Ceconomy AG (CEC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the CECONOMY AG Q4 Full-Year 2023-'24 Results Presentation. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Fabienne Caron, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone, and a warm welcome to our Full-Year 2023-'24 Results Presentation. Joining us on the call today are Karsten Wildberger, our CEO; and Kai-Ulrich Deissner, our CFO. During today's call, we will be discussing certain forward-looking statements. Please refer to the disclaimer for more detail. Let me as well remind you that you can find the presentation slides on our website. Additionally, please be aware that this call is being recorded and the recording will be accessible on our website later today. With that being said, I will now hand over the call to Karsten.

Thank you, Fabienne, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today's call, an exciting day for us. And along with our CFO, Kai Deissner, I'd like to update you on our full-year results. The past year was crucial for us. Despite a challenging market environment, we continued our transformation and made significant progress. And since we began our new strategy 2 years ago, MediaMarktSaturn is in much better shape today and has strengthened our relationships with customers. And importantly, our business model has evolved from a traditional retail business to what we call an omnichannel service platform. And to achieve this, we're enhancing our core business and building profitable, growing businesses of substantial size. Let me start by summarizing the main points of today's presentation. First, we have dedicated our resources to meeting our customers' needs and expectations. Second, we performed strongly despite a challenging economic climate and we've shown remarkable consistency with 7 consecutive quarters of growth in both sales and EBIT. And thirdly, we have proven once again that our strategic direction is the right path. I'm proud to say we've made substantial progress in implementing this strategy over the past year, and our entire company is on an upward trend. We see this not only in our numbers, but also in the positive and motivated spirit of our employees, whom I'd like to thank wholeheartedly. So ladies and gentlemen, I'm confident that we will carry this momentum forward into the upcoming year. That's why today we are sharing a very positive outlook for the financial year '24-'25, but I will dive into the details a bit later. Let's turn to Slide #3. Two years ago, we shared our mid-term targets with the Capital Markets. Back then our goal was to become a customer-centric omnichannel platform. So, we set targets for the financial year '25-'26. It's now half time, and it's time to reflect on our strategy and tactics. Over the past 2 years, we've made important strides in transforming our business. And since '21-'22, our sales have increased by 8% to EUR 22.4 billion. We've worked on our profitability. Our adjusted EBIT grew by 47% to EUR 305 million. And our free cash flow has risen to EUR 119 million, an increase of EUR 742 million. Our customer satisfaction measured by the net promoter score, NPS, has improved by 8 points, reaching a year-on-year high of 58. And this shows we're consistently putting our customer at the center of everything we do. Looking back over the past 2 years, we can say that even in a difficult market environment, we've made significant progress, managed to outperform the market trend, grew sustainably and demonstrated strong consistency. Let's take a closer look at the past financial year on Slide 4. Financially, we're in strong shape. We positively updated our guidance twice during the past financial year and we achieved what we aim for. Additionally, we secured our debt financing by successfully refinancing our corporate bond due in 2026 with a new sustainability-linked bond maturing in July '29. We have further enhanced the customer experience with an NPS of an all-time high with 58 for the full year. We're investing in our omnichannel infrastructure, and have upgraded our online back end in Germany to the latest technology. And this new technical infrastructure strengthens our omnichannel approach, also now our largest market. Our group's market share grew by 40 basis points last year, both online and offline. And we grew our market share in the vast majority of our countries and held our market share in two countries. Our sales in Services & Solutions, a strategically very important business area for us, accelerated in the past year. Services & Solutions income grew by 12%, and I'll give you more details on our growth drivers later in my presentation. And last but not least, we have strengthened our commitment to sustainability, making it easier for our customers to make eco-friendly choices when buying and handling electronic devices. For example, we quadrupled our sales of refurbished products. And this shows that the demand for sustainable options is constantly increasing. Let's turn to Slide 5, please. We are committed to delivering the best customer experience. We're investing online, enhancing our app and website to improve the digital experience, focusing on mobile first. Equally, we are investing in and modernizing our store portfolio. Ladies and gentlemen, our retail core is strong, but it's our growth businesses that make us even stronger. And these growth areas now account for an increasing part of our adjusted EBIT and clearly strengthen our financial performance. All our growth business have gained significant momentum from Operational Services & Solutions, Marketplace and Private Label to Retail Media. And the latter has already reached its targets set for '25-'26. We now aim to leverage this momentum to achieve triple-digit income in Retail Media. Now, let's take a look at our key financials on the next chart. Our net sales grew by 5.3% to EUR 22.4 billion. Our adjusted EBIT increased by 26% to EUR 305 million. And this was driven by both operational improvements and our growth businesses. We delivered particularly strong performance in Turkey, Spain and the Netherlands. And the highest contributions to our profit growth came from Western and Southern Europe. Our adjusted EBIT margin reached 1.4%, which is 30 basis points above the previous year. And our free cash flow exceeded our expectations, reaching EUR 109 million. Our EPS increased by EUR 0.24, mainly driven by our higher profitability. And Kai will provide a deeper dive, of course, into the financials later. You might recognize the next chart, Slide 7, because we presented each quarter to maintain transparency about the development of the 9 KPIs we introduced at our Capital Markets Day in June last year. These 9 KPIs represent the essence of our strategic focus. And once a year, we provide you with an update that includes concrete figures. And I'm very pleased to report that we've made solid progress in all areas. Let's go through, and let's start with the retail core on slide 9. We've grown our loyalty base to 43 million customers, a highly valuable customer group that shops more frequently and spends more. And our continuous efforts to make our customer loyalty program more appealing are paying off. Growing our online business remained a key focus area, and our online share has grown to 24% in the '23-'24 fiscal year, driven by both increased customer visits and larger basket sizes. And we've also expanded our marketplace offering, which is now live in 5 of our countries. More details a bit later. In our brick-and-mortar business, we've invested in our physical stores. 