Earnings call transcript: Olvi Oyj A sees improved margins in Q3 2025

Olvi Oyj A reported its third-quarter earnings for 2025, showing a steady performance with net sales remaining at last year’s level, while gross margins improved to 41.7%. Despite a nearly 10% decline in EBIT, the company maintained a strong financial position, reflected in its "GREAT" financial health score according to InvestingPro analysis. The stock saw a slight decline of 1.51% in pre-market trading, currently trading at $34.23.

Key Takeaways

• Gross margin improved to 41.7% despite challenging market conditions.
• EBIT declined by nearly 10%, reflecting tougher market dynamics.
• Olvi expanded its non-alcoholic product categories, maintaining leadership in the hard seltzer market.
• The company completed a high bay warehouse expansion and is constructing a new brewhouse.

Company Performance

Olvi Oyj A’s performance in Q3 2025 was mixed, with net sales holding steady compared to the previous year. The company faced soft consumer demand and intense price competition, particularly in the Baltic region. However, it managed to improve its gross margin, indicating effective cost management and pricing strategies. The company’s strategic focus on expanding its non-alcoholic product offerings and maintaining market leadership in the hard seltzer segment contributed positively to its performance.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 194.92 million (forecast), actual figures not disclosed
• Earnings per share: Forecast at 1.24 USD, actual figures not disclosed
• Gross margin: 41.7%, an improvement from the previous year
• EBIT: Declined by nearly 10% from the previous year

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, Olvi Oyj A’s stock price decreased by 1.51% in pre-market trading, reflecting investor concerns over the EBIT decline and challenging market conditions. According to InvestingPro analysis, the stock appears undervalued at current levels, trading at an attractive P/E ratio of 10.62 and offering a substantial dividend yield of 4.19%. The company has maintained dividend payments for 34 consecutive years, demonstrating strong financial stability despite market fluctuations.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Olvi remains confident in achieving a strong Q4 performance despite expecting similar market conditions. The company continues to focus on efficiency and cost management while targeting long-term growth through strategic acquisitions. Future guidance includes EPS forecasts of 3.59 USD for FY2025 and 3.94 USD for FY2026, with revenue projections of 787.05 million USD and 819.65 million USD, respectively. With a market capitalization of $707.53M and EBITDA of $120.49M, the company maintains a solid foundation for future growth. Discover more detailed financial metrics and 10 additional ProTips about Olvi’s investment potential on InvestingPro.

Executive Commentary

CEO Patrik Lundell expressed optimism about Olvi’s future, stating, "We come out of summer stronger than before," and emphasized the company’s long-term planning, saying, "We are not only planning next year, we’re planning the next 20 years." Lundell also highlighted the company’s readiness for market recovery, asserting, "Whenever the market returns, we’re more ready than before."

Risks and Challenges

• Soft consumer demand and unstable weather conditions impacting sales.
• Intense price competition, particularly in the Baltic region.
• Potential logistics cost increases affecting profitability.
• Macroeconomic pressures and consumer sentiment shifts.
• Execution risks associated with new market entries and acquisitions.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about Olvi’s recent acquisitions in Latvia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Estonia. The company explained its strategic rationale for entering these new markets and addressed concerns about increased logistics costs. Additionally, there was discussion on potential product expansion in these territories, highlighting Olvi’s growth ambitions.

Full transcript - Olvi Oyj A (OLVAS) Q3 2025:

Patrik Lundell, CEO: Welcome to our third quarter interim report. Thank you to those who are joining us here in the studio and for all of you online. Before we get to the actual contents, let’s remind ourselves of the disclaimer and the fact that we’ll be referring to future events, which always include a certain level of uncertainty. Most of you would know us by now, but in means of introductions, I’m joined here by Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, our Chief Finance and Information Officer, and then myself, Patrik Lundell, the CEO. Let’s get to it. The third quarter results are in, and we’re in for the final stretch of 2025. The market has been softer than anticipated throughout the summer period. Consumer confidence and spending remain under pressure, all of which is visible in our results. Despite this challenging operating environment, we’ve been able to keep our shares.

