The Platform Group AG (TPG.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to those who joined the previous earnings call today, and welcome everyone else to today's Q&A call of the Platform Group. The CEO, Dr. Dominik Benner, will give a brief introduction and an update on the business model and recent developments. Following this, the floor will be opened for all upcoming questions via our chat box. And please note that in today's call, we will only provide the chat to take your questions. And having said this, Mr. Benner, please, the stage is yours.

So thank you very much for this, and it was part of our more transparent strategy to explain you more regarding the platform group, how we work and how we make our business. And the idea was you know that we always make 1x or 2x per year at Capital Markets Day. The Capital Markets Day is always in Frankfurt, and we have a hybrid version that you can also have an online look on that. But we want to make sure that you also can ask us in the month of August about maybe upcoming question, maybe open questions. And as you know, we have our meeting by next week on Monday in Dusseldorf. And maybe you also have some questions which you would like to get answered before that or if you have some further questions, which you might not get an answer in our reports, we can also answer you it in this call. Bjorn, do you want to add anything from your side?

Just a warm welcome.

All right. So saying that, I think we can already start with the chat. So feel free to chat your questions. And Bjorn and me, we can directly answer your questions. We already got 25 questions in the call right now, which we had at 10:00, and these 25 questions always covered the first half year report. So it was about the EBITDA, the [indiscernible] , the revenue development, the segments. So I think we had a quite good overview on that. So if there's somebody here in the room which would like to ask some more specific things about the H1 results. You can also give us direct feedback on that or just ask us some questions regarding this report.

So I can see that we get the first questions here. So the first question, what you asked us is about the access to new partners and new platforms. So this is a very interesting question because when we go back to this wheel here, you see that we always focus on getting new partners and with the partners, we get more products. This is very important because otherwise, we cannot grow, and we have no successful development because they are the backbone of our growth. So let's make some examples. So maybe we just show you a web page here from Mobelfirst. This is a company which we acquired 4 years ago, and they are very successful with their business because they sell luxury furnitures.

Before we go into details, Dominik. I would say, basically, we have 3 ways to gain new partners. We're #1, that's the easiest one, they call us, right? They say we've heard the Platform Group, can you help us? Way #2, we call them. Of course, we try to contact potential partners, which we find are interesting and also offer them our services. And thirdly, by acquisition.

Yes, definitely. So maybe we just take one example here. So when you go on these pages like this platform here, you see it typical sofa. But when you go a little bit further, you see the background, it is a typical furniture store. And we go to furniture stores, make all the pictures and all the data. And each day, we make 100 products with the content, so with the pictures and so on, and then we go to the next door. And this is the business model. So we take more and more partners, the people come to us and say, okay, how can we get more revenue because the stagnating revenue in the offline sector, it is relevant for everybody. And so we are one of the solution providers who gives them a chance to get more revenues, and we do it in the e-commerce. And so as Bjorn already said, 80% call us or send us a message and say, okay, we want to be part of that. And what is also important is that we go to classical fairs, each industry has fairs like EFA and so on. And so we go to these fairs and have a representation there and the people come and show up and ask, hey, how can I sell products here? How can we make e-commerce with you? And this kind of business, it is available for B2B sector. As you can see here, we have a lot of partners who have machines all over the world, and we sell their machines in more than 100 countries and make sure that they have a good logistic. We make sure that they have a good quality, and that they work when we install this machine at the buyer's place. So these are just 2 examples between furniture and machines, which are quite a good example how we get our partners. Next question.

And another lever is to grow with existing partners, of course.

Yes. So next question is about the H1 results. I want to understand the cyclicity of the H1 and if we can show the GMV being down in Q2. So I think the best way if you want to have the Q1 and Q2 numbers, you go to our page, you see the quarterly report. And in the quarterly report, you see the financial numbers showing you here. So you can just subtract the numbers between the full half year and the Q1 results. I think that is the easiest way if you want to calculate all the numbers. So next question. There have been persistent questions on the media about the company's accounts. Would TPG consider using a second bigger reputable auditor to end that discussion? Yes. Thank you very much for this question. And Bjorn and me, we always also think about that to be honest. So in our history, TPG had 2 big auditors. And in 2019, for example, we worked with KPMG. KPMG, and we had a very good relationship. And after KPMG, we used Ernst & Young. So 2020, 2021, 2022, always Ernst & Young made the audit reports. For example, when you go to the concern and sections here and you open it, you can see that it is audited by Ernst & Young. So let's just scroll down here. You see the report.

