Douglas AG (DOU) Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Douglas Group Q1 2025-'26 Earnings Results Conference Call. I am Maria, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Sander van der Laan, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator, and good morning to all of you at our, let's say, quarterly Q1 results release. As you know, we have released a trading statement just a few weeks ago where we talked about our sales growth in the first quarter, and we also gave you our preliminary let's say, EBITDA number for that quarter. And basically, today, we are reconfirming those numbers, and we're also providing more numbers and background and context. And clearly, I will not do that alone. So I will do that with the support of Marco, our CFO. So the agenda for today is I will give a brief introduction. Subsequently, I will hand over to Marco. He will give an update on the Q1 financials. I will come back then with a strategy and business highlights section, and then we will have an opportunity to first wrap up and then to move into Q&A. So the Douglas Group is -- continues to be a well-positioned beauty company. We are the leading omnichannel Premium Beauty retailer in Europe. We have 4 retail brands, 2 omnichannel brands, Douglas and NOCIBE and 2 pure-play brands, Parfumdreams and Niche Beauty in our portfolio. We currently operate in 22 omnichannel countries. So we do deliver to more countries with our pure-play business, but our omnichannel business for now is focusing on 22 countries. And for this year, we also have no plans to move to the 23rd country. We had, by the end of December, 61 million plus Beauty Card members. So we have the largest, let's say, CRM program in Premium Beauty of Europe. We reported EUR 4.6 billion of sales for the annual -- the year '24-'25. And we are doing that with almost 2,000 -- actually, we have 1,970 brick-and-mortar stores plus 22 omnichannel e-commerce stores in the omnichannel market. So we basically have 2,000 stores at this point in time. That is basically, I would say, the elevated pitch for the Douglas Group. If we specifically zoom in on the first quarter from the 1st of October till the 31st of December, what we see is that our E-Com business did well and has a, I would say, a healthy sales momentum with 4.2% sales growth. That includes our so-called cross-channel services, and Marco will give you a bit more perspective on the size and the development and the relevance of our cross-channel services. So 4.2% growth in the E-Com channel. What we do see is that clearly, customers are quite uncertain about, let's say, the outlook of the world, the outlook of the wallet and also the outlook of, I would say, of society. So that leads to, I would say, more uncertainty and also more volatility between quarters, between months, between countries and between channels. So we see more swings, I would say, within our business versus what we have seen before. But by the end of the day, it adds up to a sales growth number for the Group of 1.7% in Q1, which basically means that we did almost EUR 1.7 billion of net sales, 0.4% growth in the stores, which is a combination of like-for-like, in this case, a negative like-for-like, although we need to give a certain nuance and Marco will come back on that. And clearly, our new stores and also our refurbished stores are bringing incremental sales. We delivered EUR 333.7 million of EBITDA. That's an EBITDA margin of 19.9%. Clearly, this is the biggest quarter in terms of sales and certainly in terms of EBITDA. Albeit our EBITDA margin rate and also EBITDA euros was below last year, and we also will explain that. We delivered EUR 144.8 million of net income, and we ended the quarter with a net leverage of 2.6x. However, that is a combination of leases and financial debt. And purely on the financial debt, our leverage is actually 1.4x. The financial debt actually came down. Talking about the market environment. So the Premium Beauty market in which we operate is currently growing, albeit at a lower pace. So post-COVID, there was a significant acceleration of the market. And in the past kind of 1.5 years, we see a significant slowdown of the market growth across Europe. Especially in Germany and France, which is our #1, Germany and #2 France market, we see a more significant slowdown. And basically, you could say that in Germany and France, the markets are flat, flattish. I will show a bit more details on that on the next page. The Netherlands has been really tough, has been in decline in the past quarter. And the rest of Europe has basically slowed down. But in CEE and SE, Central Eastern Europe and in Southern Europe, we still see growth, albeit lower growth versus the prior years. We also see that customers are cutting back on certain expenses or they're waiting for the promo. They're waiting for basically for a better deal, and that has an impact on our gross profit. So if you would ask us, are we promoting more, then I would say, no, it's not that we are putting more promos, let's say, in the basket. But what we do see is that customers are looking more for promos. They wait for the promo deal, and that has an impact on, let's say, certainly on our margin and sales development. So overall, I would say we have a mixed sales development during the quarter, characterized by more volatility between periods and also between countries. If you look to our operating territory on the next page, we currently operate in 22 countries. And basically, for 8 -- 9 of those countries, we do have external market data, but we are working with 3 different providers. So we work with Circana for basically Germany, France, Spain and Italy. We work with Nielsen for the Netherlands because there is no Circana for the Netherlands. And we work with Vector for Poland, Czech Slovakia and Romania. The market definitions for those 3 agencies are not the same. So be aware that not -- it's not always the same, but it does give kind of a clear indication of what happens. And when you look to the individual markets, you can see a pretty wide, I would say, spread of performance. So our #1, Germany and #2 market, France are showing -- are in this quarter showing a slight growth, 0.8% and France basically being flat, which is a slight improvement versus the quarters before. France was in decline, the market before this quarter, and Germany was real flat before the quarter. So you could say it's now plus 0. Italy, Spain, still showing healthy growth, slowdown versus the quarters before, but not too bad. The Netherlands is a very big, I would say, negative outlier. Not so long ago, the Netherlands did almost double-digit growth in terms of market and also we did very well. But now the Netherlands is particularly negative in this quarter. More recently, in this quarter, we see a slight improvement, but still negative. And then you see the CEE markets, which all show, I would say, healthy growth. And although these numbers are less versus what we've seen in the years before, still healthy growth on the back of, I would say, growing wealth and also on growth of the Premium Beauty market. And within that market, we are doing relatively well. When you combine those 9 markets and you also put weight them, then basically in those 9 markets, the average growth of 1.85%. We report for the quarter 1.7%, but the 1.7% includes 22 countries. The 1.85% includes 9 countries. So we believe that we can say that our basically market performance -- relative market performance has been stable across Europe, and we've neither lost nor gained on average share. In our biggest market in Germany, we actually have gained a little bit of share, and you've seen that the market is also slightly, let's say, positive. So this gives you a bit more context on the market. We believe that going forward, that the Premium Beauty market in Continental Europe, so I don't talk about the Nordics, I don't talk about, let's say, the U.K. because we don't operate there. But we would expect that the market will do around 3% growth in the 2, 3 years ahead of us. Around 3%, could be a little bit more, could be a little bit less. The most important question for us is what is going to happen in France and Germany because that is 50% plus of our sales. So that is kind of the market situation and the market expectation going forward. Marco?

Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sander, and welcome, everyone, also from my side. As Sander just mentioned, we delivered a solid performance in a challenging market and economic environment this quarter. Our sales increased by 1.7% to EUR 1.67 billion, and our adjusted EBITDA decreased by 5.6% to EUR 334 million, representing a 19.9% adjusted EBITDA margin. Our sales development was uneven in the period with a solid performance in November and its key events, Singles' Day and Black Friday, however, generating a partial pull-forward effect of sales that we normally see in the Christmas business. This also had an impact on the mix of the products sold in the quarter with a greater share of items sold on promotions and as Sander was mentioning, and for example, during our Black Friday or Cyber Monday and a lower share of products sold at full price, therefore, impacting the gross margins. Additionally, as the store openings completed in the last year are still in a ramp-up phase, we see temporarily a slight margin dilution effect that should disappear once the stores reach their run rate potential. Overall, the still challenging consumer environment drove heightened price sensitivity, which led to a decrease in gross profit margins by 120 basis points compared to a year ago, which is the main reason for the adjusted EBITDA margin reduction year-on-year. My next slide is about our store and E-Com sales trend. In the first quarter of the new financial year, we witnessed again a robust growth of our E-Com sales at plus 4.2%, outpacing the stores that, however, grew plus 0.4%. As a result, now E-Com sales account for 33.9% of the Group, up 80 basis points in share from a year ago. Total sales growth was driven by price, low to mid-single-digit positive, while like-for-like volumes were negative, partially compensated by store space growth. In fact, our store channel sales were driven by openings and refurbishments, while on a like-for-like basis, sales decreased by 2.8% versus prior year. As always, please bear in mind that in our definition of like-for-like, the majority of refurbishments are excluded as the store remain closed for works for more than 2 weeks. And if we include refurbishments and relocation in the concept of same-store growth, the reported like-for-like number would be 0.5% higher. Furthermore, in our last call, we spoke about the growth of our omnichannel services being Click & Collect, Click & Collect Express and In-store orders, providing a seamless customer experience across our channels. In Q1, they grew 17.6% versus last year to EUR 79 million, representing approximately 4.7% of our total sales. These services continue to be a differentiating factor from our online competitors and nurture our most profitable customer base, which is the omnichannel one, delivering significantly higher frequency of purchase and annual spend. And again, the allocation of these services is within the E-Com channel. And if they were allocated to the store channel, this would improve by 1 percentage point the like-for-like of the stores. Furthermore, our Douglas app has performed very strongly in Q1 with more than 1/3 of our E-Com orders done via the app, and this contributes positively to our customer loyalty, but also value as the conversion rate with the app is significantly higher than with the web shop and generally, performance marketing costs are lower, ultimately generating higher value per order. Let's now go to the next slide on our segment developments. Our 4 largest segments again achieved positive sales growth in the period with the highest growth rate once again in Central and Eastern Europe. By the way, you might have noticed that we changed the segment order with CEE now being reported before SE as it has now become our third largest segment. This is also a positive contributor in our total EBITDA margins as CEE, we report the highest relative profitability. And therefore, the more CEE grows, of course, the better our blended average remains. In DACHNL, sales growth was driven by E-Com with plus 2.6%, whereas store sales declined a bit below the 1%, driven by lower traffic. France delivered a resilient 1.2% growth, driven entirely by 7% -- 7.1% higher E-Com sales. And in CEE, store sales rose by 5.4%, benefiting from 31 net store openings over the last 12 months. But also E-Com sales for the segment were up by 13.6%, again, with a very strong performance. In Southern Europe, sales increased by 0.6%, thanks to 4.5% E-Com sales growth, whereas store sales were flat versus prior year. And lastly, sales at Parfumdreams, Niche Beauty ended up 1% below last year. Moving now to the adjusted EBITDA margins on the right. Margins declined across all segments, and this is mainly due to the early mentioned decline in gross profit margins. The 200 basis points decline in DACHNL region is also for 50 basis points attributable to a sub-based income reclassification to the corporate headquarters segment, and this year-on-year comparability gap will be neutralized by the next quarter when finally the reporting will be comparable. PD/NB shows a relevant margin decline, mainly due to the competitive pressure of online pure players and the phasing effect of marketing income and other items impacting positively the first quarter of prior year. Now as we've been focusing on the margin evolution year-on-year, I would like to talk about gross profit buildup and operating expenses detail. A consumer trading environment with a focus on pricing and promotions led to 120 basis points lower gross profit margin. We have prepared this slide to help you understand how the different drivers impacted our gross profit and gross profit margin in the quarter. We did achieve sales volume growth in the quarter, which you find back as a positive volume impact on our gross profit development, so the first bar of the waterfall on the left. Supply contributions were also in line with previous year in the quarter in the third bar of the waterfall on the right, although leading to a minor dilution of 10 basis points as a ratio to net sales. And then as you can see in the middle bar, that indicates that all the gross profit margin decline comes from the cash margin mainly from increasing promotional pressure in most of the countries, resulting in over 100 basis points of margin dilution. This, [indiscernible] for a small rounding difference leads to the 120 basis points margin decline versus prior year. Moving on to the next slide on the net operating expenses. Our net operating expenses went up by 3% to EUR 378 million compared to the same quarter a year ago. Cost control measures to safeguard profitability were offset by a temporary margin dilution related to the ramp-up of effects of new store performance, as we commented earlier. Staff costs increased by around 3% to EUR 203 million, and the cost-to-revenue ratio was only slightly higher, again, essentially due to the ramp-up of the