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Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Geox First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions].

Let me introduce you today's call, speakers, the Group CEO, Mr. Francesco Di Giovanni; and the CFO, Mr. Andrea Maldi.

Geox would like to remind that any forward-looking statements disclosed during this call involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ significantly from what is expressed or implied. Many of these factors are beyond the group's control. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Francesco Di Giovanni, CEO of Geox. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, indeed. Good evening. Thank you all for joining us today. We're going to talk about the first quarter 2026 results. The first quarter of 2026 recorded a 3% sales decline versus our budget across all sales channels and geographic areas. This represented a 12.5% sales decline compared to the same period of last year. On a more comparable basis, however, such a decline was 10.3% in when we included the impact of decisions taken to close some less relevant stores and certain nonprofitable digital channels.

While the performance of the wholesale brick and mortar and web channels was expected as a consequence of the 2026 December, Spring-Summer campaign, and therefore, included in our budget the performance of the retail channel was well below our initial expectations. Although the trend had begun in the second half of 2025 is dramatically intensified in the first month of the current year. The consequence is a widespread drop in traffic, both for us and for the market of approximately 8.8% of which 8.1% in our regular stores and 10.1% in our outlet that according to our collection can be observed across the entire sector.

Despite the decrease in sales, the initiatives of rationalization and cost efficiency we implemented during the second half of last year, and now generating savings in the operating cost structure of about EUR 10 million in the quarter. These savings contributed to record in the first quarter and adjusted EBITDA higher than budgeted and give us confidence that the group we'll be able to confirm the forecast set out in the budget approved in December, both in terms of operating margin, adjusted EBIT margin equal to approximately 2.3% -- 2% to 3%, sorry, and the reduction in bank debt compared to 2025.

We expect indeed the bank debt to settle in the range of approximately EUR 60 million to EUR 7 million (sic ) [ EUR 70 million ] by the end of the current year also supported by the planned optimization of production and inventory management and working capital cash flow. I also want to emphasize, however, that focusing on the industrial processes and cost containment is not the only leverage that management is pursuing.

Although it is essential in order to enable the group moreover under unfavorable market conditions to invest in its future. On the contrary, we are focusing much of our efforts on our top line. To this extent, we have brought back to the center of our group strategy, R&D -- our R&D capabilities, leveraging on our expertise in technological innovation, which have always defined the brand heritage values and this historical success. We are now about to launch on the market revolutionary solutions, which will initially be distributed by our own retail network.

Moreover, over the past few months, a very intensive work. We developed the Spring-Summer 2027 collection that will be presented to our international sales force next week. The stated the collection, which is combined with the technological context of JOC products has been entrusted that we are globally renowned design studio, which is an international benchmark in footwear design with a goal to bring revenue creative and sonic energy to the Geox brand offering a much shorter time to market of our profits.

In an increasingly complex global environment marked by conflict, instability, uncertainty. We continue to closely monitor recent market development. Although these dynamics have added thus far a relatively marginal cost impact on our operation which we have so far managed to absorb and that are reflected in our first quarter results as well as in our current year forecast. We believe that any further deterioration of the geographical geopolitical landscape is likely to affect the top line performance as a consequence of plastic deterioration in our reference markets.

For this reason, we consider it essential to maintain a prudent approach, combining growth in higher-margin products, distribution channels and markets with the continuous optimization of processes and cost containment. I thank you very much for your patience. I will now turn the floor over to Andrea Maldi who will go through our financial performance in greater detail and very willing to get your questions at the end of the presentation.

Thank you, Francesco, and good afternoon, everybody. Thank you also because of just gave us a quite precure so the main financials that have characterized the period of the 3 months 2026. I will try to deep dive a little bit more on Sales and Channel to give you further color on the specific performance of our internal distribution. As we discussed from the very beginning, the sales as of March '26 set at the level of EUR 165 million, with a decline of EUR 23 million compared to the period of last year, which is 12.5%.

And as already mentioned by Francesco, if you look at a comparable basis, taking off for the perimeter effect of the reduction of shops and some of the marketplace platform, which were not profitable, the decline is going down to 10%. We have different speed of declining or improving along the different channels. If we start from the wholesale physical rickets, really the results of 8% negative, which is representing a value of business of EUR 68 million versus the EUR 74 million of the previous year, is mainly driven by registering the initial orders of the campaigns pre-summer 2026 that is done last year, and it's already factor in our budget and forecast numbers.

So no surprise on the wholesale. We are simply registering what's going on in terms of the invoicing process of the order that we have already captured. At the same time, we need to register the decline of the wholesale web which is quite significant over the quarter, EUR 11 million out of the EUR 36 million that we have registered in the 2025. And this is mainly driven by different kind of reason. First of all, we have the strong impact of the Russia platform, mainly referring to an important customer, which is [ Walbrecht ] has really declined significantly and due to the different kind of geopolitical situation, the investment, just to give you some numbers, if you see that back in -- at the end of 2023, beginning of 2024, discussed was having orders with Geox for about EUR 10 million per season. We are now forecasting an entire 2021 (sic) [ 2025 ], just EUR 1 million of sales.

So it's another important element to mention when you look at the wholesale web platform that is clearly the cleaning of some of the off-price sales. When we say cleaning, we mean our approach to a more consistent omnichannel market go-to-market strategy, where we have clearly understood that some of our sales in the off-price were clearly affecting the consistency of the price and sales coming from the other distribution channels.

At the same time, we still have some other important platforms which are growing within this kind of decline in platform. And we are clearly working strongly on the offering strategy and segmentation to cover more consistently the kind of platform like Amazon, where we are able to improve our performance strongly in the distribution channel.

If you look at the retail, retail has been a bit of hit over the quarter because we have reached a value of EUR 36 million against the EUR 61 million of the previous year, same period. And the main impact, as already discussed by -- represented by Francesco, has been driven by a difficult traffic. Difficult traffic, which has affected the entire period in the range of 8% decline compared to last year, which has really given us the heat of the EUR 5 million of lower performance which are clearly a gap compared to the 2025 business but are representing a gap also with our budget assumption where we were forecasting a much better traffic.

And despite we are confirming our operational excellence in the shops, given by the fact that our conversion rate. So our capability to transform in sales has been strong over the internet of our shops, not only in Italy, but globally speaking and mainly in the Europe market. The overall set of this kind of different speed in the different channels, as we discussed, gave us a hit of EUR 24 million, which has been clearly accepted during the quarter by a stronger capability of the deliver cost control and action to reduce the impact of the loss of the margin in the range of EUR 10 million.

And we are also having, let's say, and a better-than-expected , let's say, payback and payoff of the action that we took back in 2025 in order to prepare and to set the business in 2026. If we move for a while from the channel view to the geographical footprint, which is discussed and presented in Page 8, we can see that Italy, which is clearly a market stand alone in terms of weight on overall business of EUR 55 million -- EUR 53 million against EUR 55 million done in 2025 is down 4.6%. Europe, which is clearly all the rest of the main European market is down significantly from 86% to 75%, 11.7%, and we are mainly impacted by the Dach area which is clearly confirming a negative trend and a good trend.

