Maisons du Monde S.A. (ZMM.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Maisons du Monde Third Quarter 9 Months 2022 Sales. [Operator Instructions] I would like now to hand the conference over to Carole Alexandre, Head of IR. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Good morning to all of you, and thank you very much for joining this call presented Maisons du Monde Q3 and 9 months 2022 at PBC. I am Carole Alexandre and I'm delighted to be with you today, having recently joined Maisons du Monde as Head of Investor Relations. I look forward to our future exchanges. I am with our CEO, Julie Walbaum; and our CFO, Regis Massuyeau, who will be made in today's presentation. It will be followed by a Q&A session. You have no doubt seen the press release we issued this morning. The conference call slides can be downloaded from and viewed on our website, corporate.maisonsdumonde.com. This call is also being audio webcast, and a replay will be available on our website later today. All listeners are reminded to read the forward-looking disclaimer on the Slide 2. I would like to now turn the call over to Julie Walbaum.

Thank you very much, Carl, and a warm welcome to you to Maisons du Monde. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for being here today. And you can see our agenda today on Slide 3. I will begin with an overview of the key business and strategic highlights of the first quarter and the first 9 months of 2022. Regis will then take you through our numbers, after which I will return to discuss our priorities and outlook before opening the floor to your questions. So let's begin. On Slide 5, with our third quarter and 9-month business and strategic highlights. We continue to operate in a very challenging environment, marked by rapidly rising inflation in Europe with price increases in the Euro Zone now reaching 10%. And this obviously has an impact on consumer confidence. In this context, our activity has been in line with our expectations. Q3 GMV is down 3% and sales are down 8% year-on-year. However, performance is above pre-pandemic levels with GMV up 12% and sales up 3% versus Q3 2019. The same is true for the 9-month period, with GMV up 16% versus 2019 and 9 month sales up 8%. The longer-term perspective attached to the item attractiveness of the brand and to the successful ramp-up of our omnichannel model, which is gaining further traction with the continued rollout of our marketplace. It shows that our commercial initiatives in the past month, which include attractive capital collections, consumer services, such as our new filing solution, Alma, as well as sourcing optimization to improve product availability or bearing fruit. On top of strong revenue management, we stay focused on the execution of the full floor action plan we launched in Q2 to contain costs and CapEx in order to set quarter 2022 objectives. The program is well on track. We are also launching new initiatives to carry over this discipline into 2023 to address the inflationary environment we will continue to face. Regis will provide you with grit reality shortly. All this allows us today to keep our 2022 guidance and change, as I will detail in my concluding remarks. On Slide 6, we look at how we continue to strengthen our direct to consumer love brands in the third quarter through our 3 piles creativity, inspiration, and engagement. First, creativity. Over the summer, we released our Autumn-Winter collections inviting consumers to open up to the world through an inspiring exploration of 6 world spot lines over more than 2,000 products. These collections speak to what our target consumers are seeking in today's environment, cocooning and optimism. And they've met with strong critical claims as evidenced by the 60% increase in press mentions compared to last year's seasonal collections. Separately, after our successful collaboration with designer Lisa Gaché with collection we launch in May, we have launched a new collaboration with Sakina M'Sa, a pioneer of sustainable fashion, who designed an exclusive collection of 25 limited edition products that celebrate exceptional women such as Camilo Del or Frida Kahlo. The profit from this collection will be donated to Le Monde Sam, an NGO that fights violence against women. We are very proud of this action that is fully consistent with our grits beautiful movement. Inspiration, second. Notably through innovation, during the quarter, our B2B business teams won a major contract to revamp several spaces inside the iconic Stade de France sports and event facility, including VIP bar. The project also involves the temporary transformation during the summer of a box area right in front of the field into a hotel room, completely published with Maisons du Monde furniture and decoration, offering customers a truly unique experience. Moreover, our false and soon to be iconic annual events Rendezvous Deco dedicated to home and living trends met with great success, attracting more than 2,000 architects and designers, curious to know more about NVMe views on lives and trams. We also continue to actively engage with our communities in line with our mission to be the most desirable and sustainable home and living brand in Europe. Our Instagram community is up again year-on-year, now reaching almost 5.5 million followers across Europe. We are also having success on