Fielmann Aktie

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's analyst and investor call of the Fielmann Group AG, following the publication of the financial year figures of 2025 and the first quarter results of 2026.

And with this, I'm happy to hand over to Fielmann's CFO, Steffen Baetjer.

Sarah, thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Steffen. I'm Fielmann's CFO and joined about 3 years ago. I'm very happy to welcome you to our first quarterly results call where we deal with the 2025 results and Q1 '26. I'm super excited and happy to have Marc with me, our CEO and majority shareholder. And without further ado, I hand over to Marc for the intro.

Thanks very much, Steffen. So I think most of you guys know already the Fielmann Group. So I'll just give a very brief summary of our family business. We are the third largest vision care provider worldwide. We count around 30 million active customers who are served by 24,000 fantastic colleagues of ours across the globe. We're operating in our retail markets in Europe and in the U.S., and we also operate manufacturing logistics in Asia.

I think one thing that is particular about Fielmann is a very, very clear focus on customers and patients. We have a 90% customer satisfaction rate, so we do very regular surveys, and that's the number of customers that say that they are happy or very happy with us.

And last year, we reported EUR 2.44 billion in annual total sales. If you look at our market position globally, you can see in the middle, roughly the sales split by major countries.

As you can see, Germany is still by far our largest market with roughly a 60% share. Then the remaining 40% are split in sequence by the U.S., which is our second biggest market. Switzerland is big for us, 10%; Spain, 9%; Austria and then the other European markets account for the rest.

If you look to the right-hand side of this chart, you can see our market position. We are the clear and uncontested market leader in terms of unit sales, all across Central Europe. So we're speaking about countries like Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia. We're #2 in Eastern Europe, where we have a very strong presence and will achieve market leadership in the long term. And we are #2 in Spain, a market that we have just entered 5 years ago and have grown to become the #2 in 5 years. And we're actually pretty confident that we'll take over market leadership next year and grow a lot further there.

Looking on the left-hand side of this chart, you can see our market position in the United States, a market that we have entered roughly 3 years ago. As you can see, we are the market leader in terms of unit sales in the upper Midwest. So we're talking about states like Michigan and Wisconsin. We also have a strong position in Nebraska, the Dakotas and in Minnesota.

And we are very confident that in the medium term, we'll seize market leadership in additional states of the United States in an area that we call the Greater Midwest. Overall, we have a presence in 17 states.

Just a quick look at our manufacturing and logistics network. So as you might be aware, Fielmann is not only a vision care provider and audiology provider, but we are actually a vertically integrated business. That means we have our own design, product development and manufacturing capabilities. We generally manufacture the glasses and lenses in the markets that we are active in.

We have 2 large facilities in the United States. We have a big facility in Germany, one in Northern Spain, another one in Poland. We're just building up a huge logistics center in Chomutov in the Czech Republic, and we have a major joint venture in Danyang, Danyang being the city in the world that manufactures the most lenses in the world. That's where we run the joint venture.

Having this globally diversified and integrated supply chain obviously allows us to offer very, very, very competitive prices to our customers and patients globally and that being the value proposition that we give to our patients, so really competitive value is obviously one of our key USPs.

And with that, just after a quick introduction of the Fielmann Group, I would hand over to Steffen, who will provide a review of the financial year 2025.

Thank you, Marc. And it's an absolute pleasure for me to talk to you about the financial year 2025 because that was, for us, as a group, a record-breaking year in terms of numbers, so real pleasure to talk about that. Let's talk about top line. Our top line grew by 7.4%. One of the most reliable ways for us to grow our top line is by increasing our store network. We moved from 1,240 to 1,262, so plus 22 stores. That's a net number, so openings and closings.

We actually opened 37 stores across the world last year, 10 of those in Spain, which is a country where we grow a lot, 9 in the U.S., but we also closed quite a few in the U.S. because we are -- in terms of our integration work, we're looking at our store network there, and we cleaned up a bit, 7.4% growth. Top line is great, 3.5% -- of that 3.6% is organic growth, 3.8% is M&A.

The first half year full consolidation of Shopko Optical is the driver here. Looking at those numbers a bit more in detail, currency FX-related movements become a little more important for us as a group, that's why we're showing you in the middle growth numbers at constant currency, which for us is the operational view of the world, so to say.

And then in -- we obviously also show you the numbers in euros because that's our functional currency, and that's what actually ends up in the reported euro P&L numbers. So group grew at 7.8% at constant currency, 7.4% in euros. The 2 big movements were the appreciation of the Swiss franc against the euro and the significant devaluation of the dollar against the euro following Q2 last year.

Looking at those countries a bit more in detail, 4.1% growth in Europe, basically, the GSA region at 4% to 6% growth. Spain, as I said, we love it, 9% growth. All the others, 0.6%, 0.8% in constant currencies. And in euros, that's Italy, that's Czech Republic, that's Poland, et cetera, et cetera. Poland alone grew 11%. So that's another growth market for us. The U.S. grew at 46.7% in dollar terms, 41% in euro terms. That is obviously the first-time consolidation of Shopko of the first half year.

Organically, we grew around 3% in that year. In the U.S., you know that the focus in North America for us was something else than growing, it was more getting ready and building the platform. [ Great ] is also, if you look at the product categories, we not only grow across all countries, we also grow across all product categories. Contact lenses and medical service, the 2 things I want to point out here, very, very strong businesses in the U.S. medical services with all the optical doctors that work for us there, more than 300 of them, and they provide these services, but also the eye checkup in Germany that we -- or in Europe by now that we're providing is a fantastic -- gives us fantastic growth numbers.

Contact lenses, the 9% in the group versus the 3% in Europe is basically driven by the first-time consolidation of the U.S. numbers. If we look at profitability, well, we guided you towards 25% in Europe, 24% adjusted EBITDA in the group. And I think we delivered that at 23.8% and 24.8%. Really happy with the development of the U.S. margins.

The focus was on integrating and getting it to one company. So the U.S. margin growing from 9.9% to just over 16% is a great achievement. Also great is obviously that our adjusted EBITDA grows by 18% when sales only grow by 7.5%, so that's a great sign of operating leverage that this business exhibits, and that's part of our business model, obviously.

Also adjusted EBT and adjusted EBT margin and net results are great, growing at 30% or 33%. Net result at EUR 205 million is actually the highest that we ever recorded and further drives down our earnings per share ratio, so there might be an opportunity for you guys, looking at that. Adjusted EBT margin at 12.8%, also right at where we guided it.

Because this is a full year, we also take a quick look at balance sheet numbers, and we take a quick look at cash flow numbers. All these profitability numbers are exactly as we reported them when we reported preliminary numbers to you. So very happy with that, stable processes. Looking at the balance sheet, you see that our cash position improved quite significantly. That's basically a model of us selling a lot more glasses and hearing aids and medical services.

The important thing is not that we generate that much cash, the important thing is that gives us the financial flexibility. It supports growth. It supports dividends. We can do both. We're really in a very, very good position sitting on that cash and waiting for it to be deployed. Leverage went down from 1.7 to 1.2. That's a function of strong cash and EBITDA growth. This is actually including leases, not just the debt. So including leases at 1.2, we always guided to that we're looking at maximum of 2x. So we're well underway here. Equity ratio increased a bit from 39% to 40%.

That's basically if you have a record profit that goes into equity and drives the balance sheet strength. That also drives our stability and provides -- this capital structure really supports our growth because we have a lot of capital to deploy, and we can put debt on if we want to. So we're ready for what's coming under Vision 35 (sic) [ Vision 2035 ] in terms of growth if we wanted to.

Cash flow, on the other hand, operating cash flow up EUR 86 million, that's higher earnings. It's a continuously strong cash conversion from operating cash flow to EBITDA, almost 90%. We also pulled EUR 16 million positive out of working capital. That's mainly inventory that we drove down. So really getting more and more -- or leaner and leaner on that. But we're still working on 3, 4, 5 months inventory, so just to make sure.

Cash flow from investing activities is now at a normalized level, I'd say, for -- to provide us for capital growth for new stores, modernizations and infrastructure investments. Last year was significantly higher because of the M&A activities. And in the financing activities, you basically see the refinancing, short-term bank loan to finance the Shopko acquisition turned into a long-term Schuldschein, and the lease payments increased also because we grow our business, and therefore, we need to rent stores, and that happens in the financing activities.

So overall, super, super happy with all those numbers, very stable balance sheet, very good cash generation and ready and set and go for growth that's coming.

And with that, I hand back to Marc, who is talking to you about the Vision '25.

Yes. So 2025 was not only a great financial year for us with fantastic numbers that Steffen has just shown to you and elaborated a little bit on, but 2025 was obviously also the conclusion of our Vision 2025. So let's do a quick recap, 3 main strategic pillars.

We took what used to be a fairly traditional family business, and we transformed it into a modern family business. Now don't get me wrong, that traditional business model took us to market leadership in Germany. And so that was a great model for us, but the wishes and demands of our customers have evolved of our people working for and with us and obviously, also of the environment. So that needs a bit different family business culture, and I think we made great headways there.

Secondly, when we started with the Vision 2025, we were mainly a German brick-and-mortar business. I believe we've done a great job in digitalizing that business. Today, we have an omnichannel platform that has around 50 million active users, and we have quadrupled our e-commerce sales in that period, still with very healthy growth in e-commerce as well, just at a level of 4% that shows you how little the overall importance of e-commerce in our businesses.

And yet if you look more into categories like sunglasses or contact lens, it's highly relevant there, and we are very able to compete very, very well there in other categories, such as prescription eyewear. E-commerce stand-alone pure-play is not important, but omnichannel, of course, is very, very important. We see a lot of touch points with our customers even before they enter our stores or practices.

And last but not least, on the internationalization front, we took a German-speaking business, and we truly made it an international business for 4 years now. All of our senior management speaks English. We have diversified our footprint globally and continue to do so. Maybe just a quick look at the numbers as well, so not only on the strategic pillars, we succeeded, but we actually also reached all of our goals and in quite a few cases, even exceeded them.

We wanted to read the exceptionally high customer satisfaction number of 90% of happy or very happy customers did that. Fantastic, great, very proud and grateful to our teams across the globe. We aimed for a 5% CAGR over this period. We actually nearly doubled the growth pace. So instead of the EUR 2 billion in sales that we aim for, we got EUR 2.4 billion, so nearly EUR 1 billion increase over the Vision 2025 period.

