Earnings call transcript: Fiskars Q3 2025 sees growth in Vita BA, EBITDA narrows

Fiskars Group reported its third-quarter 2025 earnings, highlighting a 4.1% increase in net sales, driven by an 8.2% growth in the Vita Business Area. Despite this, the company’s comparable EBITDA decreased by €10.4 million year-over-year, and cash flow was negative at €10.2 million. The stock price saw a modest increase of 0.81%, reflecting cautious investor sentiment amid mixed financial results. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains strong dividend credentials with a current yield of 6.84% and has raised its dividend for 6 consecutive years. InvestingPro subscribers have access to 10+ additional insights about Fiskars’ financial health and market position.

Key Takeaways

• Vita Business Area experienced significant growth of 8.2%.
• Comparable EBITDA dropped by €10.4 million year-over-year.
• Cash flow remained negative at €10.2 million.
• Stock price increased by 0.81% in pre-market trading.
• High net debt/EBITDA ratio of 3.7x, above the target of 2.5x.

Company Performance

Fiskars Group’s overall performance in the third quarter of 2025 showed a mixed picture. While the company achieved a 4.1% increase in net sales, driven by robust growth in the Vita Business Area, it faced challenges with a decline in comparable EBITDA and negative cash flow. The Fiskars Business Area saw a slight decline of 0.9%, which the company attributed to ongoing production curtailments and inventory reduction efforts.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: Grew by 4.1% year-over-year.
• Comparable EBITDA: €13.9 million, down €10.4 million YoY.
• Gross Margin: €46.7 million, decreased by 140 basis points.
• Net Debt/EBITDA: 3.7x, above the target of 2.5x.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Fiskars’ stock price increased by 0.81%, moving closer to the lower end of its 52-week range of 12.02 to 16.4. InvestingPro analysis indicates the stock is currently trading in oversold territory based on RSI metrics, with relatively low price volatility. The modest rise reflects a cautiously optimistic sentiment among investors, influenced by strong growth in key business areas and successful price increases despite financial challenges. The company’s overall financial health score on InvestingPro stands at "FAIR," with particularly strong ratings in cash flow management.

Outlook & Guidance

Fiskars narrowed its 2025 comparable EBITDA guidance to €90-100 million, expecting results at the lower end of this range. The company plans to introduce new long-term financial targets at its Capital Markets Day in the first half of 2026. Strategic initiatives include continued focus on inventory reduction and completing the legal entity separation by Q1 2026.

Executive Commentary

CEO Jyri Luomakoski emphasized the need to address inventory issues, stating, "It is not acceptable from my perspective to see inventory numbers as we currently have, and that’s something we need to fix." CFO Jussi Siitonen highlighted the importance of reversing negative trends: "More important than how much we are now coming down is to turn the trend."

Risks and Challenges

• High net debt/EBITDA ratio remains a concern, impacting financial flexibility.
• Production curtailments and furloughs could affect supply chain efficiency.
• Complex tariff environment may pose challenges to cost management.
• Negative cash flow indicates potential liquidity issues.
• European market caution could limit growth opportunities.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on inventory reduction efforts and the complex tariff situation. The company reiterated its commitment to optimizing cash flow while balancing profitability goals. Growth in the Gerber brand was noted as a positive development, with executives working to improve the net debt/EBITDA ratio.

Full transcript - Fiskars Oyj Abp (FSKRS) Q3 2025:

Essi Lipponen, Director of Investor Relations, Fiskars Group: Hello and welcome to Fiskars Group’s Q3 results webcast. My name is Essi Lipponen and I’m the Director of Investor Relations. I’m here with our President and CEO, Jyri Luomakoski, and our CFO, Jussi Siitonen.

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: Hello.

Essi Lipponen, Director of Investor Relations, Fiskars Group: Here is our agenda for this webcast. Jyri will start with key takeaways of the quarter. After that, Jussi will walk us through the financials, and then back to Jyri for business area-specific performance and guidance. After the presentation, we will have plenty of time for your questions. We will take questions both through the phone line and through the chat. You can type in your questions in the chat already during the presentation. Before diving deeper into Q3, I still wanted to highlight the news that we shared last week. Jyri Luomakoski has been appointed as the President and CEO of Fiskars Group following his interim role in the same position. With this piece of information, I will hand over to you, Jyri.

