OVS S.p.A. (0OV1.MU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the OVS 9 Months 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Stefano Beraldo, CEO of OVS. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good afternoon to everyone. Obviously, I'm very happy to communicate these results, which I consider excellent in a moment where the market is still what it is. So basically stable or slightly negative. And to outline that we grew again in the quarter on top of a very strong quarter of last year. So in 2 years, the growth in the quarter achieved is near to 17%, 18%. And even if we look at the 9 months, we are growing 3% on top of the almost 7%. So more than 10% the combined growth in 2 years, in 9 months. And being the market leader, this is I think, really outstanding given the market condition again and given that the growth has been posted mostly at -- in terms of organic growth. But not only I want to underline the sales performance, but even most importantly, the quality of this sales performance because we are growing with all the good projects that we are starting to -- we are starting to generate results. So project is something that we do constantly, but delivery is another aspect, and we are really in a moment where we started looking at the results in terms of good implementation of all the projects that we are making. And the most important and interesting result is that we continue to grow in the women. The women is the mother of every buying decision in this segment. She buys for herself, she buys for the kids and sometimes she buys for the husband or for the partner. And the woman is a segment of business, which is growing more, driven by the brand. And the brand means creating value, not only creating sales, but creating intangible equity because the brand represents a new and a different reason to visit OVS for each category of customer. All the brands that we introduced are performing very well, not only Piombo, which is already a solid portion of our strategy, which has been able to attract a new typology of customers more demanding in terms of style and also price. But also Les Copains, which in the second season confirms to be another incremental reason to visit OVS with the attitude of kind of presenting a type of style, which is complementary to the aspect which are typical of Piombo, where Piombo is more colorful and eclectic and Les Copains is more contemporary and very good for an everyday use. B.Angel is growing more than the others, demonstrating that we are attracting younger customers and the cross marketing with the Beauty segment is another aspect of the strategy, which is working extremely well. Even Utopja dedicated to Generation Z is working very well. So this peculiarity of the strategy of OVS is really generating good and I think, solid result also in terms of future opportunities. And also the margins, which those brands are generating to OVS are increasing. Obviously, as more a brand becomes a brand as more it's worth to pay a premium for it. And this is exactly what we are trying to do also by investing -- by making material investment in advertising in Piombo, Les Copains, B.Angel and also Utopja. Each of them with its own peculiarity of advertising, traditional media for Piombo, Instagram for B.Angel, TikTok for Utopja for instance. And then the growth comes also from other projects, which are starting to become material. The Beauty is already a very important component of our growth and also of our increase of profitability because the sales density of the space dedicated to beauty inside the OVS store is double and sometimes triple compared to the average sales density of the apparel. And also on the back of the good success of the assortment that we have been able to create with the Beauty department inside OVS, we started opening stand-alone stores. Now we have 6 stores, and they are generating more sales density than we expected with good margins. So we have another business to take care of, which is opening stand-alone Shaka stores all across Italy. And we think that the pilot period is over now. And next year, we will enter in a rollout phase with the opening of, I hope, dozens of stores denominated Shaka. We created another small story, which for now is only a pilot, but seems very interesting. We decided to create a new format. We called it OVS Atelier. And OVS Atelier means being able to populate a space of about 200, 300 square meters in high-end location downtown, high street, where sometimes it's not possible to find a big space for a full format OVS in cities where we are not present in the heart of the city, but only we are present maybe in the shopping mall around the city. And we have about 70 cities in Italy -- 60, 70 where we are not still present in the main street because of the reasons that I told that we can target with this format. On this format, we will include only the better items of our collections, the higher price and the most qualitative. The results of this opening, which took place in Novara in -- the first 60 days are incredible because the sales density of this store is almost 3x higher than the average of the OVS stores, and we are much ahead of our budget. Even in this case, I think that if this pilot will confirm also in the next coming months, the initial results, there is a possibility to open dozens of these stores in Italy and maybe not only in Italy. We are starting to take advantage of the first actions put in place by our team regarding Goldenpoint. I'm happy to say that Goldenpoint sales are double digit -- are growing double digit since our real takeover of the business. You know that we acquired the company last year, but given the time requested to manage the development of the product, it takes 1 year before being able to introduce the new collections. And starting from September, if you enter in a Goldenpoint store, you will start seeing that about 60% -- 70% of our product range has been generated by us. And all the segment of this business where we have been able to activate our creativity and buying capacity are growing double digit. The only 2 categories where we didn't touch the product that were the consequences of the former decision are stable basically. So very happy also because of this. Last but not least, international. We opened our flagship in Delhi as probably I told you 1 quarter ago. The store has been opened since 60 days, basically. And even in this case, the results are higher compared to our expectation. And in this store, we are planning now to achieve sales density, which are in line with the better sales density of our better flagship in the Italian shopping malls. So all in all, I think we have a lot of good arguments to confirm to us and to you that the company is well placed to continue to grab market share to consolidate the market, not only with the main format of OVS, but also thanks to all the other elements that we are managing. Also [ Upim ] is doing well because Upim is now confirming the great result of last year. So consolidating 1 year of growth like 7%, 8% that was the increase of sales of last year is something really noticeable, I think. In terms of cost, everything is under control and the perspective for next year are that the project that I mentioned will continue to generate growth and profitability. And also from the sourcing side, we confirm, as you can see from the exchange rate that the dollar is going to work in our favor. While this year, basically, the margin increase is mostly determined by product development and not by currency effect. So sorry I have been a bit long. And I hand the word to Francesco Leoncini as usually for a more in-depth analysis of the figure. Thank you.

