Earnings call transcript: Marimekko Q4 2024 sees strong sales growth

Marimekko Oyj (NASDAQ: HE:MEKKO) reported a solid performance for Q4 2024, with net sales reaching €54 million, a 7% increase year-over-year. The company’s comparable operating profit margin stood at 17.1%, supported by an impressive gross profit margin of 60.94%. InvestingPro analysis shows the company maintains a "GREAT" financial health score of 3.11 out of 5, reflecting robust operational efficiency. The stock responded positively, with a pre-market increase of 8.46%, as investors reacted to the company’s strong financial results and optimistic outlook for 2025.

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Key Takeaways

• Marimekko’s Q4 2024 net sales grew by 7% year-over-year.
• The company achieved a comparable operating profit margin of 17.1%.
• Marimekko plans to open 10-15 new stores in 2025, focusing on the Asia Pacific region.
• The stock surged 8.46% in pre-market trading following the earnings announcement.

Company Performance

Marimekko’s performance in Q4 2024 was marked by significant growth in international sales, particularly in the Asia Pacific and Scandinavian regions. The company opened six new stores in the quarter, contributing to its expanding global footprint. Despite challenges in the Finnish market, Marimekko’s strategic focus on omnichannel retail and brand expansion has driven sustained growth.

Financial Highlights

• Full Year 2024 Net Sales: €182.6 million (+5% YoY)
• Q4 2024 Net Sales: €54 million (+7% YoY)
• Comparable Operating Profit Margin: 17.5%
• Q4 Comparable Operating Profit: €9.3 million (17.1% of net sales)
• Proposed Dividends: Regular €0.40 and Extraordinary €0.25 per share

Market Reaction

Marimekko’s stock experienced a significant uptick of 8.46% in pre-market trading, reflecting investor confidence in the company’s strong quarterly results and positive outlook. Trading at €14.42, the stock sits 16% above its 52-week low of €11.49 and just 14% below its 52-week high of €16.70, indicating a robust recovery and strong momentum. The company’s beta of 1.26 suggests moderate market sensitivity.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Marimekko anticipates continued growth in 2025, with plans to increase net sales and maintain a comparable operating profit margin between 16% and 19%. The company aims to open 10-15 new stores, predominantly in the Asia Pacific region, and targets a long-term annual net sales growth of 15%. With an Altman Z-Score of 11.15 and moderate debt levels, InvestingPro’s analysis indicates strong financial stability to support these expansion plans.

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Executive Commentary

• "We are in a very strong position to start the year 2025 to continue scaling up our brand phenomenon and growth," said CEO Tina Alla Huttakasco.
• "Marketing is the fuel to our growth," emphasized Huttakasco, highlighting the company’s commitment to brand expansion.
• "Asia represents the most important geographical region for our future international growth," added Huttakasco, underlining the strategic focus on the Asia Pacific market.

Risks and Challenges

• Economic challenges in Finland could impact domestic sales.
• Supply chain disruptions may affect production and distribution.
• Market saturation in key regions could limit growth potential.
• Currency fluctuations could influence financial performance.
• Increased competition in the global retail market may pressure margins.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about Marimekko’s marketing strategy and its impact on growth. The company emphasized the importance of digital channels and discussed variations in wholesale deliveries. The Asia Pacific region was highlighted as a critical area for future expansion, aligning with the company’s strategic focus.

Full transcript - Marimekko Oyj (MEKKO) Q4 2024:

Anna Tuominen, Host/Moderator, Marimekko: Good afternoon and warm welcome to Marimekko’s full year twenty twenty four results webcast. My name is Anna Tuominen.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: I’m the IRO of Marimekko. And with me, I have our President and CEO, Tina Alla Huttakasco.

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: We will start with Tina going through our results. And after that, we have time for your questions with Tina and our CFO, Elena Ankar, answering any of the things that you want to get more light on. You can ask the questions using the chat function on the platform and you can type in your questions already during the presentation. But without further ado, Pina, please go ahead. Thank you, Anne.

