Ceconomy Aktie

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CECONOMY Q2 and Half Year 2025, 2026 Results Webcast and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker today, Fabienne Caron, Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sharon, and good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to welcome you to our Q2 results call today. I'm joined by our CEO, Kai-Ulrich Deissner; and our CFO, Remko Rijnders. Before we begin, I'd just like to briefly remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. Please refer to the disclaimer in the presentation for further details. This call is being recorded, and the recording will be available on our website later today. With that, I'm pleased to hand over to Kai.

Thank you, Fabienne. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Together with my trusted CFO and my soon-to-be successor, Remko Rijnders, I will now take you through the results of our first half and the second quarter of this financial year. As many of you know, we set out on this transformation journey 3 years ago, and we made some bold promises back then at our Capital Markets Day '23. We said we would put customers first and that we would establish a new category, experienced electronics rather than consumer electronics. We said we would build a business beyond traditional retail, and we said we would deliver consistent profitable growth.

Well, I'm happy and proud that we are delivering on those promises once again with a strong half year result. The result, you'll see aren't just numbers on the slide, they are proof that our strategy is working quarter-by-quarter, step by step by step, and that we're on the finishing stretch to those promises from 3 years ago. If you want it in 2 sentences; we're strengthening our customer relationships and we're increasing our profitability. But we must not get and we are not arrogant. We know there is still significant work ahead of us to serve our customers and to achieve our vision even beyond the commitments from our last CMD. I'll come back to this at the end of this presentation today.

Now let me start with Slide 3, some of our operational highlights this past quarter. I am super proud that our loyalty program, so myMediaMarkt and mySaturn have been ranked #1 in the shopping category at the 2026 German Bonus awards. Almost 150,000 consumers voted across 7 categories, and they chose us over many other well-known programs.

If you take a step back and remember where we come from, this recognition becomes even more meaningful. Our business used to be purely transactional, fire and forget. People came in, bought what they were looking for and left the stores again. No true customer relationship, no loyalty, no CRM. That's different today. By now, we know many of our customers. We stay in contact and we reward their loyalty. Actually, according to this award, we're now the top player in that space. Our app is where customers want to be. That's an excellent proof of our strategy.

Another example of strict customer focus is our marketplace. When you browse our online shop, you now have access to a huge assortment through our marketplace partners, way beyond traditional consumer electronics. To give you the numbers, in our stores, you can usually find up to 10,000 individual products. Online, we sell a few more. But on our marketplace, there is nearly 4 million individual products available. And this marketplace has reached meaningful scale.

With our launch in Switzerland in January, it now covers 98% of our footprint. This is no longer a pilot or an experiment. It is a core part of how we serve our customers. These are just 2 examples that show customer centricity is not a buzzword for us. It's a strategy. It's what drives every decision we make, every innovation we implement and every service we deliver. When customers choose us, we want them to choose an experience that puts them first.

We now give you an overview of our results on Slide 4. With one big headline. We are on course to reach our midterm targets. We're on the finishing stretch. In H1, we delivered sales of EUR 13.1 billion. That's growing 4%. This number is as always adjusted for currency and portfolio changes. When you look at Q2 alone, we achieved like-for-like growth even up 4.8%. That's solid momentum in an admittedly challenging retail environment. And so our market shares increased in Q2 by 20 basis points.

And profitability, our adjusted EBIT grew by EUR 43 million. That's a 14.2% increase in H1 and including another growth in Q2. Remko will, of course, walk you through the dynamics behind these numbers in more detail, but here's what I am very happy about. Customer satisfaction continues to grow. Our Net Promoter Score increased by 2 points year-over-year. It now stands at 62%. That tells us something fundamental. The investments we're making in customer experience are paying off. Our customers are noticing the difference. Not perfect, but better every time. And most importantly, we confirm our outlook for '25, '26.

We're delivering exactly what we promised. This consistency is what builds trust for our shareholders, with our stakeholders and confidence in our strategy even beyond our targets for September 30, this year. We will give you a bit more color on what drove this performance in the first half on Slide 5.

First, looking closer at our omnichannel sales. We saw strong momentum in Q2 even better than in the first quarter. Online sales grew by 7.3% in H1 and even by 8% in Q2. Our online share for H1, thus was 28.5%, including marketplace. That's up 150 basis points. And similarly, our Bricks-and-Mortar sales grew by 2.8% in H1, but with 3.9% in Q2. For me, this is proof that omnichannel is the right strategic approach in our sector. Our customers are visiting our stores. They shop online and they use the app across all touch points. And this integration is our competitive advantage.

Then our growth businesses continue to scale rapidly. Services & Solutions income increased strongly. Retail media income nearly doubled and again, high double-digit GMV growth in marketplace. I'll come back to these growth fields in a minute, but let's have a look at countries.

Sales performance was especially strong in Hungary, Türkiye and Spain. Profitability improved in almost all countries, but even more in Poland, in Türkiye and Hungary. On the other hand, demand in Germany and Austria remains somewhat subdued, but we are managing that actively. Most importantly, this overall development shows why our diversified international portfolio is so valuable. It gives us balance.

On profitability, we grew EUR 43 million in EBIT with EUR 10 million of that coming in Q2 alone. That's 30 basis points up in EBIT margin. As promised as in the last 3 years consistently, we're not just growing. We're growing profitability. And our cash generation rose slightly by EUR 7 million above last year, with free cash flow now at minus EUR 165 million. That's typical for a second quarter. Again, Remko will share more details on this later. So when I say we're on the finishing stretch to reach our midterm targets, this is exactly what I mean. Our strategy is working. Every business line is contributing and every market is playing its part.

You'll probably recognize this also on the next Slide #6. We present this table each quarter to give you detailed transparency about the developments of those 9 KPIs and that we introduced at our Capital Markets Day back in '23, the essence of our strategic focus. We're getting to the finishing line now. Across the various business fields, Retail Core, Service & Solutions, Marketplace, Retail Media, we took big steps towards those targets for September. And all of this, if you take a helicopter view, has changed the structure of our business.

You can see that on Slide 7. Our growth businesses now represent approximately 40% of our gross profit. That's up from 35% a year ago. This is what we mean when we say to move beyond traditional retail. All of our growth businesses contributed to this increase of our EBIT and gross profit, Services & Solutions, Marketplace, Private Label, Space-as-a-Service and Retail Media.

This matters because these businesses carry structurally higher margins, and they are less dependent on the classical consumer electronics cycle. The more we grow these segments, the more resilient and profitable our overall business becomes. This is exactly the kind of structural change that positions CECONOMY for sustainable long-term growth in the future too. Again, I will come back to this at the end of my presentation.

Let me share an operational initiative that is making a real difference for our customers on Slide 8, our Hub rollout. So what's the Hub. Hub is a regional logistics infrastructure that handles supply and demand of larger products, for example, white goods. Not just for 1 store or 2 stores or 3 stores, but for all stores in a larger region. Now when you're buying a washing machine or a fridge, it's usually not a fun purchase, right? It's a household necessity. And very often, it's urgent. You want it quickly and you want to make sure it comes when we say that it comes. That's what we're delivering with these hubs.

And the rollout of those is far advanced. We're targeting in Germany, 14 hubs overall, and 10 are already live now. This is already now reducing pressure on stock levels and improving product availability and delivery speed. And our customers appreciate that. Our delivery NPS is growing compared to our traditional approach. This is why we also have clear plans to expand this Hub model to Spain, to Benelux, Italy and Türkiye, so across our European footprint.

I already spoke about customer relationship management, CRM at the beginning with our Bonus programs. Let me come back to this because it's really key. Knowing our customers is so important for us because we can design our shopping experience to precisely what they need and want. Our loyalty program at the basis delivers outstanding results. Our active loyalty base grew by 26% year-on-year. This shows that customers aren't just signing up and then silent, they are actively choosing to shop with us. And our overall loyalty community now stands at nearly 60 million members.

And we're using this potential. The sales from direct marketing campaigns in Germany grew by 62%, almost 2/3. We're successfully shifting from broad mass market messaging to relevant targeted offers that customers actually want and how they want to offer those offers. Mobile engagement continues to accelerate. Our app and mobile channels are now becoming the primary touch points for those campaigns. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, we'll scale this personalization further. This means, for example, real-time targeting and log in via existing social media accounts that you may have as you know it from other services.

Before I hand over to Remko, let's have a look at our sustainability numbers on Slide 10. To start with BetterWay sales. Those increased by 5 percentage points, with solid growth across the entire assortment. Secondly, trade-in volumes grew by 6.7%. It shows that customers increasingly value the ability to bring back their used devices.

But here's the real one, right? Our refurbished business grew by 380%. Let me repeat that for you, 380%. That's driven by our own new refurbished offers. And by the way, these are now part of our private label business in segment and driven by better presentation and search results, for example, online. We see that this is bringing entirely new customers to this category. Admittedly, in absolute numbers, there's still a lot of potential. But with these growth rates, there's a clear trend that extends into the future.

At this stage, let me now hand over to Remko for a closer look at our financials. Remko?

Thank you, Kai, and of course, a good morning to all of you. Now let me share more details of our Q2 results. We will start with Slide 12. Before digging into the numbers, let me quickly highlight an accounting restatement, we had to do and which has an impact on our numbers. Let me be clear, this is an accounting correction, not a change in underlying trading performance. And this relates to the timing and release of voucher-related accruals after redemption. There is no impact on cash generation, liquidity or the economics of our business.

Our previous treatment was too cautious, which means sales and earnings were reported below the appropriate level. We have now corrected this and restated the comparative period for transparency. Our fiscal year adjusted EBIT for fiscal year '25 is now EUR 406 million compared to the EUR 378 million that we have reported. Our adjusted EBIT in Q1 increased by EUR 9 million to EUR 320 million.

The chart highlights that we increased our adjusted EBIT by EUR 43 million in H1 and need another EUR 51 million increase in H2, which makes us confident we will reach our targets. We had another quarter of growth, resulting into profitable EBIT growth in H1, and this, in a market which is volatile and competitive where consumers spending is under pressure, so we are extremely proud of our achievements.

Let's look at the headline numbers. Our sales growth accelerated in Q2 by a solid 4.9% resulting in a 4% growth in the first half of the year. This is the number adjusted for currency and portfolio changes in pre-IAS 29. And our like-for-like sales grew by 4.8% in Q2 and 3.7% for H1. That is, if you count only comparable selling space and stores already opened 1 year ago. Compared with the overall economic developments, particularly in retail, this is a very good result.

Now let's look at the segments, starting with DACH and sales on Slide 14. We recorded a 3.1% decline in like-for-like as consumer demand was rather soft in the region over the first half of the year. I would like to point out that we noticed a trend improvement at the end of the quarter. Our market share in Q2 was broadly flat in the DACH region. Still, Profitability improved with a EUR 7 million increase in adjusted EBIT. This achievement was made possible by an improved gross margin and effective cost control allowing us to counter the decline in sales due to the soft market.

In Western and South Europe, our sales were strong with a 4.1% increase in like-for-like in H1. And we gained 0.2 percentage point market share. On profitability, we increased our adjusted EBIT by EUR 15 million and our margin by 30 basis points. A great performance, in my view, where Spain and Italy were the main drivers. Moving to Eastern Europe. Sales were once again driven by Türkiye and Poland continues to improve as well. We gained 0.5 percentage point market share in the first half. Both countries contributed to the increase in profitability.

Finally, let me highlight our other segments which primarily represents holding cost and our private label business. The decline in EBITDA is primarily due to a higher risk provision on mobile phone contracts, reflecting the current macroeconomic headwinds.

Now turning to Slide 15. Let's take a look at the performance of Services & Solutions, our biggest growth area. You can see that we grew sales over proportionally with a plus of 12.5%. The strongest growth came from our insurance warranty business. Then to online. Our first party online sales also grew over proportionally with 7.3% increase in H1 and now reached a total of EUR 3.5 billion in H1. And on the back of this, our online sales share increased to nearly 28.5%, again, a great performance.

So let me come back to our EBIT development on Slide 17. Our gross margin increased by 30 basis points in H1 to 18.1%, which is a strong performance. This improvement was driven by our growth areas. Now circa 40% of our gross profit comes from our growth business. Our OpEx ratio was stable to 16% as we have mitigated the OpEx increase with strict cost management.

Turning to the full overview on Slide 18 from adjusted EBIT to net profit. Walking down from adjusted EBIT of EUR 347 million, we recorded EUR 62 million nonrecurring items. The EUR 50 million increase year-on-year is mainly due to a lower profit share of Fnac Darty of EUR 32 million. Regarding tax, we paid more tax due to our better profitability. All in all, those 2 elements impacted our net profit and resulted in a reported EPS of EUR 0.20 in the first half of the year.

Turning to Slide 19. Free cash flow was, as expected, seasonally negative in the first half as the second quarter is typically when we pay our supplies for the Christmas period. Even so, free cash flow improved by EUR 7 million in H1 and by around EUR 100 million in Q2. This improvement was driven by strong operating performance.

In April, Standard & Poor's upgraded CECONOMY's long-term credit rating from BB- to BB. This rating remains on credit watch positive. The upgrade reflects recognition of CECONOMY's sustainable profitability trajectory and improve stand-alone financial risk profile.

On this positive note, I will now hand back to Kai for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Remko. Look, what you've just heard from both of us, we continue to have positive momentum, and we expect this to continue for the full financial year '25, '26. But before I come to our outlook, let me address what's obviously relevant, our management transition, Slide 22. As you know, I have personally decided to step down from my role as CEO for personal reasons, actually stepped down from any executive role in the future, and I feel privileged to be able to take this step because our company is so well placed now. The path for the future is set, there is a strong leadership team here for the handover.

Remko Rijnders, who you've just all heard, will take over from July 1. Most of you know Remko, of course, well from his time as CFO. But before that, as cluster CEO and CEO of our Benelux business. He's been with MediaMarkt, Saturn for 17 years. He brings deep operational knowledge, proven track record, the strong strategic vision. He's been part of our omnichannel transformation from day 1.

Second, Jan Niclas Brandt has been serving as our CCO, Chief Customer Officer since April 1. Niclas has an outstanding track record. He led our business in Switzerland and Austria, and before that was the driving force behind our experience electronics strategy as VP Corporate Strategy. His mission now is to take us to the next level. Niclas will help us move beyond just putting customers first to really understanding what matters to each individual customer and delivering exactly that through customer relevance.

To make our leadership team complete, only one is missing, as you can see on the slide. For the Chief Financial Officer position, we expect a timely announcement in the coming quarter. I'm personally deeply convinced that this board setup is strong. They bring the right combination of strategic vision and execution to deliver. They understand what it takes to win in this market, and how to position us for sustainable growth in the next chapter. And we're also already working closely together as a team to ensure a smooth handover without missing a beat.