I usually always add and we are discussing this. I started working a couple of years ago with one of the big 4 firms. And what Dominik always says, unfortunately, is very right. Usually, you get very young teams, and that's why after all, it's quite expenses because you have a higher half a bus of consultants because they are all very junior, and if you have a senior guide, then you can really replace like 5 to 6 years and still do a better job. So you can look from in both ways. Of course, you do have the brand. But if you look at the quality of the results, you might be much better off with the smaller consultancy, which is familiar with your industry.

And coming back to the question, I think, yes, we changed our auditor because we are growing and the auditor is, I think, a good middle way between a big company and a small one and which we have chosen Air Group. They are operating in 3 different locations all over Germany. And [ Carsten Rusme ] is the auditor here. He worked for more than 30 years for PricewaterhouseCoopers. He was a partner there. And with 60, he started his own business, and we think that he's a very good partner. He has 40 different people working for him, and we think that this is a pretty good way and also a financial acceptable way for us how we can work together. All right. Next question. If I recall currently the revenue model in Aponow was different in that service fee Will this be different with a potential acquisition. So the question is about the revenue model from Aponow. And the question is, will pharmacy become its own segment? Or will it become part of the service and retail segment? Very good question because if you see the numbers, which we've shown in our announcement. Here, you can see that these pharmaceutical companies, they have a 3-digit million number revenue. So you are right with this question. We think about establishing a new segment or integrated into the service and retail segment but have the majority of this pharmaceutical goods there. So it depends when we close it, when we sign it. So it's not certain that we signed it, but we expect 99% probability to do that. And if we do it, and if you have a closing, yes, we think about the segment question. Your next question was about the revenue model, very important because, as you have mentioned in the correct way, Aponow, is the middleware between the 350 pharma manufacturers like Ratiopharm and so on and the pharmacies. So if a customer orders something at RatiopharmDE or another manufacturer, the order is completely delivered and taken care of by Aponow. And this is the way how they earn money and they are a great profitable company and each order goes through Aponow to the local pharmacy and the local pharmacy brings it to the customer. That is the business model, and they do it for more than 41,000 pharmacies. And in their business model, they get this is around 10% provision from the pharmaceutical company from the manufacturer. And this is the way how they make their business. And it's very successful. And that is the reason why we of things for more than 1 year, how we can expand it and how we can increase the value chain, not just delivering orders from pharmaceutical manufacturer to the pharmacy also to offer new additional services. And I think with our M&A targets, we have a very good idea how we can do that. Next question, given the complex onboarding process, how much does this affect the EBITDA along 12 months?

So I would say we've been acquiring 7 companies this year so far, which is Lyra Pet, fintus, Herbertz and Joli Closet that have already been consolidated. And then we have 3 new ones, which will be consolidated in the second half of the year. And these are our 3 optics and hearing acquisitions, Karrasch & Nolte, Freudenhaus and Beste Aussichten. And I hope this answers your question. So of 7 acquisitions, which we have done right now, 4 already included, 3 will come. And of course, we're trying to acquire new ones. So it will be more than 3 by the end of the year.

