Rusta AB (publ) (RUSTA) Q1 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and welcome to the presentation of the first quarter of Rusta. In our financial year that stretches from May until April, this represents then the first three months of May, June and July. Presenting will be myself, Göran Westerberg, CEO of Rusta, and I'm joined by Sofie Malmunger, our CFO. The agenda for today, we will start with a short business update to explain what's been happening during the quarter. We'll then move into more of a deep dive into the financial performance by Sofie. And then we will also add this time an update on some of the projects that are going on to give you a little bit of a flavor of what is happening in the chain. And then finally, we will summarize, tell you a little bit about current trading, and then open up for Q&A. Let's start with the business update, and as usual, give you a picture of what the retail chain looks like right now. During the quarter, we did not open any stores. This is normal. We never do during peak seasons, meaning summer and Christmas. However, after the quarter, we have opened up two new stores. And in fact, those opened up yesterday, one in Sweden and one in Finland. That takes our total number of stores in the network to 227 stores. We have continued to have an inflow of new locations that we have signed and that's also why the pipeline remains at the record high 47 stores. So looking at the guidance for opening, we've had the span between 50 to 80 stores in the coming three years. We reiterate our guidance towards the upper end of that spectrum, supported, of course, by the continued inflow of new stores. And we continue to see a softer rental market in the Nordics. Then having a look at the numbers for quarter one, we had, if we start with the numbers, we had a growth of 6% in total and 1.2% lik...