Greetings from Oriola's headquarters in Espoo. Oriola released their Q3 result today, and that's why I'm here with their CEO. Katarina Gabrielson, hello Katarina. So you announced a delay and a significant cost increase in your ERP project earlier this month. Can you explain what the changes were and why they happened?

What we have done is, like you said, announced the delay or this phase of replanning, in fact, on the program. So, taking the learning from quarter one and quarter two, and the first deployment of the Swedish SAP implementation, we also revised the timeline based on what we do in the building in Järvenpää, the new distribution center in Finland. And then we have taken more ownership from our own side, and that means that we have also staffed up a little bit in Oriola to take this on, and we also changed the system implementation partner. This means that we have prolonged the project to 2028 to align it with our Järvenpää implementation, as well as being able to take the deployment in two phases. The cost was then rising from 35 million to 54 million, but it will also be a more secure project. So that's the background for it. OK.

You are now planning to finish the ramp-up of the new Finnish distribution center that you were talking about, as well as the ERP project, during 2028. Your financial target aims for significantly higher earnings in 2029. Can you extract all the efficiencies from these investments in that short time?

What it is, is that in the CMD we promised to double the profitability by 2029, and that is still valid. And you can say that for us it is really important to get this project in place, the ERP part and the WMS part, because that's the foundation for getting the investments in place, and 2029 is of course the year when we need to have this base in place. And when we have that, we see that we still have the possibility to reach this.

The higher ERP cost also means a lower equity ratio for you in the coming years. Do you see that as an issue?

I would say that it is a facing part in this one. We are according to our forecast. I think we need to take now the SAP project, the ERP project, into operating life as one of the normal costs. It's not capex, it's a normal cost, and that is of course burdening the equity in that aspect, but at the same time we should remember that when we have the project in place, it will then ease the burden. And on top of that, we also have this land where we are today that will then be released when we leave it. We also have some other parts that we can release, so I would say it's a balance on when we release certain things, of course.

Then if we move on to the Q3 highlights of the quarter.

I was thinking that we had a solid quarter, overall. Yes, we had the same profitability level, but it is mainly due to one inventory correction that we had of 0.7 million euros that is affecting the profitability part. Otherwise, we can see that there was net sales growth in both segments, so both the distribution segment and the wholesale segment performed well in the sales part and also the profitability part. What got especially the distribution segment, since the services segment was affected by this one-off provision, so the business is, as I said, solid in that aspect, good.

Kronans Apotek posted a positive contribution to Oriola and improved the earnings. With one quarter, can we expect this to be sustainable?

It is always, I would say, when you say sustainable. It is the second quarter now that we can see that it is improving, and we are doing everything we can, of course, both on the board and the management side, to continue this. And there is a strong belief that this is like what we also presented in the CMD. Of course, we have both the cost support, the 20 million that should be saved in Kronans, on top of also more sales, and we see that Kronans is moving towards what is the target. So I expect that it will be better and better, but of course, when you say that it is completely there.

You continue to guide for an improvement for the full year. What are the main drivers?

For the full year, it is what we said before, we have a good quarter with good sales. We can continue now to build on that momentum. We have new pharmaceutical company customers in the segment that will contribute to the end of the year. This fourth quarter as well as they have done in quarter three. We also can see that the fuel surcharge that we talked a lot about in the second quarter, the higher fuel prices, is now mitigated, and that will continue also in quarter four. So the sales in combination with this, and then also the cost savings and the continuous improvement that we do every day, and of course the cost control.

And then finally, touching on the fuel prices, you already mentioned they have increased again in September and October. Do you expect that to hurt Q4 at all, or are you confident that

that we have this now in place and that it is continuing to be in place. Of course, you never know what happens after quarter four and so on, and that's something we need to look at, both from inflation and other parts and fuel prices. But for quarter four, I am confident.

Thank you so much. Katarina. And good luck with the last quarter, thank you.