Pepco Group N.V. (8UX.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to Pepco Group's FY '25 Preliminary Results presentation. Please note that today's presentation includes video content, so if you are joining via the conference call, you may wish to also join by the webcast on your computer to ensure you are able to view it. [Operator Instructions] I'll now hand over to Stephan Borchert, Pepco Group's CEO. Stephan, over to you.

Thank you, Zaheg. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our financial year '25 preliminary results presentation. Today is my first full-year result announcement for Pepco. It's been a transformational year for the group, and I'm excited to talk to you -- talk you through our progress. I will first run through some highlights, followed by a detailed look at the strategic progress we have made this year before handing over to Willem, who will update you on our financial performance in fiscal '25 and our fiscal '26 guidance. I'll then give a quick summary before we open up to your questions at the end. With that, let's begin. Slide 3. There is a lot to be proud of this year. Our company has worked incredibly hard to execute on our new strategy, and our strong progress is clearly reflected in these results. On Slide 3, you can see an overview of our highlights, which we will cover in more detail throughout the presentation. I won't dwell on them too long now, but just call out a few key points. One of the big achievements this year was the sale of Poundland, which was not only a significant step forward strategically, but also a key element of improving the profitability of our business. We've put real focus on the improvement of our core customer proposition, which has allowed us to deliver strong growth this year, including returning Poland and CEE to like-for-like growth. We delivered revenue of EUR 4.5 billion, up 8.7%, which does already include the roughly 2% headwind caused by our FMCG exit. We also increased our gross margin by 100 basis points while maintaining our focus on market-leading pricing. This was driven largely by our change in product mix out of low-margin FMCG and into higher-margin clothing and GM ranges, supported by operational improvements across the business. This is a clear confirmation that the underlying assumption of our strategy works. We generated very strong bottom line profit growth with underlying PAT up 20% to EUR 219 million. This strong financial performance allows us to deliver enhanced capital returns to our shareholders, in line with our capital allocation policy. We have declared the dividend for fiscal '25 of EUR 0.096 per share, a payout ratio of 25%, which is up from our 20% payout ratio last year. We are also midway through our second EUR 50 million share buyback tranche with up to EUR 200 million committed by fiscal year '27, all of which is underpinned by our strong free cash flow position of EUR 334 million. Over to Slide 4, with a quick reminder, our 5 strategic pillars. As set out at our CMD, our Capital Markets Day, in March this year, which hopefully you're all familiar with by now. As we move through the presentation, I will work through each of these in turn, starting with Pillar 1 over on Slide 5. On Slide 5, our objective to simplify and streamline group is nearly complete. The sale of Poundland in June not only significantly reduced our FMCG exposure and streamlined our business, allowing for greater focus and attention on Pepco, it also improved the profitability and cash generation of the group, putting us in a much stronger position overall. The last remaining piece now is Dealz, which has delivered a solid like-for-like growth of plus 1.9% in fiscal '25, but we are clear in intention to divest this business due to its FMG focus no longer aligning with our strategic vision. Dealz is now operating almost independently. With its own management team, we have separated its supply chain from Poundland and completed its migration onto its own ERP system. We have also implemented a new efficiency program to help drive margin accretion in the business and ensure we can achieve maximum value upon exit. With all of these milestones now complete, Dealz is ready to be divested, and we strongly intend to exit this business during the current financial year, which will be the final step in refocusing the group solely on Pepco. Let me now turn to performance in Pepco, starting with Poland and CEE on Slide 6. On Slide 6, I won't stay on the slide too long. But here, you can see a quick overview of our footprint and performance across both Poland and CEE. Despite our already strong presence in the region, there is still ample opportunity for new store growth with 200 net new stores opened here in fiscal '25. CEE is and remains the heartland of our business with 99% of all stores operating profitably. We also focused on restoring like-for-like growth, returning CEE to growth in Q1 and Poland to growth in Q3 with both remaining positive thereafter. The turnaround in Poland has been a particular area of focus in restoring momentum across the group. So let me delve into a little bit more in detail on how we achieved this over on Slide 7. Slide 7, in our recent past, we have underperformed in Poland, as you can see in our like-for-like chart here. But as our first and largest market, it was important to get things right in Poland and restore like-for-like growth, which I'm pleased to say we achieved in the second half of the year, delivering 2.4% like-for-like growth, including FMCG, which was up further to 3.9% growth on an excluding FMCG basis. We achieved this largely by putting high focus on operational excellence in every corner of the business, from product availability in store and localized marketing through to enhanced store and field level oversight. This program has evolved into a permanent operating procedure in order to succeed in a highly competitive market. Other initiatives such as the replacement of FMCG products and the checkout snake in all our stores delivered added margin benefits through the year. Let me outline the details of the turnaround a little bit more on Slide 8. Slide 8, our turnaround focused on 3 core areas: in-store product availability, improved product assortment and restoring sales growth in the bottom 20 store segment. Our product restocking was a fundamental issue to solve in a largely self-inflicted part of our historic like-for-like underperformance. Previously, we were restocking items in standardized preset packs. So if you imagine 2 small, 2 mediums, 2 large and 2 held in every pack, for example, except this didn't take into account which items were selling, meaning we were constantly overstocked in low demand sizes and out of stock in the sizes customers are really looking for. This has both negatively impacted sales and customer experience. As part of the overall supply chain transformation, we have overhauled our in-store restocking progress -- process accordingly. Another core part of our focus was turning around the bottom 20% of our stores, which although profitable were dragging like-for-like growth of the entire country. As you can see in the chart on the right, we have steadily improved like-for-like performance through the year in these stores, which is having a clear intangible benefit on the like-for-like performance of Poland as a whole. We've achieved this through a number of operational changes as well as commencing a refit program towards the latter part of fiscal '25 that has showed early positive results and will continue rolling out in fiscal '26. These changes have all been underpinned by our consistent focus on market-leading prices, which is integral to our proposition. On Slide 9, I wanted to spend a moment on the expansion opportunity in CEE and Poland. In fiscal '25, we opened 215 stores across CEE and Poland. We have very strong economics in the region, and already, these new stores are generating an average store EBITDA margin of 19.5%. However, as these stores mature, we would expect them to trend towards our CEE average EBITDA of