Pricer AB

STO:PRIC B

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q2

[Operator]

[Audio Gap] to the presentation of the second quarter results for 2023 for Pricer. My name is Magnus Larsson, and I'm the CEO of Pricer. And with me in today's presentation, I have Susanna Zethelius, who is our CFO.So, I would like to start, as always, with our vision. Our vision is to be retail's first choice in shelf edge automation and communication. And I feel that we are taking steps -- and I feel that we've been taking pretty big steps in actually moving towards this vision over the last quarter -- or actually over the last quarters. So, I'm happy today to do the announcement of this quarter's results.If I start with the highlights, the report contains now the second best revenue to date for us. We invoiced SEK 687 million. It's been very much fueled by existing markets, France and Italy. I have to say that I've been positively surprised by the amount of orders and the amount of actually work that we have done on this market that -- [ or many once ] considered to be more or less a mature market. It seems like there's a whole lot more possibility to develop in France and, of course, also in Italy. But we have also seen that we have had a few fast-growing Eastern European countries that has actually been adding to the revenue that we've seen, where we have had very impressive growth numbers. And I think Susanna will speak a little bit more about that one.We can also see that -- I spoke in the Q1 report about the -- one of the key changes I've seen compared to last year. We have a lot of orders now from large retailers for their own integrated stores and their own business, which has positively really contributed to the order intake in the quarter. And here, we recorded the third best order intake ever as well. So it's been a quarter filled with actually receiving orders, but also then doing a whole lot of deliveries.The gross margin, here, we see a slight increase for the second quarter. So it's actually for the second quarter in a row, not only for the second quarter. And it's the result of quite many actions that we have done to increase profitability. We have been looking at continuous cost decreases for our products. We've been looking at how to actually increase the product mix of more of our premium labels, more the 4-color labels. It's also been price increasing with customers. It's also been selling at higher margins to brand-new customers. And we can see that we expect further improvements -- tangible improvements during the second half of 2023.On the U.S. market, I'm extremely happy that we could announce now the frame agreement with AFS, Associated Food Stores. It's an American cooperative with roughly 450 stores. They did a pretty thorough selection process. It was us. It was to competing radio players. And we did a pilot where it's actually 7 stores where we had part installations. Now they made up their mind. They decided to go with ourselves. They call us best-in-class, which I, of course, appreciate. And we have now received and started to -- the deployment for the first 5 stores in the commercial setup. And we see that there is a list of stores waiting to go ahead, so there will be additional orders from AFS during autumn. So, it will be really exciting to see this move on.And I think it's a key change in the market. Now we can see that grocery retailers in the U.S. is investing. Previously, there's been a focus on non-grocery retail. So, with this change, some of the announcements that we've seen on the market during the first half clearly indicates that U.S. has now come to the ignition point, to the breaking point, where we see that retailers are starting to invest. They see the need. They have the money. They are actually putting their plans into action. So, it's a highly strategic decision from AFS, and we're, of course, extremely happy for their trust.But we also have had other wins, wins that we haven't communicated, wins that have been part of this initial installs where they moved from pilot to the initial installs, and where I also do expect that there will be gradual accounts with this change. And then, when that happens, there will be more announcements on this, just to sort of inform what's happening on the market.We have been winning more in addition to Associated Food Stores. And of course, as I think most of you know, we were chosen by Carrefour as the exclusive supplier. We've been extremely happy with this. It's a global contract. It includes all the franchisees and master franchisees for Carrefour. But the focus from a Carrefour point of view has been clearly to build and deploy ESLs in 6 key countries: France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Poland, which is really the focus. In fact, I've been so happy that we have done a joint video that I'm sure that many of you have seen, where myself and the Global Head of Technology at Carrefour, Miguel Angel. We speak about the partnership, the ambition to grow.And I can [ actually ] say today, I'm doing the presentation out of Spain. So yesterday, we had a number of meetings with the global Carrefour team. And we have done 3 stores here now, Spain, Barcelona, [indiscernible]. We did them in June. The Carrefour CEO from Spain was doing an inspection and said what, very happy. It seems like the store staff is happy. The customers are happy. So we're actually planning for further deployments now during autumn. And then later in the autumn, we will also plan for the deployments during next year. But we can see that there is [ commit ] on actually digitizing the stores in Spain, which is also an important thing because here, I think, Carrefour is the first grocery retailer in Spain that made a choice and said that the ESL is important as a part of our digitalization strategy. We have also been discussing signage with them to see what can we do on the signage side. But once the market realized that this deployment is now progressing, they have made up their mind. They put the stake in the ground. They are deploying. I'm sure that we will see a lot of the other grocery retailers following. So for me, this is the ignition point for the Spanish market where we can actually see that others will follow. And we will, of course, do whatever we can to be #1 on the Spanish market. We want to be the first choice, but we also, for this specific market, want to be #1, just like for the U.S.We announced the wholesale grocery chain. It's a European international chain. They have been a radio customer twice. They have not made up their mind to go for our premium ESLs. So we're doing 49 stores in France. But the contract we have with them, the frame agreement, actually allows us to address all their stores in all their international affiliates. So my message to my local sales team has been happy hunting. Let's make sure we do the most we can out of this contract.On the market update in general, we can see continued traction for 4-color. We have done pilot installations, as you know, but we also now start to receive a lot of commercial orders. We've been installing 4-color now in U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, Japan, New Zealand. And in Sweden, we did communicate [indiscernible], which is a couple of stores -- I think it's actually 5 stores in Skane region in Sweden. It's happening. We have received our first full container order for color labels. I cannot disclose any more details, but it's really a clear sign that things are shifting.In April, we were participating in and also had a speaking slot at the Retail Technology Show in London. And U.K. is also just like Spain and U.S. markets, where we haven't really seen the grocery take-up of ESLs yet. But it was a fantastic show. We met with almost all the Tier 1 retailers. There was a lot of good discussions. We managed to get actually orders out of the show. We won a small 4-store chain of fine food, all 4-color. We are in a lot of interesting discussions with some of the key retailers in the U.K. market. So, I'm not saying that something is happening now, but I can clearly see that business will be happening. And I hope to be able to develop the U.K. market. And actually, in fact, I expect that we will develop the U.K. market further because the interest is clearly there. We can see that the need is clear there. They are affected by the inflation after the Brexit. They're infected by the -- or affected by the lack of staff, so they need something to do this. And I can also see readiness. They have done all the necessary part of digitalization. They have the back office. They have the point of sales. They have the PDA. So, it's a natural next step for them. So, a lot of really interesting discussions.So concluding, I can say that we see a lot of clear signs of market acceleration, and especially in our strategic growth markets. We see it in U.S. We see it in Canada. We see it in the U.K. We see it in Spain. We see it in France. We see it in Australia. But we also see it in some of the other markets that we haven't said are key right now. But Japan, even though we haven't defined it as one of our strategic markets yet, we'll probably be ending up on that list later, so very, very positive.And to actually make sure that we can capture the growing market, we were happy to also announce that we now have the SEK 300 million new share issue communicated. You will get some further details on where we are with that one by Susanna, but it's a fundamental piece. It will help us to really capture the market and continue with the growth pattern that we're on.And as a final part of the market update, we see clear interest of signage within the retail community. Very often, we speak about retail media. And retail media for a retailer is the combination of the online media and the in-store media, where online has been all the commercials and all the stuff that you do on the online and then how you actually work with your customers to sell more. Now they see, with digital signage and with the store digitalization and how we combine them and work together with the retailers, this is giving them a clear opportunity and a clear potential to add additional revenue streams, primarily through different kind of in-store advertisement, but also through promotions by working together with a CPG. And there was -- a few weeks ago, they were celebrating the 60th anniversary of the hypermarket in France when they had a reintegration of the first hypermarket globally. So, Alexandre Bompard, Group CEO of Carrefour, he was there to do the -- to celebrate. And one of the stations in the store was the collaboration between Carrefour and Pricer with Procter & Gamble and Danone, where we were actually then setting up the digital signage stations. And in the discussions we have had here in Spain now, we said that this is also one of the [indiscernible] we look how can we actually make this an interesting part of the solution that we offer in Spain.So that's a market update. So what I will do, I will then pass on the word to Susanna. Susanna, could you please take us through the financials and the market development?