Now to our outlook on Slide 23. As I said at the very beginning, we confirm our guidance for '25, '26. We're on the finishing stretch. But we did specify the details with a closer look at the performance of our countries this year so far. We expect -- continue to expect a moderate increase in currency and portfolio adjusted total sales, with Western, Southern and Eastern Europe contributing to that sales growth. Secondly, we continue to expect an adjusted EBIT of around EUR 500 million, driven by Western and Southern Europe. And to remind you, one more time, this is still the target for the financial year '25, '26 that we first communicated at our Capital Markets Day back in '23 and ever since.

On to Slide 24. I've mentioned the next chapter and the future path and the next level several times today. So let me cordially invite all of you to our Strategy Day on Thursday, July 9, 2026. It will be a hybrid event. You can join us in person at our lighthouse in Hamburg or participate via stream. My board colleagues will lay out our way forward to 2028, '29. Our new midterm ambitions, strategic priorities and the many, many initiatives that will make us not just an experienced electronics player, but an experienced champion. This will be an important event for both the financial community as well as for media and Remko, Niclas and their teams look forward to sharing our vision with you in detail.

In this context, let me give you an update on our proposed partnership with JD.com on Slide 25. We're still on route to closing. On the regulatory front, we have, together and under the lead of JD, made significant progress. First, merger control clearance has been granted everywhere as set out in the offer document. Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Türkiye. Second, Foreign Direct Investor, FDI, clearances have also been received in Italy and in France. As per the offer document, 3 more countries are required. First bunch, Germany and Spain, we expect the FDI clearances to be granted in due course. And regarding the FDI clearance in Austria, we released on March 27.

We now continue to engage actively with the Federal Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism to meet the clearance conditions. This dialogue is now constructive. Thirdly, JD.com has also submitted the FSR filing in Brussels, again, as defined in the offer document, and so no surprise. They are in constructive engagement with the EU authorities. This process takes time, and they're moving in the right direction.

Given the complexity of these approval processes, we said in our talk in late March that closing is likely to extend into the second half of the year. But let me be clear, we remain fully committed and confident to this partnership, and we're working diligently, together with JD, to bring it to completion.

Allow me to repeat. We chose this partnership as a strategic next step not because we had to, but because we could and wanted to. JD.com will be a powerful partner to accelerate our development. This partnership will strengthen everything we're building here at CECONOMY and it will enable us to lead European retail in the future.

Let me wrap it up with Slide 26. A brief summary of what this quarter tells you about CECONOMY today and about the foundation for the future. Our experienced electronics strategy continues to drive higher customer satisfaction and deeper engagement, even stronger loyalty. Are we already done? No, of course, not. Are we on a good path? Definitely, yes. You've seen the proof today.

Our H1 performance underlines we have a strong and balanced portfolio. Our growing high-margin businesses make us strong. Together, they make the company more resilient and more profitable. They're an integral part of our business now, and they continue to expand. Our focus continues to remain on cost, liquidity and profitability. And with our strategic partner, JD.com, we have a unique opportunity in Europe to accelerate this development even further. We're making progress on the approval process.

Finally, to repeat one more time, we are confirming our outlook for '25, '26. We expect a moderate sales increase and adjusted EBIT of around EUR 500 million. Before we now open it for questions, allow me a personal word because this is the 14th, but also my last earnings call personally.

Thank you. Thank you all for our many, many good conversations in the past 3.5 years. Thank you for your continued interest and openness. But most importantly, thank you to the 50,000 people in this wonderful company. They have pushed us to where we are today with a clear strategy, with a path into the future, and above all with many, many happy customers. It's been an honor for me to be part of this journey and to lead it.

Thank you for your attention, and we're now ready for your questions.

[Operator Instructions]. There are currently no phone questions. I will hand the call back for the webcast questions.

Yes. So we take the first question from Frank [indiscernible]. The first one is why are we structuring costs so high in Germany? Are there plans for further store closure? And the second question is, are there any details in the acquisitions by JD.com -- delays, sorry. .

Thank you, Frank, for your questions. Remko's going to take the first one, I'll take the second one. Remko?

Yes, indeed, I will take the first one regarding Germany and the restructuring costs. Yes, we did quite some restructuring in the first half of the year in Germany, to make us for mid- and long-term scalable and viable. And of course, we always reviewed, as we always have said before, our store performance and where we see capabilities and opportunities. Do we plan for any additional store closures in the future? At the moment, we don't. That being said, with always the statement that we say, we will always, as any retailer would do, look at the performance of our stores and may we see opportunities to open new store, we do evaluate current stores.

Yes. And you also asked whether there are any delays in the acquisition by JD.com. Let me repeat what I've just said. We remain confident in this acquisition process. And on the details, we've already cleared all merger control clearances that we need or that JD.com needs according to the offer document.

On FDI, as I said, we're now in constructive discussions with Austria, and we expect, in due course, the [indiscernible] for Germany and Spain. And for the FSR process in Brussels, the filing has been made and we're now in constructive discussions again, to ease and constructive discussions with the EU authorities.

Thank you, Kai. Let me take the next question from Alex from MWB. Congratulations on the results. Wishing you all the best. Thank you, Alex.

First, can you give us more color on what has changed in Poland? And second regarding the key pledges, how should we think about the remaining upside for those open KPIs? Is there any meaningful EBIT and margin upside that can carry over behind '25, '26? And is it more -- or is it most already in our target of EUR 500 million?

Remko, you want to start with Poland and I'll do the second one.

Yes, I'm more than happy to give an update on Poland. As we said, we are happy with the performance in Poland also with an EBIT increase compared to last year, also again in Q2. What changed? First of all, we put our so-called matrix structure in play where we put additional efforts from our HQ when it comes to supply negotiations, supporting the organization in Poland, but we also have a new board that has a new CFO, a new CEO, a new team, and together with the senior management, we see now actually that dynamics is also working and the position in Poland is getting stronger and stronger from a performance perspective, but also from a team perspective, which we then also see in MPP for example.

Then, Alex, so first of all, thank you for your good wishes, very kind of you. You asked on those open pledges, which we've given at the Capital Markets Day where many, but not all KPIs are already on the target level for the 30th of September. Look, it's a package, right? We made a commitment in 2023 for those KPIs to reach the targeted level and to deliver the EUR 500 million. So that is a package. Now I cannot preempt what will be said in July about the next phase. But what I can preempt that we don't believe that EUR 500 million is the ceiling here and everything else will need to be set in July. .

Thank you, Kai. We take the next question from [indiscernible]. She's asking some questions regarding the JD.com transaction. We expect the closing in H2. Is it calendar year or fiscal year? And the second part of the question is when do you expect the delisting to take place under the Q1 plan? .

Thank you for the questions. It's Kai. So the closing date in the second half of the calendar year is what we're referring to. Remember, there is a long stop date in this transaction in November. So we expect it in the second half of the calendar year, but obviously before November 10, which is the long stop date to be very precise on this.

On delisting, you know how these things go. It's -- let's say between 3 and 6 months after closing, we would expect delisting to take place, but that's part of -- not 100% easy process. So I can't give you a precise timing, but between 3 and 6 months.

Next question is from Fred Ward from Verition Fund. Please could you give a little more detail on timing expectations for the Austrian approval on the JD.com deal? And will remedies be required and how does that -- those remedy process could work?

It's Kai. Thanks, Fred, for the questions. Please understand, these are very sensitive discussions, the confidentiality of which we respect 100%. So I cannot comment on ongoing discussions. What I can repeat is that we remain confident across all necessary approvals that includes the Austrian one in the second half of this year, as I've just specified, but further details I cannot give you at this stage.

Thank you, Kai. We see no more questions in chat. We have seen one from Charlie, but I think we gave the answer during the presentation. So we'll still wait a few minutes if you want either to type your question on the chat or just to raise the questions per telephone.

We see no further questions here on our end. I'll give you a time to brief; 3, 2, 1.

Look, thank you all for your time today and your questions. If you would like to engage us again through our field channels, we are very happy to do so to continue the conversation. We hope to see you in our Strategy Day on July 9, either in Hamburg or virtually and for our Q3 results on July 30. For now, Fabienne, Remko and I wish you all the best and a wonderful day. Thank you, and goodbye for now. .

Thank you. Goodbye. .

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CECONOMY Q1 2025-2026 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I will now hand over to Fabienne Caron, Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q1 results. I'm joined today by our CEO, Dr. Kai-Ulrich Deissner; and our CFO, Remko Rijnders.

Before we begin, a brief reminder. Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. Please refer to the disclaimer in the presentation for important information. This call is being recorded, and the recorded (sic) [ recording ] will be available on our website later today.

With that, I'm pleased to hand over to Kai to walk you through the key highlights. Kai, over to you.

Thank you, Fabienne. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Together with my partner in crime, our trusted CFO, Remko Rijnders, I will soon take you through the results of our first quarter in financial year '25-'26. But let's first recognize, Q1 is a very important quarter for us. It includes the full peak season around Black Week and Singles Day and Cyber Week and Christmas.

And in that quarter, we see millions of customers visiting our stores and our app. So at least statistically, you personally will have been part of those customers, too, and hopefully, even in real life and not just statistically. But effectively, it's a stress test for us, a stress test to our business model and how well we serve customers. So the key message here today is we've delivered, and we have successfully completed that stress test.

Now over the past many quarters, we said it time and again, we have been on a clear strategic journey, transforming CECONOMY from a traditional retailer into what we call a true omnichannel service platform. Quarter-by-quarter, this strategy is paying off also in this quarter.

Just to remind you, we're tackling this transformation from 2 angles. First, we're building our business beyond traditional retail with some significant growth areas, as we call them, that continue to perform really well. On a full year basis, this is now already a EUR 1 billion business. But the second, the real driver here is our customers because they fundamentally changed how they think about shopping and therefore, what they expect from us.

Now every team member across our 11 markets understands this shift and is very focused on delivering what we call experience electronics, putting the customer experience at the heart of what we do every day. We're creating shopping journeys that match what people today want and today need. Even though we still have a lot of work to do naturally, we're making real progress, and we're committed to getting better every day.

The results we present to you today underline this, that we're on a path of progress, growth in sales and profitability and customer satisfaction and online share and in our growth businesses. We think this is an exceptional achievement in our sector, particularly in a retail environment that remains highly competitive and volatile.

Together, all these elements are a strong foundation for future growth and of course, to reach our midterm targets by the end of this financial year '25-'26. For us, this makes this year so important. It's the finishing stretch of our journey since the Capital Market Day in 2023.

Ladies and gentlemen, CECONOMY is on the right path strategically, operationally and financially. Our consistent performance gives us confidence, and that is why we are also confirming our positive outlook for the full year '25-'26.

With that, now let's look at those details of Q1.

Let me start with an overview on Slide 3. This quarter sends a very clear message. Our strategy is continuing to work and our business continues to have strong momentum because we are ruthlessly putting the customer in the center.

Two points to back this up. One highlight I'm particularly proud of, our online share is at an all-time high, 30%. This is not just a number. It's a clear sign of our successful transformation from traditional bricks-and-mortar into an omnichannel retailer. Customers are choosing us across all touch points. And this seamless integration between online and offline is our core strength.

Second, at the same time, we've achieved a record NPS, Net Promoter Score, so the recommendations by our customers of 61 in Q1. We read this as a signal of trust from our customers for our focus on service quality, for personalized advice and for simplifying their customer journey. Customer satisfaction is not an add-on to our strategy. It's the core of our experience electronics approach.

And when you look at these 2 records together, online share and Net Promoter Score, we are strengthening our foundation and building the basis for future growth. We're improving convenience through our omnichannel capabilities, and we're elevating the experience through service and expertise. That balance is exactly what differentiates us, and it positions CECONOMY with MediaMarkt and Saturn for sustainable long-term growth even in the future.

Let's turn to Slide 4. You will see here that our growth continued across all key financial KPIs. Sales, EBIT, EPS, our major performance indicators, all moved in the right direction. We grew our profitability now for the 12th quarter in a row, 3 years quarter by quarter by quarter. That's uniquely meaningful considering the challenging economy that all of us in this sector are facing.

Second, sales grew by 3.4% to now EUR 7.6 billion. Adjusted EBIT in absolute figures grew by EUR 31 million or 11% to EUR 311 million in the quarter, and EPS was up 23% to now EUR 0.37. The basis of all of this, our strong sales development, was driven by 2 key factors. First, the increase reflects the strength of our international portfolio of countries. We will tell you more about our countries a bit later.

Second, our growth businesses gained even more momentum, proving once again how critical they are now for our long-term profitability profile. Taken together, these developments do give us confidence, confidence that our strategy is working, that our organization is executing with discipline and focus. And that's once again why we are reiterating our full year guidance today. More on that at the end.

Let's take one step further and go deeper into the operational performance with the next slide, that's Slide 5. In summary, what you can see here is the strength and the resilience of our business model during peak season. Online sales grew by 6.9%, and I will repeat that our online share increased to an all-time high of 30% and our bricks-and-mortar business also grew during that first quarter.

Profitability increased for the 12th consecutive quarter, and our free cash flow was strong at EUR 1.4 billion with an equally strong liquidity position underneath. Even more customers now trust us, become my MediaMarkt or my Saturn members. We grew our loyalty customers to now 57 million.

Next, our growth businesses now scale rapidly. This is becoming a defining element of our strategy. As you can see, Service & Solutions income increased significantly and so did Retail Media income. And here's an interesting one. Refurbished unit sales grew almost 400%. There is clearly more and more customer demand for affordable and sustainable options, and we are meeting it.

Several of our key countries delivered excellent performances. Turkiye, Spain, Hungary, Italy, all achieved strong sales momentum and better profitability. Now we did see a softer demand in Germany and Austria, but this only shows how valuable our diversified international portfolio is, gives us balanced stability and multiple engines of growth.

Overall, Slide 5 demonstrates we're scaling the right businesses. We're executing consistently across the markets, and we're thus building a more resilient and more profitable CECONOMY and MediaMarktSaturn that will continue to grow in the future.

The next slide, #6, you will probably recognize. We presented each quarter to give you transparency about the development of the 9 KPIs that we introduced at our Capital Markets Day back in 2023 because these 9 KPIs represent the essence of our strategic focus. And we are getting to the finishing line now. Across the various business fields, Retail Core, Service & Solutions, Marketplace, Space-as-a-Service, Retail Media, we took big steps towards all those targets that will become due on the 30th of September 2026.

You take a step back, retail at the core, strong momentum in our growth fields and all of that with a focus on the customer. That's the architecture of our journey that I've outlined. And you can see how this materializes in numbers on this slide.

When you look at the structure of our EBIT development, it becomes very clear how significant our growth businesses have become for the group. Our revenue and profit mix is becoming more diversified, more resilient and more future-proof and most importantly, with more growth. As you've seen over the past quarters, this is not just a temporary effect. It marks a structural shift in how value is created within CECONOMY.

