Fourlis Holdings S.A. ($FOYRK)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Costantino, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Fourlis Group conference call and webcast to present and discuss the full year 2025 financial results. We have with us today Mr. Vasileios Fourlis, Chairman; Mr. John Vasilakos, CEO; Ms. Tessie Latsou, Finance Director; and Ms. Elena Pappa, Investor Relations and Corporate Affairs Director. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session from our audio conference and webcast participants. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to management. You may now proceed.

Good evening, and thank you for participating in the conference call for our 2025 results. 2025 has been a very exciting year in many respects. We welcomed our new CEO, John Vasilakos and other top management members. We deconsolidated trade estates and thus, provide a much clearer picture in our annual financial stakes. However, our 47% participation in Trade Estates is a very significant asset for our group, both in terms of profitability but also strategically regarding our trend in the retail sector. We continue the implementation of our 5-year growth plan with new IKEA, INTERSPORT and Foot Locker stores. A special note to our recent participation in the retail pharmacy sector through the contribution of Holland & Barrett to Dr. Pharmacy. I cannot emphasize enough our commitment to the transformation of our operating model to include the latest technologies and thus maximize retail productivity and innovation. In terms of financial results, we have achieved our targets for 2025 and have had a positive start for 2026. I would like now to pass the floor to our CEO, John Vasilakos for more detailed information. John?

Thank you, Vasileios. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, from my side as well, and thank you for joining us today. We are pleased to present our full year 2025 financial results. I'm joined today by Tessie Latsou, our CFO; and one of my closest partner in this journey. And Elena Pappa, our IR Director, which you already know and we will take you through our performance, key developments during the year and, of course, the outlook going forward. Delivered strong top line growth with sales up 12% to around EUR 594 million. This was mainly driven by continued network expansion across all business units as well as market share gains and solid like-for-like performance, which is close to 6% year-on-year. At the same time, profitability improved with EBIT up 15% to EUR 30.7 million and margins reaching 5.2%, supported mainly by a strong gross profit margin at 47.3% and of course, disciplined cost management. At the bottom line, profit before tax reached EUR 29.6 million, close to EUR30 million, reflecting the combining operating performance and of course contribution from associates. Trade Estates contributed EUR 17.5 million during the year following its consolidation and accounting as an associate comeback and SSRM software mall participation, EUR 3.5 million. In terms of financial position, leverage remained well under control with net debt-to-EBITDA at 2.6x, EBITDA adjusted 2.6%, in line with our commitment to a prudent balance sheet. And finally, we continue to return value to shareholders through both dividend and share buybacks. Total remuneration for full year 2025 was EUR 9.2 million. On our next slide, beginning of the financial performance, 2025 was also an important year in terms of strategic progress. Starting with Trade Estates, as Vasileios mentioned, we completed the deconsolidation, which allowed us to strengthen our balance sheet while still maintaining exposure to its long-term value creation, which is growing. On Foot Locker, we completed the acquisition in Greece and Romania and continue to roll out across the region. This is a key step in strengthening our position in the faster-growing Athleisure segment that we were not there before and complementing our sports performance offering that we already have with INTERSPORT. We also continue to expand our store network across all brands which is not only supporting growth, but also improving proximity to the customers and enhancing our omnichannel capabilities. We have already discussed that store development is not only growth and secure sales, but also unlocks health capabilities or based on lean journeys. At the same time, the Indivica distribution center is progressing quite well. and we see it as a key enabler for improving supply chain efficiencies and supporting future growth. We will discuss further later on in this presentation. For Holland & Barrett, the agreement with Gordon at Capital market shift to a more scalable and capital-efficient model, leveraging the pharmacy channel, which is the primary channel for health and wellness products in Greece. It was something that we have already discussed in Half 1 results. And we had already mentioned that we're evaluating the distribution network. I think this change has actually mitigated all the pillars and the issues that we have in the past. And finally, on operational transformation, 2025 as well as the current year early about setting the foundations with initial steps towards centralizing the functions and simplify our operating model which will support efficiently efficiency and scalability going forward. Let me give you a bit more color on the head transformation, which is a very important part of the journey. Let me take a step back and explain how we think about the group going forward. What we are really building is a platform, a common infrastructure that will support all our brands and will enable us to scale them faster and more profitably across Southeast Europe. We leverage shared capabilities across the group, including our supply chain infrastructure, our own echannel and digital capabilities as well as our central factors like finance, IT, HR, procurement and liquor. In big retail, as you can understand, many of them are very common and centralization and serve function approach. It is directly related to productivity, efficiency and as basic Vasileios said, innovation. This allows us to create synergies, improve efficiency and productivity and expand more effectively across office bureau where we already have a strong presence and see further growth opportunities, both geographically and across brands. So overall, the platform is about bringing together our brands, capabilities and markets in a way that supports long-term growth and stronger returns. So the key question is how does this platform actually create value for us? First of all, it allows us to expand faster as we can leverage the common infrastructure across markets, while at the same time, improving supply chain efficiency. It also drives operating efficiencies across the group, improving productivity and supporting strong cost discipline. At the same time, it enables scalable growth, meaning we can support multiple brands, multiple concepts and expand new markets in a more structured and efficient way is well in the future, onboard a new concept, through this platform approach, things are made easy, Onboarding is very fast, and the results come very fast at the bottom line. On the customer side, it allows us to better leverage data and digital capabilities, improving engagement, conversion and overall customer experience. Think that everything comes on the full level from customer base to capabilities like personalization, segmentation and marketing automation, and this unlocks significant power -- firepower in the future, irrespective of the concert. Regarding supply chain, which constitutes probably the most important area to develop strong and sustainable competitive advantages, but policy productivity gains through trade logistics, we have developed a network of distribution centers that supports all our brands from IKEA and INTERSPORT to Foot Locker and Holland & Barrett, Holland & Barrett will continue to be supported by this network in the future. and gives us a high level of oversupply operations from warehousing and distribution to income fulfillment, inventory management, middle mile and last mile. As a result, we are able to improve efficiency, optimize inventory and support our omnichannel operations more effectively. As you already mentioned, the Inter IKEA is progressing according to the plan and is going to be fully operational in Q3 2026. Needless to say that the IDC operation will lead to significant productivity gains in the overall house market operations from reducing in 2027 transportation costs that exist today, to bringing better just-in-time inventory capabilities, which will reduce costs and unlock higher customer sales. Let's now move to the group financial performance outlook, and I will ask Tessie Latsou to do the presentation for me. We will continue later on.