Thank you, Stefano. I will start with Page #4 with the third quarter results. On the left column, you see the reported results that include Goldenpoint. And as [ Cesar ] said, a 9% growth in sales and also a 9% growth in EBITDA. But if we disaggregate and we keep separate Goldenpoint on the pro forma perimeter, we see a growth still important, 4.1% and an even higher increase in the profitability which would be EUR 54 million for the Q3 and plus 16%. This obviously thanks to the operating leverage that is perfectly working in this context of growth driven by like-for-like performance. On Page #5, we see the 9 months. The Q3 builds on an already very strong first half results that we communicated in September. And so globally, we are reaching EUR 152 million EBITDA in the 9 months, which is, of course, growing versus last year by over EUR 17 million. And also in terms of EBITDA margin, we see a relevant increase from 11.5% (sic) 11.2% to 12.2% (sic) 12.5%. Even more interesting, I think, would be the view on the last 12 months because on the last 12 months, it is a full year. We broke the EUR 200 million level with EUR 212 million recorded and a 12.5% EBITDA margin. That means if we compare to the 250 million of shares outstanding, EUR 0.83 per share of EBITDA achieved. Moving to Page #6, where we have some more details by channel and by brand. We see that the growth that over the 9 months was 2.9% on the pro forma perimeter. In reality, it is again close to 4% on the main channel of the directly operated store and e-commerce. While we see a slight decline in the franchising and B2B, that needs some comment because the franchising business is still growing. Our partners -- the relationship between OVS and the partners is very good. We just have a technical reduction in the low-margin sales of all stock to marketplaces. And in fact, as we can see, the profitability is not suffering at all, is even increasing. By brand, this year, OVS is growing more than Upim that we remember was growing significantly last year. Just to provide you data, in 2023, the sales were EUR 257 million. So we are growing by almost EUR 25 million in the 2 years in Upim. And the higher growth in sales then determines then higher growth also in the EBITDA that OVS is growing by 10% (sic) [ 10.5% ] to EUR 122 million (sic) [ EUR 122.8 million ]. But also in Upim, even with just a 1.3% growth, then we have an EBITDA growth of 4% to over EUR 30 million (sic) [ EUR 30.5 million ] in the 9 months. So overall, let me say, a global positive -- globally positive performance. Page #7, we start having a look to the balance sheet items. The trade working capital is, let me say, basically steady in terms of incidence to net sales, 13.8%, 14%. So a flattish situation. We improved even more the performance on trade receivable. Inventory is basically flat. I mean, it's growing by EUR 7 million. That is a 2%, 3% growth in the business that we have. While on trade payables, we see a slight decline because we anticipated the fall/winter purchases this year that we were not able to do it in 2024 when there was the outbreak of the Suez crisis. But in the end, I mean, we are talking about numbers that have a low impact on the total values of the company. And another point that we see on the trade payables is that the decline is also due to the fact that for the spring/summer 2026 orders, the cost is lower because the euro-dollar is providing us an advantage that we will see in the P&L just next year, but we already see it in terms of the price of the goods that we purchase in far east. Page #8 is a snapshot on the investments that has envisaged are reducing versus 2024 and are reducing basically on logistics where we completed the automation on the Pontenure warehouse on the Pontenure [ logistics ] center. And while we are not reducing our efforts in making -- in growing the network and in making it as beautiful as possible with the refurbishments that then are putting into the P&L a growth of almost 10% versus the previous baseline. So it's an element on which we continue to invest also in this year. Page #9, we have the 9-month cash flow. Just to remember, of course, the cash flow is something that has a full view only on the 12 year [ month ] basis, but nonetheless, also in the 9 months, we see an improvement versus last year, thanks to the growth in EBITDA, partially absorbed by the trade working capital. We are more or less stabilizing the cash out for financial charges and taxes. And so due to the normal seasonality of our business in the 9 months, we still have a cash absorption, but it is lower than in previous year. So this leads on Page #10 on the picture on the net debt. We have always to put the second decimal to see the changes into the leverage ratio, which are stable, 1.4x, 1.3x depending on having the position right now or the average. But on a level that is steady now since some period of time and with treasury shares amounting to almost 4.4% of the total capital. I move then to Page #12, just to summarize what Stefano already told about the outlook for a positive conclusion of this year, levering as said on 2012 -- last 12 months actual EBITDA and so in a situation where the outlook is positive for [ 2025 ] and also for the incoming 2026. So I think we are ready now to get your questions, and thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions]. The first question is from Francesco Brilli, Intermonte.