64% of our stores have been fully modernized and now shine with updated designs and welcoming atmospheres. This enhanced attractiveness has led to an increase in customer traffic and basket sizes. We are also enhancing our stores with personalized services to provide customers with a truly unique and memorable shopping experience. And this will be achieved by allowing customers to book appointments in advance, ensuring they receive personalized consultations in store and enabling ongoing communication with the store through multiple channels. Another highlight of the past year was the opening of new flagship stores. We opened 3 of them in Austria, Turkey and Germany, and the opening in Hamburg was one of the most memorable moments for me personally. The store is impressive in size, design and offerings. And with 15,000 square meters, it's the largest consumer electronics store in all of Europe, and it's off to a great commercial start. Turning to our stock management. We've made significant improvements. We achieved a remarkable 10% reduction in stock reach, now down to 9.3 weeks stock turn, all while maintaining even higher product availability. Let's turn to Slide 9, please. To elevate the shopping experience even further, we are putting our data to work. And with a foundation of 43 million loyal customers and billions of data points, we've gained deeper insights into customer preferences, their interest in home delivery, preferred price ranges, online shopping habits and much, much more. And leveraging these insights, we have developed a, for instance, predictive model to anticipate potential purchases. This allows us to implement targeted marketing strategies such as optimizing our campaigns. And using statistical propensity models, we make tailored product and service suggestions. Additionally, our data supports the launch of localized marketing campaigns near our stores. And these efforts are just the beginning. And in the coming year, we aim to harness the full potential of our data to drive even greater impact. And you will hear us talk more often about this very important area going forward. Slide 10, please. Let's now take a closer look at our growth areas on Slide 10. Starting with our Services & Solutions business, I'd like to share how we significantly enhance our service offerings. In the Service & Solutions segment, our focus over the past year was on the income share from our so-called Operational Services & Solutions. And by Operational Services & Solutions, we mean services, excluding Retail Media, excluding Marketplace commissions and fees, as well as deliveries. And I'm proud to share that we achieved a 17% increase in income in this area, equating to EUR 167 million. Particularly noteworthy is the strong demand for our warranty services and mobile phone contracts, which continue to perform exceptionally well. Our insurance offerings are experiencing robust growth, while our repair, installation services remain highly valued and widely utilized by our customers. And these results again underscore the strength of our strategy and our ability to meet the evolving needs of our customers. And now let's take a closer look at our Marketplace. We more than doubled our gross merchandise value, GMV, to EUR 277 million last year. And we now offer 2 million SKUs from almost 1,600 suppliers, which is a 50% increase from the previous year. And additionally, we are diversifying our product offerings. We've established new categories such as do-it-yourself, barbecue and gardening. And we are further expanding our portfolio with products related to fitness, baby and kids, as well as lighting. Moreover, we will extend our service offerings on the Marketplace, such as financing, warranties, and we will do that to all our Marketplace countries. And we are now live in the 5 countries that account for around about 80% of our group sales. And in the upcoming year, we will bring our Marketplace to customers in Belgium, Poland and Turkey. Moving on to the next chart, please. Let's take a closer look at our Private Label business. Strengthening our Private Label business was a key objective in the past year. Why is that? Because our Private Labels target customer segments that we can reach better than with our A brands, while offering very attractive and higher margins. And I want to be clear, we are not yet satisfied with where we stand, but I'm very pleased with the progress we have made over the last year. And our Private Label share reached 2.7% in '23-'24. And we have taken significant steps such as changing our category management approach and updating our designs and Private Label branding. Moreover, new logistics processes now enable faster imports. And as a result, our Private Label share increased each quarter throughout the year. And I'm confident that our increased efforts -- and I'm confident that our increased efforts will move our Private Label business onto the planned profitable growth trajectory. And next one is our Retail Media business. And our Retail Media business had an exciting year, delivering impressive results with EUR 48 million in income for '23-'24. And with this achievement, we've already met our mid-term target set for '25-'26. Given this success, we've updated our plans and are working on an accelerated growth plan. We've experienced very positive feedback from our industry partners. Our Retail Media offerings have proven to be an effective tool for enhancing product visibility and strengthening industry relationships. We are now in a position to integrate also online and offline consumer data seamlessly. So in the upcoming year, we aim to further leverage our omnichannel data. And as a result, we now target a triple-digit income in the midterm. Turning to Slide 14, sustainability. This is a fundamental value that is embedded in our corporate strategy. As I always say, we view it as both a commitment to responsible behavior and a business opportunity. And our goal is to create a customer-centric shopping experience while raising awareness of sustainability. We are continuously working on sustainability by optimizing our in-store materials for greater visibility, integrating sustainable products and services into our marketing campaigns and expanding our BetterWay product range. And last year, we continue to see strong demand for sustainable products. Our BetterWay sales share, our label for very sustainable products increased by 8 percentage points to 20%. Our trade-in proposition, the take back of used products almost doubled year-on-year. And additionally, we've made significant progress in expanding our range of refurb products across Europe with strong growth rates. And there's more to come. Let's take a closer look at our carbon footprint, as shown on Slide 15. Scope 3 emissions account for 99.7% of our total emissions and are, therefore, our main focus. Over the past year, we successfully reduced these emissions by 1.7%. And this reduction was largely driven by our commitment to sustainable products. Additionally, for the first time, we voluntarily contributed to global climate protection by avoiding more than 51,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions. And since January '24, we've also achieved 100% renewable electricity -- renewable electricity use across all our stores and facilities. And finally, for the first part, let's turn to Slide 16 to a topic close to my heart, our team. The employee experience is a cornerstone of our strategy, and our people truly make the difference. This was recognized last year with Germany, Turkey and Italy honored as top employers. We invest in training and developing our people, and a key focus has been fostering diversity and also increasing women's representation in leadership. Last year, 55% of career advancements were achieved by women. And to build on this, we launched several initiatives to support women at MediaMarktSaturn and also attract more female applicants. All our efforts have boosted our net promoter people score to a record high of plus 39. And with that, I hand over to Kai to give you a deep dive in our financial development. Kai?

