Geox S.p.A. ($GEO)

Good evening. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Geox 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Let me introduce you today's call speakers, the Geox Group CEO, Mr. Francesco Di Giovanni; and the CFO, Mr. Andrea Maldi. Geox would like to remind you that any forward-looking statements disclosed during the conference call involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ significantly from what is expressed or implied. Many of these factors are beyond the group's control. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Francesco Di Giovanni, CEO of Geox. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much indeed. Good evening, and thank you all for joining us. I took some notes because I didn't want to forget any significant comment to the 2025 results. So I might come across a bit less natural than I would love to. Let me tell you, during 2025, we devoted our efforts to strengthen the business by pursuing a thorough revision of our operating model, which led to a significant reduction of the cost base, the benefits of which have already emerged during the financial year just ended. In a market environment, which is still impacted by material contraction in consumption, which led to a sales decline of 5.3% versus the same period last year on a comparable basis. The initiatives we have undertaken already delivered tangible results. Net losses were halved compared to 2024, standing at EUR 16 million compared to EUR 30 million last year, and the bank debt significantly reduced by circa EUR 10 million to EUR 92 million. We accelerated a number of initiatives aimed at strengthening current and future margins. We reduced or discontinued nonprofitable distribution channels. We revised significantly the operating model. We reduced the cost structure, which was enhanced by leading more efficiency, sustainability and increasing -- which was increasing our capability to absorb the business uncertainties. To support our current and future commercial and financial targets, we are bringing back to the center of our commercial and marketing strategy, the group's R&D and technological DNA, which have always been the core part of the brand's heritage and values. We are already leveraging on patented products such as our Fast In product line, which significantly contributed to our 2025 turnover. In addition, and more importantly, new patented products were developed during the year, leveraging on our expertise and technological innovation capabilities. Geox is now preparing to launch a revolutionary solution initially targeted at our own retail network. We have also chosen to entrust the style development for the future to -- in particular, for the women's collection, starting with spring/summer 2027, to a globally renowned design studio, which is an international [ benchmark ] in footwear design. We strongly believe that this collaboration has brought renewed creativity and stylistic viability to the Geox brand portfolio, and we're confident that it will further enhance our market positioning and overall appeal. I'll be happy to answer to any questions later on, but let me now turn the floor to Andrea Maldi, who will walk you through the financial performance in detail. Thank you very much indeed.