other platforms such as Fintrust with audience up nearly 20% and TikTok with over twofold increase in videos. Let's now look in greater detail at our third quarter key commercial developments, starting on Slide 7 with our DTC omnichannel model, which is continuing to develop, I mean, in a complex global environment. We continue to further develop our active customer base, which reached 2.1 million at the end of Q3, including nearly 700,000 new customers and $5.4 million over the 9 months. Omnichannel customers grew by 8% over the quarter. Online GMV stood at EUR 103 million in Q3, which is up almost 8% versus Q3 of last year and as much as 44% over the same period in 2019. A driver of this performance was our online traffic, which started to grow again after being low double-digit negative in H1. This recovery is in part due to slowly improving intra for the category as Google request volume has finally returned to its 2021 levels after months of negative growth. Although furniture and demand is still weak across Europe. But even more, recovery is due to successful change in marketing tactics and the continued exceptional success of the marketplace. Online sales of EUR 80 million were down 7% versus the same quarter last year against high comps and also due to a higher share of marketplace in our online GMV, which does not translate as you know, the same way to sales, as we just recall in our revenue, the sales commissions we get from vendors. That being said, online sales are up nearly 11% versus Q3 of 2019. Regarding stores, Q3 sales amounted nearly EUR 200 million in Q3. After a strong first half performance, plus 9%, partly driven by the '21 base effect as stores were partially closed during that period. Store sales were down nearly 9% in the quarter, broadly in line with the year-on-year decline in store traffic. The latter reflects the soft consumer environment I mentioned in my introductory remarks. On Slide 8, we now zoom in on our curated marketplace, an essential part of the omnichannel strategy. The marketplace continues to see strong momentum and keeps expanding in new markets. Marketplace GMV reached EUR 30 million in Q3, up over 120% year-on-year. As you see on this slide, we have seen consistent improvement for 5 consecutive quarters now and launch has been a success in each of the 3 markets when it has happened. The variety growth in Q3 was led by France, which was up 80% year-on-year. Marketplace GMV represented 42% of fresh online GMV in the period, driven, among others, by an increase in products over to 160,000. But and that's great news, we are also seeing very solid growth at our Spanish marketplace, which we launched at the end of March. The results continue to be very positive in the Q3 with GMV of EUR 5.6 million, already representing 39% of Spanish online GMV, up from 30% 3 months ago. The success of our marketplace in Spain proves our ability to expand the model. And in Q3, we offered a marketplace in a third market, Italy, which is also off to a very promising start. Over the 9-month period, Marketplace GMV totaled EUR 76 million across these 3 countries, up 72% versus the same period last year. Marketplace sales have accounted for 22% of total group online GMV in the 9-month period. The continued success of our selective in omnichannel marketplace does demonstrate the relevance of our online strategy and our ability to maintain our competitive edge. On Slide 10, we focus on our store network. In today's in certain business environment, we have taken a highly disciplined and active approach to the management of a store network with pure openings and also measures undertaken to speed up the closure of unprofitable stores. At the end of Q3, Maisons du Monde network stood at 352 stores, that's 2 more on a net basis compared to end of H1 as well as compared to end of Q3 last year. Over the course of Q3, we opened 3 new stores, 1 each in France, Spain, and Italy and the group close 1 store in Italy. We continue to see stores as a key strategic asset and a key part of our omnichannel strategy, and we will continue to selectively expand over time. We expect to be at the low end of our EUR 0 million to EUR 5 million opening range this year. Indeed, in the current context, we believe it is critical to act with discipline and caution and be very attentive to the evolution of our category. On Slide 10, we look at how we progress on ESG journey during the quarter, in line with the commitments we made as part of our Good is Beautiful Program. On the e-portal, in the frame of our commitment #1, we continue to develop our sustainable product offering with as much as 31% of our Autumn-Winter collections now in our Good is Beautiful selection. That is 10 points more versus our pre-summer collections. To date, 27% of the active offering is part of our Good is Beautiful Program. Remember that our objective for 2025 is our 40% share. Looking at our commitment #4, we opened in '21 our own repair center to optimize our management of written products and increase our repair capacity. While this is what's happening, this warehouse continued to achieve great results over the quarter with around 17,000 financial items repair to repackage and that is up 42% year-on-year. In line with our commitment #5, Maisons du Monde also takes part in the collective assets to reduce energy consumption. We