Pandora A/S (PNDORA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. Please welcome to the stage Alexander Lacik, Chief Executive Officer, Pandora.

Welcome, dear guests. I bid you welcome to a couple of hours. We will share passion and vision for Pandora. What you just experienced in the video and in the immersion rooms is a portrait of a young, contemporary and growing global brand. Pandora has in the last 2 decades established itself firmly as a unique and highly relevant brand for consumers across the globe. Ever since Pandora first came to market, our mission has always been to democratize the jewelry space, giving millions of women possibilities to express who they are through our handcrafted jewelry. In contrast to most, if not all other players in this category, we actually invite consumers to co-create their brand experience. And this forms a very strong bond between them and our brand. So we have found a unique model where by definition, we provide a personalized experience to mass audience. Other than owning a highly differentiated brand, I would be remise if I don't spend a few words of our unique business and earnings model. First of all, Pandora straddles the space between gifting and self-purchasing. Secondly, we play in a spot between high-end luxury and fast fashion. Both those aspects allow us to target a large and cross-generational audience. Contrary to the high-end luxury model, we are focused on volume as a key growth driver, rather than relying on price and mix. This is a major difference between driving a niche brand and appealing to a wide audience. With this in mind, stretching our brand is a very potent growth idea but more about that in a second. The other unique feature is our captive earnings model. Each year, we sell approximately 10 million bracelets. And you quickly realize that over time, we have a massive installed base of bracelets. And this is what propels the highly profitable annual sales of roughly 50 million charms. This recurring revenue stream provides us with a predictable financial baseline, unlike any other jeweler. Today, we will show you how we intend to leverage those unique attributes and drive Pandora into the future. In the spirit of our brand identity, I will share 4 stories or moments, if you will, in my opening remarks. And in fact, I've created those stories with charms from our own assortment. They seek to encapsulate the key messages we would like you to take note of. During our last CMD in '21, we shared all the plans to strengthen our foundations. This is all progressing very well. So therefore, today's presentation is squarely focused on growth pillars in our strategy, to give you visibility and confidence in our plans. First and most importantly, I will share with you in which direction we're driving the brand. Secondly, I would like to once and for all break with our somewhat rocky past. In the last few years, we have transformed Pandora to become a world-class company. And I will touch briefly on some of those new foundations. Thirdly, I will cover where we are in relation to our strategy, which we call Phoenix. As the myth would tell us, the Phoenix bird possessed some superpowers, most notably, the ability to heal itself from any wound and emerge stronger and more beautiful. You may ask yourself if it was good or evil. Well, contrary to popular belief, it was neither. It's simply a primal force of change. Our strategy was a response to some failings in the past. And I'm very pleased to report that this strategy is serving us very well. Today, we will share with you our thoughts on how it will evolve into what we label it's second chapter. In the fourth and last of my stories, I will give you a high-level view of our financial ambitions in the coming 3 years. So let's move to the first of my 4 stories, which is about our north star. And in fact, if there's only one thing to remember from today's presentation, this is the one. Well, admittedly, some of you finance folks would probably pay some attention to the guidance at the back end but nevertheless. Now our ambition is to transform consumers' perception that Pandora is more than charms. It's a brand that can serve them with a full suite of meaningful jewelry. Let me repeat the most important parts of this. Transforming the perception that Pandora is a full jewelry brand. Now let's interrogate this statement a touch. First, let's zoom out from the brand perspective and look at the needs of the category in which we play. Basically, consumer needs can be divided in 2 groups. On one hand, consumers buy and use jewelry as a styling accessory. You want to match certain bit of clothing with maybe handbags, shoes, scarves, whatever and jewelry. We'll find that most brands play in this part of the game. On the other hand, people are looking for jewelry that holds a special meaning to them. I normally use my wedding ring as an example. It's clearly not very fancy but of course, it represents something very profound to me. It's in this segment that Pandora plays. Our consumers come to us primarily because they can find and compose a unique piece of jewelry that holds a high emotional value to them. This is important because it gives our brand a unique and very relevant positioning in the market. You can certainly copy our products. but it's incredibly difficult to dislodge a brand that owns and just commands this unique point of difference in people's minds. So Pandora owns this space of meaningful jewelry. And I would argue, this is our most important asset. So back to our statement. There are 2 important ideas here. First, the idea of stretching the brand to encompass more than just charms. Secondly, that we intend to transform the perception of what our brand stands for. Pretty much every brand in our sector started with an iconic product idea, which over time allowed the brand to broaden its reach with a wider assortment, thus opening up more growth avenues. A great example of a mass brand, could for instance be Dove, started in 1957 in the U.S. as a bar soap. And today, it spans many beauty categories, like body washes, lotions, deodorants, shampoos, styling products, et cetera. It's what we label a mega brand. It's rooted in a highly relevant and distinct benefit. In this case, it's all about moisturization. There are, of course, many, many more examples. So if we turn a spotlight more to the high-end luxury players. And since we're in U.K., I thought Burberry was an interesting one to look at. So it started with its iconic gabardine raincoat back in 1888. Now more than a century later, it spans a wide array of clothing, leather accessories and footwear. What I'm trying to say is that stretching a brand is a very typical growth strategy. Now it's also clear that there are some basics that need to be in place in order for this to be successful. First, you need to own a clear point of difference, which I just explained that Pandora does. Secondly, the brand needs permission by its consumers to actually expand the offering. And for this reason, we have conducted research to understand whether people are actually willing and open for us to play in the wider sector of the jewelry segment. And there is a very high acceptance to this idea. In fact, we have permission to go quite broad even outside of jewelry based on the research. But with a low single-digit market share, our focus remains inside the category. There's still a vast runway close to home. Now as many of you know, we actually already operate with a wide jewelry assortment. So what's new on my desk? Well, the critical thing here is that consumers have a significantly lower awareness of our presence in other jewelry segments beyond charms and bracelets, which means that we're less likely to be considered when times come for them to buy something. So why is it that we have the products but not the desired awareness level. Well, first of all, we haven't been particularly deliberate nor consistent about telling our audiences about this fact since we expanded the assortment. Secondly, the entry into more segments have been now more as a product play, not anchored in a specific concept, which is then quite difficult because it's not linked to the brand narrative and it's difficult to keep innovating as well as merchandising those assortments. As you will have seen, we have in the last few years started to organize the brand into different concept platforms certainly Moments, by Modern Classics, Pandora ME, et cetera. This allows, first, for strong and lasting positioning of the idea. It drives distinct design language and it ensure it fits within the overarching brand story. We are also much more deliberate to tell those stories in all our touch points. And we can clearly measure the awareness of the subsegments have been increasing as a result. There is an important remark to make in that we operate in a low purchase frequency category, which means it takes time to build sufficient awareness of new things, whether it's new collections, new products or new services. Therefore, it's vital to be consistent and very intentional across consumer touch point and time in order to build this awareness. Of course, eventually, once you get it there, consideration goes up and some of it falls into purchase. Now strategy is, of course, important but even more compelling is what consumers actually do. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. The most and important -- well, the most important and rather telling insight is that our modern classics range, which you see flashing behind me, has become a multibillion kroner business, essentially driven by organic consumer demand. This clearly demonstrates the opportunity for Pandora to more deliberately establish us as a full jewelry brand in the mind of our consumers. So the Phoenix strategy, at its core, is to make a mega brand of Pandora and being recognized as a full jewelry brand. And it's this journey to transform the consumer perception, that's the major unlock to a significantly larger addressable market. I'd like to make a very important point here. While we all get very excited by the brand stretch opportunities, we are not forgetting our roots. We are the world leaders of charms and most certainly work very hard to keep this a healthy and dynamic and growing part of Pandora. Stephen, our Chief Product Officer, will share his view a little bit later how we're going to keep this dynamic and relevant for generations to come. Let's move to my second story now. You might wonder why we're looking at a bee, other than the fact that it's a beautiful piece of Pandora jewelry. Well, so you probably may know this, a rather ill-informed perception that bees actually shouldn't be able to fly due to the very unfavorable ratio between body and wing size. Now evidence clearly debunked this myth. And if you actually delve into the intricacies of aerodynamics, there's a perfectly scientific explanation. So what about this bee story in Pandora. Well, in the last few years, there's been a fair amount of skepticism if charms are merely a fad, eventually questioning our reason to exist. Well, it's true. We're a young company. We've been on a rapid growth journey and we've had our fair share of growing up pains. But I wanted to reaffirm to you, that just like the bee, we are flying, we are healthy and surely it's not a fluke but it's based on very strong and sound fundamentals. The company you're looking at today is completely transformed. Let me highlight a few of the areas in which we've significantly moved the needle in the rebuild of the company. As we think about our fundamentals, there was one overarching idea, which was to leverage the global scale we have across the entire value chain. It not only gives us economies of scale but also ability to generate insights that we quickly can disseminate throughout our networks. Since most of our competitors are local, they actually don't have access to these insights, nor the speed to act compared to our operating model. With more than 30,000 employees, we are clearly in the people business. So let's start with this agenda point. We have upgraded our leadership pool across all functions and countries. Today, we are a destination for world-class talent. One thing is to attract top talent. Another one, of course, is to retain them. And we're proud to report that our employee Net Promoter Score puts us in the top 5% of the global benchmark. Last month, we also were named as one of the top companies to work for by the Times Magazine. This is a great testament to our efforts in being an attractive place for people to work and to develop themselves. Secondly, in the past, we had a very complex and slow operating model. Today, we operate in a lean, flat and highly agile organization, which I would argue is second to none. And on that note, it's also fair to point out that our store productivity is most likely in the top of the retail industry and this is a result achieved only in the last 10 years. Third point to mention is our manufacturing scale. We're the largest jewelry manufacturer in the world with a production volume north of 100 million pieces. As you know, we're also expanding this capacity with further sites being prepared both in Thailand and Vietnam, Being vertically integrated give us unrivaled conversion cost. But equally important is that we have full control to ensure an industry-leading product quality. We sell jewelry that will be part of people's everyday activities and therefore, exposed to high wear and tear. The fact that we have less than 2% return rates means consumers are getting a top quality product at a highly accessible price. And that's a pretty powerful combination. In the last couple of years, we've turned around analog company into using digital tools throughout the entire value chain. Many people don't know the fact that we are actually a direct-to-consumer business, since we directly manage up to 85% of all customer transactions. So we have now built a digital engine, which we power with all those first-party data points. This is -- and will continue to grow into an even more impactful source of competitive advantage. And I think we're just in the beginning of this journey. Finally, I'd like to link back to our bee. Not sure you realize but humanity actually wouldn't survive for more than 4 years in a bee-less world, because they're responsible for pollinating 70% of the world flowering plants and 35% of all food crops. Our founder did many thing right -- many things right in terms of building a sustainable business. We have taken this to new heights. Today, we have an industry-leading ESG agenda. By 2025, we'll only use recycled silver and gold to craft our products. We will reduce 50% of our CO2 emissions by 2030 and aim to be net zero by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement. And we have committed to have gender parity in senior leadership roles, latest by 2030. Maybe the world would survive without Pandora but we surely think we offer meaningful impact in a slice of people's lives. With this, I would once again like to reiterate that the Pandora company you're looking at today is a robust world-class organization and a far cry from our beginnings. From productive bees, we moved to a striving bird. No, I'm not an ornithologist. But as I build my personal stories, the use of analogies and striking images is a powerful tool. This is, of course, built on the insight that after my presentation, you will only remember 50% of what I said. By tomorrow, that's probably 25%. And by next week, it's sadly down to 10% and just going south from there. But if you can recall my bee and my Phoenix bird, chances are you make a strong connection to the story which we're sharing with you here today. Now we are very pleased with how the Phoenix strategy has delivered so far. And as they say, don't change a winning formula. My addition to this would, however, be that if you want to stay on top, you need to constantly raise the bar and be open to changing circumstances. So the main message here is to confirm that our 4 growth strategies remain in place. But as we get deeper into the executions, we, of course, learned many, many things, which inform us of how we can do things better. And with that said, we're now entering what we label as the second chapter of Phoenix. I will now highlight a couple of aspects of this new chapter. My colleagues later on will go deeper into those. Let's see if this fancy slide works. Here we go. So let's start with the brand pillar. As I detailed in my first story, this is all about the transformation of the perception. This means we have to step change all consumer touch points and ensure they deliver not just a consistent but importantly, a compelling experience. Mary Carmen, our Marketing Chief Officer, will later today talk to you about how we intend to transform our model. And this is a complete overhaul of how we will experience the brand across all touch points. A key component of the brand is the physical retail experience. We've just completed the qualification of our new store concept, Evoke 2.0 and starting next year, we'll commence an ambitious global rollout. The second growth pillar speaks to how we drive growth by beautifully designed jewelry. We continue being convinced that a mix of art and science increases the success rate of our innovation. Simply put, we introduce collections that have a high consumer appeal and acceptance. In this respect, nothing has changed. Our growth algorithm is based on solid performance from our core business, now defined as charms and carries across all collections. And in addition to this, we continue expanding our presence in finished jewelry. Later today, Stephen, our Chief Product Officer, will tell you more about the potential of our various collections. Our third growth pillar is personalized experience. As I mentioned, the key component here is the vast amount of first party data that we collect every day. And we continue to power a number of different aspects of the path to purchase journey with this data. The refreshed insight here is that personalized isn't only about digital programs but equally important is the physical experience we offer as you visit our stores. Therefore, we're doubling down on how to evolve our in-store operations, with a view to use data and tech for an enhanced and personalized experience. Furthermore, in line with our charge to be recognized as a full jewelry brand, we're expanding our services portfolio. So far, we had a very strong consumer response to our instant engraving services, where by the end of this year, we'll have equipped close to 850 stores globally. We have successfully introduced enhanced gift packaging. We offer basic repair services, cleaning services, there are pilots to offer piercing services, as well as offering extended warranty programs. A sequential rollout of our loyalty program called My Pandora continues. And on a closing note, it's important to mention that we're looking to monetize those expanded services. The fourth growth pillar, which we label markets, is together with brand likely the one that has evolved the most and offers a very meaningful growth vector. In this pillar, we have several strands, which I'll briefly touch on. First, we'll continue to expand the network. As you know, the original plan presented in '21 assumed roughly 600 new openings. We are today adding 1 year to the plan as well as a net 400 to 500 openings. This number includes concept stores, shopping shops, as well as kiosks. Key focus remains on North and Latin America and to a much lesser degree China than the original plan. When we first started a new organization, our focus was on what we labeled 7 core markets. Of those, we highlighted U.S. and China. The cluster organization has been focused on strengthening the operations in our core. As this is now in really good shape, it allows us to expand our horizons. We have, therefore, picked a few markets in which we have a presence, yet a very meaningful upside growth opportunity. So we're looking to sequentially increase our intention and investment in driving those markets. Finally, we're starting also to think beyond the near term and we'll start preparing what we call future growth engines. They're primarily in Asia and the focus is going to be on South Korea, Japan and India. For this reason, we've already adjusted our cluster organization. And in order to accelerate these efforts, we have also strengthened our global sales organization. The notable point to mention here is that we've built strong cluster teams that have the capability and bandwidth to go after these very meaningful opportunities. These are rather recent changes but I thought it was important. All of the previous stories come together in the 4 story of mine. Clearly, we expect a sparkling future. You would have noticed in our announcement this morning that we upgrade our organic growth target to 7% to 9% CAGR over the next 3 years. Two main elements to mention here. First, our high like-for-like growth target of 4% to 6% CAGR, everything you will hear of today around the 4 Phoenix pillars feeds into this. All initiatives we are running will be bringing more consumers into the Pandora brand and drive a higher like-for-like growth. The second element comes from accelerated network expansion, worth around 3 points. This is something you should be getting used to. It's low risk, highly predictable and value accretive. We have ample opportunity to push ahead with this given the white space opportunities available to us. For EBIT margins, we're targeting 26% to 27% by '26. That's effectively 100 to 200 bps of expansion versus our current '23 guidance. I want to reiterate, our business model is highly unique and highly flexible. It benefits from unmatched scale throughout the entire value chain. We can dial up or down highly variable OpEx investments into our major growth initiative. This all, while still leveraging the existing assets and infrastructure to drive profitability. You will have heard that we intend to stretch the brands across a few vectors. The current guidance encompasses the necessary firepower to deliver our ambitions. Now, when you combine both of these elements with a highly cash-generative model, it will deliver mid- to high teens EPS growth over the next 3 years. Simply put, this business model will be creating significant value for our shareholders ahead. Now let me briefly summarize the mission critical aspects of Phoenix. The objective is to drive growth by increasing brand penetration, to become the largest and most desirable brand in accessible jewelry. Our strategy is very selective, with potent and tangible elements. First, Pandora is in a transformation journey to be recognized by consumers as a full jewelry brand. Second, nurturing moments while expanding the assortment with new collections like lab-grown diamonds offers tangible incremental penetration opportunities. Thirdly, the use of our first party data and our focus on the salespeople will be crucial to enable a compelling personalized customer experience. Fourth, the network expansion and driving both core and underpenetrated markets are built on proven success models with strong growth potential. But true success only comes when you have a strong team around you. So let me end by touching on a few points in this respect. We have built the structure as future-proof, agile, as well as scalable. Therefore, we'll be able to flex and fit all the programs within the existing setup. We have a strong operating leverage. Now, structure is important. Having a talented and hungry team is the X factor though. On that note, I can say that we have invested heavily in building our talent pool, both from within as well as buying talent from the outside. As a CEO, I stand on firm ground when I say that we have a very strong organization. Despite the last few year's macro turbulence we have performed very well, while at the same time, we're building the company. And I think this is the best evidence of our new performance culture. And on that note, let me briefly introduce you to my executive leadership team. Now we have been extremely fortunate to gather a group of highly talented people, that each one represent the top tier within their field. They all come with extensive experience in various blue-chip companies and global roles. But more importantly, the one thing we all have in common, is a hunger to build and perform at the highest level. Now from this side, yes, from this side, Anders, which I'm sure most of you here know, is from Denmark, he's our CFO; Stephen is from New York, he's our Chief Product Officer and one of the most important culture bearers of Pandora; Mary Carmen from the Dominican Republic, or MC, as she's called, she is our CMO and is a true force of change. Massimo, he single-handedly built Italy to be our top-performing market. Now he's going to do the same trick across the globe. So he's the Chief Retail Officer, no expectations there. Jeerasage or Khun Aussie, he's from Thailand and looks after our crafting and supply. And he's got a lifelong experience from jewelry and watch making. And I can tell you, there are not many people to find that have this background that Khun Aussie has. So we're very fortunate to have him with us. Byron, he's our second American, he is from Texas. And as we always say, we don't hold it against him, he is our Chief HR Officer. He comes with an extensive sector and geographic experience. And finally, David, he's a Brit, that looks after all things digital and technology. Now they will not all be on stage presenting today. But at the very end, when we have the Q&A, they will all be here and we have a couple of breaks. So please have a discussion with them. They're here for your benefit today. Let's take a quick look at the agenda for this afternoon. It will be broken up in 3 sections. So we're not trying to kill you with PowerPoints. Well, we're trying but we'll try to also help you a little bit. There will be an interactive element at each section, so we can kind of engage you with Q&As. By now, you're probably ready, so there's no need to repeat it. But I can promise you, it's going to be truly interesting and hopefully inspiring for all of you. But as I said in the beginning, it's going to be focused entirely on our growth pillars. Now the legal guys told me I have to show you this. So please draw your attention to the customer disclaimer. And it's kind of illegible but you've seen this before. So now I have done that. Anyways, now we have all the housekeeping out of the way. It's my pleasure to welcome MC on stage. We're so lucky to have her leading our marketing efforts. She'll now talk to you about our first pillar on how we transform the brand. Thank you very much.