A few questions from my side. The first one is on profitability. I mean, I see very, very good developments on each brand on OVS and Upim. And I was wondering if you can share additional color on the other brands. I assure -- I'm assuming that also Stefanel is very close to breakeven at an EBITDA level, Stefanel and GAP, while I mean, Goldenpoint as anticipated, suffered from seasonality, and it was something that expected. But I was curious on -- more on the Stefanel recovery, if you can add something on this. And then on the margins of Goldenpoint for next year, do you think you will be already able to normalize the seasonality of Goldenpoint's more than what -- I mean, more than this year or we will see also next year some volatility. So better margins in the key season, summer season and then some weakness in the winter. And I would add, if I may, an additional one more on the strategy. So on international expansion, do you have some target or midterm goal on how much sales will come from international in the midterm or if you have some target or something that you can share with us?

Sorry. Sorry, I was speaking to nobody. Sorry. Thank you for the question. I was saying that, first of all, every brand is improving, including Stefanel and GAP. Regarding Stefanel, it was to mention that if in the first half, we decided to be very prudent in the intake because I wanted to be sure that the new quality of the organization and the people, which is in charge of developing collection was satisfactory. Once we realize that since the beginning of the season, the quality of the new collection was good. We decided to buy the normal quantities for the second half. This generated a situation where starting from September, the like-for-like of Stefanel started becoming plus 10% basically every week and even more. This is the first point. The second point is that the margin of Stefanel improved. And it improved not because we -- basically, we saved in the sourcing, but we adopted all the synergies that the group might have generated. And what is important, we reduced drastically the markdown. So it was not necessary like in the past, to generate sales, thanks to an exaggerated policy of markdown. So this disciplined markdown approach, combined with a better quality of the product generated a very good sales performance, which turned into a good profitability. I think coming to your question that by the year-end crossing finger, Stefanel will be breakeven at EBITDA level. And in the third quarter, Stefanel is already positive. So let me say, I wouldn't be surprised if in the 12 months, Stefanel would be negative at breakeven at EBITDA level. On GAP, we confirm that we are downsizing all the activity. And basically, what we'd expect for next year is not any more a focus on the EBITDA, which is more or less 0, but a focus on getting rid of the stock. So according to our plan, GAP will generate from EUR 3 million to EUR 4 million of net positive cash from the liquidation basically of the activities because we will sell the stock that we acquired and the quantity of new stock will be the one -- the new stock that we will buy will be much lower than the stock that we have in hand now. The second question was regarding the seasonality of Goldenpoint. One thing is important for each of us and for you, which are taking care of our company in terms of analysis, you must become familiar with this seasonality. The company is mostly exposed to summer with the swimwear. And we cannot -- and we don't want to lose this peculiarity. On the other side, or maybe to be more precise, you have to be familiar with the first quarter, which is very weak in terms of sales; second quarter, very strong; third quarter, weak again, but less weak compared to the first quarter; and the fourth quarter, which is the strongest in terms of sales. In terms of margin, probably the second quarter will be the highest because most of the sales are generated at full price. While in the last quarter, January sales are totally impacted by the sales. Anyway, we have in place several arguments to minimize the seasonality. One is that there is one segment of business, which is the leggings, which is going to be replaced by leisure wear, so a different kind of trousers. We are doing a new typology of trousers, and these are very important in the second quarter and also in the first quarter. So this is the first measure to reduce the seasonality. The second measure is the much stronger weight in the mix of the underwear. The underwear means the [ leisure ] is basically much more stable than all the other categories. So with giving more space to underwear and the results are already very encouraging, we are again minimizing the seasonality. The third level of merchandising mix changes, which will contribute to minimize the seasonality will be the knitwear, the light knitwear. We