Thank you, Karsten, and good morning to you all from me as well. Now, let me guide you through our results in just a little more detail, and I will cover both Q4 and the full year. We will start with Slide 18. As Karsten highlighted already, but let me repeat, we delivered strong results for '23-'24, and this in a market that continued to be challenging. For me, this is some tangible traction of our transformation journey here for the past 2 years. Just 2 key figures. Our group sales grew by 5.3% year-on-year. Keep in mind, this is here, as always in this presentation, always adjusted for currency and portfolio changes and pre-IAS 29. Secondly, our adjusted EBIT on a group level reached EUR 305 million. That's at the upper end of our guidance corridor between EUR 290 million and EUR 310 million. That's EUR 62 million increase year-on-year. These results continue to come from robust sales growth in our retail core from successful contributions of our new business models and from relentless discipline on costs. I will go into all 3 of those areas in the course of my presentation. First, on Slide 19, let's have a look underneath the hood. We look here at the contribution of our growth businesses to gross profit. In our view, gross profit is more meaningful than to look at sales because these businesses have a higher profitability pattern. As you can see, our growth businesses or call them not just retail businesses, represented a fair share of our gross profit this year of 32%. That's a 400 basis points increase year-on-year. And we expect those to grow to roughly 40% of our gross profit by '25-'26. Just as a reminder, those growth businesses are Operational Services & Solutions, Marketplace, Private Label and Retail Media, through all of which Karsten has just walked you through. Now, let's turn to Slide 20. The positive impact of those growth businesses on our gross margin, which I just explained, is key to our mid-term growth plan to improve our profitability towards EUR 500 million adjusted EBIT by financial year '25 and '26. And as this slide highlights, our strategy is already paying off with an EBIT CAGR of 21% over these 2 years. We're already really delivering step by step. Now in Q4, we grew sales once again strongly, closing the quarter 6.3% higher year-over-year, as always adjusted for currency and portfolio changes and pre-IAS 29. So, we maintained the good momentum from Q3. And if you look underneath this, our like-for-like sales grew 4.5% in Q4. I'm really pleased to see that this sales growth in the quarter was again driven by both bricks and mortar and online. This then resulted in market share gains of 40 basis points. If you take a 12-month view, our growth was 5.3%, and we also gained 40 bps market share in a slightly declining consumer electronics market if you adjusted for the development in Turkey. Per country, we saw good sales development in Turkey, the Netherlands and in Spain. We saw a recovery in Hungary starting from roughly H2. We saw signs of stabilization in Italy, and some improving trends in Switzerland. While to be fair, Germany remained soft. As Karsten already pointed out, we thus stabilized or grew market share in 9 out of 11 countries. That's except Poland and Luxembourg. And we're actually pleased to highlight that we gained market share in Italy. Our adjusted EBIT on a group level reached EUR 103 million in the quarter, thus EUR 9 million better than in the previous year. This is the seventh consecutive quarter of delivering an uplift. For the full year, we delivered EUR 305 million, which is EUR 62 million better than the prior year. This represents a 30 basis points margin increase to 1.4% EBIT margin. So in summary, our strategy and the rigorous transformation enable us to deliver consistently in this challenging environment, which the sector has been experiencing. Now, let me turn to our operational performance on Slide 22. You can see that our profitability increase was supported across large parts of our portfolio; Western and Southern Europe, DACH and the central functions in the other segments all contributed positively. So, let's start with DACH. We kept our market share in Germany and Hungary, and gained market shares in both Switzerland and Austria. Austria and Hungary grew their sales year-over-year, but in Germany, in line with the market and in Switzerland, our sales declined. And profitability improved this year with a EUR 17 million increase in adjusted EBIT, that's equivalent to 20 bps increase in EBIT margin. Across DACH region, this was driven by stable gross margin and effective cost control, notably in Germany. Secondly, in Western and Southern Europe, we grew sales significantly in all countries except Italy. But very importantly, here in Italy, we saw some signs of recovery in Q4. Spain and the Netherlands delivered a strong performance over the year with like-for-like sales growing in the mid- to high single-digit area and with a substantial increase of market shares. Profitability, we increased our adjusted EBIT in this segment by EUR 53 million and our margin by 70 basis points, driven by all countries, even Italy. Moving to Eastern Europe. Sales was once again driven by Turkey. But as anticipated, we do see that, that market has begun to slow down, even though slower than we had anticipated. Profitability is thus normalizing as expected, and we recorded a EUR 73 million adjusted EBIT. That's equivalent to a 2.3% margin. As for the Others segment, which primarily represents holding costs in our Private Label business, we improved by EUR 22 million, largely due to strategic cost control. Then on the next slide, let me add some highlights about Q4. At the group level, we recorded 4.5% like-for-like sales growth and thus, EUR 103 million of adjusted EBIT or EUR 9 million higher than last year. The region, the main profitability driver was DACH with Germany, where strong cost control offset soft sales development, as I already mentioned. We also gained market share in all countries in the quarter. In Western and Southern Europe, we recorded strong sales growth across the board, except in Belgium. Italy posted positive like-for-like for the first time since Q3 '21 and '22, which is really encouraging. Adjusted EBIT declined year-on-year, but that is due to a high base of comparison, especially in Spain. And EBIT margin remained strong as a whole with 3.5%. Finally, in Eastern Europe, the normalization, which I just explained, continued in this quarter. On Slide 24, you can see our sales with Service & Solutions, so our key growth area. And as a reminder, in addition to our Operational Services business, this here also includes Retail Media, Marketplace and deliveries. So overall, Service & Solutions sales increased by a strong 15% in Q4 and by the 12.4% for the full year, which Karsten already mentioned. In terms of service categories, both for the full year and for Q4, Retail Media, Marketplace and Operational Services & Solutions had a strong performance. Within Operational Services & Solutions, installations and repair increased significantly in Q4, while if you take a full-year view, extended warranties and mobile contracts were the main performance. These figures for me clearly show again that we do convince our customers that we are more than just a regular retailer. And secondly, to online. Our first-party online sales grew again strongly in Q4 with plus 10.1%, and now reached a total of EUR 1.1 billion. We did actually grow across all regions, but there was a particularly strong performance in Turkey, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Hungary. And