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: Thank you, Essi. It’s a pleasure being here. If the numbers would be better, the pleasure would be even bigger. Let’s go into the quarter. Key takeaways: some things went well and some clearly less good. If we start with the positive ones, our net sales turned to growth, and this was very much driven by several of our Vita brands, actually most of our Vita brands. Vita grew in Q3 in the magnitude of 8%. The other positive thing is that we had actually a solid growth in the U.S. The market, which has been in some kind of a turmoil as a consequence of the tariffs, consumers becoming uncertain, what’s happening there. It seems that our value proposition to the consumers has been such that it’s continued to appeal, and we’ve had good development there.

What didn’t go well is certainly the decline of our comparable EBITDA in the quarter, and this is much driven by our additional costs in the supply chain, and many of them are self-inflicted. Why? Last year, the inventories started to grow, and that was still happening in the beginning of this year in our BA Vita. We started very determined actions to take down the inventory levels by curtailing production. As a consequence, when you curtail production, your supply chain costs are partly fixed, and there is less volume to absorb those costs. It was a kind of a premeditated action from our side to prefer cash flow and go into 2026 without too much of excess baggage from the inventories.

I will soon come back when we get to the BA updates, but in our Fiskars business area, the innovation pipeline actually over the last year and a half or so has been more than doubled, and that’s very important to stay relevant to the consumers, but soon getting back to that. As a consequence of this, we specified actually our guidance. Comparable EBITDA range was narrowed to $90 million to $100 million from the $90 million to $110 million. Currently, as we see the market picture, that is pointing us to the lower end of that range for the comparable EBITDA for 2025. Handing over to Jussi, please.

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Thank you, Jyri, and hello everyone. I continue with this positive news, what we had in Q3. By top line growth, solid 4.1% growth, so that Vita was up 8.2%, and then Fiskars BA came down slightly, 0.9% negative there. Actually, this is the first quarter since Q2 2022 when we were able to deliver this kind of mid-single digit solid growth. There are a couple of good news also where this growth is coming. The fundamentals are in place. It was very broad-based. If we take our top 15 countries, which represent more than 90% of our sales, 12 out of 15 countries were growing in Q3. Also, same for brands. If we take our top 12 brands, 97% of sales, 10 out of 12 brands were also growing in Q3. It was very broad-based. EBITDA $13.9 million came down $10.4 million from last year for two main reasons.

Jyri already mentioned the supply chain issue, what we have there of under-absorption of fixed cost when it comes to our production volumes. Another one is our SG&A cost. When it comes to SG&A part, it’s mainly phasing between Q3 and Q4. On gross margin, $46.7 million, it was down 140 basis points from last year, so that Vita was down 380 basis points, 3.8% at this point there. Fiskars BA was actually up 110 basis points. On cash flow, and I will go a bit deeper to that after a couple of slides, it was up from last year, roughly $7 million, but still negative of $10 million. If we dive a bit deeper about this EBITDA bridge here and where the differences from last year were coming from. As said, group was down this $10.4 million, so that Vita was down 7.5%, and Fiskars was down $1 million.

The rest is from other operations there. Focusing first what we have here on the right, i.e. Fiskars BA. You can see that underlying gross margin was quite significantly up there and only partially offset by tariffs. The actions we have put in place, as we said after Q2, are now impacting positive results there and are mitigating the tariffs impacts in Fiskars BA. What I mentioned already about SG&A, you can see here. Fiskars BA, SG&A slightly up versus last year, but that’s also mainly phasing. On the middle, you can see Vita’s bridge, which is down to $7.5 million, as I said. Here you can see the impact of the supply chain challenge what Jyri explained. That was one biggest big driver there.

Also in Vita, it’s mainly SG&A phasing what we have there, showing quite strong negative numbers in Q3, but we assume, based on what we have seen, that that will be somewhat offset in Q4. Overall, when we are talking about SG&A here, I would say that year-to-date SG&A, which is flat versus last year, is a better proxy for a full year than just looking at our Q3 numbers. Of course, group, as a summary of those two, BA is down this 10.4%, so that even at the group level, our underlying gross margin was improving, but as a total, it was more than offset by those tariffs. Moving to cash flow, as I said, cash flow was negative $10.2 million here. Even though it improved from last year, it was still negative. This is the topic we are not very happy with.

