fiscal twenty twenty six? Are there still multi brand stores where you need to exit from?

Or is that largely done by now?

Christian, CEO, Bang & Olufsen: So on footfall, generally speaking, I think everybody is seeing a decline in footfall. And in the stores some of our stores, of course, we have also declining footfall. But the way that we are working with our clients now and the experiences that we provide, we actually see that the basket sizes are going up and the conversion rate is going up. With the marketing and the increased marketing and the global marketing efforts that we’re going to put in place, the primary goal of that is of course to increase footfall and increase awareness, because we know when we get them to the store that we actually convert successfully and there’s a high take rate of our offerings. So I think we’re also in a better position being in the luxury space than being in the consumer electronics space comparing with that industry.

We believe we are more resilient. With regard to the store closures, there will be some more stores for sure closing, but we are more excited about now on how we will accelerate the rollout of the new stores, right? So the retail plan for expansion upgrades and store relocations is what excites us. And there will be some more that will close. Maybe Nikolay will give you a more precise number if you want to share that, but we have some in the target of that are not performing.

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: I can just add that there will be store closures in the coming year as well. It will not be as many as in the year we just ended. So it will probably be a little less than half of that number.

Niels Ned, Analyst, BNB: Okay. Thank you.

Call Moderator: And now we have a follow-up from Paul Yasten from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: Yes. Thank you. Coming to the royalty part of the business, you talk about continued ramp down of HP and ramp up of the TCL. How should we look at the average or the combined number of of of those two? Should we see it being stable versus last year when we look at 25%, 26%?

Yes. Aggregated?

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: Yes, aggregated. So when we look at the license business alone, so the pure license part of that segment, then it’s our assumption that they will net out with each other sort of the HP loss next year and the TCL gain will be sort of more or less a zero in 2025, 2026. And then hopefully from 2026, 2027, we will start to see growth again.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: And when you say that Hyundai is going to an auto buy in the future, is that having a material impact on the average sales prices per unit sold?

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: Per unit sold, I think the impact will be slightly negative per unit, but I honestly cannot recall exactly. So maybe I can come back on that one.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: So you will get less than you did on the Hormann

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: Yeah. It is part of the Harman agreement.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: I thought that moving to audio by B and O should increase because you have more software components and so on.

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: Yes. But it’s from a brand perspective, indeed it’s the lowest tier in our brand hierarchy. But let me come back on that one. I have to check up on the unit sales.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. And then the final one for me is the U. S. Dollar impact. It’s clearly, on one hand, you are gaining from a softer U.

S. Dollar because you’re sourcing in dollar. But as Chinese currency is more or less pegged to the dollar, should we expect that they will in case that continues, should they then neutralize each other?

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: I think it’s a good question. It’s hard to speculate So of course, from a profit perspective, when the dollar is decreasing in value, our cost of goods sold is of course coming in at a lower level. But our sort of net exposure is higher in U. S.

Dollar than it is on the Chinese renminbi.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: Not if you look at your note in the report, then it’s more or less the same impact by a change of 5% when you talk about earnings.

Nikolay Wendelbuch, CFO, Bang & Olufsen: Yeah. So so the impact on earnings from the US dollar is is is higher.

Paul Jesten, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. Yeah. I missed the second part of it. So that’s all for me. Thanks, Paul.

Call Moderator: As there are no further questions at this moment, I will hand it back to the speakers for closing remarks.

Christian, CEO, Bang & Olufsen: Yes. Thank you, everybody, for joining today. Thank you for all your questions as well. If you have any additional questions or information you need, don’t hesitate to come back to our IR department. And with that, I wish you all a good day and a great summer.

Thank you very much for joining.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.