Hello, everyone. As Alexander said, my name is Mary Carmen. But I'm going to make that easy for you and you can call me MC. I joined Pandora exactly 1 year ago this week, and I will take you through the brand pillar part of the Phoenix strategy. There are 3 key takeaways I want you to get from this presentation. The first one is that we are transforming the perception of the Pandora brand, from a brand known and loved for our charm bracelets to the most desirable full jewelry brand. #2, we see and are leveraging significant growth opportunities to drive brand penetration and accelerate like-for-like growth to 4% to 6%, as Alexander mentioned earlier. And #3, to do this, to execute this, we're activating a 4-part brand strategy that follows the full consumer journey end-to-end. Let me ground us back on Phoenix. With the Phoenix strategy, we aim to be the largest and most desirable brand in the accessible jewelry market. We remain grounded in accessible jewelry, as it is a key strength of Pandora. We already are the largest brand in jewelry. We now aim to be also the most desirable. It's really great to be playing in this business of jewelry, this market. It's a very large market. Over DKK 2,500 billion in sales according to Euromonitor in 2022. It is growing at a clip of about 3.6% CAGR from '22 to '27. And really, very importantly, Pandora has about a 1.3% market share. So we play in a big business that is growing and we have huge amount of headroom to grow market share. Later, I will show you how this looks like in some of the key markets. We start from a really strong foundation. Over the last 4 years, Alexander and the team have worked really hard to build a foundation that now we can build on from for our second chapter. The first one is that we are the biggest brand in jewelry. We sell 3 pieces of jewelry every second. Let me say that again, 3 beautiful sparkling pieces of jewelry every second. And last year, that amounted to 103 million pieces of jewelry. We also have a very strong brand. In fact, we have top 3 equity scores in most of our top 10 markets. As Alexander said earlier, our key point of difference is meaningful jewelry. We also have a very strong network with over 6,500 points of sale in over 100 countries. And we enjoy visits for over -- from over 600 million people across stores and our online sites. And in the last few years, the team led by David has built a really robust customer database that enables to reach our consumer with personalized experience and offers. We build from a very strong place as we move into the next chapter. We aim to transform Pandora from a brand known for our beautiful charm and bracelet product that we created 20 years ago. We aim to broaden the brand to be a full jewelry brand. The reality is that if you were to look at our assortment and you saw it in the breakout rooms earlier, we already have a very, very broad assortment of jewelry. The challenge is that many people still only think of us as the charm, bracelet brand. So the key opportunity is to broaden the perception of the brand to attract a wider range of women to Pandora. And what we see is that increasing penetration, meaning having a larger base of fans, attracting more customers is the biggest lever to accelerating like-for-like to 4% to 6%, as we said earlier. So while we love and will continue to nurture the big community of current fans that we have, who come off and to buy Pandora -- and they love collecting charms, we will continue to nurture them, we realize to accelerate growth, we need to get more fans. Let me explain this chart for a second. What you see here on the left is a set of markets. In gray is the value, the jewelry category or market size in that market and in pink is the share that Pandora holds as of 2022. In light pink, you see markets like U.S., Canada, Germany, France, China, where we have 5% or lower market share. In dark pink, you see markets like U.K., Australia and now also Mexico, where we have share, 9% to 11%. Two points to take from here. One is that, we already know how to achieve high single digits and double-digit share. We know how to do that. We've done it in several markets and we recently had accomplished that in Mexico. The second point is that we have huge overhead to grow share in markets that are very big and that we know. So very broad opportunity for share growth and expansion. And how are we going to do this? We're going to do this by elevating the experience the customer has of Pandora across every touch point. Let me be clear, we have had a wonderful array of jewelry for a while. The thing is that, to transform the brand perception from charm and carrier to a full jewelry brand, we have to start with the brand itself. The product is a key part of that. And what we're doing now is mirroring that wonderful product assortment with a brand point of view that brings more people and that presents Pandora as a full jewelry brand. Now I will share with you how that comes through in a 360 brand strategy that has 4 parts to it. The first part is to drive brand desire, to establish a clear brand point of view beyond our product that attracts more women to Pandora. #2 is to build jewelry icons. We already have a wonderful icon in the charms bracelet. We want to build other jewelry icons that help bring that broadened perception that we seek. #3 is about being unmissable. So key consumption periods like Christmas and holidays will always be important to us and for any business where gifting is significant. But we recognize that jewelry is bought and worn every single day. So it's very important that we are top of mind and relevant in the minds of shoppers and wearers of jewelry throughout the year. And #4, wow at every step. And this is about enhancing the customer experience of Pandora, so Pandora is more desirable and attracts a wider set of people. I'll begin with how we will drive brand desire. As many of you know, jewelry is still a largely unbranded market. We estimate that less than 1/3 of jewelry sales is branded or from brands. The rest is still unbranded. Compare that to categories, other luxury categories, like watches or fashion or fragrances or even cosmetics, where the branded portion of the business is much higher. We see significant opportunity for growth as jewelry becomes more branded. And we also see that branded jewelry is expected to outpace the growth of total jewelry. As the jewelry category moves from largely unbranded to more branded, we see enormous value creation and Pandora will be a key player and beneficiary of this value creation. We also know that brands are incredibly important. In fact, data from KPMG, Forrester from 2021 shows that brands that people love grow 3x faster. Now why do they grow 3x faster than the category average? They grow faster because people are willing to speak about these brands 3x more than they are in general. And what this means is that they're giving word-of-mouth. They're giving credible endorsements to our brands and that is the best kind of advertising. Not only is it free but also is highly credible and it changes behavior and perception. We already today are loved for our charm bracelet. Many, many women in the world -- and in fact, as I said earlier, we're the largest jewelry brand by volume -- many, many women already love us. But we see an opportunity to broaden our perception and be desirable to even a larger percentage of the population. With a share of 1.3% globally, you see we have a lot of headroom. And so we see unlocking desirability of the brand as a key driver of growth. Now, as we make these transformations and we transform and broaden the brand perception, we all know that it's superbly important that we do that from our points of strength. Pandora enjoys wonderful strength in several areas. But one of them that we really hold onto is personal meaning. The way we measure that is, has special meaning to me. And in that attribute, we over-index significantly versus competition. So we have a very strong base there. But what's really, really exciting is that, that attribute is also the #1 driver of desire in the total jewelry category. It's the main reason why people buy jewelry. So when you look at Pandora, we have a beautiful big brand but that big brand sits on a huge human insight and benefit. It has a lot of potential to grow much more. And how are we going to do this transformation? So in 2024, we will restage the brand, bringing to life our purpose, which is, we give a voice to people's loves. This will give us an enduring brand level benefit and emotional connection that will attract more women to Pandora but also position us as a full jewelry brand. But we're not waiting for 2024. We have already started in this journey. You would have seen recently that we have announced some of our new partners, Ashley Park as an ambassador. We're working with some of the best talents in culture and entertainment, Pamela Anderson, Grace Coddington and many others. We're also putting Pandora in some of the biggest and most influential places in fashion and luxury. Let me give you an example. Earlier this summer, we became official sponsors of Copenhagen Fashion Week for the first time ever. Then we launched our new 3 diamond collections and also our diamonds campaign as a preparty to New York Fashion Week. I will show you a little bit more about that later. And just yesterday, we announced that we are official sponsors of The Fashion Awards happening here in London in early December. We're doing this to place Pandora amongst the best brands out there, among the most desirable brands and we are repositioning the brand in a new light, with customers and influencers alike. As we do this, we recognize that we also have to elevate the execution, what customers experience when they encounter Pandora in any part of the customer journey. So we're elevating the artistry and creativity in all our executions. I hope you already see some of that today. To do that, we have brought in a whole set of new partners. One of them is the agency, Baron & Baron. They are best known for their work on exceptional brands like Zegna, Gucci, Calvin Klein, Armani, Prada. They have an exceptional ability to elevate desirability. But what we like the most about them is that they're able to elevate desirability without ever losing brand relevance and accessibility. Their work on Zara globally demonstrates this, will dial up the aspiration and the inspiration, while remaining accessible jewelry for all women. We already are seeing great traction. What you see here is some recent coverage across some of the most influential publications in fashion and luxury. Some of the biggest voices are now speaking about Pandora in a different way, both with discovering our brand and our products. And this is very important because that drives customer perception. Our new diamonds campaign, Diamonds for All, we launched it a few weeks ago, as I said, in a pre-New York City -- pre-New York Fashion Week event. It centers around the idea of democratizing diamonds. Diamonds for All declares a very Pandora commitment to bring in these wonderful pieces of jewelry to more people and more occasions. The campaign features a range of cultural icons, including our own here from England, Grace Coddington, Pamela, as I mentioned earlier and a whole cast of diverse talents with great stories to tell. And it was shot by renowned photographer, Mario Sorrenti and directed by Gordon von Steiner. We're partnering with these people to ensure that we deliver on this desire elevation that is so critical to transforming the brand's perception. Now I will show you a shortened version of the campaign, which you would have seen in totality in the diamonds breakout room. This is a short version for TV. Video, please. [Presentation]