circa 22% to 23%. And as a reminder of what we outlined at our CMD in March, we continue to see a large whitespace opportunity in CEE in both our existing markets as well as in new ones like North Macedonia, which we will begin to enter later this year. On Slide 10, you can see a summary of our Western Europe footprint as well as our financial performance in our key markets of Iberia and Italy. By end of fiscal '25, we have operated 467 stores in Iberia and Italy, plus 116 in Germany and Greece. With strong revenue growth, our average store EBITDA margin reached 11%, up 460 basis points, driven primarily by our successful Pepco Plus reformatting, which has been a big area of focus in the region this year. To be clear, this is an IAS 17 metric with the percentage even higher on an IFRS 16 basis. We expect to see this increase further as we progress into fiscal '26 and see a full-year contribution from those converted stores, which I will cover in more detail shortly. Overall, we are very confident that we have now found a way that could enable us to convert our Western Europe store EBITDA numbers close to group levels. On to Slide 11. Across Western Europe, we delivered strong like-for-like growth, up 6.8%, including FMCG and up 14.1% on an excluding FMCG basis. We opened 29 new stores across Iberia and Italy, in line with our plan, as well as delivering the conversion of 117 Pepco Plus stores on time and on budget. We also improved our brand awareness with both Spain and Italy up 6 percentage points each, but still was more to do to bring recognition in these countries closer to our CEE levels. Lastly, we completed our strategic review of Germany and have decided to close 28 of our 64 stores. However, the remaining sites are performing well and are generating good profits. So I'm happy to say that we are not exiting the country completely, but rather paring back our store footprint to give ourselves a stronger base, which we may be able to grow from again in the future. Now, on to Slide 12, where you can see the performance across our regular and converted source in Iberia more clearly. In our regular stores, although there is a small impact from the removal of FMCG in our checkout snakes, the growth here in clothing and general merchandise is strong, up 13.7%. In our converted stores, like-for-like growth was heavily impacted on an including FMCG basis, down 3%. This was expected as a result of the FMCG exit and is temporary. However, we are really pleased with the resulting performance of our clothing and GM categories, a 25.1% like-for-like uplift, again, excluding FMCG. In addition, the replacement of low-margin FMCG products from these stores with higher margin clothing and general merchandise products led to a store EBITDA margin improving -- led to store EBITDA margins improving, excuse me, from 2.3% to 7% in fiscal '25, increasing further to 14.4% on an annualized basis. This is a significant uplift that really amplifies the opportunity in Western Europe. Here on Slide 13 now, we have a quick case study that shows how our converted stores performed on average pre and post FMCG exit. Because the conversion took place at various points over a few-month period, the post FMCG performance is annualized to make the data comparable. As you can see, we have reduced the size of stores as the vast majority were larger than our typical store format, which, coupled with the fact that clothing and GM-led stores require a lower density of staff has allowed us to reduce the number of employees required to run each store. As already mentioned, we experienced a slight drop in sales as a result of the FMCG exit, but a significant uplift in gross margin and store EBITDA margin, up 12.9 percentage points and 12.1 percentage points, respectively. The improved profitability of these stores puts us in an even stronger position going into fiscal '26. On to Slide 14. In the chart on the left, you can see improvement in store EBITDA margin from fiscal '24 to fiscal '25 across the converted stores more clearly. And this was all achieved with very limited CapEx of less than EUR 45,000 per store. I'm also happy to note that the last remaining store, you can see in negative territory in fiscal '25, turned positive shortly after the year-end, further highlighting that there is a phasing impact. And as these stores mature, there is additional benefits to be realized going forward. However, even with that, we have achieved -- even with what we have achieved so far, excuse me, it is encouraging to see store EBITDA in Iberia and Northern Italy converging towards group level. Lastly, on Slide 15, let's also have a look at our newly opened stores in this region. We wanted to get conviction that the further and at some stage soon also accelerated expansion would be possible at similar unit economics as group. Store EBITDA margins of newly opened stores are already strong at 15.9% on average. This is again on an IAS 17 basis, and we would expect this to increase as the stores further mature. Since here at Pepco we are passionate about our stores, our colleagues and our customers, I wanted to briefly share with you some pictures of how we are now activating our presence in Spain and what the customer reactions look like on Slide 16. If you look at Slide 16, at the top left, you can see our 4,000th store opening in Madrid, which opened in September '25. This was a huge buzz around the opening, both in terms of excitement in our Pepco team and locally with shoppers, as you can see by the length of the queue forming as people waiting to be allowed in. The store was very well received by customers with opening day sales of more than 5x our country average. The other 3 store photos you can see here, in the top right hand and in the bottom row, are taken from a store opening in December '25, so very, very recent, again, in Madrid. And again, you can see the excitement from our team and from local shoppers. We have started to dial up our marketing activities as well, investing in a large digital billboard on top of the Callao Cinema on Plaza Callao near the store, which has up to 150 million people per year passing through. Now, going back to Slide 17. Here on Slide 17 is a quick reminder of a slide we showed at our CMD that highlights the whitespace opportunity in Spain and Italy. At the time, we indicated 60 to 70 new stores between fiscal '25 and '27. However, having now improved the economics of our stores in Spain, we are in a strong position to accelerate the speed of our openings a little by remaining disciplined in our capital allocation approach. We now expect to open roughly 75 stores across Iberia and Italy in '26 with the potential for further acceleration as we progress. Moving on to Slide 18. We have made really quick progress on our digital transformation this year. Starting from a near-zero base, we are nearly ready for launch with our Pepco mobile app and digital loyalty program in Q1 calendar '26. Please be reminded that we have collected credit card token data from approximately 49 million customers and processed roughly 440 million transactions in fiscal '25. The work we have done on our new website, customer data lake and app-based loyalty system will allow us to better utilize this rich information base and accelerate our capability, capturing more information on our customers' spending behavior to offer them targeted offers and promotions. At the same time, we also launched a trial of coupon-at-till this year to drive additional in-store sales. This launched just after the year-end and is now live across all our stores in both Poland and Spain with redemption rates and sales uplifts ahead of our initial expectations. All of these initiatives form part of our digital customer engagement strategy intended to drive sales in our stores by increasing visit frequency, basket size, purchase frequency, and ultimately, customer lifetime value. To help bring it to life, I now want to play a short video of our mobile app to give you a better idea of what we will launch to customers when we go live. [Presentation]