Thank you John. so let's now move to the group's financial performance and outlook. Concerning our operational performance over the past few years, let me say that on the top line, we have seen steady growth overall, with an 8% CAGR since 2022. In 2025, group sales reached EUR 594 million, a 12% increase year-on-year, driven by strong organic growth, network expansion and market share gains. On the profitability side, group EBIT has grown at a much faster pace with a COG of around 27%. And Margins have improved consistently over the period from around 3% to above 5%, reflecting strong gross profit margin as well as cost discipline. In 2025, group EBIT increased by 15% to EUR 30.7 million in line with our guidance. About the performance by quarter, we observed a clear acceleration over the course of the year. On the top line, growth picked up significantly throughout the year, reaching mid-teens growth in Q3 and Q4. This reflects both improving trading conditions and the contribution from network expansion as the year progressed, mitigating all the pressure of Q1 due to the cyber incident attack. On the profitability side, the picture is even more pronounced. We take -- we started the year with some pressure in Q1 and Q2, which is typical retail with the next pack due to front-loaded costs in Q2. As was expected and communicated in our H1 2025 results, the OpEx pressure was normalized in the second half Therefore, the performance improved significantly driven by solid OpEx control with strong growth in both Q3 and especially Q4 represented a 44% increase in EBIT. Margins followed the similar trend expanding as the year progressed and reaching above 9% in Q4. Looking at the group business unit, home 36 remains the main contributor, accounting for around 62% of total sales and continues to act as a core profitability and core of the group. In 2025, IKEA delivered solid growth of around 7%, while maintaining strong profitability and healthy margins. Sporting goods. The second largest contributor, representing around 37% of sales continues to be a growth driver for the group. Sales were up around 22%, supported by the INTERSPORT network expansion at Foot Locker as well as an average product range, while profitability improved significantly with EBIT up around 65%. Sporting goods is increasingly becoming a stronger contributor to both growth and profitability. Helsinki represents a small part of the group and but we see it as a strategic growth opportunity. Through our recent agreement, PolanenPark, will accelerate into its next phase of growth through the pharmacy channel in risk, the time it are for health and wellness products. Now briefly touch on our capital allocation. As you can see, CapEx for 2025 reached around EUR 26 million, in line with our growth strategy. These investments are primarily directed towards network expansion, digital transformation as well as the DC for Derica, supporting both our current operations and future growth. So going forward, we will continue with disciplined ROI based network expansion while putting more focus on digital and customer-related investments, such as commerce, customer platforms, management tools, forecasting and replenishment. At the same time, we remain very selective when it comes to new projects. always looking at returns, timings and the overall impact on probing. As we invest on our growth or our future growth, at the same time, we'll focus on deleveraging and tuning value to our shareholders. Net debt remains well under control while leverage has improved significantly over the past few years, reaching around 2.6x net debt to EBITDA adjusted. In parallel, we remain committed to return on value to shareholders. Over the years, we have consistently distributed dividends and complemented them with share buybacks following a balanced and disciplined approach to capital allocation. The proposed dividend for the year 2025 in the annual general shareholders' meeting will be EUR 0.15 per share. At the same time, we proceeded to buyback amount to EUR 1.4 billion last year and proceeded also to the cancellation of 2.6 million treasury shares, which is approximately 4.9% of share capital, aiding to 5% growth EPS. Let me now briefly discuss the contribution from associates. As you can see, income from associates increased significantly in 2025, reaching EUR 21 million, mainly driven by Trade Estates. The contribution from Trade Estates state is now reflected in our P&L at the PBT level following its deconsolidation, as previously explained from Mr. Puris. At the same time, Trade Estates continue to demonstrate strong standard line performance with growth in both asset value and operating income, supporting our overall value creation. This is also reflected in the dividends from Trade Estate which is for fiscal year 2025. The combination of cash generation and long-term value creation.