[Susanna Zethelius, executive]

Absolutely. So starting with market development, and [ somewhat ] it will be repetition from what Magnus has said and what you have read, but we're happy to repeat some of this actually. So market development, and this concerns order intake for us. We had the highest order intake for a second quarter, the third highest order intake ever with SEK 678 million, so up 17% year-on-year versus same quarter last year then. The main driver is Europe, and especially France, where we had press released a number of newly-won contracts. It's been Carrefour, French DIY chain, international wholesale grocery chain, so boosting the revenue in France.If we look at Americas, the order intake, we saw a slight slowdown, coming especially from Canada. So year-on-year, it's actually been decreasing in the Americas. This slowdown in Canada was partly offset by strong order intake from the U.S. and from Latin America. And we're especially happy about the U.S. since it's the strategic market for us to grow in. And like Magnus mentioned, we've just recently press released AFS, which is very good news. Then Eastern Europe continues to be strong, and that comes especially from Carrefour Romania. It also comes from grocery chains in Bulgaria. And it's not only groceries, it's also home electronics and DIY, so good there as well.The order backlog is a total of SEK 626 million as of last of June, and we expect that to be delivered in the third and fourth quarters.Next slide, please. Thank you. So the chart on the left-hand side concerns order intake, and I've already touched upon that. So, looking at the chart in the middle, net sales, SEK 687 million, the second highest net sales number ever, up 30% versus same quarter last year, so very strong. You can also see that it was a significant increase versus the last quarter. And that was partly due to the fact that we managed to free up installation capacity and improved lead times, so we could boost some of the sales for this quarter. Top 3 markets were France, Canada and Italy for net sales.And then, on the right-hand side, coming to gross margin, so gross margin, 16% in the quarter. Like I mentioned before, it is stabilizing. It's slightly up versus the last 2 quarters. If we look within the quarter, as you may have seen, we published April and May figures when we launched the share issue. And it's been stronger in June than comparing to April, May together where we had 15.4%. So, we had a stronger June. The trend is going in the right direction is what we would say.We have a strategic program, we've talked about it, to reduce COGS. That's still ongoing. We're starting to see the benefits coming in on the cost side now in the second quarter. If we look at price levels towards customers, they do vary, dependent on what market it's in, the size of the customer, the choice of the products that the customer wants. And for this quarter, we've seen some downwards pressure from this customer/product mix, which has partly been offsetting what we have started to see in cost savings. At the same time, we have secured new contracts, for example, some of the ones that has been press released, with better price levels. And we have also managed to increase prices for certain existing customers, which should have impact going forward.I have received some questions about freight cost. Freight is actually a relatively small portion of the COGS as a whole. It's less than 4%. I would say that freight costs have normalized. They've stabilized. They're back to pre-COVID, pre-crisis levels, and they have been slightly up for us versus last year, as we have decided to fly more than put more on boat. This is especially because we wanted to reduce the tie-up of capital and also improve the speed when it comes to delivery.Recurring revenue is also, of course, impacting gross margin. We see that it could provide further boost to the gross margin in the future. Currently, in the short term, it has quite limited impact. The recurring revenue for the quarter was 2.3%, which corresponds to around SEK 16 million. So, you see it doesn't have a huge significance just yet.And finally then, when it comes to gross margin, what we see looking forward is that we expect the COGS reduction to give impact in the future, in the coming quarters, especially so, I would say, in the fourth quarter, probably less so in the third quarter, but rather in the fourth quarter.And then moving to the next slide, please. Thank you. So, operating profit for the quarter was at minus 3%. It's not a great number. It's slightly up versus last quarter and slightly up versus the same quarter last year. Operating margin at around 0%. We have the strong revenue, which is pushing the operating profit upwards. At the same time, the relatively low gross margin levels are holding us back. And then it's, of course, as well the operating costs. They were at SEK 108 million this quarter versus SEK 97 million same quarter last year. And I would say that this increase is due to 3 main reasons. It's one, just inflation, like we've seen everywhere. Then it's also expansion of our organization, especially then in selected areas that we see as necessary in order to capture the growth ahead, so primarily within sales and delivery functions. And then thirdly, it's also one-off costs that are relating especially to the strategic improvement programs that we've talked about, so the COGS reduction program, working capital improvement, setting our site in Taiwan. And summarizing those one-off costs, I would say it's roughly SEK 4 million in this quarter of the operating costs that refers to one-off costs.And then I don't have any slide on this, but I thought I will just say a couple of words about the share issue. There is also, of course, the press release on our website where you can go to look at more -- any more detail. But just to summarize, we announced on the 29th of June that we would do a directed share issue of SEK 44 million and a fully guaranteed rights issue of SEK 257 million, so a total of around SEK 301 million. The direct issue is completed, and it was directed towards Sterling Active Fund and Quaero Capital. The rights issue is subject to approval of an extra general meeting, which is taking place the 8th of August. And for the rights issue, we have subscription undertakings and guarantee commitments of a total of approximately 100%, so it's a guaranteed transaction. And we expect the funds from the rights issue to come early September.And then finally, the purpose of the share issue is to finance the company's growth strategy, as well as fulfilling the equity raise condition that we had in our bond with Ture Invest. And we will use the proceeds that we get for, one, strengthening the working capital, and also other capital-related actions, which include a potential repayment of SEK 50 million of the Ture's obligation -- or the Ture's bond. And then, we also include in the use of proceeds that we have strategic product development and production facilities.So, I think with that, I will hand over back to you, Magnus.