are introducing superlight texture like silk and cashmere, cotton and cashmere, cotton and silk. These arguments are interesting in spring and in autumn, which are exactly the 2 portions of the year where the company is weaker. So all in all, we have several reasons why to believe that the seasonality that will continue to characterize this company will be reduced. International expansion. Yes, we have target. We are not used to share with our investors our target because we normally do not communicate our business plan. But obviously, we have target. What I can say is that the first time in this very long period during which I'm managing the company, something new is happening. I would say 2 important factors are now in place. The first factor is that we are not anymore forced to limit our international expansion to opportunistic activations, which are basically motivated by our former very weak balance sheet. So having too much leverage, we couldn't invest in new countries with our own subsidiaries, contrarily to what Zara, H&M, UNIQLO did. And so basically, we were forced to find independent franchisee that basically were interested in opening a small store by taking a small risk and investing their CapEx given that we didn't have the priority of investing CapEx and our main goal was to consolidate as we did successfully the Italian market. Now we don't have this constraint anymore, and we can consider in a very selective way where to take some more risk, becoming more solid in our -- and focusing better in some markets, which are material also in terms of size and where we do see interesting opportunities. In a second, I will tell you which are those markets. But the second even most important reason is the strength that we feel we have achieved in the women. Thanks to the improvement in this category, which again is the most important in this business. We feel that we have the physical role now in order to be able to target international market and to compare -- and to offer international customers a brand and an opportunity to buy, which is getting similar to the best-in-class. As a matter of fact, we are focusing now in consolidating the market where we are present because we don't want to exit from markets which are generating good results in any case. But we are focusing in new markets like India. This is the most important market where we are putting energy and some CapEx. We created a subsidiary. We opened one full format in the third biggest, most important Delhi shopping mall. Our competitor in the same mall are Zara, Uniqlo and Marks & Spencer. Happy to say that in this shopping mall, we are achieving sales density, which are in line, as I said, with a better store in the better Italian shopping mall. We have -- we are projecting a sales density of about EUR 3,500 per square meter, which is excellent. And according to information that we are achieving by our people, which are discussing with the store manager of Zara, Uniqlo, Marks & Spencer seems, I say seems because there is nothing official, seems that we are very close to Zara in terms of sales density and 3x higher than Marks & Spencer. And considering that Marks & Spencer has 100 stores in India, I think we have a target which is already implicit in this number. We will open a new store in Delhi and a new store in Mumbai in a few months. And starting from once we open the store, all the landlords, which were a bit not skeptical, but maybe prudent in offering us a new location are now offering good location at very attractive rent. So India is going to be an important test for us. Dubai will be another important place because we already have 4 stores in Dubai. And since we improved our operation by opening a new hub in Dubai in order to be closer to the Middle East area, the hub is also used to supply our stores in Saudi Arabia, for instance, and in the rest of the United Emirates. Our sales density, our sales are improving by 40%, 50% in the same store simply because operations are more fluid and effective. So I think that international expansion for us will be the real priority for the next coming years. Today, we are already making money because if we consider the country EBITDA before the overhead, we are generating about EUR 10 million EBITDA on EUR 70 million sell-in. So we already have more than decent profitability. Then once we consider the overhead, which are about EUR 4 million, we end up with approximately EUR 5 million EBITDA generated on a full year basis from international. But the future growth will not require a linear increase of overhead because we have achieved the number of people and organization that is needed in order to sustain even a much higher turnover. So I think that we will continue to work in order to generate material growth also in international now with full format, not anymore with -- only with a small kid store.

