Bang & Olufsen International Q2 2025-26 Earnings Call - Leadership Transition and Sharpened Execution Amid Mixed Financial Results

Conference Operator: At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Bang & Olufsen International Report, second quarter 2025-26. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the Q&A, please press five-star on your telephone keypad. This call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce CFO and Interim CEO, Nikolaj Wendelboe. Nikolaj, you may now begin.

Nikolaj Wendelboe, Interim CEO and CFO, Bang & Olufsen: Hello everyone, and thanks for joining the call. Welcome to my first webcast in this position as Interim CEO. With me today is our Chair, Juha Christensen. Juha will begin by addressing the leadership transition we announced last week and will also be available for questions after the presentation. I will go through our highlights for the past quarter and provide an overview of our business performance. And following that, I will take us through the financials and our outlook in detail before we open the session up for your questions. And with that, I will hand it over to Juha.

Juha Christensen, Chair of the Board, Bang & Olufsen: Thank you, Nikolaj. And good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for joining. Let me begin with a few words on the leadership transition announced last week and what it means for our company going forward. As we announced last week, Kristian Teär has stepped down as CEO. Nikolaj Wendelboe has assumed the role of Interim CEO alongside his current role as CFO. And the board has formally initiated a process to search for a new CEO for Bang & Olufsen. On behalf of the board, I want to sincerely thank Kristian for his significant contributions to Bang & Olufsen. Kristian joined the company in 2019 at a critical point in our history. He was faced with the unprecedented challenge of leading the company through the COVID-19 period.

Over the past years, Kristian has played a key role in setting the strategic direction and in establishing a solid financial foundation for the business. For that, he deserves recognition and our thanks. The search for a new CEO is ongoing. It is a carefully considered process to ensure we find the right long-term fit, a leader who can take the company confidently into its next layers of execution. We have the full confidence in Nikolaj as Interim CEO. He brings deep knowledge of the company, financial discipline, data-driven decision-making, and solid continuity at an important moment. Let me also be very clear about something important. The overall strategy and our ambition for Bang & Olufsen remains unchanged. Our goal to strengthen our position as a global leader in luxury audio and to deliver sustainable, profitable growth stands firm and unchanged.

In January 2023, we set the strategic direction that we are now following, and last financial year was a transition year marked by investments and business optimization, leading us on a solid foundation to accelerate strategy execution. To underline our commitment, we defined midterm financial ambitions for the three-year period spanning the 2025-26 to 2027-28 financial years. We’re now six months into our three-year midterm plan. As we enter the next phase, the board believed it was the right moment to sharpen our operational focus, accelerate execution across all markets, and further elevate the end-to-end client experience. This is about building on the momentum already underway, as well as raising the bar on operational excellence. As part of the next phase is ensuring that our organization is equipped to execute at a higher level.

That means giving our engineers, designers, and product teams in Struer, Lyngby, and across the company the right tools, processes, and decision frameworks to continue deepening and expanding our product portfolio with best-in-class offerings. At the same time, it means enabling our commercial and channel teams globally across our 326 monobrand stores and our broader partner network to translate that product strength into consistent, high-quality execution across all markets. Finally, we’re focused on strengthening Bang & Olufsen’s marketing capabilities so that brand investments, retail activation, and product launches work together as a more effective and scalable demand-generation engine. These priorities are central to the board’s view of what is required to fully realize the strategy we have set. With that, I hand back over to you, Nikolaj.

Nikolaj Wendelboe, Interim CEO and CFO, Bang & Olufsen: Thank you, Juha. I’m honored to assume the role of Interim CEO and would like to thank the board for the trust and confidence they have placed in me. I would also like to thank Kristian for the last six years, a period where we have steered the company through several global challenges and have set the foundation to accelerate our strategy. I am confident that together with the exceptional team at Bang & Olufsen, we will deliver focused execution of our strategy and continue to move the business forward. Let us begin by looking at the highlights of the quarter. Highlights for the quarter were growth in like-for-like sell-out, with branded channels and Win Cities performing well. Group revenue declined by 1% in local currencies, driven by lower revenue from non-branded channels and brand partnering.