And France, which is delivered experiencing a deterioration of the performance overall across all the channels. On the other side, we have to register when we look at Europe, the positive cost like-for-like performance in all countries with the exception in the first 3 months of the funds. If we look at the rest of Europe, the decrease is in the region of the EUR 11 million. And clearly, it's mainly represented by our operation in countries, which are clearly under a stability from the geopolitical conditions that are globally impacting the business.

Worth to mention, clearly, as we discussed before, the decline of Russia, mainly on the wholesale, not in the shops, which are providing working properly and providing quite a good set of performance, as we said, mainly in the wholesale platform, as we discussed before. I would like just to bring you a little bit to the Page 10, when we discuss -- where we discuss the overall reamer distribution network evolution. As you can see, we are continuing our review of the distribution of our shops, direct and indirect.

We are in March 2026 at 562 overall manage shops against the 570 at December 2025. And if we look back at the first 3 months of 2025. The gap is quite important because we were running on average of 594. This is mainly driven by a selected approach in reviewing the operations with the aim of improving profitability across the P&L of Group level, which is quite paying back because, as you can see, when we discuss the overall recoverability of costs that we have done in 2025 and in 2026 in the first 3 months, which is -- this is also driven by the saving of costs where we've been able to cut investment or costs which we are not directly profitable or we are in a way deteriorating our target margin that we are [indiscernible].

If we look at the financial review, clearly, we also discussed the working capital, which as of March -- March 2026, is setting the value of EUR 140 million. which is not far from December 2025, EUR 135 million and pretty much a bit lower than March 2025, where we're at the level of EUR 144 million. As you know, we are deeply impacted on the working capital discussion by our seasonability, which is clearly impacted by the way we manage business in the first 3 months of the year and in the first 3 months or the second half of the period, we are normally transferring moving from inventory to sales and to receivable the season that we have purchased.

And the 3 months, we are monetizing the cash of the sale plus the retail performance. Having said that, and considering the fact that the working capital is measured against the 12-month rolling sales, we need to register an increase in terms of percentage from 22.3% to 24.1% despite inventory quality and inventory stock level is getting better. EUR 160 million against the EUR 205 million in the same period of the 3 months of 2025 and the rest of payable and receivable are moving accordingly to our conditions. I think that having -- taken into consideration on what we have discussed with Francesco myself and with the deep dive overall of the business.

We are looking at 2026, and we are overall in the year, and we are able to confirm the target in terms of EBIT margin adjusted compared to our expectations and our previous communication to the market. At the same time, we are forecasting a bank that in the range of EUR 60 million to EUR 70 million with an improvement compared to our initial expectation and -- which is in a way that the proof of concept of the fixing restructuring organization that we are doing overall in the business model.

And despite we need to reduce cereal a decline in sales, which is moving in the area compared to 2025 in the area of the mid-high single digit. I think that, just to close, as we already mentioned, and as Francesco registering some of the strong initiatives that we are carrying over, we are still working deeply on finalizing the review of our business plan. And we will announce in the future when we will be ready, considering also the fact that we are -- we need to take into consideration the evolution of the geopolitical situation that is impacting globally in the world. Thank you very much, and we can open the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions]

First question is from Oriana Cardani, Intesa Sanpaolo.

Thank you for taking my four questions. The first one is about current trade. Can you give us some details on the trends that you saw in April start of May. The second question is on the first quarter sales performance by category. Is there a significant difference between men's women's, children's and between the premium and the value segment. And on the positive side, were there any product lines that stood out.

The third question is about the potential reaction to the current macroeconomic uncertainty on the CapEx plan. So are you considering modifying your investment plan? And could you please remind us your budget for the in terms of size and type. And finally, regarding the product strategy, you have announced the decision to hire a new external studio to innovate the style. But in the meantime, the macro scenario has deteriorated and can further deteriorate. So do you think that more structural changes to the product may be necessary in the future, for example, of thinking the range focusing on some segments, but a more resilient or something like that. Thank you.

Should we answer this one question at a time? Or should we collect all the questions and then answer? Okay. Well, let me take the last one. This is Francesco. Let me take the last one, and perhaps give you a glimpse on the other two questions you asked regarding CapEx profile and products that we suffer the most.

As far as the strategy is concerned, to get along an external design. This is a decision that was taken back in November 2025. And the reason for that is actually to or even more manifold. The first one is that the -- we had put a more focus on our style in as much as our style was for a good portion of it. The consequence of a very long industrialization process that had the features in the company, i.e., to take from the design of the collection to the production of the samples to the final production of the collection and the delivery to both our wholesale customers and our retail customers, it took approximately between 18 and 24 months.

As a consequence of that, our collections were historically not updated in terms of colors, in terms of shape, in terms of offer compared to the competition. The decision to go along with an external designer was, therefore, to get -- to try to get as close as possible in terms of time to market to where our competitors are. And that was a very important decision in the process. Now that carried with it a number of risks, which we have mitigated internally, because we have accelerated the process, the industrialization process. And we indeed, next week, as I anticipated, are going to present to our international sales for the new collection for Spring-Summer 2027.

This has been done in a record number of months compared to 24 months approximately of the previous process. Is there any change that is suggested by the current or more in the bank. Now first of all, I believe that very few of us, certainly not me, can speculate on how long this turmoil is going to rocket our growth or both. We find rocking -- [ robot ] sorry. We find that so far, we have been able to absorb the cost that were indeed the result of this turmoil, is it going to make a significant change in our net future offer, of course, not because the collection has been designed.

However, next week, we will start with a sales campaign, and we will see the reaction of our wholesale clients, depending upon their orders will have a better feeling of where the market is moving -- is currently moving. In terms of resilience, Well, we know for sure that luxury is normally more resilient than the lower -- or the lowest part of the market. We believe we have a balanced offer. The collection was designed with the idea of providing a good offer to both the wholesale channels as much as the retailer. And as a matter of fact, one of the issues that you're focusing our attention on in the next collections is a more distinct product offer, more focused on wholesale and more -- some of it more focused on retail so that we can indeed differentiate our offer more than we have done so far.

And I would say that on this, I'm happy to answer any further questions that may come, and that would switch to the issue of CapEx. Now most of our CapEx, and I'm not going to go into the details in terms of numbers, but I need to Andrea to go into greater details with our CapEx range is approximately between EUR 15 million and EUR 20 million if we include what I still consider an investment in marketing, we are more in the range of the EUR 35 million to EUR 40 million combining marketing investments and other, let's call it, hard asset investment.

Among the hard assets, the Geox for over the last few years has been that of retail -- direct retail investments. Now we can anticipate that we are -- we are reconsidering that as a strategy for the future. And we discussing internally indeed, how we can switch most of our investment effort for communication and to developing proper tools to participate with greater effort on the digital market. Digital is performing better today than the wholesale and retail. And we believe that, that is an area where we will need to put more brain power and money to make it a market segment where growth is pursued with greater effort.

We still have some rationalization to be made in our parent retail. We still have some flagship shops that are not worth the amount of money we have invested in. We will work on it. we have constraints, of course, because we have contracts, medium- to long-term contracts. We need to understand how to unwind without too much damage. So there are a number of items, a number of subjects where we are focusing our attention. Most of the investments are going to go into information technology tools that might be instrumental to develop our digital business.