openings, whereas on a like-for-like basis, this remains flat. Our other net operating expenses were also up by around 3% and inside different dynamics with net marketing expense ratio lower, thanks to higher marketing income and stable expenses, confirming our overall investment versus prior year. Property expenses were slightly higher year-on-year on the back of our store network growth, whereas again, on a like-for-like basis, property costs were in line with previous year as a percentage of sales. Let's now go to the next slide with our P&L. And I already walked you through our sales, gross profit and operating expenses development. Adjustments were again lower than last year in Q1, though I remind you, we expect the full year amount of adjustments to remain broadly in line with previous year. These all resulted in the adjusted EBITDA of EUR 334 million, minus 5.6% versus last year, with a corresponding decrease in the adjusted EBITDA margin. A small rounding difference bridges the margin delta between 21.5% and 19.9%, so it's around 150 basis points. The D&A charges were up 8.6% as a result of higher depreciation related to rights of use of our growing store network and new logistics facilities, but also because of the investments that we've done in the last couple of years in the existing stores and warehouse fixed assets and IT. Asset impairments included in this line item were up by just over EUR 1 million to EUR 1.4 million. And for the sake of completeness, we are also now starting to show the adjusted EBIT view and the difference between the adjusted and the reported EBIT includes besides the EBITDA adjustments, also assets impairment as detailed in the appendix for your information. The financial result improved further, thanks to a combination of a lower net financial debt and lower average interest spreads on our financial debt following the repayment of the bridge facility in March last year. Within the reported EUR 29.3 million, EUR 15.9 million is related to IFRS 16 lease liabilities, financial expenses compared to EUR 14.4 million last year. By difference, the interest paid on net financial debt amounted to EUR 13.5 million compared to approximately EUR 20 million last year, confirming the positive effect of net financial debt reduction. The effective tax rate of 29.4% is our current estimate for the full year, which we apply across the quarters as long as this remains our best estimate. And lastly, we reported a net income of EUR 145 million, which equals to an earnings per share in the quarter of EUR 1.35. Let's now go to the next slide about the net working capital and CapEx. Our average LTM net working capital decreased by EUR 77 million to EUR 168 million, which is 3.6% of our LTM months group sales. The improvement comes mainly on the back of our supply chain financing initiatives, whose average benefit amounted to EUR 109 million, while 1 year ago, this was not yet in place. You can find the exact amounts in the appendix of this presentation for your info on the supply chain financing usage. If we exclude the benefit of supply chain financing, we experienced a year-on-year increase in average net working capital, mainly due to higher inventory levels as a result of the store openings. However, days of inventory outstanding remained broadly in line with last year at 122 days. In order to improve our inventory management, we are implementing several actions, including a new AI-driven system to calculate the stock distribution needs between stores based on real-time demand, rebalancing the inventory to optimize capital efficiency. This system is being tested in Germany for a potential future rollout across the Group. Moving to CapEx. In the quarter, we opened a total of 15 stores and closed 2, thereby lifting the total store count, including 129 franchisees to 1,972 stores. Including store refurbishments and other investments, this resulted in a EUR 6 million higher CapEx compared to a year ago. However, we confirm that we are pointing to a lower full year CapEx level as we guided already. Therefore, in Q1, we're witnessing a different phasing effect compared to last year. Let's go now to the next slide about the free cash flow. Our free cash flow after property rents amounted to EUR 383 million. When you compare the year-on-year figures, you can see that the main deviation of free cash flow comes from the delta in adjusted EBITDA with the other components remaining broadly in line as a whole. Q1 is clearly the strong cash flow quarter with significantly positive contributions from working capital with the sale of goods that are in part paid to suppliers in Q2 and other positive provision movements, for example, VAT payments following the subsequent month of the sales. The next slide is about our net debt structure. And on this slide, you can see a snapshot of our sound financial structure at the end of December 2025. In the chart on the left, you can see the net debt structure, showing a significant reduction of the net financial debt from EUR 789 million to EUR 609 million. The net financial debt reduction was entirely offset by an increase in lease liability by around EUR 200 million versus prior year. And this increase, as we had commented in the September Q4 call, is mainly due to the opening of the OWAC warehouses and 67 new store openings in the last 12 months as well as contract renewal for existing stores. And this creates, of course, a front-loading effect with lease liabilities placed on the balance sheet at the very beginning of the contract and not yet, let's say, having the EBITDA delivery of the store at the denominator. On the right-hand side of the slide, you see the development of the net leverage ratio. And again, including the higher debt related to lease liabilities, the ratio went up from 2.3x to 2.6x, also, of course, as a result of the lower adjusted EBITDA as denominator. However, if we calculate the net leverage on a pre-IFRS 16 basis, then we see a small improvement from 1.5x to 1.4x. And this reflects our lower net debt -- net financial debt for the reasons I described earlier. I will now turn to my last slide with our full year outlook. You will notice that the full year guidance remains unchanged compared to what we saw in the Q4 call. We still expect sales between EUR 4.65 billion and EUR 4.80 billion and an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 16.5% and net leverage between 2.5x and 3x as of 30 September 2026. It's worth reminding that as previously commented, Q1 of last year was our strongest quarter and the year-to-go period now measures against softer sales and margin performance from previous year. So whilst consumer confidence remains volatile, we are confident on the strength and proposition of our positioning, and we're working hard to deliver within the ranges of our guidance. This concludes my section of today's presentation. Thanks for your attention. I will now hand the call back over to you, Sander.