Thank you very much for sharing this video. Are we ready? Thank you very much for having a look at this exciting video. We are very excited about it. We have -- if you look at Slide 19, we have worked jointly with really experienced agencies in this field on the development of this app, and I'm convinced that it will resonate very well with our customers. I hope you have gotten the same impression. Now, turning to Slide 20. Underpinning all our strategic -- all our other strategic pillars is the work we are doing to improve our operating platform. We have outsourced the management of our DCs, our distribution centers, to DHL, which is intended to deliver enhanced expertise, flexibility, but also efficiency savings. We have benefited from reduced transport costs as a result of our expanded DC network. Fiscal '25 was the first full year of trading with our new Spanish DC, which allowed us to significantly reduce costs and lead times in the region. We have started to implement a more standardized operating model across the business, which both improves the customer experience and drives efficiency across Pepco. This work will extend further into fiscal '26 and '27. And our work on data and technology is progressing well. We have laid good groundwork this year with our data lake, CRM and product life cycle management tools with a further step-up next year as we begin the rollout of our new ERP system across Pepco. Finally, on Slide 21. We have prepared a quick overview of our ESG progress this year. In fiscal '25, we made significant changes to our management structure to reflect the evolving scope of our business. As a result, we have achieved a greater gender balance across our senior levels with women now representing 50% of our top leadership up from 28% in fiscal '24. We have appointed 3 new high-quality Board members with very strong international retail experience, and we are focused on reducing our environmental footprint. Scope 1 and 2 emissions are down 39% with Pepco Poland operating on 100% renewable electricity. We also focused strongly on the communities we operate in with regular initiatives to help the families shop with us and a EUR 3 million invested with NGOs. I hope these slides have given you a good overview of the progress we have made this year, which we feel is a lot. And I will now hand over to Willem to run you through our financial performance before coming back to wrap up at the end. So, Willem, over to you.