The actions we have been putting in place, or already put in place, Jyri also explained here, are the ones we are focusing on now also for the rest of the year, 2026, to get cash flow back on track. Here you can see the impact. I would focus more on year-to-date cash flow here to avoid this kind of seasonal volatility. The challenge we have is well illustrated here. Inventory is up some $46 million, whilst last year for the same first nine months period, it was down similar type of numbers. We had significant delta, negative delta there when it comes to our inventory situation. Quite naturally, being a component of net debt and EBITDA, when net debt continued increasing due to this negative cash flow, as a main single reason there, and that we are behind last year with EBITDA.

The fact is that net debt/EBITDA went up from last year, being now 3.7x. Our target maximum 2.5x is still valid, and we remain committed to this target. This is one example why we have initiated those actions to mitigate inventory inflow and make sure that we get back on track with this net debt/EBITDA. With that, giving back to you, Jyri, on VAs.

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: Thank you, Jussi. Briefly on our two business areas, starting with Vita, which is approaching its annual high season, which is the fourth quarter. Here we’ve seen, as earlier mentioned, a broad-based net sales growth. If 10 out of the 12 top brands are growing, I think we can call it broad-based and geographically also broad-based. It’s not just one market which is booming and the others not performing. The inventory-related actions we’ve touched quite much upon. When we look at the growth, and Jussi mentioned it’s several years back when the group was reporting this magnitude of growth numbers, I think it’s over two years, you need to look back till you saw a growth quarter in Vita. This is extremely important for us driving our performance that we have the underlying growth.

I’ve used a kind of a comparison or parallel to steer a ship that does not have any propulsion is very difficult, and the same applies to a company, growth being kind of the propulsion for the business too. Actions that we started to look upon in the summer, already recognizing the inventory levels, that the only way to solve the two big inventory issues is really to curtail the inflow and, of course, start to boost the outflow. When you look at the comparable EBITDA margin, really the big delta is coming from the supply chain aspect and the phasing-related SG&A. The underlying, preempting maybe a very logical question that would be arising out of the numbers, the underlying gross margin or in terms of pricing, we do not see anything that would be alarming us, and that’s extremely important. When we have the propulsion, i.e.

growth, and the brands are loved by the consumers, then I think we have the ingredients to improve our position. That’s what the guidance also implies. A few highlights, leveraging our assets, production assets in the more complicated glass production, which economically, industrial logic is more of a process industry logic. Royal Copenhagen, one of our biggest brands, a very successful brand, has now actually, next to the hand-painted porcelain, launched also high-end glassware with crystal and mouth-blown glass. Those are manufactured in our crystal factory in Rogaška in Slovenia and in our Iittala factory in Finland. Good both for the supply and complementing the offering towards our consumers to have a complete Royal Copenhagen tableware and glassware set. Iittala has expanded now to the scented candles, and when you look at those, before you even light them up, you see a form or shape that we all can recognize.

It’s the Aalto silhouette, and this is something that appeals as a decoration item. Now, getting into the darker, less light time of the year, what is then nicer to then have a beautiful scented candle lighted up, and you can enjoy all the effects. Actually, the fire is bringing one of those. It’s the elements of glass that are the three scents, water, and sand, and air that are in this offering. When we talk about desirable brands, you might recall that historically, and I still read in many reports about luxury, we have actively dropped the word luxury. We recognize that to be luxury, there are certain characteristics that many of our brands actually would fulfill, but not all of them. Our brands are very desirable.

One of the kind of manifests to that desirability, Moomin Day in the early August timeframe, it was a few days, a few hours online. We actually sold out the Moomin Day celebration mug. When the sale started, there were about 50,000 people queuing online. Interesting, when I bypassed our store at the Helsinki airport at the Schengen side, the store opens at 5:00 A.M. Normally, our stores open at 9:00, and at 5:00 A.M., according to our colleagues there, actually there was a queue outside of that. There were some happy ones who got four hours before others their Moomin Day mug. I think that’s a clear manifest to the desirability of a brand, but describes what we have in many of our brands. Moving over to Fiskars business area, relatively stable top line.

As you saw in the bridges, EBITDA bridges, Jussi Siitonen just showed, the gross margin improvement and the tariff cost, incremental tariff cost have been pretty well matching each other, which is a remarkable achievement by the team in terms of managing the situation, which is complicated. It’s still a fluid situation, as we know. Tariff announcements are still in the air, and how those, some of them will settle, we don’t know yet. The decrease of 0.9%. When I look at many peer companies who have recently published their numbers, I think we’ve been weathering this storm extremely well. Implicitly indicates, and I don’t have the proof in any formal statistics, but indicates that we’ve been actually able to capture some market share and have remained definitely relevant to our consumers.