Okay. Thank you, Marco, very much. So in the next section, I want to provide some color with relation to our strategy and certain highlights of the quarter. So first of all, on this page, you are seeing that we continue to develop our exclusive brands portfolio. So exclusive brands are really important for us from a strategic perspective because those brands you can exclusively buy at Douglas. The competition doesn't provide them. Hence, there is also no price comparison, no margin pressure. Therefore, we strategically want to grow our, let's say, share of exclusive brands. And under the leadership of our A&P lead, Stefanie and the Exclusive Brands team, we continue to grow and develop this portfolio of exclusive brands. This quarter, we are going to launch a new makeup brand about-face, which is basically with a celebrity behind the brand called Halsey. And we're going to launch a new perfume, let's say, fragrance brand, Orebella. And with both brands, we are exclusive and unique. So we will launch them this quarter, and we're going to develop and grow those brands in the quarters and the years ahead of us. So one important lever of our strategy. Second important lever is to expand and develop our store network in the existing 22 countries. So like Marco said, we opened net 13 stores in Q1, including store # 117 in Poland. We refurbished 22 stores, but this includes also relocations. Hence, this number is slightly deviating from the number which Marco mentioned earlier. We are not planning to open new countries this year. But as we have communicated a few months ago, we are currently working on a potential entry into the Middle East, the GCC countries. So basically Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman, but there is nothing further to report on this for today. Like Marco also said, in Q1, there are basically 3 important, let's say, sales events, Singles Day, Black Friday and Christmas. And especially Black Friday was a very successful event, and you see some, let's say, key numbers in terms of volume and traffic and let's say, and results in the numbers on the right. But as Marco also was saying, we also have the feeling that customers are waiting a bit more for those events to buy a product or a brand for a better deal. And we also have the impression that some of the December sales has been pulled forward into November. So that is what I was referring to impacting the volatility of our sales within the quarter. On the next page, we wanted to give you some more insight, as Marco already said, on cross-channel services. So Click & Collect, that is basically you go to a website, you select an item and instead of shipping it to your house, you can pick it up in our stores. And once you're in the store, you might be seduced to buy something else or you can ask a question or we can basically build the customer relation, but that's delivered from the warehouse to the store. Click & Collect Express, that means you're going to -- you go to the website, you select a store and you can select from the assortment of the store an item, which you can then order is being ordered in the store. And basically, 2 hours later, you get to the store and you can collect the item. So that's the Express dimension, but you can only shop from the store-specific assortment. And then thirdly, in-store orders, you are in the store, an item might be sold out in the store or you want to buy something which we do not have in the store, but we have it online. And then you can order it in-store and you can either Click & Collect it or you can ship it to your home address. These 3 basically propositions, we are calling our cross-channel services. And vis-a-vis the pure players, this is, I would say, a very strong differentiating factor. And as Marco already said, these services are growing very significantly. And also, we report them as part of the E-Com channel. We could also report them as part of the store channel, but that's just an arbitrary choice which we have made. It doesn't matter where we report them. What matters is that from a customer perspective, it works really, really well and customers are happy with it. On the next page, as part of our proposition, both our customer proposition, but also our supplier proposition, we have developed a very healthy and rapidly developing Retail Media business unit. We have almost 50 people who are working on this, and we currently are active in 9 countries. So if Chanel or Dior or L'Oreal Luxe really would like to advertise their brand messaging in a retail environment, the Douglas environment is basically the place to be. This part of our business continues to grow