Let me now have a strong and well-established governance framework with the majority of the pending Board and clear oversight structures. At the same time, management incentives are directly linked to long-term performance, ensuring alignment with shareholder value creation. In terms of ownership, we have a strong institutional investor base creating a balanced governance structure aligned with the best governance practices. Let me now move to our business activities and walk through the performance of each segment, I will ask Elena to present this.

Thank you, John. Hello from my side. The global network. In 2025, sales increased by around 7%, driven by market share gains, higher traffic and the continued expansion of our network. At the same time, we maintained strong margins with gross margin improving to 47.7%, supported by favorable product mix. EBIT remained broadly stable, reflecting the impact of higher operating expenses mainly due to investments and phasing effects earlier in the year. However, as we moved through the year, we saw a clear improvement with performance strengthening in the second half as operating costs normalize. Overall, IKEA remains a strong and resilient profitability engine for the group. Now in terms of execution, we continue to deliver on our expansion plan. Over the past 2 years, we have strengthened our network with new store openings such as PacranIraqio as well as new formats like the planet student in Bulgaria. These investments are already supporting higher traffic, improved accessibility and overall growth. At the same time, we optimize their existing network, including the Agios International Airport retail park. Looking ahead, we have a clear pipeline of projects, new generation for attogranes, new store openings and of course, the landmark flagship store at lingo. So overall, we continue to expand in a targeted way strengthening our presence and supporting future growth. Let us move to sporting goods, which includes 2 complementary concepts, addressing distinct consumer segments. INTERSPORT, the sports specialists and Foot Locker a growth accelerator for the group in Athleisure segment. So In sport goods, we continue to see a very strong growth momentum, across both INTERSPORT and Foot Locker. In 2025, sales increased by around 22%, driven by higher conversion and improved product offering and continued network expansion. Gross margin remained solid, supported by product mix despite a broad promotional environment. At the same time, profitability improved significantly with EBIT up around 65%, reflecting both operating leverage and improved cost discipline, a key driver in 2025, but also going forward, is the continued rollout of Foot Locker, which we expect to further support both sales growth and profitability. Overall, Sporting Goods is to begin to a key growth and profitability driver for the group. Beyond network expansion, we are also investing in new retail concepts, with INTERSPORT football club store being a great example. 2 football club stores are already driving higher traffic and engagement, particularly in the football category, the category with the highest rig in Greece. At the same time, our exclusive partnership with the Hellenic Football Federation as their exclusive merchandising partner is helping us build a much stronger connection with football funds and communities and allows us to equip professional teams and academies. Moving to Foot Locker. Foot Locker is scaling rapidly across the region following the acquisition of the operations in Greece and Romania in April of 2025. We have already established presence in Bulgaria with 3 stores in print locations and we continue to expand the network with new openings across our core markets. Our network consists of 50 stores now. At the same time, we are building the omnichannel presence with new e-commerce platforms in Romanian regard. We are also updating the rear experience with the introduction of the reemerging evolution concept, already launched in Greece, in amustreet and Rolando, more specifically and relocation undermost places cutlet the heart of one of the most relevant retail destinations in Greece, further strengthening resourcing and brand visibility. Overall, we are building a strong foundation for Foot Locker to become a key growth driver for the group going forward. Let us now move to Health & Wellness.