In terms of how to capture the market share, there are a few keys, but one of them is also continued distribution gains, which we also see that we still have a clear pipeline of distribution gains coming for this business. Looking at the highlights, many know Fiskars as either the scissor or the axe or the garden business. Now here highlighting the latest generation, the Fiskars Ultra Axe range, which is again how the world’s best axes have been made even better. There is an established heritage and know-how, and this is a product family now we all are proud of having been able to launch it. Innovation focus. As I mentioned earlier, our Fiskars business area has more than doubled its innovation pipeline in the last 20 months. This is not only a nice picture and promises.

On November 11, actually, we are arranging for institutional investors and analysts an investor event that will be then broadcast or webcasted, get to know business area Fiskars. Last spring, we had a similar event in Copenhagen for our BA Vita, and the feedback from analysts covering us, some fund managers attending that was very positive that we really show what we are doing, who is doing it, and we are proud to show what will be there available soon also in the stores coming out of the innovation pipeline. It’s not only talk, but there will be a chance to get the look and feel and the touch of these new products that are coming partly later this year, partly in the coming year. Our sustainability targets, we take them extremely serious and continue our commitment there.

When we look at certain environmental criteria, circular products and services, we’ve been able to grow the share by 300 basis points from last year’s September level of last year’s first nine months. There is still a way to go towards our 2030 target that half of our sales comes from circular products and services. What might not look too ambitious currently is when we have reached minus 61% on our scope 1 and 2 emissions from our own operations, seven percentage points improvement year on year. The target was 60%, so it looks quite favorable that we are reaching, actually have now reached that target. How to tackle our de facto our scope 3 emissions is defined by us as a percentage of suppliers spend, how many percent have spent to vendors who have committed to science-based targets.

There we’ve been moving sideways and still have some way to go towards our target. We are currently at 65%. In our H1 reporting in that context, we also flagged out that the rebasing of some of the sourcing for our U.S. business might actually take us a small step back short term before the new vendors can be qualified and submit their science-based targets. It’s not a target that we want to give away. On the social side, the zero harm target remains in force. We have 3.5 as our lost time accident frequency per million hours worked. It is a notch up from a number of years ago, which is very unfortunate, but the work continues. Health and safety of our people is extremely important to us. Finally, inclusion experience.

We have a target in a comparison with global high-performing companies of 80, and we are currently kind of moving sideways, just shy of that 80 at 77. Not yet there. The split of our businesses, our BAs, or separation into subsidiaries is advancing. The legal entity structure will be in our current assessment finalized by the end of first quarter 2026. The operational structure has been enforced since last spring, but that’s kind of the relatively easy part of it. We are operating in about 30 countries, have had more than 30 legal entities, and then having those split and put under basically subgroups for the Fiskars BA and for the Vita BA under the holding company, which is Fiskars Corporation, the parent company. That work is ongoing.

We had the first wave of a number of countries that went well because that has to do also with IT things, etc. The next one is the beginning of November, and this step by step we will get there by the end of the first quarter. What do we want to achieve with this separation? Of course, full business accountability. We have two colleagues who are running these two business areas, and they have operational end-to-end accountability for their business. There is no scapegoat of a group supply chain. They could say that we would have sold, but the factories didn’t deliver, etc. It’s all under one hat, which improves flexibility. It improves the speed of decision making. The closer to the consumer we are making decisions, I think the more relevant they are and more timely they are.

The independent legal entities as subgroups under the holding company, that’s very self-evident. When we talk about the transparency and measurability, once this is completed, we have already committed to the financial markets that we can provide, and we will provide, more transparency into the numbers. Currently, we have the income statement pretty well already covered by BA, but not the entire balance sheets. There is potential, and by transparency, we hope that these individual businesses are also getting with their different type of characteristics in terms of financial dynamics and asset utilization, etc. The fair valuation, which then is reflected into the aggregate, basically sum of the parts as Fiskars Group’s valuation. When we have this structure, there’s definitely a different level of dedication, and this is to accelerate, of course, to tap to the growth opportunities which these two businesses have available to them.

In terms of the guidance, I already addressed it in the very beginning. We narrowed down the range and also openly pointed out that we have the most important quarter of the year ahead of us, and the current visibility indicates more towards the lower end of the range. I know that many analysts have calculated what does it imply in terms of growth in the fourth quarter that is needed to achieve these numbers, and I’m happy to share that while we do not share regular kind of mid-quarter or monthly business updates or anything like that, as of today, having the visibility how sales have progressed also in October, i.e. the fourth quarter has started, that has been well consistent with the expectations and projections that are needed to get there.