And we said we're going to reach a 25% adjusted EBITDA margin. We did that in the original scope, meaning in Europe. Of course, we didn't fully take the U.S. into account that we only acquired 3 years ago. But I think also on a group level, a 24% EBITDA margin is a wonderful result. If you look at nominal operating profit, obviously, that by far exceeded what we originally planned.

And Steffen already mentioned our record net profit, highest in the history of our family business as well. So very, very happy to conclude the Vision 2025 at and above the goals that we set ourselves despite the coronavirus pandemic, despite the Ukraine war and ensuing crisis as a result of increased interest rates and very low consumer confidence. So I think a fantastic job of our people around the world.

Just a quick look at guidance. So Steffen showed you the numbers. Just a quick reminder, that's what we guided. We reached our guidance, so I think we've done that pretty consistently over the last few years. We said we accelerate the growth first. We accelerated the growth first. Then we said we're going to reach our margins. We're going to focus on efficiency. We did that, and that's how we got to the 25% margin. So a big call out to all of our teams across the globe. We're very proud of them. We're very grateful, and it's really them who deliver these numbers.

So it's really a big thank you to all of our loyal customers around the world and our great people over the globe that serve our patients and customers every day in our stores and practices.

And with that, we come to the Vision 2035. So this is the vision that many of you are probably aware of because we presented it at our AGM last summer. I'm just going to give a very fast recap. So our Vision 2035 for the next 10 years is as the most trusted partner for hearing and vision, we redefine comprehensive care globally. What does that mean? Well, first of all, if you look at the lower part of this chart, we have a very solid business in our existing markets in optometry in Europe, big potential there, especially in Eastern Europe and in Spain. So big opportunities.

Secondly, you see the optometry in the U.S. So our single biggest growth driver is optometry in the U.S., where we are growing healthily, but the potential is even significantly bigger. It's the biggest optometry market in the world, standing at around USD 70 billion. Third big growth pillar is the audiology in Europe. So that is obviously our fast-growing audiology business, on average growing 13% over the period of Vision 2025, and we want to accelerate that further to more than double the business in the next 5 years.

And then we have medical services, which is a very exciting field for us that is now firmly established in our group. So optometry and adjacent medical services are becoming more and more important for us. All of this leads to our 5-year goals. We have set ourselves the goals of reaching record high customer satisfaction of 90%, again, which is quite a big challenge, if you think that we acquired some businesses, especially in the U.S. with historically lower customer satisfaction rates.

So a big challenge there to bring those values up and to keep that consistently high level also in Europe. In terms of sales, we're aiming for about EUR 4 billion. We've given the range there. So that's really what we feel is an ambitious but realistic target for the next 5 years. And obviously, we want to keep our high profitability profile and reach around a 25% adjusted EBITDA margin.

And with that, I would hand over to Steffen for the Q1 numbers.

Thank you very much, Marc. Yes, let's talk about Q1. We just published those numbers this morning. Obviously, difficult environment in the first quarter. Iran war, contrary to common belief, not a big issue for us at the moment because, quite frankly, our supply chain is not touched by that. When we look at the Iran war, we're basically more concerned about secondary and tertiary effects, like increasing oil prices lead to inflation, lead to lower consumer sentiment. But at the moment, that is not helpful, don't get me wrong, but it's not -- it doesn't have a direct impact on us.

But weather was a big problem and strikes was a big problem. So if we look at the business performance across our -- the 3 main regions in which we operate, you see Germany, lots of strikes in the first 2 months. Winter was really, really harsh in Germany, really shutting down parts of the major cities for quite an extended period. So IMF forecast has been downgraded for Germany to 0.8% growth. So for us, on the short-term horizon, that's an unchanged red arrow downwards for the Germany economy.

So it was good that we actually embarked 5 years ago on internationalizing the business. Europe, slightly different, but also there, difficult weather. Spain saw torrential rain. Poland, really, really cold, really, really a lot of snow, but slightly higher growth dynamic. IMF forecast for Europe, 1.1%, for Spain, which is a more relevant country for us in Europe, 2.1%. So that gives us a kind of neutral yellow arrow to the side.

And then the U.S., and yes, it sounds like excuses, but really significant -- the Great West or the Midwest is really, really known for harsh winters, but this was, even by their standards, a very harsh winter. There were times when we couldn't open dozens of our stores just because we physically couldn't open the door.

So overall -- but even there, spring has arrived. So that's over -- overall, a more robust growth dynamic at 2.3% for this year forecasted. So that's a yellow arrow to the side. So overall, Iran war, not such a big issue, but weather and strikes was really difficult for us in January and February. March already looked a lot better.

Did we deliver? We opened -- since Q1 2025, we opened 43 stores in total. Alone this year, so since January '26, we opened 20 stores, 10 in Luxembourg through an acquisition and then 5 in the U.S. and then Spain, Poland, Germany, across the globe, we basically opened stores. And that's our increased growth dynamic that we're embarking on this year.

So we're adding a lot more to our network. Revenue grew at 2.3% at constant currency to a reported EUR 613 million. Let's look at the individual countries. Again, constant currency in the middle, reported figures on the right-hand side, you see the difference of 1 percentage point, and that's basically the U.S. dollar devaluation.

Numbers are a little smaller than what we saw last year, but still positive across the board. GSA in the 2, 3 percentage range. Austria really hit by bad weather, but also we took the downtime because, as you know, December is not -- is a low season month for us. We take those months to basically refurbish a few stores, and that reached into the January, February period as well, so 1% to 3% in GSA, Spain, torrential rain, still 5% growth; others, 9%, that's the Luxembourg acquisition.

And then in the U.S., 2.2% in dollar terms, minus 8.1% in euro terms, and that's the dollar devaluation against that started in Q2 last year. So not a lot we can do about that. On the contrary, profitability really, really intact. '24 -- we had a very good -- those who have been with us for much longer, we had a really, really good Q1 last year, and we're actually matching those numbers on a profitability level.

100 -- slight increase in total adjusted EBITDA margins basically on the same level as last year at 24.3% and 25.7%. U.S. at 13.8%, just a touch below Q1 2025 numbers. Obviously, we wanted to improve that profitability. But the lower demand or the inability of our customers to reach our stores because of snow, part with us really improving and increasing doctor coverage in most of our stores led to this effect that is basically setting us up for more growth in the month to come.

And as I said, March already looked a lot better, so let's hope this continues into the year. Adjusted EBT and net results also in line with last year's results. So given circumstances, very happy with the results. Total consolidated sales a little on the low side, profitability definitely where we want it to be.

And with that, we come to the outlook for 2026 and share with you our guidance for this year. But because Craig is such a good friend, and we put some one slide in there just to answer his question. He basically said, "Hey, if you only grow by 2%, but you want to guide us to 5% to 7%, how do you want to do that?" There are 3 levers to that. Number one, we're going to -- we are expanding exam availability, mainly in the U.S. So having ODs in the U.S. is the first gatekeeper.

If you can't get an eye exam, you're not going to buy a pair of glasses from us. Secondly, we increased productivity. We talked a lot about that over the last 15 months in terms of what we do on that. It's AI-based automated refraction. It's better store planning where we match the demand of our customers and our working schedules and then accelerate expansion. So we're aggressively going to move into opening more stores.

And as you saw, we already added 20 stores this year net, and that's about as many as we entered or added last year to our store network. So those are the 3 levers. And with better weather, we're going to be very, very sure that we see an improved growth dynamic across the board. So for this year, we're guiding you on customer satisfaction, we want to keep that number at the high level of around 90%. And that's, for us, the most important KPI because it speaks to the longevity of our business model.

Total consolidated sales shall grow at about 5% to 7% year-on-year. So that gives us -- lands us at about EUR 2.55 billion to EUR 2.60 billion. Adjusted EBITDA should be -- we will keep the margin around 23%. And as you all know, we're adding a lot more new stores. New stores are initially always loss-making because they don't address the full customer potential. Therefore, a slight decline in the EBITDA margin for this year as we announced last year at the Capital Market Day. So somewhere between EUR 590 million and EUR 610 million. Adjusted EBT margin should be in line broadly with last year, 12% to 13%.

That's our guidance. I know I read the comments, obviously, that some of you feel a little underwhelmed with that. But looking at the environment and looking at where we stand in the world and what we're doing, we have great plans. We're ready to grow. We have the capital, we have the knowledge, we have the footprint, and we're going to execute on that. So let's see how it turns out.

And with that, I open up to your questions, and thank you very much. Craig, we already did one of your questions. So if you all can limit yourself to 2 questions, we have 55 people on the call. So everybody, maximum of 2 questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] And then we will start with the questions from Mr. Rossi. So please go ahead.

So the first one is regarding the U.S. market. So a few weeks ago, you announced the creation of your U.S. Optometry Advisory Board. So I was -- could you provide more color on how this Board will help you to better serve your U.S. customers there? So I think it's going to be interesting to have your view on that. And my second question, so you alluded to the German consumer sentiment, but -- so no signs of a deterioration so far. But I was curious to have your view on how resilient the German consumer is now compared to 2022 during the last major inflationary phase. According to you, do you feel that the consumer is now better prepared to cope with a volatile macro environment?

Thank you very much for your questions. So first, the U.S. market. So as most of you guys are aware, the regulatory landscape and also the professional structure is a little bit different in most of Continental Europe compared to the U.S. So in Europe, we basically have opticians and master opticians taking care of everything but the medical part. And then you have the ophthalmologist that takes care of the medical part.

And we're using telemedicine to bridge that gap and work closer together in Europe. In the U.S., we actually have doctors on site. So we actually do provide medical services in store in our practices. And those optometrists have a very high degree of training. So they can not only issue prescriptions for eyewear or contact lenses, but they can also prescribe medication and do treatments there.

The main goal of the setup of this optometry board is to address the most important growth lever in the United States, which is the exam capacity and the availability of optometrists. So this has a twofold goal. The one goal is really to define a medical strategy and to define the medical scope that we provide. We are very clear that we will not be an aggressively full medical provider. But at the same time, we will also not just be an optical retailer in the U.S.

We actually will provide comprehensive medical care in the United States, pretty similar to Europe, where we're working with a hub-and-spoke model, meaning that we will not provide extensive medical care in every facility, but we're using our dense store network in Europe, practice network in the United States to refer patients that have additional medical needs, especially to those locations where we then also improve our scope of practice.