As far as marketing is concerned. We have switched significantly our investments from production to communication. We had invested too much of an amount in production when we had the benefit of the Ambassador -- Penelope Cruz, ambassador. We have -- in 2025, we have reconsidered data communication strategy. We are now producing even with taking advantage of Artificial Intelligence, we are producing at a lower cost and being the amount of investments we're going to make in communication, basically the same, if not, it's slightly higher than last year.

That translates into the fact that we are going to communicate far more using not only the traditional tools that are being used by Geox in the past, i.e. basically television. We have switched a lot of effort on into other channels, televisions, Fundamental Pay TV, for example, rather than other digital channels, social media and so on. Indeed, If you have an opportunity to look for jobs on the web, you will see a lot more communication through content creators and influencers. So we are gradually switching or sifting, I should say, from traditional channels to more to more up-to-date channels. And that is -- to my expectation, something that we should see the result in the relative in the near future.

Last but not least, and then even there with the proper numbers. We have been on segment of our offer between baby women and men. We've been consistently performing well in Main may like our technology. They even like our style, which at times I find quite surprising but nevermind, it's a good performer. We are not [ betting ] [indiscernible], although we have seen some peaks in certain part of our offer and more weakness in other parts of the other offers.

We have basically not succeeded with all the collabs that we had launched that is focused more on certain of them, and some of them have not been successful. Where we have consistently failed is on the women collection. Women collection has been a had a poor performance over the last few seasons and even the current season is not good. Now let me tell you I hate to take distance from what was done in the past because I believe that a company is continuous -- is an animal that has a continuous life. But don't forget, that in 2026, we are selling the spring/summer collection that was originally designed almost 24 months ago and produced almost 12 months ago.

And the fall winter that was designed approximately 18 months ago and was produced less than 6 months. So we are intent 2026 transition year. I would love to think that with the new collection, we can indeed turn around the perception of our offer. And to that extent, the collection that is going to be launched is going to be presented to the sales force next month -- next week, sorry, in the coming 2 or 3 months, should actually give us confirmation if we have gone in the right direction or not.

Sorry, if I took a lot of your time. That -- I took advantage of this opportunity to introduce some of the subjects where we are brainstorming a lot internally.

So first of all, thank you, Francesco. Because [indiscernible] me from the duty of going through all the questions that has been paused kindly by our analysts. I think that we are just -- we just need to conclude a little bit to the question on the current trade. The current trade so far, Oriana in April as of the mid-19 is not showing us a particular difference from what we have seen in the first quarter, unfortunately. So it means that the traffic is a bit better, but still down in the range in the area of the 8%.

And at the same time, when we look at our own cost, we are registering a little bit better performance in our regular shops. We are down 5%, 8% compared to the overall that we are discussing in for the first quarter. And at the same time, we are seeing that -- we are having a different speed when we look at the digital, so our own web to our own website, where we are registering performance, which is quite positive like for like 10%, which is mainly driven, as we said, by the new performance of the digital channel on the website, but also the marketplace on a like-for-like basis.

Just to give you the color on what's going on, what we have seen so far on the retail, physical and digital. On the other question, I think that has been properly addressed by our CEO. Just the color on the CapEx, the range, yes, we were setting our target around EUR 50 million. We are thinking to cut a little bit of some of the investments that are not directly connected to production and sales, but at the same time, to support the new collection and the investment on the new collection December '27, we are increasing a little bit the investment that we are going to do in the area of the stamps and so instruments to develop a new collection, which is going to give a change for the Spring-Summer 2027.

So that's -- I think that this is -- should be addressed properly and we have given you all the info.

[Operator Instructions]. There are no more questions registered at this time.

So thank you for participating in our quarter call. And see you in the next -- for the next meeting for the half year.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.

Good evening. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Geox 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Let me introduce you today's call speakers, the Geox Group CEO, Mr. Francesco Di Giovanni; and the CFO, Mr. Andrea Maldi.

Geox would like to remind you that any forward-looking statements disclosed during the conference call involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ significantly from what is expressed or implied. Many of these factors are beyond the group's control.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Francesco Di Giovanni, CEO of Geox. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much indeed. Good evening, and thank you all for joining us. I took some notes because I didn't want to forget any significant comment to the 2025 results. So I might come across a bit less natural than I would love to.

Let me tell you, during 2025, we devoted our efforts to strengthen the business by pursuing a thorough revision of our operating model, which led to a significant reduction of the cost base, the benefits of which have already emerged during the financial year just ended. In a market environment, which is still impacted by material contraction in consumption, which led to a sales decline of 5.3% versus the same period last year on a comparable basis. The initiatives we have undertaken already delivered tangible results.

Net losses were halved compared to 2024, standing at EUR 16 million compared to EUR 30 million last year, and the bank debt significantly reduced by circa EUR 10 million to EUR 92 million. We accelerated a number of initiatives aimed at strengthening current and future margins. We reduced or discontinued nonprofitable distribution channels. We revised significantly the operating model. We reduced the cost structure, which was enhanced by leading more efficiency, sustainability and increasing -- which was increasing our capability to absorb the business uncertainties.

To support our current and future commercial and financial targets, we are bringing back to the center of our commercial and marketing strategy, the group's R&D and technological DNA, which have always been the core part of the brand's heritage and values. We are already leveraging on patented products such as our Fast In product line, which significantly contributed to our 2025 turnover. In addition, and more importantly, new patented products were developed during the year, leveraging on our expertise and technological innovation capabilities.

Geox is now preparing to launch a revolutionary solution initially targeted at our own retail network. We have also chosen to entrust the style development for the future to -- in particular, for the women's collection, starting with spring/summer 2027, to a globally renowned design studio, which is an international [ benchmark ] in footwear design. We strongly believe that this collaboration has brought renewed creativity and stylistic viability to the Geox brand portfolio, and we're confident that it will further enhance our market positioning and overall appeal.

I'll be happy to answer to any questions later on, but let me now turn the floor to Andrea Maldi, who will walk you through the financial performance in detail. Thank you very much indeed.

Thank you, Francesco. And thank you, everybody, for joining Geox fiscal 2025 results, year-end results. I will try to deep dive you into the financial performance of the company during 2025. And I would start from the main key financial drivers, commenting on the sales.

Net sales amount to EUR 608.7 million at year-end, which signed a decline of minus 8.3% versus last year. And if we exclude the effect of China and U.S. platform that has been winding down in 2025, declining sales with the right comparison amounts to minus 5.3%. The result of the decline in sales, the EBITDA adjusted amount to EUR 24.8 million, which is pretty much in line to what -- to the same EBITDA adjusted that we have in 2024, slightly declined. We are sitting in 2024 at EUR 26.2 million. This means that the result has been achieved through a solid and strong cost control and efficiency within the organization.

As a result of the 2 actions, the EBIT adjusted amount to EUR 9 million, which is pretty much in line with 2024. And we have been able to reduce the loss at the year-end, moving from EUR 30.3 million in 2024 to EUR 16.2 million in 2025. From a financial point of view, the bank debt amount reached a value of EUR 92.6 million negative, showing a significant improvement of EUR 10 million -- more than EUR 10 million compared to the same period of 2024. Net working capital reached a value of EUR 135.7 million as a result, so 22.3% of the net sales. Same period last year, EUR 104 million or 15.7% at December '24.