We're no longer dependent on the traditional retail cycle alone. Instead, we're building a balanced portfolio that combines the stability of our Retail Core with the high margins of Service & Solutions, Marketplace, Private Label, Space-as-a-Service and Retail Media.

Now next, a closer look at our peak season on Slide 8. In summary, what we can say, our teams executed exceptionally well across all major product and service categories.

Let's start with product. In our Retail Core, we saw strong performance, especially in gaming hardware, floor care, toys and computing. Here's what's sold best, the Nintendo Switch 2, the PlayStation 5, as well as robot vacuum cleaners. And interestingly, we had a substantial sales increase in toys.

For example, LEGO, I'm told LEGO flowers are really hot on the market at the moment. So you can see that products that are beyond our core assortment can also become favorites for our customers. PCs also sold very well, mostly driven by laptops. And in this context, here's another interesting detail. We've also just released our very first private label, so own gaming laptop. It's called the [ Experian ].

Now in parallel to this Retail Core business, at the same time, Retail Media grew substantially across the whole portfolio, nearly doubled its web shop ads volume. This business is really scaling rapidly now. And we're -- also, as we anticipated at the end of last year, we're extending our customer base for Retail Media with customers outside the traditional consumer electronics sector. For example, Opel. Opel showcased the new Opel Frontera in various MediaMarkt stores in the Netherlands, another example outside Retail Core.

Services & Solutions delivered another strong quarter. This was primarily driven by bundling campaigns and by preparation of those bundles and value-added services in central warehouses, so a more efficient way of producing this. These bundles are key for us to reduce complexity for customers, it's easier to buy and of course, reduce complexity for employees as well. So they drive on the one hand side attachment of service and income, and they also drive efficiency for us.

Two examples. We launched maintenance packages in Turkiye. These are designed to extend the lifespan of the device that the customer may have, improve long-term energy efficiency and even help with hygiene conditions, in particular, for household appliances at home. Now, in real life, each maintenance procedure is carried out either on site at the customer or at the service workshop by specialized technical personnel.

Second example is the successful launch of what we call the SparKette bundles in Germany. Here, we focus on subscription contracts like antivirus or Microsoft 365 licenses, combined with devices like smartphones and tablets, and there's always a clear price benefit for customers.

Final milestone and interesting detail here is the collaboration between our growth field Service & Solutions and Marketplace because we now also offer insurances, not just for the products that we sell in our retail business, but also for Marketplace in Germany, so for third-party products from independent sellers. As you can see, our peak season performance was really broad-based, fully in line with our strategy and operationally really strong.

Now before I hand over to Remko, let me have a closer look at one of those longer term trends that we continuously emphasize, and it's circular economy on Slide 9, because this really had some extra momentum in Q1. Customers are actively choosing more and more sustainable and from their perspective, affordable alternatives. You can see that in the numbers. The BetterWay sales share increased another 2 percentage points to 16%.

Now those of you who follow us more often and more regularly, please note, we had to redefine our BetterWay scope. So what you're seeing here is the new BetterWay logic. Why? Because new energy labels are being introduced on an EU level. So we withdrew categories [ without ] such a label, that's, for example, vacuum cleaners and coffee machines, and we also introduced new criteria for smartphones. That's why it's the new BetterWay scope increasing 2 percentage points to 16%.

But most strikingly, perhaps and importantly, refurbished sales, mainly on the Marketplace for us, grew significantly by 380%. This came from more and more specialized sellers and thus a broader assortment. In December alone, one in 4 products sold on the Marketplace was refurbished.

And finally, trade-In numbers also grew. In Spain, we already launched a more efficient trade-In platform for us internally, and it shows promising results. The technology that underlies this simplifies the customer journey, and it increases conversion, and it gives us a better return as a retailer. We'll roll out this platform in more countries throughout this year.

But as you can see with all of these developments, we're not just responding to customer expectations. We're actively shaping a more sustainable, more innovative and future-oriented retail model around circularity.

Now let me hand over to Remko for a closer look at those financials. Remko?

Yes. Thank you, Kai, and good morning to all of you. Now let me share some more details of our Q1 results. We will start with Slide 11. As Kai already highlighted in the beginning, this is our 12th consecutive quarter with positive EBIT growth, and this in a market which is volatile and competitive. So we can and are extremely proud of this result.

Let's look at the headline numbers. We grew sales in Q1 by a solid 3.4%. This number is adjusted for currency and portfolio changes and pre-IAS 29. And our like-for-like sales grew by 3%, that is if you count only comparable selling space and stores already opened 1 year ago. Compared with our overall economic development, particularly in retail, this is a very good result.

Now let's look at our regions, starting with DACH and sales. Over the peak season, we faced intensive competition and many customers held back on spending. This was most pronounced in Germany and Austria, leaving sales down with 2.9% versus last year in the DACH region. We balanced that with a better gross margin, thanks to our growth business and by running a tighter cost base, especially our location costs. Overall, EBIT margin was up 10 basis points in the quarter.

In Western and Southern Europe, sales rose by 4.7% with growth in every country. Spain and Italy were particularly strong performers. On profitability, EBIT increased strongly with EUR 11 million and margin expanded by 30 basis points.

Moving to Eastern Europe. Sales were once again driven by Turkiye. We are pleased to see that our restructuring measures in Poland are gaining traction, leading to a double-digit million improvement in adjusted EBIT in the quarter. For the region overall, adjusted EBIT reached EUR 46 million, equivalent to 4.1% margin, a very strong result, and we are extremely proud of a starting turnaround in Poland.

Now let me turn to our largest growth business, Service & Solutions, on Slide 13. In Q1, sales grew by nearly 14% with momentum across both online and in-store channels, truly omnichannel. All service categories increased with extended warranties showing the strongest growth. We are pleased to share that extended warranties are now available on our marketplace in Germany and are being well received by all our customers. We plan to roll this out to additional countries soon.

Then to online. Our first-party online sales grew also with 6.9% to EUR 2.2 billion. We recorded a particular strong performance in Hungary, Poland, Switzerland, Turkiye and Spain. And on the back of this, our online share reached a record 30%, the highest level since COVID, a very strong performance in my view.

So let me come back to our EBIT development on Slide 15 in more detail. Our gross margin increased by 40 basis points in the quarter, driven by our growth businesses. This highlights that our strategy is working and helps mitigate the impact of a challenging environment.

Now on cost. Our adjusted OpEx ratio improved by 20 basis points, thanks to a relentless focus on cost. We are more efficient in marketing while maintaining a stable share of voice in the market. We have also taken measures to further optimize location costs. We will remain disciplined on cost for the remaining part of the year, particularly in DACH region given the market environment.

Turning to the full overview on Slide 16 from adjusted EBIT to net profit. Walking down from the adjusted EBIT of EUR 311 million, we recorded limited nonrecurring items. The bulk of those are due to IAS 29 hyperinflation accounting. Consequently, our reported EBIT reached EUR 293 million, which is a robust increase of EUR 64 million year-on-year. Our net financial result improved, thanks to Turkiye. Overall, Q1 delivered higher reported net income and EPS. EPS rose by 23% to EUR 0.37, a solid performance.

Then let me continue with free cash flow on Slide 17. Overall, we generated EUR 1.4 billion of positive free cash flow, a very solid performance. This was driven by strong operating performance and seasonal working capital inflows typical for the peak season. We closed the quarter with a strong net position of EUR 2 billion.

This completes then as well the financial section, and let me now hand over back to you, Kai.

Thanks, Remko. Now what you've just heard from both of us, we continue to have positive momentum strategically, operationally, financially. And we do expect this to continue for financial year '25-'26. That's why we are confidently confirming our outlook. You can see that on Slide 19.

We continue to expect a moderate increase in currency and portfolio adjusted total sales with all of our regions contributing to that sales growth. Secondly, we continue to expect an adjusted EBIT of around EUR 500 million. This is still the target for the financial year '25-'26, that we first communicated at our Capital Markets Day in 2023 and ever since. This improvement this year will be driven by the DACH region and the Western and Southern Europe.

Finally, as we look ahead, let me give you a perspective on the innovation trends that will long-term shape customer demand in the future. We can see them on Slide 20. First, in household robotics, we expect major progress that will bring smarter, more autonomous solutions into everyday homes, like this picture that you can see here of a floor care robot that can actually climb stairs. We also see strong momentum in smart glasses, where the next generation will finally bring the form factor out of the niche and closer to the mass market.

Finally, health tech is another innovative field that we think caters to a larger trend because in this day and age, who doesn't want to be fit. We see fast improvements in health tracking and the use of data here, new devices, new services emerging every month. For us, all of these trends will support traffic, demand and category expansion over the coming quarters. They fundamentally reinforce our belief that consumer electronics will remain one of the most dynamic retail segments.

And so we're happy to be in that particular segment. Most importantly, we are ready for this and now stronger than ever. Our stores, our online platforms, our omnichannel infrastructure are well positioned to bring these innovations to consumers in Europe with advice, with service, with installation, with a full set of solutions around the product. And yes, with our partner, JD.com. But to be sure, today was about our Q1 performance, but you will have seen the result of the tender offer, and you will have seen the progress of regulatory approvals.

Of course, we will continue to update you always on our website and personally at every major milestone. But to reiterate and to confirm, we continue to expect closing of that transaction within the first half of this calendar year.

Now let me conclude with Slide 21, a brief summary of what this quarter tells you about CECONOMY today and about the foundation for the future. Our experience electronics strategy continues to drive higher customer satisfaction, NPS and deeper engagement, even stronger loyalty. The combination of expert advice, seamless online journeys and a growing set of value-added services is clearly resonating with customers.

Our Q1 the stress test, as I called it, performance demonstrates we have a strong and balanced portfolio. Our growing high-margin businesses make us stronger. Together, they make the company more resilient, more profitable, exactly what we set out to achieve with our transformation in 2023. By now, our growth business are an integral part of our business, and they continue to grow.

In all of that, [ core ] focus remains very disciplined on cost, liquidity and profitability. And with our new strategic partner, JD.com, we now have a unique opportunity to accelerate this development over 12 quarters even further in technology, in logistics, and assortment and many more. Last but not least, we're confirming our outlook for financial year '25-'26, we expect a moderate sales increase and adjusted EBIT of around EUR 500 million.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are the main takeaways. We stay confident for the rest of the year. Our execution is in full swing, and we're on a path of future growth. We've started this year with strong momentum, and we're well on track to deliver on our ambitions.

Thank you for your attention so far. We're now really looking forward to your questions.

[Operator Instructions] We are now going to proceed with our first question. The questions come from the line of Matthias Inverardi from Thomson Reuters.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you perfectly well. Proceed.

Not so surprising, I have a question concerning your Fnac Darty shares. Have you decided yet if you're going to sell them to Mr. Kretinsky or not?

Yes. Look, we're still waiting for the concrete and detailed offer. We will then look at that offer in detail and analyze it, and then we will take a decision. No decision has been made yet.

We have no further questions on the phone line. So I'll hand back for any written questions. Thank you.

Caron tells me that we should wait for 1 minute or 2. So please do feel encouraged to ask questions. We're really very willing to engage in whatever conversation you may have. So we'll give you another minute.

Currently, we have no further questions. [Operator Instructions]

Thank you. We've got a question on chat from Alex Zienkowicz from mwb research. The first part of the question is regarding gross margin. Is it purely driven by mix? Or did you benefit from a lower promotion share? Or were you better on price?

Yes. Alex, thanks for your question. So we have stated a couple of times already that we are very [ rigous ] on to grow, but to grow profitable. So first of all, we are really analyzing the profitability per category. It's not mix driven. That's what I can already tell you. So it's a benefit on the gross margin of really [ rigous ] negotiation and pushing the products and offering the products with a better margin.

That's true. But it's also related to how we do the customer journey online and offline with better accessory attached, for example, and that helps also in the mix because, of course, the average margin on accessories is for sure, much, much better. So it's a mix effect on accessories and of course, the goods margin as such by being very [ rigous ] where we want to grow and profitable to grow based on customer demand.

The second part of the question is on Poland. Can you provide more color on the EBIT improvement in Poland, please?

This is Kai again. I'll take the question on Poland. Remko will take the next one. Now as Remko said, we are actually very proud of the initial signs of turnaround that we've seen in Poland. As you know, we are operating there in a very competitive environment. So we've done several things actually. We set up a new management structure with a new CEO and CFO, both of whom are now on board.

And in particular, we improved our capabilities in online and in Service & Solutions. So the positive results in Q1 that we're here reporting are largely due to online, a much better performance in online also in technical capabilities. For example, if you remember, we introduced the Marketplace in Poland only last year.

In parallel to all of this, of course, we are reviewing cost structures to get further efficiencies out of the business. But I would -- what I would highlight is, in particular, the new management structure and our increased online performance and capabilities.

The next question is from Philip Brandlein, Lebensmittel Zeitung. First part of the question, looking at the DACH region, how do you plan to improve sales and EBIT?

I will take this question. So looking at the DACH region, we started Q1 slightly below expectation from an EBIT perspective, mainly driven by top line. So what we have an -- a customer demand decreasing. So the next implementation that we are doing at the moment is to simplify it. We have a clear action plan in place where we have on the top line a lot of focus on the top 200 products. So of course, we have many more products, 15,000 SKUs online, but we focus on 200 products that make around about 40% of our sales.

And what are we doing? We secure really end-to-end for these 200 products together with our partners, our suppliers that there is always availability on the products that we are really on par with pricing, that we have visibility online but also offline. So to explain, when you as a customer enter the store, these products are immediately visible. And these products also generate 40% of sales. We also make sure that the right accessories are there next to it, both on and offline to make sure that you have the right experience as a customer.

On the EBIT side, we have also implemented a very strong cost program. And this cost program, we already mentioned it, is focusing on location costs, but also a lot on indirect spend. So we see that the cost percentage in Germany, percentage of sales has potential also compared to other countries. So we are really benchmarking the cost between the countries, making sure that we get on par with the cost. So to summarize it, on the top line, a extreme focus on the top 200. And on the cost line, it's really making sure that we get for every cost line in Germany on par with the benchmark of our company.

I will bundle the 2 questions together. First is from Philip Brandlein, and the next one is Paul Dean from Churchill Capital. So it's both regarding JD.

First, you stated that CECONOMY is ready to accelerate with JD. What will that look like? Is that true that the Joybuy Express service will be available for MediaMarkt soon?

And the second part of the question from Paul is asking regarding the AU FSR review, which has been in pre-notification stage since August last year. If you could provide more color on how is this progressing?

And I'm happy to do that. Thank you, Philip and Paul, for the questions. Now first of all, on what's our plan with JD. Now let me remind you and reiterate, this is all about growth. So think of this as both top line and profitability growth in the future, centered around what has been the essence of our transformation here as well. So an omnichannel approach, both companies believe in both online and bricks-and-mortar and an approach centered on delivering excellent customer service. So that's the big headline what this is about.