Gross margin continued its increasing trajectory, resulting in EBIT before special items of minus 5.3%, as we have invested in Centennial campaigns and events. Adjusted for that, the EBIT margin before special items was around 0%. We had a busy quarter with the launches of the earpieces Beograze, the Beosound Premier soundbar, and our Re-load program. We also opened a flagship store in Paris in December, and we opened the first of three stores in California. And lastly, we were very busy with our 100-year anniversary, which we marked across the globe, a significant milestone reflecting our rich heritage in design, craftsmanship, and acoustic innovation. In the celebration of our centenary in November, we executed a global brand campaign and a series of celebration events across key markets, combining a clear global direction with strong local execution.

Together, these moments honored our heritage, showcased the strength of the brand today, and marked our transition into the next century of Bang & Olufsen. The events brought together clients, partners, media, and key stakeholders and generated extensive media coverage globally. As part of our global centennial campaign, we activated our brand at the iconic Harrods in London through a window takeover on Brompton Road, following the recent uplift of our Harrods store. Each window focused on a defining decade in our history, illustrating the evolution of our design over time. The activation delivered strong results. Footfall in Harrods increased by a notable 64% versus the same period last year. In fact, November became the highest revenue month on record for the store, growing 71% year on year. As I highlighted, we announced three product innovations in the quarter.

With our Beograze earpieces announced in September 2025, we are redefining the in-ear category. With a solid foundation in the DNA of Bang & Olufsen, we have created the best audio quality in a wireless earphone, leveraging our competencies for a functional and beautiful aluminum design. As with our H100 headphone, the earpieces are built on our proprietary Amadeus software platform, which ensures full flexibility in the development of features. The combination of design, craftsmanship, and acoustic excellence underlines what B&O product stands for. In November, we announced the soundbar Beosound Premier, adding a soundbar to a portfolio that fits TVs from 42 inches and upwards. The soundbar complements our TV offering in the stage category alongside Beosound Theatre and Beovision Harmony. Beosound Premier differentiates from the market in the combination of innovative features.

The soundbar is built with wide-stage technology, precision tuning from Struer Craftsmen, and powered by our Mozart software platform. Once again, leveraging our expertise, it’s sculpted from pure aluminum and offering full integration with our home speakers. Cementing our longevity promise, our Re-load program was launched in October on our own e-com channel. With Re-load, we are taking yet another important step towards extending the life of our products. Through this initiative, we offer select refurbished products with Bang & Olufsen warranty and official certification through monthly product drops on our e-com. The launch has been successful with three out of five drops sold out within the first week after launch. We plan to expand the offering during the year to our stores throughout Europe, giving the stores the opportunity to sell refurbished products with Bang & Olufsen warranty and official certification.

All three launches complement our current product portfolio and support our ambition of leading the luxury audio market with our iconic long-lasting products. The Re-load program further underpins the value and the resale value of our products. As part of our channel optimization, we continue to strengthen both the footprint and the quality of our branded retail network across regions. Starting with the actions taken during the quarter, we opened two new stores, carried out two strategic relocations, eight store uplifts, and eight selective plant closures. These actions reflect our continued focus on improving the quality of the network, not just expanding the number of stores.

Turning to the EMEA region, we opened a new flagship store in Paris in November, featuring our Culture Store concept, a design concept that turns our stores into immersive spaces where design, sound, and local culture meets and invites guests to experience, feel, and connect with Bang & Olufsen. The number of stores in Paris remained unchanged as one store, our company-owned store in Les Archives, was closed during the quarter. We opened two pop-up stores, one in Oslo and one in Zurich Airport, and these pop-ups allow us to test locations while increasing brand awareness in our markets. In the Americas, we reached an important milestone after quarter end with the opening of our partner-operated flagship store on Union Square in San Francisco.

