CDON’s September Inflection Comes With a Tariff Chaser
A product-feed fix and a costly brand launch turned GMV growth positive, but profit still lags — and another EU duty lands in peak season.
CDON.ST · Earnings Call · 2026-10-22
The Cleanup Quarter That Wasn’t
CDON entered Q3 2026 with a simple story: close the remaining 1P inventory business, become a clean third-party marketplace, and let operating leverage show. The quarter delivered the opposite headline. Reported EBITDA was -5.4 million SEK, adjusted EBITDA only 1 million versus 11.5 million a year ago, and the group booked 6.4 million SEK of total 1P closure costs. But the call’s real event happened in late August, not in the P&L. A long-invested product data service let CDON deduplicate product cards and massively expand its Google Shopping feeds. September GMV grew 32%, and management says the momentum carried into October. That is the inflection management wants investors to underwrite.The market context matters: CDON’s top company keywords this quarter — Brand marketing, European giants, 1P cost, product feed, retail media, EU tariffs — are almost entirely company-specific. They are not the global top-75 list, which is dominated by rate hikes, IRB models, mortgage spreads, and tariff refund accounting at much larger financial and industrial names. CDON is not riding a broad sector wave. It is executing a small-cap marketplace repair story. That makes the signal cleaner but also more fragile.
What Actually Changed
The product feed fix is not cosmetic. CDON had been displaying the same product many times across merchants; management says a PlayStation 5 could appear ten times. Step one of the product data service groups duplicates into one card, which allowed CDON to push a much broader assortment into its Google feed without the old business-intelligence filtering. The result was a step-change in paid traffic efficiency and conversion, especially at Fyndiq, which had been hit by the July EU customs duty on goods entering the bloc. “We had a strong turnaround in the quarter. Weak start, but the big inflection point came with a big tech investment...” — Fredrik Norberg, CEO · 2026-10-22That is a genuine operational change, not a narrative. The Nordic growth numbers support it: CDON grew 20% in the Nordics versus 2% last year to date, and Fyndiq grew 62% versus 38%. CDON moved 130 merchants that previously sold only in Sweden into other Nordic markets. The European giants kept pace and now represent 6% of total sales. Management says it is far from maturity there and is moving from consumer electronics into home, toys, and second-tier categories.
The cost side is where the story gets less clean. Marketing cost rose 36%, including the new brand marketing campaign launched on September 21. The “Expect Everything” concept and the CDON-lings cost 3.8 million SEK in the quarter, mostly production and media, with no time to earn a return. Management also absorbed 2 million SEK from a search incident during the internal search launch. On a comparable basis — excluding 1P costs and brand marketing — GPAM was up only 1%. “If we exclude the 1P costs and also brand marketing on a comparable basis, we were slightly up 1% compared to last year.” — Carl Andersson, CFO · 2026-10-22
We released our new brand marketing concept 21st of September, loading 3.8 million SEK in costs, both production and media in the quarter, but obviously do not really getting the upside already yet in the quarter.
So the quarter contains two truths. GMV growth is real and accelerating. Profit is not yet following, because CDON chose to front-load brand spend and because the marketplace mix is shifting toward lower-commission categories. The take rate in CDON fell to 13.4%, or 13.9% excluding 1P costs, as European giants and electronics carried more volume. Management argues this is deliberate: optimize absolute gross profit and gross profit after marketing, not percentage take rate. Investors will want to see that math work.
The Unmonetized Options
The most interesting soft spot is retail media. CDON has been talking about it as a take-rate booster, but the call was blunt: the company is live on both marketplaces and still has no revenue. “We still do not have any revenue.” — Fredrik Norberg, CEO · 2026-10-22 Expanded ad placements are being released in Q4, so 2027 should show whether retail media is a real second leg or just a slide. If it works, it addresses the take-rate dilution from European giants without raising merchant commissions. If it slips again, the 2027 EBITDA target leans entirely on GMV leverage and brand marketing efficiency.The internal search migration to Google AI Commerce Search is another option. Management says conversion improved, and the future roadmap includes conversational “help me out” search. That is a practical AI use case, not a moon shot. It also fits the company’s open approach to AI agents: unlike Amazon, CDON says it wants agents to be able to access its assortment. “We believe we understand why they're doing this, but for us, it's obvious that this is a new channel of the shopping experience.” — Fredrik Norberg, CEO · 2026-10-22 That is a sensible long-term bet for a marketplace with 3 million active customers and 100 million annual visits, but it is not yet a P&L line.
The Tariff Chaser
The biggest near-term risk is that the July shock was only the first installment. The EU’s EUR 3 customs duty hit Fyndiq hard in July and August, and another EUR 2 handling fee is scheduled for November 1 — right in peak season. Management is appropriately humble. “I am quite humble about these EU tariffs...” — Fredrik Norberg, CEO · 2026-10-22 The offsetting argument is that CDON’s average order value is higher than ultra-cheap Chinese competitors, so a fixed fee hurts proportionally less. The supply chain is also more accustomed to the regime, and merchants may absorb more of the cost this time. But the company admits it cannot adjust a huge assortment week to week.That makes Q4 a genuine test. CDON has three big game releases — Grand Theft Auto, World of Warcraft, and Zelda — that should drive consumer electronics attachment. The Grand Theft Auto release is the biggest gaming event in 13 years, and management expects monitors, TVs, and audio to follow. If the September GMV growth run-rate holds through November’s fee increase, the inflection is credible. If it stutters, the quarter will look like a well-timed feed expansion that was overwhelmed by policy.
The 2027 target is still approaching 100 million SEK of EBITDA from an LTM base of 3 million. That is a huge bridge. Management’s defense is a largely fixed cost base: the platform does not scale with GMV, only with article count, and headcount at 76 versus 71 is not meant to step up much further. “Our cost base is largely fixed. We do not scale with GMV.” — Carl Andersson, CFO · 2026-10-22 If true, incremental GMV should drop through at high margins once brand marketing normalizes. But the company also says it will keep investing in brand marketing into 2027, so the “normalization” may be slower than the bull case assumes.