BHG Group AB

STO:BHG

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q1

[Operator]

Hello, and thank you for joining us on our conference call today to review BHG's First Quarter 2021 Results. This call is being recorded, and a replay of the conference will be available later today on our Investor Relations website. Together with me today are Adam Schatz, President and CEO; and Jesper Flemme, CFO, and both will be available for Q&A later in today's call. So with that said, I'll now turn the call over to Adam. Please begin.

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Moving to Slide 2, please. 2020 was a year like no other for BHG. And 2021 has started in a similar vein with continued strong organic growth and with very strong performances in recently acquired businesses. Last quarter, we updated our financial targets, including the target to double our net sales once again over the medium term. The first quarter of 2021 with total growth of 58% and pro forma organic growth of 43% clearly shows the progress we continue to make along this path.Slide 3, please. Today, we will start by reviewing the results highlights, then move on to the business update. I'll then hand it over to Jesper to cover the financial update before I summarize and we launch into the Q&A session. On to the highlights then, Slide 5, please. Growth accelerated further compared to the already strong third and fourth quarters of 2021. Total growth amounted to 58%, organic growth to 37% and pro forma organic growth to 43%. The pro forma organic growth number shows both the importance of Nordic Nest, our largest acquisition to date and the continued stellar performance of the business. Net sales reached SEK 2.6 billion. Adjusted EBIT came in at SEK 184 million, corresponding to an adjusted EBIT margin of 7.2%. And cash flow from operating activities amounted to SEK 120 million despite Q1, typically not being a strong quarter for cash flow because of seasonality. Our performance shows that consumer interest in home improvement remained high, but also that the accelerated shift towards the online channel has continued. In a strong overall market, which we believe grew by around 10%, BHG took significant further market share. Both segments performed well. The Home Furnishing segment was further boosted by the inclusion of Nordic Nest, as well as strong growth in our Eastern European markets. The DIY segment continued on its accelerated path with strong trading in all units, including our large Swedish and Finnish platforms and quite exceptional trading by our private label and own brand businesses. It's always difficult to look into the future. Forecasters' crystal balls are probably especially opaque in our world of today.Near-term uncertainties include how consumer confidence will be impacted by stimulus packages, interest rates and housing prices. Further compounding the picture of the disruptions that have risen in global supply chains. Despite these uncertainties, our strong online foundation makes us confident that we will face favorable growth conditions also going forward. Slide 6, please. We continue approaching growth through a mix of organic initiatives and M&A. When it comes to the organic component, we're now reporting our sixth quarter in a row with growth above the 15% level, our communicated target over a business cycle. Again, with the 37% organic growth this past quarter and 43%, including Nordic Nest on a pro forma basis, Q1 saw a further acceleration in the past 2 excellent quarters.Slide 7, please. Our strategy remains focused on our 4 cornerstones. Firstly, the continued expansion of our leading product range, which now exceeds 1 million SKU mark; secondly, scale and the high share of own brands in our sales mix. With a quarter's growth of 58% and LTM growth of 50%, not least fueled by our private label range, we continue building scale advantages; thirdly, creating the most appealing shopping experience and leading in the digital realm.We continued growing our digital footprint significantly in the quarter, resulting in visits to our destinations exceeding 100 million; and finally, offering the market's best professional guidance, service and support including in the quarter, further extending the reach of our installation network within DIY as well as our own last mile delivery capability on the home furnishing side. This is our ecosystem with the product offering at a space and the customer always at the center. And finally, an integral part of our execution approach includes leveraging our M&A capabilities to accelerate both growth and strategy execution. Moving on to the business update. And turning to Slide 9. As we enter our ninth year since inception, some key metrics describing who we are today at a glance. On the left-hand side, our CAGR since 2014 exceeds 40%. In this period, EBITDA has grown by more than 100% per annum. Our EBIT margin on an LTM basis stands at 8.1% and was generated by over 100 customer-facing web properties. Now moving over to the right-hand side. These web shops have been visited well over 300 million times in the past 12 months, generating some 3.6 million orders from customers in 24 countries. And finally, our leading product portfolio keeps expanding.Slide 10, please. We announced 3 acquisitions in the quarter, which all contribute to one or more of the 4 strategic cornerstones we just reviewed. A common feature of both acquisitions in the DIY segment is that they will drive our continued development towards a higher share of proprietary brands. IP agencies strength lies in its private label assortment in the ledger segment, already an important complement to