I hope you enjoyed watching that as much as we enjoyed creating it. Along with this commitment to democratizing diamond jewelry, we declare our intention to become a lab-grown diamond destination and the ambition to exceed DKK 1 billion in revenue from this business by 2026. What's really exciting to us about this is that not only are we expanding the footprint of Pandora, we're also seeing that our diamonds proposition is appealing to our current fans and also to new fans. And in fact, it brings a higher percentage of new people to Pandora than our other collections. So this business will be big and will bring incremental business to the brand. How are we going to do that? We do that behind 2 big building blocks. The first one is more collections. So we started with 1 collection. We launched 3 more a few weeks ago and we will continue to expand the collection array as we see what are the needs and desires of the broad set of customers that are coming through our doors. We will also continue geographical expansion. So far, we have launched in the U.K., U.S., Canada and Australia and we will continue to thoughtfully expand in other markets. Now I step back to the total brand. We're sitting here in early October. We're approaching the holidays, which is such an important period for Pandora and for all brands that play in a big way in gifting. The campaign that I will show you has not aired yet. It will only air end of this month. So you're getting an early preview. Please keep it here, if you can. The holiday campaign, the intent of it is to bring this elevation to Pandora to expand the view of the brand to a full jewelry brand but doing that while remaining authentically Pandora. The idea is to make Pandora the perfect gift for this holiday season. To do that, it features a wide range of casting and it was directed by Paul Gore and Oliver Hadlee Pearch. I will show you the video now, a long version of the video. I hope you enjoy as much as we do. [Presentation]

What we love about this campaign is, that remains very much Pandora, Pandora DNA. And our customers tell us that they also see a full jewelry brand here. So after seeing all those beautiful products, I move to the second part of the brand strategy, which is building jewelry icons. We start from the customer. And at Pandora, we're very fortunate. We serve a very, very broad set of customers. And what you see here is the age distribution of Pandora customers in 2022. You can see that we serve all ages. We do have an over index on Gen Z. We win really well with Gen Z. And that is credit to the great work that the team has done in the last few years to make sure the brand stays relevant to new audiences. But we are very broad and we serve a wide range of women. When you look at income levels, here I have this for 3 countries. You see also that we're very broad. Pandora serves fans across all income brackets. And when you look at the breadth of that customer base that we have, it's really important that we continue to broaden and optimize our assortment so that we meet, not only their current needs but also the evolving needs of a wide set of customers. And so we continue to do that. We're doing this in a very strategic and databased way. Specifically, one example of what we're doing, is that we're sharpening our enduring consumer platforms, which we call ECPs. We're using artificial intelligence to map out the whole world of jewelry and identify what are the jewelry aesthetic spaces. I will show you what those look like in 1 minute. When we do that, we see that Pandora already plays really well and over indexes in 3 out of those spaces. Those 3 account for 25% of the map. But we see opportunity for growth in the other 7. Now the key is that we need to look at that and embed our brand's point of difference of meaningful jewelry and other insights that we have from the business and the markets to choose what are the right next opportunities for Pandora. To illustrate this a little bit better, you see here the map from the U.S. This is U.S. data. The 3 areas on the left are 3 aesthetic spaces where we do really well already. When you look on the right, you see spaces where we have opportunity. Let me point to 1 example. The one in the middle in dark pink is called organic, fluid and natural. And that space accounts for about 17% of the map. We're not going to go blindly after everything. We're studying these spaces, filtering through our brand, realizing which ones we can create strong, highly appealing, enduring concept platforms based on strong customer insight. And that guides where we innovate next. We're also looking at the map of jewelry across categories and we are systemically closing assortment gaps that we see across categories. So on this chart, what you see on the left, in gray, is the market split for the whole jewelry market in 2022. On the right, you see is the Pandora's share of that part of the market, also in 2022. You'll see a few things from this chart. The first one is that we do extremely well in wristwear, not surprisingly, given that our DNA comes from this wonderful charm bracelet product that has become such a world phenomenon. And we absolutely own that. But you can see that we only have [ 6 ] share of wristwear. So there's still significant opportunity for growth there. You also see rings that we have a share of rings that is kind of in line with our total share. And that was not the case a few years ago. That is the credit of the team in the last few years under Alexander's leadership. We have played a lot more in rings and now you see the development. Pandora can do this. The next 2 categories, over 60% of the category or the jewelry market, I should say, sit in neckwear and in earrings. And you can see there that we have tiny market share. So we look at growth from several angles, bringing more women, women with different aesthetic desires or who are looking for different occasions. And we also look at categories. There is significant potential for Pandora to grow across all these levers. And not surprisingly, if you know us well, we identified this organic, fluid and natural space as a key opportunity, and we're piloting a collection called Pandora Essence, it's in pilot in the Netherlands right now. It plays on this organic, fluid and natural space, which I said earlier, accounts for 17% of the map in the U.S. but it also drives earrings, pearls and yellow gold-plated. I didn't get into all those details but those are all opportunity areas for Pandora. Not surprisingly, it's doing very well and we seek to begin the global rollout of the new Pandora Essence in 2024. To transform the perception of the brand from a charm and carriers brand or a charm bracelet brand to a full jewelry brand, we must [indiscernible], our icon, which is our core, the charm bracelet but also icons, beautiful product in the other parts of our assortment. My partner, Stephen, will later take you through the strategy on that but we will make sure that consumers begin to recognize products in other aesthetic spaces and other categories so that their image of Pandora can broaden. An example of this is the studded chain, which I'm actually wearing here. The studded chain is something we launched this year. It's a wonderful innovation, with a design that maximizes light, flexibility and wearability. So it catches a lot of sparkle. Also importantly, it's super strong because Pandora's products are for everywhere -- everyday wear. So they must be really strong while they are wonderfully appealing. This product is already #3 bestseller globally behind great customer reception and also a lot of love from the press, as you can see on the slide. When we look at the bigger place, the product places in the brand transformation, we see that driving trust in the quality of our products is absolutely critical. What this chart shows is that, if you want to move brand desire for Pandora, the most impactful lever right now is to drive more trust. And that is directly tied to the quality perception of our products. So we are creating an always on toolkit to help markets do this, where we show the artistry and craftsmanship behind our products. We have wonderful design, wonderful crafting but most people don't know that. When we tell people that 25 pairs of hands on average work on each Pandora piece, they cannot believe it. We also have wonderful innovations like Murano art, which you see here on the turtle icon on the right, that our fans love but many people don't know anything about. So lots of opportunity to build credibility in the quality of our products, which is already exceptional, as Alexander noted earlier, with only 2% returns. The third pillar is being unmissable and this is about being top of mind and relevant to jewelry wearers and shoppers all year long. Key consumption periods like Christmas and Mother's Day will always be important to us. But we recognize that the biggest key consumption period of all is actually birthdays. I bet all of you have one of those. So we will be present and relevant any day that somebody wakes up and thinks, I need to buy jewelry today. How we do that? We recognize -- we always go back to our customer. What we recognized in looking at the data is that when you measure unaided awareness and let me explain what unaided awareness is. Unaided awareness is when you ask a customer, tell me the brands of jewelry that you can think about, if they think of you, Pandora, they have unaided awareness of Pandora. But what you see here -- so it's nonprompted basically, you don't help them. They have to think of the brand themselves. What you see here is that owners of Pandora, not surprisingly, have much higher awareness. The key opportunity is increasing awareness with nonbuyers. And when we dig into that data and we do further research, we realize that of those nonowners, only 3% know the brand and the product. And when we introduce the Pandora brand and product proposition to most people, most people actually like it. So our biggest opportunity is driving awareness of who we are as a brand and what we offer. Already when Alexander joined, he brought in great investment in paid media to bring this brand awareness to a higher level. We will continue to do that. But what's new is that we're doing a much bigger effort in maximizing the synergy between paid and earned media so that every single pound or dollar that we spend works harder for us. And it's also leveraging the push and pull [Audio Gap] [Presentation]

That short video was from a few weeks ago, when we launched our new Diamonds for All campaign and our 3 new diamonds collections as part of New York Fashion Week. It was one of our biggest events ever, with over 570 attendees, including 230 VIP, top press from all over the world and celebrities. What I like the most about that is actually the output. We generated over 370 pieces of great coverage in the press, which drove 6.7 billion impressions. These are really important impressions because this is what puts Pandora up there along with the most desirable brands and shifts consumer perception. But we don't wait for big events to do this. Everyday, we are optimizing how we interact with our customers and their experience of Pandora. What you see on the screen is some examples of products that this year went viral on TikTok. There were some trends that we associated with and the products just took off. An example is the star bracelet that was just on the screen. We saw a 200 index versus a year ago based on a TikTok trend. What we're doing is, we're catching the trend. We're seeing what customers are getting excited about and we are activating it with our product. The sun and moon ring is another example. Taylor Swift had a great song. Somebody associated that song to one of our new ring sets and viola, sold out in 2 weeks. We absolutely see the impact on the business. The key here is that we're listening to our customer and we're being there, where they are. This is all on top of all the wonderful 360 marketing that we do. And what's really -- one more thing I want to say about that, what's really cool about this is that it's one of the ways in which we leverage our vertical integration because we can sense the customer and we can respond faster than companies that are not vertically integrated. So we can be there where the customer is. The last point is wow at every step. And here, Massimo, my colleague, will take you through a lot more detail on what we're doing on the store side of things, where we already have a very competitive advantage. But besides the physical store, we're also elevating the digital experience. And we're also working to more activate the voice of the 16,000 store Pandorians, the people who are closest to our customers every single day throughout the world. On the store experience, what you see here is a warm welcome, beautiful Pandora experience, unified as a brand. I hope you see that when you visit one of our new stores. If you haven't done that so already, I know some of you did, visit the Oxford store. When you get a closer look, what you see is that we're using the walls, very intentionally, to enable customers to self discover the full range of our jewelry. There's a lot more detail Massimo will tell you about. But what's really important here is that we deliver this inspiration and this elevation without ever compromising any of the wonderful efficiency that makes us so strong in retail. Pandora.net is a big business and we look to bring some of that wonderful personalized experience also to our website. And again, we're working on a relaunch as of next year. That concludes the content of my presentation. There are 3 things I started with and I would like to reiterate, I hope you took away from my presentation today. The first one is that we are transforming the perception of the Pandora brand, from a charm and bracelet brand to a full jewelry brand, while remaining grounded on accessible luxury. While we see and are leveraging significant growth opportunities to drive 4% to 6% like-for-like and these opportunities go across bringing more customers to the brand, expanding to new jewelry spaces and also geographically. And last is that we're activating a full 360 brand strategy to be able to execute this with excellence and have customers experience a transformed, broader, more elevated Pandora in every touch point. Thank you for your attention. We already are a full jewelry brand and it's time that everybody knows it. With that, I welcome my partner, Stephen, who will take you through the product side of the Phoenix strategy. Thank you so much.