Consumers make the decision, and actually it will be after New Year’s Eve when we close the stores, when we actually will in the end know how the fourth quarter went. Our D2C share increased a notch in the third quarter, and traditionally the fourth quarter is more direct-to-consumer heavy. Both our own e-comm and our stores play a relatively seen bigger role, which means that the visibility is really at the point of sale that takes place. We have in the background certain assumptions and definitely actions also, and those relate to the supply chain variances, which we have addressed. Those two published factory curtailments or mothballing, as somebody would call them, are both related to 90 days furloughs, and that means that they will span also into the fourth quarter. The direct tariff impacts are way easier to calculate.

Of course, the indirect impacts on demand are very much then visible again on the point of sale. We expect this Vita’s positive net sales trend to continue in the fourth quarter. As I mentioned, we are on track on that, and the tariff mitigation efforts continue as some parts of the tariff landscape are still effectively open. In brief summary, what is really delightful here is that we’ve returned back to growth, especially the Vita part, and this is the time of the year where that growth is relevant and super needed. The U.S., where we’ve had certainly many aches and pains with the very volatile tariff situation, we’ve remained relevant and been able to remain relevant also to our customers, i.e., the distribution, and gained some more traction on that side. The actions to reduce inventories continue.

It is not acceptable from my perspective to see inventory numbers as we currently have, and that’s something we need to fix. Innovation pipeline, more on that in a few weeks, and guidance I already touched. Relating to a guidance longer-term topic, last spring when I took over as interim CEO, there was a date penciled into the calendar in this autumn for a Capital Markets Day. We all know that our long-term financial targets are basically expiring end of this year; that’s clearly recognized. At that time, I personally felt that it would not be right to go out and make promises about the future, and then somebody else might be then bailing out those promises. That’s not the style we want to kind of enforce in our company. In H1 2026, we will arrange a Capital Markets Day. The timing is still open.

In that connection, we also plan to issue then our new long-term financial targets. This, as I say, promise, and now being able to bail out those promises, it feels way better to be standing here and announcing this, and we will be back on the timing of this. That concludes my part of the presentation. Thank you for your attention so far, and we are shifting to the Q&A session, I guess, Essi?

Essi Lipponen, Director of Investor Relations, Fiskars Group: Yes. Yes! Let’s first take questions through the phone line. If you want to ask questions through the chat, just please write your questions in, and we will take them afterwards. Let’s see if we have any questions through the phone line. If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Kai J. Loikkanen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Hi everyone. Thank you for taking my question. First off, congrats, Jyri, on the new appointment. I have a few questions. If I take them one by one. First, in Vita, the inventory-related actions and the scaling down of production, for how long will this continue to impact profitability?

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: As I said, the current announced furloughs are 90-day furloughs, and with regards to Barlaston, that’s a 90-day block, kind of a monoblock, I would say. With respect to Iittala, it’s phased, and part of that is in 2025, and part of that will be in the winter season of 2026. We are, of course, continuously looking at do we see the development. We had a notch of inventory reduction now in Iittala already in Q3, with a bigger demand anticipated in Q4. We expect more, and it is very much a steering where we want to clear the baggage from the past, have a clear slate forward for the business, and manage the cash flow, and implicitly through that also the indebtedness or the net debt position. Timing is difficult to say, but it’s not ending in Q4 already based on what we have announced with respect to Iittala.

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Okay, you’re not expecting a similar kind of impact on EBIT anymore from these actions as we saw in Q3?

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: Into our guidance, we have certainly factored in what we know for the actions for this current year, and at this stage, we are not yet going to guide any income statement or any other element of 2026. We are managing that situation diligently and carefully, balancing between the cash flow optimization, and of course, we are in the business of making profits and delivering profits, and that’s even our legal obligation to do that and manage the situation between these two aspects.

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Yes, okay, got it. Now looking at year to date, adjusted EBIT is $46 million roughly. You need about $44 million in Q4 to reach the lower end of the guidance. Last year, you did $43 million of EBIT in Q4. In practice, you need $3 million more now in Q4. I was just wondering, you mentioned that you expect Vita to continue to grow top line in Q4, which should, of course, help. I was wondering if you have still these kind of inventory-related actions ongoing, probably a bit of negative EBIT coming in from those then, or at least negative impact on EBIT. Can you elaborate a bit, perhaps more in detail on what levers there are for you to grow EBIT in Q4 to really reach the guidance?