are rolling out this month a comprehensive energy saving plan in Europe to save on store heating and lighting and also in the logistics square houses and at group headquarters. Maisons du Monde also signed the EcoWatt Charter in France, which promotes responsible energy consumption. Let me remind you that Maisons du Monde has been committed to reduce energy consumption in its own premises for several years already with an energy reduction program that has already seen a drop in consumption of over 20%. With several actions in place such as switching to lead lighting with a vast re-lamping plant and upgrading into air conditioning and heating equipment. All these actions will participate to reach our carbon footprint and contribute to carbon neutrality at to our Scopes 1 and 2 emissions by the end of the year. On the Sport, as part of our commitment #2, we keep supporting local nonprofit organizations by refurbishing living spaces for those who need it most. We dressed up 6 new living spaces this quarter, one, for example, for [indiscernible]. Regarding our commitment #3, Maisons du Monde organized the second annual engagement week in September, which aims at raising awareness and involving all group's employees to promote equal opportunities as well as diversity and inclusion in our time and beyond through conferences, webinars, games and challenges. And finally, on the G-part, as announced in June 22, we have created a dedicated CSR committee at board level headed by our new board member, Alexandra Palt, Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer and Executive Vice President of L'Oreal Commission at L'Oreal. The CSR mission is to assist the ball in matters of social and environmental responsibility, supporting and transformation towards a low-carbon business model and contributing to HR and societal positive impact. We also completed the deployment of Good is Beautiful ambassadors in 100% of our stores. This is a key initiative in the development of the movement in favor of more sustainable and responsible practices across the group. Now I would like to hand over to Regis to walk you through our financial review.

Thank you, Julie. Good morning, everyone. Welcome, Carole, and I take opportunity to thank Chris Wilson for his contribution in the last 2 years. I'm happy to be with you to provide more color on our Q3 performance and update you on our action plan. Let's start with Slide 12 with our 9-month sales bridge. As you see on the slide, our sales in the first 9 months of the year stood at EUR 882 million, down 5.9% versus the same period last year, reflecting a combination of a weak consumer environment, as mentioned by Julie. And a tough comparable base as the first 9 months of last year had benefited from a rebound in activity after pandemic-related 2020. However, compared to the first 9 months of '19, our sales are actually up by 8%, which attests again the strength of our omnichannel model. The slide shows you the different building blocks of our 2022 9-month performance. The main components of our lower sales in the period is a drop of EUR 71 million in like-for-like sales due to the challenging comp and today's soft consumption patterns. This drop was partly offset by the contribution of EUR 16 million on a net basis from stores opened in 2021 and 2022. On next slide, Slide 13, we look at the sales performance in greater granularity by breaking it down by quarter to allow you to visualize the sequence of our sales as COVID created quite a complex reading on a year-on-year basis. The graph against shows the dual trend with a year-on-year drop in each quarter of 2022, owing to tough comps and consumption trends, but better performance in each quarter versus 2019. Zooming in on Q3, our sales performance was broadly in line with what we observed in Q2 as both quarters showed a drop of about 8% year-on-year. It still reflects an overall depressing consumption pattern and as expected, a context where consumers have to make difficult choices. However, the monthly sequence was different. The sales trend in July was in line with what we saw in May-June, down in the low double digits, while August was pretty stable year-on-year, supported by higher inventory levels and consequently improve product availability as well as late August discount operations. September activity, while still negative year-on-year improved compared to the recent trend of the previous month. Thanks to higher promotional activity to support traffic and sales conversion that I will comment on the next slide. Compared to pre-pandemic levels, sales were up 3% in Q3 versus the same period in 2019. Julie will comment later on how we see Q4 unfolding. On Slide 14, here too, there is a contrasting picture between the year-on-year comparison in Q3 and the comparison versus pre-pandemic levels. I will start with categories. Both Furniture and decoration sales were down about 8% in the quarter. The trend is more balanced as we benefit from the improvement of inventory replenishment in furniture. Decoration, Q3 sales amounted to EUR 164 million and accounted for 59% of total third quarter sales, 61% of sales in France, the vast majority of which occurred in stores, frames, lighting, tableware performed particularly well. Q3 Furniture sales totaled $14 million and nearly half of those occurred online, thanks to dynamic