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Thank you very much, Susanna. And as previously, if you have questions on what we presented, do please feel to bring them up after we have formalized the presentation.So, capturing the market 2023. Last quarter, these were the key bullets I presented. So where are we? On the sales and delivery, we have been recruiting in the U.S. But there's also been -- given the development in the U.K., in Spain, but also France and in APAC, we have strengthened the organization in the mature markets like France. We are adding resources in the U.K., in Spain and also in APAC to be able to really facilitate the growth that we see.On increasing agility, the second R&D site is now -- we are fully recruiting. Compared to the targets that we set up for the first half, we're doing well. And we are continuing recruitment, so we have some of the key members of the team in place. We have some of the first engineers. So, during the second half, the team will be operational.On the supply leadership, there is a constant dialogue with all our suppliers. There's a constant dialogue with new suppliers. As Susanna mentioned, we have the strategic COGS reduction program to see how can we take any measure -- any and all measures to actually fundamentally get our costs down. And that does not only mean negotiating with current supplier, but it's also looking at the way we design our products. They're looking at the point where we do the manufacturing. We're looking at the variation, so we're cutting down the number of variants. So there are many different aspects of cutting the costs that we're actually taking. So it's formalized in a big program where we actually keep track of every single cost reduction item and then have a pretty clear idea actually where this will bring us, both now this year and into the future.And on the cloud tech, this is, of course, very tightly connected to the recurring revenue. And you heard Susanna communicate 2.3% in Q2. Ambition is that it will be 10% by 2025. So, of course, we sell to new customers. So all the installs here in Spain, as an example, they are all based on Plaza; AFS, all based on Plaza; the unnamed wholesale grocery retailer, also Plaza. But we have some 20,000 stores on Pricer Server, our on-prem solution. So here, we have actually teamed up with Google, who is actually providing the cloud infrastructure for Plaza, to see how can we jointly then make sure that we speed the migration process up. So we will launch in August the program, together with Google, towards our on-prem customers to actually facilitate now a faster move from on-prem to cloud solution or Plaza solution. So, that will be really exciting to see how the reaction will be, but that's a very good dialogue.So finally, before the Q&A, summarizing the second quarter, the market is growing fast, and above all, it's growing in the strategic markets. So, of course, it was as expected, but we're happy to see that it's happening now because it's always difficult to forecast. You have a feeling. You have an idea. You do research. You check the market. So, for U.S., would it happen now? Would it happen next year? It's, of course, hard to say. But now we see the signs. We see the first orders coming in, and we see a pretty rapid market development. And I'm happy to see also that we managed to capitalize on this market growth with the second-best net sales ever and the third-best order intake ever in the quarter.It was, of course, nice to be able to communicate that for the second quarter in a row, we do see a gross margin increase. This was what we communicated last quarter. And now, I'll say that you will see tangible improvements by second half and then with a focus on Q4. So, that will be the result of the actions that we've done, but it's also good that you can see that what we communicated now actually starts to be fulfilled.And we are investing to grow. We are investing in innovation. We are investing, of course, in the R&D organization. But we're also investing in the sales delivery and administrational organization to really make sure that we can grow as per plans.So, having said all this, I invite you to now the Q&A session.