The store also features our Culture Store concept and is the largest Bang & Olufsen store globally, and the first of three planned openings in California this financial year. The planned expansion will continue with openings in Palo Alto and West Hollywood in the second half of 2025-26. Finally, in the APAC region, we continue to improve the retail network, particularly in China, where several stores were uplifted and underperforming locations were closed. Now, please move to page 10, and I will go into the financial and outlook in more detail, and I’ll begin with our sellout, our like-for-like sellout, which reported 7% growth in the quarter. For branded channels, like-for-like sellout grew by 8% with double-digit growth from company-owned stores and e-commerce. Looking across our regions, we had like-for-like sellout growth across the board, driven by branded channels.

In EMEA, we saw an increase of 2%, which was driven by double-digit growth from company-owned stores and e-commerce and single-digit growth from our monobrand stores. In the Americas, like-for-like sellout increased by 9%. Branded channels grew double digits, while our monobrand stores declined single digit. Despite lower consumer sentiment, we see good traction from our company-owned stores. Like-for-like sellout in APAC grew by 17%, driven by the branded channels. The retail channel increased, driven by sellout growth from China, where we operate our own online flagship store. For our Win Cities, New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong, combined sellout growth was 19%, marking the sixth consecutive quarter with double-digit growth. Group revenue declined by 1.2% in local currencies, totaling DKK 667 million for the quarter. Looking at our performance across our product categories, revenue from product sales were overall flat in local currencies year on year.

Both Flexible Living and the Staged categories performed well, while the on-the-go category declined. Revenue from brand partnering and other activities declined by 12.3% in local currencies. This is partly driven by a timing effect in our automotive licensing revenue. And license revenue from HP declined as expected and was offset by increased revenue from TCL. And I will now go into more details per region. When looking at the results overall on a regional level, product sales declined by 2.2% and, as mentioned, was overall flat in local currencies with a modest increase of 0.2%. The gross margin increased to a record high of 54.4% for the quarter. And in general, we are seeing positive developments in the margin across regions. In EMEA, revenue was DKK 342 million, which was a decline of 2.2% in local currencies.

Revenue from our company-owned stores rose double-digit, while revenue from the monobrand channel declined single-digit compared to last year, driven by central and southern European markets. Revenue from multi-brand and e-tail declined mainly due to lower revenue from the on-the-go category. Last year, the launches of Beoplay H100 and Beoplay 11 generated high comparables, as well as end-of-life sales of Beoplay EX. The gross margin rose to 51% from 49.3% in Q2 last year, mainly driven by a shift towards higher margin categories. Moving to the Americas, revenue declined by 2.4% in local currencies to DKK 79 million. Revenue from branded channels rose double-digit compared to Q2 last year, driven by our monobrand and company-owned stores. Hence, from a channel perspective, the decline was driven by enterprise and e-tail.

We saw a decline of 41% year over year for the on-the-go category, driven by a strong quarter last year due to the launches and end-of-life mentions, as well as reduced promotional activities. Despite the change in tariffs, the gross margin increased from 48% to 56.4%. This was driven by a shift towards higher margin projects, with especially the staged category performing well. For the APAC region, reported revenue was DKK 185 million and increased by 6.1% in local currencies. This was achieved despite China, which accounts for around half of the region, being down by 0.5% in local currencies. From a channel perspective, the increase was driven by our company-owned and monobrand stores. The gross margin increased from 47.4% to 59.7%.

This was a result of a shift in product mix towards higher margin products, improved product margin across categories, and the takeover of the Tmall online flagship store in April 2025. The gross margin for the brand partnering and other activities was 89.7%, and the development reflected the change in mix between license and product sales compared to Q2 last year. The group gross margin was 57.9%, an increase of 4.2 percentage points from last year’s margin of 53.7%. The EBIT margin before special items decreased by 7%. This points to minus 5.3%. When we look at the EBIT bridge between Q2 last year and this quarter, the main driver of the decline was the extraordinary cost related to our centennial campaigns and celebrations. Excluding these extraordinary costs, EBIT before special items was around zero.

Net working capital decreased by DKK 27 million during the quarter to DKK 289 million. Trade receivables increased by DKK 117 million, and trade payables increased by DKK 103 million. Inventory increased by DKK 13 million to DKK 487 million. The inventory level is expected to decline during the second half of the year.