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: Two critical aspects, of course, the top line growth, as indicated, is vital for that. That’s the prerequisite. With respect to the cost side, SG&A, where we had an uplift in Q3, which relates to phasing, relates to some accruals, how they were accrued last year comparing year on year, and some accruals with respect to variable compensation, short-term incentives, etc. Apparently, I was not there in this role, but as a former Audit Committee Chair, I do remember some of the facts from the history. When the visibility went a bit sour last year, some of those were reversed, creating a benefit into last year’s Q3, which makes the current comparison also somewhat unfair in terms of the Vita Q3 EBIT performance. That type of an ugly comparison doesn’t reoccur in Q4.

It’s revenues and costs, which I know sounds like a very simplistic answer, but there are very targeted items, and of course, we are careful and very cautious in terms of other costs and expenditures in the fourth quarter.

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Okay, thanks. That’s very helpful. Lastly, before handing over to others, I know there’s still plenty to do this year, but what sort of initial thoughts do you have for 2026? Anything that you kind of are looking forward to or expecting from next year?

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: Next year, we hope that there will be a kind of stabilization of the tariff situation because now it’s been waking up in the morning and checking the social media, what is the new situation, and that’s been keeping our organization extremely busy. That’s also time off the consumers and customers. It’s time that has been spent in rebasing our sourcing and relates now to the U.S. Fiskars business predominantly. The team has done a tremendous job in terms of finding new sources, qualifying them, testing them, and negotiating that we can move and base our sourcing into already settled down tariff environments and so forth. That’s the only part, actually, given that we will issue our 2026 guidance in early February in connection with our Q4 full year reporting that I can share at this stage.

That remains like a wish that we could concentrate on some more productive or progressive topics instead of fighting the situation here.

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Okay, okay, makes sense. Thank you very much. That’s all for me.

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: Thank you.

Essi Lipponen, Director of Investor Relations, Fiskars Group: The next question comes from Maria Wikstrom from SEB. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Maybe continue a bit with the top topics that Kalle raised as well. Just getting a little bit more color, as Q4, your guidance, reaching the low end of the range indicates that you need to record some 8% growth in the EBIT, which in light of today’s results, something needs to change. Is the thinking right that, given that it seems that in the Fiskars BA, you have been able to get these price increases through and the EBIT is stabilizing, more stabilizing year over year, the lift that we are going to see, we would need to see, is coming from the Vita segment? Then here, you think that the Q3 was somewhat extraordinary, so it should be better in the high season. Is that rightly summed up?

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Hi Maria. Kalle’s math worked well. If we take our year-to-date numbers here, you can see that we are $25 million behind last year when it comes to EBIT on the first nine months. Making our guidance, we need to be roughly $5 million better than last year in Q4. What I said in my part here is that we have some technical tailwind there coming from SG&A phasing. I would say year-to-date change in EBITDA would be a better proxy to give direction there for full year SG&A. You can figure out how much technical upside we are expecting there. Exactly like Jyri said, here we do need demand, which as of today looks pretty good there for Vita that we are following the plans we had in place.

When we are prioritizing the cash flow here, the decisions are very much ours here what to do with production to ensure that we can continue improving cash flow. These are the items we have in place. This time Q4 is a bit different from last year. You might remember last year we were struggling with demand when it comes to Q4. I would say at the very moment we have one problem less versus last year, and we have this kind of technical tailwinds. As I said, all this needs to work very much well in plans we currently have to make the guidance.

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: Your analysis on Fiskars’ role in the fourth quarter is also correct. It’s not really the gardening season. Yes, some craft things happen for the holiday season. Of course, from our perspective, we wish a lot of snow to the Nordic countries. The snowstorm season is always something we are cheering while the traffic in the cities is kind of not happy about snow.

Perfect. This is very helpful. I wanted to touch upon the geographical sales development as it seems that the demand is better in America as well as in the Asia segment, versus Europe, which is still lagging behind. Is there any lead indicators or some bright spots which would indicate that Europe would join the crowd when it comes to the demand? Do you see that Europe is likely to remain muted also for the last quarter?

Of world economy, Europe does not currently have a big contributing factor to world economic growth, and consumers in Europe are typically more cautious than in many other geographies. In the Nordics, we’ve had good tailwinds with our Vita business. When we commented broad-based both brands and market-wise, in the Nordics, we have been able to remain very relevant and very much a desired way to bring some joy and making the everyday extraordinary with our products. Your analysis is correct that it’s both North America, U.S. especially, and Asia where the consumers are more happy to consume.