our large DIY platforms. Hafa bathroom group brings 3 strong brands to the Bathroom segment. Hafa, NORO and Westerbergs. These brands complement our own Best Life Brand. Through Hafa Bathroom Group, we have also added a team that has a long history of building strong brands with a clear long-term position in the market. The acquisition of Svenssons i Lammhult was a logical continuation after Nordic Nest became part of BHG and will strengthen our position in the premium segment with one of the strongest destination brands in the Swedish market and the portfolio of very strong external product brands.After raising SEK 1.6 billion through a directed share issue in February, we are in a very strong position to continue driving growth, both through organic initiatives and by complementing these with acquisitions, opportunities for which are plentiful. Looking a little deeper at expansion opportunities and moving to Slide 11, please. Our growth can be decided along 2 vectors, both of product assortment and geography. Our assortment has expanded continuously, both in terms of the breadth and the depth of the categories that we serve with our customers' homes at the center. Starting with the Home Furnishing segment. We continue driving assortment expansion within our current categories, ranging from large and bulky furniture over to the lighting, table top and smaller items side of the spectrum. Turning to the DIY segment. Much of the focus in terms of recent expansion has been on driving our proprietary brands. In addition, we have also added to the verticals that we serve. The leisure vertical is one such growing example, which sits well with core DIY categories, such as doors and windows, bathrooms, flooring, garden, et cetera. Again, the home environment forms the base, but being customer-centric, we're also prepared to step into adjacent verticals which resonate with our target customers. Turning to the other vector, that is geography. Our main focus until quite recently has been on our Nordic home market. Since the second half of 2018, we're also present in a number of fast-growing Eastern European markets. And now with Nordic Nest, we've also in earnest expanded our presence into additional large markets, such as, for instance, Germany. Our current geographic base provides fertile ground for continued expansion. Within DIY, we are primarily focusing on extending the geographic reach of our private label businesses by taking them pan Nordic as well as selectively entering mainland EU markets. Within the Home Furnishing Segment, we see clear geographic acceleration opportunities in the Nordics, in Eastern Europe, and now the rest of Europe with Germany actually having surpassed Norway as Nordic Nest's second largest market in the quarter.Summing up, we continue to pursue growth along the assortment and geography vectors and remain committed to M&A as a key accelerant of growth and strategy execution. Moving on to Slide 12. While continuing our journey of building, we achieved for sustainable, profitable cash-generating growth, we are also step-by-step, professionalizing our approach to ESG. 2020 saw significant progress in this regard. With our first ever full stakeholder influenced materiality analysis, helping us define what sustainability means more specifically for us with the categories we serve and the business model that we deploy. We then carried out a review of our growing universal units, implemented the process for consistent data collection and released our first sustainability report consistent with the GRI Standards.And as recently as last week, we received our first ESG rating from MSCI. The MSCI A rating is now our external baseline benchmark against which we will measure our progress. The foundation is in place. And as we announced in this past quarter, we're adding a new role to the executive management team. Maria Morin is joining us on August 1 to Head of HR Communications and ESG, 3 critical and interwoven area. Moving on to Slide 13, please. Our business model combines a multi-brand approach with acquisitions, both of which help maximize our digital footprint and result in a customer base that is both broad and attractive. As you can see to the left in this picture, we've seen strong growth in active customers, defined as customers who have made a Phase I purchase in the past 12 months. Over the past 5 quarters, our active customer base has grown by 67% and has now reached the 3 million mark. The number of new customers in the first quarter grew by more than 80% on a pro forma basis, on the back of strong organic growth as well as excellent growth in recently acquired businesses. Despite the steep growth in new customers, we maintained a relatively stable share of repeat orders at around 40% of the total. Our customers place on average 1.3 orders per annum as our product assortment is dominated by consumer durables. Our approach to digital marketing and traffic generation results in an excellent return on advertising spend with sound first order profitability and a marketing ROI well over 3x. We took important steps in the quarter of charting the path to further unlocking insights from customer-related data across the group and to get consistent processes and measurements in place also for the more recently acquired business. We're convinced that investments into this area will help unlock further profitable cash-generating growth for the group. This is a key focus area for management along with the other steps we're taking to continue enhancing the customer experience. I'll now hand it over to Jesper, who will walk us through the financials in more detail. Over to you, Jesper.