Health & Wellness. This is a category where we see strong long-term growth potential, driven by increasing consumer focus on health, prevention and well-being. This is an area which is very interesting because as you already know, we announced yesterday, we took the decision to actually move through a different direction something that we have already discussed in our previous conference call, where I said that we are visiting all the options around the distribution channels. And I'm happy that we actually find our way to the pharmacy market, which constitutes the dominant market for Health & Wellness at least in Greece. We are positioning so our Health & Wellness business towards a more scalable and capital-efficient model. And in this context, we have entered into a strategic partnership with ordinates capital through Dr Pharmacy Group contributing our existing Holland & Barrett operations and acquired a 15% stake in the combined entity. The key idea here is to scale Holland & Barrett through the pharmacy channel, as I already described, which offers access to the dominant distribution network in Greece. At the same time, the structure is capital-light with no additional investment required while limiting operational complexity. Importantly, we will take strategic exposure to the health and wellness category, which continues to benefit from strong underlying consumer trends. And through our minority participation, we remain well positioned to benefit from future growth. So overall, this is a strategic repositioning that allows us to mitigate current P&L pressure, accelerate growth while improving capital efficiency and maintaining exposure to the upside of the new organization that we have created a core capital. I'm very optimistic about this. I expect this to be a big success in the near future. And I think that we have found our way to growth. I think in 2025, following a ballet moving to the results in 2025, following barret delivered strong revenue growth of 46%, supported by almost 30%, 28% like-for-like performance driven by high customer loyalty and expanding e-commerce and marketplace participation. Recently, Holland & Barrett introduced the whole marketplace quite successfully, e-commerce is going strong, the loyalty scheme is overperforming, I can say. The numbers are super, showing that if the numbers are moving that way through our own store distribution channel in margin, what is the potential with the new pharmacy structure new partners so aims to enable a more scalable and efficient model going forward. Elena please discuss as slides on ESG performance business.

Thank you. Okay. So in terms of our ESG strategy, sustainability remains fully embedded in the group. We are aligned with the Corporate Sustainable Reporting Directive and ESRS framework. ESG is now under direct work oversight through a stable committee. We continue to focus on the group's material issues, including energy, waste management working conditions, social conclusion and governance. And in terms of some highlights of our 2025 performance, we have significantly reduced emissions and increase the use of renewable energy. We continue to strengthen our social impact with growing community contributions and strong female representation at 57% of the group average and 46% in management positions and 44% at -- as already mentioned earlier, in terms of governance, we maintained a very robust governance framework with high board independence and 0 incidents of times. Overall, ESG remains an integral part of how we operate and grow. Now let us move to the outlook going forward.