All right. Organic growth. Could you please provide more detail on the reported organic growth at segment level and comment on the plausibility of double-digit rates in structurally weaker sectors such as furniture or automotive supply? Yes, absolutely. You are completely right that sectors like automotive or furniture, for example, they have a bad development in the last 2 years. They are declining or stagnating. But this is important to understand that our growth is not depending on the industry. So our growth rate is determined by partners and products. And this is what we really always want to, again and again repeat because the majority of the people do not understand our business model. That is a real problem for us because when we get more partners, for example, furniture partners, what we've shown you with [ Rolfben ] sofas, we get more customers because they like half spend so far. And with these more customers, we get more revenue. And we can grow in a market which is not growing. But if we get no more partners, we have no additional product, and we do not grow anymore. So it's really no dependency between the industry and our business model. There could be also a negative correlation. For example, I can show you one example with the industry of bike. Bike-Angebot, the company which we acquired in 2020 before the COVID pandemic. And just, for example, in COVID times, the revenue was very strong, increasing in this segment. But in our case, it was a nightmare. So we had declining revenues. We had losses. We were not happy about that. because at the end, the retail partners, our partners said, no, we will not offer you any product because we are sold out. We have nothing to sell anymore. We have good numbers, but you don't get any product from us. And that was our nightmare. And this is very important to understand, we do not rely on the industry development. It is not really relevant for us. We rely on products and partners. This is the only key driver in our business case. So next question. Sorry, I wasn't clear. The Q1 GMV was EUR 356 million, and the Q2 was EUR 296 million. I wanted to understand how do you think about this being lower? And how to think about GMV going on forward? Is it seasonal? If so, which quarters are generally higher? Yes, thank you for the question. You are right. We have seasonality in our yearly perspective and then also in our quarterly perspective. The highest revenue what we have and the highest GMV is always November and December. And in these 2 months, we have, of course, the highest revenues, but not the highest margins. So as you might know, we have the seasonal effects like discounts, like Black Week and so on. So all these consumer goods segments, which we have with more than 50%, they are affected by discounts. And in these 2 months, we have great GMV numbers, but low margin numbers. So this is important to understand. And yes, you are right. We do have the GMV much higher there, but not with high earnings. Can you give a...

If you look at the interest rates like currently, you see Bike-Angebot, that's something you sell more in the summertime anyways. If you look at our machinery, that's nothing you get as a Christmas present. So these do not really increase. And if you look at Lyra Pet, and they are more into goods that you actually use. So it's more like pet food and cat pet care, sorry. So that's also something which you regularly use during the year. So this does not really positively affect your sales. So generally, we do have more sales, but at a lower margin, but also not all segments contribute to Q4 sales.