international activities. Bestsellers included this quarter, arms chairs, sofas, tables and outdoor furniture. In a sector hampered by the global inflationary context, furniture is somehow impacted by the size of the ticket and perhaps a recruitment rate that improved during COVID time. However, past performance did benefit from significant progress in inventory replenishment with an immediate availability ratio now at the end of September at 72% versus 58% at the end of June 2022. It's a very positive achievement that should also serve the Q4 activity and enable a more favorable entry point into 2023. Looking now at channels. Q3 online GMV is back to mid-single-digit growth, thanks to the successful change in marketing tactics and the acceleration of our marketplace. Julie commented that. Marketplace has represented 30% of total online GMV this quarter. As you know, marketplace has a different grow-through to sales. So looking at Q3 online sales, there were almost EUR 80 million, down 7% year-on-year, but sequentially improving, following a Q2 at minus 34% year-on-year. They're representing 29% of good sales over the quarter. Q3 store sales amounted to roughly EUR 200 million in Q3, sorry. They were down 9% after a positive H1 performance, which was partly driven by the H1 2021 base effect as stores are partially closed during that period. As expected, Q3 2022 traffic growth was negative year-on-year as last year, traffic growth benefited from a boost after COVID store closure. July and August traffic were down similar to June traffic. September was better, thanks to physical retail gaining back some momentum for the back-to-school period and also promotional activities that drove people to stores. Compared to 2019, online sales are up 11%, reflecting again our digital ramp-up, while store sales are broadly stable. Finally, by geography. Q3 sales in France reached nearly EUR 147 million, down around 11%. France accounted for 52% of our sales in the quarter where online were in France down 5% year-on-year, and store sales were roughly down low single digit -- low -- sorry, low teens according to higher comparison base in 2021. Geography international sales totaled almost EUR 132 million and were down 5% year-on-year. We saw a resilient performance in Southern Europe with broadly stable combined sales in Spain and Italy, which account for 58% of total international sales. In the rest of Europe, the environment was tougher and combined sales in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, decreased 12% year-on-year. Compared to 2019, sales in France were down 3%, with the effect of less stores versus 2019, minus 12%, while international sales were up 10% with a favorable effect of extra 17 stores, reflecting the rebalancing of geography. On the next slide, I'd like to update you on our cost containment action plan, which aims to strike a fine balance between driving sales and preserving margins. As you know, the current inflationary environment has led to a reallocation of discretionary consumer spending away from the home and living sector, a much higher promotional environment and increased input costs. In the face of this new reality, the group implemented in May, an action plan to defend the gross margin, content cost and protect cash. I'm pleased to report that the plan is fully on track, and we will achieve our targets of generating an extra EUR 5 million in gross margin and in adjusting our cost by EUR 20 million to mitigate the impact of rising inflation. On the gross margin side, we have focused our efforts on a new round of negotiations with key suppliers and stepping up operating efficiencies on sourcing and our collectioning process. Very importantly as well, we put in place a new pricing policy over the summer with a second wave of price uplift, notably in furniture around high single digits as the second semester collections were released. And we continued active revenue management to guarantee price competitiveness. On that topic, as mentioned in July, promotion level for the year will be around 2 to 3 points above last year, which was pretty low back to 2019 historical never know. On the cost side, we put in place cost reduction measures in the store network. We have as well reduced marketing spend, taking very strict return on investment approach. And we implemented a company-wide reduction on spending covering areas such as travel, third-party fees. 2022 CapEx originally planned and around EUR 90 million has been revised onwards and is now expected to be in the range of EUR 70 million to EUR 75 million for the year, focusing only on key strategic projects, such as our second round IT and transformation projects while deferring all nonessential CapEx. We aim to make sure that every euro spent at the time of a certainty and consumption in general is well investing and is preparing for future growth. Regarding working capital requirements, the group has made good progress in adjusting its H2 shipping plans to mitigate excess inventory risk while rebuilding inventories in selected product families to support Q4 activity in Q1 2023 sales. And simultaneously negotiating with suppliers to reorganize manufacturing and purchasing placing as well as to optimize payments terms. In the current context, we are not stopping there. And we are working on new initiatives to prepare 