The free cash flow was negative DKK 33 million for the quarter, reflecting cash flow from operating activities alongside continued investments in product development and our retail network. These investments led to CapEx of DKK 74 million for the quarter and an increase of DKK 20 million compared to Q2 last year. Capital resources were DKK 267 million compared to DKK 319 million at the end of Q2 last year. Out of the DKK 267 million in capital resources, available liquidity accounts for DKK 117 million compared to DKK 159 million in Q2 last year. And then moving to the outlook for the financial year 2025-2026. As announced last week, based on the performance in the first half of the year, we have narrowed parts of our full-year outlook. This reflects increased visibility following the first half of the financial year, while the overall strategic direction and underlying assumptions remain unchanged.

We expect our recent product launches and store openings to support growth in the second half of the financial year. Revenue growth in local currencies is now expected in the range of 1%-5%, narrowed from 1%-8%. The outlook for EBIT margin before special items remains unchanged at -3% to +1%. Free cash flow is now expected to be in the range of -DKK 100 million to -DKK 50 million, narrowed from -DKK 100 million to DKK 0. We continue to monitor developments related to tariffs and are taking mitigation actions where relevant. To conclude, we remain on track with our strategic execution and investments, and we continue to focus our execution across retail, branded marketing, and product development, and now we will turn into the Q&A session. Thank you. We’ll now start the Q&A session.

If you wish to ask a question, please press five-star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing five-star again. There’ll be a brief pause while questions are being registered. And our first question will be from the line of Poul Jessen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted. Thank you. I have a few questions. Let’s start by the change of CEO. You mentioned that you are now focusing on execution and on improving R&D, especially on the focus on software. Can you just give some flavor on what, in fact, that you are concluding that Kristian Teär did not have of competencies within these areas after the long transition? That’s question number one. And let me address this. So Kristian Teär played a central role in bringing Bang & Olufsen to where we are today.

We are in a stronger position, and we are more focused, and we are ready for the next phase. And the CEO transition is not at all about changing direction. It’s about accelerating the direction and execution where we already are. And so there’s, of course, one would say there’s never a good time to change CEO, but we consider that probably the best time is when you are stepping into a new accelerated execution mode like we are, and that’s why we decided to do this now. Can you put some flavor on what you’re looking for? Is it an international or non-Danish, potentially person with a high track record within luxury or retail, or is it in the R&D part? So Bang & Olufsen is multiple things. We are a product company, we are a retailer, and we’re also very heavily involved in custom installations.

The ideal candidate should, of course, be an expert at all three. It’s unlikely that such a person exists out in the world. So what we are actually principally looking for is someone with a strong execution ability, someone who is good at hiring and activating the right people and letting them do their work, and creating a strong ethos of data-driven decision-making across the company. We’re, of course, looking everywhere. We are looking internally, we’re looking externally, we are looking in Denmark and beyond. What’s clear is that this company deserves an outstanding CEO, and that’s what I’ll go out and deliver to the company. Okay. And what timing should we look for? Should we expect that someone is in place by late year? And then I think calendar year. This is about getting the right person, not about getting the right person as quickly as possible.

I’m not going to put a date on that. Okay. One operational question. If I can just add to it, Poul, the company is locked and loaded on execution across multiple areas. Product, we have a strong product organization. We’ve had an additional hire who have just started to further accelerate and drive the execution on the roadmap that’s already in place. On the channel, we have a good understanding and handle on our unit economics, on what it takes to find a store to get it ready for opening, and the economics bringing us into where the store is cash flow and P&L positive. We know we are probably a bit behind the curve on marketing, but we are making good progress with our interim situation right now to create a strong demand generation engine as well.

The company overall is in very good hands under Nikolaj and the global leadership team to execute thoroughly. So in between CEOs, we’re looking at accelerating, not treading water. Okay. Thank you. And then I guess it’s for you, Nikolaj. You mentioned the results out of Heritage by having a large marketing push. I assume that could then be extrapolated on the group that marketing is having an impact on the looking forward. How are you looking at this now? Would you like to have much more resources, or is it just if you have the resources? Your sound was a little bit on and off, Poul, but I think the question was related to marketing resources and what we’ve learned from the Heritage execution, of course. And I think in terms of marketing, it’s not necessarily about spending more and more money.