All right. Next question, can you give us some insights about the economics of the framework, get order, does your partner, the product to the customer or delivery? Okay, it's a question about our business process when we get an order and how is it delivered? So very simple, let's take this example here. So if somebody is buying this Cube mountain bike for EUR 2,000, we get the order and when we have the order, we decide which retail partner gets this order. The next thing is we call our logistic partner or our own forces and pick up the bike. We adjust everything at the back that people can use it. The customer can use it. You have to make some adjustments with the bicycle. And then we deliver it to the customer. And we also received the money. So we see all the amounts from the purchase, and we also make the marketing and the customer care. Though the full value chain of e-commerce is always on our side. and the partner, the retail partner, in this case, a bicycle partner, they are just offering their stock, and we make the content and we make all the other thing. So the delivery to the customer is always from our partner, from our logistic partner or by ourselves. How has the transformation to a platform business developed at Lyra Pet, for example? How many partners that Lyra Pet had and so far, what is the potential sales to partners and what to own inventory? So this is a question regarding a new company. We acquired this company some months ago and basically, currently, the majority of the revenue is still on their own inventory. So the majority is about the food for the pet and so on. and about hardware equipment for pets. And our strategic focus is always platform. So we have a road map together with them. And within the next 2 months, we implement our software. So in the next 2 months, they use our software to make all the platform connections. And after that, they can connect partners, manufacturers, retail partners, and then they can increase the number of products more and more. But to give you an example of how it works, when we acquired fashionette 2 years ago, they only had bags and shoes, nothing else. But the biggest industry or part of the industry is fashion. It's not shoes. It's not bags, it's fashion. So what we did here is the same thing. You can see that 37,000 products are listed in fashion. And before we acquired it, it was 0. And now it is contributing the majority of the revenue this year. So you see how fast the change between -- we have inventory and we are a pure player to we are a platform and make for a lot of retailers, a lot of partners, the revenue, how fast this can go. So we always expect around 5 months to 1 year to implement our software, to change to the platform model and to increase the number of partner products. Next question is the new KGaA structure will be in place? Do you plan to increase the free float on the shares, Dominik? What would be willing to reduce your ownership stake to increase the liquidity in the shares? Yes. Good question. We showed you the planned change of the legal structure. We have our AGM next week. And to answer your question, I don't want to sell shares, to be honest. It's not my intention. If we see a good target, we can make a capital increase if it's necessary. Of course, we can do that, but we always want to become with Benner Holding, a long-term shareholder and make sure that the shareholder is aligned with TPG and stays there for forever or for a lot of years. And this is really our focus. So there's no intention of selling shares. But of course, you see that the liquidity of the share is increasing since 2 years. So when we bought fashionette, there was a daily trade volume of around per day, EUR 50,000. Now we already have EUR 300,000 to EUR 800,000 per day. So it's really a good progress. The average around is EUR 400,000 per day this month and we expect a further increase. And we think that EUR 1 million daily trade volume is not unrealistic. So I think we are on a good way. And we think we are in a good way that we also have more volatility here and have more trade volume. Next question, can you please explain the strong increase in receivables against affiliate companies in the [ Hagberport ] 2024. Yes, very simple answer on that. I can maybe show you another picture which might be more adequate to answer. So when you see the structure here, you see -- we showed it in the last call that we have our AG structure on top. And below that, we have 3 holdings the Platform Group AG, Fashionette GmbH and [indiscernible] . These are 2 Netherlands companies. And below all that, we have the operational portfolio companies. And the important thing to understand is that we always have relation between the Platform Group AG on the top level and the portfolio companies below. And that is the reason why we do not have much cash on top. We always have it in the operational companies or in the holdings below. And so it's very simple to understand that if we take a bond with EUR 50 million, for example, last year, we put it into acquisitions. And we put it into the company below that we acquired and then they have, of course, accounts receivables on the top holding. And that is the reason why this increased to EUR 100 million. There's one other thing which you should understand. The company Platform Group AG, you cannot compare it with 2023. Because in 2023, it was a Fashion AG. And the fashion AG that I gave was not a holding structure, it was not comparable on what we do here. So it really changed in 2024. So the similarity or the comparability is not given in this case. In retrospect, are 3 pharma distributors operating in a niche. Do they only distribute specific products? Okay, let's go back to the question regarding the pharmaceutical companies, the platforms. So I mean, we are still in a confident procedure, so we cannot give you specific details on that. But you can be sure, and we can announce that we do not only buy a company which is distributing products. We are looking for platform companies, which are really operating a niche. And one of these new segments can be, for example, specific drugs or specific relations to other pharmacies and also some e-commerce activities on that. So it's really a new segment where we operate in and what we want to buy. Sorry for that, it's still confident. So it's not closed. It's not -- so please understand that. Hello, thank you again for your time. What do you say is your main motivation for the legal change, please? Also, I was hoping to see the ROCE for H1 and that is an important KPI. Yes. So to answer that, actually and the return on equity. The problem with that is that you cannot calculate it for the half year because you see the balance sheet number, that is clear, but you need a full year perspective on the profit. And that is the reason why we did not calculate it for the half year because if we would do that, we have to make an estimation on these figures. And then everybody will blame us and say, okay, you make an estimation on full year. This is not realistic. This is not calculability, this is not acceptable. And that is the reason why we did not make this calculation. Here, you can see our return on equity and return on capital employed by last year. And we are pretty sure that we will have the same numbers this year. So it will be around 18% to 28% as a range where we operate in, and it will be very similar. If you have a good idea, to be honest, how we can solve that, how other companies do it with the half year report and calculate it for the full year, let us know, we are open for that. We did not really find...

So if you want, you can contact me any time. And if it's reasonable, of course, we will try to factor it in.

Yes. All right. The next question is about the auditor. The question is, can you explain what Air Group company is doing? And why we believe that Mr. Uslar is qualified to audit and so on. So to answer this question, Mr. [indiscernible] is our former auditor for last year. And for this year, it will not be Mr. [indiscernible] And so we have chosen a new company, which is qualified for our growing activity. So that is a background for that. Can you please explain your cash management within the group and the holding? Is the balance sheet of the group by end of 2024, cash of only EUR 400,000? So yes, we already answered that. I'm sorry to give you the short answer. We already answered you this question because when you see on this structure here, which we already presented in a public way. You see that we have no need for big cash reserves on the holding because below that, we have our sub holdings and our operational companies, and we can always have access to the cash because the majority of them, 90% or more have contract with us for liquidity and cash pooling. So we can work with that. So next question, what was behind the EUR 32 million decrease in ability [indiscernible] in H1 last year. So I don't know if you really rely on last year. But the answer is very simple. Last year, we sold a lot of cars in the Kuno company. And with the sale of the cars, we reduced the [indiscernible] in that amount. So that was the background. And that is the reason why the H1 last year was a little bit a one-off effect in some financial numbers. A lot of analysts ask us about that question last year, and we -- I think we already have published it in our annual report that there was a onetime effect of acquiring this company and selling all of these cars. Do you own an online pharmacy. Yes, we have a niche pharmacy. It is called Doc.Green and this new pharmacy, we have product online in the drug sector and sell it but it is not so relevant because we focus really on B2B. Our focus is B2B business. So when you look on ARPU now, they have 99% with B2B revenues, we are not such a big fan of B2C business because it's very competitive there. There's a lot of advertisement competition. And we think that is a good way to lose money and not to earn money. So we are quite conservative on that. Next question.