So given the financial -- main financial KPIs, if we move to the Page 7 of the presentation, which is available for the participants, we try to deep dive a bit more on sales. As you can see, we have tracked the sales from 2023 to 2025. We are now reaching the value of EUR 608.7 million, which include a margin value, which is stable at 51% compared to the same period of last year. From an EBIT perspective, the EBIT adjusted net of nonrecurring items amounted EUR 9 million, which is clearly a strong achievement because we have been able to maintain the same EBIT of last year despite the decline in sales of overall EUR 55 million.

Moving to Page 8. We can see how we have been able to reduce almost halving the losses from EUR 33 million to EUR 16.2 million negative. And we can see that the fiscal year result is impacted by a sales decline of approximately EUR 55.1 million compared to previous year, leading to a gross margin reduction of EUR 27 million. The reduction of EUR 27 million has been completely offset by a decrease in the cost base structure for the same amount, EUR 27.4 million, thanks to a series of actions that the management has been able to commit and deploy reorganization, renegotiation, reorganization and restructuring of the personnel cost.

And the -- if we move to the nonrecurring item, we can see that we have a slight decrease from EUR 13 million in 2024 to EUR 12 million in 2025. This is the amount that we have invested as nonrecurring items, special items to reorganize and restructure our business operating model. At the same time, we got a benefit from the financial expense structure, where we have been able to benefit of about EUR 11.7 million, mainly coming from 2 main factors: the reduction of the debt, thanks also to the capital increase that we have performed in 2025 and at the same time, a reduction of the financial interest and mainly for EUR 10 million of this EUR 11.7 million, almost EUR 10 million, EUR 9-point something -- EUR 9.8 million, mainly to the exchange rate between euro and [indiscernible] that have positively impacted 2025.

If we look at the sales, and we try to have a drill down by channel in Page 9, we can see that the wholesale is lower compared -- is declining compared to last year for about EUR 17.9 million. The negative performance mainly in Italy, France, Iberia region and Russia. And this is due to a softer sell-in for SS spring/summer season 2025 for winter '25 campaign across the key geographies. The retail is down 3.3% year-on-year, and it's clearly impacted by performance issues, which led the DOS brick-and-mortar like-for-like performance negative down to 1.8% compared to 2024. The franchising deal business model like-for-like performance again deteriorating by 2.5% versus 2024.

At the same time, we got a hit by the negative perimeter in terms of sales, which amount to EUR 3.7 million due to network reorganization or rationalization. And clearly, the perimeter effect is bringing -- despite the decline in sales is bringing the positive effect on the overall contribution because clearly, we are continue rationalizing and cleaning our network where we see shops or franchising direct customer, which are not performing from a contribution point of view.

If we look at the digital channels, clearly, we have a weaker performance on the wholesale marketplace. On the marketplace side, I would like to remind that we have taken a strong decision like we did for action for U.S.A. and China to reduce and close platforms which are not performing. While if we look at our own website, we are pretty satisfied with the performance. We have been able to register a like-for-like increase of 4.6% compared to the year 2024.

If we look at the net sales by region, clearly, we can see that all the regions are decreasing compared to the year 2024. Italy is down 4.5%. Wholesale and retail negative performance, only partially offset by web performance growing mid-single digit, 5.4% just in Italy. Europe overall, including our core market, is mainly down for the performance driven by the negative wholesale results. At the same time, just to mention the DACH area that confirms negative trend mainly across all channels. France continued to be a country pretty much resilient and positive performance in retail and web. This is clearly reflecting the position of a solid market leadership, while we are in the retail side, where we are suffering a little bit in the wholesale channel. The rest of the world is clearly impacted by our reorganization because we need to consider that we have shut down -- wind down the operation in the U.S. and China, which led to a sales loss of sales decline of EUR 16.7 million, as we already mentioned during this call.

On the other side, we have a positive performance in the Middle Eastern region, while Russia, which is clearly an important market for us, is continuing clearly declining slightly and outperforming compared to the previous year, mainly due to the wholesale side of the business and due to the conflict and war which is currently happening between Ukraine and Russia. And just to mention that the performance of the direct operated shops in Russia is still solid. We are still perceived like a strong brand well positioned on the retail side.

I would like just to move directly into Page 12, where we can see the distribution evolution of our network. From a DOS perspective, we are slightly declining the network. We have 5 net closure of DOS, mostly related to the Hong Kong subsidiary, which has been rationalized and reorganized. While we are decreasing more significantly into the franchising and deal store, mainly in European countries following, again, the network rationalization. On the franchise on deal, clearly, we can expand a bit more later during the Q&A section, but this is clearly an action where we are trying to reorganize our network through more financial partner with higher financial stability, higher financial strength that are clearly on the other side, cleaning our business from a risk of credit risk.

I think that given all the description of the business, just mention on Page 16, as already to the bank financial -- net financial position. We moved from, as we said, from the EUR 103 million negative of last year to EUR 92 million, which has been achieved through cost reorganization, capital increase, decrease of the indirect cost spending and rationalization of the Far East [ purchase ]. I think that if we consider where we are now and the way we close 2025, having a look forward looking into 2026, we can say that the fiscal year 2026 sales are expecting, as we already communicated during the approval of the budget to decline in the low single-digit area compared to the fiscal year 2025.

The EBIT margin estimates are instead still unchanged in the range of 3.2% to 3%, as we already said in our business plan and also during our session of budget approval, mainly thanks to the cost initiatives that are able to compensate the decline in sales expectation. And the bank debt is expected again to improve and to move into the range of the EUR 80 million, EUR 85 million by year-end 2026. As we already commented in our previous communication to the market, the management team is strongly committed and working on a refresh of the business plan -- of our previous business plan. And the idea is to be ready at the end of the spring 2026, most likely into the range of June with a refresh on the new business plan and explanation of the trend of sales for the year '27, '28 and '29.

I would like now to thank you again for participating and I would like to open the session of Q&A for the management team.

[Operator Instructions] First question is from Oriana Cardani, Intesa Sanpaolo.

The first one is on the evolution of the gross margin. Do you expect it to stabilize at the 2025 level? My second question is on current trade. Can you give an update on the performance in January and February with some details on what's happening for each channels? And the third one is on the control of cost. If sales deteriorate much more than expecting, what kind of cost actions could be taken further to mitigate the impact on cash flow?

Thank you, Oriana, for your question. I will try to give you the fair answer, the best that I'm able to give you so far. I think that we can start from the first one, which is the gross margin in 2026. And as you might recover in our budget section, we have forecasted an improvement of our margin for about 110 basis points, out of which 80 mainly due to the channel mix. I think that given the way so far the current business, the current trading is now performing into the first year -- months of the year, I suggest I would say to the market that we are committed and we will be able to maintain margin flat compared to 2025.

If we -- this is leading me to comment a bit on the current trading side. I think that it's fair to say that if we look at our D2C, direct-to-consumer market and in particular to our regular brick-and-mortar business as of week 10, the like-for-like performance is down in the range of the 5% to 6%, while the outlet, again, brick-and-mortar physical in the same week, we are referring to week 10 as a current trading point for this comment, is down significantly in the range of 16.6%.