It’s about spending the money in the right way to create the right impact, and that is, of course, something that we are working on improving based on data and also based on things that we are trying, like for instance, what we’ve done in heritage, because one of the key things for our marketing organization is, of course, to drive customers into the stores because when they’re in the stores, then they can also make a purchase, and we were quite successful with that on the heritage takeover, and of course, we are taking learnings from that particular campaign, but equally important is, of course, also to take the learnings around the investment level versus the impact that it’s giving.

And that’s something that takes a longer time to measure because there’s also a tail, of course, from an event like or a takeover like that until you have the full impact. But this is the direction we’re going, driving more footfall through marketing, but also making sure that we spend our money on where it makes the most sense. Okay. I’ll step back to see if there are others. Otherwise, I’ll go back to the Q. Thank you, Poul. As a reminder, if you have a question for the speakers, please press five-star on your telephone keypad. We’ll have a brief pause while questions are being registered. And our next question is from Niels Leth from Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted. Thank you so much. First question on the gross margin progression in Americas.

So could we extrapolate on the very nice gross margin improvement that you made here in quarter two? Is this sustainable for the coming quarters as well? Second question on your sell-out, which has been quite a bit higher than your sales growth in local currency for the past four quarters. Perhaps you could just firstly remind us how you calculate your sell-out growth. So which channels are included in your sell-out growth? And secondly, would the fact that sell-out growth has been so much higher than sales growth in local currency, would that suggest that inventories are at a very low point? And my third question would be on special items for this fiscal year. So how much in special items should we build into our models? Thank you. Thanks, Niels.

First, on the gross margin in the U.S., there are several factors that are leading to this significant increase in the gross margin. And I can actually say one thing. We will not see that kind of increase quarter over quarter and year over year. That’s for sure. But can you use it as a new level? Not exactly because there are some things in this particular quarter where the improvement is coming from the stores that we opened in San Francisco, where we also sold in more Staged products and especially more of our very expensive products Beolab 90s to the California stores as part of some special editions we have created for that market. And that has a higher than normal gross margin. That being said, last year, we had a number of end-of-life sales, especially on Beoplay EX.

And last year, we also had more promotional campaigns, especially in the retail channel, for instance, during Black Friday than what we have done this year. So as part of our transition away from price performance in consumer electronics towards taking the luxury order position, we are also expecting our gross margin to increase in the U.S. to a level that is more on par with the rest of the world, with the caveat that in the U.S., you have tariffs, and in the U.S., you also have a higher landed cost on your products. So it will be difficult for them to get to the same level as EMEA and APAC. But we are seeing these improvements as a good sign that we are going in the right direction. Then on sell-out, it’s correct that sell-out for the quarter is 7%.

Sell-out for branded channels in the quarter is 8%, and if we look at the branded channels, or maybe let me go back and explain how we are calculating like-for-like sell-out, as you were asking, so like-for-like sell-out is a measure of same-store sell-out, so it has to be on stores where we have been opened this quarter, but then also opened in Q2 of last year, so it’s a like-for-like measure. It includes, in principle, all channels where we have like-for-like stores. Of course, the most stable environment at the moment on like-for-like stores is in our branded channels, our monobrand channels, our COCO channel, and our e-comm, whereas in multi-brand and retail, with the big changes that we’ve done in that retail network, the like-for-like numbers are based on fewer stores, of course.

So if we dive into the like-for-like sell-out in the branded channels, then you are bridging 8% in sell-out with 5.4% growth in revenue. And a main part of that is a reduction of inventories, especially in the monobrand channel that is driving this difference, along with other technicalities that I’m not sure I will bore you with at this call. But when you’re measuring like-for-like sell-out, you’re measuring it in retail weeks because you need to make sure that you’re comparing weeks with weeks, whereas revenue is measured in calendar months. And that can actually change a little bit when a month is ending and starting compared to the weeks that you’re measuring. So that gives some small differences. But the large difference is related to inventories.