Now we've also highlighted a few areas in which we believe there is most potential for them -- for that future growth. One of them is indeed logistics. So we will be looking at faster delivery, better delivery, more reliable delivery quality for our customers. At this stage, however, it is too early to comment on specific services like Joybuy Express. But what I can confirm and what I can reiterate is that delivery capabilities are very much in focus of what we think as growth opportunities together with JD.com. That's on the first part of the question.

On the second part of the question on FSR, I cannot give you any color on this. We are in very constructive discussions with JD, and we are in very constructive discussions with all regulatory approval authorities, including the European offices in Brussels, and it is all progressing, as I said, as we had anticipated to be concluded in the first half of this year.

The next question from chat comes from Darja Lema from Bloomberg Intelligence.

With EUR 311 million EBIT achieved in Q1, can you provide more color on how you plan to achieve EUR 500 million by the end of the year? Does it involve cost cutting or a significant uplift from your growth businesses such as Retail Media or Services?

Yes, this is Remko. Thanks for your question. So in our EBIT, to start off with, there is always a seasonality, right? So in Q1, we reached 64% of our EBIT ambition or budget and in Q2 at 6% normally, Q3 is around about 1% and then Q4 is -- our Q4 is 29%. So looking at Q1, that's why also Kai already mentioned that our Q1 is and was extremely important to reach our EUR 500 million ambition, and we are right on track with our, yes, projection of the around EUR 500 million EBIT achievement.

Now to answer your question a bit more in detail, when it comes to cost, we have said from the beginning, and we keep on doing that, when there is a soft line in DACH, mainly at the moment, we are very [ rigous ] on costs. So especially on the indirect cost, we are taking the initiatives, but also on location costs, for example. So the cost in percentage of sales needs to stay in par of reaching that EUR 500 million.

Other than that, our strategy is working. That's what we have seen also in Q1. We keep our strategy. And yes, a big part of that strategy is focusing on accelerating on our growth businesses. And that's what we will do, what we believe in, has paid off for 12 quarters in a row, still paying off. And with that, we will reach the EUR 500 million.

There are no further questions at this time. So I'll now hand back to Dr. Kai-Ulrich Deissner for closing remarks. Thank you.

Yes. I'll take a deep breath to give anybody a chance to still raise their hand, but -- and wait for one more minute before I will close with a few additional comments. But just give everyone one more minute.

Okay. Look, thank you for your time and your questions this morning. If you want to engage with us any further through our official channels, we're always very happy to continue those conversations. And if you can't wait for another 3 months to speak to us again, you're very welcome to join our Annual General Meeting. It happens exactly a week today. There are dial-ins for the press available, and you get to see more of this wonderful company in a week's time. And we will be happy to present our Q2 results to you on May 13.

Until then, Remko, Fabienne and I wish you all the best. Thank you for your interest, and see you very, very soon. Goodbye.

Thank you. Goodbye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you, and have a good rest of your day.

Welcome to the CECONOMY MediaMarkt Full Year Results Webcast. We are live from our headquarters in Düsseldorf in a hybrid setup with participants both on-site and online. I'm joined by our CEO, Dr. Kai-Ulrich Deissner; and our CFO, Remko Rijnders. They will present the highlights of the year, followed by a Q&A session. Today, we meet in a new setup, one joint call for both press and analysts. We are pleased to welcome journalists online from our 11 countries. The presentation will be held in English with live translation. You can switch the language in the live stream.

Before we begin, please note that today's discussions will include forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to our disclaimer. The full presentation is available on our website.

With that, I'm delighted to hand over to Dr. Deissner, who will guide you through the highlights of the year.

Thank you, Fabienne. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us here today. I'm really happy to have you here with us today, now whether you're joining us here at our CECONOMY headquarter in Düsseldorf or participating virtually, as Fabienne said, from 11 countries of our footprint. Today, Remko Rijnders, my trusted CFO, and I will take you through the details of our financial year '24 and '25.

Now we had already shared some preliminary numbers with you back in October, but I'm sure you will see some very strong performance across the board today, because we've been on a strategic transformation for some 3 years now from a classical retailer into what we call an omnichannel service platform. And last year's results show very well how that strategic transformation is gaining momentum. It's only the tip of the iceberg, but let me remind you from the very beginning, 11 quarters of EBIT growth. That's a very strong track record.

Now there's 2 levels to this. First, for our business model, we are enhancing our Retail Core business model with what we call growth businesses. These are by now substantial in size and they continue to grow. But secondly, and actually much more fundamentally, this transformation is about the customers, about customers that think and feel and go shopping differently now than they did in the past. And all of our teams in the stores, in our logistics centers, in the offices throughout our 11 countries, they do want to put those customers first front and center, to give them what we call experience electronics. Our goal is to create a unique shopping experience that is tailored to their needs.

Do we get that right every day? Of course, not. Not yet, but we're moving in that direction and into the right directions. As you will see today's results underline that. We've set, over the past 3 years, a solid foundation for future growth, and we're proud of that. Ladies and gentlemen, we're on the right path, and we will see this consistency pay off in the new financial year again. That's why we will publish a positive outlook for the current financial year '25 and '26. I will get to that later.

Now let's first have a look into the details of those results of last year. Let me start with an overview, and you will see that we delivered strong results across all our key metrics. First, sales reached EUR 23.1 billion. That's a growth of 5.7%, and that's more than the moderate growth that we initially guided. And we grew EBIT by 24% to EUR 378 million. That means profitability is growing steadily. Just as a reminder, for 11 quarters in a row now. And finally, a very hard measure. We increased free cash flow by 180%, now reaching EUR 337 million.

And as I said initially, fundamentally, our customer satisfaction reached a new record. Our Net Promoter Score improved to 61. That's up 3 points from the previous year. So our focus on customer experience is indeed paying off. Now we want to accelerate even more based on this momentum. We know that we still have a way to go in terms of our transformation. But we are ready for that next step. And we believe we have a really good partner to take this on with JD.com. This partnership will help us accelerate even faster. JD.com brings significant experience, especially in logistics and technology. In teaming up with them, we want to create not just experience Electronics, but the future of European retail.

Just so that you know where we stand with this partnership. As you all know, we've signed our investor agreement back in July this year. Now at the end of November, JD.com had secured a total shareholding of 85.2% in CECONOMY. And now we're working on and waiting for the outstanding regulatory approvals to finally close this transaction. We expect that closing still for the first half of the next calendar year. And I'm more convinced than ever that this partnership will make us even stronger and will take us to that next level.

But independent of that partnership in the future, let's look at the progress we made in our business, and that's on Slide 4. The performance of our growth area shows we are on the right track with diversifying our business model. Each of our strategic business segments contributes to our success. This diversified growth gives us the ability to adapt to changing market conditions even in the future. And we're adapting to our customer needs. Our all-time high of the Net Promoter Score isn't just a number of 61, it reflects fundamental improvements in how we serve everyone that shops with us across all touch points and every day.

In this context, we've made significant progress with what we call personalized service, a specific program to let you design your visit to the store. We've completed that rollout in 4 countries already, and we're currently expanding to 5 additional countries. This, by the way, demonstrates that we scale successful concepts internationally, but of course, we do adapt locally to reflect the different expectations that may exist in different countries. And we also invest in our backbone, our logistics and infrastructure, especially for those omnichannel capabilities. Here's an example. We've rolled out 16 regional fulfillment centers that's across Germany, Spain and Turkey. These centers then help us reduce delivery times and improve reliability of delivery for our customers.

On the technology or IT front, we are leveraging data and AI to improve our customer experience. For example, with personalization to help our customers discover products that truly meet their specific needs and to help us with conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Additionally, we're driving our sustainability measures, one of the key pillars of our strategy. Our refurbished sales nearly tripled this year. This also reflects changing consumer behavior. More and more often, customers choose high-quality refurbished products, because it makes sense for them economically and at the same time, it is an active contribution to putting less pressure on the environment.

You probably recognize the next slide, #5. We do present it each quarter to give you transparency about the development of the 9 KPIs, which we introduced at our Capital Markets Day back in 2023, because these 9 KPIs represent the essence of our strategic focus. And once a year, we provide you with an update that includes precise figures. That's today. And I'm very proud to show to you that we've reached 3 of those nice strategic KPIs ahead of time. We achieved 53 million loyalty members, we increased our income share of Services & Solutions, and we grew our retail media income, all before the official deadline, September '26. This shows we have made huge strides in becoming more than a retailer. Our growth businesses are now a significant contributor to our business, and they still continue to grow steadily.

This will become clear on Slide 6 too. Our growth businesses now represent a total of 36% of our gross profit. That's up from 33% last year, and it's a substantial increase from the 31% in financial year 2022, '23. So we believe we're well on track to reach our target mix for financial year '25-'26 when we expect our growth businesses to contribute even more significantly to our overall profitability.

Now for the next few pages, let me walk you through some of the key operational developments last year, first for Retail Core, but then also for those growth businesses that I keep talking about. Let's start with Retail Core. It continues to be our strong foundation. And we're making some progress across all key areas in Retail Core. Let's look at loyalty first. As I said, we already surpassed our midterm target of 50 million loyalty customers, and it's now 53 million. Why is that? We successfully integrated our MediaMarkt and MySaturn programs in Germany for a more customer-centric approach. And our loyalty program is now available in nearly all countries. Why is that important? These 53 million customers come to our stores and to our app and to our website far more frequently than unregistered customers. And we are approaching them with more targeted offers that convince them and they do drive our revenues.

As you can see, we also improved another key metric, and that's inventory management further. It's now down to 8.8 weeks of stock reach. And of course, online, our online sales were driven by strong growth, both in visits and in conversion rate. And also our omnichannel approach is paying off. We're successfully linking for customers, store visits and online journeys. It's finally reflected in our pickup rate, the rate of customers that chooses to go into a store, although they ordered online. And that's now 37%. That's a great example of what omnichannel means. Not to forget the app, the percentage of online sales generated through the app has grown to almost 30%. That's very strong growth, and it's mainly driven by Turkey, Spain, the Netherlands and Austria. Final element, store modernization. It remains fully on track. We've promised a target of 90%, and we're on track to achieve that.

Last year, we opened, in particular, smaller store formats, 29 new Express stores and 8 new really small smart stores. That brings our innovative formats closer to our customers. Looking ahead into next year, we are preparing for the future through even more small format stores and at the same time, a few more large lighthouses. As in the past, this differentiation, which is untypical for us historically, comes together with a cost focus and better logistics. So it serves our customers better and it is more efficient. All of this together shows our Retail Core is the strong foundation, and it is making steady progress to get even better.

Now based on that foundation, next to our growth fields, and let's start with Services & Solutions. Now we did grow all product categories in Services & Solutions, but what stood out last year were insurances and installations and configuration services when customers buy new devices. It's what we internally call power services. Turkey and Spain were the 2 highlight countries for that part of the service business. For this year, we have 2 major objectives. We want to make it easier for customers to buy services online or in the app because, frankly speaking, this is still not as convenient as in our stores, and our attach rate still here has some potential. And we want to focus secondly on growth in the telco segment. We believe that there, there's still a lot of growth for us, potentially even with MVNOs like our own mobile brand, Let's Go Mobile, which we launched in the Netherlands only this year.

Second element of Retail Core is what we call Space-as-a-Service, and it also expanded successfully. We're now offering what we call experience zones and entrance statements in over 700 of our 1,000 stores. And we're working with around 25 very special partners. We call them internally non-endemic partners. What that means it's partners that are not our classical industry partners, but where actually we establish a new relationship, and there's also new business potential.

Let's move on to Private Label, our own brands. Now to be fair, the progress in Private Label has been slower than progress in other areas. But last year, our Private Label business benefited significantly from our audio line with Peak and there, especially by the Robbie Williams campaign. Strongest product category is still accessories. And why is that? Because we tailor our accessory offers to highlight products. Take the Nintendo Switch 2 launch as an example. When we launched it, cases and many other accessories, cables were also in high demand. And so we used that momentum and posted strong numbers around private label around the Switch launch. Finally, we are improving the usability of our products. We've just recently introduced an AI chatbot that's been really well received by customers, especially with the use of smart manuals.

Then after Private Label, let us look at Retail Media business. This grew especially strong in Benelux, Spain and Turkey. And we extended our offer again. We've introduced our first off-site program. In case you're not familiar with that solution, advertisers can reach MediaMarktSaturn shoppers not just on our website or app, but elsewhere. With this, we open new potential for our partners in addition to our own platforms. And that is also very much in focus for this financial year. Secondly, we want to onboard here as well non-endemic partners and thus build new relationships, very similar to what I've just said about Space-as-a-Service.

Then Marketplace on Slide 10. With Turkey now active, we are operating our Marketplace in 8 countries now. The GMV, the gross merchandise value, reached EUR 527 million. That's another 90% year-on-year growth. Importantly, our EBIT generation more than doubled in that period. So we've also made strong improvements in our profitability as we scale this business, and we're not done yet. We're preparing to roll out Marketplace next in Hungary and Switzerland for 2026. At the same time, as we roll this out, we will enhance our assortment and add what we call verticals, I would call them topic areas. This is important because these verticals or topics have been very successful in the past. And you will see that they are different than our core assortment. For example, energy, fitness, e-mobility or even gardening. These verticals expand our assortment, and they make us even more attractive for our customers.

And as you know, and as I said, sustainability is a core part of our strategy. And again, we doubled down on this last year, as you can see on Slide 11. There's 3 aspects. Let me start with BetterWay. We reached our BetterWay targets ahead of plan. Let me remind you what BetterWay is. BetterWay products are products in our assortment that are more sustainable, for example, by being more energy efficient. And these BetterWay sales now account for 25%, so 1/4 of our total sales. That's already now a lot more than the 20% target, which we had given ourselves for the financial year '25-'26.

Second, the number of trade-in products. So when a customer returns a used device, this increased by 11%. At the same time, the average trade-in value also increased, and that helped us make this a very profitable business for us. Finally, refurbished products. So used products, refurbished to be as good as new. This showed exceptional growth and increased by 191%. That's a very clear sign that we really are offering what customers nowadays are looking for. So overall, we do feel encouraged to stay on this path. We will expand our trade-in offers. We will sell even more refurbished devices, and we will continue to focus on reducing the emissions footprint of our products.

Now all of this that I've just so proudly presented to you, all of this would not be possible without our great team. I strongly believe that for us as an omnichannel platform, people and the human touch make all the difference. So we consistently invest in our people because we want, as MediaMarktSaturn, to be the best place for them to work. And so we ask them, we ask them twice a year, would you recommend us as an employer. The results, we call that the Net Promoter People. And in our last survey, it was at an all-time high of 42. That's up 4 points year-on-year, or 10%. And of course, we also invest in their development. We now use AI actually as a core tool to empower and to train our employees. And at the same time, strengthening those AI skills across all levels in our organization is a key priority for us in this next phase.