significantly faster than the top line of the company. It is very, very profitable. So it's also enhancing our EBITDA, and it's growing -- it continues to grow double digits. The next element of our strategy is to, let's say, is to build a stronger operating model. And as part of the stronger operating model, we are simplifying our IT landscape. Douglas is historically a company which had a lot of decentral decision-making. And as a result of that we are basically currently working with almost 700 applications across our 22 countries. That's way too many for a company which would like to work with a standardized and a harmonized operating model. Hence, we are in the process of basically simplifying this, and we have defined our so-called Group tech stack. So within those 700 applications, we have selected the preferred applications. And those preferred applications, we basically are rolling out across Europe, replacing local -- basically local choices of the past or local legacy. And basically, the dark green countries on the slide, so which are -- is a significant portion of our business are those countries which are now fully on our Group tech stack. And the country with an arrow, so Poland, Czech, Slovak, Hungary and Lithuania are the countries where we've recently implemented our Group tech stack and basically retired our local legacy systems. So you can see the idea is that over the next few years, Europe is going to be painted dark green. By the way, Italy and France have a different color versus most of the others. Why is that? Because in Italy and France, we are also on SAP, but we are on all the version of SAP versus the dark green countries. So at a certain point in time, we also want to move France and Italy to, let's say, the dark green level. But the message here is we are well on our way to simplify and harmonize and standardize the operating model of Douglas. Similar message on the next page. What does it show? On the next page, it shows that historically, we had basically in every country, different payment providers, both on the store side and on the E-Com side. We had probably close to 20 different providers in the store domain and the E-Com domain on the left side of the slide. Basically, we have now signed an agreement with a preferred payment provider. And you can see on the right side that more than half of our countries on the store side and already 2/3 of our country on the E-Com side migrated to this, let's say, preferred partner. Again, an example of simplification and standardization. So this is a process, both in terms of IT and payment, which will take a few more years. We are making investments. We're making changes, but it all should contribute to building a stronger, let's say, operating platform for Douglas. So to conclude, in summary, we believe that we have delivered a solid performance as Europe's leading Premium Beauty retail amidst a challenging market and economic environment. Our market keeps growing, albeit at a lower pace with a flattish development in Germany and France, which weighs more heavily on our sales because more than 50% of our business is driven by Germany and France. We do see a subdued consumer sentiment and increased price sensitivity, which leads to notable sales fluctuation and promotional pressure impacting our gross profit. We also see that the E-Com channel is growing faster than the store channel. There is more pressure in the store channel, not only at Douglas, but also in the wider markets. E-Com is boosted by the cross-channel services as well as by a strong performance of both our Partner Program and Retail Media. We continue to invest in strengthening our USPs, Unique Selling Proposition towards our customers, the unique integration of often online and the further development of the exclusivity of our brand range. And we also continue to work on the future readiness of our operating model by the development of our store network and the harmonization of our IT landscape. And as Mark already said, our guidance for the full year '25-'26 remains unchanged. With that, I want to move to one more slide, which is actually not a slide. It's a video. It's actually commercial because we are today on the 11th of February. And don't forget, in 3 days from today, it is Valentine, and that is very normal that you are buying something for your beloved ones and what is a better place to buy something at Douglas or NOCIBE. So please, operator, can you please move to the next slide and show the commercial. [Presentation] Okay. Thank you very much. With that, operator, we wanted to move back to you, and we wanted to provide an opportunity for Q&A.