And that's really an exciting field in the United States, something that our doctors are very passionate about. So we really will bring and combine productivity and efficiency in the exam lane with an extended scope in the medical care.

So many people consider this a contradiction, we actually think it's very complementary. If we free up time for our optometrists, if we can be more productive in exams, for example, by adding skilled trained opticians that can do pretesting and that take up time, take out time, precious time, that our optometrists now spend on administrative work, then that's really time that we can use for additional exams and we can use for additional medical service, and that's something that our doctors really care about in the United States.

To your second question, the German consumer sentiment, so I think there have been publications there that actually say that the German consumer is more resilient. I'm not an economist or an expert of German consumer confidence. I've seen that the German consumer confidence has retreated slightly, translated to the German optical industry.

I can definitely report that there has been some hesitation when it comes to repurchase cycles. So I think an important part for our industry and for us specifically to make sure that we match -- or we manage the repurchase cycles. For us, of course, we benefit from consumers looking for value offerings.

So as the price leader, we obviously have a big opportunity at gaining additional market shares. That's something that we managed in the last 5 years. That's something that we managed last year. And as per our numbers, we feel that specifically also in Germany, we will be extending our market shares this year as well. So to our current information, we're significantly outperforming the German market with the numbers that we have right now. I hope that answered your questions.

Thank you so much. And then we will move on with the next question. So it's from Craig Abbott. He would like to know the sales guidance implies a clear acceleration in sales, the remainder of the year, 6% to 7%. Apparently, the investments you have been making are starting to pay off. Could you provide some color on what underlines your confidence in achieving this?

I think, Craig, we answered that question already with that slide saying we're basically adding more -- we grew in our core market, GSA 4% to 6% last year, and we're actually accelerating the growth pace by adding more stores. Number two, we're adding exam capacity, mainly in the U.S., which will help us. And after all the integration work, we're now ready to embark on a growth trend in the United States.

We're continuing to increase productivity of our opticians and of our optometrists. And thirdly, we're really embarking on opening more stores, and that should drive sales. As I said, this year alone, we added almost as many stores on a net level as we did for the full year last year, and that's going to continue.

In our meetings, I talked about that in Spain, for example, we're going to go from 10 stores to 25 to 30 stores this year alone. So that's the growth dynamic why we're confident around the 5% to 7% growth rate.

And maybe if I can add one thing, we are not only going to add exam capacity, we have already added exam capacity in the United States, and that was met with soft demand by very temporary weather effects, as we alluded to. So I mean, in Wisconsin, we had 3 feet of snow. That's why Steffen literally you couldn't get into the store, not even anywhere near to it. We are pretty confident that with that additional exam capacity and weather obviously having improved already from March onwards that obviously, the demand is there. U.S. consumers, U.S. patients on average wait 16 days for an eye exam. In rural areas, they wait months for an eye exam. So when you add exam capacity, that translates into demand. So that's why we are pretty confident that as now weather has normalized that we can also capture this additional growth, especially in the United States.

And then you will also see a normalization and improvement in the EBITDA margin because now what you saw in the EBITDA margin in the U.S. was soft demand on an already improved exam capacity that obviously drives up the cost base there because it was prepared for a higher demand that only temporarily didn't come, but is coming now.

Thank you so much. So the next question is from Harrison Woodin. So on the expectations for rebranding in the U.S., will new U.S. stores bear the Fielmann banner? What will be the branding transition look like?

Thanks very much for this very important question. We are actually now in the transformation phase. So as we have said in the past, '24, '25 with the integration phase, we have moved all of our banners into one Fielmann USA organization. So even now as we operate under SVS Vision and Shopko Optical, they all use the same systems. They all use the same core processes. In the next step, we are now transforming the business. We are actually piloting right now the Fielmann brand in a few stores. And with that, we are piloting our new offerings.

We will take the time that we need to make sure that we have a superior customer experience. I think we have alluded to that in the past that we'll feature readily available exam availability. So especially in regions where people wait for weeks or sometimes months for exams, that's a great USP to be able to say in 48 hours, you do get an exam guaranteed.

Secondly, we will have a huge selection of glasses fully covered by the vision insurances. Again, I think that's another really cool USP. And the third one will be really a transparent patient experience where people are -- can fully understand what they are paying for if they pay out of pocket. And those are the 3 big changes that we are piloting. We've introduced new products, new technology, new services into the practices that we're piloting in. We're iterating it.

And once we feel confident that the customer experience and patient experience is really superior, we will roll it out to further stores. That will take this year, I would suppose. And then the pace of transformation and introducing it to other practices will depend, obviously, on the success of the pilot that we're running right now.

Thank you so much. And his second question is, can you quantify the productivity improvements, especially in the U.S. so far? Can you break down the revenue drivers for price, volume mix? Is Fielmann brand outperforming other branded frames?

Well, don't really -- Harrison, don't really want to turn this into a modeling call. So your best source to go to is Nils. AOVs in the U.S. have been relatively stable and growth mainly comes from more sales basically and a slight increase in sellout structure, which is for us more important than the price increases, as you know. So improving the quality, selling more multifocal, that's basically the way we're going, and that's the same in the U.S. as it is in Europe.

And then we have a virtual hand from [ Diana Gomez ]. So you should be able to speak now.

Could I ask in terms of the guidance for the 5% to 7% revenue growth, would you be able to share with us what's your expectation in terms of the currency impact? And in terms of the U.S. margin improvement through the year, could you give us a little bit more color in terms of the shape of that trajectory and the implied sequential, say, deceleration in terms of the margin through the year? Should we think about it more due to the fact that you have the store openings coming through, or is there something else that we should keep in mind?

Sure. Diana, good to talk to you again. Hello. Why don't I take those 2 questions. The 5% to 7% growth and the FX impact, we're modeling on a constant -- well, constant U.S. dollar to euro exchange rate. It's now -- it stands at about 1.18. I think the last time I checked, which is about a few days ago, the forward for the end of the year was around that area. So we're implying, as we say in all our documents, read the fine print, we're saying the U.S. dollar euro exchange rate should be stable for the remainder of the year, which basically means it's also for Q2, Q3, Q4 in line with last year.

On the margins, that's a tricky question. The U.S. margins were a little softer than we wanted it to be because, as Marc said, we increased doctor capacity, which costs money, personnel expenses, and we had a little softer demand than anticipated. So that's not good for margin in our business, as you know. The really, really, really good news of this quarter is that our gross profit margins, so cost of goods sold is very stable and slightly improving over time. So we do see that we have a big resilience on the gross profit margin. Everything that happened to the margin is basically happening on the personnel expenses.

So as soon as demand picks up, we will be seeing an increase in the U.S. margins as well. And that should happen over the next -- over this quarter really because I spoke with Wisconsin yesterday. And yesterday, it was, yes, raining, but it was above 32 degrees Fahrenheit, which is good news for them.

And sorry, one last thing on that. Just a reminder, you all know that, but contrary to our European business, the U.S. business has the strongest sales in Q4 because everybody wakes up in December and thinks, oh, I still need to get my pair of glasses for this year. So the big margin improvement in the U.S. typically comes in Q4.

Which is because of the insurances, you get your insurance reimbursement. And if you don't use it in the last quarter, you obviously lose it for that year.

Thank you. So the next question comes from Mr. [indiscernible]. Congrats for the great margin lift up in all your major markets. But what needs to happen in order to lift Germany's and Austria's EBT margins back up to or close to 2018, 2019 levels? And what would be a realistic time frame?

Well, we don't anticipate. Our guidance says for this year as well -- for this year, we're guiding to 23%. In our target 2030, we say 25% for the group. Germany, Austria, Switzerland make up a big part of our business. So we're not targeting the 28%, 29%, 30% that we saw in the past. We are continuously investing where even in Germany, this year, we're going to open 15, 1-5 new stores. So that has a little drag on margins as well. So we don't have a plan to increase to 28%, 29% overall because our guidance for the group is 25%.

Thank you. And Mr. [indiscernible] would like to know, you mentioned an improvement environment in March compared to January and February. Can you give more details regarding the growth rates during this month? And has this trend continued into April?

Yes, we could, but we don't because, as you know, we are reporting quarterly numbers. We don't report monthly figures, just take my word. January, February were not good. March was a lot better. But we don't break it by month end drivers.

Next question, please, can you quantify the exit rate for the quarter or give us an understanding of the improvement seen in growth during March?

Same answer. We don't guide or give details on individual months. I think that would be over detailed. We're reporting quarters, and take my word, march was a lot better.

All right. And then we have a question. I think we already covered a bit. So the number of trainees has been declining gradually in the past 5 years. To what extent is this reflection of personnel [ infinity ] of your stores structurally declining as the various in-store tooks, like AI engaged refractory equipment reduced the average time per customer? Or is it simply a reflection of a shrinking talent pool? And if so, to what extent might this become a growth hindrage?

I think the major change in the last few years has been that the labor market slightly -- I want to say, slightly changed to our favor from a labor market that was really reflective of a lack of skilled labor. Now with economic weakening of Germany stagnation, rising unemployment, it is really a situation where the labor market is becoming a little bit more favorable for employers, like ourselves. As you already imply, we have enacted and continue to enact quite a lot of measures that drive productivity. The most recent one is the AI-based self-refraction. So this is not replacing the opticians core competency in refraction, but it is significantly accelerating the process at the same or better quality and the same or better customer satisfaction.

At the same time, another big driver was and remains our technology, also AI-based that we use to match capacity of labor in our stores in Europe with the customer footfall. So generally, the challenge is not that we have tons of stores where we don't get people, but the big challenge is always to have the people at the right place at the right time where there's the patient footfalls or scheduling and appointment systems help a lot there.

And another big lever on productivity has been a continued centralization of our glazing. So we're really centralizing and bringing the manufacturer of glasses into our own supply chain instead of making a lot of glasses in the individual stores. That's another big driver for productivity and also one that will continue quite a bit.

So little bit less labor needed. Still, I think, big perspectives and potentials for opticians in Germany, especially as we extend into the medical services, really adding a lot of new tasks and roles to our opticians, but the labor market developing a little bit more into our favor, and that is amplified by the productivity gains that we have seen and where we also still see potentials.