Finally, touching upon the tariff situation and your mitigating actions, I was very surprised how well you were able to get the price increases through for the Fiskars segment during Q3. Would you say that the tariff risk has now winded down, or is there still many unknowns that we should consider as a risk going forward?

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Yes, we are very pleased with the Fiskars BA team here, how they have succeeded to mitigate those tariffs. As you might remember, we got some extra burden there late August when those steel tariffs came in, and we are still mitigating also those there. We are now living the last two weeks, if I’m right, these last 90-day extensions, which is given to Chinese tariff. Let’s see where it goes after 8th of November there. No one knows at the moment. We are, as Jyri mentioned, following on a daily basis what’s the current mood when it comes to tariffs and trying to tackle it.

More fundamental-based, the actions we have put in place, price increases are only part of this story, mainly focusing on our own footprint, what we have in sourcing there to find alternatives for those high-tariff countries, how we are able to make some re-footprinting in that sense. Can’t promise that we have tackled all the problems because we don’t know them, but as the ones we know at the very moment, we are very pleased with our BA Fiskars execution capability.

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: With respect to the re-footprinting, that implies basically products that we have historically sourced out of China. We have qualified suppliers, brought tooling into some of the neighboring countries, which already have settled down tariff deals with the U.S. Those tariffs are clearly at a lower level than the current China tariffs are and give a kind of a planning horizon for us going forward.

Thank you. I had one more question in mind, which reflects to the Gerber division. As I recall, Gerber was the one that had faced some difficulties or faced lower demand during the summer period. What are currently the trends you are specifically seeing, I mean, for the Gerber brand in the U.S.?

Gerber has been hit in some geographies by restrictions, whether you can advertise knives or multi-tools, which are then qualified also as knives, because they are in some jurisdictions like weapons. From that perspective, the push towards the consumers has been a more difficult struggle. Our efforts, and I visited in the summer Portland and the Gerber team, similarly as in the rest of Fiskars BA, innovation and remaining relevant to the consumer is extremely important. I think it’s fair to say that we have neglected that.

It’s been a few years where we haven’t had too much of innovation flow, new products, and happy to see that that pipeline is also well equipped with new ways to charm the consumer, to have the outdoor people, the fishermen and the women and the hunters and campers and all those with new neat stuff equipped, and that is the key to tackle this issue. What we can’t advertise in public or what needs to go beyond a locked cabinet in an outdoor store in some states in the U.S., we have now other ways in the pipeline to make us relevant and again wanted.

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Yeah. Maria, when I said that 10 out of 12 brands were growing in Q3, Gerber was one of the growing ones there in Q3.

Perfect. Thank you very much. I don’t have further questions.

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: Thank you.

Essi Lipponen, Director of Investor Relations, Fiskars Group: There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Yes, we do have questions in the chat. Thank you, Kalle and Maria, for the questions through the phone. Maybe if we start with the question related to top line, and Jyri, if you take this one, was there any impact of timing between quarters supporting the top line development in Q3?

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: No, that I’m aware. We have potentially between Q2 and Q3, we have the load-ins for the back-to-school season in North America. That’s traditionally been something that either happens last week of June or first weeks of July, and you get big swings. We are not here in that type of phasing. The holiday season load-ins, which, as a reminder for Vita, less than half of our sales is through distribution, more than half, clearly more than half is through our D2C channels. Those load-ins are happening now in October anyhow, so those have not been moved forward to September. No signs of that.

Essi Lipponen, Director of Investor Relations, Fiskars Group: Great. Let’s see what we have next. Related to production, maybe Jyri, if you can continue. Given the current demand situation and production curtailments, how do you view the current production footprint, especially in Vita? Are you considering any adjustments?

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: A prudent and careful manager of a business always considers adjustments. I know this is kind of a rounded answer, but that’s our obligation to see how we can best perform and serve our customers and in the end make money for the company. Those always being in the background, but they’re now here in terms of some concrete that there is a site that we would need to kind of permanently mothball or so. Such plans are currently not on the table. Of course, demand situation is dictating. We are here for the customers, for the consumers. That’s dictating in the end the footprint, how we are set up and how we operate that.

Essi Lipponen, Director of Investor Relations, Fiskars Group: Thank you. Maybe Jussi, related to working capital and inventories, how large working capital release are you expecting in Q4? Have you considered other actions than reducing inventories?

