Essity AB (publ) (ESSITY_A) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and welcome to Essity's presentation of the Q1 2026 results. Here to take us through the highlights of the quarter, we have our CEO Ulrika Kolsrud and our CFO Fredrik Rystedt. After their presentation, you have the opportunity to engage directly with us. To ask a question, please press star one. And I kindly remind you to just ask one question per call. Now, enough of me. Let's get started. Ulrika, please, take us through the quarter. Thank you, Sandra. And also from my side, welcome to this webcast. We started the year with organic sales growth coming from volume growth, and we continued to win the relative game, strengthening market shares in our branded business in retail. We furthermore strengthened our profit margins and delivered a strong cash flow. Then besides these solid results, we had three major events in the quarter. The decision to launch a new share buyback program of 3 billion SEK, well in line with our ambition to have share buybacks as a reoccurring part of our capital allocation. We also completed our feminine care acquisition in North America, now more than doubling our personal care sales in the US. And we have the organizational change, meaning that we now report in our four new business units, health and medical, personal care, consumer tissue and professional hygiene. And let's start with health and medical, where we continued on our track record of consecutive growth in medical solutions. We were especially pleased in the quarter with the continued good growth in wound care across geographies. Q1 was, however, a weaker sales quarter for incontinence care in healthcare. Given the financial pressure that we see in healthcare systems and also the lower input costs that we have had, we held on to prices very well. So margins and prof...