We haven’t lost our strong market shares; quite on the contrary, we’ve even been able to gain some shares in many pockets across our business. Additionally, we’ve been able to expand our margins. Let’s have a look at some of the highlights of the third quarter here. As I mentioned, the weather at the end of summer throughout the third quarter remained unstable, affecting the overall market demand. We did enjoy a three-week spell of sunny weather in Finland, which increased demand there in the local market. Especially across the Baltics, we had a long, rainy summer, and this impacted the demand directly. Despite the challenging environment and the smaller than anticipated market, we kept investing. We invested in our brands, in our own operations, to ensure that we remain competitive and that we come out of this cloud stronger than before.

We kept our shares, and we even grew shares, as I mentioned. For instance, if we go to Latvia, where we communicated during Q2 that the market was much smaller than last year, the same applies for the third quarter. Despite that, we took 3% market share in the beer category in Latvia. That’s a clear demonstration of our actions actually carrying dividends. More broadly, across many of our markets, we took share in the non-alcohol category, for instance, mentioning waters and Finland specifically. We’ve been working on our portfolio, developing it both through innovation and by managing the mix, and this is now visible in the margin expansion. In addition to managing and maintaining our profitable core business, we’re also pursuing growth now through acquisitions.

We’ll come back to this at the end of the presentation, but we’ve made acquisitions or communicated our intent to bring on board three companies now, two in our domestic current markets and one that brings us into completely new territory. With all of this being said, we come out of summer stronger than before, and we remain confident in our ability to deliver a strong first quarter. We do not see any issues with our operating model overall. With those intro words, Tiina-Liisa, please, why don’t you share some of the numbers with us?

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: Yes, thank you, Patrik, and hello from my side too. Let’s start with the Q3 results. Our net sales and sales volume remained at the previous year’s level. In total, Q3 was behind our expectation, especially due to the rainy weather in the late summer in the Baltics and also in Belarus. This economic and political uncertainty has continued, and that’s reflected in the consumer’s purchasing power in all of our markets. Despite the challenging market and intense competition in Q3, we were able to maintain our shares and expand our margins, which is a good achievement in challenging market conditions. Even though profitability improved as measured by gross margin %, overall profitability measured by EBIT declined almost 10%. There are a few reasons.

It was affected by decreased volumes or not that high volumes that we expected, investments into the sales, marketing, and pricing, higher logistic cost, and then business development measures. Let’s have a look at the segments in Q3, and there were differences between the business segments. In Finland, we can see good growth in Q3. As mentioned, July’s three-week heat wave significantly boosted demand and ensured a good third quarter sales for Finland. Our strong brands performed well. For example, non-alcoholic and hard seltzer categories continued to grow, and hard seltzer turned five years this year, and we have kept our position as a market leader all this time. Strong owned brand sales and very good delivery accuracy, thanks to the new investments in Iisalmi, boosted the sales and profitability, especially in July during the high demand when we performed very well.

In the Baltic Sea region, rainy and unfavorable weather conditions, together with the weak development of consumer purchasing power, tight price competition, and decrease in the consumption of alcohol products in general, impacted the profitability together with these high expenses, especially in the marketing and sales. Sales volumes declined, especially in Latvia and Denmark. In Latvia, the overall retail market continued to decline, but the good news is that we achieved growth in Horeca sales. In Denmark, our soft brand Jolly’s sales were significantly better than last year, but this gain did not offset the impact of lost private label leaders. However, all these market shares have mainly remained at the level of the previous year or even improved in the Baltic countries. Even though the market has been softer, we have performed in this market condition.

EBIT declined almost 25%, and the effect was due to the decreased volumes from Latvia and Denmark, but also Lithuania’s profitability was affected significantly in Q3 by the tight price competition in the summer season. In Belarus, there was the cold weather in the late summer, and that affected the overall demand. The good news is that the sales of these non-alcoholic products grew, as it is a strategic target for us. In profitability, we see a decline, and that is because there have been higher fixed costs, and especially, for example, logistics costs have been higher than last year. The whole year until September, as said, the whole year sales volumes were affected by continued weak consumer demand, general market uncertainty, and this unstable summer weather. Q3 sales were weaker than expected, especially in the Baltic Sea segment.