if you take a 12-month view, online sales increased by 7.3% to now above EUR 5 billion. This translates then into an online share that includes our Marketplace of 23.6%. That's 100 basis points more than prior year. So with these deep dives, let me now come back to our EBIT development on Slide 26. Our gross margin increased by 10 basis points for the full year. That's essentially driven by the positive impact of our growth businesses, as Karsten initially pointed out. However, in Q4, our gross margin was impacted by a more competitive environment, particularly in Turkey. That's because of the normalization of the market growth here is leading to strong price pressure. Then on OpEx, our adjusted OpEx ratio decreased again, although only marginally by 10 basis points to now 17.4% of group sales for the full year. But in a still inflationary environment, I do consider this a strong achievement. In the fourth quarter, we even improved our OpEx ratio by 40 basis points. So let me now give you an update on our efficiency programs in this context. We're pleased to have delivered the EUR 130 million cost savings run rate in Q4. This major efficiency program, which we internally named, Drive, has now been successfully completed. Drive targeted and delivered not only efficiency but also effectiveness of our organization, especially in classical SG&A. It has made us leaner and at the same time, faster and more effective in many headquarter and central functions. Regarding restructuring costs on the right part of the chart, we booked EUR 95 million as a whole over these 2 years, and that's even slightly below our initial forecast of EUR 100 million. And so we've now started the next wave. While Drive targeted headquarter and central functions, we now focus on operating costs. We have initiated central programs, particularly in 3 areas: technology costs, supply chain and logistics; and finally, media spending. We target additional cost savings in the middle double-digit million range if you compare financial year '24 and '25 versus '23 and '24. And of course, we will update you as we proceed. Now finally, turning to the full overview on Slide 28 from adjusted EBIT to net profit. Walking down from the adjusted EBIT of EUR 305 million, we recorded only EUR 52 million non-recurring items for the full year, significantly less than last year. The bulk of those on the cost side are, first, our restructuring program of EUR 29 million; and secondly, EUR 30 million for IAS 29, so hyperinflation accounting. On the income side, we recorded our profit share in Fnac Darty. So consequently, our reported EBIT reached EUR 254 million, which is a significant increase of EUR 275 million year-over-year. Our financial result came in at EUR 166 million as anticipated. This is largely due to higher interest payments in Turkey and higher interest on leases, in line with the overall rate development and of course, in line with our newly placed bond in the course of the year. Regarding tax, we paid little tax this year as expected with a 12.8% tax rate. All in all, for the full year, our net results turned positive with a EUR 77 million net profit and leading to a reported EPS undiluted of EUR 0.16. That's a strong increase of EUR 0.24 compared to the prior year. Now on Q4 financials. As a reminder, we reported EUR 103 million adjusted EBIT, EUR 9 million increase year-over-year. Our non-recurring items in this quarter reached EUR 33 million, EUR 25 million of which comes from restructuring. This then results in the EUR 71 million reported EBIT that you can see on the slide. Our financial result increased for the same reasons, which I just explained. But please also note that the last year was positively impacted then by the deconsolidation of our Swedish business. Again on taxes, we recorded a EUR 17 million charge, but this has mainly technical reasons. When forecasting our tax rate for the full year, Q4, we use as an adjustment period, which makes it challenging, to be honest, to be analyzed on its own, and it does impact the net profit in the period sometimes as in this particular quarter. As a result, we recorded a reported EPS of EUR 0.01 in the quarter. And let me continue with free cash flow, what it all comes down to on Slide 13. Looking at the full year, our free cash flow developed even ahead of our own expectations with plus EUR 119 million. Looking at the underlying dynamics from the left to the right, let's start with EBITDA. It improved from 102 -- it improved by EUR 102 million to EUR 916 million. Next, working capital. As I emphasized throughout the year, we used our working capital to drive growth, especially through better product availability. The operational driver behind this was then slightly higher stock levels. You've also seen the good effect this had on the top line. Now if you take a year-over-year perspective at the bottom of the chart, this does result in a negative change, but the EUR 140 million negative, which you see here for the year is actually a good improvement from the EUR 192 million negative, which we saw for the first 9 months. And as I said, actually better than our expectations. Then on taxes, you can see a positive year-over-year effect of EUR 81 million, but still an outflow of EUR 28 million. Frankly, the background here is very administrative. The German tax authorities experienced some delays, which will result in a cash inflow in financial year '24 and '25 rather than in this quarter as we had originally anticipated. Finally, other operating cash flow of minus EUR 240 million was mainly influenced by cash-out for restructuring by the non-cash adjustment related to Fnac, which is, of course, neutral on the whole bridge, which you see on this page. So in conclusion, we generated a positive free cash flow of EUR 119 million, above our plan and despite better product availability. In closing then, looking at our financing structure and strategic pillars on Slide 31. Looking back at the full year, I'm happy to repeat that we have renewed the long-term financing and secured a stable and robust structure for our company in the future. First and foremost, we refinanced our corporate bond to '26 with a new sustainability-linked bond due in July '29. Secondly, we extended our revolving credit facilities by another year to 2026. As a reminder, this is still undrawn to date and has never been. It is a pure backup line. So as a result, we have no major debt repayment before 2029. Now to update you on the 2 strategic pillars from our Capital Markets Day last year. Our leverage ratio, which we promised would never ever exceed 2.5x has further improved. It now stands at 1.7x net debt to adjusted EBITDA. And we promised always to keep sufficient liquidity reserves. And again, we improved with a healthy cash position of more than EUR 1 billion, that's up 13% year-over-year. So it is in this context that we would like to add a third pillar to our financial strategy. We explicitly reconfirm our commitments on leverage ratio and liquidity reserves without any doubt or any change. But in addition, we would now like to specify our dividend policy. For the future, we're looking to offer an attractive dividend with a payout ratio equivalent to between 10% and 25% of EPS. We emphasize, however, what we actually consider to be a sound business principle. While we stand to this dividend aspiration, we will always also consider any capital requirements of our existing business or potential new business areas. And with that, I complete the financial section. And let me hand you back to Karsten for his closing remarks. Karsten?