Thank you, MC, so much. Hello, I'm Stephen. I'm the Chief Product Officer. And it's a pleasure to have you all today. So I'm a product guy, so product is in my heart and product is the heart of Pandora. So I want to bring you today into the creative design process, also our design strategy and our product universe, which is amazing. So first, I want to update on our foundation and second, I want to take a deep dive into our design strategy. So I think you heard Alexander. Our ambition is crystal clear. One, we will be known as a full jewelry brand. Two, we will accelerate growth. The Phoenix strategy is working and we have established ourselves as the world's largest and most desirable jewelry company. So I say this. Every once in a while, an innovative concept comes along and it disrupts everything. Pandora has done this. We created the biggest platform for meaningful jewelry. So when I see women and men wearing our bracelets, fully loaded charms, you know it's Pandora. It's unique and it's recognizable. Now I want to take you into our creative design process and show you how we design our amazing products. So our design process is anchored in a very strong and commercial consumer-centric strategy. Consumer-centric strategy. This allows us to tap into consumer needs and commercial opportunities. So we find inspiration from a lot of resources, from art, from music, from film but also from community and culture. So when we merge the science and the art, it defines the creative visions for our collections. And I simply say this all the time, we have to hire the best design talent who want to design the best jewelry in the world. Collaborations. We see huge potential to expand collaborations across collections with new partners and licenses. We have repositioned Pandora ME and optimized and amplified the concept. We have launched Pandora lab-grown diamonds, MC said earlier, in the U.K., the U.S. and Canada. We're expanding into Australia, Mexico and Brazil. So this concludes my first point. We have a strong foundation and have huge potential for growth. So now I want to really deep dive into the second point, our revised design strategy. We have revised and optimized our design strategy and we will drive growth through. Grow the core charms and carriers, which encompasses Moments and Pandora ME. We will fuel with more, with Modern Classics which encompasses Timeless, Signature and our new Pandora Essence collection. And we will fuel this more with lab-grown diamonds. And we will expand collaborations across all pillars in all collections. So we will drive growth and collaborations by dialing up cultural relevance, expanding design beyond Moments and leveraging collaborations with large REITs, license partnerships. So let's take a closer look at the pillars. Grow the core and fuel with more. Let's start with grow the core. Our core will be charms and carriers and will include the following collections, Moments, Pandora ME and collaborations. We will grow our core by Moments, collaborations and harnessing collection synergies with Pandora ME. Pandora ME is a complementary charms and carrier platform, next to Moments and it will drive present -- penetration with its unique design aesthetic. So Pandora ME charms and medallions will be interchangeable with the Moments carriers. We will then -- which will help us expand the platform for Pandora ME, which will drive sequential growth. We are also expanding collaborations across all charms and carriers. We are also expanding all our design aesthetics across charms and carriers and we will continue expanding our engraving collection. So I'm going to ask a rhetorical question. What does a charm mean to you? To us, a charm can hold a 1,000 meanings. It can tell a 1,000 stories. So a charm can tell your story. So a charm reflects times, culture and community. A charm is a vehicle for communication. A charm is expression of your personality. So combining culture and identity elevates charms to hyper objects. A hyper object is like sneakers and charms. It inspires 2 things, collectibility and ignites desire. I'm going to bring Nike up. Nike did Air Jordan. Air Jordans have become a collectible and ignites desire. We do the same thing with our charms. We own the universe of charms. So I'd like to bring you into our universe of charms through a video. [Presentation]

So I'd like to summarize the key messages of grow the core. We are the global charms leader. So the Murano turtle was an absolute best selling charm last year. Almost 300,000 pieces were sold. It's an amazing charm. It's hard to make. It requires very skilled crafts people. And it's made in a blue Venetian Murano glass, with detailed works with [indiscernible]. This is a hyper object and ignited desire and collectibility. So we have strong potential to grow and we will do this by expanding our design aesthetics. So this is a perfect example of a Pandora ME medallion. It symbolizes and reflects meaning and symbolism. We will continue boosting our bracelet growth, focusing on iconic bracelets, the Moment snake chain, the Moment studded chain, and the Pandora ME link chain. We will continue leveraging and building product icons to be, like MC said. So I think you saw today, we have a padlock. It's offered in silver, 14-carat rose and gold. This is a good example of an icon to be. We are iconizing styling. We will continue focused on fully loaded carriers. So our growth ambition for Moment is low single-digit to mid-single-digit growth. We will drive charms momentum by driving desirability, penetration and attracting new consumers. So let's take a dive into the second part of the design strategy. Fuel with more. So let's explore our modern classic portfolio. Modern Classics contains our key jewelry concepts outside of charms and carriers. It encompasses Timeless, Signature in introducing our new Pandora Essence. I will explain more about Pandora Essence later and introducing collaborations in Modern Classics. This will allow us to stretch and complement our Modern Classics portfolio and drive growth. So let's take a deep dive into our biggest jewelry concept, Timeless. Timeless is a high-end jewelry aesthetic at an accessible price point. Timeless is twisting classical designs into modern meaningful jewelry. And we will drive iconicity with our designs. And Timeless is focused on styling, amplifying, stacking and layering. So Timeless consists of 5 distinctive pillars. So Stone Clusters, like our iconic Herbarium collection that we launched last year, Pavé, Wish and Wave, classic stone cuts and pearls. We are adding a new pillar in Timeless. The new universe of pearls will expand our design aesthetics. It's a growth opportunity to tap into the attractive pearl market. So I would like to show you a video and bring you into the universe of Timeless. [Presentation]

Okay. So now let's take a look at our new awesome collection Pandora Essence. Pandora Essence is a completely new collection and it is not related to our former Essence collection. It's a new distinctive design aesthetic for Pandora. It's instrumental in driving growth, desirability and to be known as a full jewelry brand. Our testing shows that Pandora Essence has massive potential across all markets. And like MC said, we're piloting Pandora Essence in the Netherlands. So why are we introducing Pandora Essence? So very simply, to drive desire, to drive relevancy and drive a new design aesthetic, which is all based on organic shapes and forms. So MC touched on this, we're expanding our assortment of earrings to play in a very fast-growing category of earrings. We are expanding into 14K gold-plated assortment to play in a very fast-growing, yellow gold-plated market. And we want to build our pearl offering and drive growth by building our position in the attractive pearl market. So Pandora Essence consists of 3 pillars. Essentials, which is minimalistic and elegant. Organic, organic shapes and forms. And organic in pearls, where organic shapes are mixed with pearls. All 3 pillars are very distinctive and it is a very new design aesthetic for Pandora. The plan is to roll out the collection in new markets. So I'd like to bring you into the universe through video into Pandora Essence. [Presentation]

So this concludes this section of Modern Classics. So let me just summarize the key messages. Modern Classics is a key enabler to be known as a full jewelry brand. We will expand the design aesthetics in Modern Classics. This is our new Timeless Pavé chain bracelet and it's a good example of world-class craftsmanship. So just on a side note, I just want to let you all know, we set 4.8 million stones everyday at Pandora. So we will pilot Pandora Essence in selected markets and gradually scale it globally. We will expand collaborations into Modern Classics. And as I said, styling is key to drive desirability and growth to drive stacking and layering across all jewelry collections in all categories. So it's Pandora's unique take on how to express your personality through Modern Classics. We will grow Modern Classics to mid- to single-digit to high-single-digit. So last but not least, let's take a look at our last pillar, our designs and our design strategy, Pandora lab-grown diamonds. Our diamond portfolio consists of 4 distinctive collections. Infinite was the first lab-grown diamond collection we launched, its modern infinity setting design makes it distinctive, ownable and an iconic design to be. Nova is a new collection that has a distinctive 4-pronged setting, allowing the diamond to capture the light. It's beautiful. It's unique and I really love the Nova collection personally, because it's a modern twist on traditional and elegant design. And [ Era ] is a new collection. It's Pandora's take on classic elegant bezel and pronged setting. It's expanding to more classic and traditional style but for me, it's like an everyday wardrobe essential. And then Talisman. It's a new collection, adding meaning and symbolism through unique settings, both in pendants and in charms. It's expanding meaningful jewelry to diamonds and it taps truly into the Pandora heritage and DNA. So let me show you a video to introduce our lab-grown diamonds. [Presentation]

So let me just summarize the key messages. We will democratize diamonds and change the narrative. Diamonds are for all but for me, it says it all. Diamonds are not just forever, they are for everyone, all moods, all milestones and all styles. We will build awareness and desire, and I think MC showed this to you, an amazing campaigns in 360. And we will expand the user occasions. They are not just for a few special occasions. They are for all occasions and, of course, we will continue developing our existing collections. We will establish the lab-grown diamonds authority and we will accelerate it in launched markets. So this concludes the deep dive into our design strategy. But like Alexander said, I want to leave you with some key messages that I want you to remember from this presentation. We changed the jewelry world. But we're just getting started. We will grow our core by driving charms momentum. We will fuel with more by growing Modern Classics, becoming the preferred lab-grown diamond destination and we will be known as a full jewelry brand and accelerate growth. Our purpose. We give a voice to people's loves through meaningful jewelry. Thank you.

I'm doing a little intervention. We are running a little bit behind. So we're not going to do the fireside chat now. We have a big Q&A at the back end. So I'm just going to throw all of you out of here, get a little bit of fresh air and get a cup of coffee. Back in here in 15 minutes, okay?

Thank you. [Break]

Good afternoon, everyone. Please welcome to the stage Alexander Lacik, Chief Executive Officer. Please welcome to the stage, David Walmsley, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Pandora.

Thank you very much. For a second there, I thought I've been promoted. That was so close. Okay. My name is David Walmsley, as my friend just said. I'm the Chief Digital and Technology Officer and this is the science bit. So get ready for digital transformation. So I joined the business about 4.5 years ago. Two years ago, Alexander said to me, can you combine together the digital function that you've built with global IT and the data analytics functions that we've built around the business at that point. And we created a function called digital and technology. We had a very simple mission and we still have that very simple mission, which is to make sure that all the technology we build focuses on customer outcome. It's a very simple mission. We're transforming all of the digital foundations across Pandora in the process. So in this update, I'm going to talk about 3 things. I'm going to talk about the progress we've made in the last 2 years on a number of fronts, bringing it to life for you. We're then going to drill down into how we're leveraging that first-party data that both Alexander and MC mentioned. How we built that up and how we're then leveraging that and turning data into sales. Third, we're going to talk about where next with digital transformation. So for me, the world really divides into 2 types of company. There are companies that see technologies as a source of strategic advantage. And there are companies that, for whatever reason, sometimes see technology as a source of strategic threat. Two years ago, when we committed to the digital transformation journey, we put Pandora firmly in the first camp. We see technology as a source of major strategic advantage for our business. So I'm going to talk about the progress we've made. But first of all, I just want to go back to the mission statement that we put in place for digital transformation a couple of years ago. So digital transformation, of course, at its heart is about customer experience. But it's also about transforming the whole Pandora machine. We're looking to digitize, simplify and connect all the parts of our business to streamline the organization for, in the words of Steve Jobs, the technology that just simply works, making our colleague experience as slick as our customer experience. But at its heart, digital transformation is about that customer experience. It's about making sure that the personalized experience we create in our stores everyday through amazing storytelling, amazing customer connection can be transformed into the digital arena and replicate it as best as we can in that digital space. It's about storytelling, it's about wrapping the experience around our customers everyday, in all the ways that we can. So in terms of the progress that we've made in the last couple of years then, in the digital space, we've made some really big strides in e-commerce. So I think we've got to now, what I'd consider to be a really great selling process, selling platform. We've transformed the technologies underpinning the websites in the past 2 years, so we have slick, stable and fast digital presence in most markets in the world. And we've also rolled out all the omnichannel features, the key omnichannel features like click and collect and return in store and so on, real table stake stuff in our core markets. But again, that enables our colleagues in store to link together the customer experience in ways they were never able to do previously. So it's all good stuff. And e-commerce sales, as you probably know, reached 21% full year '22 in our organization. So we're off to the races but we have a lot more to do in this space. And as MC said, we're focused now on brand elevation, much more storytelling, much more curation in that digital space as we head into '24. Two years ago at the Capital Markets Day, the last Capital Markets Day, I trailed what we were going to do in personalization. We're now doing it. So we focused in '23, in particular in our U.K. market, we've rolled out personalization platform around the world. But what we've done is, focused then on the operating model of how we do personalization. Because it's not about the technology, it's really about the operating model. It's about how we come together with our trading and marketing teams in markets around the world to most effectively curate the customer experience. In the CRM space, we've launched our loyalty program. We're in 3 markets right now. We've got more markets to follow in '24 but beyond the loyalty program, which Massimo is going to talk a lot more about in his update, we've also launched the customer orchestration platform. Now this is something you never see as customers on websites. But it's kind of the fabric on which the digital experience sits. It's the thing that works out how many e-mails you receive, what digital experience you receive on the websites, what media you receive and so on. This is now a global platform that's working very effectively for us with all of our customers. And that's really the secret sauce in terms of the digital transformation of the customer experience. Now I'm in the right audience to talk a little bit about investment. I'm not going to talk too much about investment. But 2 years ago, we said that we were elevating the investment levels on digital transformation for a number of years. We're nothing if not consistent. We've done that and we continue to do that. So we're going to keep the spend levels at an elevated level. Anders is going to put our investments in digital into the context of the overall investment strategy in his update. So where are we right now then? As I said, I think we've got to kind of the table stakes for the digital experience across Pandora in all of our key markets. Now it's about elevating that brand experience. It's about really creating a storytelling environment in a space where we can celebrate our customers' stories and lives and loves. And personalization, it's pretty simple. It's about scaling the operation. Now, Massimo in his update is going to bring to life the personalized experience strategy in a lot more detail. For loyalty, also, let's reach more markets. And let's find more ways to surprise and delight our customers and also more ways to leverage that first-party data, finding new ways that we can turn data into sales. We're also now using technology, really focusing on the store associates experience, the -- everyone in store and how they -- how we can use technology to liberate all of our colleagues. So finding more time for our store managers to focus on training with their teams and selling to customers, taking away day-to-day admin tasks, speeding up our [indiscernible] throughput, which at key times of the year is a critical factor for us. And finding ways of bringing data to bear on our store experience. So again, it's a huge amounts that's following that space. But there's more to digital transformation, as I said, than just that digital experience. We focused on the customer experience in the first phase of digital transformation. And now we're focusing on the back end, transforming the backbone that runs throughout our business. So manufacturing, we've had a intensive and extensive program to digitize the shop floor execution in our amazing crafting facilities in Bangkok. That program is going to come to fruition in '24, where we deploy the execution -- the shop floor execution platform into our major crafting facility in Bangkok. And that, for the first time, is going to put lights on, on the back end of the second half of our supply chain. Real-time data and insight that's going to drive smarter decision-making, just-in-time manufacturing and many other benefits. The first half of the supply chain, warehousing system. We've already deployed our own warehousing system a few months ago in 2023 into our main EMEA DC in Hamburg. Now that platform, I'm not going to go into detail on but you'll be pleased to hear. I've got diagrams if you want them but I don't think you do. But what was important about that platform is it's one of the first major platforms we've built in a different way because digital transformation is about people as well. We've built our own engineering teams. We've in-sourced a significant amount of engineering and data science. So the teams that built the warehousing system are the teams that are going to go on and support it. Now that doesn't sound that radical, but most IT functions in most businesses you speak to, the smartest they get on any system is on the day it goes live, because on the day it goes live, all the people who built it leave because it's contract-based IT. And then some other poor team gets to support the platform. That's not how we're doing technology in Pandora now. We're a modern tech outfit, you build it, you run it. That means that when things do break, because they do, things will be fixed so much faster. And over time, things break a lot less often because you're building better code. The people platform is actually the first major global platform we put live just under 2 years ago now. This is a platform that enables, very simply, all of us to join together. What we ask it to do is the critical piece. So asking it to create a simplified operating model for Pandora is really our challenge. And I think we've given ourselves the best chance of success of that because of reason #2, which is we're a simple business. We make beautiful jewelry, we make it in our own factories. We move it through our own supply chain as Alexander said, up to 86% of the sales are under our control through our own channels, et cetera. So we're of a simple business. We're not an aeronautical business, we're not like a car manufacturer with thousands of suppliers and millions of parts and so on. So for those reasons, keeping to a very lean, very core, very simple ERP, I think we've got a really good chance of success in that space. So let's talk about our first-party data. It's been mentioned a couple of times. We're going to play a simple video just now. [Presentation]