In Finland, we got this heat season in July, but that we didn’t see in the Baltic Sea region or in Belarus. Net sales grew, and that is thanks to the higher average sales price. Despite this challenging market, as said, we retained our market shares in all our main product groups, and our net sales remained at the previous year level. Profitability-wise, as said, the relative gross margin improved year on year, and that was 41.7%. We are happy that we have been able to improve this relative profitability measured by gross margin, as that is the base for sustainable profitable growth in the future. EBIT decreased due to strategic investments in business development and growth, including costs associated with these announced acquisitions and the modernization of information systems, as well as the increased sales and marketing activity and higher logistics costs.

For example, in this example of this modernization of information system, we are renewing our ERP system and also putting effort on our demand and campaign planning. The whole year by segments, in Finland, in terms of these product categories, as I said, sales of hard seltzers and non-alcoholic products continue to grow. Even though there is a change in consumer behavior slightly reduced due to the overall demand for alcohol products, the most significant change in the sales volume was due to the optimization measures taken in the beer range in 2024, which has a negative effect on the sales volume compared to last year.

The operating result improved almost 9% compared to last year, and that is mainly as a result of the sales volume growth due to the sales peak caused by the heat in July, improved production efficiency, the stabilization of cost increases, and changes in the product range. Many things have affected. Market position remained strong, as said. The Baltic Sea region price competition has continued intensive, and sales volumes declined due to the consumer’s weak purchasing power, weather conditions, and lower consumption of alcoholic products. This we have already mentioned. We have managed the market decline quite well. As always, market shares have mainly remained at the previous year level or even improved. As mentioned, sales volumes declined, especially in Denmark and Latvia, but the reasons are the same as mentioned in Q3. Profitability has not developed according to our plans in the Baltic Sea region. EBIT decline is 31%.

We saw that in Q3 it was less, but overall it is 31%. The decline comes from Denmark, Latvia, and Lithuania. In Denmark, the process of changing the focus of business operations from private label manufacturer to own brand business is in progress, but we have not yet made our operations profitable. In Latvia and Lithuania, intensified price competition caused by weak consumer demand during the summer season, especially in summer season, together with the significantly higher investments in brand visibility, campaigns, and pricing, weakened our profitability due to the smaller than expected market. At the same time, this helped maintaining our competitive position. Profitability drop in Latvia and Lithuania is expected to be temporary, as profitability has already improved in September compared with the previous months.

In Belarus, we see that the sales volumes and net sales are in the last year level, or the sales volumes are in the last year’s level, and net sales have improved, and that is because the average sales price has also improved. In overall, EBIT has declined, and that is because there has been more fixed cost. The cross-margin has been in a good level, but there is a bigger amount of fixed cost, and especially the logistics cost has been growing this year quite significantly. Finance summary, so some of the highlights from here. As overall, our balance sheet and financial position are strong. As announced, together with the acquisitions, we are planning to finance these acquisitions by operating cash flow and also utilizing existing short-term finance instruments.

In the sustainability side, in the 2025 Reputation Trust Survey done in Finland at the end of quarter two, we received a good rating in all areas and excellent in the products and services among both the general public and investors. Among the general public, our results were the best in the measurement history, and among the investors, the second best. We are especially proud of this good result in products and services because that is the core of our business. Investments, the total investments are €10 million more than last year, and the main part is coming from Finland. Finland investments have proceeded on schedule. This new high bay warehouse has significantly improved the delivery accuracy. We will see the proofs of that one in a moment in the video. I think that now we can go and see what has happened in Iisalmi.

The expansion project of our high bay warehouse here in Iisalmi has been completed on schedule and within budget. Construction work was finalized already during the springtime, and the warehouse was fully operational for high season 2025. The modern automated warehouse strengthens our delivery accuracy and effectively supports growing demand. As a result, we are able to serve our customers with even greater flexibility and speed with our high-quality products. Our new state-of-the-art brewhouse is being built as we speak. The project is progressing in time and within the budget. The new brewhouse will be ready for 2026 high season. With this new brewhouse, we get new growth opportunities in our current categories as well as new ones. The increased capacity of the new brewhouse will allow us to broaden our selection and offer an even wider range of products to meet the needs of customers and our consumers.

With the added capacity and modern technology, we will be able to expand into new non-alcoholic categories and offer more special and seasonal brews while continuing to produce our classics, most popular all the products. These investments are not just for efficiency, automation, and new technology. These are investments for our future, for our people, for our working environment, and for our customers so we can serve them even better than today. They will improve our service level and enhance our agility, enabling us to respond more effectively to future demand.