Thank you, Francesco. And thank you, everybody, for joining Geox fiscal 2025 results, year-end results. I will try to deep dive you into the financial performance of the company during 2025. And I would start from the main key financial drivers, commenting on the sales. Net sales amount to EUR 608.7 million at year-end, which signed a decline of minus 8.3% versus last year. And if we exclude the effect of China and U.S. platform that has been winding down in 2025, declining sales with the right comparison amounts to minus 5.3%. The result of the decline in sales, the EBITDA adjusted amount to EUR 24.8 million, which is pretty much in line to what -- to the same EBITDA adjusted that we have in 2024, slightly declined. We are sitting in 2024 at EUR 26.2 million. This means that the result has been achieved through a solid and strong cost control and efficiency within the organization. As a result of the 2 actions, the EBIT adjusted amount to EUR 9 million, which is pretty much in line with 2024. And we have been able to reduce the loss at the year-end, moving from EUR 30.3 million in 2024 to EUR 16.2 million in 2025. From a financial point of view, the bank debt amount reached a value of EUR 92.6 million negative, showing a significant improvement of EUR 10 million -- more than EUR 10 million compared to the same period of 2024. Net working capital reached a value of EUR 135.7 million as a result, so 22.3% of the net sales. Same period last year, EUR 104 million or 15.7% at December '24. So given the financial -- main financial KPIs, if we move to the Page 7 of the presentation, which is available for the participants, we try to deep dive a bit more on sales. As you can see, we have tracked the sales from 2023 to 2025. We are now reaching the value of EUR 608.7 million, which include a margin value, which is stable at 51% compared to the same period of last year. From an EBIT perspective, the EBIT adjusted net of nonrecurring items amounted EUR 9 million, which is clearly a strong achievement because we have been able to maintain the same EBIT of last year despite the decline in sales of overall EUR 55 million. Moving to Page 8. We can see how we have been able to reduce almost halving the losses from EUR 33 million to EUR 16.2 million negative. And we can see that the fiscal year result is impacted by a sales decline of approximately EUR 55.1 million compared to previous year, leading to a gross margin reduction of EUR 27 million. The reduction of EUR 27 million has been completely offset by a decrease in the cost base structure for the same amount, EUR 27.4 million, thanks to a series of actions that the management has been able to commit and deploy reorganization, renegotiation, reorganization and restructuring of the personnel cost. And the -- if we move to the nonrecurring item, we can see that we have a slight decrease from EUR 13 million in 2024 to EUR 12 million in 2025. This is the amount that we have invested as nonrecurring items, special items to reorganize and restructure our business operating model. At the same time, we got a benefit from the financial expense structure, where we have been able to benefit of about EUR 11.7 million, mainly coming from 2 main factors: the reduction of the debt, thanks also to the capital increase that we have performed in 2025 and at the same time, a reduction of the financial interest and mainly for EUR 10 million of this EUR 11.7 million, almost EUR 10 million, EUR 9-point something -- EUR 9.8 million, mainly to the exchange rate between euro and [indiscernible] that have positively impacted 2025. If we look at the sales, and we try to have a drill down by channel in Page 9, we can see that the wholesale is lower compared -- is declining compared to last year for about EUR 17.9 million. The negative performance mainly in Italy, France, Iberia region and Russia. And this is due to a softer sell-in for SS spring/summer season 2025 for winter '25 campaign across the key geographies. The retail is down 3.3% year-on-year, and it's clearly impacted by performance issues, which led the DOS brick-and-mortar like-for-like performance negative down to 1.8% compared to 2024. The franchising deal business model like-for-like performance again deteriorating by 2.5% versus 2024. At the same time, we got a hit by the negative perimeter in terms of sales, which amount to EUR 3.7 million due to network reorganization or rationalization. And clearly, the perimeter effect is bringing -- despite the decline in sales is bringing the positive effect on the overall contribution because clearly, we are continue rationalizing and cleaning our network where we see shops or franchising direct customer, which are not performing from a contribution point of view. If we look at the digital channels, clearly, we have a weaker performance on the wholesale marketplace. On the marketplace side, I would like to remind that we have taken a strong decision like we did for action for U.S.A. and China to reduce and close platforms which are not performing. While if we look at our own website, we are pretty satisfied with the performance. We have been able to register a like-for-like increase of 4.6% compared to the year 2024. If we look at the net sales by region, clearly, we can see that all the regions are decreasing compared to the year 2024. Italy is down 4.5%. Wholesale and retail negative performance, only partially offset by web performance growing mid-single digit, 5.4% just in Italy. Europe overall, including our core market, is mainly down for the performance driven by the negative wholesale results. At the same time, just to mention the DACH area that confirms negative trend mainly across all channels. France continued to be a country pretty much resilient and positive performance in retail and web. This is clearly reflecting the position of a solid market leadership, while we are in the retail side, where we are suffering a little bit in the wholesale channel. The rest of the world is clearly impacted by our reorganization because we need to consider that we have shut down -- wind down the operation in the U.S. and China, which led to a sales loss of sales decline of EUR 16.7 million, as we already mentioned during this call. On the other side, we have a positive performance in the Middle Eastern region, while Russia, which is clearly an important market for us, is continuing clearly declining slightly and outperforming compared to the previous year, mainly due to the wholesale side of the business and due to the conflict and war which is currently happening between Ukraine and Russia. And just to mention that the performance of the direct operated shops in Russia is still solid. We are still perceived like a strong brand well positioned on the retail side. I would like just to move directly into Page 12, where we can see the distribution evolution of our network. From a DOS perspective, we are slightly declining the network. We have 5 net closure of DOS, mostly related to the Hong Kong subsidiary, which has been rationalized and reorganized. While we are decreasing more significantly into the franchising and deal store, mainly in European countries following, again, the network rationalization. On the franchise on deal, clearly, we can expand a bit more later during the Q&A section, but this is clearly an action where we are trying to reorganize our network through more financial partner with higher financial stability, higher financial strength that are clearly on the other side, cleaning our business from a risk of credit risk. I think that given all the description of the business, just mention on Page 16, as already to the bank financial -- net financial position. We moved from, as we said, from the EUR 103 million negative of last year to EUR 92 million, which has been achieved through cost reorganization, capital increase, decrease of the indirect cost spending and rationalization of the Far East [ purchase ]. I think that if we consider where we are now and the way we close 2025, having a look forward looking into 2026, we can say that the fiscal year 2026 sales are expecting, as we already communicated during the approval of the budget to decline in the low single-digit area compared to the fiscal year 2025. The EBIT margin estimates are instead still unchanged in the range of 3.2% to 3%, as we already said in our business plan and also during our session of budget approval, mainly thanks to the cost initiatives that are able to compensate the decline in sales expectation. And the bank debt is expected again to improve and to move into the range of the EUR 80 million, EUR 85 million by year-end 2026. As we already commented in our previous communication to the market, the management team is strongly committed and working on a refresh of the business plan -- of our previous business plan. And the idea is to be ready at the end of the spring 2026, most likely into the range of June with a refresh on the new business plan and explanation of the trend of sales for the year '27, '28 and '29. I would like now to thank you again for participating and I would like to open the session of Q&A for the management team.