The next question is from Andrea Bonfa of Banca Akros.

Some of my questions have been answered, but I would like to know if it's possible to have some development or recent development on Kasanova, if any. And as far as the U.S. dollar, how much did you cover for next year, if it's possible?

Okay. Thank you, Andrea. Kasanova, basically, I can answer in 2 ways. From an industrial point of view, the initial work and cooperation that we are working on with the Kasanova team are demonstrating the good reason for this interest. We are discovering opportunities in the merchandising mix. They are very strong in some categories, in general, in hard goods, and they are very weak in textile. And because textile represents more than 20% of the total sales of Kasanova, we believe that in this case, there are material savings that we can offer to the company without an exaggerated effort. On the other side, we are receiving confirmation from vendors that once the situation would be stabilized, we can buy a better condition, also the existing categories that they are sourcing on one side by getting rid of middlemen, which they are using in order to source because they do not have a stable organization in the Far East market, in the Far East countries differently from what we do have. So basically, they might take advantage of our know-how in managing directly the sourcing from Far East suppliers. The second reason for this is that once in front of a buyer, which is reliable in terms of payment terms, the vendor will improve the conditions simply because they are talking to a more solid buyer and their credit will become a real credit and not a big risk like today. In terms of cost, we are realizing that the lack of a good instrument in order to manage planning of goods, planning of working hours, managing the labor cost in the big number of stores that they have with different time shift given the different opening times of shopping mall, downtown. And because they do not manage this in a I would say, the normal way, not in a sophisticated way. They really manage it in a very primordial, if I might say, way. There is a lot of advantages also to be taken at cost of labor store, cost of labor level. Only an example, they do not place the level of the ticketing in the -- neither in the vendors' warehouses or in the general warehouse. Every store put manually all the tag, the price tag product by product. You can imagine the number of hours which are wasted in doing these activities in such a disaggregated way. Finally, we have understood that once merged with us, if and when there will be another material cost saving due to reduction of overhead. From a financial, legal point of view, we are still working. So we can say that we are not in the closing mode. We are still working with banks. The banks are super happy to have ovs.in. The suppliers are super happy to have ovs.in, but the Board of the company is still debating and asking things that we will not deliver. So this -- just to give you a little bit of color, we are very demanding, obviously, because the company is that man working in our opinion, with excellent industrial opportunities once saved and incorporated by us, but we are still working in order to achieve kind of an optimal final agreement with vendors and banks in absence of which we are still ready to retire. This is not a mood, but we are very demanding now, and we will keep you posted once we have news about it. U.S. dollar, in the last 2 weeks, we hedged another big portion of our total needs. So we are hedged at 90% for the second half. And I think for the first half, 100%. So sorry, we are hedged 60% on the second half. 100% of the first half, we are still hedging now in these weeks. So in total, we have covered something more than 80% of our total U.S. dollar needs.

The next question is from Gian Marco Gadini at Kepler Cheuvreux.

I have some on the top line growth, I would like to go into that particularly as regards to like-for-like growth, particularly if there were any seasonal effects or weather impact in October that boosted the like-for-like growth and thus, if we should expect some reversal in Q4? And if this is the case, if you are seeing anything like that in November and December? And also about the closures and the impact of closures and new openings on the like-for-like growth. And very last question, piece of question regarding like-for-like growth, if you can disclose the share of cosmetics in your -- in the overall top line figure. And if I may, regarding the free cash flow generation, if you have any indication, particularly with regards to the last quarter cash generation and CapEx commitment. And if you can tell us something about the buyback, if you are going to maintain the level of buybacks you have maintained in the last couple of quarters. And if this capital allocation policy, if this can be defined as a capital allocation policy that can be assumed also for the next years. Sorry for the amount of questions.