So I'm just going to bring this to life with a very simple model of how we are disciplined about turning data into sales. So very simply put, very simply put. Our media teams have a simple job, very strong media team in Pandora. Their simple job is to bring people from out there into our channels. And they do that by working with the data science team. We've built 48. As of today, we have 48 live segments in terms of customer segmentation that live around the world. We use this every day to target and attract people into Pandora. From there, once a person is inside one of our channels. Again, very simple goal. The channels seem to have a simple goal, which is to make that first sale. And at that point, the real-time personalization kicks in, built it in the U.K., scaling it globally. That and the customer orchestration platform kicks in to make sure you're seeing just the right messages at just the right time. And from the channel to our audience, hopefully, you then make the purchase, you're then a known customer. And we have a very simple goals on around driving frequency, but fundamentally driving brand love in MC's terms to really drive that engagement and longevity of the relationship, and there the loyalty program by Pandora and then CRM through customer orchestration really kicks in. Let's bring this to life with a very specific example, the gold shopping journey in the U.K. So I'm really down the [ reeds ] now, but I want to make sure that you understand this is not vaporware, this is not what we might do in the future, this is what's happening right now in our markets. So gold shopper journey. You're out there looking at -- things on Instagram, maybe our media teams working with our media platforms, thinking you might be a target for gold advertising. So they put a little efforts in front of you with a nice piece of gold jewelry in it. you're engaged, you click on it. You land into our website on a landing page, which is being customized around the things you've just seen in the adverts and we built a whole gold story on the website. At that point, we drop a cookie on to you. Now everyone knows what a cookie is these days because we all hit the accept button 50 times a day on websites. We have alongside the 55 million first-party customer records. We have approximately 230 million people who are cookied in some way. And from there, we're gathering behavioral data. We don't know who you are, we don't know where you live, but we do know that the pages you visited and what you're doing. We do know where you move around on those pages as well. So let's assume that you're so engaged, you buy your first piece of jewelry, the lovely Zodiac charm on the page there. You also sign up to My Pandora because you know you're going to get money off your next purchase with us. And then from there, you're into that life cycle with the customer orchestration, deepening the relationship, building that connection. So why is that important? Well, the work we've done in the U.K. so far this year has taken people who receive a personalized experience to the heady heights of 10%. It's hard just to get to that. We've had some two major technology breakthroughs in terms of how we do personalization in the last number of months. We now believe we're going to be able to get that figure up to 50% of all people hitting the web channels, having a personalized experience. And why is that important? The number in the black box. We saw a 33% improvement in performance for people who saw this gold journey. So in terms of saying this is real, it's in small stage at the moment, we're building this up very steadily. We have the operating model working now. So let's go on to the final message. Where do we go next in our digital journey? Well, for us, One of our key values is we deliver? You may have seen it in the Phoenix wheel from earlier on. And I've talked a lot about the things we've got delivered. But we also dare, we dare. And for us now, it's about raising our heads up and looking at the technology horizon and thinking about what's next. In this first phase, we've built super strong foundations. Alexander referenced it upfront, the digital foundations are the glue driving that on top of which the Phoenix growth strategy sits. I think it's not just about what we build those, it's about the way we build it. And I mentioned about the warehousing system, modern technology culture, hiring great tech talents into Pandora. So with scalable modern foundations, when you combine that with talents, genuine tech talent that we're bringing in from around the world to be part of the Pandora adventure. And you add into that culture, you get one thing and that's acceleration. And that's the phase that we're in now with all things digital. The next phase will provide us with faster time to market and in particular, with the foundations that we've built in data, which mean very hard jobs, over the last couple of years to get ourselves to the place where we've got super solid foundations, all our data are in one place, transactional, customer behavioral and so on. With those foundations now in place, the future will increasingly be built around data science, predictive analytics and AI. So we're in a strong position for this digital acceleration as well because as I said, we've built these foundations. But on top of that, the vertical integration we have means that we get lights on across the value chain from a data point of view. And now our question is what tunes do we play? What analytic future do we want to build? And in particular, as part of that, we have the right partnerships. So we're partnered with Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce, Bloomreach on customer orchestration. And with our partnerships, we're getting earlier and earlier access to the betas, the trials and the pilots that these companies want to do because they're excited about the Pandora story as well. Okay. So last, what are we going to accelerate? We talked a lot about the customer experience, we talked about taking digital from great selling experience to elevated brand experience. We've talked about personalization, in particular, a huge driver that we've got in that space. Leveraging that first-party data, this is all about repetition and deepening what we've built. So building that operating model, streamlining it and keep driving on that. We have a model that works. Now we're driving. And as I said, that predictive analytics piece will continue to grow. We've got over 3 years' experience. Now, we're building machine learning models around our customers. Now we start to apply it to different parts of the value chain, we're going to get a great result. So very simply for me, three key takeaways. The digital transformation at Pandora is, present tense, is working. We've got huge strides on that front. Second, our model monetizes customer data. We understand how that model works, and now it's about accelerating that. And third, it's all about acceleration. Thank you very much. I'm going to hand to Massimo, my friend now.

Good afternoon, everyone. So my name is Massimo Basei, and I'm the Chief of Retail Operations. Today, I'm going to cover two topics, which are near and dear to my heart, and most importantly, are key to make Pandora or become make Pandora become known as a full jewelry brand: Providing a personalized customer experience to each and every Pandora customers; and drive market growth and brand presence across the world. As the Chief of retail operations, this is my mandate. I'm fairly new in this role, but I have gained lots of experience in Pandora, in driving market growth, expanding network and leading stores and support functions. More importantly, we also reorganized and realigned our global and cluster resources in support of these goals. First, I will cover how Pandora provides a truly tailored personal shopping experience. We have a unique opportunity to build strong relationship with our customers. Thanks to our beautiful and meaningful jewelry, who speaks to the lot of our customers or fans as we like to call them and their loves. We have 600 million visits per year in our stores, both online and offline. And we want to take the experience to the next level by personalizing the journey. The personalized experience pillar of the Phoenix strategy aims to give a variety of touch points with the brand in the way they want to interact with us. Our ambition is clear, we want to deliver world-class customer journeys regardless of channel with a focus on seamless and inspiring journey. This is one of the most tangible expression of Pandora as a full jewelry brand. Our store team know that a fan's love can be expressed in many ways with different product types and on different wearing occasions. We have a customer engagement model called Spark, which our teams used to engage and delight with our fans across the full offering over multiple collections and categories. I've mentioned the in-store experience, but let's be clear, the Phoenix personalized experience pillar is focused on the omni experience, both online and off-line. As a true omnichannel retailer, we embrace the many ways our customers want to shop with us. Today, 72% of our revenue comes from our owned and operated channel, 51% from our owned and operated stores and 21% from our pandora.net. And this will only grow in the years to come. Therefore, we have comprehensive plans to enhance the experience, the customer experience, both online and off-line. Please watch this video to see how this comes to life. [Presentation]