On the other side, the good news is coming again from the digital side. Well, the DOS digital like-for-like performance compared to last year is up, significantly up double digit, close to 10%, a little bit more than 10%. If you look at the wholesale, we need to be comment looking at also the calendarization of our performance, we are down in the range of 18% compared to last year, which is corresponding mainly to the execution of the decline of the order of the spring/summer campaign 2026, for which we are now building out product. And that's the way we have -- we started -- it's true, it's fair to say that we started the year lower -- a bit lower than expected.

I think that when we look at the direct-to-consumer business, both physical -- sorry, both physical and digital, but mainly physical, one of the item that is clearly impacting our current trading is the decline on traffic. Decline on traffic is mainly due to economic condition, overall economic condition. And clearly, what is now happening overall in the world with the new conflict is not for sure helping the recovery of the economy and the stability and is not supporting the normal consumption of the overall market.

But on the other side, I think that we will be able in the next future to recover a bit of the traffic, especially because we are starting from last week, but maybe we will focus on the next few weeks, we will start with the new communication campaign. And I think that we'll be able to address a little bit the recovery part of the traffic and the attention of our customer to our new product, especially on the spring/summer side, where we have significant innovation on the shops in terms of product with 2 line, the more sophisticated Blue Touch and the current overall [indiscernible] Touch product that we have developed nicely for 2026 spring/summer.

The third question is on the cost control. I think that we have -- we have a track of success in cost control over the last 2 years, mainly in 2025. We have accelerated significantly as you -- the good results in terms of profitability achieved in 2025 came from a cost rationalization and cost control, and we have adopted a discipline to look at our cost base because we realized that we were not able to follow from the market side, the sales expectation that we have a decline in our previous business -- in our actual business plan.

On the same side, we still think that we have a room significant -- quite a good room to improve the base cost in 2026. First thing that I would like to say is that the strong investment in the personnel costs and staff reorganization that has been very painful from a group point of view will clearly pay off in terms of financial benefit mainly in 2026, and it's already included in our budget section. So if we look at our budget-based cost, we will be able to again reduce the overall cost structure for about EUR 60 million. And the management is already working on plan to further take action on indirect cost if the current trading will continue in that direction. So overall, I think that we will make our best effort to eventually mitigate further deterioration of our top line expectation, top line sales.

[Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Okay. Well, ladies and gentlemen, if there are no further questions, we invite you to contact us if there is any further need for information -- let me just reiterate one concept. We managed to navigate 2025 quite successfully as far as cost control are concerned. A good portion of the costs that were put under control are going to be -- were related to the performance of the business, and they're going to be somewhat influencing the 2026 results as well.

There were some costs that we stopped during the year, such as, for example, communication costs because we revised entirely -- as I suggested in my initial speech, we had to revise our strategy. And therefore, there was little point to keep investing a significant amount of money into communication while we were revising our -- not only just our communication strategy, but generally speaking, our further development strategy, future development strategy. That has had clearly an impact on our sales during the second -- the last quarter of last year and probably the first few weeks of the current fiscal year.

We truly believe that the strategy that we have adopted, which is as I indicated, reviving the technological content is already paying off because if we look at the areas where it should be more effective such as men sales, the first few weeks of this year were actually very good indeed. We were not being particularly successful was on the women collection. Women collection has not been appreciated into the market. And that is why we are -- we have made a decision to coordinate far better our new offer.

Unfortunately, company in this business is like a large boat. You need to wheel the rudder in order to make changes. And therefore, the new collection developed with the new stylist will hit the retail business only in -- during the second quarter of next year 2027. We're going to have some indications of how much it is appreciated by the market during the next sales campaign in late spring this year. Between June and July, we should actually see how that is appreciated by our wholesale clients.

In general, however, we still have room, as Andrea indicated, to keep our cost base under control. Some of it is a natural consequence if there is a contraction of the business -- of the contraction of the business. Some of it is linked to further initiatives which we are implementing. A component of it is clearly related to the initiatives that we have already implemented, such as the restructuring cost on our organization, which led to a reduction of approximately 1/3 of the labor cost in terms of heads, we have reduced by approximately EUR 200 million or EUR 600 million base last year. And the benefit of that is going to be more evident during 2026, of course.

So we believe that 2026 is a year of transition during which some of the benefits of the new commercial strategy will not probably fully materialize because the new collection will kick in only the following spring/summer season because some of the actions in terms of communication will trigger their effects over the medium term rather than just as an immediate reaction to a commercial. We need to reshape a bit the market recognition of our brand, and that will not take just a few weeks or months. It will take a bit longer. In 2026, we still believe that we can confirm the -- basically the results that we anticipated in our 2026 budget and hope that with the business plan, we're going to give more clarity to the market for what we expect going forward.

So thank you. Thank you, Francesco. Thank you overall to everyone that participated in the call. I think we can now close the call if there are no further comments.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.

Good evening. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Geox First 9 Months 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Let me introduce you to today's call speakers, the Geox Group CEO, Mr. Francesco Giovanni; and the CFO, Mr. Andrea Maldi.

Geox would like to remind that any forward-looking statements disclosed during this call involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ significantly from what is expressed or implied. Many of these factors are behind the group's control.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Francesco Giovanni, CEO of Geox. Please go ahead, sir.

Good evening. Thank you very much.

Good evening, and thank you all for joining us. Let me summarize in a few statements what has happened over the last 9 months. We report a 3.8% decline in sales compared to the same period of last year on a like-for-like basis, as market conditions and overall consumer dynamics continue to affect sector demand, which remains in significant contraction. However, I believe it is important to notice that despite such market dynamics, our direct retail channel delivered sales substantially in line with the previous year, in line with our most recently adopted strategy, but also taking into account such challenging market conditions.

We focused with strong determination on cost rationalization and efficiency measures, which enabled us to achieve a higher adjusted EBIT than the first 9 months of 2024, the previous year. For the full year 2025, thanks to the aforementioned cost containment measures, we forecast an adjusted EBIT margin in line with the previous -- with previous plan expectations and the bank debt in the range of EUR 100 million, EUR 110 million despite the aforementioned high single-digit weakness in sales.

The challenging market we live in is further confirmed by the wholesale channel sales campaign for the Spring/Summer 2026 collection, which has been concluded in September, which has recorded a slight decrease in volumes compared to the Spring/Summer 2025 season.

Overall, we can say that the company is fostering a change process, as we indicated in the past. A lot of things are happening in the company. We will strive to move on with our turnaround measures. And I'm happy to turn the floor now to Andrea Maldi to talk about the 9 months that has gone by. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Francesco, for your introduction, and good evening, everybody. I will try to give you highlights of the 9 months 2025 sales. And just as overall assumption, we can say that the wholesale business remained under pressure, mainly reflecting the softer sell-in for the 2025 Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter '25 campaign across all the geographies.

If we talk about retail, we can see a minor decline, which is mainly driven by a perimeter reduction. And instead, if we look at the web, e-commerce in general, we can register a weak performance in the wholesale and marketplace platforms, which has been only partially offset by the very good performance of our own web DOS distribution.

Having said that, if you look at the numbers, we set -- we reached the target of net sales to EUR 492 million, which is a 6.2% decrease compared to last year. But if we compare on a like-for-like basis in terms of perimeter, the decline is much lower and is set at 3.8%.