[Operator Instructions] First question is from Oriana Cardani, Intesa Sanpaolo.

The first one is on the evolution of the gross margin. Do you expect it to stabilize at the 2025 level? My second question is on current trade. Can you give an update on the performance in January and February with some details on what's happening for each channels? And the third one is on the control of cost. If sales deteriorate much more than expecting, what kind of cost actions could be taken further to mitigate the impact on cash flow?

Thank you, Oriana, for your question. I will try to give you the fair answer, the best that I'm able to give you so far. I think that we can start from the first one, which is the gross margin in 2026. And as you might recover in our budget section, we have forecasted an improvement of our margin for about 110 basis points, out of which 80 mainly due to the channel mix. I think that given the way so far the current business, the current trading is now performing into the first year -- months of the year, I suggest I would say to the market that we are committed and we will be able to maintain margin flat compared to 2025. If we -- this is leading me to comment a bit on the current trading side. I think that it's fair to say that if we look at our D2C, direct-to-consumer market and in particular to our regular brick-and-mortar business as of week 10, the like-for-like performance is down in the range of the 5% to 6%, while the outlet, again, brick-and-mortar physical in the same week, we are referring to week 10 as a current trading point for this comment, is down significantly in the range of 16.6%. On the other side, the good news is coming again from the digital side. Well, the DOS digital like-for-like performance compared to last year is up, significantly up double digit, close to 10%, a little bit more than 10%. If you look at the wholesale, we need to be comment looking at also the calendarization of our performance, we are down in the range of 18% compared to last year, which is corresponding mainly to the execution of the decline of the order of the spring/summer campaign 2026, for which we are now building out product. And that's the way we have -- we started -- it's true, it's fair to say that we started the year lower -- a bit lower than expected. I think that when we look at the direct-to-consumer business, both physical -- sorry, both physical and digital, but mainly physical, one of the item that is clearly impacting our current trading is the decline on traffic. Decline on traffic is mainly due to economic condition, overall economic condition. And clearly, what is now happening overall in the world with the new conflict is not for sure helping the recovery of the economy and the stability and is not supporting the normal consumption of the overall market. But on the other side, I think that we will be able in the next future to recover a bit of the traffic, especially because we are starting from last week, but maybe we will focus on the next few weeks, we will start with the new communication campaign. And I think that we'll be able to address a little bit the recovery part of the traffic and the attention of our customer to our new product, especially on the spring/summer side, where we have significant innovation on the shops in terms of product with 2 line, the more sophisticated Blue Touch and the current overall [indiscernible] Touch product that we have developed nicely for 2026 spring/summer. The third question is on the cost control. I think that we have -- we have a track of success in cost control over the last 2 years, mainly in 2025. We have accelerated significantly as you -- the good results in terms of profitability achieved in 2025 came from a cost rationalization and cost control, and we have adopted a discipline to look at our cost base because we realized that we were not able to follow from the market side, the sales expectation that we have a decline in our previous business -- in our actual business plan. On the same side, we still think that we have a room significant -- quite a good room to improve the base cost in 2026. First thing that I would like to say is that the strong investment in the personnel costs and staff reorganization that has been very painful from a group point of view will clearly pay off in terms of financial benefit mainly in 2026, and it's already included in our budget section. So if we look at our budget-based cost, we will be able to again reduce the overall cost structure for about EUR 60 million. And the management is already working on plan to further take action on indirect cost if the current trading will continue in that direction. So overall, I think that we will make our best effort to eventually mitigate further deterioration of our top line expectation, top line sales.

[Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Okay. Well, ladies and gentlemen, if there are no further questions, we invite you to contact us if there is any further need for information -- let me just reiterate one concept. We managed to navigate 2025 quite successfully as far as cost control are concerned. A good portion of the costs that were put under control are going to be -- were related to the performance of the business, and they're going to be somewhat influencing the 2026 results as well. There were some costs that we stopped during the year, such as, for example, communication costs because we revised entirely -- as I suggested in my initial speech, we had to revise our strategy. And therefore, there was little point to keep investing a significant amount of money into communication while we were revising our -- not only just our communication strategy, but generally speaking, our further development strategy, future development strategy. That has had clearly an impact on our sales during the second -- the last quarter of last year and probably the first few weeks of the current fiscal year. We truly believe that the strategy that we have adopted, which is as I indicated, reviving the technological content is already paying off because if we look at the areas where it should be more effective such as men sales, the first few weeks of this year were actually very good indeed. We were not being particularly successful was on the women collection. Women collection has not been appreciated into the market. And that is why we are -- we have made a decision to coordinate far better our new offer. Unfortunately, company in this business is like a large boat. You need to wheel the rudder in order to make changes. And therefore, the new collection developed with the new stylist will hit the retail business only in -- during the second quarter of next year 2027. We're going to have some indications of how much it is appreciated by the market during the next sales campaign in late spring this year. Between June and July, we should actually see how that is appreciated by our wholesale clients. In general, however, we still have room, as Andrea indicated, to keep our cost base under control. Some of it is a natural consequence if there is a contraction of the business -- of the contraction of the business. Some of it is linked to further initiatives which we are implementing. A component of it is clearly related to the initiatives that we have already implemented, such as the restructuring cost on our organization, which led to a reduction of approximately 1/3 of the labor cost in terms of heads, we have reduced by approximately EUR 200 million or EUR 600 million base last year. And the benefit of that is going to be more evident during 2026, of course. So we believe that 2026 is a year of transition during which some of the benefits of the new commercial strategy will not probably fully materialize because the new collection will kick in only the following spring/summer season because some of the actions in terms of communication will trigger their effects over the medium term rather than just as an immediate reaction to a commercial. We need to reshape a bit the market recognition of our brand, and that will not take just a few weeks or months. It will take a bit longer. In 2026, we still believe that we can confirm the -- basically the results that we anticipated in our 2026 budget and hope that with the business plan, we're going to give more clarity to the market for what we expect going forward.

So thank you. Thank you, Francesco. Thank you overall to everyone that participated in the call. I think we can now close the call if there are no further comments.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.