The first question comes from the line of Vandita Sood from Citi.

I just have 2. So firstly, I was just wondering on the development of your 2 new brands. What is the structure in place? Is that -- would that be like a corporate brand or I guess the other question I had was you're seeing promotional intensity pick up probably because people are getting a bit uncomfortable with all the price increases and waiting for promos. Is this a good opportunity for you to sort of develop your own brands that are maybe premium but at a lower price? And then my next question was just, again, if you could comment on categories in this sort of a macro environment, do you see that maybe skincare is more resilient than, let's say, perfumes or yes, just what are you seeing in terms of category trends?

Okay. So Vandita, first of all, thank you for your question. So first of all, you asked the question about the 2 new brands. Those brands are not being owned by us. We have signed an exclusive agreement to be the primary distributor of those brands in the 22 countries where we operate. And we are now in the process of launching those brands. So I can't say anything about the first results. In terms of promotional pressure and the promotional development, over the past few years, we did -- we have seen that many brands have increased prices, so driven by the brand owners, and that has led to a disproportionate growth, I would say, of the prices in certain categories. And we do see that certain customers are now becoming a bit more hesitant to buy those brands at the full price. Hence, they wait for the promo before they make the purchase. We also see that a number of brand owners have understood that they have basically been too eager, I would say, to create value/increase the prices of the products. And we can also see that some of the brands are taking initiatives by launching different propositions against on average lower prices. We do believe that our own brand portfolio, let's say, provides an opportunity, let's say, for customers to buy a good Premium Beauty product for a lower price. At this point in time, we do not see an acceleration, let's say, of our corporate brand growth. And your last question was about categories. So if I make it kind of simple, so I said we have seen a slowdown of the growth in the markets. Basically, we can -- we see this slowdown across fragrance, skincare and color. Hair care is an exception because hair care is basically growing double-digit from a market perspective in most markets. But that is mostly driven by the fact that more retailers, and we are leading that are starting to basically add the hair care category to basically our store network. So with every store we open or refurbish, we're adding the hair care category. And we're also adding brands. One of our fastest-growing brands, by the way, in hair care is Kerastase. So hair care is significantly growing. Fragrance is our biggest category. And for a number of years, we've seen that fragrance has grown ahead of the total market. We still see that the fragrance category is growing, but the fragrance growth is kind of normalizing. We also got some questions recently, is there kind of a fragrance fatigue at customer level. We don't see that. So if the growth is slowing down or the growth is normalizing, I wouldn't consider that a fatigue. And when you look to skincare and makeup, let's say, the performance of this category is a bit mixed by country. So it's -- there's not one European trend to be stated about skincare and fragrance. Okay. With that, we move to the next person.

The next question comes from the line of Joffrey Bellicha Meller from Bank of America Securities.

You've talked a lot about exclusive brands on the call, and I was just wondering if you can provide us with what percentage of sales is currently coming from exclusive brands and how this has grown maybe compared to last year? And if possible as well, can you give us a bit of an outlook as to where you would like this percentage of sales to get to? Because obviously, I think this is quite a support potentially for the gross margin going forward in a more promotional environment. That's my first question. And then the second question, if I may. You've spoken about the performance of the categories already, but is there a difference in the markdowns or the promotional activity across the categories? And can you be a little bit more active within the store base to bring forward the categories that are maybe less promotional? Is that something that you're working on?

Okay. Marco will take the first question, and I will take the second question.

Hi Joffrey. You're right, Corporate brands and exclusive brands are a key element for our strategy to differentiate and safeguard the margins on the industry brands. The 2 of them combined represent a share of sales, which is today in the mid-teens, so slightly above, let's say. And so of course, the vast majority is still third-party brands, but our focus is really to grow on this share -- and primarily, it represents a growth in the, I would say, exclusive brands in our expectations because with the corporate brands, we do cover a good share of the, let's say, offering, especially in the skincare and makeup categories. So we do expect also the corporate brand share or sales to outgrow a bit the total top line, but not as fast as the exclusive brands. Now whether you ask if it's going to become, let's say, a majority, no, this combined sales share, but we do expect it on a medium-term basis to become closer to a quarter around this level.

Okay. And on your second question, your question was if we see a change in the promotional dynamics between categories. And I would say no. I cannot say that the promotional dynamics are now fundamentally different for fragrance versus makeup in comparison to the quarters before. And your second part was if we cannot move customers in the stores towards, let's say, the less promotional brands or maybe more of the margin-enhancing brands. And the answer is yes. We are working on that. And clearly, we are instructing our almost 16,000 beauty advisers and informing and motivating them to basically get customers focused on the brands which are the most unique and with the more attractive, I would say, profitability. At the same point in time, many customers walk into the store with their smartphone in their hands. So while we are talking about the product, they are looking online for, let's say, okay, what is the competition offering. So this transparency in terms of pricing clearly makes it more difficult, let's say, to do the sales space. But yes, we are working on that.

The next question is from Yashraj Rajani from UBS.