Thank you, Stephan, and good morning, everyone. Now, let's get straight into it. Turning now to Slide 22, the slide gives a really clear overview of the Pepco Group growth trajectory. We're generating strong growth rates across each of our core metrics. At the top line, we've driven sales CAGR of nearly 16% over the period since 2022, while at the same time, increasing gross margin by 650 basis points, which has enabled even stronger profit conversion with an underlying EBITDA CAGR of 22% and underlying net earnings CAGR of 20%. You can see a real step-up in our net earnings growth in the recent 12 to 18 months, as we have enhanced focus on our bottom line conversion, which I will touch upon more later in these slides. On to Slide 23, where we have the key financial highlights from our full-year fiscal year '25 performance. I won't go through each of these numbers in turn, but instead call out a few key points. We generate gross margin improvement of 100 basis points in a year, where we also prioritized our market-leading pricing across all our stores and categories. We delivered very strong underlying profit after tax growth of 20%, driven in part by work we have completed this year on interest and tax. It's noteworthy that this includes a one-off IFRS 16 impairment charge before tax of EUR 38 million. We finished the year with a free cash flow unlevered of EUR 334 million, which allowed us to propose an increased dividend for full year '25 of EUR 0.096 per share, up 55%. We remain focused on delivering value to our shareholders, finishing the year with strong EPS growth of 20% in fiscal year '25. Now on to Slide 24. Pepco generated strong revenue growth of 8.6% in fiscal year '25, as already shown by Stephan. We solidly focused on maintaining our market-leading pricing this year, which you can see by the minus 4.2% price impact on our revenue, but we drove strong volume growth in clothing and general merchandise across both existing and new stores, up 15% combined. It is worth highlighting that revenues include a 2 percentage point negative impact caused by our FMCG exit, partially offset in the like-for-like growth of clothing and general merchandise. You can see the fiscal year '25 mix impact by quarter in the chart below. The phasing of which means we're thinking about our growth next year, we'll be facing a headwind in H1 that will ease off in the second half of the year. As Stephan has already explained in his Western European case study, this is gross margin and store EBITDA accretive and will drive an expected further 40 basis points margin improvement at group level for fiscal '26. Here on Slide 25, we have a breakdown of the Pepco revenue. For the avoidance of any doubt, this is excluding Dealz. First, by geography, where you can see particularly strong growth in Western Europe, which is now increasing as a percentage of total Pepco revenue, up 2 points to 17% in fiscal year '25, as we continue to turn around our performance and drive growth in this region. Our category split remained relatively stable year-on-year. It's worth calling out that kids and baby clothing is roughly 20% to 25% of Pepco sales. This is both clothing and toys, so split across both clothing and GM, but important to mention, as although a core and stable part of our core business, it is a much smaller proportion than may be typically assumed. Generally speaking, general merchandise performed very well through the year. We had a difficult start in the first half in clothing caused by some of the larger self-inflicted issues of the past, which Stephan already alluded to earlier, but a strong second half as the output of our turnaround efforts began to materialize. Now on to Slide 26. We have a breakdown of our like-for-likes. This slide is quite self-explanatory, so I won't go through each in turn, but it gives you a feel for the performance across our business throughout the year. Generally, we saw an uplift in like-for-like performance in the second half of the year, thanks to our strategic efforts to improve operational efficiency and drive growth. This is with the exception of Western Europe, which was, of course, impacted by the Pepco Plus reformatting and FMCG exit, which we covered earlier in the slides. However, on an excluding FMCG basis, we again drove improving performance throughout the year. On Slide 27. This top chart sets out very clearly the turnaround journey we've been on in Pepco with consistently weak negative like-for-likes in fiscal year '24, turning positive in fiscal year '25. And as you can see from the bottom chart, this has been primarily driven by strong volume growth as we focus on restoring and maintaining our price leadership positions. On Slide 28, you can see our gross margin performance in fiscal year '25, which was up 100 basis points, an effort we were very pleased with, especially given the price reinvestment made this year, as I outlined on an earlier slide. The uplift is in large part thanks to our strategic decision to exit FMCG, which allowed us to replace these low around 30% margin FMCG products with high circa 50% margin clothing and GM products, delivering 70 basis points of improvement. We achieved a strong product margin uplift of 60 basis points this year, thanks to improved negotiations with more -- which more than offset our markdowns, which we used to right size our inventory and clear older stock. In addition, we also benefited from ForEx gains of 30 basis points as the euro strengthened throughout the year. Going into 2026, and as explained earlier, we expect to deliver 40 basis points of further margin improvement as a result of our FMCG exit in fiscal year '26. On Slide 29, you can see the movement behind our EBITDA performance year-on-year, with growth mainly driven by a gross margin improvement. Store costs were up year-on-year, largely due to labor costs. Real wage growth has been high across large parts of CEE, and we also processed higher volumes this year, which required increased store labor and distribution costs. We would expect this impact to moderate going forward as real wage growth in CEE begins to ease, and we benefit from our FMCG exit, which should enable the stores to operate with a lower density of staff as already shown in our Western European case study earlier. We are, of course, always mindful of our cost base and have efficiency in front of mind. During the year, we outsourced management of our DCs to DHL, which will deliver efficiency savings going forward. And over the coming years, we strongly believe that there is more we can deliver to further reduce costs, particularly in our supply chain. On to Slide 30. Upfront, you can see we have restated the fiscal year '24 figure from the 199 some of you may recall from our pre-close in September. This is due to a number of one-off adjustments, roughly half of which relate to lease fees, dilapidations provisions and small stock adjustments in Pepco and the other half relating to adjustments required in Dealz. Full disclosure will be provided in our annual accounts, which we publish in January. From this new EUR 183 million base, you can see we delivered a very strong profit growth of 20% year-on-year. Earnings growth was offset by a one-off impairment of EUR 38 million in fiscal year '25, without which EBIT growth would have been materially higher, plus 9.9% versus the 1.1% reported, fully explaining the gap to revenue growth. However, we also delivered an improvement in our interest rate as a result of a fall in EURIBOR, favorable ForEx and in our tax rate with our underlying ETR improving 6.6 basis points to 27.6%. This was largely driven by a reduction in our loss-making stores and turnaround in specific countries, for example, Iberia, as already explained earlier. Following the year-end, we successfully completed the refinancing of our bond and term loan at significantly lower interest rates, which I will touch on more shortly. This, along with further improvements, we are confident we can deliver, and our tax rate will drive further improvements in our profit conversion going forward. Unlevered free cash -- Slide 31, unlevered free cash flow was strong for the year, reflecting a number of particular drivers. CapEx, in particular, was low, which I will touch on more in the next slide, but this reflects strict discipline in allocation of capital, in particular in opening new stores, which was introduced throughout fiscal year '25. Working capital contributed EUR 80 million over fiscal '24 and fiscal '25, which we do not expect to continue in fiscal year '26. For fiscal '26, we guide on an unlevered free cash flow in excess of EUR 200 million with a normalized CapEx at the top end of our guidance range and some working capital investments as our business continues to grow. Now over to Slide 32. CapEx was notably lower this year as we focus on restructuring our business to pivot back towards sustainable profitable growth. This meant taking a slight step back from investment in the short term. However, we still opened net new 247 stores in fiscal year '25. This is particularly in the area of new stores openings. Historically, stores have been opened far too quickly without due care and process. Having slowed down in fiscal year '25 to reassess and restructure, we're now in a much stronger position going into fiscal year '26, and we will, therefore, begin to accelerate our investments accordingly, particularly in technology and IT. The business has historically underinvested in these areas, which we are working quickly and efficiently to rectify. We also began trials on -- of our store refit program in late fiscal '25 with early great success. So we will increase our investment in fiscal '26, as we roll out this program more widely. As a result, you should expect CapEx in fiscal '26 to be at the top end of our guided EUR 160 million to EUR 180 million range. This is also significant -- this is, therefore, a significant driver of our free cash flow guidance of over EUR 200 million for fiscal year '26. On Slide 33, as I mentioned earlier, towards the end of fiscal '25 and into early fiscal '26, we undertook a complete refinancing of our external debt facilities, the detail of which you can see here on Slide 33. This was a dual-track process consisting of a EUR 770 million in committed credit facilities, for which we were oversubscribed, as well as PLN 600 million, EUR 140 million, debut Polish bonds, which are part of an up to roughly PLN 2 billion program, refunds specifically to be allocated towards greener projects supporting our sustainability goals. The refinancing not only reduced the average coupon by 2.5 percentage points, but also addressed the fact that our term loan of EUR 250 million has become current and was due for repayment in April '26. It extends our maturity by over 3 years, providing both stability and visibility for the group and creates an interest saving of EUR 40 million annually a year after. Lastly, it's worth noting that in recognition of our improved financial profile post the exit of Poundland, we also received a ratings upgrade from Moody's from the BB- to BB. A quick reminder, here on Slide 34, you can see our capital allocation framework. Our priorities are to invest in organic growth, technology initiatives, in our supply chain and optimize our leverage, which leads to stronger free cash flow that will enable enhanced returns to shareholders. This year, free cash flow was very strong at EUR 334 million, which has enabled a proposed dividend payment of EUR 0.096 per share, a payout ratio of 25% of underlying profit after tax, up from 20% in fiscal year '24. We've also continued our share buyback program. In fiscal '25, we repurchased EUR 50 million worth of shares with a second EUR 50 million tranche started in quarter 1 fiscal '26. To summarize, fiscal '25 quickly, on Slide 35, at our CMD in March, we set out clear guidance for new Pepco and for deals, which we have either met or exceeded this year. For new Pepco, we delivered revenue growth in line with expectations despite the FMCG headwind outlined earlier. Gross margin was significantly ahead of guidance, up 100 basis points, driving strong EBITDA growth, again, in line with expectations. We've covered this already, but as a reminder that EBIT this year was impacted by one-off impairments relating to an impairment review of Pepco stores without which growth would have been significantly higher. Finally, on to Slide 36 for our fiscal '26 and midterm guidance. Starting with fiscal '26, we expect revenue growth of 6% to 8%, which takes into account the FMCG headwind, and we will continue to experience in the next year. As shown earlier in the deck on Slide 25, when I provided the breakdown by quarter, this will be a phase impact that will affect us more in the first half, easing off through H2, but accounting -- amounting to roughly 2% headwind through the course of the year. We expect gross margin of at least 48%. This is something we hope to exceed, but we remain cautious. We continue to prioritize market-leading pricing across our stores. EBITDA growth will be at least 9%, and for the first time, we are now guiding on net earnings growth to align with our focus on generating sustainable, profitable growth for all our shareholders. In fiscal '26, we expect net earnings growth of at least 25%. Our CapEx guidance remains unchanged of EUR 160 million to EUR 180 million. In fiscal '26, you should expect us to be towards the top end of this range as we materially step up investment in areas such as store refits and IT. Lastly, on underlying free cash flow and as an outcome, we expect this to exceed EUR 200 million. As for our midterm guidance, we are upgrading this today in a few key areas, and we realize this is not customary, but we feel the need to do this. We now expect gross margin to be at least 48.5% and free cash flow growth of -- exceeding EUR 250 million plus, up from the EUR 200 million plus earlier communicated. We've also introduced a new metric of net earnings growth, which we expect to generate a CAGR of at least 15%. CapEx guidance remains unchanged at EUR 160 million to EUR 180 million. Now, you should expect to see higher levels of spend in the near term, particularly as we work to bring our technology and data capabilities in line with and where it should be. This should then start to reduce towards the latter years. With that, let me hand back to Stephan.