We also made progress looking at diversity. Our female share in the top leadership increased by 250 basis points year-on-year and now stands at 16.3%. Come to think of it. Perhaps even more importantly, we have so many different cultures on board in our team. And that's a very important aspect also to me personally of diversity that shapes our company culture. Across Europe, people from over 130 nations work with us. Yes, that's right. More than 130 nationalities at MediaMarktSaturn.

I want to take this opportunity not to speak to press and analysts, but to thank all those amazing people, to thank you guys that you work with us. All of this wouldn't have been possible without you. So thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Before I now hand over to Remko for the financial results, I want to highlight the 3 points that I want you to remember after our presentation today. Number one, the customer is always in the center of everything we do, not always perfect, but better every day. We are convinced that our omnichannel model is the right way to go, and it delivers on their expectations. So we will build on that in the future. Second, we have proven once again that our strategic direction, which has been stable for 3 years, is the right path. We continue to diversify our business, and we do become more than a pure retailer. Our growth business are no longer small. They are a key pillar of our success, and they continue to deliver consistent growth. And thirdly, as I started, we performed strongly despite an arguably challenging economic climate. Our sales grew more than moderate and our profitability improved for the 11th quarter in a row.

Let me now hand over to Remko for a closer look at those amazing financials. So Remko, please join me.

Thank you. And also a big thanks from my side as well, and a warm welcome once again. As Kai already highlighted, we achieved a strong result this year and delivered slightly ahead of our updated guidance with both a strong sales growth of 5.7% and adjusted EBIT of EUR 378 million, slightly above our updated guidance of around EUR 375 million. This represents a 24% increase year-on-year or EUR 72 million compared to the previous year. In my opinion, these results are visible and measurable success. They are proof that we are making good progress in our transformation, which began just under 3 years ago, as you can see on Slide 16.

Our efforts have translated directly into financial strength. We have significantly improved our profitability with our adjusted EBIT growing by an average of 22% year-on-year. That's a performance that speaks for itself, and we are certainly very proud of it. These results come from robust sales growth in our Core Retail business, the increased contribution from our successful growth business and our strict cost discipline. I will go into more detail on all 3 areas shortly.

Let me now take a closer look at the full year results. We reported solid sales performance in all our 4 quarters and released very strong 6.9% like-for-like in Q4. Our profitability increase was driven again by our growth business, while we remain focused on cost. For Q4, our gross margin increase of 40 basis points was the main driver behind our profitability improvement.

And now per region, the region DACH performed strongly over the year, and Germany reported the highest improvement in the region. This is a strong achievement, continued in a muted market, and we are pleased to report that we held our market share. In Western and Southern Europe, there Spain was the strongest contributor, both in sales and in EBIT growth. Note that the Netherlands had a strong EBIT growth, too. Finally, for Eastern Europe, Turkey continued to perform strongly. While we are still in restructuring mode in Poland, as we said before, it will take a bit more time.

Let's now take a look at our sales from Services & Solutions. As a reminder, this includes insurance and warranties, telco and digital products, installation and repair, consumer financing and sustainability services. Overall, sales from Services & Solutions increased by 12.5% for the full year. Regarding the individual service categories, extended warranty and consumer financing achieved strong results for the full year. These figures show once again that our efforts to improve our service offerings are paying off. We have successfully convinced our customers that we are not just product providers, but above all, solution providers.

Let's move on to our online business. Over a 12-month period, online sales increased by 13.3% to EUR 5.7 billion. This corresponds to an online share of 26%, including our Marketplace, and this is 240 basis points more than the previous year. Please keep in mind here that our Marketplace is currently active in 8 countries with the recent opening in Turkey. We expect the final 2 countries, Switzerland and Hungary, to go live in 2026. We still see a great deal of potential here as the marketplaces to continue to ramp up.

Let me now return to EBIT development. Our gross margin increased by a strong 30 basis points for the full year. This is essentially due to the positive impact of our growth areas. If you look at our operating expenses, you can see that our adjusted OpEx ratio has decreased again, although only slightly by 10 basis points to 17.3% of group sales for the full year. We have improved our location costs as well as the efficiency of our marketing spend. We also place strong emphasis on managing our indirect spend. In simple terms, we are working hard to control all our internal costs that don't directly relate to customer-facing side of our business.

Let me walk through from adjusted EBIT to net profit. As explained before, we increased our adjusted EBIT by EUR 72 million this year, which is a strong operating performance. Below the line, our net profit came in at minus EUR 34 million, mainly impacted by nonrecurring items like impairment we made in Poland for EUR 34 million. Remember that we are in restructuring mode over there, as I mentioned before. Second, we recorded a EUR 32 million transaction cost for our coming partnership with JD, and clearly see this as an investment for our future. So it's fair to say that excluding those, we would have reported a positive net profit.

Let me finish with cash. Indeed, cash is king, particularly now in retail. While profit is an important measure, cash is the true livelihood of the company. A strong free cash flow demonstrates that our business model is working efficiently. In this case, that gives us the strategic freedom to fund growth, reduce debt and ensure we are resilient and agile in any economical climate. In essence, it's the engine that powers our long-term success. We generated EUR 280 million more cash than last year, which is a fantastic performance in my view.

On this positive note, let me now hand back to Kai.

Thank you, Remko. You see, we are having what I call positive momentum. And this, we want to carry it into this year. So now in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to share our outlook for the financial year '25 and '26. We are confident that we will continue to improve. We very formally expect a moderate increase in currency and portfolio adjusted total sales with all our regions contributing to that sales growth.

Secondly, and arguably more importantly, we anticipate an adjusted EBIT of around EUR 500 million. This is also the target for the financial year '25 and '26 that we have communicated our Capital Markets Day back in 2023, and ever since. This improvement will be driven by the DACH region and Western and Southern Europe. And we already started into this new financial year strongly, as you will see on the next slide.

As you know, Black November and Christmas are very important times in the year for us. They set the tone for our Q1 performance and our Q1 is usually our strongest quarter. So it's important. And I'm very proud to tell you, we had a successful Black season. Many of our countries delivered strong numbers. Especially [indiscernible] this year, in case you're interested, floor care robots, computer hardware and small domestic appliances like kitchen devices, usually smart kitchen devices. At the same time, our attachment rate for Service & Solutions, one of those growth areas, also was very strong.

All of this performance was, of course, made possible by working on the engine by excellent product availability and by our marketing campaigns. Here, you may remember, we turned November into Yovember, because we want to say yes or Yo to offering our customers whatever they need, be it the best product, the best service or the best possible price. I'm very happy to look into more detail here together with you in February when we present our Q1 results.

So in wrapping up, what have we presented to you today? First, we delivered strong performance in a challenging market environment, again. Second, our experience electronics strategy translates directly into greater customer satisfaction. Our record NPS underlines this. Third, our growth businesses are no longer small. They are an integral part of our business, and they continue to accelerate. Fourth, our focus remains unwavering on cost management, liquidity and profitability. Fifth, we are ready. We are ready to accelerate our development with our new strategic partner, JD.com. And finally, we maintain, unlike others, a positive outlook as we enter the new financial year.

Ladies and gentlemen, as we conclude our presentation, I want to emphasize this positive momentum that CECONOMY has demonstrated throughout the past financial year. We still are not transformed fully, and we have a way to go. But that positive development shows we are on the right way. We're not just developing consumer electronics and experience electronics, we are paving the road to become the experienced champion in consumer electronics in Europe. Our dedicated team of almost 50,000 employees from more than 130 nations is working very hard on this vision. We will continue to stay close to our customers until we become a truly customer-centric omnichannel service platform.

Thank you for your attention. We're now ready for your questions. Thank you.

So we will now open the Q&A session. So in the room, please raise your hand and wait for the microphone. Online, you have received a QR code with your registration. Otherwise, you can scan the QR code that may appear on screen to submit your questions. [Operator Instructions].

So we've got the first question online from xyz.pl, so from a Polish journalist. The first question is, are you still ready for major capital injection into MediaMarkt Poland? Second, do you plan to keep fighting for market share to become #1 in Poland? And third, how big will the change be after the JD.com transaction?

Yes, Matthias, thanks for the questions. Remko will take the first 2 questions, and I'll round it off with the third.

Yes. Matthias, thank you for the question indeed. And let me highlight a bit how we see Poland at the moment. Poland is extremely important for our portfolio of countries. It's an important market, and it's a growing market. And of course, as we look at the results right now, we are investing in the team. We opened our marketplace in Poland that is now paying off. So we treat Poland as a very important country and a country that is very important also for our growth in Europe and also in a Europe that is at the moment consolidating. So that's foremost.

Secondly, basically, how do you keep on plan fighting in Poland. We have mentioned it a couple of times, and it goes for all our country portfolio. For us, it's extremely important to be indeed #1 or the #2 in any country. And that's our ambition that we have together. And that's what we want to achieve in Poland where we go to that direction. But as mentioned already, this will take time in Poland. Poland is a very competitive market, and we are looking at the options as we speak. And let me now hand over to Kai.

Yes, let's talk about JD. Actually, it's no different for Poland than for any of our other markets. What do we look -- what are the likely first changes that we see from our partnership with JD. And we've talked about it. We are, in particular, looking to their expertise in logistics, in particular, in delivery towards customers and in technology. And those are the 2 areas that will all materialize most likely in all countries, but most certainly also in Poland to help us, as Remko said, to fight back for that important market position, which we are committed to get.

Good. So we will show the QR code again for people who didn't have time to register to do so. So the next question is from Javier Garcia Ropero from Spain. He is from Cinco Días, a newspaper. He is asking, Spain showed a significant sales growth last year. What do you expect in the market in terms of sales growth and new store for next year?

Yes. So Javier, thanks for the question, and let me take this one. Yes. The Spanish market in 2025 was a very positive market. First of all, from a market perspective, overall, but in that market, we were able also to gain significantly, market share, both offline and online without opening stores. So basically, what we are looking into for next year is still that the Spanish market is going to grow. And in that market, we have still enough potential to grow more than our competitive environment, gaining more market share. So we are very positive about the Spanish market, but we are even more positive about our performance in that market, both on- and off-line.

Good. Next questions. We cannot see where it comes from. It's a question regarding if we plan to cut jobs at CECONOMY MediaMarkt.

So I'll make sure that everybody heard that. So the question was whether we plan to cut jobs. And the answer is no. We do not plan to cut jobs. Very clearly, we do not plan to cut jobs. Let me explain that a bit. The business we're in means we constantly review our performance, as any normal retailer would. We're looking at that store and see whether it's still performing. We are looking at that area and seeing whether it's still performing, or at that area. So there will be changes. And yes, we will, of course, like in regular business, sometimes close 1 store here to reopen it there. And that may also mean that there is 1 or 2 or 3 jobs lost in the process. But that's very different from planning to cut jobs at large scale as a company strategy. That's not our strategy. We invest in people. We expect more stores. We expect to grow. So the answer is no. But of course, in day-to-day business, this may appear.

Thank you, Kai. The next question is from Matthias Inverardi from Reuters. Can you outline in detail how logistics will be improved by your partnership with JD.com?

Let me try to take that, and I'm sure Remko is eager to add some details, but I want to place it first. Without wanting to be too defensive here, no, we cannot outline this in detail yet. Please respect that we're still in a phase where regulatory approvals are outstanding when there is no detailed discussions between the 2 companies, so we cannot give you a detailed answer.

What I can tell you is what our ambition is and what we believe JD.com is strong. And I think I hinted at that already. They're very strong in very efficient delivery to customers. More than 90% of the deliveries in China reached their customer the same day or the next day. And just let that sink in. We're talking about China and not just the cities, I mean all of China. So as JD is rolling out these delivery expertise to Europe, it is our expectation and actually our agreement that we will be able to participate in this. This is what I can say in general. But detail is probably difficult to share at this stage.

Yes, it's difficult. We acknowledge that logistics is a very, very important part in an omnichannel strategy that we, as CECONOMY MediaMarkt have. And we have made very good progress. Automatization in Germany. Our NPS of delivery is going up. But yes, as Kai said, 1 of the reasons to look into synergy effects to thinking direction is, of course, this enormous strength on that last mile logistics, which accelerate basically our strategy that we have defined together. So I'm very much looking forward to that cooperation. But of course, logistics is going to be a customer-facing logistics topic for all of us. So yes.

Thank you, Remko. The next question is from Alexander Zienkowicz from mwb research. Congratulations on the results. You have your focus on the finish line, but could you provide us some glimpse beyond '25, '26. And secondly, with your free cash flow improving significantly, could you elaborate on capital allocation?

Yes. Thank you, Alexander, and good to hear from you again. Let me give you a perspective where we stand, and then Remko will say something about the numbers. First of all, where we stand. The #1, #2 and #3 priority is making sure that we deliver our promises for the end of the current financial year. So the infamous EUR 500 million EBIT and the EUR 200 million steady cash flow. That is and remains our priority. Now we realize, of course, that we're confident to achieve that. So we are already thinking about the phase afterwards. And what I can anticipate that we expect to invite all of you towards the middle of next year, calendar year, to a strategy update where we will share the outlook on the next phase of our journey. So beyond the 30th of September, 2026. Expect that to appear in your diaries eventually for some time in the middle of next calendar year.

And on the financials, Remko, do you want to dare to give an outlook already, or be careful?

No, I'm always careful, but very confident, of course. So first of all, thanks for the congratulations, Alexander, and good morning. So yes, we are very proud as well, as you mentioned, and I mentioned already, cash is king, on our achievement on free cash flow. Of course, as I mentioned already in the presentation, is that gives us a bit flexibility also to invest in our future and our future strategy. As Kai already mentioned, we will come back towards the next step. However, 2026 has been clearly defined, above EUR 200 million, EUR 500 million, and also how we want to get there with growth areas. So yes, there will be significant investment also in logistics, but especially also in the growth areas, because as you have seen, this is paying off. But the detailed capital, let's say, allocation, of course, we will come back on that topic later. But it's supporting our current strategy. That's for sure.

Thank you, Remko. The next questions come from Javier Mesa at elEconomista in Spain. What stage in the process of modernization in MediaMarkt are you? And will the smart format arrive in Spain in the coming months?

Yes, Javier, thanks for the question. I'll be slightly evasive about this, but I ask your understanding. Let me be very clear. Each of our store formats, so that's the core format, the classical MediaMarkt, the Smart and the Express and the Lighthouse. Each of those formats is designed for each and every country. This is not country-specific. We expect to have these formats in each and every country. But I'm not able, and frankly, also not willing at this particular moment to share details of the rollout plan in any particular country. I would have given the same answer about Turkey or Italy or so. But yes, you can expect all of our store formats to be available in all of our countries in the future.

Thank you, Kai. The next question comes from Carlos Torres, [indiscernible] Spain. You have pointed out our important spend is for the group. Could you specify the company sales for Spain? And what are your forecasts for next year?