I've got 2 from my end, please. So the first one is maybe just it will be helpful to try and understand what level of growth we've actually achieved in the second quarter to-date, just to try and understand better as to what we are underwriting for the second half to get your guidance? And maybe just a follow-up to that would be what gives you confidence that the underlying Premium Beauty market will actually have a recovery in the second half? So that's the first question. And then the second question, is more to do with your SG&A. So obviously, to get to again your EBITDA margin guidance, right? Like there's probably a bit of margin improvement that you're underwriting in the second half, which is probably coming from the cost savings. Can you maybe give us some quantification of what those cost savings might be and which areas they might come from to again, better try and understand the mix between gross margin and SG&A improvement to get to your EBITDA guidance?

I will take the first question, and Marco can take the second question. I did not completely understand your first question, but let me give an attempt in my answer. Yes. So we did, let's say, 6.6% growth in Q1 last year.

Last year, we did 6.5% excluding Disapo.

6.5% excluding Disapo in Q1. And in the rest of the year, so Q2, Q3, Q4, we did around 1-ish percent. 1.7% growth for the remaining 9 months with a negative Q2 and an improvement in Q3 and Q4. So we are now cycling, let's say, a tougher Q2 and a slightly better Q3 and Q4 are ahead of us. And that is basically the reason why Marco said that we believe that our sales outlook is now cycling softness in last year. Hence, we are more optimistic about our ability to grow the sales in the remainder of the year. That is not so much driven by an expectation of the improvement of the market. So we expect basically a continuation of, let's say, from a Continental Europe perspective of the growth which we currently see. So I said already earlier, we expect around 3% for the next few years. I did not say 3% for the next 9 months. That could also be 2.2% for the next 9 months or I don't know. That would be too speculative. So basically, our assumptions are based on -- or our financial planning is based on these assumptions. Marco?

Yes, of course. So you're right, yes first to reach basically the guidance in the year-to-go to be an improvement both in the sales and in the margins. As much as we are cycling against a softer sales pace, we're also cycling against a softer gross profit margin trend. So of course, we have an underlying assumption to be able to stabilize this trend. In reality, we do factor in a slight margin dilution in the gross profit level also in the year-to-go to be compensated with SG&A efficiency. In this case, we expect, let's say, stores to ramp up into a run rate, let's say, performance and therefore, improving what we have witnessed so far. but also, let's say, general cost consciousness. So not, let's say -- let's say, headline assumption to reduce certain costs or cut certain costs. But in any case, a continuous focus on our spend. And this is, in fact, resulting into OpEx actually performing slightly better in Q1 than our planning and our budget. And therefore, in the year-to-go to, let's say, if you do the math and wanted to reach 16.5%, you would need 30 basis points, 40 basis points of EBITDA margin improvement, which, let's say, in the best possibility that should come from better SG&A efficiency.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Jurgen Kolb from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Three quick ones. First one on current trading and Q2. Obviously, here in Germany, the weather conditions have been quite snowy and cold. I was wondering if you've seen any customer traffic declines in your stores as a consequence there? And maybe by the same token, maybe an improvement in the online business just from current trends, one quick comment. Secondly, you mentioned that France and Italy still using a different SAP system. When do you think you can upgrade it to the rest of the pack so that you have a harmonized SAP system? And the last one on inventories. Inventories have increased, obviously. Maybe a quick comment on how you feel the inventory situation looks like. Is there maybe also a little bit of a gross margin risk or pressure which may hamper the gross margin going forward in order for the inventory level to go back to a more normalized level?

Let me take the first question and you take the second and the third. So first of all, Jurgen, thank you for your questions. On the current trading, we can say that the pattern in January was very similar to basically the development in Q1. So yes, we did see significant impact in terms of traffic driven by weather conditions, not only in Germany, but also in Spain and Italy, in Sicily, in Poland. There has been a lot of snow or water or wind in many countries. We also have seen a very positive development of the E-Com channel, let's say, which is offsetting a part of that. And we see between weeks different traffic patterns. So when there is a lot of snow, people don't get to the store and then the week after they're catching up picking up a little bit. But our current trading, so the first -- the start of this quarter is very similar to Q1.

Okay. Then taking the second and the third question. So on the ERP, France and Italy, so we're currently in, let's say, in the middle of a planning phase for a more significant upgrade to, well, S/4HANA. So we're currently running on ECC as, let's say, the Group tech stack. And so what we're assessing now is the convenience of rolling out the current tech stack also to big countries such as Italy and France versus developing the new S/4HANA rollout and therefore, roll out directly an upgraded, let's say, future-proof system. Most likely, it will be the second. That would entail a little longer time, let's say, to roll out into Italy and France. And it's, in any case, a priority of our midterm planning, let's say, to reach to an upgraded IT landscape across the Group. On the inventory, Jurgen, I commented earlier, you're right, year-on-year basis, spot as of the end of December, I think inventories are up 6% on a year-on-year basis. Let's say, when we, of course, not measure the spots, but the average to do the DIO calculation, it's slightly lower because the end of December is, of course, highly dependent on the -- really the last 2 weeks of sales and trading. And therefore, you need some time to, let's say, readjust the working capital. We are putting in place actions to improve our rotation, as we mentioned. So even with new tools to optimize the inventory rotation. Let's say, so far in terms of stock quality, we don't see, let's say, meaningful or notable, let's say, deterioration that would hint at a potential risk of impairment write-downs or necessity to invest cash margin to, let's say, reduce inventories or liquidate stock. We're rather tackling it with, let's say, efficient supply chain and better tools to, let's say, allocate the stock where it's needed basically.