[Jesper Flemme, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Adam. Our rapid development continued in the first quarter with strong performance by both our segments. The quarter was characterized by strong, profitable and cash-generating growth, including a solid performance by Nordic Nest. As Adam mentioned, net sales increased 57.7% to reach SEK 2,568 million; pro forma organic growth reached 42.7%; and organic growth reached 36.5%. The top line development coupled with gross margin improvement and discipline on the SG&A line, resulting in the highest first quarter EBIT and EBIT margin to date. EBIT amounted to SEK 183.7 million, which corresponds to an EBIT margin of 7.2%. As in recent quarters, the high adjusted EBIT margin was the result of a favorable price and product mix, including the continuously growing private label share of sales in the due to sales segment as well as good operational leverage due to high growth. Moving on to Slide 16. Turning to some of the sales drivers in the quarter. The continued strong trading conditions led to a strong growth in the number of visits to the group's destination, which increased by 74% to SEK 101 million during the quarter and generated 1.1 million orders. Despite a strong trend in terms of the number of businesses to the group's destinations, with pro forma growth of 51%, the conversion rate increased. The lower overall AOV level in the period was attributable to shift in mix towards more package shipments, resulting from the consolidation of Nordic Nest on January 1.The gross margin for the quarter of 27.2% equaled the record from the preceding quarter and demonstrates that an advantageous AOV structure should be maintained in the relation to the delivery options relevant to given category. Slide 17, please. On the back of continued strong market conditions, the first quarter of the year enjoyed a nicely leveraged P&L. Strong top line growth at 57.7% resulted in strong operating leverage translates into a gross margin increase of 66.3% and an EBIT increase exceeding 100%. The gross margin improved by 1.4 percentage points to reach the record-breaking level of 27.2% from last quarter. The product margin amounted to 39.7%. Just as in the second half of 2020, the gross margin improvement was driven by: One, a growing share of sales from our own brand; two, continued focus on maintaining the price points for bulky products; three, additional cost and process efficiencies in purchasing and logistics, partly as a result of the high volumes; and four, positive net effect from the stronger SEK, resulting in a favorable impact on the EBIT margin by 0.9 percentage points. Let us now turn to our Do It Yourself Segment, Slide 18, please. The Do It Yourself Segment started year in the same way it ended the preceding year, with strong growth and favorable profitability. Net sales grew by 47.6% to reach SEK 1.389 million, of which organic growth amounts to 44.8%. The various areas of the segment performed in line with recent quarters, favorable growth in the large Swedish and Finnish platform, an exceptionally strong growth in the Danish operations as well as the operations that supply our own brands. Profitability in the Do It Yourself Segment was once again favorably impacted by high share of sales from our own brand. The gross margin improved by 3.0 percentage points to reach the record high level of 25.7% and adjusted EBIT amounts to SEK 108 million, corresponding to an EBIT margin of 7.8%. During the quarter, we continued to develop our custom offering, including the continuous expansion of the product range, expanding the base of products for which consolidated deliveries offered and a further rollout of installation services. The installation platform has now been established in the Finnish market, and the number of installations grew quickly during the quarter. Slide 19, please. The Home Furnishing Segment reported a very strong quarter with favorable organic development and exceptionally strong growth in recently acquired Nordic Nest. Net sales in the Home Furnishing Segment grew by 70.6% in the quarter, reaching SEK 1.185 million, of which organic growth amounts to 25.4% and pro forma organic growth including Nordic Nest amounts to 41.5%. Net sales were strong in all geographic markets with the highest growth reported by Nordic Nest, the category specialist LampGallerian and Eastern European operations Furniture1. The gross margin for the quarter was 28.9%. Adjusted EBIT amounted to SEK 89 million, corresponding to an EBIT margin of 7.5%. The slightly lower gross margin compared with the year earlier period is mainly attributable to 2 factors: A mix effect from Nordic Nest, which has slightly lower gross margin than the segment better operation; and effects from the Danish Furnitures in Denmark in January and February. Finally, the stronger SEK rates during the period had a positive impact on EBIT, corresponding to approximately 1.3 percentage points. Let us turn to cash flow. Slide -- cash flow from operating activities amounts to SEK 120 million, corresponding to a cash conversion in relation to adjusted EBITDA of 48.8%. The increase in working capital in the period is mainly attributable to the high demand in the preceding quarter through an outflow of supplier payments and the fact that the group has chosen to accept a slightly higher inventory level ahead of the outdoor season that has just begun.The right-hand graph showing the development in liquidity walks us through the starting period position of SEK 299 million, adding the cash flow from operations, deducting the impact of investing activities, a majority of which is M&A related; and finally, the financing activities, which are primarily related to the share issues completed in the period, but also include amortization of leasing liability. Bringing us to the period end, SEK 1.9 billion of liquidity at hand. Slide 21, please. The group's net debt amounted to SEK 174 million at the end of the quarter, completed a directed share issue and strong operating performance meant that net debt in relation to LTM adjusted EBITDA ended at 0.2x, a significant outperformance of the medium-term financial target range. On top of our liquidity at hand, we had unutilized credit facility at the end of the quarter of SEK 240 million. We continue to see excellent M&A opportunities and the funds we raised through the directed share issue fully reset our capacity to act decisively as the right opportunities materialize. Handing it back over to you, Adam, to summarize and conclude.