Thank you very much, Kai. In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to share our outlook for the upcoming financial year '24-'25. Even with the volatile market condition expected in '24-'25, we are confident that we will continue to improve. Our performance is not just a reflection of the market. We are prepared in all parts of our business, obviously, including our core, and our growth businesses are set to gain even more momentum. And this strategic positioning should help us to stay resilient and continue to grow. So, we expect a moderate increase in currency and portfolio adjusted total sales, with all our regions contributing to sales growth. And furthermore, we anticipate a clear improvement in adjusted EBIT, driven by the DACH region and Western and Southern Europe. And let me be very clear, this guidance for the financial year '24-'25 is all in line with our mid-term guidance given at our Capital Markets Day. So on the next slide, I'm sure that a lot of you will ask yourself, so how did Black Friday go? So, let's take a closer look at our Black week performance. As you know, Black Friday, Black November and the Christmas season are critical sales drivers for us. And this year, we've had a strong start to the new financial year. Our centrally managed campaigns for Black Friday and the pre-Christmas period delivered excellent results. We saw solid demand across categories like mobile phones, small domestic appliances and PC hardware, with strong performance across all our markets. And I'm sure some of you will ask how did Germany go? I said all our markets, including Germany. And our marketing campaigns played a key role in driving awareness and boosting customer demand. Most notably, we introduced Jurgen Klopp as our new brand ambassador through impactful campaigns, and I very much look forward to the upcoming projects together. And this success was further supported by excellent product availability during the Black season. So, we ensured our customers found exactly what they were looking for and more. So, let me summarize and wrap-up on Chart 35. Number one, at CECONOMY and MediaMarktSaturn, we have achieved positive results despite a challenging market environment. Once again, we have demonstrated that we are evolving beyond being a retailer into an omnichannel service platform. Secondly, our solid market share gains reflect our successful efforts to overcome challenges by prioritizing the customer experience. This reinforces our reliability in a volatile market. Thirdly, we have set clear priorities. Our substantial growth businesses are already -- they already drive strong performance, and we are determined to scale them further. Fourthly, our strategy is strong and gives us clear direction for the future. Number five, we remain committed to managing costs, as Kai said, maintaining liquidity and enhancing efficiency to ensure our competitiveness and financial prudence. And last but not least, as a result, we anticipate a moderate increase in sales and a clear increase in adjusted EBIT for the current financial year. And this positive outlook reinforces our confidence in our strategic direction and our dedication to pursuing and achieving our goals. Ladies and gentlemen, as we conclude our presentation, I want to emphasize the resilience and positive momentum that CECONOMY has demonstrated throughout the past financial year. We recognize that the upcoming year may bring uncertainties. However, as we have outlined, I have faith in our strong foundation, our strategic direction and most importantly, in our team. Our dedicated team of 50,000 colleagues is working tirelessly to realize our vision. By staying close to our customers, they are paving the way for us to become a customer-centric service platform with more growth and greater profitability. And with their passion and dedication, I'm confident we will achieve our objectives. Thank you very much for your attention. Now, Kai and I look forward to your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Alessandro Cuglietta, Kepler Cheuvreux.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you well, Alessandro.

