About Ulrika Kolsrud
Ulrika Kolsrud, President and CEO of Essity, reported the company’s second quarter 2026 results, highlighting positive organic sales growth driven by volume increases in three of four business units: health and medical, personal care, and professional hygiene. She noted that consumer tissue experienced lower sales. Kolsrud stated that profitability margins remained healthy but were slightly negatively impacted by geopolitical factors causing increased cost inflation. She said the company has implemented some price increases and agreed on others that will appear in the third quarter, adding that compensating for cost increases is a top priority and that Essity has a strong track record of doing so over time.
Kolsrud discussed several strategic initiatives, including a reorganization into four business areas with end-to-end accountability, a cost-saving program, and a sharpened innovation agenda. She also mentioned an acquisition in feminine care in North America and a strategic review of the consumer tissue business. Regarding the review, Kolsrud said the company is examining all options—divestiture, separation, or retention—and that the goal is to create the best conditions for both the consumer tissue business and the rest of Essity to develop to their full potential and maximize value creation. She cited the UK’s NHS introducing value-based procurement guidance for medical technology as a positive development for Essity’s holistic solutions.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Ulrika Kolsrud's recent appearances.
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Transcript (12 segments)
S
Sandra0:05
Welcome to this quarterly interview with our CEO. Hi Ola.
U
Ulrika Kolsrud0:10
Hi Sandra. This morning we published our Q3 results. How would you summarize the quarter with three words?
S
Sandra0:19
Those would be growth, margin enhancement, and I'd say action.
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Ulrika Kolsrud0:24
So first you mentioned growth. Please elaborate. Well, we continue to grow our sales organically in the quarter. Price, volume, and mix all contributed to the 0.9% organic growth with price being the most significant contributor. And what I think was especially pleasing to see was that we continue to grow very nicely in our strategic categories and segments like incontinence care, feminine care, wound care and also in the strategic products that we have in professional hygiene. And the second word was margin enhancement.
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Sandra1:00
Yes. Why? Why margin enhancement?
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Ulrika Kolsrud1:02
Well, once again we delivered record high gross profit margins thanks to higher volumes, better pricing, and also lower COGS and thanks to excellent cost control this flowed through to the bottom line. So thanks to that we delivered 14.6% in profit margin, strengthening the profit margin, and also a result of five billion SEK in the quarter. And thirdly, you mentioned action. Please tell me.
Well, I'm then referring to that the actions that we took last quarter have paid off. One thing was that we had in incontinence care, health care, and in baby as well as in professional hygiene, we were declining last quarter and we have improved in all of those three areas and our volumes are sequentially improving in all three of those areas. Also, the call to action that we took in July pulling the brakes on our SG&A cost development has had very good results and that is exactly what we saw now in strengthening our profit margin to 14.6%. So that is one reason why I think this is a quarter that can be characterized by the word action. But the other is the work that we have done during the quarter to define how to set ourselves up for success. So as I shared last quarter during my first months in the role, I have now done and conducted an extensive review of the business and then worked closely with the management team to define what to change, what to improve, and what to prioritize in order to accelerate our progress towards our targets and towards our long-term vision. And this work has resulted in two initiatives to increase Essity's profitable growth.
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Sandra2:56
Could you please tell me about the initiatives and what benefits they bring?
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Ulrika Kolsrud3:04
Well, starting with the first one then that is that we will reshape our organization so that we sharpen our focus and become faster and more agile. So we will create four new global business units that are based on our product categories. And those will have P&L responsibility and also the full end to end accountability which is a change versus what we have today and those business units will be health and medical, personal care, consumer tissue, and professional hygiene.
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Sandra3:34
Yes. And those four business units will then also be reflected in our external reporting. So we will have those as our business area and our financial reporting will follow that structure.
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Ulrika Kolsrud3:43
Exactly, as from 1st of January 2026 that is the case and the benefits with this reorganization is that we will decentralize decision-making, we will reduce complexity, and by that we will become faster in responding to evolving consumer and customer needs. Also, we will sharpen our focus on the most attractive categories and segments moving forward. Then the other action or initiative that we're launching is a groupwide cost-saving program. With this reorganization, we will not only be more effective, we will also be more efficient. And those efficiency gains are a key component of that cost-saving program. We expect a saving of 1 billion SEK in run rate with full effect by end of 2026. We're targeting primarily SG&A costs and that is on top of the cost-saving program that we already have when it comes to COGS which is yielding 0.5 to 1 billion SEK as well. A&M is excluded, quite the contrary actually, we it's important that we at least maintain our A&M and R&D investments to continue to fuel growth and the savings that we generate will primarily be reinvested in accelerating profitable growth. So invested in our high yielding areas where we also have a proven track record of high return on investments. And I am confident Sandra that with these changes we will unleash the full power of our organization. We will free up resources to accelerate profitable growth and we will unlock the full potential of our product portfolio.
S
Sandra5:33
Thank you, Ulrika, for this update. We look forward to following your leadership and thank you for watching this interview. We will make sure to keep you updated with our progress on the organizational change and our cost-saving program. If you are interested in a more in-depth presentation of the Q3 results, I highly recommend you to watch the webcast available here on essity.com. Bye for now.