More comment on the cash topic we just had -- so it's very important to point out that we do not have cash transfer agreements in place, but we do have cash pooling contracts in place with all our subsidiaries.

Yes. So next question. Can you please provide an update on TPG Pay? How high is the turnover rate among partners? Are there fixed contract term for partners? Yes. So we have fixed partner terms or contracts. Usually, they are for 2 years and they extend after these 2 years for another year. How high is the turnover rate? I'm not sure what it means turnover rates. Bjorn, do you know what turnover rate means?

No.

Okay. So maybe -- maybe you can specify what you mean is turnover rate. And the update on TPG, very good question from you. We've shown you that in our Capital Markets Day.

Probably the churn rate, which he's referring to. So how many exchanging per year?

Okay. Got it. So it's about 3% to 4% per year, which we lose because they have no successor, or they close or they are whatever insolvent or I don't know. So that is the reason for that why we have 3% or 4%. So you asked us about an update on TPG Pay. We presented to you our TPG pay system in a better version at our Capital Markets Day. And we got a lot of feedback, which we really appreciated. And we also gave you a time line on our project pipeline here. And you can see that we want to release CBA in the first version by end of August or beginning of September. So we are right now on track with that. And we will go on the next version and release it in our shops by end of November or beginning of December. So this is our pipeline and our time schedule for that, and we are, I think, pretty good on track. Next question, the answer was not clear for me. Are the EUR 12.7 million payments for investments entirely attributable to the further development of the software platform? If not, can you provide a breakdown? Yes. Thank you very much for the question. Maybe we should give you a more detailed perspective on that because when you go on this breakdown here, let's go on the H1 report. You see that there's an increase in the cash flow here, let's go on that. And I think you're talking about that here, the EUR 12.6 million for investments. And maybe it's a good idea to provide you with further information because right now, we do not have it here. But of course, we can provide you in the next call for a detailed number on that. And I think if I'm right, we also gave some more information here in the Lager bridge. So maybe you should also have a look on that. Yes. But anyway, we give you more feedback on that. Could you give us a quick refresher on expected sales and adjusted EBITDA for full year 2025 and consolidated contribution is strong recent M&A. If the full year 2026 guidance for Glasses business, integrating further M&A? Or is it 100% organic?

By both MyGlass is growing organically and the local stores, you have to acquire M&A in order to grow the number of parts.