I wrote a bible with all your questions. So I feel the 3 pages. I hope I can remember some of them. Apart any joke, thank you for the question. Like-for-like, I think your main question is regarding like-for-like. Yes, weather is, as always, has an impact in our sales, mostly in the kids, which is more sensitive, less in the women, which is able to buy independently from weather sometime. Anyway, coming more precisely on your question, yes, we had an advantage -- a small advantage in -- disadvantage in September and a small advantage in October. So all in all, in the Q, we don't see material weather effect. You can consider the Q neutral. And the real incredible thing is that the Q has been much -- has been higher compared to last year, where also thanks to a weather impact, we have been received a good boost. So being able to replicate in 2025 in the third Q, the good -- the excellent impact that weather and quality of assortment generated one year before, I think, is really important. In the last quarter, which is now halfway, well, the temperature in December are higher than normal, as you can see, particularly in north of Italy. The sales are positive like-for-like in spite of this negative trend. November was very good. December started weak because of the weather. Let's see what is going to happen from now onwards. I think we will have a good sales period because people are more and more oriented to look for bargaining in this difficult economic environment. So I think that we will continue to benefit from people which are buying our brand during the full season, but also people which are waiting for the sales period to buy the brand at a lower price. So I guess that January will be very solid this year. Anyway, as I told, positive like-for-like in the quarter-to-date as of today. Cosmetic, the weight of cosmetic on the total of the assortment is about 8% today. The cosmetic is growing double digit, but not anymore by 20% per year because we grew 20% per year in 3 consequent years, if I'm not wrong, or 2.5. So it's important to notice that we are continuing to grow at high speed, thanks to a combination of continuous improvement of the assortment and also some increase of square meter dedicated to this segment to the detriment of mostly of kids. Also good to notice that if we are growing in women, we are also positive in men and neutral in kids. So we are not losing market share in the kids market to the advantage of the emergent cheap player like Pepco, et cetera. And this is also because we reduced a little bit our price of kids because we want to keep going with maintaining good relation with our old customer base. Then you made other question which are very technical. Cash generation CapEx in the 4Q, honestly, there is not a precise answer to this question. Cash generation on 4Q will depend from sales, obviously. And sales will depend very much also from how January, which is a very important month for sales, will perform. But I expect that cash generation will be as normal, let's say, to be similar to the one that we had last year, maybe something more. In CapEx, nothing special to mention. In the fourth quarter, we don't expect either a boost or a slowdown in CapEx. So it will be in trend with the full year results. And obviously, if you need more details on this question, happy to offer you Enrico support to speak with you any time.

There was a last one as regards to buybacks. If you can tell us anything you're...

It was in the second page of my note. On buyback, we will continue in principle, the policy is still in place. Nothing changed. Obviously, like we did in the past, it will depend from the behavior of the share in the moment in which the share is going up like this morning, we are not buying, obviously, maybe this afternoon, we will buy because after a plus 8% in the first 3 hours, now there is a minus something in -- but no, apart any joke, the policy is in place, and we will continue like in the past. In terms of capital allocation, nothing special. We are working on, if I may say, reformulating our midterm sources of funds. So we are -- as you can imagine, we receive banks every 2 weeks because when you don't need money, all the banking system is offering you money. When you need money, the banks are turning the eyes on somewhere else. So because today, we don't need money, we are working on the reformulation of our balance sheet structure, making longer expiration times, longer maturity at very attractive financial conditions, but we are still working on it.

The next question is from Domenico Ghilotti, Equita.

My first question just is a clarification follow-up on the international expansion. When you say the expansion with, say, full format, but are you referring to directly operated stores or franchise? And this is the key point. Then if you -- I have a question on the profitability that we have seen, so the very strong improvement in profitability. Can you elaborate on how are you managing costs? So what is the rents and personnel inflation that you are seeing? And if you are benefiting more from a cost containment or gross margin expansion? And maybe also looking at 2026, so some preliminary thoughts on how do you see really the -- I'm not talking about profitability, probably it's too early, but how are you managing really the cost side, if you see the main tailwinds and headwinds that you see in 2026? And the very last question on, let's say, a competitive environment. So I'm trying to understand because you are referring to, say, a very tough market and you are referring to a market that is not growing overall. So I'm trying to understand if there are some players that have been, say, more more aggressive, more taking share on the market as you are or if you see really any change in the consumer behavior?