Let me walk you through how we think about the transformation of the group over the next few years. In 2026, the focus is on building the foundations of the platform, as Vasileios said, defining the operating model setting up services, finance, IT, HR, procurement, legal and establishing the data and system architecture to support this platform in a productive and efficient and effective way. In 2027 and 2028, we move into integration, connecting our supply chain, strengthening omnichannel capabilities and standardizing processes and systems across marketing brands. And this is already happening. We have already assigned the first project and these transformation projects, and we move fast in order to be ready and deliver the first systems and integrations in 2027 and 2028. From 2028 and onwards, we start fully unlocking the benefits; faster expansion, improved margins through scale efficiencies and more effective use of customer data that will be enabled and utilized on Fourlis group based. This is very important in the modern world. So this is a phased road map moving from building capabilities to integrating operations to ultimately delivering scalable and more profitable growth in customer service and customer experience of course. We have started the year strongly with group sales up 13% year-to-date and like-for-like growth around 6%. Growth is driven by sporting goods, up 24% like-for-like close to 8%, while home furnishing remained strong at 6% growth with a like-for-like close to 3%. This reflects healthy customer traffic, continued market share gains and the impact of our expanding network. At the same time, we remain highly focused on disciplined execution and maintain flexibility particularly given the increased macro and geopolitical uncertain. We are closely monitoring developments related to Iran conflict, which may impact energy cost, availability inflation and consumer confidence. And to mitigate this, we are actively managing costs, maintaining pricing discipline and reserving flexibility in our investment plans. Overall, trading remains in line with our expectations so far. We don't see something negative. But as already described, we monitor developments and we stay alert. I expect this, I do not expect an easy year going forward, mainly due to inflation and transported -- mainly due to inflation that we will see to be depicted not only in products but also in transportation costs mainly. I expect some pressure on disposable income, which is also very important. But we stay optimistic. We have seen it before. And we feel that we can deliver the plan given that the start of the year has shown very positive up to now and according to our budgets. For my close, this is our financial guidance for 2026 and of course, we look forward to engage with you throughout the year and during our Investor Day, which we estimate that it will take place in October this year. And I'm ready. We are ready after closing this presentation to Q&A.

Ladies and gentlemen, this time will begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] One moment for the first question, please -- the first question comes from the line of Draziotis Stamatios with Eurobank Equities.

Just a couple from my side, please. Firstly, could you -- could you provide a breakdown of sporting goods sales across Foot Locker and INTERSPORT, just to better asset the underlying performance and mix dynamics. And secondly, on the outlook I must say I'm a bit confused with the messaging. Your latest presentation seems to place greater emphasis on platform integration through '26, '27, '28, with a more visible contribution to growth, as you say, from '28 onwards. So I get the impression of this shift, the timing of the earnings inflection versus your prior guidance, which I don't think that you do have any guidance at this stage. So could you clarify whether the previously communicated target remain achievable within the same time frame or whether that is effectively a delay in the delivery? .

Yes. First of all, let's see the numbers for full year 2025 for sporting goods industry. We said that the overall, it was 22% growth. If you see it per concept, INTERSPORT grew around 11.5%, reaching close to EUR 202 million, while Foot Locker, the number was close to EUR 20 million, EUR 19.2 million, adding altogether to 22%, okay? And within this Sport at least, which is actually the most comparable thing. The like-for-like was close to 9% and as already said, the overall growth was 11.4%. Is it clear?

That's very clear. .

Okay.Now regarding the transformation journey, we have already, what I'm saying here is the fall. In 2026, I do not expect heavy productivity gains from systems, at least because the RFPs have already -- most of the RFPs we have concluded and we are signed at the moment. Blueprinting and execution requires in many of them, 6 months to 1 year, because we actually have prioritize, of course, but we have opened all and prioritize all the system changes, including process reengineering. And I expect heavy productivity gains coming from the systems, mid-'27 and then '28. Anyhow, transformation, as you already know, is not only systems, systems enable the transformation. Until then, what would have described at the centralization of the business, so building a service and centralized whatever can be centralized through reprocessing and reengineering the way we work, which affects, as you can understand, head count and way of working is something that we already have kicked off, and we feel that we will have significant gains within 2026 as we move forward. So this is the case. Regarding now the pace that we expect this to happen in the following years, we have already say that in our previous calls that 2026, we expect that we will stay very close with what we have given the 3-year plan guidance, which will lead us at some point to close to 8% adjusted EBITDA. The timing will fluctuate a little bit because 2026 is a transitional year, but we have said that we will recover with close from 0.5% to 1% per year as we move forward, and we will hit the target or come very close to this target at some point in 2028-2029. So what has changed, at least in my mind, taking all the specifics and launching all -- opening all the boxes and looking and prioritizing the transformation, we will start from the engineering of the process and the sale service. We will continue with systems and cost optimization in many cases, which comes from procurement processes, revisiting all the costs, killing some cost that we feel that we can at the moment reduce and we will proceed with productivity gains coming from technology transformation and full process transformation in mid-'27 and onwards. That's the case.

