Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call this morning. 2017 has been an eventful, but also a challenging year for
PANDORA. We continued the strong performance in several of our key markets. However, we were also impacted by weaker performance in some of more developed markets.
Looking ahead, our focus is to deliver on our 2022 strategy that we presented at our Capital Markets Day. In short, the strategy is about capitalizing on our strong position as the world’s largest manufacturer with the most recognized brand. We will leverage our fully integrated value chain and capture the ample growth opportunities in the
pandora global jewelry market through four core strategic focus areas. We’re going to innovate affordable jewelry, lead in agile manufacturing, we are going to digitalize the brand experience and win in omnichannel retail. With this strategy, we are confident that we will deliver continued growth and strong profitability in 2018 and in the years to come.
With that said, let me go through the highlights for
pandora disney collection 2017. Please turn to slide number 3. Revenue for 2017 was DKK 22.8 billion and increased 12% compared to 2016 or 15% in local currency. The Asia Pacific region was the main driver of growth, increasing 25%, whereas revenue from the EMEA region increased 13%. The U.S. continued to be affected by challenging retail environment and consequently revenue from the Americas region increased 4%.
On the
pandora necklace product side, the performance in our more established markets has been impacted by a lack of new concept as well as too much repetition in our collection. Nevertheless, all product categories delivered double-digit growth in local currency for the year. We opened 308 new concept stores in 2017 and continued to increase the control of our network. Half of the concept stores opened were owned and operated and on top of this, we acquired 200 concept stores during the year. Acquisitions had a positive impact on revenue of around DKK 750 million.
Moving on to our profitability, EBITDA for the year was DKK 8.5 billion, corresponding to an EBITDA margin of 37.3%. The effective tax rate was 24.8% and the higher than anticipated level was due to the new U.S. tax reform as well as a repatriation of dividend related to PANDORA production in Thailand. Excluding the two one-off items, the effective tax rate was approximately 21%. Finally, free cash flow for the year was DKK 5.3 billion on par with 2016. Peter will come back later in the presentation with how we plan to distribute cash to our shareholders in 2018.