Patrik Lundell, CEO: Great. I hope you enjoyed the video and the scenery beyond the important contents that Tommy shared with us. We’re super proud of all the work that has been done in Iisalmi, and we’re probably a bit biased if we say, but I’m sure you agree after having seen the video that this is a brewery that’s in the most beautiful place in the world. We invite you to visit. Back to other topics. In terms of our near-term outlook, we’ve changed our guidance based on the actuals of Q3. I want to emphasize that we still expect a strong fourth quarter. Tiina-Liisa mentioned and referenced some of the investments we’ve done this summer. There were heavier investments in the similar space at the end of last year, which we are not expecting to repeat.

We’re overlapping some of those costs, and thereby we have great confidence in our ability to deliver a strong fourth quarter. In terms of strategy and getting to those acquisitions that I promised we would reference, we are committed to our strategy. The strategy is working. Our brands are performing. We have solid market shares. Our margins are improving. Our efficiency in our operations is improving. We will continue to execute in line with our plan, and we have great confidence in our ability to deliver growth also in the long term. Part of delivering that growth is expansion. Expansion through acquisitions. Let me just briefly touch on the three pieces of news we’ve shared during the third quarter. In Latvia, we’ve spoken about Latvia today as we did during the second quarter. You’ve heard that the market is much smaller.

Having said that, though, there are two brands that are performing. There are two brands that are growing. One is our Piebalga, a premium beer in the market that’s growing. The other one is Valmiermuiža. We, as a whole, have taken those increased shares of the market that are referenced, 3% more share in beer. There is growth in the market. There’s growth to be had, particularly in the premium part of the portfolio. Bringing Valmiermuiža on board is very much a local expansion. They have regional relevance as well. I’ve even seen some of their products, our products here in Finland. They also do soft drinks. It’s also leaning in on our multi-beverage strategy.

In the middle here, you see another picture of a beautiful brewery, this time in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Banja Luka Pivara brewery that we are looking to bring on board as all of these acquisitions by the end of the first quarter of 2026. In the case of Banja Luka, this not only brings us an addition to our beer portfolio, healthy operations there, but it provides us access to an entirely new market. If you look at Western Balkans, you’ll find roughly 20 million consumers. That’s not very different from the combined amount of consumers that we are able to service in our domestic markets today. If you look at the whole of the Balkans, you include Greece and Romania, we’re quickly talking about 60 million consumers. We’re opening up a new territory for our business.

As Banja Luka today is very much committed to beers, we have an opportunity to quickly extend their range and their offering there in the local markets with our in-house portfolio of non-alcoholic products and other alcoholic propositions. This will also help us to build our already existing exports in the market, to bring some of the production locally, and be an even stronger player there in the region. The third acquisition brings us to Estonia, where it’s a local acquisition of the Värska Mineraalvee OU original water business. This is a longstanding operator in the region, a strong local player, also with regional relevance. We see their products across the Baltics. We see them in Finland and beyond. This is a growing business, all non-alcoholic, but beyond water as well. They have enhanced waters, vitamin waters, magnesium waters, one of the novelties that they brought recently out.

This is a local and regional player and leans very much in on our ambitions to grow in the non-alcohol space. Their volume alone adds roughly 10% to the total non-alcohol sales of the group today. Three very interesting and relevant acquisitions lean directly on our strategy, enable us to be stronger in our current markets, enable us to seek growth across the regions that we operate in, and through the Banja Luka acquisition open up a completely new region for us. We’re very excited about these acquisitions and bringing the new team members on board and going into 2026 with many levers to pull and many growth opportunities. With that, we close and invite the participants here in the room and all of you there online to ask your questions. Thank you.

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: Thank you.

Patrik Lundell, CEO: Maybe we’ll leave this up. I don’t know. Will that inspire too many questions? Okay, please.

Right, thank you for the presentation, Sanna Perälä from Nordea. You walked us through the market development quite well, but I had one question that’s regarding Finland. You mentioned the good weather that was supportive in Q3, but was there anything else besides the good weather that supported the nice growth we saw?

Yeah, I think Tiina-Liisa referenced many of the important points there, one of which is our delivery accuracy. Through the investments already done and taken into good use during Easter of this year, we got the high bay warehouse. I sometimes make that mistake. The high bay warehouse in good use improved our delivery accuracy, so we were able to sell more than previous years and sell across our portfolio. That’s also the part that we want to emphasize, that our portfolio mix was stronger. Other internal efficiencies combined with the less strong growth on input costs. Many things played in our advantage. Did I forget something critical?