Okay. Perfect. I have 2. First one is on EBIT margin. So, you've confirmed the EBIT margin target for 2025, '26. And it seems to me that it implies a bigger step in the last year, given your guidance for next year. Is it correct to assume that? And what would be the drivers of this step increase in the last year for your margin? And the second question is on the free cash flow for next year. You had a positive change in net working capital over the past few years. Should we expect maybe a normalization in next year? Or is now net working cap maybe at a more normalized level as a percentage of sales? What can you tell me about that?

Thanks for your questions. Good to hear you again, Alessandro. This is Kai. Let me take both of your questions. So framing and positioning our guidance, which we've just given for the current financial year with our mid-term targets. If you look to the current Bloomberg consensus, we feel comfortable with that number, right? And that does imply that in the current financial year or rather in the year after the -- in the final year of our mid-term guidance, there would be a bigger step compared to the current financial year. You're right in assuming that if your point of reference is the current consensus. Now, you asked about drivers secondly, for those steps and in particular, let's say, in the last year of our 4-year marathon here. I would give you the following orientation. If you think of the EBIT increase that would be necessary that we will achieve to hit the '25-'26 target of EUR 500 million, you can think of it driven roughly in 2 parts. Think of roughly 50% of that EBIT increase to come from our growth business, which we've just gone through in some detail. So Service & Solutions, Marketplace, Private Label, Retail Media, roughly 50%, roughly 50%. The other half in equal parts by strengthening our retail core business, classical retail business, and the second half of that second half by cost efficiencies. And I've just given you some orientation. I think I've given you 3 areas where we are initiating even new efficiency areas, that's supply chain, that's media spending and that's technology, okay? So, that's the orientation for the guidance. And then secondly, you asked about free cash flow for next year, and in particular, if I understood you well about net working capital. Look, we've optimized net working capital for quite some time now. And if you take a longer-term perspective, it has normalized this year. I've emphasized throughout that in the prior year, we were somehow over optimizing stock levels. We've now adjusted this a bit, and we still saw a positive swing. For the current financial year, we are targeting another improvement in net working capital, but think of this as significantly smaller than what you've seen in the past. So it's not going to be the major contribution also to free cash flow that we will see at the end of this financial year. I hope this answers your questions.

The next question comes from Volker Bosse, Baader Bank.

Volker Bosse at Baader Bank. Congratulations on the results. I would have 3 questions. First is on Germany. You stated Germany remains soft. Yes, in general, we are in an economic difficult environment, but also competition is developing somehow. So, can you clarify how the competition is evolving? I mean, thinking about Galaxus or Coolblue and how do you see the field here evolving? And the second question would be on gross margin in '25-'26. Is it fair to assume that also gross margin should improve again on the back of the growth initiatives, which you started at Retail Media, which is quite supportive in regards to gross margin? And final question, any comment on the merger of Fnac and Unieuro? And what does that mean for your business going forward, of course, especially in Italy then? And how do you look at this?