The next question comes from the line of Pointon Russell with Edison Group.

I have a number of questions, if that's okay. I'll start off with the Holland & Barrett partnership. It looks like a smart way to accelerate scale by the pharmacy channel. But could you just give us some idea how quickly you think this will ramp up through the Dr. P network over the coming years, please?

You want to.

Yes.

I would like to remind that our initial intention was to enter slowly into the pharmacy sector and the start was made through our Holland & Barrett and touching a little bit on the world being sector. The final plan was indeed to being voted with full scale in the pharma sector. So by contributing Holland & Barrett to Dr. Pharmacy, we're actually implementing our initial plan. Now having said that, obviously, we had the minority in the new scheme. And we foresee that we will continue this way. And whether or not Holland & Barrett will accelerate fast, it is a matter of how fast the Dr. Pharmacy network will accelerate. The intention, however, is to include Holland & Barrett in all Dr. Pharmacy locations.

We can say that the plan of organic capital to pharmacy to go aggressively and build a strong and large pharmacy network, which is very important, and it does not exist in Greece in this idea. And Holland & Barrett is going to be a significant part of this journey.

Okay. And sorry, and I'm not so familiar with the Dr. Pharmacy brand from outside the country. But are there any operational considerations? Are the brands fairly complementary, the products, the customers, that type of thing?

Okay. Let me give you just a quick bridge on the pharma sector in Greece. The performance sector in Greece is basically the last -- we are the last country in Europe that has a rather close retailing regarding pharmacies, which means that there were serious regulations and obstacles in developing chains of pharmacies. During the last few years, this has changed significantly, and it is possible now through various means to develop trains of pharmacies. Now as John said before, Dr Pharmacy is the new brand that will be implemented, of course, going further down. At this point, the number of pharmacists is around 25 to 30, and this will be accelerated to more than 100. So we look forward to having national page retail pharmacy chains in the next few years. Is it clear?

Yes. That's great. And a broader question, please, if that's okay. So the stores are being rolled out with a partner. So did you feel a bit capital constrained for where you saw the opportunity in Holland & Barrett. And therefore, as a result of no longer having this capital requirements, does this free up capital to expand the other store activities a bit quicker than you previously anticipated?

You mean. Look, this is something that we read a lot during the previous days, but this will unlock the energy capacity of the management and capital to concentrate in the 2 industries, the sporting good and the furniture market, but this is not true. Because for us, this continues to be a significant sector that we realized how difficult it is, of course, to go in a small country like Greece with a stand-alone concept and how demanding it is. But for us, it is clear that we believe that this is -- there is a huge opportunity there, and we'll continue to put some effort there along with Dr. Pharmacy because -- and capital because we see the potential. And of course, minority participation, things are becoming easier at the moment only on the P&L level. but the effort will continue because we believe that in 2, 3 years from now, things in an organization that has solved all the bureaucracy, all the dilated things and has managed to build 100 pharmacies in Greece, this is something with huge potential that we will, at some point, get back 2, 3, 4 years from now. So believe me, this bet is going to pay back in the future. At the moment, of course, it is mitigating some pressure on capital P&L, but this is not the issue. We believe that we have placed ourselves in the -- we have seen all the options, and we were lucky and good enough to select the best option for the future.

And given the partnership will be in investment mode, is it reasonable to assume there will be no dividends coming back to Fourlis group from the partnership?

Who knows. But we don't -- we have not assumed at the moment, dividends from this. We already received strong dividends from the states, and this is something that it's enough. We -- it is at a completely different phase at this moment, growth and formation of this organization of this network is what is important for use and we will support this even through bringing the board and supporting part of the operation, providing supply chain services, IT services, supporting things like that, we will do our part in order to make this a success.

And my final question is a bit broader. The operating cash flow was a bit weaker in the year because there was quite a big buildup in inventory. Could you just talk about that inventory buildup, please?