[Unknown Executive]

Great, Magnus. Thank you very much. So let's start where you started your own presentation with Carrefour. They seem to love you. But what determines the pace of the rollout? Is it your own capacity? Or what is it? Could you roll out even faster?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

We could -- I hope I'm not saying too much. Yes, we could roll out faster, but it's all about planning. So what we are working with -- together with Carrefour and actually all the markets right now? The focus has very much been on France, Spain and actually Poland, Romania, maybe primarily, even though we also, of course, do deployments in Italy and Belgium as well. We are working very closely with the Carrefour teams. They have their budget set for this year, so we are now deciding how we should actually then help them get as much as possible deployed. And we are in discussions. So when we met with Carrefour Spain yesterday, one of the key topics of our discussion was actually the plans for 2024. How can we make sure that we deploy as much as possible? And then, of course, within their budgets. And then to be clear, they haven't set their budget for next year. But it's a good and constructive dialogue. And when we do that, we have the capability to adopt production. We have the capability to adapt the service organization based on actually the need of Carrefour. And it's a very good and the constructive relationship. So, I have to give a lot of credit to the Carrefour people, and of course, our own team basically, both within the sales team and delivery team, but also the headquarter team, for having facilitated this. And in the discussions with the Carrefour team, it's been very clear that there were 2 key things for them to selecting us. One was, of course, our technical capability, and we feel very confident in our technological choices, but they also highlight the way we work. And then I think it's best characterized by one of our core company values. We have -- we dare, we care and move in together. And I think this has been a very good example of how we actually win together, both within Pricer, but together with the customer.That was a long answer to a fairly short question.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you, Magnus. So, you also said that when a retailer like Carrefour goes ahead like this, it opens up the market and others follow. Would you have the capacity to take on those? And what type of interest do you see now?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Yes, I think so. And there will always be a lag. And if we take Netherlands, as an example, in 2019, Ahold Group decided to go ahead with an ESL project. Then the year after, then Plus selected us, decided to go ahead. Then the year after that, then you had Jumbo. And then the year after that, you had Coop. So, you can see that it's a pretty rapid movement, but it's not rapid so fast that we cannot then adapt. So we will have the time to actually build the local capability that we need actually to address this potential. And if we take Spain as an example, since we see the business possibility with Carrefour, but also with other retailers, we are proactively ramping up on some of the key functions to not only deliver but to make sure we have the capability to win new business.

[Unknown Executive]

Good. So, we have a question from the web here. You mentioned several 4-color pilot projects in markets such as the U.S. Do your competitors have the ability to run this kind of project as well, with regards to battery mostly?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

I would say that they have the capability, but I haven't seen the -- maybe not with regards to battery, but they have the capability for sure to sell 4-color, but I haven't seen a real appetite. I have a lot of speculation on why this is the case, in addition to technological reasons. But they're speculation. So, I will just keep them for myself. But I would say that, yes, they have the capability, but they choose to focus on 3-color. That's what I see.