2023 in the face of persistently challenging market conditions to better balance our economic equation. This wide-ranging plans include a thorough review of our store opening and closing plans that may translate into an acceleration of plant closures and postponement of some openings. If the development of stores is central to the organic growth agenda of Maisons du Monde, we just aim at adapting this plan to the current reality to protect cash and ensure that we resume a more aggressive plan when the market conditions will fully support that strategy. We are as well reviewing 2022-2023 internal projects that are important to strengthen our operating model that can be deferred, so all teams are purely focused on commercial initiatives. Finally, we have started reinforcing our SG&A containment initiatives, reducing, for example, consumes fees, again, to the minimum, further adapting our organization while anticipating some payroll increases in 2023, and we're negotiating all contracts with major providers. As an example, energy is assembled to what we do. In parallel of investment to reduce energy consumption in the recent years, our recent negotiation in each country, will enable Maisons du Monde to stabilize or possibly reducing energy bills versus this year. It's a great achievement for next year. Preparing 2023 is an important focus at the moment. It will be still a challenging year. At the same time, it is hard to forecast the dynamics of the sector. We all know that inflation will last in some countries make possibly according to some economic center into recession. If my team strikes that may adjust favorably as planned. ForEx will be adverse, and we will face inflation across our operating model. This is why all Maisons du Monde are already fully focused on preparing and optimizing the 2023 equation. Let me now hand back to Julie.

Thank you, Regis. On Slide 17 now. I'd like to give you a bit of flavor on current trading and detail our commercial and operational priorities for Q4. Well, overall, what we've seen to date in October is a bit of a contrasting situation between stores and online. On the store front, traffic is down again year-on-year and also versus 2019, while September was pretty flat versus last year. In France, it has been penalized by recent fuel strikes, which resulted in fuel shortages and reduced store visits. On the other hand, online traffic keeps growing year-on-year broadly to the same extent it had in September, supported by promotional activities and as we said by the growth of our marketplace. For the fourth quarter as a whole, we expect sales improvement over Q3. This will be driven by a combination of factors on top of the typical seasonality we see in our business. First, an easier comparable base online. Second, further improvement in funds inventory levels, building on the significant progress we made in inventory replenishment and third, an active agenda of commercial initiatives. Indeed, for the remainder of the year, we will be running a number of initiatives to support traffic and sales in tacitly soft human environments. First, we will continue to roll out tactical promotional activity to drive traffic in cells to promote demand and also to manage the access inventory risk. Second, we will build on the promising start of our marketplace in Italy, rolling out its in-store for the country. Third, we will be testing a new digital solution in French stores to passive cell conversion there and also boost CRM capabilities. And finally, we plan to launch the Rhinov interior designer service in Italy and Spain. At the same time, and as just mentioned by Regis, we will be continuing our cost and cash protection initiatives, notably by adjusting Asia to Europe shipping plans, continuing to optimize our key supplier relationships and engage in CapEx with a very strict discipline. So let me conclude on Slide 18 with our guidance, which remains unchanged. It is fair to acknowledge that we will continue this quarter to operate in a difficult and uncertain environment marked by continued inflation, soft purchasing power and changing consumer habits that has an impact on the home and decoration market. But the commercial initiatives we are implementing since the end of May as well as our system efforts in inventory replenishment have been bearing fruit and should continue to support our activity through the end of the year. Moreover, the cost and cash selling action plan that we started in Q2 is also delivering its planned [indiscernible]. Consequently, our full year '22 objectives remain unchanged. As a reminder, Maisons du Monde to achieve in the full year top line that will decrease in the mid-single-digit range and EBIT margin of 5% or above, free cash flow of EUR 10 million to EUR 30 million, a dividend pay-out ratio of 30% to 40% and a reduction of the group's carbon intensity with CO2 neutrality scopes 1 and 2. We remain fully confident in the fundamental strength of Maisons du Monde, which combines a strong love brand, a broad range of desirable and increasingly sustainable harmonic products with a unique omnichannel business model. Well, thank you for your attention, and Regis and I are now happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] We have one question so please standby. We are now taking the question from Marie-Line Fort from SG CIB.