Thank you. And then Mr. [indiscernible] would like to know, could you talk to the competitive environment in the U.S. and also where you see a customer satisfaction level in the U.S. today relative to Europe? Is this improving?

Yes. So mid-single digits lower customer satisfaction rates in the companies that we took over that I would label as very solid companies in terms of the customer experience. We didn't acquire them solely because they were best-in-class in terms of their customer experience, but we acquired those companies specifically because of their dense store networks and their great positions with insurances.

So they really are also in a lot of positions where insurances are great partners that love to work with us. When you have one store in New York, one in Los Angeles and one in Florida, where a lot of other optometrists are, that doesn't make you very favorable with insurances. If you have a lot of practices in locations that are generally labeled health deserts or rural areas, you're much more favorable among insurances.

So having said that, we are in the right spot in the U.S. market. That's generally where there is a lower competitive environment, and that's also where we're going to continue to play, so specifically in the Greater Midwest. That's a very different competitive environment to, say, downtown New York City or L.A. or Miami. And that's where we feel very comfortable and where we will continue to expand and where we feel a lot of value can be added to the customer experience.

I've visited a lot of our practices there. And when you go to rural Minnesota or rural Nebraska or rural Wisconsin, there's not really a lot of people out there. So I think we're really doing a great job in improving the accessibility and affordability, not only of eyewear products, but also of the eye care there, and that's definitely something that we will continue to do.

Thank you. And then we have a follow-up question from Diana again.

Could you share with us the progress you have made in the progressive lenses space? I know it was one area where you were aiming to train the personnel in the store to be able to increase that product mix. And if I could squeeze one more in, in terms of smart or AI glasses, are you seeing any impact on the product mix from that as well?

Great questions, Diana. Thank you very much. So highly relevant question because the improving sales mix, especially in progressive lenses has actually been one of the biggest drivers of our EBITDA margin success story. So we said we're going to grow in Europe to 25% adjusted EBITDA margin. We did. And one of the most successful measures was really exactly what you mentioned. So really training our teams, making customers aware and then being able to see also the sell-through of progressive lenses.

So a far more complex product, product that takes more time, a product that really also requires more expertise, and we're super happy that we were able to deliver it. So yes, we set ourselves the goals to really improve this share, and we managed to improve that share, still upside, and that's also one of the drivers that we still see continuing in the coming years, especially in our mature markets.

With regards to smart glasses, so we've been following that topic, I would say, for nearly a decade. So you might remember Google Glass and so on. In my experience or my observation, smart glasses come and go in waves. So there's always these waves of excitement. We've seen multiple waves in the last decade of moving up and then it totally crashed and nobody bought smart glasses. I think now we see the first time a wave where smart glasses are here to stay. I believe that's the consensus in the industry.

So smart glasses have established themselves as a category. For now, in my personal view, smart glasses, I see them a little bit like sports sunglasses. So for me, right now, they are a category. We do offer smart glasses in around 150 stores and practices across our network. If they would be highly attractive, meaning if a lot of consumers would ask for them, we would have added them to all of our stores. So this speaks a little bit to the importance in the overall sales mix.

If I look at our store network specifically, you can see a very divergent demand pattern. So you can really see that different markets, such as the U.S. or different, let's say, regions, such as metropolitan regions, such as Detroit, where we operate a lot of stores in the Detroit metro area, this is really where you can see a lot of demand. In other markets, such as GSA, German-speaking regions, or also in other regions, let's say, if you go more to rural areas, I think customers still struggle with finding the use cases for it.

Maybe also interesting for you, I've just been to China last week to look at the landscape there. I visited the first smart glasses only store in Shenzhen metropolitan area. And I was speaking there with some optical retailers and asked them about the importance of smart glasses. So you really have a lot of technology companies betting on it.

Actually, China is a little bit further ahead, if you ask me in terms of the use cases that they provide. They have simultaneous translation. So you're basically having something like subtitles in your glasses. And those glasses, I think, will take another 1.5 to 2 years to come to the Western world because of the ecosystems. They currently only operate in the Chinese ecosystems, but it's only a question of time until those will come as well.

The optical retailers there that already have them, so that already have more advanced smart glasses, they are currently seeing a low single-digit share, and they expect it to rise maybe to 10%, and that's currently my perception as well. Our focus at Fielmann is to be ready, be it that they remain at a low single-digit share, they go to 10% or they go even to the high double -- or to the significant double digits as some others predict.

We are ready for that. We are offering smart glasses of all major brands in our store network, whatever works, we roll out. And obviously, a big field that we see is obviously the glazing, so providing the optical lenses and working with strategic partners because once you move from the camera glasses that you have today, meaning the lenses are completely normal, they are transparent into the display smart glasses or what they also call XR glasses, extended reality glasses, that gets very, very complex in terms of lenses.

It gets complex in terms of regulatory environment because those are medical products. And that's again something we feel very comfortable about, and we are working very closely together with some strategic partners to provide solutions there. So if you want to have screens in your glasses, that's, let's say, like a totally different level of complexity, but a very exciting future ahead.

So I think smart glasses is very exciting. Right now, they are a category. They are not a wearable yet. They might become a wearable, but it's a long way until they can replace smart glasses. All of this is possible. For now, they're a category, and I have yet to see the super convincing use cases that may make them a wearable. In metropolitan areas, some consumers in big U.S. metro areas and in some cities, like Barcelona and Southern Spain, we do sell them quite well, but generally not a mega trend yet for us.

Thank you. And then we have one question left from Mr. [indiscernible]. Could you please comment on the competitive landscape in Germany? You mentioned that you keep gaining market share, but has the pricing pressure increased? Last year, there was news on eyes + more is planning to expand aggressively in Germany. How has this impacted your business?

Well, I might be a little bit biased, but I would feel that Germany is the most competitive market for optometry and optical retail in the world. We are offering a free eye exam plus a full pair of glasses individually manufactured for EUR 18.90. I haven't found that, not even in China or other places in the world, at least not for the same and comparable product. So I think we are already the fiercest and most competitive market in the world.

As you mentioned, with 57% unit sales market share, I think we are managing quite well in that market, which is why we also love other markets that are a little bit less competitive and which is why we are very happy to grow there, but as we have shown in the last 5 years, as we have shown last year, and I feel also as we will show this year, we can not only survive, but also thrive in the most competitive market to us in the world.

And really last question from Mr. [indiscernible]. I would be interested to hear management thoughts on capital allocation, more specifically potential share repurchases, given your confidence in the long-term outlook, the strong cash position discussed earlier on the call and what appears to be a discounted valuation on the stock?

Well, no plans to do any share repurchases at the moment. And we're very happy to accumulate that cash. We're very happy to pay a great dividend to our great shareholders. And we're very happy that we are ready to act on M&A opportunities as they might arise. For us, no process running currently. But if they arise, we're very happy to be able to act on them very, very quickly and very convincingly. And I think that's part of my job description to provide our business with the opportunity to move and grow in all possible directions, and that's what we're doing.

Thank you. And this answer concludes our call for today. So thank you for your shared interest in the Fielmann Group. And with this, we wish you a lovely remaining week and say Goodbye.

Thank you. Goodbye.

Bye.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the Fielmann Group AG following the publication of the Q3 financial figures of 2025. I'm happy to hand over to Fielmann's CFO, Steffen Baetjer.

Thank you very much, Ingmar, and also a warm welcome from me from very, very exceedingly sunny Hamburg, which is a rare occasion. So we really should be outside and not sitting in here and doing the call. But obviously, it's a pleasure for us to present to you our 9-month figures and our Q3 results in this call following, as Ingmar said, the presentation and the release of the publication this morning.

Well, here's the -- Tobias, we're not so fast yet. We can't do questions now, but we do the questions at the end. So disclaimer, very important, obviously, for you to take note of that, should you listen to the recording. But with that, let's go to our 9 months and Q3 numbers in a nutshell. You're going to hear from me a lot about expectations and within expectation because really what we do, and I think what we stand for in terms of the dialogue that we're having with you guys and on the investor and analyst side is that we walk the talk.

So we're not a stock that super overperforms. We try to be not a stock that super underperforms. And therefore, you're going to see a lot of -- it's within expectation. The focus, remember, for this year is that we're really focusing on profitability, and we really want to change the profile, the profitability profile of Fielmann Group for good so that we have a more flexible P&L structure, and we can actually reap the benefits of that going forward.

Coming to our group sales, they increased by plus 9%. 4% of that is organic, 5% from the U.S. acquisition. You remember that in July 2024, we, for the first time, consolidated Shopko. So this is the effect of the first half year. In Q3 alone, there is only organic growth because we didn't do any acquisitions, and that's why the growth rate is slowly coming down, and we always guided that we expect for the group an organic growth of 4%, 5%, 6%.

So 4% within the expectation, as I said, within the framework that we presented to you, obviously, not at the upper end, but more on the lower end of that, but still within that guidance that we provided to you. Q3 at constant currency grew by 4%, all of which organic, as I said, U.S. grew 4%, Europe grew 4%. Very proud about that, that the U.S. returned to growth path. We had a lot of discussions, a lot of questions from you, what's going on in the U.S. and why is the growth a little sluggish?

And I explained that, that we're in the middle of a business model transformation, which is still ongoing, but very happy about us having returned to growth pattern there, and we come to that a little later. Relentless focus on profitability. And when every word -- as you can imagine, every word in this presentation is very carefully chosen. Relentless is exactly what we mean, a relentless focus on profitability. This organization has been working for the last 2 years to bring our profitability back up to where we think it should be.

Adjusted EBITDA up 18%, adjusted EBT also up 20%. So that has been the primary focus of what we're doing. And what I'm especially proud of is we managed to flexibilize costs that were previously deemed to be fixed costs like personnel expenses. And therefore, we have become -- we have gotten a much better and sustainably better P&L structure.

Adjusted EBITDA margins are exactly where they should be. We always said group 24%; Europe, 25%; the U.S. at 14%, not quite where we expected it for this year, but we changed our outlook for the U.S. and said, look, it's going to be more around the mid- to high teens than the 19%. And I think that still holds true. Adjusted EBT margin also improving compared to prior year. So very happy about that.

As already said, U.S. platform regained growth momentum, 4% year-on-year in U.S. dollar terms. And all that while we're changing the business model, which is a lot of preparation, takes a lot of attention from a lot of people on running a business at the same time building up doctor capacity because that's really what's missing.