And good afternoon, everyone, also on my behalf. And it is my pleasure and joy today to talk you through our results for 2024. So how did we do if we start from the last quarter, so the fourth quarter of the year? We did well. Actually, our net sales reached a new quarterly record high in the fourth quarter.

And with that also our operating profit improved despite the continued challenging macroeconomic operating environment. We actually achieved increase in net sales across all market areas, and I think that’s a true testament for the determined efforts that we do to scale up our brand and growth across the world. In total, our net sales increased by 7% in the fourth quarter and totaled EUR 54,000,000. Net sales were boosted in particular by the excellent development of retail sales in all market areas. In Finland, our important home market, our net sales grew by 3% as the domestic retail sales developed very strongly with 8% growth versus the comparable period.

And our international sales grew by 13% with both retail and wholesale increasing. Thanks to, in particular, the good development in net sales then, our comparable operating profit improved by 12% and totaled €9,300,000 equaling to 17.1% of net sales. Then when we look at the full year level, our net sales increased by 5% to EUR 182,600,000.0 and our comparable operating profit margin landed at 17.5%, so a strong level. As to the proposals through the AGM, our board, is proposing, that a regular dividend of 40¢ and an extraordinary dividend of 25¢ will be paid for 2024. Overall, I must say that looking at the full year of 2024, finished by a very strong final quarter, we are in a very strong position to start the year 2025 to continue scaling up our brand phenomenon and growth and challenging the fashion and design industry with our optimism, art of printmaking and timeless design.

Then let’s have a closer look to the different drivers behind the net sales and operating profit. Starting again from this fourth quarter, as mentioned, our net sales increased by 7% and they were boosted, especially by the increased retail sales in all market areas. As mentioned, the omnichannel retail sales grew in all market areas and in total by 12%. The wholesale sales were weakened by non recurring promotional deliveries in Finland, which were smaller as estimated earlier than in the comparison period. In total, the wholesale sales declined by just 1%.

Then when we look at Finland, our important home market, despite the continued challenging overall market situation and highly tactical business environment, our retail sales did very well in the domestic market and grew by 8%. And that led actually the whole market to increase sales by 3%. Then in our second largest market area, namely the Asia Pacific region, our net sales increased by 11%, especially our retail sales developed positively. Wholesale sales in the region grew by 6% and retail sales by 25%. And then in total, our international net sales grew by 13%, so very nice double digit growth numbers.

Then looking at the full year cumulative net sales development, we saw an increase of 5% and our net sales were boosted especially by the growth of retail sales both in Finland and other market areas, as well as growth in wholesale sales in the Asia Pacific region and Scandinavia. So our omnichannel retail sales increased double digit in total by 10% with increase in all our key markets, which is definitely something that we’re very proud about. Our wholesale sales has developed positively in the Asia Pacific region and Scandinavia, as mentioned, and totaled then altogether 0%, so flat to the previous year’s levels. In Finland, our net sales increased as a result of good development in retail sales on an annual level plus 6% and like for like plus 5%. And wholesale sales, as mentioned, decreased as the non recurring promotional deliveries were below the comparable year as estimated earlier.

What is also good to remember is that the domestic market wholesale sales were also weakened by some wholesale deliveries in the first quarter of twenty twenty four being already recorded in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. In the Asia Pacific region, our second largest market area, we saw 11% net sales growth, driven by the good development of both wholesale and retail sales. International sales altogether increased by almost 10%, so 9%. And what I also want to lift is that when we look at the full year, our licensing income reached another new record level and actually increased by 11%. Then when we look at our net sales split by market area and product line, there is no major change changes in these.

We can see that due to the good development in the international sales development, we can see a slight increase in the share of sales to Asia Pacific, to North America as well as to Scandinavia and a small decline in the share of Finland. Then when it comes to the net sales by product line, again, no major changes. Again, the kind of fashion world comprising fashion and bags and accessories is representing altogether 55% of our net sales and then 45% of our net sales come from our strong home category. Of course, during the past year, our omnichannel store network further developed. And what was also very exciting and another highlight during the year was that we launched a new sort of quite visionary e commerce platform in our own operated e commerce markets, in total 30 markets.