[Unknown Executive]

Okay. You mentioned Japan. Could you give us some more color? How do you address that market? And do you have any market share or any expectations of market share going forward?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

I will start with the [ clear one ]. So I would say that at this point of time, we have no market share, but we have now a strategic partner in place. They are working quite actively to address the market. We have a first pilot in place with a potential customer. I cannot disclose the name. But as far as you can judge, they are very happy with the work done by our partners so far and are willing to engage in further discussion. As a disclaimer, that does not mean that we will win it. But it does mean that we will have a good shot at actually doing something jointly in the Japanese market.I would very much like to see that market take off because I think that the way Japanese -- in general, Japanese companies value the corporation and products. I think we have a good fit. There is a clear appreciation of quality, and I think that we deliver premium quality. But there is also a way of working, and the way we work together with our partners, I think, will be fitting the Japanese market really well. And to even further strengthen the capability of the partner, we are actually -- we have done -- we are planning to do a joint recruitment to have someone that is -- both Pricer and partner -- with the sole ambition to actually focus on getting the sales and support -- the partner team in Japan, but then having the specific Pricer knowledge. So, we would make sure we do the training, and we make sure that, that person will get all the facilitation needed to be successful. So, let's see where we'll end at. But from a strategic point of view, Japan is a market that I would consider highly interesting for us.

[Unknown Executive]

So, you're seeing growth in almost every market. We've talked about Spain. We talked a bit about the U.S., now Japan. How do you prioritize your resources?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

So, priority right now, it's -- it would really be according to the key strategic market. It's France. It's U.S., Canada. It's U.K. It's Spain. I'd say, Australia, but it's actually Australia and New Zealand. And I would say it's also Germany. And as many of you know, we haven't been very successful in Germany before. We are changing our strategy. We're changing the way we're addressing the German market. We are listening in a different way. We are engaging in a different way. And we have built now the capability to address the very specific need of some of the German customers. And very specific needs are actually in fact not very specific, but often they have an idea of that, when we do this deployment, we want to have our specific size of ESL, and it's important for them. It's part of the way they build their brand. It's part of the way they want to be represented in the store. And historically, we might not have done it that way. But now, with the change also on product and R&D, where we have built the capability to very quickly build working prototypes, we are able to quite quickly respond to the requests from the German market and say, so is this what you want? We can discuss through it. And we know that if they would say, yes, we have the capability to also do volume production at an interesting cost level. So, this has been the change in the way we work and the way we actually design the ESL that is facilitating this. So, I think our chances of winning in Germany is much better, but it will probably take some time. We need to win the trust. We need to engage. And we need to make sure we come in the right spending cycle of the reseller. So, as much as I would like to say that you will see immediate results, the result might actually come within the coming three years, even though I, of course, hope to have it faster.

[Unknown Executive]

Now, you mentioned Germany as a market, but you also have your new production facility in Germany. Could you elaborate a bit more on that?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Yes. So, we opened it. Actually, I think we had the first test runs in March already. We started production in smaller scale in April. We had the formal inauguration between the Pricer and the Zollner team, as Zollner is the contract manufacturer we're working with, in May. And we are now getting volume out. And this -- the wholesale company, the European one, they are one of the first customers that is actually getting now labels from this facility. It's fully automated. It has the capability to produce 24/7. So it's actually adding quite high capacity with only one production line. The setup that we have done is a setup that we can copy paste, so it's easy for us to add another production line or to actually do a similar type production line in another market, let's say, in the U.S. market, if that's something that we would want. And given the way that the American market is developing, that might very well be something that we would like to investigate further and potentially make an investment in.

[Unknown Executive]

So, made in the U.S.A. potentially would be great for selling in the U.S. Have you started any initiative like that?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

We are -- no, we have not started anything, but we have started to investigate, if we would set something like this up, which would be the best place from an administrational, taxation, availability of infrastructure, logistics point of view. So, we have started to look into it to make sure that we would actually have some material to actually make an assessment for eventually management and the Board to make a decision, let's invest or let's not invest. But we have started that, you can call it, pre-study because we do think that made in the U.S. would be highly appreciated in the American market.