Yes. So let me take that question, Carlos. Thank you very much. As you, we are very proud of Spain as a country. It's a growing country. As I mentioned, we are doing better in the market in Spain, and that's due to really the team working for us in Spain and basically using all sales channels, B2B, online, off-line and, of course, marketplace. So from that perspective, we are happy. We see the market growing. We see us also growing in that market. We are preparing, also the Spanish team are preparing really some nice new propositions also from a customer perspective. So we are very much looking forward. Do I want to pinpoint a number specifically on the country today? I do not. But we are very positive about Spain and the performance and also about the future for Spain next year, or this year actually.

We love Spain.

Yes, Spain is good.

So at this point in time, I see no further questions.

My personal experience is, we will wait for a moment or so. Sometimes people need a moment to warm up. I'm afraid we haven't got anything planned to bridge the time now. So you'll just have to bear with us for a moment.

We made a nice Christmas movie, so maybe.

Okay. I'm checking with our back-office team here. No questions or more questions? One more coming. Okay.

Yes. The question is as well from Frank Meßing of [indiscernible]. He is asking how many stores we're going to modernize next year in Germany?

Frank, thank you for the question. I will give you the -- I think the answer has already been given. We have a target of modernizing or having modernized 90% of our core formats. Let me just be clear what that is, that's your classical MediaMarkt, right. 90% at the end of next financial year. And so that's also the answer for Germany. As to the numbers, that's roughly 400 stores. I'll give you the number now, 400 stores in Germany. So 90% of that is 360 stores that we will plan to have modernized by the end of next year.

The next question comes from Philip [indiscernible]. First, is there any further changes planned on Saturn in 2026? Will the brand continue to exist in Germany on- or off-line? And second, your adjusted EBIT improved, but not your reported EBIT. Could you give a guidance for reported EBIT?

Yes, Philip, thank you on the Saturn question. I want to be very clear about this because there are so many rumors and often also so many questions around. Look, we have 2 brands. Actually, if you're really picky, we have three. MediaMarkt, MediaWorld in Italy and Saturn here in Germany. And we are proud of every element of that brand architecture. Now there's people out there who tend to buy more with MediaMarkt and there's people who tend to buy more with Saturn. We take that very seriously. That's why whenever we do modernize a store, as we've just talked about, we look at that store in a lot of detail and really come up with a decision that is specific to that store.

And in Germany, we have 2 options. It's MediaMarkt and it's Saturn. And it stays like that. What I would want to emphasize is the value of our brands, of our joint brands, yes, MediaMarkt and Saturn. And we've just recently, from Brand Finance, received confirmation that our brand equity increased significantly, including Saturn by EUR 500 million year-over-year increase to EUR 2.5 billion now. So that's a strong argument for that double strategy of our brand.

And for the second part of the question, I'll give it to Remko.

Yes. Thank you very much, Kai, and thank you very much, Philip. Let me repeat the second part of the question maybe. Your adjusted EBIT improved, but not your EBIT. Can you give a guidance on EBIT? And let me come back to what I said before, so adjusted EBIT indeed improved to a staggering amount of EUR 378 million. What is causing the EBIT to be negative is the investment that we did in our future, in the JD Corporation, accounts for EUR 32 million from nonrecurring items. It had a big impact. And also the Poland restructuring to build for the future, but we already mentioned where we want to be with Poland. So that had the biggest impact. What is our future outlook? Our future outlook is a positive outlook on EBIT and, of course, the around EUR 500 million in adjusted EBIT.

Thank you. The next question is from Jerome [indiscernible] from The Telegraph. So we are moving to the Netherlands. Question on data. You leveraged consumer data successfully with the off-site program. We're thinking -- we're talking here Retail Media. Do you expect regulatory scrutiny of this program also with JD.com in the Chinese context.

Jerome, thanks for the question. Look, we are right in the middle of a regulatory approval process, and perhaps let me outline just where this stands in a bit more detail. There is merger control, there is foreign direct invest, and there is subsidy control by the European Union. Now I'm very happy to say that merger control has already been improved in each and every country where this is relevant for us. On foreign direct invest, the process is ongoing. We're happy to already have received an approval by the Italian authorities. All other processes are ongoing. And I do imagine that, of course, questions of data are always part of that, but none that are particular to these off-site campaigns, as you mentioned. Furthermore, I cannot and it would not be adequate to comment at this particular stage. I would want to close and emphasize again, we remain very confident and expect to close in the first half of 2026.

Thank you, Kai. The next question has come from Ulrike Dauer, Dow Jones. First questions. At the 2023 Capital Markets Day, beyond the adjusted EBIT target for '25-'26, you gave out other target for adjusted free cash flow and adjusted EBIT margin, which seems a bit outdated now. Can you update those targets at this point in time?

And I'll take that perhaps together with the second question for a dividend because it's also from Ulrike, yes. Now let me say here that we will not comment on numbers in any detail. If we are really picky, we gave an adjusted EBIT target for the end of next year, that's EUR 500 million. We gave that number in our Capital Markets Day, and we have repeated that number precisely to the last decimal since. We have, at the Capital Markets Day in 2023, said that we expect a stable cash flow of EUR 200 million per year, and we're also not changing that number.

As for the dividend, we have a standing policy as a company. And that policy, I think we revealed it here last year, exactly a year ago, if I remember correctly. Let me just reiterate that, because that policy is still in place. And it is that between 15% and 25% of the net profit or EPS per year can be distributed as a dividend. That has not changed. We've reviewed it here a year ago, and it is still stable. That policy has not changed and will also be relevant in the future.

Thank you. We have an additional question from Alexander Zienkowicz from mwb research. Retail Media trends to grow because marketing budgets are tight as brand shifts spend towards more performance-driven channels. To what extent is your growth benefiting from this dynamic?

Yes. So Alexander, thanks for that question because, first of all, as mentioned, we are already extremely proud of our growth when it comes to Retail Media. That being said, we are just at the beginning also when we look at our competitive field. There is a huge possibility to make that even a bigger part of our growth area, our growth business. It's true that basically the SEO, the whole world is changing there. AI comes into play. So yes, there is huge opportunity already in the Retail Media area where we are today, because we are just at the beginning. Yes, we are already better performing than we expected for 2025 fiscal year, and we expect a growth there as well.

That being said, it will not be only on paid. We are also working very, very hard on the organic traffic in our organization. It's about brand awareness. So that also plays a role in this partner marketing and Retail Media. But you're right, it will play a significant part in combination to paid search and organic growth of our company, which helps then non-endemic or our suppliers of MediaMarkt to turn as well.

Thank you, Remko. I see no further question at this point.

Still going to give it 30 seconds. Last time, I was successful in tickling out a few more questions.

Okay. Look, thank you all for your time and for your questions and all the energy today. I trust that you've seen that Remko and I and Fabienne and the whole team, actually, that 50,000 people here at MediaMarkt and Saturn work very hard to bring what we call experienced electronics to life. And we will continue that journey. And we will continue it also in a partnership with JD.com after that transaction closes in the first half of 2026. We will, of course, keep you posted about this process. And in the meantime, if you would like to engage with us in any of our regular channels, we are very happy to continue those conversations.

Please also mark February 11 already in your diaries. That's when we will present our Q1 results and, of course, share much more details about the Christmas and Black piece.

Until then, Remko, Fabienne and I and everyone here at MediaMarktSaturn wishes you a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful holiday season. Enjoy your time with your loved ones. And if you don't have all the presents yet, come to our stores or order online, even on the last day before Christmas, because with a 90-minute delivery, we'll make sure that you got something to put underneath the Christmas tree. Thank you very much for today. We are very much looking forward to speaking to you next year. Thank you very much, everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ceconomy Q3 and 9 Months Results Webcast and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Fabienne Caron, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sharon. Welcome, everyone, and a very good morning to you all. We're excited to present our Q3 results today, and I'm joined by our CEO, Dr. Kai-Ulrich Deissner; and our CFO, Remko Rijnders.

Just a brief note before we explore our performance. Please be aware that we'll be discussing certain forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to our disclaimer, and you'll also find the full presentation available on our website. This call is being recorded and will be posted on the website later today for your reference. With that, I'm delighted to pass the call over to Kai, who will guide us through the key highlights of our third quarter. Kai, it's all yours.

Thank you, Fabienne. Good morning, everyone. I imagine in the middle of holidays for most of you and thank you for joining us today for the presentation of our Q3 and our 9 months results. Of course, with many of you, we've been in close contact over the past few weeks because of the latest developments in our company. As you know, we have signed an investment agreement with JD.com and JD in parallel has announced a public offer. While today is all about Q3 and 9 months, there is a link between the 2. I think is we're coming from a position of strength. We've already achieved a lot over the past few years, and that has made us an attractive partner for JD. As you will see, our third quarter shows this clearly as well. And so, then this partnership will give us the chance to further accelerate our development in many areas, even more. With it, we will not just be able to follow the trends in European retail, but to shape them and drive them forward. That means growth and new opportunities for all of us, for us as a company, our employees, our partners and of course, first and foremost, for our customers.

Before we now go into detail on Q3, let me emphasize one key message. We have been growing for 2.5 years quarter after quarter after quarter. That's 10 quarters in a row now. But we're not just growing. We have actually accelerated our positive development in some areas, and that's despite, as you know, challenging market environment in retail. Behind all of that, our sizable growth businesses have kept expanding again. This is a valuable extension of our core retail business and fundamentally broadens the basis for our whole company. At the same time, we're making tangible progress, as you will see, in leveraging our data capabilities. We do improve in this way, the customer experience, personalize our approach and make every interaction with customers more relevant. Throughout all of this, we've kept a sharp focus on cost management, liquidity and profitability. This then ensures a strong foundation for sustainable growth. Again, as you know, following our positive performance, we've already specified our growth outlook for the financial year '24-'25. This once again underpins our confidence in the road ahead.

Let me now begin with the summary of our results. Starting with Slide 3. In this quarter, we've once again strengthened our promise to put the customer in the center of everything we do. One important building block of that is our logistics. We do want to ensure smooth delivery and fulfillment processes for our customers. Now in the past quarter, we've opened new regional fulfillment centers in Germany to deliver to that promise. These fulfillment hubs are already making our delivery network more efficient and responsive effectively faster for our customers in their areas. And secondly, in the Netherlands, we've introduced same-day delivery, but not just same-day delivery, but same-day delivery for bulky items, what we call 2-man handling items, a significant enhancement that responds directly to customer needs. We do ensure speed and convenience.

And speaking of speed, we've also expanded our customer service with our delivery in 19 minutes. We're now live in 5 countries. We started in Germany and in Spain, Hungary, Poland and since May, now also Austria. Effectively, this instant delivery is a favorite among our customers, and it helps us strengthen our customer service and actually outperform many of our competitors. And thirdly, our loyalty program has reached a major milestone, hitting 50 million members now. Reaching that number, we're ahead of our initial plan. As you may remember, we initially planned to reach 50 million only at the end of the next financial year. So, we're 5 quarters early. And we further want to improve our loyalty programs. In Germany, for example, we've now merged the 2 formerly separate programs, my MediaMarkt and my Saturn to ensure an even better and smoother customer experience and raising our efficiency. These are only highlights, but they do show that we're consistently working on delivering best-in-class customer experience.

Let's now have a quick look on our financials on Slide 4 before Remko will go into more detail a bit later. Sales grew 5.1% to EUR 4.8 billion in the third quarter. On a like-for-like basis, that equals 4.4% growth. Adjusted EBIT has also improved by EUR 20 million, as I said, the 10th consecutive quarter of year-on-year growth. And our NPS, most importantly, reached a new all-time high of 63. It is in light of these positive developments that we specified our outlook, as you know. We now expect and we reiterate that here, an adjusted EBIT of around EUR 375 million for the full financial year '24/'25. All of these results show we have built significant momentum in Q3. We deliver sustainable profitable growth even in a challenging market environment. And that's because our Experience Electronics strategy gains more and more traction because we always, always have the customer in focus.

As I already mentioned, our results picked up momentum in the past quarter. This positive development was especially driven by our growth businesses. Service & Solutions income increased strongly and Marketplace GMV as well as retail media income also kept their growth momentum. These still new noncore retail businesses do make us stronger each quarter. And secondly, we see our efforts are paying off in growing omnichannel sales. Our bricks-and-mortar sales grew by 3%, while our online sales were up by a strong 12%. Thus, our online share was at almost 25%. That's growing 240 basis points year-over-year.

Then let's take a different look. Let's look at the countries. We posted strong sales performance in Turkey, Switzerland and Spain. In Germany, to be fair, the market was still very volatile, yet our profitability improved in Germany. And this is also the case for Netherlands, Spain and again, Turkey. This then led to an overall increase in profitability by EUR 20 million in EBIT. Our EBIT margin grew even by an impressive 40 basis points year-over-year. And as I said, the number of our loyalty members has now surpassed 50 million. This is an important milestone for us as it means we've reached another one of our goals for the upcoming financial year ahead of schedule. And then all the way down the P&L, our reported earnings per share was up EUR 0.10 in Q3, and our free cash flow improved by an astonishing EUR 132 million.

Let's quickly turn to Slide 6. That's the key table we share every quarter to track progress on our key pledges. And in Q3, as you can see, we again made substantial progress across all relevant KPIs. The 50 million loyalty customers, which you find on this page are, of course, essentially a valuable asset to us. Let me go more into detail here on the next slide. This strong loyalty base helps us to understand customer behavior. With that data and our AI knowledge, we continuously improve the shopping experience. Let me give you 3 examples from the past quarter. First, we now use AI for faster and more accurate problem solving in our customer service. We designed a dedicated solution and rolled it out in May in all our 11 countries, and the efforts already paid off. We saw a strong increase in our relevant NPS here.

Secondly, thanks to AI, we can now assess and create our trade-in products more efficiently and more accurately. This helps us to increase client satisfaction as well as margin. And thirdly, we put our data to work to address our customers in a more targeted way. Our personalized campaigns are really well received and did lead to an increase in revenues.

Let's take one more closer look at 2 of our strategic growth businesses. That's Retail Media and Marketplace on Slide 8. Both of those continue to show momentum in the past quarter and helped us to unlock new opportunities. We're bringing new retail media products to the market to further grow this business. What I'm talking about is audience extension, and it leverages valuable shopper insights and helps us to reach similar audiences, not on our website and our app, but on external websites and apps. With this, we effectively enhance the effectiveness of our advertising offer for partners. It's currently live in Germany, Austria and Italy, but we're working on further rollouts in the next quarter.

In-store advertising, also as part of Retail Media is another area of progress. We do use the high traffic in our stores also for creating advertising space. This offer is now available in 8 countries. And then to the marketplace. Our marketplace is also expanding after Germany, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy and Belgium. Poland is now the seventh country in which we went live with our webshop platform. Overall, this means that the marketplace covers an area of roughly 85% of our presence if you base it on revenues. What's missing are Switzerland, Turkey, Hungary and Luxembourg. So, we've come a good way to cover an astonishing part of our overall footprint with marketplace already. And our offering is constantly growing. We're seeing great success in new categories outside consumer electronics core, for example, fitness or e-mobility.