Today, at the end of the year, we had almost 170 Marameco stores, 168 to be specific. And of those, the majority are already located in the Asia Pacific region, with 91 Marameco stores and shopping shops there. But it’s, of course, important to note that in addition to the physical retail online store, an online business represents an important part and our online store serves customers in 38 countries already. When it comes to our brand sales, which is the estimated retail value of the Maremeco product sales translated into consumer prices. There, on a full year level, we increased our brand sales to $420,000,000 almost.

And 68% of our brand sales already come from outside of our home market Finland, which really shows that as a brand, as per our strategy, we are scaling up our presence and growth, especially in the international markets. When it comes to our profitability, in the fourth quarter, we improved our comparable operating profit by 12% and landed at 9,300,000.0 equaling to 17.1% of our net sales. Naturally, the increased net sales especially drove the improvement of the operating profit. On the other hand, then the weak and relative sales margin had a negative impact on the operating profit. The relative sales margin was decreased in the fourth quarter due to the higher logistic costs.

What is good to note is that on the fourth quarter, our fixed costs were on par with the comparison period. Then looking at cumulative development, our cumulative comparable operating profit was at the comparable year’s record level. So landing at SEK 31,900,000.0, equaling to 17.5% of net sales, which we’re very happy about. Our operating profit was improved again by increased net sales. On the other hand, then especially higher fixed costs, but also lower relative sales margin had a negative impact on the operating profit.

What is there behind those factors? Fixed costs do grew to the increased personal and marketing expenses. So when it comes to personal expenses, there were some kind of index increases across different markets that elevated the personal costs and then also the increased personal costs from the retail stores to support growth were also another reason behind there. When it comes to marketing expenses, maybe some of you remember we had last year the special year of the Unico anniversary. And those marketing investments were planned investments to really capture the opportunities of this special anniversary of our iconic print.

Then the relative sales margin was negatively affected, especially by the higher logistic costs, similarly as in the fourth quarter. On the other hand then, the record high licensing income supported the relative sales margin. There were a lot of key events also in a very eventful year with the Unico anniversary celebration. Looking at the fourth quarter, we continued our determined execution of our scale strategy, and we also launched on market the third limited edition collaboration collection with Uniqlo in 2024. These kinds of collaborations with top players in their own respective industries bring us the amazing opportunity to increase further our awareness and introduce our brand to yet again new audiences.

Also six new Maraleko stores opened globally in Q4. The store network developed in particular in Asia and we opened new stores in Yokohama, Nara, Tokyo, Singapore and Pattaya and then one store in Espoo in Finland. In addition to that, also five pop up stores mainly in Asia introduced new audiences to Marimekko and our products. Since the pandemic, we have seen the role of these kinds of creative retail experiences such as pop ups growing to become an even more important part of the holistic omnichannel experience and brand building strategy. In October, we also saw the launch on market of the limited edition collaboration collection we did with the Finnish Kalevala Akorum.

This beautiful collection comprises pieces made from recycled silver featuring our most iconic print, absolutely beautiful collection. Also something that I want to highlight are the consistent steps that we have taken in our sustainability journey. And I’m very proud to share with you that in 2024, we actually reached our goals for sourced textile materials for the fourth time. Namely, we reached our targets compared to the base year 2019, both in the greenhouse gas emissions per source kilogram of textiles as well as in the water scarcity score per source kilogram of textiles. So we saw really nice decreases that we have been working very hard on together with our entire organization.

In the past year, we also worked hard to prepare our science based near term target emission reduction targets and the science based targets initiative announced their validation in January in 2025. Then moving on to the outlook for the already started new year. First saying a few words in general. So, of course, the uncertainties related to the development of global economies such as the geopolitical tensions and their impact on the general economic situation as well as the general cost inflation influence consumer confidence, purchasing power and behavior and as a result can have an impact on our business in 2025, especially in Finland in our important home market. These different exceptional situations may also cause significant, even significant disruptions in production logistics chain and thus may have a negative impact on our company.