[Unknown Executive]

And the manufacturing you have in Germany today, can you elaborate on the manufacturing cost versus Asia?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

It's actually -- initially, it's on the same level, roughly. No, actually, you can say that it's on the same level. And it's initial phases. So, of course, what we are doing together with Zollner is that we're looking at how can we make it more efficient? How can we increase the capacity without doing bigger investments? Is there anything we can change in the design of the ESL to get the cost down? So there is, of course, an expectation that also in this factory, we will gradually lower the cost, which means that we will have a quite attractive cost level compared to Asia.

[Unknown Executive]

Good. So, you elaborated a bit on Associated Foods. Could you say something more on how far you've come?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

So, it's been following a pretty classic sales process. So, you start with the initial dialogue. They know that they would probably like to do something digitizing. They do a lab test, or maybe they even do it in their office, not even in the store. Then they decide to go ahead to do the first store installs. So, in our case, we did 7 stores with fairly small installs in every store, where they were testing it. They were testing it with 2 radio competitors that were doing a similar setup. But I think we were the only one that actually got 7 stores. I think the other guys got a little bit less. They've done quite a thorough test of our system. And they -- to them, it's strategic. This is something they feel will help them gain initially then -- and primarily right now, the operational efficiency savings. We can see that there's a lot of excitement. We've got the first 5 stores now in June. And we are planning for, if we have not even started to install, maybe 1 or 2 of them, but it will happen now very soon. And we know that there's a number of stores waiting to actually -- so there will be another round of orders coming during autumn for delivery in autumn. So, it will be a number of stores. I will not say more at this point in time.

[Unknown Executive]

Good. Was AFS one of the mentioned Tier 1 U.S. grocery pilots that you mentioned earlier, as early as Q4 2022?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Yes. We've been working with them since last year. But there are more pilots at play, and some of them have actually turned into initial installs, where we've moved from pilots to maybe to first store install. Now, we will actually move to the next stage, which will be like up to a handful of stores where you start testing maybe the industrialization process. So, we've reached that stage also with some retailers in -- grocery retailers in the U.S. market.

[Unknown Executive]

Okay. And regarding the loan from Ture, would there be a possibility if you had the chance -- if you had that type of money to repay the loan ahead of time?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

I would leave that question to you, Susanna.

[Susanna Zethelius, executive]

Yes. Well, the short answer is, yes. If we were to repay it earlier, it would be quite costly, though. Okay. I would say that our focus has been primarily now to make sure that we landed this new share issue, and we're still not really there, although we know that it will happen in the coming month. And then, together with the new Board, also, we will look at how to set up a capital structure going forward.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you. So, by how much are your systems more expensive than competition? And why are clients willing to pay more?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

It's depending from case to case. We can actually see -- in some markets, where we've had a much better margin, we can see that the price pressure has not been that intense, which means -- it's hard to say how much, and we might not have been more expensive, but still got the premium price that we want. In the markets where we can see a very hard price pressure, maybe 5% to 10%, I would say, probably closer to 10%. And meeting some of the recent contracts that you've seen, there has been an expectation from the customers that we should go lower, and we have said, no, because we feel that what we deliver is a premium product, and we feel that the way we deliver it is of a premium nature. So, this is also coming back to this -- our corporate values [ were there]. One of the cases we know that was much at risk, but we also know that we delivered so much value that we felt confident that this is a risk that we're willing to take because we think we have the right to charge the price that we've been asking, and it was successful. But it's always a difficult question to answer. But my ask from the sales team is that I want them in average to be 10% on top of competition because I think we have the right to ask that price.

[Unknown Executive]

Great, Magnus. I think we've come through -- no -- yes, so we've come through the questions. Do you want to summarize?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Yes, I would be happy to. So, thanks for the facilitation for a lot. Thanks for all the questions, really good questions, interesting. I'm always happy to take this dialogue. Thanks also for spending now this -- I guess, it's almost an hour with us. It's been a pleasure. So, thank you very much, and I wish you a fantastic summer. Bye.