And then at the same time, thinking about what should be our presentation of SVS and Shopko, our Fielmann USA business in the future that takes a lot of thinking and it's very difficult to do it all at the same time, but we obviously have to. As I said, we didn't manage so well in the first half year. But in Q3, we actually went back to growth. So we manage a little better. Our outlook for 2025, we're confirming.

On revenue, it's very simple. We're going to -- we have the 25% rule. So really, Q4 is typically around 24%, 25% of our yearly revenue. So if we multiply that all out, we get to the nearly EUR 2.5 billion. We're looking at EUR 2.450 billion, [ EUR 2.4 low 60s billion ] maybe for year-end. So there, we are confident that we are within that framework of nearly EUR 2.5 billion. And sellout structure, we're improving. We've optimized our personnel expenses. We're pretty cost conscious on overheads and that will drive margin expansion also in Q4.

So given that we have about -- among those personnel expenses and consulting and marketing, we have like a EUR 30 million saving more or less for Q4 compared to prior year. So we expect that the margin trend that we've seen so far during this year will be stable for the remainder of the year, and that's why we are confirming our outlook for 2025.

Let's go to the next page. These numbers are basically very happy and still very happy looking at it. Organic growth, as I said, 4%, 9% reported numbers, including the first consolidation of Shopko for half a year. EBITDA growth is great. EBT growth is great. Margins are within what we said. And as I said, we have built a better, more flexible P&L structure, which is going to help us for the future.

Let's look at sales in a bit more detail. Sales at around EUR 1.842 billion for the year so far, as I said, 25% -- that's around 75% for the year. So we're going to hit our guidance, albeit at the lower end of it. The 9% growth, I already dwelled on. So why don't we move on and look in more detail. Again, we have a growth across all product categories. These are reported numbers, so not organic numbers, 7% in eyewear, 9% in audiology, which you know is for the future, a big growth topic for us.

We were looking at -- we built our own business unit for audiology and really driving that as a real business unit with P&L profitability responsibility and all that. Sunglasses, probably a low-margin business for us or a lower-margin business for us. So still at 5%.

Contact lenses. In Europe, not so interesting. In the U.S., a very interesting business, 13%, 3% of that is organic, just so that you know. And obviously, adjacent healthcare services, which are the Eye Health Checkup in Europe and the optometrist services that we provide to the communities in the United States. All that is obviously growing because of our Shopko Optical consolidation. So very happy. We're growing across our product categories. And we're also growing across our main markets. So Germany, a little lower. We come to that when we talk about Q3, but a little lower than we would have hoped for. The U.S., obviously doing great. That is a consolidation effect. We come to that as well. And then Spain, still growing strong.

I mean bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger business, and they just maintain this 8%, 9%, 10% growth pattern, which is really great and keep the margin stable, which is fantastic. Spain -- sorry, Switzerland and Austria also doing great. We've been active there for many, many years and that's our plan for our German business as well once the economy recovers.

Poland. Also Poland is something that we're looking at for the next growth horizon also doing great at 14%. And then we have all the others that are also growing, which is quite nice. We excluded here compared to the report our Belarus operations that we discontinued 1st of January this year.

Looking at profitability for the group. We increased our margins by 1.7 percentage points on the 9 months compared to the prior year, which we like. The drivers are exactly what we told you, and that's why I'm saying it's -- yes, it's -- we walk the talk, and we do what we talk about. And you see it all within expectation. We have a favorable sellout structure. Those who have been with us for more than one call know that we always talk about that so that increases the gross margin. We have optimized our personnel costs or the deployment of our personnel in the shops, matching more the customer flow with our available opticians that really has a big impact on our margin.

And then we have operating leverage in other operating expenses we're also saving. And then we have a few effects in other costs and booking of currency factors, et cetera, et cetera that have a detriment effect on our margin. But overall, 1.7 percentage points, so almost 2 percentage points growth. That's second year in a row where we're growing at that speed, which we really like.

Looking at the individual countries. You know that picture. European margin at 9 months '25 at 24.8%. So very, very, very close. So there at the 25%, 24.8% is very close to 25%. U.S. margin doubled compared to 9 months prior year, almost to 14%, but definitely not where we would have expected it and wanted it. But as I said so many times to you, it's all homemade and it's being addressed, and that's great that we can change this. Adjusted EBT also at -- growing at 20% and the margin increasing by 1.1 percentage points. So overall, within expectation, happy with the numbers, happy that we're able to deliver what we promised to you.

Now let's look at Q3 in a bit more detail because Nils and I figured that you're going to ask some questions about that. There was a lot going on in Q3. So we did a little buildup for you just to explain it to you. So if we look at it at constant currency, which is important because the U.S. is now our second largest market. And obviously, the U.S. dollar is all over the place and it's going more south than north.

And so if we look at it at constant currency, we see a 12% growth for the group. We see -- of that, we see a 4% growth in organically, and we do see in -- that's half year 1. And in Q3, we also see a 4% growth. So, so far, for half year 1 and for Q3 are totally in line within our corridor of 4%, 5%, 6% organic growth that we announced for this year, albeit, as I said, at the lower end of it.

Why is that so? Well, let's look at our 2 biggest markets, Germany and the United States. Germany growing in H1 still at 5% at Q3 at 2%. That's definitely not within our corridor of expectations. We mentioned some of the reasons. Weather in August was really an extreme. We had heat waves and heat warnings in major parts of Germany. If it's super hot, then people, especially older people who buy hearing aids and progressive lenses and all that do not leave the home and nobody goes into the city center to go for shopping.

We've seen that the consumer sentiment was not great in Q1, picked up in Q2 and then really started diving again in Q3. So the disappointment with the German economy, the disappointment, I think, with the German -- new German government that was established within Q2 really taken hold of the population. Everybody was hoping for change for the better after 3.5 years of that coalition that we had before that, that didn't prove to be -- to show yet hopefully.

And therefore, consumer sentiment went back to where it was in Q1. And so we're faced with this slowing and especially when consumer sentiment goes down, people become a little more careful than when it's actually down. And then we obviously also talk to all of our lenses providers. We are actually performing in line with the market. So it's not us, it's the market. So we see a general demand weakness in the German glasses and spectacles and lenses market in Q3. And as I said, especially in August. September was actually pretty good.

For the U.S., well, you see H1 that not taken into effect, obviously, the consolidation number. The growth -- the organic growth in the U.S. was very, very little, somewhere between 0 and 1-point-something percent. So we're very happy being back at 4% in Q3. Obviously, it's great to be back at 4%. Obviously, that's not what we're aiming for. We're aiming more for the 7% to 10% growth ranges in the United States, but we do it step-by-step and quarter-by-quarter because remember, we are changing the business model at the same time and preparing.

And for us, having spent all that money on those acquisitions is a lot more important to get the business model transformation right and be ready for growth in -- during next year than having a great Q3 in 2025. Now unfortunately, there's something that we can't really influence and that's the U.S. dollar. So if you look at that slide that I just presented to you in actually converted euro terms, which is our functional currency, you see that the left-hand side, so the 12% and the 4% is totally unchanged. The 4% that we showed you for Q3 as a group went down to 3%.

Germany is obviously unchanged because we're doing euros. And the U.S. dropped year-on-year growth in Q3 from plus 4% to minus 3% because the U.S. dollar in Q1 was $1.05. In Q2, it was $1.13. And in Q3, it was $1.17. So almost a 10% depreciation of the U.S. dollar against the euro. And that's something that we just have to take and that we can't really compensate for because we're not going to grow -- we're not going to outgrow a devaluation of that sort, but we hope that everything will settle and that the dollar will return to its former strength.

If we then look -- so that basically these 2 trends. So Germany, mainly the weather and the consumer sentiment, which dampened demand in Q3 across the optical industry, plus the U.S. dollar development for the U.S. that really explains why growth in Q3 was a little subdued to what we have seen in the first half quarter. If we look at the other countries, you see that overall, all markets together really accelerated the growth compared to H1.

So Spain, you can't see it here, but it's like a point-something acceleration of growth. Switzerland, very, very visible; Austria, very visible; and all the other countries also. And if you measure it all up, then you see it's Germany and the U.S. and the rest is developing as it should be, and we're very happy with an accelerated growth trend in those countries. That's really what I can tell you about Q3 revenue development or sales development.

If we look at EBITDA, you see that 24.2% is our profile for this -- for Q1; 23.2% in Q2; slightly higher in Q3, 23.4%. And we continue to be working on the sell-out structure. We continue to be working on our optimized personnel deployment. We're still working on cost-conscious overheads. All these are tried and tested measures that we're going to implement also in Q4 and that's why we confirm our outlook, as I said, on the sales and of around 24% EBITDA margin for the group by the end of the year. As I said in this call, probably at the lower end of the spectrum, but still within the guidance that we've given you.

Looking at opportunities and risks, it's a bit strange in November doing this. The opportunities are mainly midterm, increased organic growth. We see the acceleration in countries like Spain and Switzerland and Austria. To be honest, we're going to see a certain push from Black Weeks and people actually going out and shopping in Germany. There's no risk of a heat wave anymore.

So we're going to see some organic growth there that's going to be a little higher than in Q3. We're going to see great potential for expansion in the optical retail, but that's more for next year, the U.S. and continued in Spain and Eastern Europe. And in hearing aids, as I said, new business unit established first results showing we're now completing the organization. We're really implementing a European Head of Hearing Aids, which we never had.

And then primary eye care is definitely a promising market in the U.S. and Europe, but that's more a long-term part, and we presented that to you as part of the Vision 2035 strategy -- strategic goals 2030 presentation that we held during the Capital Markets Day and Marc and I and the recording that you can still download on our website. The risks, as we always said, consumer sentiment is the biggest risk.

And in Germany and unfortunately or fortunately however you want to look at it, Germany is our biggest market. But if it comes back, it's going to come back. Skilled labor shortage is still a risk, but it's really been easing, a, because of the productivity gains that we implemented, the flexibilization of our personnel cost structure really helps here.

Trade conflict and tariffs. We still have it on there, although currently, it's decreasing in importance, but it's always easier to put a risk on than take a risk off. But we're monitoring it and things have settled more or less. But you never know. And then we talked about that a delay in execution of our business model transformation. We're totally on it. We're working on it. But as I presented at the Capital Markets Day, not -- we probably underestimated the time it takes to merge a couple of companies in the U.S., define the new structure, define a new management team, decide where to put it, decide how we're going to address the needs that are obviously there in that very, very promising market.