But of course, as always, we are closely monitoring the different situations and will adjust our operations and plans according to the circumstances if and when needed. Then a few words about seasonality. So some of you might remember, because of the seasonal nature of our business, a major portion of our company’s euro denominated net sales and operating results are traditionally generated during the second half of the year. Then what is good to note, is that net sales and operating profit in the first quarter of twenty twenty five are significantly impacted by the timing differences from the comparison period. In the comparable year, a large amount of non recurring promotional deliveries in Finnish wholesale sales occurred exceptionally during the first quarter of the year.

And in addition, a significant part of licensing income in 2024 was recorded already during the first quarter of the year, unlike now in 2025. Then overall, it’s good to remember that the timing between the quarters of the non recurring promotional deliveries in Finnish wholesale sales and their size typically vary on an annual basis. And this year in 2025, licensing income is forecasted to be significantly below the previous year’s record level. Then a few words about net sales development. Starting from Finland, our important home market, despite the still weak market situation and the fact that in 2025, we expect the non recurring promotional deliveries in Finnish wholesale to be significantly lower than in the comparable year.

Net sales in Finland are expected to be approximately at the level of the previous year. Then moving on to the international part of our business. Overall, we estimate our international sales to grow in 2025. Equally, we also estimate our net sales in the Asia Pacific region, our second largest market to increase in 2025. Our objective in the started year is to open approximately 10 to 15 new Maremeco stores and shop in shops, and most of these planned openings will be in Asia as similar to also past years.

Moving on then to growth investments and costs. So as we have a scale strategy and we develop our business with a long term view, We will be also investing in growth in 2025 and our fixed costs are expected to be up on the previous year. Also the marketing expenses are expected to increase as we aim to scale up our business. What is also good to remember that the early commitments to product orders from supplier partners, which is typical of the industry and partly further emphasized due to different factors, those weaken our ability to optimize product orders and respond to rapid changes in demand and consumer behavior, which also increases risks. It’s also good to remember that there are still significant uncertainties related to the global production and logistic chains, which may cause delays.

But as always, we work actively with our teams to ensure a well functioning production and logistic chain to avoid delays and to mitigate negative impacts of generally increased costs and to enhance inventory management. Moving on to our financial guidance for 2025. So we estimate our net sales for 2025 to grow from the previous year, And we estimate the comparable operating profit margin to be approximately 16% to 19%. The development of consumer confidence and purchasing power, especially in Finland, as well as the general uncertainties and possible disruptions in global supply chains, among others, do cause volatility to the outlook for 2025. Then a few words about the dividend still for 2025.

As already mentioned at the start of my presentation, the Marameca Board of Directors proposed to the annual general meeting that the regular dividend of $0.4 and an extraordinary dividend of $0.25 per share be paid for 2024. Our financial position is very strong and our business model and our strategy of profitable growth does not require significant capital. So therefore, our Board of Directors believes that it’s warranted to pay an extraordinary dividend for our shareholders. And with these words, I will end my presentation and invite my colleagues Anna and Elena here on the stage to be able to answer to your questions. Thank you so much.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: Thank you, Tina. We actually have a lot of questions this time. Great. You already mentioned the launch of new online e commerce platform. How do you see the role of digital channels and digital customer experience?

How much did it affect the results in 2024?

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: And going forward, what’s its role? So actually, if we start from the most recent quarter, for example, Q4, we also mentioned in our interim report that our digital business continued to develop well and actually our online sales continued to grow in the fourth quarter. Taking one step back further, for many, many years, the role of online commerce has been just and its importance has been overall further strategically increasing. And what is good to remember is that at Marameco, we always develop our business from an omnichannel point of view. We want to create seamless omnichannel experiences across different channels to our customers and that is work that we continue to do also in the new year.

So of course, it has a very important role. And one key kind of milestone in the kind of online development was indeed the new e commerce platform update that we did in the past year. And this is all in the efforts to serve our customers even better. In the report and in presentation,

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: I talked about the ONIK anniversary and the marketing expenses also related to that. Looking the sort of the just the Q4 numbers, while the marketing expenses for the full year increased, in Q4 they actually decreased compared to the 2023 period. Was there any reason behind that? Or were the Unico anniversary events timed at the beginning of the year? Or

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: So we were celebrating the Unico anniversary during the course of the entire year. So these kind of investments can also vary by quarter. So holistically, it was a very big year of Onikko celebrations. I’m sure that everybody noticed. So nothing more special in that.