So this video demonstrated our fan's journey online and offline. During our time today, I'll be more focused on the in-store experience, this is where our brand really comes to life. So to that end, I'll start by reviewing how we're focusing on retaining and developing top store managers' talent. Then we walk through how we will enable more transactions in peak traffic and trading periods by optimizing retail processes. And lastly, I'll talk to you about two ways we are innovating the personalized shopping experience both in-store and online. So our store teams are so important or I would like or as we like to call them, our Store Pandorians are so important that they deserve their own part of my presentation today. We strongly believe that developing and empowering our store managers is the key to the customer experience in store. Actually, our store teams are not simple retail staff who folds t-shirts or restock shelves. They are true salespeople who engage with our customers and the quality of that interaction defines to a large extent, the quality of the customer experience and its results. So our Pandorians are the #1 asset in providing a key customer experience, and this is especially true for our store manager. When a store manager is strong, the store has higher revenue lower sales associate, attrition, and scratch. We must train them on how to engage with the customers, run retail operations and lead the store teams. Therefore, you can see that retaining Pandorians is a key unlock for growth. We are today on par with market retention and its flipside attrition. But our goal is to cut attrition in half by 2026. By doing so, we estimate a run rate of DKK 200 million in year-over-year cost avoidance. And more importantly, a run rate of DKK 800 million in top line impact. The top line comes from longer tenure associate selling more and reducing lost sales while hiring for replacements. Because our store managers are so valuable to us and to the customer experience and because the time it takes to ramp up to full productivity, we are launching a whole ecosystem of programs to strengthen our store manager skills, enhance their development and extend their careers with us. Some examples include: for mentoring, we're launching a global mentoring and best practice sharing forum; for career developing, we have redefined and standardizing the career ladder, looking to develop strong sales associates into store managers and beyond; for recognition, we have a robust incentive system in place to drive and reward performance. Plus as an added perk, we have a celebration program for top managers sponsoring them on a trip to our crafting facilities in Thailand. This is an annual program to elevate and celebrate our top talent. Plus, we are reducing admin work for our store teams, especially for our store managers. We are adding a communication and task management program called Connect to streamline the workload that goes into our stores. And we are also introducing a workforce management system to optimize staff scheduling. I'll go into the details of our workforce management initiative in a minute. But removing a main task for our store teams and especially store managers will free up time for them to spend on training and coaching our store teams or back to engage directly with our customers. Both activities will drive top line. And now I'll talk about how we are eliminating our streamlining in-store processes. But before I dive into it, let me paint a picture for you. We do about 40% of our annual revenue in the 6 weeks from mid-November to end of December, let's say, through Christmas which is a lot. But when you think of an example to put it into more sharper focus, for example, Italy, complete a transaction every 3 minutes during those 6 weeks. And I'm referring to O&O concept stores. Now you may conclude that we are already quite good at managing volumes. But MC said that one of our strategic focus is to drive penetration. So bringing new customers into Pandora and adding new customers at peak requires that we must continue to drive operational efficiencies. This includes, but is not limited to, to implementing in-store technology. It's not for tax sake. The technology we are implementing is actually improving processes in a way that would not be possible manually. And we will be able to drive better customer experience and more revenue as a consequence. So first, let's talk about mobile POS system or which I would refer to mobile POS. We already have mobile POS in North America and know that at peak, it drives higher conversion rates, reduces SKUs and enables quicker transaction time. And most importantly, it improves the customer experience because the customer engages with the same through -- with the same sales associate throughout the whole sales process throughout the whole experience. We have a road map to implement mobile POS in our European core markets over the next two years. The benefit of mobile POS in Europe is most obvious at peak. But remember that they mentioned that some markets close a completed transaction every 3 minutes, so there is very little time to engage with the customers, show them the product they desire, try them on and then go to the checkout. This implies that every second counts. With mobile POS, we will be able to serve more customers during peak traffic times and periods and this will be reflected actually in an expected improvement in conversion rate of 0.9 percentage points. This is the expected run rate -- improvement in run rate in market -- sorry, for O&O stores for the [ in-scope ] markets. The last benefit of mobile POS is that we free up space in store, for example, the space occupied by a fixed deal can be used by an engraving machine instead. So we can provide a consistent omni experience if our stores are lacking proper technology. Therefore, we are announcing the in-store tech in a smart, targeted way. One of our biggest initiatives is the implementation of our workforce management system. The system will generate automatic staff schedules, eliminating the manual task for our store managers and store associate can better manage in swapping shift, clocking in and out, and checking the hours worked, which will drive higher engagement. Probably, most importantly, the workforce management system will yield higher conversion rate by optimizing staffing as it allows a more accurate and qualitative allocation of the labor hours when traffic is high. Our sales per square meter proves that we are already quite productive, but these will help us taking it to the next level. The workforce management system is expected to save 200 labor hours per year per store manager. And you can easily understand how we can use that time in a more efficient way. All in all, our estimate is that the workforce management system will drive an approximately 2% revenue run rate impact in O&O stores for the markets in scope, which is a conservative view, industry benchmarks suggest a 5% uplift. But as I said, we know we're starting from an already quite strong position. Those are a few of the projects we will be investing in over the next two years or few years. Not only do they drive better customer experience, but they have also revenue upside. With longer tenured staff and more efficient in-store operations, we can innovate our shopping experience or brand experience. I'll talk about two initiatives which we are now ready to ramp up at scale, which are engraving and our loyalty program, My Pandora. One of the ways we are innovating the brand experience is by introducing engraving. We offer instant engraving in-store with a full range of blank template charm, bracelet and pendants to choose from. Additionally, customers can select a variety of forms, emojis or can even engrave their own doodles or drawing. By the end of the year, we will cover 850 brick-and-mortar stores with engraving. Said another way, 44% of our owned and operated concept stores and 14% of our franchise store will have an engraving machine. And we are also planning to add another 600 machines next year. By the way, engraving is one of the feature in our new concept -- new store concept, Evoke 2.0. The result speaks for itself. Sales of Engraving have outperformed by 2x our ambitions so far, and our fans love it. The engraving content on TikTok has 24x the reach and 95x the engagement versus our average Pandora content. The in-store engraving experience was so powerful that we accelerated our plans to roll it out online. It's important for us to mirror the services we offer online and off-line as because of our ambition to be a true omnichannel retailer. Our ambition for 2024 is to expand online engraving to the next wave of markets, but we will also fine-tune and improve the service. For example, in 2024, we will increase the number of items that can be engraved online from currently 10 to 30. And finally, we want to reward our fans for coming back time and time again. Therefore, you remember that we launched in 2022 in France, our loyalty program, My Pandora. We're now scaling the program fast through 2023 and 2024. Some markets generating more than 50% of our revenue globally will be covered by the program. Taking a look at the progress so far, in France and U.K. combined, we have 1.4 million My Pandora members, and we just entered Q4, which is a high season for recruiting new members. Last year in France, in Q4, the intake of new members doubled compared the monthly average. Furthermore, we see that 60% of our members are totally new to Pandora, while 40% have transitioned from our old Pandora club. And out of our members, 65% have purchased generating around DKK 1 billion in sales. In general, these customers are very valuable to us because they love our brand. And with the data they give us as member of the program, we can continue to tailor and personalize our and fine-tune our services and programs. These data are particularly powerful when combined with our marketing efforts because we can convey more personalized messages to our My Pandora members to drive conversion. So now I've come to the end of my first presentation. And I'd like to leave you with a few takeaways. So first, we are focused on empowering our store managers to drive store performance as they are the most powerful asset in driving the customer experience. Our focus is to retain and develop top talent. Two, we're investing to become even more efficient in retail operations, implementing in-store technology and other best practices. This will enable us to serve even more customers at peak. And lastly, we will use the free up time to innovate for our fans, which will also deliver higher top line. Examples include engraving and our loyalty program, My Pandora, and this is just the beginning. So now I'll move into my second presentation, which is about our market. And some of you may have noticed that we have relabeled our previous Phoenix Core Markets pillar into markets today. This has been intentionally done because we want to highlight our diversified geographical footprint to energize enough to have multiple channels and store types to meet the specific of a market. And lastly, I'm excited to discuss our Evoke store concept, which we are rolling out at scale. This concept enabled us to communicate multiple collections and categories under the Pandora brand umbrella. So let's start with our view on markets and how to best drive growth in each of the wide set of markets in our portfolio. So going forward, we will have a more focused approach in pursuing opportunities across our geographical portfolio. The message I want to take you is that our growth algorithm is not reliant on one single market. The global jewelry market is highly fragmented, and despite owning approximately 1.3% of the global jewelry market, our position is, to a large extent, driven by high penetration in core European markets. We are looking to change this by broadening our strategic focus and targeting significant opportunities around the world. This will result in a broader geographical mix in markets we operate in today. So what this means is that in markets where we have an already high market share today, we will look to take this to the next level through our full jewelry offering. Across the rest of the portfolio, where our market share is low, we will harvest our true potential. Of course, across our portfolio growth will be complemented with network expansion. Finally, we are going to invest in, for future growth, a few markets we have been -- we are largely absent from, specifically India, South Korea and Japan. This is really to build out future growth engine already. Two years ago, we said that we would have gone after this market after Phoenix. However, Pandora has been through a true transformation with a complete organizational restructure, and we have now key global functions across the value chain and global support function for our collections. With this strengthened operating model, we have now the capacity to accelerate growth opportunities in different -- in these markets. So I wanted to show you here three case studies to show how flexible our operating model can actually be depending on the specific country strategy, depending on the specific strategy within these markets. So firstly, we grew the U.S. by being laser focused on increasing our market share. The market, the jewelry market in the U.S. is highly fragmented. We have less than 2% market share, and Pandora has, therefore, lots of white space, particularly in the West Coast and in the South. We aggressively pursued new store opening to fill this white space. Additionally, we grew with forward integration, converting franchise stores into O&O. To support a larger owned and operated retail network, we also restructured, reorganized our North America organization, both store and support functions. These three things combined with a host of smaller initiatives, were all rooted in driving market share. Now this market share strategy and related practice are also applicable to other markets. So maybe not at the same scale as in the U.S. We believe that we can drive meaningful growth and meaningful gains in market share also in other markets. Second example is our case study in Mexico. Mexico has had an incredible revenue growth trajectory over the last few years and they did so by building presence very rapidly, going from a small player to a much larger presence. Network expansion has played a key role here as well with both concept stores and shop-in-shop. But the Mexico team has complemented the network expansion strategy with bold -- with a bold marketing strategy to drive penetration. MC reviewed that recruiting new customers is actually key in driving brand penetration. So the Mexico team used a variety of ways to get the Pandora message in front of our customers with out-of-home and in-mall advertising and social media, in particularly with influencers. They targeted, which is also worth remembering, as slightly more affluent customers than we usually do in U.S. or in Western Europe, given the specific of the demographics in Mexico. So we see that this type of strategy can be applied also to other markets. And particularly, as we look to expand our business in South America, it's applicable, this strategy is applicable to Mexico. Then lastly, you may remember that in 2017, we converted most of our franchise stores into O&O in Spain. And this is a good example of gains after forward integration. This was early in our journey to become a direct-to-consumer brand. But we believe then and still believe today that stores can be more productive and we can offer a better customer experience when we run them on full. Here, we show the size of the top 10 markets, which cover roughly 85% of the global jewelry market. Then we layered on our estimate for growth potential and market and brand penetration. The analysis led us to the following two broad market groupings. Here, you can see why we chose those two segments. There is a clear divide between mature, high market share like U.K., Italy and Australia and the rest of Pandora. We realized that each group requires its own communication plan. For lower penetrated market, the key is to kickstart awareness by connected with culture. In markets like Australia, Italy and the U.K., the unlock is to drive consideration and broaden appeal. So we will use these two broad segments to guide our go-to-market strategies and investments for growth. As I said, this is not one size fits all. We adapt our strategy depending on the specific of the market, but it's just to give you an idea. In the first grouping, we can see markets where we expect a strong -- a solid to strong directional like-for-like growth. These are markets where we expect, where we see very good potential. There is an opportunity to boost penetration and grow by increasing awareness and recruiting new customers. There are a few ways we can actually win in these markets, growing in low to mid market share countries, continuing on already strong brand momentum, building presence rapidly in new markets or driving like-for-like with forward integration. In the next group, you can see markets where we expect steady directional like-for-like growth. These are markets where we already have a high market share, optimized store network and high brand awareness. The next step here is to elevate our full jewelry offering, fueling with more. We already have good example of this strategy at work. For example, with diamonds in the U.K., which we piloted in U.K. actually, to broaden our offer and bring new customers to the brand. But we also have our eyes on the horizon and our aim is to start developing future growth engines now while reaping the benefits of the segments I just presented. These growth engines will take some time to develop and will also require some investment in retail and other infrastructure. The first step is to ensure that we have the right organizational setup. This is why we recently formed the new Latin America and Pacific cluster, but also appointed a global owner for the partners channel for the first time. Next step will be to further detail out our ambition in each country and a specific go-to-market approach. We will likely use a distributor model as you need luck and knowledge and relations, for example, with lenders to win in these markets. This is about all I can share at this moment at this point in time. It's too early to plan any impact but we expect to start to see it towards the end of the horizon in 2026. We are confident that when done right, we can also succeed in these type of markets. For example, recall our successful business in Taiwan. We went after the market with a strong focus on our core Moments platform on meaningful jewelry. But let's discuss in detail these three growth engines that we see. So India, while India is predominantly a gold market, the silver demand is starting to grow among young consumers. We have a strong full jewelry offering that is rooted in affordable luxury, just a sweet spot for younger consumers who are starting to gain purchasing power. And the size of the Indian market make the demand material. India is the third largest silver market in the world. So now we have the scale, both in production capabilities and organizational infrastructure to meet this demand. Then we have Japan where we have a handful of stores, but revenue is low, and it's not been a strategic focus yet. Now we have the capacity to pursue additional new growth avenues and we will begin to make it a focus, and the time is right. Affordability is becoming increasingly interesting for Japanese consumers who love to reward themselves and gift others. Pandora is the right full jewelry brand to meet those customers' desire for affordable luxury. Lastly, South Korea. The South Korea jewelry market is benefiting from robust consumer spending. And the market, which is already the #8 in the world is expected to grow in the years to come to reach to at least the size of Japan, which is the #4 market globally. And like Japan, cost-conscious consumers are emerging. Again, Pandora position as an affordable full jewelry brand, will serve as well here as well. To round out this section, I would like to revisit one topic that was discussed at last Capital Markets Day in 2021, our long-term ambitions in the U.S. and China. So let's start with the U.S. Now I mentioned earlier how we are executing on taking market share. And I also want to reiterate that our Phoenix strategy is working extremely well in the U.S. Some of you will remember that back in 2021, we set a long-term ambition to double our U.S. business versus 2019 revenue level. The U.S. is a large jewelry market, and we see a lot of opportunities for us. So we do not have specific slides on the U.S. today apart from this. But the way you should think of it is the following: all the growth opportunities that we have presented and will present today apply also to the U.S. And in some cases, they apply in particularly to the U.S., like, for example, network expansions and diamond. So today, we're not setting a new specific revenue target for the U.S. in absolute number. But the message we want to send you is even more important, and that's the one I showed two slides back. We see a solid to strong like-for-like growth opportunity in the U.S. during the next three years. Now based on the delivery of the last couple of years and the ample opportunities we see ahead of us, we are on track to exceed our revenue target of doubling our U.S. business by 2025. So doubling our U.S. business by 2025 is equivalent to a revenue CAGR of 12%. I also want to reiterate that we see ample opportunities even beyond 2025. We simply have so many opportunities to build our brand in the U.S. Now let's talk about China and our plans in China. Back in 2021, Pandora set an ambitious target to triple our business compared to the 2019 baseline of DKK 2 billion. Since then, ongoing COVID disruption delayed our effort of reestablishing the brand. We continue to see big opportunities in China given the size of the jewelry market, but it's clear that building a sizable business is going to be in a journey that will take longer than we initially expected. We announced at the Q2 results that we took the initial step in relaunching our brand in Shanghai. So let me show how some early results of how things are progressing. As you can see on the slide, there has been some early positive responses in terms of traffic to stores and social media in Shanghai compared to rest of China since the relaunch. So we will take these learnings and continue to build our brand step by step. Again, I want to reiterate that we will desist. We're on a journey. We will take this learning and adjust accordingly. Similarly to the U.S. We're not setting a specific revenue target for China, but we can share that the first step will be to get back to the revenue level we had in '19. But this will probably happen beyond 2026. This concludes our market segment discussion. Now we should talk about the tactics for network expansion within a market. So as you know, we have 4 channels, brick-and-mortar stores, pandora.net, marketplace, online marketplaces and multi-brand jewelers. Let me explain a little bit more in detail our physical store network. We have both stand-alone concept stores and shop-in-shops. Both allow us to express the brand in the right way, enabling us to be become known as a full jewelry brand. We typically use shop-in-shop when the demographic of a certain area wouldn't support a full concept store. Franchise store has been key in our growth journey, and they will continue to play a role in our network even as we transition more into owned and operated. So we leverage different store formats and ownerships depending on the local store types depending on the circumstances of the local market. But the preferred go-forward channel is owned and operated concept stores. And you'll understand why in a couple of slides. Now you would have seen our accelerated plans for network expansion. And here, I just wanted to highlight the extent of our white space opportunity. In short, there is a vast amount of white space available for us globally. Into 2021, we completed a thorough white space analysis, mapping over 13,000 locations in our key markets. Then we filtered them down and created a phased approach to tackle them. We opened around 400 stores in 2022 and 2023, and plan to open another 400 to 500 stores over the next three years. The majority of these will be in our key markets, particularly in North America and Latin America. Landlords tends to want our business in their malls because of the high productivity of our stores. So we only come behind, as Alexander said, the likes of brands like Apple. I know Anders will expand on this later, but I just wanted to highlight with this slide how much value we create. On the slide, you can see the typical economics of a classical concept store to the right and shop-in-shop to the left. In both cases, we ramp up to the average revenue contribution of DKK 2.5 million to DKK 3 million very quickly at a margin contribution from 35% to 40%. The capital required to establish this store is relatively low, while the productivity is incredibly attractive. This is a low-risk and highly predictable revenue driver for us. And we hope that this economic will make clear why we will continue to push ahead on our plans here. You would also have recently seen that our owned and operated stores have outperformed those of our partners. This comes as no surprise to us because of the investment we're making in our store teams. But it also endorses our forward integration strategy. So you can see that over the past 5 years, we've been on a journey to become a true direct-to-consumer brand. And we will selectively continue this journey with forward integrations, expected to add 1% per year to our group sales going forward. Similar to new store openings when we open a store ourselves, the economics here are incredibly value accretive with 2x revenue, and broadened neutral EBIT margin impact to group. So as you can see, filling white space with highly productive and value-accretive stores is one of our core competencies. And this leads up into my last chapter, which is about Evoke. So the Evoke store concept has been developed and tested over the last two years and it is now our go-forward concept for our stand-alone retail stores. And it will be also applied to other store formats, including shop-in-shops and kiosk in the coming months. Evoke is an important enabler in our journey to become known as a full jewelry brand. It allows for multiple collections and product types to be communicated under the Pandora brand umbrella. Evoke gives strong exposure to our new bets while keeping our core at the center. So I'd like to share some customers' impression for the Evoke concept from our external research partner. So the perceived look and feel aligned nicely with our core attributes in brand DNA. So specifically, it's perceived as were welcoming and approachable. Storefront is striking, 82% of the traffic notice the windows and 84% of them stopped to look. Design works practically, it's easy to navigate and the fixture are at a comfortable height. And lastly, it drives higher inspiration and makes exploration easy beyond just our charms and bracelet products. Plus productivity wise, it's a win because we have more selling stations in Evoke, on average, 2 to 3 because we can now sell from the wall and there is also less inventory tied up in displays and more of it available for selling due to the changes on-the-wall modules. So this suggests us that our ambitions with the Evoke store concept were realized on all fronts. So Evoke is now our go-forward store concept. And again, it's a key enabler for us to become known as a full jewelry brand. So we are moving at speed to transition our full network to Evoke. 74% of our owned and operated concept store revenue will come from Evoke stores by the end of 2026. To accomplish this goal, we will refit 850 owned and operated concept stores, but we will also refit, there would be also 300 franchise stores refitted into Evoke. And lastly, we will add between 225 to 275 new concept stores. So we will complete the full transition of our owned and operated concept store network to Evoke by the end of 2028. So that brings me to the end of my presentation, and I want to leave you with four key takeaways: We are targeting new markets in a way that optimizes potential growth opportunities; we see a large opportunity to continue our growth trajectory in multiple markets using our playbook; network expansion is focused on owned and operated stores as our most value-accretive channel; and lastly, the Evoke store concept will enable us become known as a full jewelry brand and provide rich customer experience. So thank you very much. I think there has been another change to the program. So we now have our final coffee break. And then I'll invite you to come back in 15 minutes for the Q&A session. Thank you very much. [Break]