On international, we will focus on continuing with our growth in existing market, mostly with franchising players. There are markets where we make good money with franchising like Saudi Arabia, we will continue with franchising. United Emirates, we will continue with franchising with the exclusion of the flagship in Dubai. So we will maintain our franchising partner, which is happy to notice that we are opening one full format with our personnel because this will became a flagship, and they hope they will benefit from the visibility of the better perception of OVS in the area. In Cyprus, we are growing only with franchising. Like in the most of the Central Europe, we opened a store in Bulgaria a few weeks ago with a partner. We have a store in Spain with a mix of direct consignment and franchising. So our model is pretty flexible. What we will do differently from the past is that we will focus in a new country like India, which is not totally new for us because you might remember that we already opened more than 10 years ago, a few stores that were performing very well, by the way. But our partner because we were in a minority position in a joint venture, he went bankrupt because of other businesses and he stopped clearing custom on our goods. So we have been forced to stop unless we should have acquired the majority of the stake, but we didn't feel ready with our assortment. Now that we feel ready in India, we decided to stop having partner in such important country with a population of more than one billion and with a much lighter competition compared to other areas in the world like Europe or like China and with a customer which is clearly interested to Italian brand and with a customer which is young. It's worth to put some money and to do direct like most of the other partners are doing in this period. One aspect which I didn't mention before, 65% of our sales are generated by customers, which has less than 35 years. So it's a young country and seems that the young customers are appreciating OVS offer. So a mix, franchising, consignment and in some case, where it worth, full format. But I think I mentioned also that in a couple of important markets where we are making test, which is Mexico and Japan, we have a partner. So it's a pure franchising. In Mexico, we will open 60 corners with the Slim family in the Sears hypermarket and Sears in Mexico is totally different from Sears in the U.S. And in Japan, we have opened, I think, 7, 8 kids corner, and we are about to open some Piombo corner with E.ON, which is the biggest shopping mall in Japan with EUR 80 billion turnover. Likewise, we are opening satisfactorily Stefanel and Piombo corner inside GALERIA, which is a department store in Germany or inside Galeries Lafayette in France. And in this case, the agreement are franchising. So as I said, it's a mix. In terms of cost, first of all, the gross margin is growing. So one element of the contribution to the profitability is generated by the like-for-like combined -- so the operating leverage combined with a higher gross margin. In terms of cost, there is still a negative tail of the national labor agreement, which will expire this date next year. In 2025, we have the second -- third. It was basically split in 3 years, the total increase. We are in the end of the second year of increase. Next year will be the last year covered by the former national labor agreements. I don't see other negative element on the cost other than this. On the positive side, I don't remember if I informed you that we entered in a cost review, let's say. I want to review all the cost of the company. We are in the middle of this activity. And I think that for next year, we have at least EUR 2 million, EUR 3 million, EUR 4 million of overhead reduction generated by this cost review. In terms of rent, nothing special. In terms of energy, nothing special. And I think that's it. We are still waiting for a normalization in the Suez Canal interdiction basically. So we are still suffering from the water case, still waiting that operation will continue to -- will become better. So nothing worse compared to 2024 or 2025 in terms of logistics. Competitive environment, small operators like Pepco are continuing growing. Big operator like Benetton suffering strongly. H&M slightly reduction. Primark surprisingly started reducing market share because probably -- because they are not opening new store in this period in the last 12 months, apparently, according to Nielsen, their market share is going down from 2.7% to 2.6%. Pepco is going up from 0.5% to 0.6%. Piazza Italia is in trouble, I think. They have been recently -- they recently changed the governance. One of the 2 owners sold to the other one. So I think they will be in the middle of a high debt situation where I don't think they can overinvest in order to improve their performance. They have to pay down leverage -- acquisition leverage basically. Zara is still doing very well, like us. The 2 companies which are doing very well in the market are OVS and Zara, still OVS as a banner -- as a brand is gaining market share. Zara is gaining market share. According to Sita Nielsen OVS is about 6.5% and Zara is about 6.2%. Then if we consider all the other format of OVS, Zara, Inditex, et cetera, the market share goes to about 9%. Nothing else, I would say nothing else, nothing special other than this.