So the Q4 amount shouldn’t be considered as the running rate from now on, but more sort of Basically, what we say in our market outlook about our marketing costs for 2025 is that they will increase. And this is, of course, as we are in the journey of scale up our growth and marketing is the fuel to that growth.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: Another investor is wondering why not invest even more in marketing. Would you see diminishing returns for investments if

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: you did even more? Well, Almorameco, we want to build sustainable, profitable growth. So we believe that we have found kind of a good recipe in terms of how to fuel our growth overall in the past years. I mean, we are in the consumer business, in the brand business, so marketing plays a really important strategic role in that. So this is what we’re aiming to do, to grow the marketing spend also in 2025.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: There’s a lot of questions related to sales in different market areas. First, with Scandinavia, the net sales there grew over 20% in Q4 and almost 20% for the full year. Have you done something different in Scandinavia? Or is it just a result of an improved consumer sentiment?

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: So actually, well, Scandinavia has been one of our main markets for a longer time. But in recent years, we have really done a lot of activities to further refresh and sharpen the position of Marameco in the market. Some key actions that we have done in the past years is, for example, the launch of the Marameco flagship store in Copenhagen, the complete revamp of our flagship store in Stockholm. We have also established a strong continued presence at the Copenhagen Fashion Week that has started to compete actually with some of the global fashion weeks like Paris and New York and so forth. So and at the same time, of course, we have been further developing our e commerce business.

We have been further developing our wholesale business. So this is a result of a very determined, consistent work to further grow our brand presence in the market. Outside Finland, the Scandinavian macroeconomic outlook is a bit better. Could one assume that the Scandinavian pickup could be even faster in 2025? Well, we do not specifically guide the kind of sentiments in different markets.

And overall at Maremeco, while, of course, we need to be aware what is the general market sentiment, we never develop the business based on that. For us, it’s important to be on the pulse of the consumers. But regardless of whether there is a good macro or bad macro situation, we are determined in our scale strategy. And I think that this kind of a more uncertain and volatile operating environment just requires, first of all, strong brand desirability, which we continuously invest in, and secondly, strong commercial agility. And I think that we have proven that we have found quite good ways of working on both.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: In EMEA region, we saw nice growth in Q4, much unlike in the first months of the year. Where did this improvement come from?

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: So in EMEA, it’s good to first of all remember that EMEA is one of those markets represents an important part of the business. And with wholesale sales, there can always be also kind of quarterly variations. What we have also mentioned transparently before is that we are in the process of modernizing our distribution and brand in that market. And that work also continues in the new year. We are also planning to open a Paris flagship store, not just because of the European market, but understanding the role of Paris as the heart of probably the most important fashion capital in the world.

We believe that those kind of investments will actually further support our entire global ecosystem. And in the kind of Central European market, we see opportunities to grow across different channels, especially in wholesale. And I think this is going to be very interesting journey that we will have with our teams to further develop that market for us.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: There’s actually a question whether we will see ML market turning to growth in 2025, but you also mentioned that there’s a lot happening. Yes. Okay. Moving on then to other markets as well. Just one more question about marketing expenses, sorry.

So can you open up where this additional marketing spend or the marketing spend in 2025 will be if there’s not such event as Onyeko anniversary was.

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: The good thing in Marameco is that when we have an archive of over 3,500 prints, all of them with their own unique names, all of them with their own unique stories, there’s always an anniversary or reason to celebrate or create a moment. So we’re not, we’re not scarce in that. So you can very much count on us that this year will be, we will be actually leveraging and building on the Unico anniversary by further sort of growing our brand phenomenon through various means and activities. I mean, so we’ll have the Milan Design Week coming up. The Copenhagen Fashion Week presentation was just a few weeks ago.