All that takes a little longer than we thought. So please bear with us and give us a couple more quarters. And then obviously, the U.S. for reported numbers, not really business risk, but for reported numbers, the U.S. dollar development, the forward curve for next year sees another 10% depreciation. But that's really -- well, it's a risk that I can't manage and it's a risk -- it's a translational risk. We're not really shipping money back and forth between the U.S. and Germany. So there's no transactional risk. Most of the contracts that we have with outside providers are in euros -- in dollar terms. So it's more a translational than a transactional risk for our reported numbers.

And with that, I'm still looking positively into the future. I think so far, if we take a few steps back and look at what this group has achieved over the last 2 years in terms of internationalization, in terms of margin profile, in terms of P&L structure, I'm still a very proud CFO and very happy to be here and talking to you and being able and having the privilege to present those numbers to you.

Thank you all very much for being in the call and your continued interest in the development of our group. As I said, it's a pleasure of representing Fielmann Group to you guys. And we're not going to hear each other on a call like this until April, but we're publishing, obviously, which conferences we are attending, and we either see you in Paris, Lyon, Frankfurt or New York over the next half year or 4 months and then we speak again soon. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a great weekend.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the Fielmann Group AG following the publication of the financial half year figures of 2025.

And with this, I'm happy to hand over to Fielmann's CFO, Steffen Baetjer.

Well, Ingmar, that was definitely the most enthusiastic entry we had in a long time. Thank you very much for that. And I think it's just -- it really given the way the company performed, I think this is the right -- setting the right tone, so to say. Welcome, everybody, to our earnings call for the half year 1 results that is the period ending 30th of June. Today is the 28th of August. We already published our preliminary numbers in just ahead of our AGM in -- on the 10th or 11th or something of July. So no real news but still we want to give you the opportunity to hear a little bit more on the numbers and definitely give you the opportunity to ask any questions you might have.

You are all aware that this is the half year 1 results call. We're going to host in September. We're going to host a more comprehensive session on our vision 2030 and -- or Vision 2035 and targets 2030 that we announced on the AGM, where we're going to peel the onion a little bit further for you and then say what does all that mean? Where does all the growth come from and what does that mean for margin and CapEx? And are these guys going overboard with acquisitions? No, we're not. But that is all September's meeting today is all about the earnings of the half year 1.

So let's jump straight to the summary. But we before we do that. I have with me Nils Scharwaechter and Nils Scharwaechter, most of you know maybe Nils, you turn on the camera. There is Nils. And Nils has been, as I introduce him to some of you as he was one of my guys. So working in the CFO office for Fielmann. He has been with the company 6 years then left us to do some equity research and came back. So I'm very happy to announce that mid of August, we promoted Nils to permanent full-time Director of Investor Relations.

Patrick Miller, who was with us for a few months, helped us tremendously in taking what we had telling us what normal companies should have helped us through the AGM, and he is now taking a well-deserved break and we thank him very much for everything you did for us and he basically helped Nils to jump into this position. And I'm actually super proud that somebody who, after school decided to do his first professional endeavor with Fielmann is now a director in our company and part of the senior management team.

Thank you very much for everything you've done, Nils. So far, good luck and very glad to have you on board, albeit in a different role.

With that, we go to the summary of the first half year in a nutshell. We continue our growth trajectory. We have a slight delay here. Yes. We continue our growth trajectory, we continue our margin expansion. We are in a challenging environment. Consumer sentiment is still -- because of everything that's going on is still difficult. Consumer sentiment in the U.S. First -- in the first quarter, we had a lot of snow, even a lot for upper Midwest standards, a lot of snow. And then we had Liberation Day right on the beginning of the second quarter. And all that was absolutely not helpful for consumer sentiment but it has picked up since in late May, June, it started to pick up. But still, across the world, a challenging consumer sentiment with -- we do have a strong development across all major markets. We have a very strong development across all product categories. So very happy with the numbers that we're producing.

We see that group sales increased by 12%, 4.5% of that organically, about 8% come from the U.S. acquisition. So Shopko that we consolidated fully for the first time on first July 2024. So with that, we're basically down to organic growth for the remainder of the year. I just want to flag that to you so that we don't expect all these big numbers. From now on quarter-by-quarter, it's going to be organic. 4.5% is good. It's not great. It's definitely at the low end. Over the last 5, 6 years, we delivered around 6% organic growth. But with 4.5% in that environment, we are satisfied Vision 2030, our target is around 5% organic growth in that part of the business. So we're kind of there. But as I said, it's definitely on the lower end of what we -- of the range that we're going to deliver.

Our group's adjusted EBITDA profitability. We always said, and I've been saying it for the last 2 years actually that I've been working for Fielmann to set my anniversary 1.5 weeks ago. So for the last 2 years, I've been saying we're working on profitability, we're working on profitability and we're working on profitability. Adjusted EBITDA improved significantly. Margin for the group is now at 24% after to 21% last year. Europe at 25%, U.S. at 15%, all with quite impressive growth rates, and that is the usual mix, that's the great news about our business. There are no news in terms of what we do. We're pulling the same levers that we've been pulling, cost control, efficiency in the stores, and improve -- continuously improving sellout structure and all that drives profitability for the business and gets us fully into the target corridor that we have.

Adjusted EBITDA, EBT, increased also substantially by 29%. Margin is now at 12.9% after 11% in the last year, and that is despite us adding EUR 300 million in debt, which obviously is not helpful for EBT. We have all the PPAs, so the acquisition-related write-offs of the intangibles. So despite all that, our margin is improving. And it's actually quite a nice pyramid shape that you want to have as a CFO. You want to have group sales at 12%, adjusted EBITDA by 26% and then adjusted EBIT by 29%. So you have this pyramid structure. The further down you go in your P&L structure, the higher the percentage growth rate that shows you that we are looking at operational leverage here, which is exactly what we're aiming for.

We confirmed -- and I know this is boring, but there are quite a few companies who didn't, we confirm our outlook that we published for the financial year 2025. So we're saying nearly EUR 2.5 billion sales, a 24% margin for the group. And looking at the results, you see why we do that. We have a slide later at the end of the presentation on that. And we announced Vision 2035 and targets for 2030 in our AGM. And as I said, in September, we're going to talk about that.

On the next slide, you see the numbers basically again, but in a much prettier shape. You see the total consolidated sales with the organic growth. CAGR actually for '23 to '25 was 12%. So we're pretty stable on the consolidated sales growth rate. CAGR for adjusted EBITDA was about 19%. Now this -- the last year, we were at 26%. So we see an acceleration but that's also acquisition-driven.

Q2 in profitability, we typically talk about year-to-date but Q2 was a bit lower but that's basically a phasing of our marketing expenses, we really held back with timing the marketing a little bit according to season, and that changes every year because we're not one of these companies who says, we always do this campaign then and then we do the other campaign then. So we face it a bit. So there's an EUR 8 million difference in marketing spend between Q1 and Q2. And if you factor that in for the Excel guys among you, that's the -- in other operating expenses, if you factor that in, then you see that actually the profitability across the quarters is pretty similar.

Product mix, we always -- if the sun is with us, and it was this year, especially in Germany if the sun is with us, we always have a slightly higher cost of goods sold in Q2 that's basically driven by more sun and therefore, more sunglasses and margin on sunglasses without prescription is lower than margin on glasses with prescription. And that's basically it because all the Northern European once the sun comes out, they come to Finland and they buy new sunglasses, which is great.

Adjusted EBT, we talked about 28% or 29% growth. The CAGR for the 2 years is 23%. So we see an acceleration. We see a stableness in the sales growth. We see an acceleration on the profitability growth, which is exactly what we wanted.

A bit more into detail. The top line growth or the top line increased by 12%. By now, everybody knows that song. Let's look at what we mean when we say all product categories and all in all countries. Here, you see the product categories. First, you look at it, and sunglasses is the only 1 category that helped me back by writing double-digit growth in all product categories. Sunglass is still at plus 9%. All other categories at double-digit growth. This is obviously mainly influenced by the Shopko Optical consolidation, especially the contact lens is because the contact lenses are strong product in the U.S. Organically, we put that here for your further information [indiscernible] the contact lens business at 25%.

And adjacent healthcare services, relatively small, high growth because all the eye exams we do in our U.S. practices as basically adjacent those eye exams done by the optometrists are actually adjacent healthcare services grew by 87%. Organically, it's still 50%, but that's because we really trying to broaden in the U.S., we're trying to broaden the availability of doctor appointment, and that's why that category growth. And it also grows because we have our eye care, eye health checkup in Europe and that is developing for quite nicely as well as undoubtedly you have heard about.

Growth in unit sales, eyewear 4%, some of that influenced by our U.S. acquisition. Organically, to be honest, SVS vision a bit struggling if you put together the SVS and Shopko and you treat them as if we acquired them all on day 1, you see a slight growth in unit sales in the U.S. and we're flat to slightly positive in unit sales. In Europe, as I said, very, very challenging consumer environment at the moment for us. So we're pretty happy that we're outperforming the market with our growth and that's partially by this growing slightly above 0, and it's partly because we're growing quite extensively as we do in countries like Spain and Austria, Czech Republic and Poland. We see that the economy is a lot more -- is a lot more vibrant. And therefore, we also see that we have a higher unit sales than, for example, in Germany.

Innovation is driving our adjacent eye health business. We have -- as I said, we have the eye care checkup and then we have the business in the U.S. and you might -- all these trends that you see here are basically the foundation for our 2030 targets. So these strategic growth drivers that you see on this page and that we talked about are basically the growth drivers that we're going to use to get to our 2030 targets. But as I said, that's more [indiscernible] September, I'm going to tell you story. So product categories overall, ignore sunglasses double-digit growth, we were very happy with that.

If we look at the individual markets, on the next page, you see the company growing, the group growing at 12%, obviously in the U.S. at 143%, that's driven by the Shopko Optical consolidation. I'm so glad that this consolidation part is over and we can talk about real numbers going forward. All the other countries, as you see 5%, 8%, 5% to 6%. So really a healthy development, think about where we stand and what the state of the world is and what market position we have. So you have an absolute market leader in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. And in these countries, we're still growing by 5% and 6% and outperforming the market overall.