Yes. Thank you, Willem. Let me now quickly summarize on Slide 38 before we turn over to your questions. On Slide 38, you can see that fiscal year '25 was a year characterized by swift strategic execution that really allowed us to transform the shape of the group in a short space of time, putting us in a far more agile and dynamic position as we move forward. It has also helped us deliver the strong results outlined today, including net earnings growth of plus 20% as well as an overall improved financial position. This growth enabled us to provide enhanced returns to shareholders through our regular dividend, which was up 55% and our ongoing share buyback program, which continues into fiscal year '26. Pepco has created good momentum in fiscal '25 and has the clear potential of further strengthening its position becoming the leading variety discount retail in Europe with strong profitable growth and shareholder returns. These results put us in an excellent position going into fiscal '26. And coupled with the strategic progress we have made, they have given us confidence to upgrade certain parameters of our midterm guidance already after 1 year in this role as just alluded on by Willem. On a side note, you may have seen this morning's announcement from Ibex Group. We are pleased to see that our majority shareholder has made a clear statement of support to the long-term development of Pepco by extending the operational period of -- for the Ibex Investments platform through to December 2028 with flexibility to further extend through to December 2030. This extension reaffirms Ibex's active support for our transformation strategy and for the multiyear value creation opportunity at Pepco Group. Let me now finish on Slide 39 with an overview of our current trading and outlook. For the quarter-to-date, group like-for-like, excluding FMCG, was up 3% despite a drag from deals which experienced challenging trading conditions during the period. Pepco like-for-like, excluding FMCG, was higher at plus 3.9% for quarter-to-date. We had a strong start in October, offset by a weaker November, as seen across the industry, really, before returning to improved growth in December. Pepco like-for-like growth for the 3 weeks to December 13 was plus 7%, excluding FMCG, highlighting the improved trajectory as we had towards the end of the quarter. Looking ahead to fiscal '26 as a whole, we expect to deliver between 6% to 8% revenue growth, and that is despite the circa 2% headwind from our FMCG exit, which Willem outlined earlier. This will be driven by continued volume growth across the group and our new store opening program. We expect to open circa 250 net new stores in fiscal '26 with circa 75 of them in Iberia and Italy. Fiscal '26 underlying EBITDA growth is expected to be at least 9% with underlying profit after tax growth of at least 25%, as we continue to drive strong bottom line conversion. Lastly, we remain focused on delivering the divestment of deals during this financial year, which will be the last remaining piece of our FMCG exit and will complete our strategic focus or refocus on Pepco as our core and sole business, further improving the growth and profitability of the group. With that, I would like to hand back to the operator and take your questions. Thank you very much for your attention.

[Operator Instructions] We'll now take our first question from Alison Lygo from Deutsche Bank.