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: I think as a summary, it is that we have a better capability now to respond, for example, to this kind of peak seasonal demands. We can show that we can respond on those ones and we can kind of deliver, and that’s where also they get the benefits on those.

Patrik Lundell, CEO: Sure.

You expect the good development to continue, and it’s not just the weather?

Yes, we’re not in the weather business, although we have to accept that demand is impacted by the temperature outside.

All right, thank you. You mentioned the portfolio optimization and product mix. Could you describe some of the concrete actions you have taken perhaps during this year or in Q3 that optimizes your portfolio going forward?

Yeah, so coming in, thank you for the questions, by the way. Coming into this summer, we had stronger plans in the Finnish market as we did across the regions. We did more media investments. We also placed more secondary placements in store. We had a clear focus. We had five priorities that we went after, and we were able to deliver double-digit growth across all those five priorities. We’ve been quite focused and committed to delivering on specific areas. If you want specificity, for instance, in the non-alcohol part, we were focused on waters, building our Kevytalo brand, which is the leading brand in Finland in terms of these juice-enhanced waters. We saw tremendous growth there in waters. Overall, we took nearly a bit more than 2% market share this summer.

They’re cutting dividends, the actions we’re taking, and this is then, of course, changing the shape of our portfolio.

All right, thank you. If we look at Q4, you already touched upon that in my previous question, but how do you see the overall market development going into that? Do you, or how confident are you that your sales will remain on a positive growth track?

Maybe we take this together, but if I start, we don’t expect consumer sentiment to dramatically change. We expect the environment to remain similar. On one hand, we’re overlapping some investments, which we’re not repeating. On the other hand, as I mentioned, we’re coming out of summer stronger than we went into summer. We’ve got increased shares. We’re taking a bigger slice of the pie out than we did a year ago. We’ve been quite tight on our internal cost as well, driving out, teasing out efficiencies where we can to make sure that we deliver a strong fourth quarter.

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: Yeah, we are quite confident that we can manage the internal part. We know what kind of expenses we had this year, what we had last year, and that’s why we are believing that the Q4 in the profitability-wise is better than last year. Yes, the softness in the market has not disappeared. That remains to be seen how the Q4 is going to be. I think that we have seen quite a much of changes already in the summer season. It cannot go any worse maybe than this has been in the summer season. I think total.

Patrik Lundell, CEO: To point back to what you said previously as well about September, Latvia and Lithuania, we already see the needle moving in the right direction. That gives us confidence as well.

All right, that’s clear. Moving on to the guidance for 2025, which you restated yesterday. If I calculated correctly, you need to improve 50% in Q4 on your EBIT level to reach the lower end of the guidance range. What steps do we need to see or do you need to do in order to reach that?

Thank you for the question. It feels like it’s a bit of a follow-up on the theme we’ve already been touching on. Indeed, we have taken those measures. We have them in the plan, and we have a line of sight of the costs we had last year and things that we’re not repeating this year. Maybe to mention the fact that we spent in marketing and sales activations more in the fourth quarter of last year than we are planning to do this year. We have already invested that in summer. There are these shifts which give us confidence that despite the market being where it is, we’re controlling our own operations, and by that we expect a strong fourth quarter.

Is this improvement mainly from Finland and the Baltic Sea region or the other one only?

We see it across our business. We have taken these initiatives across our business in all divisions. Thank you very much.

I still have two more questions to go. You’ve seen your non-alcoholic categories growing across the board while alcoholics are somewhat more depressed. Can you share what’s their share of revenue or volumes these days?

If you look at our volumes in total, and you can refer back to the annual report of last year, you’ll see that roughly half of our volume is beer. If you take soft drinks and waters, that’s roughly 25%. If you take all of our non-alcohol combined, I believe you’ll find in the report, even for the first time, you’ll find a specific number. Maybe you want to repeat, but it’s more than 40% that’s represented by non-alcohol.

Does that stand still in Q3 2025?

Yes, year to date it’s even grown.

All right, thanks. Lastly, about the acquisitions, they look quite promising. Have you quantified any synergy potential there?