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

Thank you, Jesper. Slide 23. We are now 1/3 of the way into the second quarter and are facing the very strong comps from last year when demand to costs in earnest. As we write in today's report, after a full year of growth that was decided to be higher than the normal trend, it's difficult to predict how long this elevated level of demand will continue. However, so far, so good as we see, we believe that the new level of online penetration has been established and that the prospects for the Home category served by us remain right. Summarizing the quarter. We're off to a very strong start to the year. Growth accelerated further on the strong third and fourth quarters of last year and marks the sixth quarter in a row with above target goal. We've kept a high M&A pace with 3 strategic bolt-ons announced in the quarter. Our gross and bottom line margins are at industry-leading levels on the back of a sound mix development and strong operational control. Strategy execution is in motion, revolving around our 4 pillars, which make up the BHG ecosystem. And finally, as we announced updated financial targets in conjunction with the Q4 report. Q1 marks the first quarter of the new leg of our journey, a journey in which we are going to doubling in size again to reach SEK 20 billion in net sales in the medium-term and a journey, which is now off to an excellent start. This concludes our presentation, and we will now open up the call for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Niklas Ekman from Carnegie.

[Niklas Ekman]

Yes. I have a couple of questions. Firstly, can you elaborate a little bit more on your comments about current trading? You talk about a favorable demand, but what does that translate into? Are you still seeing double-digit growth? And can you also give some more details on what the comps are like? Was April the toughest month last year? Or did things accelerate throughout Q2?

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

So starting with the last part of the question, Niklas -- and hi by the way. The strongest weeks were the last 2 weeks of April and the first 2 weeks of May, those were the most exceptional weeks. But as we also reported back then, when we reported the second quarter of 2020, we saw a strong demand level throughout the entire quarter. So with some variation, but still. And we haven't quantified the growth pace thus far into the quarter. And we love to do that now since we haven't in the report. But suffice it to say that we're really pleased with the level of demand that we've seen so far into the quarter.

[Niklas Ekman]

Fair enough. Second question is the market for acquisitions. You say that this is better than ever. What do you mean with this? Are there more acquisitions up for grabs? Otherwise, I would assume that pricing generally has gone up during the pandemic as a result of the strong online migration.