The EBITDA adjusted margin is higher than the 9 months 2024. And the bank net debt, as mentioned by Francesco, is in the range of EUR 106 million compared to EUR 103 million of the period December 2024 and EUR 138.4 million as of September '24, if we look at just 9 months.

If we try to have a look again more in detail into the sales by channel, we say that we started from a last year of 9 months '24 at EUR 525 million. We are impacted by a perimeter reduction. As you remember, we closed last year 2 important markets, China and U.S. for a total value of EUR 13.4 million. And having restated the perimeter, we can say that the wholesale is declining by EUR 9 million compared to the same period of last year. And this decline is mainly driven by the softer sell-in, as we said, of the Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter 2025 campaign. And the negative performance has been mainly driven, we will see later in France, Iberia region and Russia. At the same time, we have a retail, which is almost flat, as we said. Like-for-like as just said at minus 0.6%, we can say flat, while we have been impacted by a perimeter effect by the reduction of our distribution of EUR 1.3 million.

If we look at, again, e-commerce to different speed of pace. Clearly, the -- our own DOS website is performing strongly, is positive and it is growing with a significant -- an important percentage of growth, sorry, 3.7% plus compared clearly to wholesale web distribution, which has been instead negative in the 9 months and by marketplace performance, which is strongly negative, but also is determined by our own decision of winding down some of the platforms that we were not performing in terms of profitability, despite this a conscious decision to exit business, which is lowering our overall profitability.

If we try to have a look at the sales by region, -- we can see that Italy is almost flat, EUR 144 million compared to EUR 143 million. Europe, the overall performance moves from EUR 239 million to EUR 235 million with an overall performance, which is slightly negative as the positive results, which is coming from the retail channel has been more than offset by a weaker performance into the wholesale distribution. This is mainly happening in France and Iberia region, as we mentioned.

France, overall instead continues to deliver resilient and positive performance in retail, reflecting the solid market leadership while it is underperforming in the other channel . if we look at the rest of the world, clearly worth to mention, worth to notice that the performance needs to be is mainly impacted by the perimeter effect of the closing or the winding down of 2 main -- 2 markets of China and U.S. And at the same time, we have an important decline of the business in Russia in the range of the EUR 16 million within the 9 months.

Quick highlight on the sales by product, mainly dividing the world into footwear and apparel. The percentage remain -- in terms of percentage remain unchanged compared to last year, being the footwear business still representing 91% of our own -- of the total business and the apparel is in the region of 9% to 10%.

I would like to give you a highlight of the overall structure of the distribution of our brick-and-mortar retail network. As we can see from the chart, we see that we have an important perimeter reduction. We moved from the 616 number of doors in 2024 -- at the end of 2024 to 569 at the end of the 9 months 2025. The reduction, if we look at the structure, is mainly driven by the reduction into what we call franchisee in deal. So the -- our own partners that are working within our own perimeter. We decreased that number from 141 to 111, so a decline of 30 stores in the 9 months, while the structure of the -- our own shops remain substantially unchanged with a slight negative of 4, which is clearly the average between the new openings and the shutting down of the shops, which were not performing.

Just again, a quick highlight on the net debt as of September 2025. We mentioned EUR 119 million as overall value of the net debt and the net financial position, which is clearly including a negative fair value of the hedging instrument, which is in the range of EUR 14 million -- sorry, of EUR 12.5 million. Therefore, we confirm that the bank net debt as of September 2024 is EUR 106 billion, which is in line with our forecast, with our expectation for the year and is setting up positively for us the trends to be in line with our expectation at year-end as well as committed to the original budget.

I think that in terms of outlook, -- based on the performance that we have recorded in the first -- in the 9 months of 2025, our company forecast is that the 2025 sales for the full year are expected to decline a little bit more than what we have seen in the previous market presentation, moving into the high single-digit area compared to what we have represented in the fiscal year 2024.

On the other side, we continue to work to perform and protect on the adjusted EBIT margin, which is -- which we estimate to remain unchanged compared to the target that we set for 2025, thanks to the strong ongoing initiatives into the rationalization and cost saving initiatives.

And the net debt -- the bank net debt is expected to be in the year-end in the range of EUR 100 million to EUR 110 million, which is again in line with what we have forecasted at the beginning of the 2025 in January.

So thanks for the attention. I think that we are now opening the session of the Q&A, if any.

[Operator Instructions]

The first question is from Oriana Cardani of Intesa Sanpaolo.

Thank you for taking my 3 questions. The first one is on the Q3 sales performance by category. Is there any difference between men's, women's, children's between the premium and value segments? Or is the weakness of the quarter general across all categories? The second question is on the measures implemented to accelerate savings. Regarding the agreement reached with the trade unions, can you tell us the expected structural savings from these measures starting in 2026?

And besides personnel costs, have you found other areas for intervention such as in supply chain or logistic cost? And finally, do you plan to present an update of the business plan next year?

Okay. thanks for your question. I tried to give a fair answer to all your point. The first one is on your business mix in terms of decline. Overall, we have seen that we are struggling mostly on women categories, mainly on the [ sandals ], which is resulting in 8.5% decline compared to last year. And overall, if we look at the third quarter 2025, we have a women performance, which is still quite weak in the range of minus 15.4%.

This is primarily -- excuse me, Francesco Di Giovanni. This is primarily driven by a very dramatic September result, which in October saw a rebound, not significant rebound in inventory part.

Coming to the second point, which is related to the overall restructuring costs on the personnel side, there is clearly some sensitivities. So what I can say so far is that we are working in order to incorporate in our year-end results, the cost of the restructuring or at least, let's say, 70% of the cost of the overall restructuring. We are working on the detail to perform on the number. And the expected saving in 2026 is at least in line with the value of investment that we are going to make in 2024 -- in 2025 to prepare the first side of the restructuring. What I can also say in terms of the overall impact of the -- this project is that the run rate of the savings expected is paying back 1 year completely the investment that we are going to do in -- overall for our restructuring project.

I think that we will have much more details clearly at year-end once we will have satisfied all the compliance activity that are currently under way of being performed in terms of determination exactly of the amount that we want to invest, how much of this amount will be cash driven, cash paid in 2025, how much will be just accounted into the P&L. We are working on this detail.

But overall, the overall project is really profitable because the payoff in a run rate basis is in less than 1 year.

Well, in addition to that, we can say, this is Francesco to join again, we can say that the restructuring plan is moving along quite quickly. We have had thus far approximately 60 people accepting the offer that was made to leave the company out of 120. In addition, we are moving faster than expected on the international network. And thus far, we have approximately half of the international network [indiscernible]

Thank you, Giovanni, Francesco. The third question is, I think -- the third question is, I think that if I recall properly, is on the overall approach on the other -- on the base cost on what we normally define as indirect cost. As you know, we have identified an important indirect cost base spending that we are taking. There has been already a significant portion of activity of acceleration and work on this target on the financial target in 2025, which is going to pay off because -- to pay back quite quickly because we are expecting to be on track with the year-end net results.

The saving is quite important in the range of the 70% of the overall in direct base cost. And this process will continue in 2026 as well, not only clearly on the personnel and staff cost, as you just mentioned, as a part of the overall restructuring project, but also on the indirect cost as well.