Please welcome to the stage, Anders Boyer, Chief Financial Officer, Pandora.

Welcome back from the break, and welcome to the final stretch of the day. Before I dive into the financials, there's a message that I would like to pass on from the leadership team of Pandora. Everything that we've seen since we launched the Phoenix strategy a couple of years back. It tells us that the strategy works. And all the investments that we put into the organization into building capabilities, driving top line are yielding positive results. And with all of that, we think that we are standing here today and can say that we have transformed Pandora into a much more reliable and consistent performer. And therefore, we're also ready to stand here today and promise you four things from a financial angle. And those four things are what you can see in the boxes on the slide here. First of all, we will be accelerating top line growth in the years to come. That's very much about, as you've seen today, doing what we've already been doing during the last couple of years, keep executing. And as we keep executing, we believe that we will see accelerated top line growth. We will be driving EBIT margin expansion. And it's important to know that we will do that while we are accelerating investments in current and future growth at the same time. We will continue to be a cash machine, if I can use that word, driving very -- delivering very significant free cash flow during the next couple of years and keep returning that to our shareholders. And if you add off those first three boxes, we will be delivering mid-to-high teens earnings per share growth during the next couple of years. And in a way, Pandora is quite a simple business or rather a simple financial model. And in this context, simple is good. A quite simple financial model that will continue delivering significant shareholder returns in the years to come. Just taking a step back and look at what we promised at the Capital Market Day back in 2021. If you go back then -- the key measures that we passed on in 2021 was that Pandora is back on a growth track. And if you look at where we are now 2 years down the road, we're actually delivering on the targets that we set out back then on the top line and on the bottom line. And that delivery comes despite a somewhat tougher macroeconomic environment and other external factors. Which were clearly not baked into the targets that we set out back then, but still we will be delivering on the targets that we set out 2 years back. But even more important, looking ahead on the financial targets, we have -- you've seen these numbers a couple of times already. But based on the portfolio of growth opportunities that we are seeing, the range of growth opportunities, we lift the organic growth target to 7% to 9% for the next 3 years. On the EBIT margin, we see 26% to 27% margin in 2026, so up 100 to 200 basis points from the 25% guidance that we've set out for 2023. And it is clear from these targets that we will now be taking Pandora into the next level of sustainable and profitable growth. One of the things that we wanted to stress upfront is that when you look at the box to the left, the organic growth CAGR it is a CAGR target. So not necessarily something that's going to be delivered each and every year through this 3-year target period. And it's very deliberate that we set the targets this way. We did the same back in 2021, but we want to make sure that the targets allow some flexibility for -- as an example, macroeconomic fluctuations during the period and not least, potentially in 2024. So unpacking the revenue ambition in a bit more detail. The first box that you can see in the bridge here, that's like-for-like, 4% to 6% like-for-like CAGR during the next couple of years. And I'll dive a little bit more into that in a second. On top of that, network expansion. We've talked a lot about that already three points of growth on average during the next 3 years and then taking us to the 7% to 9% organic growth. One point of forward integration on top on average and then lifting the total local currency growth to an 8% to 10% CAGR during the next couple of years. And converting that into absolute numbers, we're looking at a DKK 34 million to DKK 36 billion of revenue in 2026. Up DKK 7 billion to DKK 9 billion from the guidance that we've set out for this year. During the day, we have focused mostly on the growth pillars in the Phoenix strategy, and that's the four growth pillars that you can see in the pink circle on the screen here. And then all of my colleagues have been diving into the concrete initiatives below each of those four growth pillars. And that's what you can see in the bullet points up here. Lot of words, but we just thought that we wanted you to have this slide on your iPad or in your hard copies or you can get the combined overview of all of the growth initiatives that we are pursuing. But again, the key message being that the sum of these initiatives, we are quite confident is going to deliver accelerated revenue growth in the years to come. So a bit more detail on the revenue growth. One data point that could be relevant to think about is that when we deliver on the guidance for 2023, that corresponds to a 3 points of like-for-like CAGR compared to all the way back to 2019. So 3 points of like-for-like CAGR since before the world starting talking about COVID-19. And we believe that with the initiatives that we have been talking about today, we will be accelerating like-for-like growth above that 3-point level. And a couple of things that we will highlight to give a little bit of credibility to that statement of accelerated like-for-like growth. First of all, we are going to put proper money behind the growth initiatives that we have lined out today. We'll remain prudent on the cost, and I'll try to be the guardian of that, but we'll make sure to put a proper money behind our growth initiatives. Secondly, the initiatives that we are pursuing is very much about doing what we're already doing. We're not going into completely new ventures in completely sort of different directions of what we have done in the past. It's mostly about keep executing on what we have already been doing for the last couple of years. And thirdly, like what you saw back in the Capital Market Day in '21. The sum of the parts of all the initiatives you've heard about today is above the 4% to 6% like-for-like CAGR. And in a way, that's the beauty of having a strategy that builds very much on the existing assets, the existing infrastructure of the company. Because that means that we can pursue multiple growth initiatives at the same time in a fairly low risk and cost-efficient manner. And that is why we have built in this contingency bucket that you can see so roughly in the middle of the slide here. That also means that we are less dependent on sort of one single growth initiative succeeding in order for us to deliver on the target. On the network expansion, the 3 points of network expansion, it's also about continue doing what we're already doing for the last couple of years. We know how to do that. And -- and in a way, that growth bucket is almost independent on the economic cycle. It's a very different source of growth. As Massimo also already said, it's very predictable, it's low risk, almost mechanical and a lot of hard work, obviously, but it's a very different source of growth that we are very happy with. In order to help you understand our thinking on the growth during the next couple of years. We have provided you some couple of data points during today on growth from a geographical point of view. And growth from a collection point of view. And the slide here is almost similar to the one that Massimo shows just a few minutes back, but 2 points only then I would like to highlight or repeat when we had the Capital Market Day in '21, we spoke a lot about China, and we spoke a lot about the U.S. as the focus of geographical opportunities, but the growth opportunities that we are facing from a geographical perspective are much wider than that. And that is one of the messages that we would like to make sure that you take home today. And that's why Alexander mentioned it in the introduction, Massimo mentioned it, and now I take the liberty of repeating it for the third time because we think it's a key message for you to take back. Then the other message I would like to give a while on this slide is that 70% of our revenue today sits in the box to the left, the black box, which is the growth, the markets with a relatively higher growth opportunity. Only 30% of the revenue sits in the box to the right. Massimo has talked about these three potential future growth engines as well, India, Japan and South Korea. So that's just one point that I wanted to -- at or repeat again, is that the potential revenue upside from these three markets is not included in the targets that we have set out today. Potentially, it could add to revenue in the back half of the period. Let's see, but it's a little bit too early for us to be concrete about that. Another way of unpacking revenue growth ambition is by collection. And you've heard both [MC] and Stephen talked about that earlier on. So again, I just -- we just wanted to have the slide in here for completeness sake on what -- how we think about the financial assumptions. But the only thing I would like to repeat again is that moment is a key source of growth for us in the years to come. Low to mid-single-digit like-for-like growth during the next couple of years. And then on top of that obviously comes moments growth driven by the network expansion, of course. And speaking about network expansion, we have a very big network already. Massimo spoke about that, but there's a lot of wide space. And we are going to run for that wide space in the years to come. So we will be adding another 400 to 500 stores during the next 3 years. And that will, in numbers term at DKK 2.5 billion of incremental revenue by 2026 and almost DKK 1 billion in annual incremental EBIT from 2026. But the expansion of the network doesn't stop in 2026. We just talked about this time horizon because that's the time horizon for the target. But once we get to that point, 2027, there's still going to be ample white space for us to continue the journey of network expansion. Moving a little bit further down the P&L and talking about the EBIT margin. Our starting point for the EBIT margin is high. And it's going to stay high, very much supported by a strong gross margin. As you know, we have a gross margin in the high 70s, supported by the scale that we have throughout the company. And that gross margin will remain high in the years to come as well and probably even take up a further not during the next couple of years. If you start from the left in the Brinks Home up here, the first pink box network expansion, network expansion has been margin accretive in the past. It's going to remain margin accretive and will drive 100 basis points of margin expansion during the next couple of years. If you look at that second pink box operating leverage, then we have a lot of growth opportunities ahead of us, and we want to make sure that we grab these growth opportunities and invest what it takes behind them to get them off the ground and deliver the accelerated top line growth that we are looking for. So we will be reinvesting a big part or a big part of the operating leverage back into the business. So we are making sure that we see this accelerated like-for-like growth in the years to come. And then depending on how much we are going to invest to drive as an example, the restating of the brand that [ MC ] talked about and depending on how much that level of investments drive in like-for-like that will determine how the operating leverage play out. But operating leverage could add up to 100 basis points of EBIT margin as well during the next couple of years and all adding up to between 1 and 2 percentage points of margin expansion by '26. And there's two points we would like to add here. One is that the journey towards that EBIT margin expansion will not be linear. When we get into 2024, we want to make sure that we invest what it takes to get these growth opportunities that we had in front of us of the ground in a proper way. We want to make sure that we have the flexibility to invest what it takes in the -- and what is needed in 2024. Secondly, this -- the EBIT margin target that we set out for 2026 obviously includes the investment that we need to make to drive ourselves forward towards our ambitious sustainability targets. The investment is not something that changes the P&L structure of the company in any way. But still, it adds up to meaningful money to make sure that we progress towards our journey of meeting our sustainability targets. Structured annual price increases is an integrated part of how we operate. It's part of our EBIT margin algorithm. And the target that we set today includes 1 to 2 points of annual ASP increases going forward. And as we talked about before, it's not going to be a revenue driver, but it's clearly something that will be supporting our margins and help offset salary increases and other types of inflation that is creeping into the P&L. Looking at capital expenditure, we will be spending 6% to 7% of revenue during the next couple of years. And many of you will know that we have previously communicated a target of in the longer run of about 5% of revenue CapEx being 5% of revenue, but we've been below that for a couple of years. In the past now will be above for a couple of years, but the average in the long term remain the same at around 5% of revenue. The model is unchanged. Pandora is very asset light. So we are looking into a couple of years with a return on invested capital, ROIC at around the 45% level. On cash generation, since Pandora was listed many years back, we have generated a lot of free cash flow every year and return that to the shareholders. And there's nothing that changes in that model. During the next couple of years, we will continue generating a lot of free cash flow. DKK 16 billion to DKK 17 billion of free cash flow during the next couple of years, corresponding to a cash conversion of between 65% and 70%. And then looking at how we're going to spend that cash -- allocate that cash that we're generating during the next couple of years. We have laid out the principles on the slide here. And they are completely unchanged compared to what we have spoken about before, but I'll just walk you through it. We start out by making sure in our cash allocation principles that we maintain our investment grade rating and that we invest what it takes to drive current and future growth. And that's step #1 on the slide up here. But in a business like what we are sitting with in our hands that generates so much cash then step #1 is, in a way, not something, to be honest, we spent a lot of time in the leadership team because with the amount of cash that we generate, we are de-leveraging up to almost [ 0.5 turn ] every year. So in reality, the cash allocation discussion centers around two quite simple questions. And question number one being what leverage are we targeting by the end of the year. Within our capital structure policy, but which target a leverage of targeting by the end of the year? And then secondly, given that leverage that we are targeting, how are we splitting the excess cash between dividends, box #2 and share buybacks in Box #3. And during the next 3 years, we will be returning between DKK 14 billion and DKK 17 billion in total cash returns to the shareholders. And where we end in that range will be dependent on whether we decide to keep the leverage unchanged compared to where we're ending '23, that's around, let's call it, 1.2 turns. Or whether we de-leverage slightly to the midpoint of the capital structure policy to 1.0 turns. On the split between Box #2 and 3, we're not going to be very specific today. We want to leave that open to the ongoing discussions between Pandora and the shareholders as we have been used to do in the past. Having said that, we do follow a progressive dividend policy, progressive dividend per share policy. And you should expect that the dividend per share will increase notably and during the next couple of years. And that means that the split between dividend and share buybacks will be a bit more balanced, if I can call it that, than what we see in 2023. In 2023, we have an 80-20 split, 80% share buyback, 20% dividend, and you should expect that split to be a bit more balanced, so to speak, in the years to come. When we announced the Phoenix strategy back in 2021, we were, as a leadership team, quite excited. Now we're standing here 2 years have been executed 2 more years of execution under the belt, and we are even more excited about the future growth potential of the company. So we believe that we are at a point in time where we can lift revenue growth to high single-digit organic growth, 7% to 9% every year. And on top of that, we do have some quite important structural scale advantages throughout the value chain from manufacturing through the brand to retail operations. And they means they have a very attractive P&L profile with very high gross margins feeding into high EBIT margins. We will continue to generate a lot of free cash flow that we will, as usual, return back to shareholders also in the next 3 years. And with all of that combined, today, you are looking at a company which will be generating mid- to high teens earnings per share growth during the next couple of years. Thank you very much for listening. And I think I will leave it for Alex [indiscernible]. Thank you very much.