Three for me, if that's okay, please. First one, just on whether we can unpick the drivers of that 6% to 8% revenue growth for next year. If we kind of put FMCG and that drags the side, just interested if you could add some color on what your working assumptions are in terms of category. How much is coming from kids? How much from kind of gaining wallet share in some of the broader kind of categories? And then, I guess the second way of kind of coming at that, how are you thinking about that on a regional basis as we think Poland, CEE and then kind of Western Europe? I'll leave it there and give you kind of one at a time. But yes, that's my first question, please.

Thanks, Alison. Yes, I will take this. Yes. Look, as we do not guide down to this segment detail, but let me give you a flavor here. On the categories, we have seen very strong performance on our general merchandise category. But we have also seen, as stated before, strong positive progress on our lady adult wear area. Kids, it is, as Willem stated before, roughly 25% of our total business, if you take both categories, GM and clothing together, will also grow, but for us, it's very clear that we want to balance our like-for-like contribution here. And it depends a bit. In Western Europe, we see very strong kids growth and baby growth. In the more mature markets, there is a strong -- at the moment, a strong focus on GM. But without -- how can I say that, now disclosing here too much, I mean, we have strongly dialed up our promotion and seasonal collection pipeline for next year. And we hope to see quite balanced like-for-like growth across the categories. On the region, yes, I think it has become quite visible, right, that on a like-for-like growth opportunity at the moment, Western Europe is motoring ahead. I mean, this is to be expected. But it actually is also for us a -- how can I say that, a positive surprise above and beyond our expectations. It's very clear that the value proposition of Pepco resonates extremely well with customers in those markets. And this really has to do with higher number of larger families, a more fragmented retail environment, lower competitive density, of course, as well, but we are really pleased to see that without adjustments on our product range, we see strong like-for-like continuing in Western Europe. So as I said before, CEE is going to be and remains our heartland, and we're working hard also in mature markets to increase our like-for-like. But at the moment, we see clearly also Western Europe are driving like-for-like growth in the group.

Great. That's really clear and very helpful. Then the other question I have is just on gross margin. So the midterm guidance now upgraded to that 48.5%, which is in line with what the Pepco format delivered this year. Just wondering how we should be thinking about the midterm moving parts within that in terms of whether you think there's room for kind of further underlying kind of gross margin expansion. Is there some investment into price still into that? Just how you're kind of thinking about those puts and takes?

Thank you very much, Alison. Let me take this question. Willem Eelman here. So first of all, our group margin was achieved at 48%, and the guidance that we provided is a group guidance. And we also indicated that there is a 40 basis points additional gain to be expected from the FMCG exit. And so that should define already our fiscal year '26 expectation, and it underpins also, they exceed 48.5% group outlined for the midterm guidance. With regards to your question, we see continued tailwind from ForEx and purchase -- FOB purchase costs in local currency, which will continue to feed through in our numbers. But we also are conscious that we want to maintain our strong price competitive position whilst recognizing that maybe in some markets, we actually have some price opportunity. So this is a balanced and delicate mix to execute, where we continue to be true to our value discounting credentials, but where we clearly will seek to use the opportunities on gross margin to drive accelerated profit growth of EBITDA ahead of revenue growth. I hope that I've answered your question with that.

Our next question is from Matt Clements from Barclays.

I was just wondering if you could spend some time going through what you're seeing in terms of consumer backdrop in some of your key markets, and how you think about spending power of your customer base into '26? And then the second question is around competitive environment. There's obviously been some positive news from the European Union recently with the introduction of the fixed levy on low-value e-commerce imports from the middle of next year. Just thinking kind of high level, do you expect a more favorable competitive backdrop next year than in recent years?

Thank you for the very good questions. Consumer, I mean, we -- in our business, it's always difficult to extrapolate consumer behavior. Consumers are dramatically volatile in retail in general. However, in our -- in the value space we are in right now, we see quite stable transaction numbers and also our customers, which we track coming back to us. November was a bit odd because it was a -- I think, quite a -- I think, a delay tactic of consumers to be honest, and everybody felt it a bit. So we saw transactions down, and we saw also the interest down, but we saw a lot of, I think, delaying of spend. This is not new. This is every year happening, but it seems to accumulate and accelerate a bit more. But on a broader basis, on a more top level base, look, we see the wage -- the minimum wage inflation or wage increases coming down. So you would argue there is less disposable income. But of course, also inflation rates go down. So overall, i.e., we are not worried about spending power of our customers, particularly in our segment again. And this is a segment where we -- customers really look out for value. And as Willem just alluded on before, we do have ample firepower to adjust prices and pricing, if needed, even if spending power would be -- would become under pressure, which I do not see so much at the moment. We see clearly a very discerning customer, considerate customers looking for better value for money. And I think we are right in the sweet spot here with our company. On the competitive pressure, I mean, look, first of all, we operate across 18 countries. The competition is very, very different and very, let's say, nuanced across those markets. It's very clear that Poland and the northern part of CEEs are seeing a high competitive pressure. And -- but so far, this has always been the case, and we had, for many years, a strong overlap with our competitors, and that is not new. On the Chinese online, look, there's -- my view there is very clear. On the one hand, we do, of course, support everything that helps European-based retailers to succeed and strive. But on the other hand, their one really strong advantage is the technology. The technology advantage of those players is just very, very strong, and this resonates with customers and consumers out there. So it's definitely a challenge to all of us to live up to it and to invest harder in your similar opportunities. What happens on the de minimis and everything else? To be seen, to be honest. I don't think it's a secret that all of these players are now investing heavily in local distribution centers and local fulfillment structures. So I think that's something to really watch and see further, but it truly will have a transformative effect on the industry. And that is, in my opinion, definitely something that we need to look at over the midterm.

And our next question is from Michal Potyra from UBS.