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

You're right, to some extent, on the question of valuations. And as we've commented on before, we see a discrepancy in terms of valuation between the opportunities for bolt-on acquisitions and the types of larger perhaps acquisitions that are more of a transformational nature where valuations are typically higher, just as we saw with Nordic Nest. So I think we have to view valuations from that lens of 2 different sets of levels, which I think is reflecting the level of maturity and the position of these businesses before they become part of our group. And when we say that the opportunities for acquisitions are better than ever, it very much refers to our own position in terms of both financial capabilities, but also operational capabilities and handling both the transactions and the integration work post-transaction. But also, finally, the fact that we've now attained, also from this perspective, what one might call critical mass in terms of deal flow generation, we see a tremendous deal flow, obviously, from the Nordic countries, but also from -- actually all over Europe. And I think that very much is a reflection of the fact that we have grown, and we've also sort of hand-in-hand with our growth, become more visible to the market at large.

[Niklas Ekman]

Yes. And what type of acquisitions are you looking for here? I mean, it seems you're clearly moving in wider circles in terms of what is home related. And you talk about adjacent verticals. Are you also considering M&A to expand into new markets in Continental Europe? Or is that predominantly something you're looking at organically?

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

So first when it comes to the categories. We have -- we are not moving in a different way than we have in the past few years. I think we're perhaps just more clearly articulating the strategy that we've deployed since some time back. We are really focusing on home improvement in a right sense. And we have our core categories, especially within DIY, that form the hard-core of what we do. But surrounding those categories, there are great opportunities for exactly the same customer base. That fits really well. And that is what we meant when we talk about adjacent categories today as well. And it's also reflected, as we commented on a couple of times now by the fact that the ledger category has been a fast-growing category on our large DIY platforms for a good while now actually. And it's one of those adjacent spaces that fits really well with our customer base. And when it comes to geographies, we are definitely pursuing organic expansion opportunities there in both segments in slightly different ways. Within DIY, we are primarily going after geographic expansion opportunities for our proprietary brands. And we have a great opportunity to bring those into the Nordic markets where there -- where they are still, in some case, not present or significantly underpenetrated. As we've commented, that's why, I think, tremendous growth in Finland and now also in Norway and Denmark. That's one example our key bathroom brand.So opportunities for that sort of geographic expansion now also extends actually into Europe, and that's something that we've been driving in a somewhat low key way for a while now, and we will continue to pursue those opportunities. Within Home Furnishings, of course, we are present already in basically a majority of EU markets through the Furniture1 business in Eastern Europe and now also through Nordic Nest. And as we commented, Germany surpassed Norway as Nordic Nest's second largest market in this quarter and is developing quite spectacularly. We also see acquisition opportunities in -- outside of the Nordics. And we look at some of those quite seriously. What we said previous years, within DIY, if we wanted to establish a quick critical mass in a new country, we would likely go about that just as we have in the past through establishing a bridge via an acquisition. That is how we established our business in Finland and Norway and Denmark. And it's likely to be the avenue if we were to move into an additional country on the continent.

[Niklas Ekman]

And just a quick final one. Private label, you say this increased further. Can you provide us an update on where you are, what share of sales in the 2 different segments?

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

Yes. So when we talk about the growth in the proprietary brands, we refer to DIY primarily. And just a quick recap, we have a very high share of proprietary brands or private label within Home Furnishing excluding Nordic Nest, which is primarily selling well-known external brands. The rest of our Home Furnishing business is somewhere around 90% based on our own private label assortment. We're happy with that level. And we wouldn't mind if we see strong growth in some of the external brands that would bring that level down, marginally a couple of percentage points, that would be perfectly fine. When we talk about expanding the share of net sales from proprietary brands, we have been driving that for the DIY segment specifically, where we've gone from historically 0% to a couple of years back 10% as we did share some time ago, 6 months ago, so we reached 20%. We're now north of 20% without providing a hard number there. And we see definitely room for driving that even higher from these levels. But we still believe that the majority of net sales within DIY will continue to come from the well-known external brands. And it's this mix of well-known external brands and proprietary brands that has served us so well with the external brands, of course, being a good business in its own right with great cash flow generation profile, but also with the external brands being one key way of generating traffic to our destination. So we definitely see that we want the mix, and we do believe that there's room to grow proprietary brands, but that external brands will continue to from the majority of net sales also in a longer perspective.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Fredrik Ivarsson from ABG.

