Essity AB (publ) (ESSITY_A) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

We're going to give you that wow effect. This is everyday care. This is smarter care. This is sustainable care. To over a billion people. For everybody and everybody, this is Essendon. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this presentation of Essity's second quarter 2026 results. Our CEO, Ulrika Karlsrud, will start by presenting the business highlights for the quarter. We will then turn to the financial metrics presented by our CFO, Fredrik Rydstedt. After the presentations, we will open up the line for questions. We are looking forward to your questions and we kindly ask you to ask one question per call. Now, I'm pleased to hand over to our CEO. Ulrika, the floor is yours. Thank you, Sandra. And also from my side, welcome to this webcast and good morning, everyone. We delivered positive organic sales growth in the quarter, primarily driven by a continued good volume development. The activities to strengthen our value propositions, to increase marketing investments and to make selective price adjustments have paid off. And we are growing in three out of our four business units, namely in health and medical, in personal care and in professional hygiene. It was a tougher quarter for consumer tissue where we had lower sales. Then if we look at our profitability, we continue to have and maintain healthy margins in the quarter, even though they were slightly negatively impacted by the geopolitical environment that is coming with an increased cost inflation. When we look at now going forward, of course, we will compensate that with price increases, and we are already driving price increases not yet visible in our P&L, while we remain focused on protecting and even growing our market shares. LOOKING AT OUR COST SAVINGS, WE DELIVERED BOTH OUR COST SAVING PROGRAM IN SG&A A...