The next question comes from the line of Nick Barker from BNPP.

Just one for me. You performed very strongly online through the E-Commerce channel. But taking a step back, what are your thoughts on TikTok Shop and Agentic AI? Do you see these becoming long-term threats to your business? Any comments on that would be great.

Shall I answer that? So first of all, the TikTok Shop, clearly, we're following that closely. And we have seen that in the United States, that has been a phenomenal, I would say, success because we don't operate in the United States. The TikTok Shop has now also arrived in Europe and in Continental Europe in a number of our key markets. At this point in time, we do not see a lot of traction in the TikTok Shop with premium brands. So with products which have a higher, I would say, price versus the fast-moving consumer goods brands, which you might buy in a drugstore. TikTok is a very important social media channel. So we fundamentally embrace that, and we are doing a lot in -- with TikTok, but we are currently withholding when you talk about the TikTok Shop. Agentic AI is clearly going to create a revolution in the world. We are not only following it closely, but we are also working on a number of plans and initiatives. And I would say it provides as many opportunities as potential threats. But ultimately, we believe that we are well-positioned with our omnichannel proposition, let's say, to benefit and/mitigate these developments.

The next question comes from the line of Adam Cochrane from Deutsche Bank.

Just a question on the product cycle. How are you feeling about the product development coming from your suppliers? There was a period over the last few years where in skincare, there's a lot of new dermatological products. There was a number of new fragrance launches. Are you finding that there's less new exciting products coming into the category than maybe we saw over the last couple of years? And are you led to believe at least that your suppliers are going to start to improve and increase the new products coming through? And then second question is the performance of the category in the U.S. appears to have been relatively robust compared to some of the weakness in Europe. And given it's a global category, would you say this is largely just down to a difference in, in the sort of macroeconomic conditions rather than anything more specific?

Let me take that. So thank you, Adam, for the question. So first of all, when you talk about the product cycle, I think it is -- if you take a step back, during COVID and the whole world was basically closed and also the beauty brands were very hesitant in launching new stuff. So when basically the world reopened, including our store network, there was a really big boom of innovations, which were basically sitting in the pipeline for 2 years. And in the following 2 years, we've seen a lot of new products, new brands, new stuff arriving. And I think it is fair to say that in the recent year, 1.5 years, we see a slowdown in terms of newness, let's say, in the category. And that is also partly impacting the slower growth of the market. We do see a number of, I would say, brands or segments which are still very hot. So a brand like Sol de Janeiro is doing really well at Douglas Rituals is doing really well at Douglas. The Korean brands are doing really well globally, including at Douglas. So that is all helping. I made the point already that the hair care category in Kerastase is doing really well at Douglas. But it's also fair to say that some of the more, let's call it, classical brands are having more challenges in growing their sales. So Chanel is not reporting externally, but Dior is reporting externally. Clinique Estee Lauder are reporting externally. Those classical brands have, I would say, a very soft development on average. And part of that is driven by a reduction in the innovation pipeline of these brands. Moving towards the U.S., I do think that in the United States, also Premium Beauty has slowed down versus the post-COVID boost. But I also do agree that based on what we see, and to be honest, we don't buy reports from the United States. So I have to use external sources for that. But I do see that Premium Beauty is doing a bit better in the United States versus in Europe. And yes, I do believe that the general macroeconomic development in the United States is contributing, let's say to that. And I do think that the European consumer is more hesitant, more concerned driven by the political developments, by the way, from the United States, but also the developments on the east side of Europe around the Ukraine. So that makes our customer and consumer base more concerned and more hesitant in their willingness to basically to spend money. With that, I think -- thank you, Adam, for your questions. We are coming to an end. Operator, I don't see any more people in the line. So I would like then to wrap up. So to conclude, we believe that we have delivered a solid performance in not an easy environment. But both the top line and the bottom line of Douglas, I would say, are in relatively good shape versus the rest of the world. Current trading in this quarter is very similar in the first, I would say, month versus what we delivered in Q1 despite the challenging weather conditions. We believe that our omnichannel strategy is -- provides a competitive platform and competitive, I would say, framework to continue to grow our company going forward. We maintain our guidance for the current financial year, and we're looking forward to see you, let's say, in 3 months from now to report back on the second quarter. With that, I want to say, don't forget it's Valentine's Day on the 14th of February, 3 more days, douglas.de or douglas.nl or nocibe.fr in France are all at your disposal.