Just to highlight again that if you take our announcement to date of the overall results, we have been able to achieve an overall EUR 20 million reduction of cost in the first 9 months of 2025 compared to last year. This is including already overall EUR 5 million of personnel cost saving in the first 9 months.

Well, as far as the last question was about the business plan.

The last question is about the business plan. I think that we have expectation is that we are working on it and that we -- probably in the beginning of spring, let's say, placing the date in spring next year, we will produce an amended or an adjusted business plan, a revised and updated business plan. Clearly, we will need to catch on the sales and the new cost structure to represent the evolution from 2027 and going forward for the next 3 years of the plan.

At the same time, we are working deeply in those weeks in the budget for 2026, and we are trying to commit to remain in terms of cash flow unchanged compared to the expectation of our business plan that we have declared to the market back in March 2024 either.

[Operator Instructions] Management, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Okay. Well, thank you very much, everybody.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephone.

Good evening. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Geox First Half 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Luca Amadini, Investor Relations Manager of Geox. Please go ahead, sir.

Good evening, everybody, and thank you for joining our call today. This is Luca Amadini speaking. Let me introduce you to today's call speakers, the Geox Group CEO, Mr. Francesco Di Giovanni; and the CFO, Mr. Andrea Maldi. Mr. Di Giovanni will start by providing you a brief introduction, then Andrea will dive deeper into the financial results and our first half 2025. Following that, Mr. Di Giovanni and Mr. Maldi will be happy to take your questions.

I would like to remind you that the presentation may contain statements that do not reflect reported financial results or other historical information. Any forward-looking statements are based on the group current expectations and projections concerning future events. Let me also underline that given the nature of the Geox business, interim results can be influenced by seasonal effects and therefore, cannot be taken as a proxy for full year trends or results.

Let me now hand over to our CEO, Mr. Francesco Di Giovanni.

Hello. Good evening. My name is Francesco Di Giovanni. As you may know, I've been appointed just recently. As a matter of fact, I believe, no more than a week ago. That by itself, it might trigger some curiosity, and I'll be happy to answer any questions that you might have, I would say, at the end of the conversation as was anticipated by Luca.

Just a few words as an introduction, I've been around the Geox offices [indiscernible] for the last 6 months now. I was involved immediately after -- by the company immediately after the year-end 2024 that, as you may remember, was marked by a number of important events, including the agreement that had been reached with the banks. And the idea of my involvement at that time was to have a proper set of second eyes on the likelihood of the performance of the business and of the performance of the business plan that had been concluded.

What has happened recently is that there was a sort of say, discussion on the speed and the focus to deliver the business plan or to deliver the results of the business plan, so to say it better, which led eventually to the decision by the Board of Directors and the shareholders to appoint me to improve the chances of driving the accelerated actions that are needed in order to meet the quite challenging market conditions under which the company as much as all its competitors are actually facing at the moment.

I guess I can anticipate that I will turn the floor to Andrea Maldi in a second, but I can tell you that the results of the first 6 months won't disappoint you, will not disappoint you. There are a number of important initiatives that have been taken by the company over the last few months, which are already bearing fruit. We would expect a number of other actions that have been discussed over the last few months to be implemented over the coming months. I will not speculate on what that translates into -- potentially translates into numbers and results, figures and so on. But I guess we will have opportunities in the future to discuss further what the expectations of the company are for the future.

With that in mind, I leave the floor to Andrea Maldi. Happy to take any questions at the end.

Thank you, Francesco, and good afternoon, everybody. I will try to deep dive with you on the results of the first half of the financial year 2025 and to give you the main highlights of this semester. Starting from the sales, it's worth to notice that we have reached a value of EUR 305 million as of June '25, which compared to the same period of last year, where we reached a value of EUR 320 million, it means that we have a gap of EUR 15 million.

Worth to notice that this EUR 15 million gap is mainly explained by the shutdown of our operation in U.S. and China, which has been closed as of December '24. Therefore, the comparison takes us to the point that we just have a slight decrease in sales compared to the same period of last year in the region of EUR 6 million. And it's also worth to notice that the results of the first half of the year in terms of sales is quite close to our budget expectation that we have set for the period at EUR 312 million.

Despite the drop in sales of EUR 15 million, which means overall an EUR 8 million of margin less compared to the same period of last year, we have been able, thanks to a series of action in cost control and thanks to the support also of Francesco that was acting at the time as a consultant in the company, we've been able to drive an improvement of our profitability and to recover about EUR 14 million of cost compared to the same period of June 2024. That said, it means that we are able to close our semester with an EBIT adjusted in the positive path of about EUR 600,000, let's say, EUR 1 million, just to run the number compared to the loss that we have incurred in the same period of last year, which was set in the region of minus EUR 5 million.

So I would say, a dramatically significant improvement in terms of profitability of the company over the first 6 months. If we -- and significantly better than our expectation for the same period that are based on the assumption that are noted in our budget, which, as you might remember, it was basically aligned to the first year of the financial and industrial business plan that has been presented to the stock exchange and to the market in March.

If we look at the net results, clearly, we are positive benefiting of this recovery of profitability. And at the same time, we are having a favorable exchange rate with the Russian ruble that is taking us to register a loss for the first half of 2025 in the region of the EUR 5 million compared to the EUR 15 million negative that we have incurred last year in the same period.

So that are the main highlights on the financial. Therefore, I would like to again stress the point of net sales overall aligned. We are speaking about minus 4.7%. And if we exclude the perimeter effect of U.S.A. and China, we're just taking the number down to 1.9% compared to the last year, and we are benefiting of good profitability in terms of recoverability of profitability, which is mainly coming from cost control.

If we move down a little bit more into the footprint, in terms of shops, our number is set for the June 2025 in the range of 590 shops, including direct operated stores and the franchisee, which is lower than the same period last year where the number was at 630. The decline is mainly in the franchisee department and not in the direct operating shop. The other good news is on the like-for-like performance of our workshops, which is basically doing a positive -- slightly positive 0.3% compared to last year.

So I would say flat positive. And we are also benefiting of the strong results of our website, direct operated website, which is performing 8.6% better than 2024. At the same time, we are instead incurring a significant decrease of performance on the line of the marketplace, which is down 14% -- 17%, I apologize compared to the perimeter of the 2024.

The other, I think, interesting note for the market is that our financial position for the first semester, the so-called PFN on the bank, bank debt is set at EUR 100 million which is lower compared to the period of 2024, where we registered a PFN debt of about EUR 112 million. Basically, we are worth noting that we are benefiting in our first 6 months of the capital increase, which has been concluded in the range of EUR 30 million just a few weeks ago before the end of June.

I think that if you look at the sales in terms of -- by channel, and we try to drill down the evolution of the different channels, and we compare the two results of the first 6 months, we are basically having an wholesale and brick-and-mortar, which is down EUR 5 million, which is quite a good result. And we have retail business and e-commerce, which are basically flat in terms of results compared to the same period of last year. I think that these are the main financial highlights.