[Fredrik Ivarsson, Research Analyst]

Adam and Jesper, a few questions from me as well. First, I want to touch upon the AOV, which declined a little bit. And you mentioned that Nordic Nest was a strong driver for that. How much approximately was due to the Nordic Nest acquisition, would you say?

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

So with all of the decline in AOV is to do with the Nordic Nest acquisition plus currency. The currency impact is the smaller part, and we, by far, the biggest part is the mix effect of including Nordic Nest into the mix. Nordic Nest has AOV roughly at 1/3 of the level of the rest of the group. So that's -- it really is a mix effect. And the importance of AOVs, as we keep stressing, is primarily when it comes to the big bulky items that ship on ]. And on that part of the assortment as the very strong gross margin attested too, we've had a nice development in terms of AOVs.

[Fredrik Ivarsson, Research Analyst]

Right. So we should expect a similar picture with the coming quarters as well, I guess?

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

Yes, with Nordic Nest being part of the mix, that is definitely the factor.

[Fredrik Ivarsson, Research Analyst]

Yes. And then on the market, you referred to 10% market growth. And obviously, that for the entire home improvement market, would you be able to quantify the potential market share gains within the online channel only?

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

It's a bit premature to do that. We can't do it with any quality. As you know, Fredrik, there is little readily available timely data on this. And so I actually don't want to quantify that other than it being quite obvious to me that with pro forma organic growth and 43%, that clearly is significantly above market.

[Fredrik Ivarsson, Research Analyst]

Yes. That sounds reasonable. And last question, if you would like to quantify the earn-out component, the earn-out payments for the quarter. And also, if you could help us with your estimate for the full year, that would be helpful.

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

Absolutely. I'll hand it over to Jesper with the one hand on that one.

[Jesper Flemme, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. So the earn-out payments in the quarter was roughly SEK 10 million. And the estimate for the full year is roughly SEK 200 million.

[Operator]

And the next question comes from the line of Gustav Hagéus from SEB.

[Gustav Hagéus, Research Analyst]

Apologies if you already talked about this. But I'm curious about your investments in personnel and customer success and support specifically. Could you talk a little bit where you are now in terms of staffing here? And if you're starting to see already improvement in customer satisfaction on the back of these investments would be helpful.

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

Yes. So one of the challenges that is growing rapidly is exactly the one you point to Gustav. And we have worked really hard to ensure that we have the appropriate staffing. And we have staffed up, as we reported in the past couple of quarters. We've also seen a nice development in customer satisfaction levels. If you recall this, so back in Q2 of 2020, we were extremely pleased with the developments, but we did say that the one aspect that we were less than perfectly pleased with was that we had some challenges in keeping up when it came to delivering on time, and that's the single most important customer satisfaction asset. So we've seen a good development since. We've clawed our way back, and we are never happy. Just generally, we aren't happy with anything that we've done, although we can be proud of achievements. We always want to improve further. And I see that we have significant room to continue driving customer satisfaction to higher levels. But we are in no way in any acute situation right now. Things are good in that regard. But we definitely want to drive them higher. And as we also comment in the report as well as in the presentation that we just walked through, the dual aspect of driving customer satisfaction higher, but also improving how we leverage the customer data that flows through our systems. Those are fantastic opportunities for us to create further growth to drive the share of repeat orders higher to also perhaps drive the orders per active customer side, et cetera. Those are really key areas for us.

[Gustav Hagéus, Research Analyst]

And in terms of staffing, are you already there in terms of the number of customer support people or whatnot? Or are we seeing an incremental growth, meaningful growth in those investments into next quarter and beyond?