We're still at mid-single digit, and that's, as we always said, 4% to 7% is our guidance for organic growth in Europe. The U.S. is now our second largest market, which is still driving the integration of the businesses. So I said earlier, in Q1, we were done with the systems integration. So the management team integration. Now it's all about business model transformation. We're trying out a few things and identify the winning formula for the U.S. but still all that integration really drives profitability as you will see on one of the later slides that the profitability has really improved quite dramatically. And actually, we're higher in the U.S. profitability now than we were individually in those companies when we acquired them.

Spain and Portugal, still our high-growth dynamic. Countries, they are outperforming the market. I always said the great thing about our country portfolio is not only that we touch the lives of a few hundred million people but -- and help them to hear and see the beauty in the world better but we also have a great portfolio of countries in terms of very, very mature market-leading companies in U.S.A and then some really hot growth engines in Spain and Poland and then some next-generation growth countries like the Czech Republic.

In others, that's basically where you're going to find Poland. You're also going to find Italy. They have returned to growth. We closed quite a few stores there because we had to review our profitability profile, and it was not a profitability profile. It now is still mid-teens in terms of profitability for the year and Italy has also now returned to growth after the store closures. So they're only 2%, but still after everything the country went through, it's pretty great. And we are continuing to become more and more international, 39% of sales are generated outside Germany, and that's just because of the U.S. dollar that depreciated against the euro quite dramatically. Otherwise, we would have hit our target of 40%. But in 2023, we were at 30%, so quite a dramatic increase in out of Germany sales, which helps us to be a lot more balanced across the global economy.

Looking at profitability on the next slide, significant margin improvement. I told you all that. You read about it. Yes, Europe at 24.8%, so 25%, the U.S. at 15%. Europe is going to be there or thereabout for the end of the year. We said that in our guidance for the year. The U.S. is going to improve a little bit, definitely not to 20%, somewhere between 16% and 18%, 19%-ish, that's where the U.S. is going to land. So they're going to improve further and further and thinking about that they came from just under 10% by the end of 2024, ending up at mid-teens, high mid-teens is going to be a great success, and we're very happy with adjusted EBT, I think [indiscernible].

Looking at half year numbers, we also look at the balance sheet. Pretty happy, actually very happy. You need to move that finger away from the numbers. Yes, thanks. Cash generation in the first year, we had a bridge facility for about EUR 305 million, and we refinanced EUR 275 million. So despite that decrease in financial debt, which we paid out of cash, we still have EUR 100 million more cash at hand than we had at the year-end. We're going to pay a dividend of about EUR 96 million. So first half year, we worked for [indiscernible]. Second half, we're working for the company to provide the company with enough cash to grow and invest.

Net debt to EBITDA, so unadjusted EBITDA. So our leverage is at 1.1, if you adjust it for the dividend that we then paid like 2 weeks after the cutoff date, it's still 1.2 coming from 1.7, so pretty dramatic deleveraging, and that's all because of the strong cash generation, the EBITDA growth. So two-pronged approach. We're actually paying down debt. We're actually accumulating cash and we're growing the EBITDA at the same time, and that's how we delever the business. You know that in terms of leverage, our policy is we feel very comfortable with anything that has -- that is below 2. And yes, we're at the lower end of that, and that is including leases, and so the major part is leases.

Our equity ratio improved and jumped over to above the 40%. And then one of the bigger effects for those who look in detail at the balance sheet is the currency translation. So euro to U.S. dollar, U.S. dollar depreciated from 1.04 against the euro in December to 1.17, and that really drives a decrease in intangibles, goodwill and right-of-use assets, AKA rent or leases or whatever you want to call it. That effect decreases our balance sheet by EUR 45 million alone just because of that currency translation effect. But as I said, it's all only one time event, it's [ translation ] and not transactional.

On the next page, looking at our cash flow. Cash flow statement is mainly impacted by the U.S. acquisition and obviously, the growth in the business. Operating cash flow jumping from EUR 198 million to EUR 236 million. The main difference here is slightly lower cash conversion. We paid out bonuses. So slightly higher bonuses. So the provisions went down, the cash went out. So the cash conversion rate between operating cash and EBITDA moved from 86% to 83%, still a very high cash generation. And the driver behind the growth is the EBITDA improvement because we're a cash on transaction business. People get their glasses and they pay. And then, yes, we deal with health insurances and all that but the major part is cash on delivery and that great for a very healthy cash flow profile.

In the U.S., we actually take down payments on ordering. So we actually have a slightly -- we actually have a positive working capital effect from growth there. So -- but that was too small what you see. Cash flow from investing activities EUR 37 million, prior year was EUR 15 million. If we just look at the maintenance and growth CapEx, remember, we paid for the Shopko acquisition on the 1st of July. This is the 30th of June. So it's not a year. If you just look at maintenance and growth CapEx, we are this year at EUR 37 million. Last year, we were at EUR 33 million, and that is basically in line with our growing business. And then the prior year, why is the prior year EUR 15 million when you already spent EUR 15 million for maintenance and growth CapEx? Well, because we had disposals and we had basically securities and EUR 2 million [ provisions ] basically to generate the cash, and that was a EUR 18 million cash inflow. So EUR 33 million, minus EUR 18 million is the EUR 15 million. And this year, we didn't do any of that in a significant manner. So it's EUR 37 million and this year's EUR 7 million, it's 0. So that's why you have EUR 37 million and EUR 15 million.

Cash flow from financing activities all over the place, minus EUR 100 million this half year, plus EUR 96 million last year, well, we paid our Shopko acquisition on the 1st of July but to make sure that we can pay on the 1st of July, we -- last year, we had to increase our debt by, as I said, initially EUR 280 million, and that was the cash inflow. And this year, we basically repaid the debt. We raised the Schuldschein. That's a promissory note that should -- I think everybody knows Schuldschein. So that's basically what we did here in financing. And then we have the repayment of leasing liabilities, and that's in line with our growing business. So we remain highly cash generative. We have a high-quality balance sheet that still may be on the lower end of the leverage, and we're pretty happy with that more conservative approach.

Risks and opportunities for this year that we see. Well, opportunity would be a strong organic growth in our established European markets. You see it in those markets, we are really doing good in those markets that have a more vibrant economy like Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, that's where as soon as that happens, it has a direct impact on us. Germany, it's still a bit of a problematic case, and we're obviously still fully dependent on Germany. So let's hope that sentiment improves. We still do have great potential for expansion in optical retail in the U.S. and Spain, Eastern Europe and hearing aids. Hearing aids, you see it. Spain and Eastern Europe, you see it as well. In the U.S., as I said, we're trying out things. We're in the middle of the business model transformation.

So for us, we don't think quarter-by-quarter. We think more longer term for us, laying a proper foundation and really, really addressing the U.S. market in the right way will help us in the long run to really reap the benefits and bring the U.S. to where we want them to be, which is a strong organic grower with a margin that's very similar to our European businesses. So -- and that's what we're doing at the moment. One of our more senior management team members is now -- has now transferred to the U.S. He was our Strategy Manager. He has now transferred to the U.S. and is living there and working there and basically running the business model transformation together with the U.S. leadership team. Our Chief Sales Officer, Bastian Koerber, is spending now about 10 days a month in the U.S. to help with that. So we really have full focus now on the business model transformation in the U.S., and that will bring us a tremendous joy and potential for expansion in the future, probably only 1/4 of that this year, if at all but definitely for the future.

And primary eye care is still definitely a promising market. You see that we're growing. You probably listen to what we said at the AGM or the strategy recording that Marc and I did and where we also talk about this as being a small but very important piece of what we're going to be doing over the next 5 years.

Risks unchanged. Consumer sentiment is the biggest impediment where we made the growth. Skilled labor shortage is becoming more and more an issue that we have under control. Trade conflicts and tariffs, well, for now, the EU and the U.S. where we have a deal. Our industry analysts said, they signed the deal, and it has very little impact on the optical industry. And we always said that, that at the moment, we don't see any problems there. But let's see how long those agreements hold before we're happy. But at the moment, I would say, trade conflict and tariffs are going a little bit down on the risk -- the biggest risk remains by far the consumer sentiment.

Now let's get to our outlook for 2025 at the last slide. We're totally on course to achieve our targets. Customer satisfaction is where it should be. Our customers are happy, and that's great because happy customers talk about their experience and happy customers return. Unit sales at EUR 4.7 million. So we said around EUR 9.5 million. I talked about the reasons. And so we're confident to get into that direction. Total consolidated at nearly EUR 2.5 billion, and I can fully confirm that. Consensus is about EUR 2.47 billion, and that's -- we think along those lines as well.

Adjusted EBITDA of around EUR 580 million at a margin of about 24% with a European margin around 25% and the U.S. margin being in the high mid-teens. So we are confirming that and the adjusted EBITDA margin increased by -- we said because we didn't know how all that financing and the acquisition goodwill impairment write-downs and all that work. So we said it's going to grow at a similar rate, while it's been growing 1.7% so far. So we're pretty confident in that. So we are one of the companies who basically say, yes, we -- it's end of August, and we confirm our targets for the year.

And with that, I came to the end of my short presentation, and we have a bit of time for Q&A, and I hand over for that to Ingmar.

Yes. Thank you very much for the presentation, and we will now be happy to answer your questions in a couple of minutes.

[Operator Instructions] And we have received a couple of questions. Mr. Abbott, you should be able to speak now.

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay. Excellent. Yes, you usually like for us to limit our questions to 2. So I'll do my best. And the first question, it's a multicomponent but it's regarding -- all regarding the U.S. I mean we saw the Q2 sales number actually down versus Q1. Could you give us an indication how much of this was FX translation effect, whether there are normal seasonality patterns here and kind of what measures you're taking and what you expect in the coming quarters there? And then I'll ask my second question.

Yes. U.S., as I said, it's interesting environment. Q1, we were still up against the weather, which was a lot worse than usual in the Midwest, and that means a lot. And definitely, Q2 Liberation Day, so President Trump's announcement of the magic formula for tariffs didn't really help a lot for, a, the stock markets. And you know how dependent the Americans are on the stock markets for everything in their life, especially retirement. So that wasn't helpful. That really knocked down consumer sentiment. So we could instantaneously feel that people were hitting the brakes going into full backward throttle to say, look, we don't know what's going on with the economy with my personal income. So we'll be very cautious with what's going to happen here. So we really sense that. So your sentiment is right.