Okay. Thank you very much, Volker, and good to hear you. Thanks a lot. I will take question number one and number three, and Kai will answer the gross margin question. So on Germany and your question regarding competition and how it's evolving, look, as I indicated now for the Black November period and the very early, say, December period, we are very, very confident. We've seen for us, actually, very good market share gains. And we have seen also a good solid market share performance in Germany actually in the fourth quarter. And let me answer this question actually by talking about ourselves. We see -- as we say, as we perform against well -- holding up well against competition, let me be very clear that our German organization is in the core very, very strong. And we've made important improvements and steps forward this year that I hope will also pay off in this financial year. What is it? We see a good uptake in our online business. We see a good strong performance in the app. We have improved, for instance, our ability on logistics. To give you one example, we also have same delivery for white goods. And you know which competitor, for instance, I would be talking about. So, we are also playing to our strength. We are playing our game. We have seen very good refurbishment rate of our stores with higher traffic, higher footfall. We have new formats in the pipeline, and we will continue to use also opportunities that a softer market offers. So with that, I would say we are very much focusing on what is our game of play and we will continue to do so. And of course, we take competition very seriously. But so far, I would say, given market share evolution, we've found the right answers. On the merger of Fnac Darty and Unieuro, look, I think for us, from a competitive landscape, nothing has really changed. Unieuro has a new owner with Fnac, is a great retail business. That's for sure. Unieuro is a great retail business. So nothing that has changed. And also, as I stated in Germany, we play our game in Italy. We have seen also here a solid performance improvement in online. Remember, we took live the Marketplace in Italy in August. This is also bearing fruits and gaining momentum. And we have a very good offline omnichannel strategy execution in Italy. And as Kai stated, we have seen very, very strong results given the market conditions in Italy. So, that's the way we look at it. So, we are also trying to play our game, our strategy. Obviously, we take them, as always, very seriously with high respect for what they do, but it's down to us to play what we are strong at. Kai?

Yes. And then let me answer your gross margin question, Volker. This is Kai speaking. So, 2 parts of an answer to that. The first, for short, yes, you should assume a gross margin improvement. That's largely driven, as I think we've pointed out throughout the last hour by our growth business and a good robust performance of our retail core. But let me add to that, that the target function that we're optimizing here internally is not the margin as such, but the total income in absolute figures because it's the total income, the total gross profit that at the end of the day drives the bottom line. So, I can confirm your assumption. I would still highlight that what we are hunting here and what we are targeting to optimize is the overall gross profit driven by our growth business and our retail core. And I hope that gives you a perspective.

The next question comes from Clement Genelot, Bryan, Garnier & Co.

Three questions from my side. So the first one, with German consumers being more cautious, do you see Amazon, Euronics and others turning more aggressive? My second question is rather on the guidance. Can you help us frame a bit your EBIT guidance and understand what are your assumptions for specifically Germany? And my last one is about dividends. So, what is the threshold to meet before paying any dividend? I mean, is it a certain level of net debt? Or is it a certain level of financial costs?

Thank you very much for your questions. I will take the first one and the other 2, Kai will answer. So to your first question on the German consumer sentiment, let me first start with -- by saying, taking into account the first part of Q1, we actually can't confirm for us the cautious consumer sentiment in Germany. We can't confirm this in Q1. What I can say is that the market in Germany has become more volatile, but I'm confident that we are finding the right answers with our commercial strategy with also our growth business to this. And when it comes to aggressiveness in the market, I would say we -- to date, we have not seen higher aggressiveness, also confirmed, as I indicated, by our market share gains in Q1. That said, am I prudent and I'm always looking forward and trying to prepare myself for volatile times? Yes, absolutely. That's my job, and I will do so. But for the time being, I'm happy with the performance I've seen.

Good. And Clement, let me then follow-up with question 2 on framing our EBIT guidance and understanding our assumptions for Germany. So just to repeat what I answered just a few minutes ago, if you look at the current Bloomberg-based consensus, that gives you a good indication for the current financial year, what we feel comfortable with, just to frame the overall number that is underlying our guidance that we've just given on the -- and remember that we said that this will be driven by 2 segments, in particular, that's Western and Southern Europe and DACH. As it is in our guidance also driven by DACH, you can take -- you need to assume that DACH is largely driven by Germany. So implicitly, while we do not guide on any particular country, implicitly, I think you may assume that this also implies a similar contribution from the largest part of DACH. That's on the guidance. And then on the dividend, look, we wouldn't give a detailed new dividend policy if we didn't feel comfortable that in the foreseeable future, we will actually recommend to the Supervisory Board and to the AGM to pay a dividend. We wouldn't do that. That's been our business principle here that we are reliable. So while there is -- at the same time, we do not want to give a specific date and do not want to limit us by specific thresholds. We believe in this industry and our market, it is crucial to be able to react to any short-term business opportunities that there may be. They may be in our own business. They may be in new businesses. So, we don't want to limit us by technical thresholds for that, but there is the perspective to actually pay that dividend or to recommend it to those who finally need to take that decision. That's as much as I can say to help you understand this a bit better. Hopefully, that gives you a feel.