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

Yes, we're there in terms of handling the volumes that we see today. But we position the business for further growth, right? And as part of that, we will continue also investing in the organization, but I would say, as importantly, in investing in IT capabilities for automation around key aspects of this. We mentioned in the report, perhaps a bit sleepingly. But anyway, one of the key IT projects we're launching in this second quarter is leveraging AI to improve the -- assess delivery times. And that in turn then will be reflected in even more accurate delivery times on site, but also the capability to keep customers who have placed orders abreast of developments, should, for instance, delays occur. So IT is really a key part of the solution here, both in terms of short-term things like the one I mentioned. But over the longer term, most definitely so as well.

[Gustav Hagéus, Research Analyst]

Okay. And I noticed you've opened now your Norwegian showroom in the quarter. Could you update us a bit. It was a while ago since we talked about the net number of stores or showrooms. Where are you right now? Are you happy with that number, gross and net? And do you see any impact from sort of lower lease costs or anything like that, that some of your more fiscal peers are talking about?

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

Yes. So we haven't opened the outdoor showroom yet. We will open it this quarter. We have a tentative date for late May, and that should hold no barring any corona surprises. So we will open it this quarter, and we'll also launch our own last-mile delivery setup in Greater Oslo in this quarter. That's the plan. And to the more general question of showrooms, we're at some north of 80 now, 8-0. And we have a very good track record of getting profitability in a narrow sense in showroom-by-showroom quite quickly when we open new ones. And even more importantly what we see is, if you will, an intangible effect on the postcode surrounding that showroom where we should see an increase in the growth in the online business that we can strictly attribute to the showroom, but there's clearly something in the air when we open a showroom that helps start the online business. So it's part of the strategy. But in terms of financial modeling and the like, we won't see a departure from what we've done in the past couple of years. We'll continue very selectively step-by-step opening a limited number of additional showrooms. The Norwegian market is an interesting one in this regard, where, again, we'll be opening the first showroom now. Of course, we have to learn and see how that goes. But we do believe that in a market like Norway, where we have zero showrooms today, there is space for something like 8 showrooms, perhaps over a period of 3 years. So as always, we do things step-by-step, but that could be the number of showrooms we get to in a market like Norway over a number of years.

[Gustav Hagéus, Research Analyst]

Okay. And a final one, if I recall correctly, you stated you had some 60 basis points contribution to your gross margin in the quarter from FX surge. I remember you had a similar number I think in last quarter. Is it fair to assume that you should have another 2 quarters of that type of support if FX holds at current spot rates?

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

Yes. I think that's fair to assume. And of course, I'm not making any predictions on FX rates. You are a much better placed than me to do that, but, yes.

[Gustav Hagéus, Research Analyst]

Not sure about that.

[Operator]

And we have one more question from the line of Carl-Oscar Bredengen from Berenberg.

[Carl-Oscar Green Bredengen]

Just lastly, so in terms of a lot of the other gardening and home improvement peers who you know I've talked about rising raw material costs, et cetera, I guess that your private label segment is a little bit different. Can you just give us a little bit update on how you think about potential raw material headwinds and how you're positioned with that?

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

That's a very good and pertinent question. Inflation -- input inflation, including in terms of raw materials, but also, as you know, when it comes to freight rates is a landscape that we've been living in now for a while. And we see that continuing certainly throughout Q2, and our base case is that it will continue through Q3, perhaps actually through the entire year.So that's a factor. But another factor that we also comment on in the report is as far as we can see at least in the near term, the main challenge is less likely to be that demand dissipates. It rather is a market-wide shortage of products at least within certain categories. So the base case scenario we see in such an environment is that there should be reasonable opportunities of passing on input inflation onto pricing. That's the environment we see. But absolutely, in isolation, we do see those increases in input pricing.

[Operator]

And as there are no further questions, I will hand it back for closing remarks.

[Adam Schatz, President, CEO & Head of Home Furnishing Segment]

Well, thank you, everyone, for dialing in. Thanks for the good discussion here at the end as well. And we will stay in touch. Thank you. Have a good day.

[Operator]

This concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.