We've seen that consumer sentiment came back up beginning mid-May, June looked better, July looks better. We still revised downwards internally our expectation for the U.S. sales because we just had to. And then obviously, the FX effect was also not helpful. So overall, I'd say not the greatest year for our U.S. experience. Plus, as I said, we're in the middle of changing the 2 companies into one and changing the way they do business. So that obviously also leads to a bit of distraction. But midterm, so next year, the year after, we're still very, very confident that we've done the right thing and working on it. And we see the margin expansion at least. And then once we're through with the business model transformation, we're going to see an uptick in U.S. sales as well.

But are you gaining, losing market share? Do you have any insights there?

We see -- well, total U.S. market share is...

No, I mean in your region, sorry, in Europe.

Yes, no. I just wanted to say we're under 1%. So if we take the European levels, we still have 30% to go. We do see that our competitors are actually reporting higher organic sales or growth figures than we are. We're looking at that. We do see -- we're looking at day 1 conversion rates, which is one of the primary key indicators for us, which basically means how many people come out of the optometrist's office with a prescription and how many of those file it with us or leave immediately on the same day or how many leave and then come back or go somewhere else. We see that, that number is actually pretty stable, slightly trending downwards, which would be an indicator for losing market share.

Our biggest issue at the moment is doctor availability. So we're specializing on the more rural parts of the upper Midwest, which is great when you're there and you're running because there's not a lot of competition, which is not so great if one of your doctors retire or leaves the area and moves to a city, then it's very hard to attract doctors to work there. And once you don't have doctors, then you don't have a prescription and then that's not great for sales, and that's currently the biggest issue.

We're now -- we did a lot of hiring over the summer. We now have after Labor Day, which is, I think, next Monday or the Monday after next. We actually have the highest availability of doctor hours ever. So we expect the business to pick up. But yes, so far, we're seeing lower numbers in our numbers than what our competitors are reporting for the U.S.

Okay. Okay. So -- but you did feel obviously the FX effect in that quarter, the translation.

Yes, yes, of course. Yes.

Okay. And for the group as a whole, my second question, please. I mean, you addressed.

That was a very long first question.

No, I know, I'm sorry, I really -- I'll be done. And you said -- you said, as we know, clearly, FX effect is all about organic sales growth. And to achieve that your guidance or stay where this level is where you felt comfortable with. You're going to need 5%, 6% growth in the second half, more towards the upper end of half of that. So I just wondered what you -- what underlines your optimism at this stage being in mid-August or end of August. with that number?

We're going to see a pickup in the U.S. sales, and we're going to -- and we do have quite a few campaigns going on now after the summer coming out in our -- well, in Germany and in all our markets basically. I just -- this morning, I had a forecast meeting with sales and yesterday, we really go through each country and say, what are the activities? We just closed out. We talked about extensively about the July results, all of which I'm not going to share but I'm going to tell you that nearly EUR 2.5 billion is what I see currently in the numbers that I have as a forecast for this year.

Thanks for your question. Well, Mr. Abbott was raising his hand right in the beginning of your presentation. So...

Making sure. That's how we know, [ Craig. ]

Okay. So we move on to the next participant. Mr. Rossi, you should be able to speak now and place your question, please.

I hope you can hear me well.

Yes.

So the first one is just to come back on the U.S. So I heard that you were expecting a pickup in sales in the second half of the year. And I recall that during the call in May, you were saying that almost 85% of the margin improvement was coming from organic growth. So in a worst-case scenario, have you planned any contingency measures or mitigation measures in case of maybe a less optimistic scenario in case of a prolonged adverse consumer sentiment there? So that's my first question.

And the second one is regarding your -- the rollout of your teleoptometry platform. Could you share with us any KPIs or what do you see in terms of customer profiles? Were you able to attract a new profile of customers? Or what's the conversion rate there?

Sorry, the rollout of?

Yes, your teleoptometry platform, the eye health checkups and so on.

Okay. Yes. Yes. Definitely can talk about that. So number one, the U.S., if something happens and what are our mitigating measures? Well, first of all, we know that the U.S. is a big market and it's a big investment for us, and we definitely want to make it work. We know that we are basically in the U.S. trying to change the way the Americans are going to experience visiting their optometrists and their opticians. So we know this is not a quick fix, and we know it's going to take a while to do that. So any mitigating actions we're going to undertake cannot harm or impede the long-term development of the business. So firing opticians is not is not on the menu. Firing doctors is not on the menu. Accelerating in making them more efficient is definitely on the menu, and that's why we're shipping quite a few people from Germany to the U.S. to consult and help there.

As I said, one strategy manager working there and our CSO basically being there to consult and to meet and to help and guide and do whatever you do as a Board member when you're looking at your second largest market. And mitigating actions that we have are relatively limited in the U.S. In this case, we're still bringing together the 2 organizations. And yes, we took a risk, as you say, in the U.S., so a reduction in force, but we still see here and there people that we can let go, mainly in the back-office departments like the insurance handling, the finance. We're becoming more and more integrated and working on that. So that's number one.

And number two is marketing expenses where we're getting -- where we're becoming a lot more selective in how we spend it. And then -- and number three is being a little more careful in terms of expansion because obviously, if we're in the middle of changing the business model and a new store is going to lose money even in the U.S. for the first 10, 11, 12 months, then it doesn't make sense to accelerate that expansion now. So also that we always said for the last 1.5 years at least that we said, look, we bought these 2 companies now, let's bring them together, let's make them work before we continue expanding on that, and that's what we're doing. So these are the 3 mitigating levers that we have and that we're actually pulling.

The optometry platform, our eye health checkup, you -- we showed that in the AGM. I think we also showed that in the strategy review recording that we posted in July on our website, you see that we're getting to more and more customers are actually excited about that. And we're growing at quite tremendous rates, but that's because it's still a low level but we are now at over 200 eye health checkups that we've done. In Europe, we're obviously doing all the stuff in the U.S. where everybody has to see an OD before they get a prescription. But in the U.S. -- in Germany and Europe, we actually -- we're attracting a lot of customers.

So far, it's mainly customers who are in store anyway. So we're not there yet that we see a lot of people coming in our stores and who have never been at a Fielmann. But quite frankly, that's very difficult in Germany because we have 56% market share in units. So finding somebody who's never been to a Fielmann is difficult for us. But we're happy with the development. We're going to expand it, and we're definitely pursuing our idea of turning this into a pan-European platform for all sorts of opticians and yes, and making good headway there.

And we move on to the next participant, [ Ms. Gomez, ] you should be able to speak now.

Could I -- very helpful clarification so far and [ Craig ] actually still one of my questions. But if I could clarify on the marketing spending. So it was a little bit higher in the first half. I understand that you were mentioning -- calling out some of the summer campaigns that help give you confidence for the sequential acceleration we should see in the second half. Does this mean that marketing expense cost will be also sequentially higher in the second half to support that growth in the U.S. and also in your core markets like Germany? That would be my first question, just as a clarification.

Yes. Well, I said that marketing cost in the second quarter were EUR 8 million higher than in the first quarter because just of the phasing of those -- yes, of the campaigns. And let me just -- if you're asking a specific question, and I happen to have the file here, let me just -- if you give me a minute, I'll just look it up so that I give you the precise number and then I don't lie, which I shouldn't. Just a second. Look, we just finished the -- as I said, we just finished the forecast. And so far, we spent in marketing, for the year, we spent EUR 44 million first half year. And our forecast for the year is about EUR 84 million. So we're not going to see -- we're going to see targeted marketing expenditure but we're basically going back to first half year like second half year.

So EUR 44 million to EUR 84 million, slightly less marketing expenditure, which is obviously an answer to -- is a mitigating action to slightly less enthusiastic growth in our sales.

I appreciate that. And then if I could just go into the cash allocation priorities. So in terms of the dividend payout policy, we are seeing a reduction year-over-year. Just if you could give a little bit more color into the thinking in the short term. I would assume there's a focus on, obviously, the debt payments that are there, but any other insights would be helpful in terms of how you are planning for the rest of the year?

Sure. Our dividend policy is we want to have our investors obviously participate in the success and the growth of our company. we're looking at payout ratios of the profits attributable to shareholders of in the 60%. We've been doing this last year. We've been doing this year. We will be doing it usual caveats apply but we will be doing this next year. We increased our dividend payout by 15% because our profitability grew by 15% from '23 to '24. So that's basically how we look at it. We say if the company grows and the profitability increases, then unless we do something major, we should be having our investors participate in that.

You've seen our leverage profile. You've seen our target. So we have to keep -- to be within our target range of leverage, we have about 0.9% or 0.8% after dividends in headroom. So multiply this with EUR 580 million in EBITDA, that gives you the debt capacity that we have to -- should we do something. So I don't really see that the dividend for the next years is under any imminent danger unless something really, really, really big comes along. But so far, we're pretty happy with the profile that we have.

I personally feel we're slightly at 1.1, we're probably at the lower end of our target range for leverage. So I think before we're cutting dividends, we should be increasing debt, which will better utilize our balance sheet that we have and that is super stable. That's how I look at it. So no imminent danger for your dividend payments.

Well, thank you. And in the meantime, we haven't received any further questions. So everything appears to be answered by now. But should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. We, therefore, come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you for your shown interest, and a big thank you to Steffen for your presentation and the time you took to answer the questions. It was a pleasure to be your host today, and I wish you all a lovely remaining week.

And with this, Steffen, I hand back over to you for some final remarks, which concludes your call for today.

Well, we definitely want to have, Ingmar, more. We want to have more Ingmar than grumpy Germans on the call. So thank you very much, Ingmar, for being our host. Yes, thank you all for joining. Thank you very much for your questions. Thank you very much for the continued dialogue that we have with each of you between meetings and conferences. I know that I sometimes have to be a grumpy German but I definitely enjoy the exchange with you and you give us a lot of food for thought. You know that we've been changing the way we do Investor Relations over the last year. I hope this format is now great for you.

We have Nils, who is a great guy, so reach out to him. And then we look forward to the next highlight, which is a mere 3 weeks ago away, and that's on September 17 in Frankfurt, you can join us in person or online for our Capital Markets Day/Analyst Day where we're going to really, really spend a lot of time on, a, your questions; and b, definitely on Vision 2035 and the targets for 2030. And we hope to see and hear you there. Thank you very much for your continued interest.