Profoto reports decrease in first-quarter sales

“Sales were SEK 171m, a decrease of 25 percent compared to the first quarter of 2023,” said Anders Hedebark, president and CEO. “The EBIT margin was negatively affected by the low sales, which nevertheless amounted to 20 percent (31) thanks to strict discipline in keeping costs in check.

“As in recent quarters, professional photographers and large studios alike continued to be cautious about investing in equipment, considering the uncertain macroeconomic environment and high interest rates. Underlying demand for our products therefore continued to be weak in all our regions. In a cautious market, we need to give customers convincing reasons to invest, to improve demand. Normally, our primary way to do this is by launching new, innovative products. We have not had any major product launches in the last few quarters, which combined with the cautious market, are the main reasons for the weak sales. To address this situation, we have had a lot of extra activities and attractive offers for professional photographers in connection with the important spring wedding season, which had a positive effect on the sales of our OCF and Clic products.

“We remain confident in our financial targets. To continue to meet our growth target, after several challenging quarters, we continue to invest a lot of energy and resources in product development. I am especially proud and happy that we can finally start to showcase the results of this dedicated work with the launch of our new monolight, the Pro-D3.

“I see it as marking the start of a very exciting time, with more frequent product launches than we have had over the past two years, enabled by our investment in innovation. In addition to investing in innovation and launching new products, we continue to raise our level of activity in the market and to further develop the way in which we launch and sell our products.”

“We have three areas of light in which we are growing; our core area of Light for professional photographers, where we have been able to develop products and increase our market share and sales for many years. This is an important area that we will continue to invest in. Our two newer focus areas are Software for e-commerce and studios, where there are major efficiency improvements to be made and where we have made several innovations in 2023. The third area, Light for film production, is a newer area with great opportunities that we are now investing in.”