And just to complement on your comments, the online channel, do you see online channel still growing or frankly speaking, is not anymore.

They are continuing to grow. We are growing more than the market, the online channel -- than the online market, but the growth is not anymore very big. So I think that the shares -- the market share of digital and online and offline market are stabilizing, and the growth will be much lighter from now on.

The next question is from [ Luca Orsini ] from [indiscernible].

Just a few things I wanted to ask you is about do you have any -- do you track the average age and the average figure? And can you tell us how they've been evolving this year? And then I have a second question on Altavia, which this time you haven't mentioned it. So maybe there is something you want to say there.

Luca, this is Stefano speaking. And I have not understood the first question. So if you can reelaborate the question, please?

The question is on the average age of your customers, whether you track it and where is it -- I know you track it and where is it going and also the average ticket.

Okay. The average ticket is growing continuously. And now the average ticket, I'm looking to figure if my team is showing to me, I think it's about EUR 30, growing 3%, 4% compared to last year. And I ask my team while I speak if I'm correct or not. But they say yes. So apparently, this is the size. The age is getting lower and lower, but we track, but I don't have the figure now. We have several data point and several ways to measure from the loyal customer to interviews, obviously, the ones that are not getting part of our customer base, the loyal customer base where we -- which represent more than 60%, if I'm not wrong, of our sales, we don't have the age of the others. But according to also interview and insight view that we have out of the store when they get out and we make them question, clearly, they are getting younger. And the reason is that B.Angel and Beauty, as I said, are attracting younger customers and also Utopja. In this moment, I don't have an answer, but I would ask my team to ask our people of the marketing to get with an answer. And because I have your address, I will send you or you can ask to Enrico. On the second question, Altavia, I didn't mention simply because I forgot and because we have many projects, but Altavia is doing very well. This year, Altavia is growing by 30% in the second half, if I'm not wrong. And no, 40%. 40%, this is year-to-date. Year-to-date, Altavia is growing 40%. And -- but it's worth noticing that the total intake increased by 14%. So with 14% more gasoline, we achieved 40% higher speed, which is very good. Obviously, the consequence of this is improved profitability and better sell-through.

The next question is from Luca Bacoccoli, Intesa Sanpaolo.

Just 2 follow-ups from my side. Well, the first one is on the FX. At one of the previous calls, you flagged meaningful cost savings next year from a weaker U.S. dollar. So now you hedged 80% of next year needs. So if you have an update on the size of these savings and how you intend to deploy them? And the other follow-up is on Golden Point. Sales grew 10% year-on-year, thanks to new product offering. Can you comment on the EBITDA impact and any cost efficiency you achieved with the initial initiatives you put in place?

Well, on U.S. dollar, basically, I cannot say how much of the advantage will be delivered at the bottom line. It will depend also from the price policies. And for the second half, the price policies has still not been decided. In this moment, I don't see a reason why to be aggressive on prices. And I think that a big portion of the advantage will be maintained. Then how much marketing cost we will decide to do, which price policy we will decide to do, which kind of aggressiveness from competition, which will emerge and will force us to be partially transformed into markdown, this we don't know. So I cannot answer in such a precise and quantitative way. I can say that I'm confident that a material amount of this advantage will be delivered at the bottom line. In terms of profitability of Golden Point, if the question refers to the profitability of the third Q.

Yes, right. Yes, right.

Yes. The last year was almost minus 5%, and this year is about minus 3%, the third Q. And the full year expectation are for a solid positive EBITDA for this year and obviously for a much higher EBITDA next year.

[Operator Instructions].

Okay. So I think that the conference call is over. Let me only say that I look forward to seeing or to meeting you maybe in February, once we have elaborated our business plan for '26, '27 and '28. In that occasion, we will be able to be a bit more wide in presenting to you guys our main goals. And obviously, let me wish you on behalf of all my team also Merry Christmas and best wishes for the next coming year. Thank you.