Yannick Fierling
Management
Thank you very much, Ann-Sofi. Good day to all of you. Very glad to be with you for these third-quarter results. This quarter can be best characterized as a very strong execution and a resilient performance. I would start with the strong strategical execution. First, the three joint ventures in North America are operational. We kept on optimizing our organization by moving more people from the corporate side of equation to the front line for sales and marketing. We have been executing in this quarter, once again, our footprint. We have been closing the factory in Argentina in Rosario. We have been closing the Anderson factory on July 31st, and we have constructive exchanges with the institution in Italy and with our social partners. The markets have been very challenging. North America has been down by 5%, Europe has been flat, and Brazil has been slowing down with a growth of 2%. But despite this difficult environment, we kept on growing. Our organic growth in the quarter has been 3.5%. We have been also delivering one of the strongest third-quarter cash flow in the past years here. Very strong headwinds from an external side of the equation, but we have been delivering strong cost reduction. We keep on focusing on what we can control, which is execution for our strategical side of equation and profitable growth. Let me move now through the group results. First, from the transformational side of equation, as I said previously, we have been executing our footprint with the closure of Anderson on July 31st, the closure of the Rosario factory in Argentina, and again, constructive discussion in Italy. The markets have been, as I said, flat, down, slightly up in Brazil, but we kept on growing organically at the level of 3.5%, with higher volume in EMEA, APAC, and Latin America. We have been keeping the price increase we put in place beginning of May in North America. In Europe especially, we are very proud to say that we gained market share in Electrolux, AEG, targeting the premium price levels we have been in for the last month and years. On the earnings side of equation, very strong performance from cost reduction side of equation. We have been delivering SEK 1.4 billion cost reduction here, mainly coming from product cost reduction. In this quarter, we have been, of course, facing a very significant level of headwinds. First coming from a tariff in North America, but not only. We have been impacting fully by the Middle East conflict here, not being protected any longer by hedging. These significant external headwinds will remain in the coming quarters. Moving now to Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and APAC. We will be closing our factory in Hungary at the year-end. We have very good discussion with the trade unions and the institutions in Italy, constructive discussions, which are moving according to plan. Demand in Europe has been very much subdued. We do not see any signal of recovery from the construction market side of equation. Despite all of that, we kept on growing. We kept on growing with an organic growth of 2.8%. We kept on gaining market share with our premium brands, Electrolux and AEG, keeping the high price index we had built in the last month and years. From an EBIT side of equation, stable operating income, despite, again, a hit we have been getting due to the Middle East conflict with higher logistic cost here and higher raw material cost. If you look at the market evolution, pretty impactful picture here. Europe has been flat once again. Western Europe has been down by 1%. That is where we are selling 80% of our products, and Eastern Europe has been up by 3%, but overall flat. If you compare the volume we did have in the third quarter 2026, we are 8% down versus Q3 2019 here, which was pre-COVID. If you are taking the volume we delivered in this quarter versus the volume we delivered 10 years ago in the third quarter 2016, we are 4% down versus what we delivered 10 years ago. So we are back at the level of 2014 in terms of volume in Europe. Consumer confidence have been very low, impacted, of course, by the higher level of inflation we have seen here and the inflation we have been experiencing in Europe. I would like to share with you now a very interesting commercial campaign we have been launching in the U.K. here. AEG, the aim of AEG is really to be able to offer products which are expressing the identity of every single customer, expressing your taste, your home. Let us watch this video. Now moving to North America. Again, we are very proud of that. The three joint ventures are operational as we speak today. The partnership with Midea is moving in a very constructive manner. From a market side of equation, the market was down 5%. What we see is our volume has been slightly less down than the market. We kept the price increase we have been implementing in the second quarter here. As we have been communicating a quarter ago, we have been impacted by mixed. Purchasing power in North America has been going down, and our customers are orienting themselves to lower price points in the market. In terms of EBIT, we had, of course, significant external headwinds coming from tariff, raw material, again through the Middle East impact here. The price increase has been partly compensating for these very significant external factors. Looking at the market, very depressed market. Consumer confidence in North America is on a 10-years low. After a decrease of 10% in the first quarter, a decrease of 3% in the second quarter, the market has been going down once again in North America by 5% in the third quarter, with, again, consumer confidence being very highly impacted by the geopolitical position. That's a nice picture. It's a picture which is illustrating the day one of the different joint ventures. We have been closing Anderson according to plan on July 31st. We have been launching the manufacturing joint venture in Anderson on September 1st. We have been launching the sales joint venture and the manufacturing joint venture of Juárez on October 1st here. We're still planning to start production in Anderson with top loader at the end of the first half 2027. So the execution is on plan with Midea, with a very constructive cooperation with our partner. Moving now to Latin America, another strong quarter for Latin America. Again, from a transformation side of the equation, we have been closing the plant in Rosario, Argentina. We have been keeping on extending and reinforcing our direct-to-consumer channel in the region as well. Brazil has been slowing down. Brazil's growth has been at the level of 2% in the third quarter. However, in the region, if you look at our organic growth, we have been growing by 6.6%, gaining market share at the price points we are targeting, aligned with our brand positioning here. From an external factors, of course, the market is impacted by high interest rates here, which is driving a high level of inflation. Again, the impact we see in terms of raw material and logistic cost. From an EBIT side of equation, we have been delivering on cost efficiency here. We have been recovering as well an overpaid tax from the past years here. I think these two factors have been more than offsetting a provision we had to make due to the restructuring of one of the main retailer in Brazil. Moving to cost reduction, again, another strong quarter. We have been delivering SEK 1.4 billion in the third quarter in terms of cost reduction, mainly, again, due to a better engineering of our product, a better sourcing of our components, and additional productivity out of our factories. We have been adding here some numbers as well about the optimization we are undergoing in our organization. If you're looking year-to-date, we have been reducing our staff by more than 2,000 people. Since January 1st, we went from 41,000 people to 39,000 people. With that, I'm passing it to you, Therese.