On the acquisitions?

Yeah.

Yes, we’re not disclosing those details. Yes, we have. That is part of it, to grow and really make sure that we work stronger together than separately today.

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: We have only stated that those businesses are profitable now. Of course, we have found synergies as those companies are in Latvia or Estonia. We have the operations there, so we can find some synergies in the future in many aspects also.

All right, that’s all from me. Thank you.

Patrik Lundell, CEO: Thank you.

Hi, it’s Matti from Open Markets. I’d like to ask you also about these acquisitions you made. I think the Baltic acquisitions make perfect sense, and they are a perfect match to your existing portfolio. This Bosnia acquisition was a bit surprising, at least for me. How do you see kind of the country risks or this kind of what could possibly go wrong there going to the totally new market?

Sure. Now, we have some experience, of course, of entering new markets, and we’ve been quite successful in doing that in the past. We expect the same here. We are indeed going into the Western Balkans. If you think about the Croatian coast, you think about Montenegro, Albania, the tourism that’s growing there, we’ll be able to serve them not all the way from our domestic markets, but from our local future domestic markets. There’s growth there to be had. If you look at Bosnia and Herzegovina in itself, it’s a small country, it’s a small market. When you go beyond into Serbia and some of the neighboring markets, Greece and Italy, again, there’s good momentum already today that we expect to only accelerate and broaden our offering through that. There’s clear building blocks that give us confidence in the growth.

When you point to the uncertainty in the region, I’d like to emphasize that these markets are all applying to become EU members. We’re very much leaning into the Western Hemisphere here. Actually, Bosnia and Herzegovina will be our westernmost country after Denmark, if you look at it geographically. Thank you for the question.

Thank you. Maybe one follow-up, like the opportunities you just mentioned. How do you see kind of the, you said that you have option to export your existing products via these new acquisitions. How do you think what are the key products you are trying to get into the new market?

I don’t want to spoil the surprise for the local consumers and tourists that visit the region. We’ll see that in the future. If you think about what the acquired company is doing today, they’re doing great with their local beers. They’re seeing strong growth in their local range. It’s only beer. We can add the obvious waters, soft drinks, our cocktails. We can bring many of these products to the local offering, energy drinks, new waters. All these types of categories are up for grabs. Indeed, we’re already in the market. Now having a domestic machinery there and a sales force will bring us a lot of additional strength behind that offering that’s already in the market. I hope I answered your question.

Yes, thank you. Maybe two more questions. One, like you said that your logistic cost has been increasing. Is that the case in all the regions and segments? I’m sorry. Oh, I’m so sorry.

No worries. It’ll be the background music. It doesn’t hurt.

Yeah, so the logistic cost. Is that the case that they’ve been increasing all the segments and all the regions? Is it specifically the case in the Baltic Sea region, or how do you see that?

Yeah, it’s more southern bound. The challenge there is where we have to leverage external warehousing, and then you see increases in logistics costs. That’s the combination. Not so much in Finland, but how do you want to expand on it?

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: I think last year we saw the logistic cost increase in Finland. Now we can see it more powerfully in the Baltics, especially in Belarus. The inflation kind of comes a little bit late. For example, in Belarus, there’s a lack of drivers and the gasoline cost and everything like that. I think that’s the combination. Also, our business is growing, so we need more warehousing and these kind of things. These external additional warehouses are also then a little bit extra cost.

All right, and then the final one. How do you see the market? The market is now a bit soft, but how do you see like the next year? Any educated guesses?

Patrik Lundell, CEO: We don’t want to be guessworking. I think weather-wise we should expect at least similar weather, if not slightly better. That’s one part. In terms of the economy, I mean, we read the same newspapers and follow the media broadly as you would. There are different views on will it recover, when will it recover. I think suffice it to say eventually it will. That’s why we have great confidence in our plan and the actions that we’re taking, where we’re investing in our core business, we’re investing in our capabilities, our efficiency. We will be stronger by every day that goes. Whenever the market returns, we’re more ready than before.

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: It is a kind of combination. For example, in Finland, the salaries have increased, people have more money, but when do you have the confidence to use the money? Of course, there are statistics or guesses that the wiser than us are doing that it should be a little bit better next year, but that we do know. We do not have probably a high expectation it will be totally different next year than this year.

Thank you.