Maybe the first question, you could comment on your inventory level. Is this at the level you like it to be? And perhaps you also could comment on the sourcing trends from Asia, and I know how easy it is about pricing trends, et cetera. Let me stop here and perhaps I can ask another question later.

Yes. Yes. Thank you for your questions. Inventory level, yes, we are -- I mean, just really, really top-level answer there, we are pretty much comfortable with what it is. We set our reduction target, which we internally meet. So far, we had seen more difficult times in this company here before. So we are definitely much better on top of these things. So I would say, overall, inventory levels are in line with our internal plans. Sourcing trends, bigger topic, a very interesting topic. As you know, the largest part of our sourcing basically all is Asia. However, Asia is different. We have, of course, a large part of China -- Chinese supply, but also branched out significantly into Bangladesh, India and other countries. The trends, I don't -- I mean, it's interesting that tariffs have, of course, given short-term buying opportunities into Europe, and that continues to an extent. But it's quite interesting that you see strong Asian manufacturers now also establishing factories closer to Europe, Northern Africa areas and things like that. So we are in very close discussions and touch and actually actions and activities with our suppliers to also start sourcing from other countries who are like Egypt and Africa. This has -- potentially will have -- not yet in our numbers, potentially will have further FOB -- as COGS opportunities because, first, lead times are shorter. And secondly, in certain areas and certain product classes, the production costs are even lower than in Asia. So overall, I would say that's really what we see. We personally -- we, as a company, continue to improve our processes. We have so many opportunities still in balancing better the value chain. So for example, where is design -- AI-based design and so on and so on. So we also work on efficiency here. But it's very clear that this spread between very sophisticated suppliers in Asia and non-sophisticated suppliers will continue. And we are, as a large volume buyer and importer definitely closer to the good ones.

I have 2 more follow-ups, kind of more technical questions, please. So the first one is on -- regarding your guidance, regarding earnings growth. I'm wondering if that includes the impact of buybacks, right? Because is it more like EPS or kind of pure earnings guidance? So just this question. And another one regarding the composition of your like-for-like sales. I'm just wondering, looking at the Slide 27, where you are showing a volume versus price mix that appears to be more skewed toward direction of price in the fourth quarter, but also, I understand it includes FMCG. So maybe you can provide more description of your volume versus price trends, maybe excluding FMCG throughout 2025.

Thanks, Michal. I will take the -- your third question, and then Stephan will take your fourth. The guidance is on absolute earnings. Earnings per share, as we continue to expand our SPV, would even accelerate a bit further, but I would like to call out that on a diluted basis because of share-based programs, the number was actually for '25 fiscal, exactly in line with our underlying earnings growth number. So the guidance very clearly is on an absolute euro level and not on an earnings per share level, just to clarify.

And on the like-for-like, I think you see the strong bars on '27, basically because of our strong price adjustment initiative in '24, which started in Q4 '24. Going forward, we will monitor very strongly. As Willem alluded on before, we do have gross profit margin firepower to adjust prices if needed. But obviously, we're not going to go for another significant structured price adjustment as we did in Q4 '24. But of course, we continue to look at volume growth, right? That is very clear. Our like-for-like composition is not driven by price increases. It is though driven by mix effects, FMCG out. We also see from a consumer side to an extent a larger demand for some of the higher priced products. So overall, we will continue on driving volume. That's what we're really after. We continue to monitor price and remain price leader and have a very strong initiative set for next year, driving like-for-like by driving customers into our stores with digital components and really increasing number of visits, number of transactions and higher basket.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from Janusz Pieta from mBank.

Could you give us a bit more color on the -- on your incentive program? What dilution do you expect in 2026 and throughout the whole program?

Thanks for the question, Janusz. And I will come back to you on that in detail because I know the impact on my fiscal '25 numbers, as they were disclosed in the table, and we will further disclose a lot of details on this in our full ARA and annual report that we'll publish in Jan. But on the outward impact, I would need to have a check. So I'll come back to you on that one separately.

It appears there are currently no further questions in the phone queue. With this, I'd like to hand back for any webcast questions.

We've got a few questions on the webcast. And the first question is from Anna at DM BDM. Will customers be able to make purchases in the application?

Yes. Thank you, Anna. No, not at the beginning. As I also outlined in previous calls, we really clearly decided to start with a customer engagement strategy on digital that really is all about driving customers to store. We call it DISS, digitally-influenced store sales. And why is that? Because as I said before, we are sitting on an almost treasure, if you want, of 440 million transactions a year and 49 million token customers we have. This potential of understanding customers better, addressing them in a more personalized and customized way is already so high. But this is our absolute focus since the very beginning. We, of course, are exploring, assessing all sorts of strategic options around the transactional strategy, which is a Phase 2 for us. But in the very beginning at the launch, there will be no transaction element in it.

Next question is from Grzegorz at Trigon. What is the contribution of the Western Europe Pepco business at the adjusted EBITDA or adjusted EBIT level?

Thanks, Grzegorz. Consistent. We don't disclose underlying profitability at country segment level. And so we will not do that at this stage either. However, it is very clear that from the material that we showed you on the turnaround in the Western European business, in particular, Iberia, the impact of FMCG has a material positive impact on our store EBITDA and henceforth country EBITDA. Most of that improvement will only become visible in 2020 -- fiscal '26 and beyond, as we have been reformatting those stores in the course of fiscal 2025, as we laid out on, I think, it was Slide 25, or whatever the number was, where we showed you the impact of FMCG at group level in our numbers. Now, that was group level. Clearly, at Iberia level, the impact was even much higher. Therefore, we disclosed to you the impact of our store EBITDA levels in Iberia, which will turn into very healthy territory. We also were able and are able to recognize for the first time a DTA on the loss that we still made in '25, fiscal '25 that will be disclosed in our annual accounts, clearly indicating that we have real strong reasons and convictions that we are returning into total country profitability territory very shortly as we have exited the FMCG category. So a bit of a long-winded answer because I do want to express real confidence that Iberia has turned the corner and that we see a positive profit contribution from Iberia going forward, but we do not disclose the absolute levels of profitability by country. I hope that answered partly your question, Grzegorz.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Jan at Odyssey. How much of the FMCG drag on like-for-like performance has been offset by products replacing that space, for example, clothing and general merchandise?