This was something that we already discussed in things are getting better. If you see it actually in a more comparable case, we had at some point after the incident significantly higher stock levels, which, of course, -- most of them were translated and supported the sales growth. But yes, there was an upside over and above, which was actually -- it was an action taking in order to mitigate the supply chain problems that we faced after the incidents and stock in the stores was kept high in order to mitigate the pressure coming from the problems. During the year, we continue to optimize this and at least on the INTERSPORT and Foot Locker we managed to go down a apples with applies. But at the end of the year, we brought in more than EUR 5 million of Nike products because Nike globally change their ERP end of year and delivered the products September, October, and then we delivered in March. So it was a decision taken, we brought in more products in order to operate. It was not our decision, it was Nike's make decisions and we have to go that way. Regarding IKEA to be honest, I was hoping that we will be even better, although stock 109 is very strong. But end of the year, things got softer and that's why we ended up with some more stock, but I think it is immaterial. So yes, there is more space for optimizing stock levels. And for this year, we have already assumed that end of this year, we were going to be at lower level, and that's why we have prioritized also demand forecasting replacement and stock liquidation this year in order to bring stock levels now and also get rid of some slow-moving stock, but this is within our assumptions for this budget, and we proceed at the moment with a concrete plan and delivery plan in order to go that way. Sorry for this. Keep in mind, I want to add that every store that we open even if it's IKEA or in Foot Locker, you have to consider that a significant stock amount is kept there for display stock and operations stock, and we have to expect with a significant growth of new stores that an uplift will come for display stock as well. Anyhow, this is expected. And of course, it is part of the P&L of the stores as well. it pays back fast. But as far as size, absolute charges -- this will go up as a percentage size and short term metric we have a showed in this budget that we will come to a better position end of year.

I see another question.

Let us first ask if any other, Operator, please?

Okay. I see 1 question. Yes. Can you comment on InQuest 10.2 stake in Fourlis.

Okay, I will start to the comment, and then I will pass to Vasileios. I can say that I'm very happy for all the institutional participation including InfoQuest, that they are, at the moment, more than 10%. And it's not a request. It's also hold that has above 10%. For me, this is a clear method that very experienced and very strong players in the market that they know what they are doing, and they understand also around industries and they have long-term view, trust the company and the management, and they have believed in our plan and they feel that it's a good time at the moment, a good point to enter. And because investors, of course, expect a return on their investments. This is a trust statement and I believe that we can make it and we can bring strong returns in the near future. So for me, I'm very happy to see that. I expect more big players to enter hopefully and give their trust. And I pass Vasileios, which is coming from a different point of view to this.

Absolutely. I fully agree with John. It is a very positive sign. It is a vote of confidence to the potential of the business -- and I have to say that along with Fourlis family and management who control more than 30% of the shares, we also have Quest with a strong 10% stake whole also. So for us, this is a very positive sign, as I said, along with the major shareholder to see strong institutional investors, strong companies casting a vote confidence for us.

We don't have any more questions, either online or audio. So I think we can close this. Operator, would you please make a final confirmation for us please?

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you.

Just a second. 1 more question just received online from BarCap. Can you please give us color on your store opening program for both healthcare and sporting goods and CapEx levels for 2026?

First of all, I would like to give you a flavor of how we have splitted the CapEx? And what is the size of the CapEx assumed in the budget of 2026. Of course, expecting but the overall trading is going to follow the budget numbers and other things being equal in a way. And I say that given the volatility of the external environment. So what we have assumed is that the CapEx of this year is going to be at the same absolute level of 2025, so close to EUR 25 million, EUR 25 million to EUR 26 million, including the IDC investment, which is not part actually of the operation, but has, as I said, significant indirect gains for house market risk in the future. So this EUR 26 million is broken, if you see it as a pie and on a group level, close to 5% on maintenance. And when I say maintenance is the typical maintenance idea, but also including IT, yes, EUR 5 million, EUR 4.9 million IT maintenance as well, licensing and all this stuff. Digital transformation per se, which is development and new licensing of the digital transformation, which will be close to EUR 6 million, EUR 6.5 million. This may be a little bit lower because of the timing that you unlock the transformation, but we have assumed close to EUR 6.5 million and EUR 13 million is going to expansion, 13.2 million. If we see that there is space for, coming from digital transformation slowdown, we will unlock further growth CapEx, given that we will find the correct properties in the correct timing. And around EUR 6 million is expected for the IDC project, which is all the machinery and all the equipment needed in order to run the Inter IKEA warehouse on behalf of inter IKEA, which has also been assumed and depreciations of which are part of the overall P&L. So overall, EUR 26 million. If you see it now or expansion in the expansion side per concept, we have assumed close to EUR 5 million for IKEA, which means that we would like to open 3 stores per year. This is a big headache because property in IKEA is not very easy to find according to the specific requirements of the concept with big spaces and parking and construction. But 2% to 3% is the number. And of course, when I say 2 to 3, I mean smaller formats close to Patra close to Patra, I can say because the capital sits at Greece asked for this number of 3,000, 3,500 square meters and the big store coming is not before 2028, which is the Linio store that will be running operational in 2029. So 2 to 3 stores for IKEA. And what we have assumed for INTERSPORT is around EUR 3 million for 4 stores covering geographical earnings that were not there, big capital cities of Greece. And around 10 to 15, approximately 12, I think it's feasible per year because you have to find the property at the correct price for Foot Locker. So over 13.2, it can go to 13 to 14 or it can go to 12%, depending on availability for new store openings. Again, I said 2 to 3 for IKEA. For INTERSPORT 12 13 to Foot Locker. This is the CapEx spend overall EUR 25, EUR 26 million per year.