I've got several questions. The first one is on your Q3 negative performance in France in stores. Could you comment further if it's more market driven or still due to the lack of inventories? Second question is about your inventories level projected for 2023. I was curious to know how you will determine the good level of inventories for next year in this particularly context? And the third question is about the competitive landscape. There is a lot of competitors struggling at that time. How do you think it could help you to gain market shares, particularly online, curious to have your view on that point?

Thank you, Marie-Line. So I'll take your first and third question and Regis will answer to your second question around inventories. Regarding the performance in France in Q3, well, this is related to base effect. As you might remember, in Q2, we had a strong growth in France due to very good store dynamics following the base effect of 2021. So that is France returning to sort of like a longer-term trend, but it's mainly related to that, so specific effect here. Around the competition and market shares, it is true that, unfortunately, quite a few players are struggling, and this talk to the changing environment. And when we look at market shares, it is true that we've been seeing in France that Maisons du Monde was one of the very, very few players that managed to maintain or even slightly improve its market share. And if we take a longer-term view that is from 2019, it is the same story. We've been gaining market share over traditional players. So this is indeed what is happening. I think that those who like us have a very virtuous marketplace model are the best equipped in the current context. Because if you look at the environment, demand is soft out of everywhere. So having a very performing marketplace allows us to go and serve demand where it is. So very small and slight pockets of demand where it is very well hidden, but we managed to do that with the vast offering of our marketplace. So and we also have the other leg of our Maisons du Monde offering. So we can see in this context that we have a very virtuous model. And I do believe that we will keep gaining market share, the more we go, the more we have the economies of scale [Technical Difficulty]. So I think the diamonds will keep this way.

Thank you, Marie-Line. And I will compliment on your question vis-a-vis inventory for 2023. As I said during the call, currently, we are adapting the shipping plant and the manufacturing and production planning, which is important because it's at the beginning of the process, and we have been starting -- well, we have been managing this way really very, very, very cautiously in the recent months to go to adapt for Q2, as I said, to secure Christmas season and at the time adapt the inventory for the rest and secure the entry point for 2023. So how do we do that? Obviously, it's a combination of adapting our sales projections by category, by channel, by quarter, monitoring the shipping plan and the production planning is important. So it's really, I would say, classic circle of decision with a lot of transversality internally in between the different departments, so to ensure that we go to the right level of coverage, and it will translate into some adjustments, obviously, versus where we see it at the moment. But I cannot be more precise. Again, it will depend a lot on the projection of sales that we will get.

We don't have any other questions at the moment.

Maybe we can go through the chat question.