So we have started to build our presence even stronger in some of these key international and global events, and we will further capture the opportunities also in those.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: The follow-up question here was that will the additional marketing spend convert to sales in ’twenty five, but you already mentioned that there’s quite good lot of thinking behind the marketing

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: investment. Yes. And I think that in marketing, it’s important to understand that, again, being in the brand business and consumer brand business, it’s all about desirability. So it’s all about how to build the desirability of the brand with a long term view. So there’s it’s important to invest in that.

And at the same time, you know, marketing has also the element of being the fuel for sales. So it’s about finding the right kind of mix, but always the most important is the brand and the product desirability and relevance for the customer.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: For the outlook on the Finnish market in ’twenty five, your retail sales or the Marimika retail sales in ’twenty four developed nicely. So shouldn’t that sort of be a good basis for growth also in the year this year as well? Or are you just being cautious in your estimates?

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: I’m very proud of the development of our omnichannel retail sales, both on the fourth quarter as well as on a total full year cumulative level. I think that it really kind of demonstrates the competitiveness, our agility, our desirability from the consumer point of view. So I would rather say that this sort of further reinforces our sort of healthy self confidence.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: Are there any expectations behind the outlook of Finland on improvement of the domestic market conditions? So when we look at the general statistics,

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: I think that looking at the officials’ general statistics, they are still quite weak. However, of course, should there be, you know, a faster kind of flight coming to the macro sentiment and consumer confidence in Finland, of course, we’re very warmly welcoming that. But we are like always monitoring the situation and adjusting our operations, Whether it’s to the better or worse macro sentiment, we want to perform in either.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: In the Finnish market outlook, also there’s mentioning of the wholesale deliveries. What’s the driver behind lower wholesale deliveries in ’twenty five? We actually mentioned in the report that they are non recurring.

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: Yes, exactly. So they are indeed non recurring promotional deliveries. And many of you might already be familiar that when you look back to our financial statements bulletins for many, many years, you can see that in some years, these non recurring promotional deliveries in Finnish wholesale have been bigger. In some, they are smaller. So this is quite typical of these types of deliveries.

There is variance.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: Okay. Then a few questions about the international markets. You mentioned growth expectations for international markets. Is there any way of giving more light on that whether people should look at it higher or lower growth rate compared to 2024?

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: So overall, I will just reiterate what I said. So overall, when we look at 2025, we estimate our international sales to increase. And then in our second largest market area after Finland, Asia Pacific region, we also estimate our net sales to increase there. And then when we take our strategy kind of view, so long term view, not just related to any specific year, but of course, we are, as Marimekko, seeking growth across all of our key markets. We have a scale strategy.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: Asia actually grew 11 in ’twenty four, but we have seen bigger growth percentages. For example, in 2023, the growth in the Asia Pacific region was 17%. How satisfied are you with the development in 2024? And what needs to happen for the Asia to accelerate for us to get to that target level of all markets growing?

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: Yes. Well, I have to say that we are happy with the development of our Asia Pacific region, including also as a wholesale sales development. What is really good to remember is that as we operate in Asia mainly through the loose franchise business model, so most of the Marameco or all the physical Marameco stores are actually operated by our loose franchise partners in the different markets, then those sales translate to us in wholesale sales. So that, of course, impacts also the kind of the accumulation the business model impacts the accumulation of net sales. But I think that we have shown that we are on a good track and Asia represents the most important geographical region for our future international growth.

And we determinedly continue on that road. And maybe I will add that this year, the plan is to open 10 to 15 new Marameco stores mostly located in Asia.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: Elen, there’s a very detailed question on our leases. Are you able to explain why the leases were down in 2024?

Elena Ankar, CFO, Marimekko: The lease contracts in the balance sheet. I mean, of course, there are some variations regarding the lease contracts in different markets. So it’s like basically case related for the price of the lease location and then it’s discounted for the contract period. So nothing dramatic there.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: So it’s not even possible to give us sort of a forward looking sort of guidance on this as it’s per contract that are estimated annually?