Yes. Absolutely. Could you also give us a quick refresher on current and normative return levels in key segments. Yes, very good question. Okay. This is a figure what we actually did not publish so often because nobody is asking us for that. Our average return rate is about 25% to 28%. And when you go to the segments in our report, we have no return reporting because actually, the most people do not care about that. But we can give you more or less the specific numbers. So in the segment of consumer goods, there's a variety between, I would say, 11%, 12% for bags, up to 45%, 50% for specific shoes, especially women shoes. Well, this is the range. And I think the average will be around 30%, 35% in the segment. The freight goods segment, it is below 5%. So there are almost no returns or very low numbers. And the industrial goods segment, it is below 3%. So it's not existing. And segment service and retail goods, it is also below 5%, so really no numbers. So when you calculate all these together, you can understand that we always talk between 25% and 28% return rate, and this is predominantly coming from the segment of consumer goods. Okay. How much of your transportation costs are actually related to returns? Yes. these are bad news. When you have 25% return rate, for example, you cannot say that 25% of the distribution costs are because of returns. Because there's one negative thing in this industry, the returns are more expensive. So much more. That means the Deutsche Post or UPS also on the charge you more for the returns automatically per parcel. And additionally, we have higher internal costs for returns. So when you say you have 25% return, right and ask us how much will it be in the distribution costs here in this line? You can estimate about 34%, 35% of these costs are coming from returns. So it's not proportional. It's more than proportional. Yes. So we get a great feedback. Thank you for that. Chronext was acquired at the end of last year, yes, December. What is the product strategy here, particularly in terms of increasing the range of available products? Yes, good question. So it is the same strategy what we always do. We acquired Chronext and they had no replatform strategy. And what we do now is the same as we ever do in all our companies. We get partners connected to our software and increase the number of products. This is our strategy. We do it for Europe, for fashionette, for Chronext and so on. And I think they already have 20% or 30% revenue from partners already, so from external partners, which in this amount, they do not have before. And we expect a further increase up to more than 50% by end of this year. So the growth driver is clearly the partner model and the platform model. It will be no longer only focused on inventory by themselves. Does the automotive business still exist? And how are the developments here? We have a lot of automotive or automotive supply business. So 1 is a lot, for example. This is a company which we acquired 3 years before, and they are working in the automotive car part segment. It is very successful. They have good growth rates. And they also started 2 years ago with the platform model. Now that means if you buy anything like a break or something here, it is in the majority from a partner and the seller for the partner. So this is how they earn their money and they make it in a very profitable way. And we also have our activity with X Mobility. This is a company where you can make contracts for monthly contracts for cars. So Volkswagen here, EUR 600. It depends on how many kilometers, and you can make the contract for each month individually and cancel it each month. And yes, we are still active in that 2 years before we acquired 2 different companies and kind of a third company with an asset deal, and we decided to consolidate everything into one new brand, cut off all the former brands sold the legal entities and consolidated everything into one company. Critics for that, to be honest, a lot of analysts asked why did you do that? Why did you split off the old companies and put them away. And we said, yes, we want to have one new company with one brand because we had 3 different customers. Every of this customer has a different brand on this paper on his invoice, and we said, no, we make one new company, and this is called X Mobility.

So next one is going to have definitely a big impact 2 months ago, the entire managing team of TPG made a field trip into the valley in order to get acquainted with the latest developments of artificial intelligence. And we brought that all back, and we wouldn't meet TPG. So what we did is we hired the people in order to establish an AI Academy and all employees have a course once a week. And of course, we have specific takeaways, and this is going to revolutionize everything that starts with content generation, the way you make the content for your articles, it's photos. So right now, we have a large photo studio in order to make pictures and mood pictures, especially of all our articles with certain tools you are able to automize this fully. So basically, you just take a clear shot of the article and then you tell the AI, what the background in this setting should be and then it's generating this and it's doing it by now in quality that probably most of us could not differentiate from a real photo, at least is really doing the business for us. And you can expand this into how you do your entire planning. This is how you do the invoice control, so it's going to have an impact of pretty much every single area in the company.

Yes. So absolutely right, what Bjorn says. And it was really an eye-opener when we visited Silicon Valley with all our executive members. And we decided, yes, we have to implement an own team. But AI does not work if only some key people know how it works. We have to implement it at the basis. And now every employee, [indiscernible] gets an education, one hour per week on AI, everybody. And that was a clear strategy, how we have to implement AI on the bottom of the organization and not only on the top. And maybe you can see it here, right now, we are still making physical autos. We are making physical videos, and we need a model and a photograph and so on. Next year, there will be no model, and there will be no photographer for this anymore. So we completely eliminate this and can significantly decrease the cost structure on that, but it will have a huge impact. Next question. I assume your answer was lost, but could you please remind us on your main rationale for changing the company legal structure? Yes. So we already made an update call on that. by first of August, maybe you remember that we mentioned our reasons for that and why we did it. And basically, we had 3 reasons. The one reason was, first, we want to have a safe anchor shareholder, with Benner Holding and even if they would dilute the shares if we have more capital increase, we always stay on board and be a valid and long-term partner. The second is we want to make more international acquisitions. So we think that when we make international acquisitions, people are used to have shares Class A shares, Class B and Class C. And it's not with a negative connotation like it is in Germany. So basically, we think that we make any activity and buy companies, we have no problem in foreign countries to work with that and also to give the sellers on shares if we acquired this company. And the third reason, we are more flexible with that. Maybe you know some German specific on that, and we have more and quick decisions when we choose this new structure to -- just to mention that. And next question is about, can you please explain how your incentive your different managers and executives -- do you have a very...