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Following our historical pattern, what we typically have had in Q4 is that working capital is coming down, and typically cash flow has been improving versus Q3 and Q4. Is it happening now? We can’t confirm it yet. The actions we have put in place at the moment are exactly the ones Jyri already explained there with a high priority target of continuing reducing inventories. This inventory challenge is very much on Vita side, less on Fiskars side.

Essi Lipponen, Director of Investor Relations, Fiskars Group: Yes. Maybe to both of you, but maybe if Jyri starts, when comparing Q4 and Q3, are you expecting higher under-absorption of fixed costs in Vita related to the inventory?

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: We have implicitly guided for Q4 the EBIT or comparable EBIT number, not individual line items and not individual line items within our cost of goods sold where the supply chain variances would be ending. Certainly, we have our plans how and we will operate our different production sites during the fourth quarter, and based on that calculated and factored in into the mathematics, how we have arrived at our forecasts, which are supportive of our guidance.

Essi Lipponen, Director of Investor Relations, Fiskars Group: Great. About tariffs, and Jussi, if you start, given the U.S. tariffs and additional steel tariffs, how much headwind are you expecting for 2026, and how much of these have you been able to mitigate as of now?

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Steel tariffs, as I said, is something new there started or announced in late August. The steel tariffs impact is mainly in 2026, while the other tariffs we have for country specific, they have been already since April this year. This kind of year-on-year change is not expected to be significant. It is mainly the new one-eye steel tariffs impacting more in 2026 than in 2025. We haven’t announced any specific numbers, how much they are impacting, what’s the direct impact of tariffs on our gross margin. Only said that when it comes to direct impacts there, we do have toolbox to mitigate them, including this re-footprinting, what we are referring, prices and the likes.

Of course, we are now looking for category expansions there when it comes to offering what we have, which would also help to create new demand, and therefore tackling it not only by cutting cost, but also expanding our portfolio and top line there. Toolbox is quite broad. How much still left for 2026, that we haven’t yet commented.

Essi Lipponen, Director of Investor Relations, Fiskars Group: Yeah. We still have a couple of questions, and let’s see if there are any new ones coming. It might be that we have already covered this, but maybe just to remind, how quickly can inventory levels in Vita be normalized? If Jyri, we want to comment on that.

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: It is not a sprint. It consists of two factors. One is the one which is more in really our control, and that’s curtailing the supply or the input into the inventories, both relating to sourced items and own manufacturing. Those we can tackle, and those we have started to tackle very clearly. At the same time, the output from inventories, so clearance sales type of topics, that’s also needed. Now we are heading to the seasons where you have, as we know, the Black Fridays of this world. They are to some extent also created for clearing some inventories, but it’s definitely not done in the fourth quarter of this year. It’s not a marathon, but it’s still long-distance activity that we have there. Working on both ends, input and the output. As we progress, the output, of course, requires always the willing purchaser, consumer, or distributor.

Once we have more to share on that front too, not only those actions that are under our control, we will, of course, be back and updating on those.

Essi Lipponen, Director of Investor Relations, Fiskars Group: Thank you. Maybe the final question for Jussi. With net debt at over €600 million and leverage at 3.7x, what is the deleveraging plan for 2026?

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Very good point. First of all, it’s just an outcome of what Jyri just explained. That’s the main driver there, what we have on short term, and then I’m moving to 2026. Typically, historically, we have come down when it comes to net debt/EBITDA towards the end of the year after Q3. That’s our historical pattern there. More important than how much we are now coming down is to turn the trend. We need to get a declining trend there when it comes to our net debt/EBITDA and then impacting on both components there, net debt and then improving our EBITDA. I’m not expecting any rapid overnight improvement there. As I said, more important is now to have fundamentals in place to turn the trend, getting it on the lowering trend there. What we said is that this max 2.5x net debt/EBITDA remains our target.

It might take a bit more time than probably someone might expect to get it there, but it clearly remains our target.

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: We work in a very determined way on both elements of this EBITDA and the net debt, where really the main lever is inventories.

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Yeah.

Essi Lipponen, Director of Investor Relations, Fiskars Group: Thank you. It seems that we are out of questions. Thank you for the active participation, and I wish you all a nice end of the week.

Jyri Luomakoski, President and CEO, Fiskars Group: Thank you very much for joining, and happy shopping in the year-end holiday and gifting season.

Jussi Siitonen, CFO, Fiskars Group: Thank you.

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