Elena Ankar, CFO, Marimekko: Yes, it is per contract. And in our balance sheet, we have those leases which we operate ourselves. So when, as Tina mentioned, we are going to we are planning to open 10 to 15 new stores, which are mainly in Asia region, which means that the majority of the new stores will be run by the partners, which are not in our own balance sheet. So that is a good hint to keep in mind in terms of the leases number in the balance sheet.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: In the report, Marimo gave some details about the first quarter compared to the last year. One was that the wholesale campaign deliveries are smaller than on the comparable period and also that the licensing revenue in 2024 was accumulated. Most of it or a lot of it was accumulated in Q1. Should one expect that the balance between H1 and H2 will become even bigger because of this?

Elena Ankar, CFO, Marimekko: I mean, of course, on top of these two names factors, there are lots of other factors which are affecting the both halves of the year. So I would just say that as traditionally our main euro net sales and EBIT accumulation happens in H2. So that is still true this year as well.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: In the guidance or the market outlook also, the licensing income is expected to be significantly lower. Is it possible that that could change during the year? How are the sort of the deals done? Can there be new deals during the year? And could that change the guidance?

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: So when it comes to the licensing income, so we have two streams of licensing income. One is the traditional licensing, so our lifestyle complementing or kind of very localized products related licensing. And that stream is more kind of balanced when it comes to the revenue recognition. And then we have the brand collaborations, and those are based on individual contracts. And there can be also quite a lot of even variance between quarters or even years.

We have had very good licensing income years, actually record level years, both in 2024 and 2023. And looking at 2025, today, we have estimated that the licensing income for 2025 will be significantly below the level of last year. But of course, this is something that we constantly I mean, that is our estimate at the moment and we constantly work on this, but it’s good to know that because of the nature of the brand collaboration deals, variance is a normal part of it. So there can be seasonal or quarterly or even yearly variance in the revenue.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: We have few more questions here. If you want to ask questions, please type in them now, so we can we still have time to take them in. But there’s a question about the retail sales. So they were very strong, like mentioned already in ’twenty four. Is there any reason why that development wouldn’t continue in ’twenty five?

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: Of course, when we develop our business going forward, we utilize all the good learnings and best practices that we accumulate all the time. And I think that, as mentioned already, this is a true result of the high desirability of our brand and collections paired with the commercial agility to navigate through these sort of more challenging macro market sentiments. And of course, going forward, we will utilize these best practices and also build new.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: The outlook overall, growth in group net sales and the comparable operating profit margin being between somewhere between 1619% in 25% is very similar than it was the year before. When do you expect the sales growth to accelerate towards the target of the long term target of 15%?

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: So of course, it’s good to remember that the long term financial target of 15% annual net sales growth is indeed a long term financial target. And but that gives us a very kind of strong vision towards which we, of course, develop our business. When it comes to 2025, we estimate, as you, Anna, mentioned that our net sales will grow and we estimate that in our home market, despite the weak macro situation, we estimate our net sales to be more or less on the same level as in the past year and we estimate growth in the international

Anna Tuominen, Host/Moderator, Marimekko: net sales and also

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: the Asia Pacific region net sales. And in the Capital Markets Day, last September, we

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: And in the Capital Markets Day last September, we actually discussed some of the factors that will eventually lead into the long term targets. So could you maybe remind us of maybe the most important factors? Where does the net sales growth come

Tina Alla Huttakasco, President and CEO, Marimekko: in the coming years? Yes. And of course, we are targeting and we’re seeking growth from all of our key markets. And as, just to kind of summarize, we have lifted Asia as the most important geographical region for a future international growth. So our kind of growth there plays an important role.

Then growth in all of our other international markets also plays an important role. And definitely, we have room to grow in each of these international key markets. And what is also important to keep be kept in mind is that Finland, our strong home market, is around half of our net sales. So in terms of achieving our long term financial goal of 15% annual growth, we will also be seeking to further grow our market share in the Finnish market. And I think that also the kind of results in the past year that we have done in a very weak general macro sentiment in Finland really showcase our competitiveness.

So we feel that we’re in a good position to continue from here onwards.

Anna, Investor Relations Officer (IRO), Marimekko: Thank you, Tina. Thank you, Elena. We have no more questions, so we would like to take thank you for taking the time and we hope to see you on May in our Q1 results as well. Thank you. Thank you.

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