And this answers the next question as well from reopen who asks how many if any stores we plan to open this year for both compact concepts? I don't see any more questions online. So I don't see any audio questions either. No. There is 1 more. Excuse me, apologies for that. There's always a delay in online coming up. Just a second. Okay, here go from -- what were the main factors that led to missing the adjusted EBITDA target for 2025 that you have previously guided for? and to what extent were they driven by external conditions versus execution-related issues within the group? Additionally, could you outline your key targets for 2026, including any updated guidance on profitability.

Yes. I think that regarding the first question around the guided adjusted EBITDA target, which, if I'm correct, it was around EUR 38 million and what we managed to deliver is EUR 36 million. We have said that we will be close to EUR 600 million. If you had asked me 3 months before the end of the year, to be honest, I was expecting that we will be above EUR 600 million, and this was the initial estimate close to EUR 615 million or EUR 610 million to EUR 615 million which would be enough in order to bring this EUR 38 million on the adjusted EBITDA level. Unfortunately, end of year, it was softer, especially in the home furnacing market. And not only in Greece globally, you have to understand, and I need to point out that the performance of Greek of House Market, not only Greek, of house market in Greece, Bulgaria and Romania is at the top 5 quartile of IKEA globally. And unfortunately, the last 3 months of the year became softer and also the beginning of the year, I can say, is softer than what we expected. And it's a global thing. Of course, we will do whatever is needed in order to hit the budget. And this missing EUR 10 million, EUR 15 million because we ended up at EUR 795 million, volume related, and it was not possible to link to EUR 38 million in adjusted EBITDA. So this is the reason and nothing more. You see that the product and actually gave -- it was very important for this to happen because the fees. It was promised. And for me, it was very important to deliver trust for me and transparency is the first in this relationship with all our investors. And so we remain focused on delivering the percentage EBIT and even better -- and regarding the absolute number, it was only relating to the top line growth that was expected at least EUR15 million more than what it happened mainly driven by the end of the year. Also I can tell you around the guidance, which, of course, it's not something that we missed. I put on the table as an excuse, but it was something that we missed. It was -- given that last year, we had faced the cyber attack. These are the reasons. Now regarding the guidance, I don't want at this point to give any guidance because everything in the market is quite volatile. What I can say, and we already said is that the beginning of the year and almost the first quarter of the year regarding sales and hopefully, at the end regarding also IP was very close to our expectations. An I'm sure if this will continue and the market and consumer confidence and consumption will not slow down all inflation. We will not create big pressure or on OpEx side, we will continue to deliver the plan. But at the moment, I don't want to go further because it will be actually very risky. And I don't have all the information regarding the market to show guidance. Later on this year, we will have a clear understanding of what we'd expect both on the OpEx side and the top line. And we are sure that new will come as soon as possible to deliver it. It is part of the strategy to provide transparency to the investors as we move forward.

Thank you very much. I don't see any more questions. I think that's final.

So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for taking the time and having the patience to see all these numbers. We will keep in touch, and we will give you further updates.

The call has concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a pleasant evening.