I wanted to focus on these developments because they demonstrate the power and the flexibility of our growth businesses. Retail Media and Marketplace are 2 real engines for our group with accelerating success. As you can then see on Slide 9, our growth businesses continue to drive profitability. All of them contributed substantially to our gross profit growth in the past quarter, and they now represent already nearly 40% of that gross profit.

Then turning to sustainability. I'm really pleased to report that we remain firmly on track. Both on a Q3 and on a 9-month basis, we did see a positive development throughout our KPIs. One of them that I wanted to single out is our better ways sales share, which is now at 26%. That's already 5 percentage points above our midterm goal for the end of next financial year '25 and '26. And with a number of strategic initiatives behind this, we further drive growth. In Germany and Hungary, we've introduced what we call green ambassadors in our stores. These are our sustainability experts on the shop floor who walk customers through very practical sustainability-related questions from what should I buy to how can I make this last longer or what services can help me get more out of my device. And if you go to one of those stores, you will recognize them, but they are green shirts unlike our usual proud red shirts.

A particular highlight this quarter is the strong growth in our refurbished segment. Customer demand for refurbished products is rising constantly. We cater for that. Hence, we're also exploring new ways. I take Spain as an example. In Spain, we've launched a new refurbished in-store offer with third-party vendors. So effectively marketplace vendors that offer refurbished products in our stores to our customers. And finally, I'm particularly proud that we recently achieved an A rating in the CDP Supplier Engagement assessment for the very first time. This is a recognition that honors our overall commitment to climate action throughout our entire supply chain. It shows that we're not only keeping track of our own emissions, but also successfully supporting our partners in taking shared responsibility for climate protection. The bottom line is, once again, sustainability impacts everything we do from our operations to our product offerings and our business models.

Let me finally turn to Slide 9. The momentum which we generated has translated into a strong performance over the first 9 months of the year, if you look at this. We've delivered consistent sales growth over the last 3 quarters. Our operational improvements and focus on profitability have led to sustained EBIT growth, making this once again the 10th consecutive quarter of growth. From our perspective, the results of the first 9 months demonstrate the resilience of our business model and the really successful execution of our strategic priorities. As we now look ahead to the final quarter, we're confident that this momentum will support us in achieving our full year targets.

Now I want to hand over to Remko to take a closer look at our Q3 and of course, our 9 months financials. Remko?

Thank you, Kai, and good morning to all of you. I'm happy to guide you through the first figures for Q3 and the 9 months view, as Kai already mentioned. Let's start with sales and EBIT on Slide 13. We grew our sales in Q3 by 5.1% adjusted for currency and portfolio changes. And we grew omnichannel, so both brick-and-mortar and especially our online sales increased. On a reported basis, sales came in below prior year, but this is only due to exchange rate effects and technical effects of accounting for hyperinflation in Turkey. Per country, sales last quarter were particularly strong in Switzerland, Spain, Hungary and Turkey. On a 9-month view, both reported, and FX adjusted sales were clearly up year-on-year with a 2.2% and a 5.5%, respectively.

Our adjusted EBIT showed an improvement of plus EUR 20 million in Q3, which is a great performance. I can proudly repeat what Kai already mentioned. This is the 10th quarter in a row with EBIT growth. And with a plus of EUR 56 million in the first 9 months, we are definitely on track to reach our specific guidance. Also, profitability increased, adjusted EBIT margin was up 40 basis points in the third quarter, mainly driven by Western and Southern Europe. These results continue to come from robust sales growth in our retail core from successful contributions of our new business models and from relentless discipline on cost. I will go in all 3 of those areas later in the presentation today.

Now let me turn to our operational performance on Slide 14. You can see that Western, Southern Europe, along with DACH and the segment Others were the main drivers of our profitability this quarter. Starting with DACH, sales declined in the quarter with minus 2.6% like-for-like. Consumer demand in the region remained soft, particularly in Germany, yet we saw an improving trend towards the end of the quarter. Hungary and Switzerland performed well in terms of sales. On profitability, adjusted EBIT increased by EUR 6 million, which is a great performance, the soft -- related to the soft performance of the top-line. I'm proud to say that all countries contributed. As a whole, our adjusted EBIT margin increased 20 basis points in the region, thanks to clear improvement in gross margin across all countries.

In Western and South Europe, we recorded a solid like-for-like growth of 3.3% after a softer second quarter. All countries contributed except for the Netherlands, where our marketing campaigns were not as affected as expected. There were -- there we are convinced to regain a top-line momentum in the coming months. Spain continues to stand out with an outstanding like-for-like, and we are pleased to see that Italy posted positive like-for-like. On profitability, our adjusted EBIT increased by EUR 10 million and our margin by 60 basis points. Moving now to Eastern Europe. The sales increase was again driven by Turkey. Although in Poland, online sales were up year-on-year, this could not compensate for weaker brick-and-mortar sales. Our turnaround efforts are ongoing here, but as I said last quarter, the recovery will take some time. Our adjusted EBIT was stable in the region with EUR 4 million. Last but not least, our segment Others. The sales improvement is mainly attributable to Imtron, our private label company. Our EBIT was positively impacted by exchange rate impacts.

To sum it up, on Slide 15, we see the 9 months view. All segments contributed to the sales growth. Looking at the adjusted EBIT, as expected, Western and Southern Europe as well as DACH segments are clearly above the previous year, while Eastern Europe is slowing down as expected. We now stand at EUR 258 million adjusted EBIT for the 9 months or EUR 56 million above last year. With this tailwind, we feel confident to deliver our newly specified guidance of around EUR 375 million adjusted EBIT for the full year.

Moving on Slide 16. Let's look at our Services & Solutions business. In the third quarter, it made a strong contribution to our profitability with almost 10% sales growth and 14% in the first 9 months. As a result, our income share, which is one of our key KPIs, increased 20 basis points in the quarter to nearly 6%. The main drivers were warranty extension and financing solutions. Those numbers highlight that we are successfully enhancing our service offering. We are pleased to see the increase in NPS in this area as well.

On Slide 17, you'll see that regarding online sales, our third quarter was in line with our 9-month development, both showing more than 12% growth. The third quarter performance was driven by an increasing number of purchases but shows the great attractiveness of our online offers. Including marketplace, our online sales share was up 240 basis points in the third quarter, reaching almost 25%. Speaking about marketplace, with Poland as a seventh country now live, the number of SKUs available grew by 75% year-on-year to 2.8 million SKUs. That's an amazing assortment extension.

So let me return to our EBIT development on Slide 18. As I already pointed out, when talking about our regions, the gross margin improvement was really strong this quarter. This was, on the one hand, boosted by our growth business, upfront Service & Solutions and Retail Media. And on the other hand, we also saw great improvement in our logistics cost. Looking at OpEx, we saw a slight increase in Q3, which is mainly due to labor agreements in Germany. This increase was somewhat mitigated by lower location costs, optimized marketing spend and increased marketing effectiveness. We remain focused on the cost and expect some OpEx improvements in Q4.

Turning to the full overview of adjusted EBIT to net profit on Slide 19. We improved our adjusted EBIT by EUR 20 million in Q3. Still, the absolute number is negative as usual due to seasonality of our business. We recorded EUR 47 million of nonrecurring items. The EUR 90 million increase year-on-year is mainly caused by the need to account for Turkey as a hyperinflationary country, our efficiency and restructuring measures going on at a lower profit share of Fnac Darty. Consequently, our reported EBIT came in roughly at prior level with a minus of EUR 78 million. Our financial result is almost stable in the quarter with a minus of EUR 56 million.

Regarding tax, we recorded a EUR 20 million income in Q3. The improvement on the year-on-year comparison is mainly technical impact due to increase of IAS 29. Still, our underlying tax rate, so without Fnac before IAS 29 and without the impairment in Poland remains at a low at 19.3%, which is a great level. All in all, our reported EPS is up EUR 0.10. And excluding the nonrecurring effects, on an underlying basis, our adjusted EPS is even up EUR 0.11 year-on-year.

Slide 20 summarizes our financial performance in the first 9 months in the same logic. Overall, due to high nonrecurring items and higher financial results, our EPS for the 9-month period reached a minus EUR 0.01. On an adjusted basis, our EPS comes in at EUR 0.10.

Now moving to our free cash flow on Slide 21, where we see a clear increase compared to prior year of over EUR 130 million. Now from left to right, our EBITDA increased EUR 4 million. Our net working capital development was impacted by normalization of our payables over the period. The tax line helped us here in terms of cash. We received tax refunds from previous years and the development in Poland led to lower tax payments. The other operating cash flow improved significantly year-on-year. We recorded a higher cash in from VAT receivables as well as some cash in from insurance payments and of lower reversals of the Fnac Darty results. In terms of cash investments, we spent EUR 18 million more than last year, predominantly improving in IT and logistics infrastructure. Still, our forecast for the year of a positive cash flow remains. With lower lease payments than last year, this resulted in a lease adjustment free cash flow of minus EUR 29 million. Our free cash flow improved by EUR 132 million in the 9-month period, which is a strong improvement compared to H1 and highlights the strong cash contribution in Q3.

Now one more thing that I would like to add. For those of you who have not seen it, our rating agencies, Standard & Poor's and Fitch both placed our rating on credit watch positive as the transaction with JD is expected to have a positive impact on our credit worthiness. And with that, I would like to hand over back to Kai.

Thank you, Remko. Now let me turn to our guidance for the full financial year '24, '25 on Slide 23. As you know, we just specified our guidance on July 16, but let me reiterate. We're still expecting a moderate increase in FX portfolio adjusted sales with all segments expected to contribute to this growth. Adjusted EBIT is now expected to reach around EUR 375 million. That is mainly from improvements in DACH and Western and Southern Europe. This compares with our previous guidance of clear increase.

Now let me wrap up. Our results show we are strong, and we grew substantially over the past years, oftentimes even against the overall market trends. At the same time, we're conscious that this is not the end of the road. We keep on pushing and will drive this transformation of our company to reach our midterm targets by the end of the next financial year. However, the track record of the last 10 quarters gives us some confidence and energy to achieve those objectives. And it increasingly encourages us to be bold in our marketing and our go-to-market strategy.

Let me give you some recent examples. We've just launched a new advertising campaign that clearly highlights our unique strength as an omnichannel platform compared to pure online retailers. It emphasizes the distinctive value we offer to our customers from services to instant delivery or our private label. Another important milestone for us in the past months was the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, being the go-to store for gamers throughout Europe was really important for us. And the preorders and sales exceeded our expectations. We sold over 250,000 units throughout Europe, 150,000 alone in Germany. We really wanted to make the whole shopping experience special. So, for example, we organized some exclusive events like the Big Switch 2 launch night at our Lighthouse store in Berlin. And even here, we played our omnichannel strength and delivered to customers in that particular area even in the early hours during that night.

These unique customer experiences also create huge benefit for our suppliers. They increasingly acknowledge our transformation and see us as their key strategic partner for these sorts of exclusive events and major product launches in Europe. That makes us a go-to destination for innovation in all consumer electronics. And by the way, we didn't just sell the Switch 2 itself. Cases, games and many more accessories were also in high demand, especially our private label products. So, we also strengthened one of our growth businesses, and by the way, our margin.

Let me now sum up today's presentation for you. In a volatile market, we continue to improve our momentum. Our growth businesses continue to expand, and they already have a decent size. We continue to improve our profitability for the 10th quarter in a row. We're consistently focusing on cost, liquidity and profitability. Continue to leverage data to improve our customer experience. So, we are on a growth path, and we intend to continue our journey. Our clear strategy, experience Electronics is our North Star. We keep the focus on the customer, on sustainable growth, operational excellence and delivering value for our customers, partners and shareholders. Thank you for your attention this morning, and Remko and I now look forward to your questions.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Clement Genelot from Stifel.

Two questions from my side, if I may. So, the first one is on the growth businesses. So, with like-for-like being negative in DACH versus an improving margin in Q3, I assume both cost savings and new businesses have contributed to this margin expansion. So, can you give us an update on the development of Retail Media and Marketplace? And my second question is more higher level one around AI. So, this year marks the emergence of what we call Agentic AI. So, what is your initial view on these agents and how we could reshape your digital operations? I mean, would it force you to rebuild your website accordingly and move away from paid search?

Thank you very much for your questions. This is Remko. I will answer your first question related to DACH, and then Kai Deissner will answer your second question around AI. Thanks for the questions. So, first about DACH, you're right. The improvement was mainly driven by gross margin. I mentioned already in the second half of the third quarter, we saw a positive trend, especially also in Germany, in the DACH region, but still negative. And therefore, we were very much focused, of course, on our growth areas like retail media, but also marketplace. And of course, cost, as already mentioned in the presentation. Cost, we had it under control. We saw substantial savings, especially in logistics, advertisement and with rig negotiations also on the logistics and location cost. A bit of background, especially on Retail Media, we saw a very strong uplift in the DACH region when it comes to income, low numbers, EUR 4 million, EUR 5 million roundabout.

Good. And Clement, this is Kai speaking. Let me talk about AI. Now you're right, of course. Agentic AI is not just a buzzword. Anybody who's been shopping online recently will have been confronted with Agentic AI. If you enter into your browser, your usual search string, you're actually getting in most cases or in many cases anyway, an agent that replies to you. So, it's a topic that may seem small, but it's actually very much on top of our minds. However, we look at it not so much from a cost perspective, but from an opportunity perspective. Since roughly mid-June, we opened our websites quite explicitly in a controlled way to these AI, let's call them crawlers in Germany and in the Netherlands because we wanted to understand their behavior and impact on our servers, traffic and load and cost. We did this for 3 weeks and closely monitored it. And pretty simple, we concluded this is very well manageable. There's actually not significant cost increase, and it's well offset by sales. So, we opened it up to the other countries as well. And if we now -- these are early indications, yes. But if we now look at that particular traffic, this agentic traffic, let's say, the conversion rate is actually relatively good compared to other traffic sources. And it's increasing, which is good news. So, you're right in pinpointing this trend. And while it's too early to really come up with a summary, the first indications that we have are very positive on this. I hope that answers your question.

[Operator Instructions] And your next question today comes from the line of Alessandro Cuglietta from Kepler Cheuvreux.

I just have 2 quick questions. One on the DACH region and the -- I mean, the expected growth in the region. Just curious to know if we could have some color on the consumer sentiment in the region. And when do you expect this particular region to return to positive growth? And the second one is on the JD.com deal. I was curious also to know if you can give us some details on the key regulatory steps and approvals that are required for the deal to go through.