Patrik Lundell, CEO: Maybe just whilst we move to online questions, to say that we’re not only planning next year, we’re planning the next 20 years. Eventually we’ll get better. Please, was there something online as well?

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: Yes, we have a few questions that we have received online. First, let’s go to Belarus. There are the temporary restrictions on the distribution of profits to the parent company from Belarus. There are questions related to that, that you have €60 million cash in your balance sheet, and how much of that is sitting in Belarus that you currently don’t have access to, and how do you see the risks in continuing operations there at the moment?

Patrik Lundell, CEO: Yes, let’s take this together, but maybe on the operations there. Things are performing under these circumstances well. We have our Lithuanian long-standing CEO in charge there, and we’re able to operate. Our team is safe and doing well in terms of the working conditions, and we’re maintaining the asset with necessary investments. From that perspective, things are ticking along. In terms of the cash reserves, we haven’t been very specific on it, but maybe you want to elaborate with a few words.

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: I think in the final statement in the year-end, we have stated the cash amount in Belarus in the quarter reports. We have not stated that one, but I think that what we have said is that usually the cash flows are related to the size of the business.

Thank you. Let’s move on to Finland. How do you see the consumer demand at the moment in Finland?

Patrik Lundell, CEO: It feels like we’re kind of repeating the same narrative here. It’s been a soft, soft year. We had in Finland, we had those three weeks of warm weather in July, which kind of fixed the third quarter. Overall, it’s cautious, I would say, but there’s maybe cautious optimism if you zoom in on Finland alone. The reports we read on the future there indicate a cautious recovery, whether it’s in property prices or others. We’re expecting that eventually the Finns will gain confidence again and start spending a bit more.

Thank you. Moving on to Denmark, how much volume growth would you need in Denmark to turn it profitable with the current margin structure?

That’s a very specific question, but it points clearly to the issue we have. When we started the kind of turnaround initiatives in Denmark, what we did, we walked away from some of the most unhealthy business we had, which wasn’t profit creative. If you want to ask how much more volume, it’s not as simple as that because it depends what type of volume. What has happened is that we’ve also lost some of that base volume that we would have liked to keep. We’re looking for volume broadly, but it has to be something that helps us justify our existence for the long term. It has to kind of build a path to recovery. I don’t know how much more specifically we can answer.

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: Yeah, I think we stated already that earlier the volumes were mainly private labels, so the retailers’ kind of own brands, and now we are making the shift to our own brands, Olvi own brands, and investment own brands. Basically, the leaders that we have lost, we do not need the similar kind of leaders to be profitable with our own brands, but how much, that we have not been specific, of course.

Patrik Lundell, CEO: Maybe we can share the YOLI story there. We’ve increased our share many times over, and we’ve been able, on the soft drinks specifically, to replace some unhealthy volume with healthier YOLI volume, but that doesn’t cover the other losses in the water and beer segments.

Thank you. There just came a follow-up question on this about losing the private label contracts. Was that your own decision or the partner’s decision?

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: Both.

Patrik Lundell, CEO: Yeah, it’s always a commercial decision, right? It’s a negotiation, and then you either win the deal or you don’t.

Thank you. Moving on to the M&As, can you share how much roughly did you spend on the three acquisitions that you have done lately, and how much of the M&A-related costs did you incur in Q3?

The acquisition numbers, we haven’t shared any in terms of costs because we’ve mentioned that part of our fixed costs were associated with developing an M&A, but what kind of, do you have a round figure or %?

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: No, it’s multiple hundred thousands, of course, because you have many acquisitions going on, and usually the processes are quite long and these kind of things. We have not stated this one, but for the year-end, I think we try to do some kind of summary and disclose that more then.

Thank you. To the final question, this is also related to the M&A. Are you currently working on many new acquisitions, or were you working on just these three, and they happened to materialize at the same time?

Patrik Lundell, CEO: This is an ongoing topic, and I think it’s suffice to say that we intend to remain strong and develop our business. We have confidence in our model, and we will continue to invest both domestically and beyond.

Thank you.

Tiina-Liisa Liukkonen, Chief Finance and Information Officer: Thank you.

Patrik Lundell, CEO: All right, if that was all from the questions perspective, thank you for joining us. We look forward to meeting you again when we close the year early next year, and in the meantime, we wish you a good continuation of the week and the year.

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