I have an answer to that one. I expect we do have market-oriented salaries as base pay. So they are not too low, but at the same time, they're also not I -- and of course, like in any of these positions, we do have success-oriented fees, so you can get a bonus. This is attractive but also not sky high. So again, it's market oriented and this is how we pay our people.

Yes. And we have no stock option program. So very important to say that because actually, we do not believe that a basic employee and the stock has such a strong relation. And so we always believe that making a good bonus and which is paid every year when they are successful and have a good basic salary. I think these are 2 things which are enough for us. And we can work with that. And maybe you have seen that in our adjusted figures, we never have any stock compensation programs, which you see in a lot of other balance sheets. There are numbers of subsidiaries, of which you own 100% or less than 100. What is the plan for the minorities? And do you plan to use to buy out the maturity this year or next year? So yes, we have the option after 2 or 3 years to increase our shareholding in the company, and it depends on the development. So if we see good development, we want to increase it, but we have to pay, of course, with this higher value. And so it's a very good strategy, what we do from our perspective to reduce the risk, to keep the managers on board, and to pay when it's successfully and not -- when it's not successfully. And so this is our strategy, how we reduce risk and make sure that they have a good valuation development. What proportion of your newly acquired partners previously had no online presence? I don't understand. Maybe the partner. So if you connect a partner on Bike-Angebot, for example, and the partner is setting a bike here, to be honest, 90% of these partners have no online presence, though they are really off-line players they maybe have a Facebook account or Google business account, but they are not having an own online shop. They are not selling products online. So in January, it's about 90%, which are not online in an active way.

And some might have some, especially like white label shops. But if you do not work on them, if you do not invest in ZIA and ZO, then, of course, the number of people, potential customers, you're able to reach is relatively low. So you might have your own shop, but still it's not a high seller. So if we connect it and if we focus the TPG performance marketing power on these new shops. Then of course, this always leads to a big jump.

Yes. So one last question, which you see here in the chart, it's about the internationalization and could you please talk more about your strategy on this front of internationalization? Yes, good question because, as you know, we have around 75% with revenues in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and Netherlands. So it is one of our goals to expand our international footprint and to have more revenues in other countries because we are not very happy that we are so much focused here on Germany and the countries around Germany. And I think we already started that. And for example, with Winkelstraat we acquired last year, they are very successful in the Netherlands and now outside the Netherlands. So it's a good first move. Last year, we have Brandfield. They are operating also in the Netherlands. And last but not least, we just acquired Joli Closet this year. They are a good player in France. And you can be sure also with the pharmaceutical acquisition that we will expand more into Staten and Eastern Europe, and we will do it in the next month. So we will step by step go forward, but always with a risk-averse strategy because we will never open an office with 100 people, let's see if it works. And if not, we will fire them. That's not our business. We are a family business, we are conservative, and we have to take care that the cash is not going out, and we have to take care that we make profits. And that is the reason why we always move into small steps and make sure that this will work. The last question is about AI, AI progression and the possibility to open a web store, easier access to be players like ABS similar coming. I think, to be honest, it does not change so fast for us. So we see no real competition on that. We use AI for our own processes internally. But we think that it does not change web store or the easier access to players like ABS because ABS AWS, a server provider, we use it and other people also use it. So I don't see a real relation to our business model so far. Okay. No, I think these are all the questions. So we see no open questions anymore. So thank you very much from our side. And I think it was a very good conversation with the chat and all the questions here.

Yes. Thank you very much for your time taking all the questions. There are no further questions. Thanks to everyone joining and your strong interest in the Platform Group. Should, however, further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. Thank you to Dr. Benner and Mr. Minnier for your update and your time to take all the questions. I wish you all a lovely weekend. And with this, I hand over again to Dr. Benner for some final remarks.

No final remarks. Happy to see you at the AGM or the next Capital Markets Day, which we plan in the next 2 months. Bye-bye.

So thank you for your very interesting and fair questions.