That's a difficult one to assess, in particular, for the snake. But for Iberia, as you could see that very clearly in the case study slide that we showed you, where we see a drop in revenue at store level as we do not fully compensate for the lost selling space, and of course, by giving expanded space to the GM/clothing categories, yes, we see significant uplift, but not to the full extent that we lose FMCG in that store. What is noteworthy, and what I would like to highlight your attention on, is that the stores in Iberia that did not have FMCG have continued and grew at consistent double-digit like-for-like level.

Thank you. Next question comes from Robert. As you stated, Ibex will stay with Pepco until at least December 2028. Does that mean they will not sell any shares of Pepco until that time?

Look, I think we -- running the risk of repeating myself here, this is really difficult for us to state. We can't talk on behalf of Ibex, but what you have seen today is clearly a token of support for the long-term strategy of this company. And we have, over the past year or so, really gotten to know Ibex as a responsible, considerate investor and shareholder over time and have no indication that they would not support our long-term strategy here. It's -- but it's also clear that long term, Ibex will definitely not stay our shareholder for the next, whatever, 10, 20 years. So something to be expected surely at some point of time, but it's not in our knowledge and discussion what Ibex is going to do with their share. We wanted to highlight the news this morning really as a token of support for our company and our long-term strategy here.

Great. Thank you. Next question, another question from Jan, Odyssey. Could you clarify what the midterm CAGR target for next earnings includes the projected growth rate of over 25% next year?

Yes, it does.

Great. Next question comes from Federico at UniCredit. First question, the revised FY '26 FCF guidance still includes the contribution from Dealz. Or does it take into account any contribution from the Dealz sale?

Dealz is broadly cash neutral in our numbers. And therefore, the underlying free cash flow is an annual free cash flow that we intend to -- that we expect to generate exceeding EUR 50 million on the Pepco format.

Thank you. Next question comes from Christoph. How does Pepco view and prepare for the ongoing decline in fertility in Poland and Europe? Any studies being conducted to evaluate the impact of this trend on the company? And are any measures being taken to minimize the impact of this trend on future revenues and profits?

Yes. That's a good question. I'd like to step back for 1 second really and say, as I said before, our total company revenue share in baby and kids is 25% across the 2 categories, roughly, right? So what we really see is, yes, we acknowledge a reduction in birth rates statistically, but if you really look deeper into it, what you basically see is you see a similar number of birth rates in household with 1 child. We see a reduction in household with several children. But what you see there is that the spend per child is definitely going up. So -- and again, we are not in the high price segment of kids and kids wear and toys. That is, I think, probably a different discussion to have. We are in the value segment. And so, therefore, bar homemade mistakes on ranges or quality that is, of course, always a topic. But bar that, we don't see the demographic development as a major headwind for us. So what do we do? Definitely upgrading our ranges, making them a bit more attractive, increasing the fashionability elements, increasing particularly quality of product and fabric there and trying to just remain a great destination store for young families on a budget for this thing. We do obviously look at it from country to country. For example, in our Western European markets. As you can imagine, baby and kids is running extremely well because there, we see birth rates stable and also larger families. And so what basically, of course, every good retailer would do is adjust some of the macro space in store and things like that. So we do all of this. But overall, again, bar some internal problems that could occur on ranges and product and availabilities and so on and so on, we don't see this as a major topic for us.

Next question comes from Igor at Gi Group. Congratulations on your results and the turnaround. I had a question regarding new openings in 2026. How many new locations are you planning for Poland?

Yes. As much as we would like to, of course, provide you with all the information, we do not disclose this in detail per market. But I mean just maybe on a bit more top, top level here, we, of course, have to make choices going forward, right? We basically, as Willem said before, deploy a very, very rigid capital allocation policy now. So every store has to deliver quite ambitious, but achievable threshold for us in terms of return. And so, therefore, we look really from market to market on return, cannibalization, white spot opportunity and so on. And it's clear that the white spot opportunities are moving a little bit down to the southern part of CEE, and of course, Western Europe. So therefore, we continue to open. But particularly in Poland, we put a lot of focus on upgrading our stores, relocating our stores and making them more attractive to customers to drive the like-for-like.

One final question from Grzegorz. Does the company consider enhancing disclosures in its FY '26 quarterly financial communication in line with market standards?

I will take that question. No, we will continue to report in quarter 1 and quarter 3, a limited set of trading updates, which mainly focuses on revenue, which is in most of Europe actually the market practice. I am aware that in Poland, there is a tendency to report a full or set of quarter numbers. But often, 1 month to 1.5 months later. And we believe that it's better to speedily inform the market on the actual revenue and where relevant gross margin trends in the business on a speedily and timely basis in those intermediate quarters whilst sticking to a very comprehensive, as we do today, H1 and H2/full-year disclosure. So yes, we considered, but for very conscious reasons, we will stick to our quarterly rhythm from quarter 1 and quarter 3.

Thank you very much. And that concludes the Q&A session. So I'll hand back over to Stephan for any closing remarks.

Yes. I remain -- thank you very much. I remain with thanking you all for your interest in our company. It's been a transformational year as we set out. The management team is really pleased with the results of this year and extremely motivated to continue this journey into '26. We have a strong pipeline of initiatives. We have a very, very tight framework of the strategy we've set out at the CMD, and we continue to deliver strongly against this strategy. And I'm looking forward to the next encounter with you and the next conversation with you on the next results. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.