The next question comes from Emmanuelle Vigneron, HSBC.

So first one, you have already reached your target in terms of Retail Media. What is the range of profitability for such business? Secondly, what should we expect in terms of financial expenses for the current year? And finally, in your presentation, you said that you have gained 40 bps market share during the year. What does it refer to? Could we have some granularities about this?

Emmanuelle, then let me take the first 2 questions. First one was on Retail Media, and the second one on the financial results, and then Karsten will comment on the market shares. So on Retail Media, let me start by emphasizing, yes, we have met in the past financial year, the target that has been our -- that we had targeted for '25 and '26. Let me remind you that we've also indicated a new ambition just now, and that new ambition is triple-digit coming from the EUR 45 million that we have at the moment. Now in terms of profitability behind that, it is very fair to assume that roughly 4/5 of the sales of that will materialize from the bottom line. 4/5 of that, okay? Now for financial expenses or for the financial results, let me give you a bit more background for this. To start with the results, we expect a stable or slightly improved financial results in the current financial year compared to the last financial year. But let me give you the detailed dynamics behind this. Now the financial result is largely driven by the interest environment in Turkey. And on that part, we expect an improvement in the current financial year. So, that would deliver us some tailwind. On the other hand, we expect some headwinds in other parts of our financial results. Let me give you a few examples. The impact of the new bond only partially materialized in the past financial year, but will fully materialize in the current financial year. So, that's year-on-year a headwind. And secondly, I learned that Metro won't pay a dividend, or has indicated that they won't pay a dividend in the current financial year, but they did not pay one in the last financial year. There's also some assumptions of lower interest rates. Overall, all 3 of those [ impact our ] bond, Metro dividend and then overall lower interest environment add up to some headwinds, while we expect some tailwinds from our efforts in Turkey. Putting all of that together, we expect a stable or slightly better financial result than what we've seen in the last financial year. And I hope that answers your question. I would give it to Karsten for the market share question.

Emmanuelle, on the market share, let me give you a bit more details on this. Let me first of all say, this is, of course, the 40 basis points is an overall market share increase for the full year. And I'm very pleased to say that this market share gain translates into online share gain as well as offline. And that actually holds very consistent across the portfolio. That's a very important message because it means our strategy is paying off. Stronger online also drives offline and vice versa. It's really working. Now if you ask me about which countries are driving this, when we stated the particularly great performance, say, in the Benelux or in Spain, Turkey is also -- was one of the great performance. Let's also not forget Austria, our strongest market. That is actually a very good correlation that they have done really well on market share gains. And in all the other markets, also Germany, where we are holding up nicely, I would say, it's always the case that we watch that very carefully. And even in markets where we are neutral, we are always watching that we're in the game to actually win market share. But these countries that I called out are clearly the ones you should take note of that they were particularly strong. One more mention because that sometimes gets lost in translation. I'm a great friend of -- and I always say that to the team, we have to earn market share, earn it through customer experience. You can, of course, in a quarter, buy your market share, but that's not financially, that's voodoo. That's not sustainable. I want to earn market share, and that's why the net promoter score is such an important lead indicator. And I think it translates nicely across the portfolio with the special call-outs I mentioned. I hope that clarifies it.

The next question comes from Alexander Zienkowicz, mwb research.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you very well, Alex.

Congrats on the strong results. Most of my questions have been covered, so I'll make it short. Maybe if you could give us some thoughts on online competition from Chinese players, maybe in the context of market share gains and perhaps if you are seeing some impacts on your Marketplace and Private Label efforts.

Yes. Thank you, Alexander. And let me try to shed some light on this. Look, the Chinese players that we've seen, we take very, very seriously. They fish in a pond, which is a bit different from our current business. They are very much into super price-sensitive segments. So, that is nothing yet that head-on-head competes with us. That's the first message. Is this there to stay? Let's see. But I would like to also add one more thing that I think is important and I look at it as an opportunity. When you look at some of these Chinese players, it's not just the aggressiveness they bring, they actually bring a lot of innovation that we are looking into, social commerce that you see, much more gamification. So, that is something we are actually working on. And that is something we should, in a positive way, take note of. And to the other question, is this an opportunity for our own brands? Yes, it is. For sure, we have actually a great portfolio improved in design and everything. And as I said, we are then able to play in a price segment where we usually don't compete with our A brands, with our industry partner brands. So, there is definitely something an opportunity for us, how we compete. But rest assured, we take that very seriously on all fronts.

So at the moment, there are no further questions. [Operator Instructions] So, there seem to be no further questions at this time. So, I'd like to hand it back to Dr. Karsten Wildberger, CEO, for the closing remarks.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for being with us today for your time and your questions. As a formal reminder, we will release our first quarter results on the 11th of February. And with that, I'll wrap up today's results call. And let me do this by wishing you all a very happy and joyful holiday season with your loved ones and of course, a great and Happy New Year. Before I say take care, stay healthy. Let me also offer you, if you still need some Christmas presents, let us help you find them. With that, all the very best. Bye-bye. See you soon. Bye-bye.

Thank you.