I think that we can have a quick look also at the net working capital. We know that we are having at June a net working capital of about EUR 140 million, which is a little bit higher than the one of EUR 126 million as of June '24 and higher than the one at the end of 2024, where we registered EUR 105 million. I think basically, most of the increase is coming from the payable side, where we have improved our payment terms condition. At the same time, we have also reduced our base cost. So the 2 effects combined are clearly increasing the net working capital. Good story on the inventory, which is in setting the value in the range of EUR 245 million with an improvement on the certification and of the season included in inventory.

So I think that having said that the results of the first semester are quite good, quite in line with our expectation. At the same time, we are looking forward at what's going on for the rest of the year. And we are still foreseeing some significant important issue that might come in terms of sales. Therefore, we want to remain prudent. We know that we have taken the right path in terms of profitability. At the same time, we can conclude that looking at the results that we confirm to the market, we are expecting a slight decrease in the range of the mid-single digit compared to our last communication, while we are confirming fully the profitability expected in terms of first margin.

I'm happy to take questions on specific, if any.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Oriana Cardani of Intesa Sanpaolo.

The first one is for Mr. Di Giovanni. Can you tell us what areas will be your focus immediately? And what potential deviations from the current plan may be introduced? And just a confirmation, is the '25-'29 business plan still valid? My second question is on the spring/summer collection for '26. How was the feedback received in May? And what are your expectations regarding the order intake, a flat or a low single-digit decline compared to last year, maybe a realistic scenario?

The third question is on the weakness in the online wholesale in the second quarter. Can you elaborate on the reasons and whether there were temporary factors that contributed to the decline? Or are difficulties expected to persist in coming months? And finally, can you give us the expectation of net debt by year-end?

Well, thank you for your questions. I will address the first one, and then I will leave all the others to Andrea, but I'll be very happy to complement what Andrea might not [indiscernible].

Well, I guess the point is the following. The company is certainly recognizing the market as a significant player in the industry. Unfortunately, the financial performance of the company, the economic performance of the company has not been up to expectations for quite a long while. The analysis that I had the opportunity to run for a couple of months at the beginning of my involvement as an adviser confirmed what I guess, the financials -- the historical financials of the company showed quite clearly, i.e., a declining business, which is probably attributable to an odd combination of product offering and market demand across, I would say, all the areas where the company is present. But even more, it shows a cost structure, which is not adequate to the changed business environment in the business the company plays its role.

And I want to be -- I don't want to be too diplomatic, but I guess that the latter is probably the major issue that we will need to address over the coming few months to see whether we can indeed achieve a more balanced financial performance, most probably, I would say, not earlier than next year because as you probably imagine, although a number of projects have been already implemented and some of the benefits of that are indeed included already in the first 6 months, although they were not started in January 2025. Some of them, yes, some of them were implemented -- the implementation started during the first 6 months. The net effect of all of that is approximately EUR 14 million, EUR 14.7 million, if I put my heart, that is the number, which shows that it can be done. You can indeed take actions and take decisions that if properly implemented, lead to better results.

And that is the path that we intend to follow. And I guess when I say we, it is because this has been shared with a significant portion of the management and with the Board of Directors and with the shareholders to the benefit of all shareholders as a matter of fact. So there are projects that are already ongoing. There are projects that need to be implemented, although they've been decided. And there are additional projects we are working on that will further support a cost reduction, but also a very significant simplification of the processes that have a bearing on the top line of the company.

So the idea is to get into a, say, safer area as far as the cost structure is concerned without neglecting at any point in time the possibility to pursue improvements very soon. Even now, as we are speaking, we are working to promote some of our products that had not been particularly focused upon in the past few months and therefore, foster as much as possible the top line as well. Very happy to be more detailed if anyone needs more. Basically, that is a very quick summary of the program we have.

As far as the solidity of the current business plan, so to speak, going forward, the plan that was coned in 2024 already had a certain suggestions in terms of the turnaround of the, say, of the top line, it was not addressing in my opinion, I believe that I have good reasons to say that. It was not addressing the issue of timing more than anything else. And that is where we are -- we need to dedicate our resources and effort is to accelerate the programs more than making a revolution. This is at least for the very short term, i.e., the next 6 to 12 months, we will need to focus specifically on accelerating savings, so to speak, and as much as possible, supporting the product that we currently have in our pipeline so that to push as much as possible turnover.

That does not mean that during the coming few months because of the projects that we are working on, as I said, to simplify processes rather than to give more solidity to the turnaround of the company in terms of market positioning and so on, there might not be the need to reconsider some of the assumptions of the old plan and therefore, come forward to you all with some sort of fine-tuning of the plan. But I will not speculate on that at the moment because I think it would be -- well it will not be proper.

Thank you, Francesco. This is Andrea speaking. Oriana, I will try to address the other question that you made, if you might need to remember if I missed some of them. First one, I think that was related to what's the status of the spring-summer campaign 2026. if I'm not wrong. I would say that, as you know, the campaign started back beginning of May and it's supposed to close by the end of September. So we are deeply now working, and we are really in the middle of the campaign.

So far, as we have noted also in our press release, there has been quite a good interest on the new product development that we made and for which we worked out in the past despite the fact that, as you know, it's not matching with an interesting and nice market momentum. Despite the market momentum with the new product and also with our traditional, let's say, the back of the -- some key products like the fast and whatever, we are strongly developing on the market in terms of orders, and we might expect to be at least in the region of a slightly positive results compared to the season of the previous year.

The other question, I think that was related to the weakness is what you call wholesale web. And just to better specify, I think that when we look at the year-end results, we are mainly focusing -- we are thinking to be mainly impacted by a slight decline on sales mainly into 2 lines. One is the one that you just mentioned, which is the wholesale platform, and we are thinking to some specific country like Russia, where the market is becoming quite difficult. And we push hard on the market to this key customer in the past. And now we are clearly taking a moment of relief of what we did in the past and we are facing some issues in maintaining the same level of order expectation in the kind of countries with some specific customers.

The other one, which is quite interesting, but that needs to be taken in consideration just to expand on your point is on the marketplace, where we are expecting to have a slight decline compared to last year. But further, I would say that we are taking on our side, the decision to decrease the pace of speed or the new opening of new platform, given the fact that it's a very difficult market. The platform are very difficult now to make them really profitable. So you move a lot of sales, but then it's difficult to make profitability. And we need to focus, as Francesco said, on recover profitability. And we are identifying a series of actions to make them more profitable. But clearly, as a company, we prefer to fix what we have rather than expand on a business model, which is struggling to be successful.

If I'm not wrong, the last question was around the -- our expectation on the net debt by year-end. I think that we are happy to confirm that despite our indication of a mid low mid-single-digit decline in sales by year-end. We are still confirming to be in the range of the net debt expected and indicated by the market in the region of the EUR 105 million. Let's say, from EUR 100 million to EUR 110 million would be quite a good result for us because this is going to be a set that is in line with the financial plan evolution and is keeping our cash consumption in line with our expectation and basically without absorbing cash by 2024 to 2025. I think that I should have answered all your questions, if I'm missing something.

Yes, thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] Mr. Amadini, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for participating in this call and for staying with us this evening. Let me just give you a quick reminder of the next call on the 2025 9 months results that will be held on the next November 3 -- 13, sorry. And thank you again, and good evening to all of you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones. Thank you.