Alessandro, this is Remko. Let me come back to your question related to DACH coming back to growth. So quite well-explained, already on Q3. I want to add one thing. So, we still see a soft sentiment in the market in DACH. That being said, we also see our gross profit increasing. So we are, for sure, also not chasing unprofitable sales, especially in Germany specific because Hungary and Switzerland are growing like-for-like. So that being said, as already mentioned, we saw in the last month of Q3, our Q3 that the sentiment also in Germany became more and more positive. Nevertheless, we still see a lot of customers or consumers trading down. So, our campaigns are also focused on this. So, we have a quite moderate stable outlook also for the last quarter of our fiscal year when it comes to Germany. But the overall market is still soft, and therefore, we are very rigorous when it comes to our growth opportunities, our growth levers like Retail Media, Marketplace, Service and Solutions, where we are all growing and of course, on our cost. So, it is a stable outlook now for the last quarter when it comes to Germany. But our campaigns are very much focused on this consumer sentiment as we speak.

And then let me pick up from Remko here, Alessandro, and speak about the regulatory perspective on JD. Now we need to distinguish very specifically 3 different trajectories here. There is merger clearance by the antitrust regulators in many countries where we operate, and this will be done on a country level. That's topic number one, merger clearance. The second is subsidy control. And this, we expect to happen on an EU level. And then thirdly, there is foreign direct investment by the regulatory bodies also on a country level. These 3 different angles from our understanding, will need to be cleared. And as I said when initially announcing the transaction, we're confident that we will be able to close this in the first half of the next calendar year.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Kai Deissner, CEO, for the closing comments.

Okay. Thank you all for your time today and your questions. We do realize, of course, that it's a holiday period for most of you, and we have spoken intensively, of course, over the last few weeks or days even. But hopefully, as you've seen, we are constantly working on our strategy and our ambition. Of course, our new strategic partner, JD will help us accelerate even more once the transaction is closed, which we expect, as I just said, for the first half of 2026. But until then, we're motivated from the fact that our work here has already translated into reliable results. And we firmly believe that we're on the right path and will continue towards our goals.

Now if you would like to engage with us again through our official channels, we are very happy to continue the conversations and please also mark December 19 -- 17, I apologize, December 17 in your calendars, when we will present to you our full year results. And of course, we'll continue to update you on the progress of our partnership with JD as it unfolds. Until then, Fabienne, Remko and I wish you all the best, and have a good holiday, and we'll see you at the other end of summer. Have a good day now.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the CECONOMY AG Analyst and Investors Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference over to Fabienne Caron, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our call. We are so grateful you could make it on such a short notice. By my side today are our CEO, Kai-Ulrich Deissner; and our CFO, Remko Rijnders.

Before we dive into the presentation, I want to remind you that we will be discussing certain forward-looking statements. Please refer to the disclaimer for more information. You can also find the presentation slide on our website for your reference. This call is being recorded and will be accessible on the website later today. Now I'm delighted to hand over to Kai will walk us through the partnership with JD.com.

Thank you, Fabienne, and good morning, everyone, from my side as well. Thank you for joining us.

Look, today marks an important milestone for CECONOMY. And as you know, we announced the investment agreement with JD.com last night. JD.com globally leading supply chain technology provider, service provider and of course, retail brand platform.

Now we're deeply convinced this agreement enables us to accelerate what you have come to know is our strategy to grow. And that is to grow as Europe's leading omnichannel consumer electronics platform delivering value for customers, employees, industry partners, and of course, shareholder value alike. We are really excited to share how this partnership will accelerate our growth trajectory. And with that, also further strengthen European retail.

Before we go into this, let me briefly walk you through the agenda on Slide 4. We'll begin by taking a closer look at the current market environment and the strong position from which CECONOMY is starting this new chapter. After that, Remko will guide you through the details of the transaction so that you understand this really well before I then discuss the strategic rationale behind this partnership. We'll then review the time line and highlight the key milestones you can expect in the coming months. And finally, we'll, of course, leave plenty of time at the end to answer any questions that you may have.

Now let's start where we are today. We are Europe's largest consumer electronics retailer. And we're proud to be operating from a position of real strength and positive momentum present with more than 1,000 stores across 11 European countries. Our brands, iconic brands enjoy unaided awareness above 70%. And as most of you who follow us regularly know we have been working hard to transform this company over the past 3 years from a traditional retailer to a truly customer-centric service platform, omnichannel service platform.

At the core of all of this is what we call the experience electronics strategy, with a focus on the customer and built around 5 growth areas with very distinct business models and those have been fueling our growth. As you will recall, these are sales and solutions, marketplace, the private label business, Space as a Service and retail media.

Now as you know, this strategy simply materializes in our numbers, it yields strong results, as you can see on Slide 6. In financial year '23, '24, we achieved around EUR 22 billion in total sales, with nearly EUR 1 billion in adjusted EBITDA. We've delivered adjusted EBIT growth for 10 consecutive quarters. That's an impressive 47% increase since our starting year here and that's financial '21 and '22. Very recently, we also specified the EBIT outlook for this financial year. We now expect around EUR 375 million by the end of September.

In short, if you summarize all of that, over the past years, we have built real momentum by consistently delivering strong results and strengthening our market position. All of this is firmly grounded in our strategy. Now at the same time, we are acutely aware that we are navigating a very dynamic market, new competitors constantly evolving customer expectations.

Given these market dynamics, strategically standing still is not an option for us. Our ambition is not only to keep pace with the transformation of European retail Instead it is, we want to continue to lead it. And for this ambition to lead in Europe, JD is the right partner at the right time.

First and foremost, our customers will benefit from a better shopping experience because we can leverage JD's advanced omnichannel retail expertise in the industry-leading technology logistics and warehouse capabilities. Second, for our shareholders, the offer provides an attractive premium with significant value upfront. JD launches a voluntary public takeover offer at EUR 4.60 per share in cash.

Then for our employees, these partnerships sends a strong message of confidence. We will stay a stand-alone company with proud European heritage and workforce continuity. There will be no workforce reductions or site closures in connection with this transaction.

So this partnership is finally not only about growth for us, but also about growth for our industry partners, for our suppliers. We will continue to work closely with our existing suppliers, quality suppliers from all over the world and grow theirs in our business together.

So in essence, this partnership strengthens our ambition to meet the growing customer demand for speed, convenience, excellent service, as you can see on Slide 8. We want to be able to offer superior customer experience. We want to excel in store digitization and advance our technology better and faster than today. We want to enhance our logistics network and supply chain management, and we want to leap frog with digital growth businesses.

With JD as a partner, we have the chance to accelerate our existing growth strategy, seize market opportunities that may emerge and strengthen overall, our position as Europe's leading omnichannel consumer electronics platform.

For that condition, JD also increases our financial agility and gives us access to technological, omnichannel retail and logistical capabilities. With them, we're in the best position to double down on our growth path as Europe's leading omnichannel consumer electronics retail. So with that background, I'd like to hand over to Remko to discuss the offer in more detail. Remko?

Yes. Thank you, Kai. Good morning to everybody. And first of all, I share, of course, the excitement about this partnership, as Kai already mentioned. JD.com is the right partner at the right time and this transaction is all about growth, accelerating our strategy. Let me now focus on what this means for you as shareholders on Slide 9.

The offer of JD.com provides an attractive and certain opportunity to realize a significant portion of the long-term value of your investment immediately and in cash. JD.com will, as Kai already mentioned, launched a voluntary public takeover a takeover offer at a price of EUR 4.60 per economy share in cash.

This values the company at EUR 4 billion. The offer represents a premium of 23% over the ineffective closing share price as of the 23rd of July and 43% over the 3 months volume-weighted average share price. The offer price equals to an equity value of approximately EUR 2.2 billion. The implied enterprise value of EUR 4 billion corresponds therefore, to a valuation of 4.1x EV on an adjusted EBIT basis over the year 2025.

The transaction will be subject to customary offer conditions, including the regulatory and merger control approvals. It's important to note that the partnership has the full support of the management Board, Kai and I, Supervisory Board, Anchor shareholders and the founder family, which is also extremely important for us. Anchor shareholders, including Haniel, Beisheim, Freenet and Convergenta have already signed a so-called irrevocable tender commitments to accept the offer for approximately 32% of CECONOMY shares. CECONOMY's founder family, shareholder, Convergenta will maintain 25.4% shareholding following the public takeover.

Following a careful review of the over document in line with the legal obligation, the Management Board and Supervisory Board intend to recommend to accept the offer. With that, I will hand over back to Kai, who will now outline the partnership means for our workforce and also very important for our customers.

Thank you, Remko. Now on to the next slide. As Remko said, this transaction does not only benefit our customers and our investors, very importantly, also our employees and it's to listen that we signed an investment agreement with strong commitments led by JD.

First, JD explicitly backs our midterm financial targets and the existing experience electronics strategy as a basis. Second, CECONOMY will stay as a stand-alone company headquartered here in Düsseldorf and Ingolstadt. JD.com does not plan any material changes to our company structure, organization and for a period of 5 years after offer settlement, our strong brand architecture. There are no plans importantly to enter into a domination or a profit and loss transfer agreement for a period of 3 years after settlement.

And third, JD has committed to work closely with the current management team, so the two of us, which will continue to stay in charge of driving the company's business strategy and operations. There will be no workforce reductions and no site closures in connections with this transaction.

I said earlier, JD is the right partner at the right time, simply because our strengths are complementary. But also if you look a bit underneath because our values are shared. Both companies with the customer first. Both companies believe in trustworthy and long-term relationships with international brands. There will be no overarching changes to our product range or our focus on high-quality consumer electronics products.

Importantly, both companies share the conviction that omnichannel is the future of retail. That's why we will continue to invest not only in digital growth, but agreed to accelerate also our strategic initiatives regarding our bricks-and-mortar business. For example, with the personalized service, under the existing brands.

Last but not least, it is important to note that in this investment agreement, we ensure the full independence of our IT systems, the tech stack and customer data as well as, of course, full compliance with European data privacy regulations. Together, we will work towards establishing a separate and strictly independent European tech stack with the ability to provide technology services and capabilities similar to those offered in China but based in Europe.

So in summary then, why JD.com? Both CECONOMY and JD are fully committed to excellent customer service and outstanding customer experiences. JD has unparalleled retail experience as well as industry-leading tech and logistics capabilities. You're probably aware, but it operates one of the world's largest in-house e-commerce logistics operations, for example, pioneering, same and next-day delivery nationwide in China. Let it sink in, 95% of JD's online retail orders are fulfilled same day or next day across China.

And finally, both companies operate brand-led platforms prioritizing strong partnerships with leading global enterprises. Both companies believe in responsible and sustainable business models. For example, JD sets really new standards in emissions management. So by joining forces, we're not just keeping pace with the transformation in European retail, we will be able to shape it and delete it, delivering even greater value, convenience and innovation, to those who matter most for us and customers.

So to recap. This partnership means improved shopping and customer experience for customers, attractive premium, realizing a significant part of the value immediately in upfront and preserving our prior European heritage and workforce continue for our employees. It's a strong endorsement of our strategy that most of you have followed so closely for the past 2 or 3 years and it positions us for accelerated growth and ...

Let me now hand it back to Remko to give you an overview of the upcoming time line as well as the financial calendar for the rest of the year.

Thank you, Kai. Indeed, time line. So let me now walk you through the key milestones ahead as we bring this partnership to life on Slide 14.

Today, we announced JD.com, voluntary public take offer, making the official start of an exciting chapter. The formal offer document will be published in August or September, providing all shareholders with the necessary details. Once published, we will enter in a 10-week acceptance period during which shareholders can review and consider the proposal.

This period will, of course, include formal submission and review by the BaFin, the German Financial Supervisory Authority to ensure regulatory compliance. Assuming all approvals are received as expected, we anticipate closing the transaction in the first half year of 2026. Afterwards, it's investigated to transition economy to a private company with delisting target for June 2026. Throughout, we are committed to open and transparent communication with all stakeholders, keeping everybody informed every step of the way.

As we look ahead, I would like to highlight a few important dates that you may want to mark in your calendars. We will we share in our Q3 and 9 months results on the 12th of August 2025 followed closely by Q2 results of JD.com, on the 25th of August. Later in the year, on the 28th of October, we will publish our Q4 and full year trading statement. JD.com Q3 results will be released on the 13th of November, and we will round out the year with the economies, Q4 and full year's results on the 17th of December 2025.

Throughout this entire period, you can count on us, keep you fully informed the regular updates and transparent communications as we move through this important transaction together. So this is an outline of our time line. And now I would like to take a pause for possible questions.

[Operator Instructions]. And the first question goes to Clement Genelot, please go ahead.

Two questions from my side, if I may. The first one, beyond knowledge sharing ones, do you see Retail Media and private labeling as a concrete area of one of the division with JD? And my second question, when you merge with JD, you would assume that the business enhance and pivot a bit towards the B2B services?

Good morning, Clement. Thanks for your question. let me take the first question about the cooperation with -- regarding private labels and Retail Media. We already mentioned in the overview that we share beliefs and principles in a omnichannel strategy with JD.com. That, of course, means also that not only in Retail Media and not only in private labels, but basically in all our strategic focus areas that Kai mentioned, like Services & Solutions, Base as a Service, but also marketplace we see a strength in this cooperation together to accelerate already our existing strategy.

So to answer your question, yes. But more than that, on all 5 focus points, we can accelerate with their support. And they also fully support this strategy, and that's what we have seen in the last discussions and the strategic document that we have together.

Yes. Clement, it's Kai. And then let me take your second one, you asked whether we would now merge with JD's European business and perhaps pivot to a B2B service. This is a simple one. It's binary. The answer is no. Let me elaborate a bit on this. As I said, we will continue our operational independence. We will remain an independent run company with our existing strategy.

Our existing strategy is a B2C strategy around those 5 growth areas, which Remko just mentioned. There is no plans for any changes in our company structure, our organization, strong bank and most importantly, not about the strategy and the management. It was a long version of a short no.

Ladies and gentlemen, we didn't receive any further questions. [Operator Instructions].

Ladies and gentlemen, on the phone, we always -- a, we understand it's holiday season. And b, we do understand you're not having so many questions as a complement to our IR team. We spent the morning explaining this to you and also to the compliments of the communications team here of putting the information together.

But let me emphasize, we are really happy to take any further questions. We do want to make sure that we answer any concerns that you may have very transparently as we speak. So we'll give you another minute to think if there's anything else you would like to know.

All right. Look, then allow us to wrap this up to let me reiterate because it's just such an important day for us. This marks a new chapter for CECONOMY. We're acting from a position of strength, prudent strategy an excellent team, a clear vision for the future, but now we will be able to accelerate our growth and create even more value for stakeholders, and we will continue to lead transformation of European retail, and we will also continue to engage with you and keep you up to date as to this process that has started late last night. Thank you very much for your attention today and your continued support. Thank you.

Thank you.