Secondly, the fact that the like-for-like stores that are new versus the like-for-like stores that we took out last year are also giving a positive impact, which is actually showing that our retail transformation is improving our sell-out. Finally, on special items, I don’t think I will comment in any details on special items. Obviously, with the leadership change, there will be some special items related to that. This will be disclosed in the remuneration report at the end of the year. And of course, some provisions can be expected also at the end when we are reporting our Q3 numbers. I think if you want to get a feel for it, I would encourage you to read our remuneration policy, and then you will get a good sense of what that could lead to. Thank you so much.

Perhaps you could just remind us when it comes to sell-out growth and the branded sell-out growth, which you highlight as being 8%. So how much does the branded sell-out grow? How much does that represent of your total product sales? Thank you. From a revenue perspective, it represents approximately if you take off product sales, it’s around 60% of product sales it represents. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Niels. Our next question is a question from Poul Jessen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted. Yes. Thank you. My question is, I don’t know if you want to comment it right now because it’s a little current quarter, but can you say a little about the impressions you have from the opening in San Francisco and the new store in Paris and also the two product launches you’ve had? Yeah.

We have some great openings of the two stores. I’m not going to comment in detail on the performance of the stores. San Francisco opened in December, so the data there is also limited. Of course, in general, the openings of three stores in California this year is going to help the second half of the year from a growth perspective, for sure. The Paris store was opened in November and replacing the very small store we had in Les Archives in Paris. Of course, I continued doing business with the clients that we have there. It’s impacting our numbers positively. I think more importantly, we had the launches of Beograze and Beosound Premier. Both of these launches came late in the quarter. The impact this quarter from both a sell-in and a sell-out perspective is limited.

As we are ramping up to full capacity on the production lines, this will have a positive impact also in the second half of the year. We have high hopes for these two products. When we get to our Q3 report, we will, of course, say more about how they were performing. Just to understand about the US gross margin, you said it was supported by sell-in of high-end products to the San Francisco store, and therefore we should not expect continuing. What about LA and Palo Alto? That must then be supporting the Q3, Q4 US performance. These stores will definitely support Q3, Q4 performance in the US. There was a higher than normal sell-in in relation to the San Francisco opening due to these special variants of Beolab 90 that we produced for this specific opening event.

So that’s why it’s a little bit higher than it would normally be from a sell-in to a new store. Okay. And then about your liquidity. I can see that your credit facility has been reduced from DKK 250 million to DKK 150 million. Is that because you don’t think that you need it anymore, or are there any other reasons why it’s been reduced? No. So just okay. So maybe to clear that out, it has not been reduced. The credit facility is the same. But over the end of this quarter, we had utilized part of the credit facility. So when we talk about available credit facility, we, of course, deduct the part that hasn’t been utilized yet. But it remains the same. But we have utilized it over the end of the quarter, basically as a part of daily cash management efforts and nothing out of the ordinary on that.

Okay. And then my last question, that is on the like-for-like, and coming back to Niels’ question about the channel inventories. When do you see or expect the channel inventories to have bottomed out, meaning that we should see a positive contribution from the sell-in also? Yeah. But I mean, the channel inventory is always fluctuating because in different quarters, you have different seasonality on channel inventory. Typically, it goes up in Q1. And then in Q2, we’ve seen that for many quarters. In Q2, you’re reducing your channel inventory because you have higher sales out due to high season. And the same goes for December. And then you typically also see some channel inventory building and connecting with product launches, etc., etc. Generally speaking, I mean, we are satisfied with the inventory level that we have in the channels.

The reason why it becomes an important thing for us to discuss is because we’re seeing the differences between revenue and sell-out, where the movements in the inventory, of course, play a role. We only have a few places in the world where we think channel inventory is too high, one specific country in Asia, in Korea, whereas in the rest of the world, the channel inventory is quite satisfactory. Okay. That was all for me. Thanks, Poul. As we have no further questions in the queue, I will hand it back to the speakers for any closing remarks. Thank you, everyone, for your interest in Bang & Olufsen and for joining today and for your questions, and if you have any additional questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to our investor relations team, and I wish you all a great day.