I know you have tons of questions. We're going to get the executive team on the stage. I'm going to try to be like a data warehouse. I'm going to channel your questions and then my esteemed colleagues are going to try to answer all of them. Unless there's something I can be helpful with. So why don't you guys come up? And then we'll just get firing. So the way it's going to work is we have three runners with microphones. So we need to use the microphones because we are people that are calling in. So if you don't speak to the microphone, they won't hear your question. So just raise your hand, they'll come with the microphone. I'm going to then try to direct to the most suitable person to answer your questions. Thank you. Okay. Let's fire away. We have one here. Do we have another microphone maybe?

It's Antoine Belge from BNP Paribas Exane. Ask three questions, but I will ask in two. So today, I was quite amazed to see so many opportunities. A lot of things I remember in the past some time some of your predecessors were embracing too many things. So how confident are you that you have enough people. And also have you been putting in place new incentives, not just for you, but also the larger team. So that's my first question. And then I remember in the last Capital Market Day, there were some -- I mean, you alluded to potential M&A. So I would like to know if between now and 2026, that's totally out of the equation?

Okay. So I'll take both of them. So we're quick here. On the first one, I mean, what you see, and I think what we've tried to demonstrate is that we're using existing structures that we build up. Three years ago, the foundations of this company were in shambles. They were not good. Anything from data to stores and then it just didn't hang together. Well, I think we've demonstrated with results is that this machine is up and running, and now it's a matter of acceleration. And also to [ Anders' ] point, we have more opportunities than what we're kind of putting on the board. But we're still very selective when we go after them. So I'm not launching five new collections. Yes, we're launching Essence, okay? Then we're launching diamonds in a few markets. So we are still very selective as we go after our big bets. So I think that's question one. So I have no concerns there. The second question on M&A. Well, I mean, as I said, 1.3% market share in a super fragmented market, highly unbranded market. So yes, there are opportunities probably out there, but we have enough to do closer to home. So what we said then was at one point, we may be part of being an aggregator of assets in this marketplace. But right now, that's not needed. We're going to deliver fantastic returns to our shareholders based on what we were guiding for here. Now -- and as all of you know, when you say what I just said, then the next day somebody knocks on my door wants to do an M&A. So -- but our plan is not to actively pursue and knock down doors. If somebody comes to me and they do all the time, by the way, then we'll have a look at it. I mean we're business people. So if the opportunity is good, yes, we'll do it. But right now, we have enough to do. So that's the current view.

Thank you. Thanks for a very good presentation. Two questions. The first one is on China. And I understand there are many reasons to maybe turn that down a little bit right now, not at least the macro situation. But nevertheless, just one slide, can we get some details on after the initial marketing investment what comes next in this 3-year period? So some color on that. And then I guess, and Anders question. So -- from your [ verbatim ], I understood the gross margin could continue to grow. But from your slide on the margin bridge, you only had the negatives. I just wonder what I got wrong there?

Okay. So on China, I think when we get to the Q3 results because the relaunch in Shanghai happened within the quarter. That's also why we are not really commenting on it here, as you know. So at the Q3, we'll give you a little bit more light. I think though, the important step -- or the important statement we're making is that we're not giving up on China, even though the starting point is dire versus where our starting point was believed back in '21. So it's still a big opportunity. All the work we've done in China still suggests that Pandora has a right to play and to be an important part of that market, but it's just going to take more time. So and hindsight is always a great thing. Do I wish that we put out that 3x number back in '21? Nowadays, maybe I don't. But it's out there. So the long-term view of us getting to a sizable business in China, we're still committed to do this. But the way we get there is probably different than what we initially expected. Then I'll leave the question to Anders.

Yes. On the gross margin, the -- we do think that the gross margin will go up a bit and contribute to the EBIT margin expansion during the years to come. It's a network expansion is one element of that. And forward integration as well as actually even though that's sort of margin neutral to [indiscernible] EBIT margin diluted as Massimo said, then on the gross margin level forward integration adds a bit to the gross margin as well. So network expansion, forward integration and then the price increases will be adding to that. But then the diamonds acceleration will work the other way around. But net-net, you should expect gross margin to go up a bit. So part of that is in that [ Brexit ] is in the network expansion bucket.

Michael Rasmussen from Danske Bank. Two questions. I believe the first one will be for Massimo and the second one for Stephen. On the Evoke 2.0, what are you thinking in terms of rollout? Are you thinking underperforming markets because our underperforming stores because that's where we can do the biggest incremental lift? Or maybe you can share a bit more on that?

Okay. No, I think 60% of the refit will take place in North America, British Isles and Southern Europe. So we're looking at where we can make the biggest impact, of course, as a brand because it drives a lot of operational improvements. But first and foremost, it helps us becoming known as a full jewelry brand. So these are three big markets for us. This is where we will focus on the beginning. Then we will also focus where we get more traffic probably. So within markets, we will start probably from the main cities or [indiscernible] way points where we have the highest traffic.

Okay. So not necessarily where the local dynamics are the worst -- as of today?

I think we will be balanced in that because we luckily performed quite well, both in top location on the high street, but also in maybe B modes. So then we also need to look at the timeline of the lease renewals, which is another metric we need to look at to take into the equation for -- from a market perspective, the main focus would be on these three clusters.

Stephen, on the launch of Essence, one thing that you didn't spend a lot of time on is, where are we kind of price point-wise and the very initial feedback, maybe you could share anything in terms of how customers take this in the Netherlands?

Well, first of all, we've been piloting in the Netherlands as we speak, and it's been performing extremely well. From a price point, it's in the same area where we have our modern classics. It's basically opening price points and higher price points to be very simple. [indiscernible] , I don't know if you want to add anything on price points.

Yes. No, it's in line. It's in line. And what we're seeing in the pilot because the pilot is about learning and optimizing. Is we're seeing a great fit with what we're trying to achieve, which is to strengthen the gold plated, the earrings offering and also bring a customer that has a different aesthetic wish. And so it's -- we expect it to be incremental.

And remember, it's also offered in sterling silver also. So we had 14-carat gold plated also. And I think when I showed the different design aesthetics, I think we have very simple and then we have it where we're, of course, adding organic shapes with Pearls, which raises the prices a little bit.

Can we have something we maybe take this side, maybe just to balance out the room. Okay. We're going on to [indiscernible]

Two questions, please. The first one, maybe for Stephen and MC the second one for Anders. The first one, so with the push of Essence and the classic modern classic lines comes probably greater product complexity, greater assortment and SKUs. How do you handle that complexity from a manufacturing standpoint, but also the selling ceremony install communication? Are you not worried to drown in too much complexity?

So I'll think Massimo should take that.

I'll take this. From a store perspective, No, I don't think we will add to complexity. Of course, we need probably to redesign the selling ceremony. If you look at the [ book ] and any folks really support it. One focal feature invoke is the entrance table, the roundtable you saw at the beginning at the entrance of the store. This is where customers walking into the stores will actually look. And this is where our stores will need to actually meet and welcome customers then walk them around the stores through the different collections, which I'll call out with the niches. Then this itself will drive a different behavior of the team and conversion rate. Then we are really working on enhancing our training activities. You saw that all activities we're doing in that space are meant really to remove activities, which do not focus on conversion rate and basket because this is where the store team can make a difference. The rest should be done according to a playbook, which has delivered from the central office. So really taking advantage of this additional free tank will help us really -- naming the multiple collection selling. We already have a customer engagement model, and I mentioned that during my presentation, called Spark, then we need to elevate the story-telling. One point of difference, which I think we have all stressed is that we bring to market meaningful jewelry and is that in that interaction in the store that we can make a difference. And so training the story telling, training that particular ability will help us deliver on our ambition.

And for Anders, maybe on your 26%, 27% EBIT margin targets, that range, does it roughly depend on 4% and 6% like-for-like, so 4% like-for-like will directionally go towards [ 26% ] and 6% like-for-like towards [ 27%. ] And then just in terms of all the cost efficiencies that you've helped generating since program now and then Phoenix. What would you say is the rule of thumb to keep the profitability flat at Pandora and what is the like-for-like needed to protect profitability, all other things being equal?

Thanks, Thomas. Two good questions. The EBIT margin range depend among others, where we land in the 4% to 6% like-for-like range, but that's actually also the other side of the coin. So the level of investment has played a role as well. So just as an example, again, how much do we need to invest to become known as a full jewelry brand? Is it this amount? Is it a higher amount of where exactly that is that? So you actually have both the level of investment and the outcome that is variable in where we end up in that 26% to 27% range by -- in 2026. And then what was your other question?

The breakeven point. I have portion of the cost structure?

The way -- the way you could think about it is that the combination of the annual price increases, 1 to 2 points of annual price increases, combined with a target that we have set on annual cost efficiencies that we want to keep driving just like we did on -- as part of what we call cost reset on the program now, and we still have a team in place to do that. Those two will be offsetting the combination of annual salary increases and other types of cost inflation. That's kind of the idea that we have in the head -- and then that leads into that from the first point of like-for-like growth, that should be leverage in the model unless we decide to invest that operating leverage into one of the growth opportunities. But I'm thinking about salary increases -- sorry, price increases plus cost efficiencies to net out with salaries and inflation. That's the model.

And on your variable investment plan, is marketing still 13%, 15% of sales long term? That's maybe I missed that in the presentation slide.

I don't think we said it. But yes, you're right. 13% to 15%, that's unchanged.

Now we need to address this side of the room.

Just a quick question on the marketing channels. if I remember correctly, during COVID, you did very well by investing in linear TV, and you had a very great share of voice when a lot of people were moving away. So going forward, as you try and communicate all of the new platforms, how you think about the marketing spend, maybe by marketing channel?

MC, maybe.