Yes, I can see a question from [ AGIG ] of [ Joe Orwell ]. Question is vis-a-vis the magnitude of cost savings that can be further implemented without impacting business model. Basically, it's a question with a couple of questions. The second part is about our strategy on promotion, whether we could adapt it on the back of gross margin to support the activities. And there is a overall question on USD exposure and hedging. So I may take those 3. I will not comment more in detail the cost savings that can be further implemented. As I commented during the call, it's a large bunch of initiatives. It goes from SG&A, but to other elements even in gross margin negotiation. So I think the spirit is that we are really adapting the model so to make sure that we are focusing on commercial priorities and that we adapt for the rest to secure and refine the equation. We want the model to be profitable to keep the level of profitability and to restore gross margin, as we said previously in July. So it's really important. We go across the board, and that's really important. We operate that way. We will be clear, obviously, later on. And obviously, next time we discuss with all of you. Vis-a-vis promotion, yes, tactically, I just remind all of you that, again, we have adapted our promotion level this year. It will be 2 to 3 points above what it was last year. It's still very reasonable. It's an equivalent of 5% to 7% to 8% sales ratio on net sales, which was the level of 2019. And indeed, at the same time, we are passing price hikes at the rhythm of the launch of the new collection. We are adapting tactically the promotion to make sure that we have competitiveness really protected. So it's an overall management of promotion and pricing in general. So yes, we are ready to do so, but we will do it tactically without changing and, let's say, equity itself, which is not a promoted brand. Vis-a-vis USD, I think the question was on the exposure, where we have quite, as you know, pretty much 85% of our sourcing is in Asia, so in USD plus treat. So a very large portion of our cost of goods sold is exposed to USD. For the year, for 2022, I commented in July, there will be no material variation versus last year. Our hedging policy is an 18-month running process. It means that for this year, we started at the end of 2020. So we have I think, a good approach on USD exposure, and we have been able, therefore, to protect our equation this year. For next year, we have started in the same way. So it means that next year, we will have a USD effect because we are not yet fully covered from 2023. But I think we have already secured quite favorable approach versus the spot rate anyway. So just to conclude, USD, yes, will be negative probably year-on-year next year, but it's one component of gross margin. It's not only about this one. We have reopened all negotiations with suppliers. Again, we have a new pricing approach. Promotion is another element. Freight negotiation is as well a key important matter. So we are positive in the way we can manage gross margin overall with the different indicators. Hope it does answer all your questions, AG. So after AG, we have another question, which is about the comparison of sales I may read it. Could you give us a comparison of the sales of the stores network with a comparable surface area? Or at least specify the surface area of the French stores in international stores per quarter for 2021 and 2019?

So I might take that question, Sami. I'll give you sort of the big picture. As you know France and international store networks are indeed pretty different in terms of surface area in the sense that the French store network is about 2/3 in retail parks and 1/3 in shopping centers and city centers. So 2/3 in France retail parks, and that is over 90% growth. And as you know, retail parks is quite bigger. It's about 2,000 square meters on average, so to say. We have the shopping mall and city centers, they are more between 500 and 1,000 square meters. So after the sort of the setup of the store network, indeed, international stores are bigger compared to French stores. So they drive more sales per store because of that. Now if I can maybe give you a flavor country by country about what's been happening, it's been alluded to by Regis earlier on. But just to give you, again, the big picture over the 9-month period. What we see is that we have France, as we could say, that is around mid-single-digit negative, but that is flat versus 2019. So France is sort of in the middle. We have Southern Europe, which is performing really well. So it's positive over the 9-month period year-on-year, but it's really strong double digit versus 2019. And other countries like Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, they are fairly down year-on-year, but they are also strong double-digit positive versus 2019. So here again, you can see the base effect. So just to have in mind the key messages around countries France is sort of in the middle, flat versus '19. We have a very strong international versus '19, but versus year-on-year. Southern Europe is strongly positive. Northern Europe is fairly strongly negative. So this is a dynamic across countries.

We have a question of Florent on the warehouse. I may read the question, and I think it's consistent with another question. When the new warehouse will be operational, what will be the OpEx generated by this new warehouse? So new warehouse has started operations back in July for the manual part of the operations. And as you may remember, there will be an automated part that will start only next year. So that's about the when. Vis-a-vis the OpEx, I will not comment in detail. I think what is really important is to remember the reason why of this second warehouse, it's really as well to optimize the full logistic approach for those that may have not that in mind, but we have a very centralized logistics approach today. We have one big warehouse in South of France. So everything is there about de-risking in a way, this approach by having a second warehouse that will enable us to optimize our deliveries for the north part of our activity. So it's not only about OpEx. It's really about extra cost to operate, sure, but at the same time, efficiencies in transport. So I will comment more in detail when we will discuss about next year trajectory. But just to clarify that there is a return on this investment on the back of this extra efficiency via the automation plus the optimization of logistics transport. Question of Christophe, how do you see the store network evolution in 2023, France versus international, if possible?