Thank you very, very much, Mrs. Banner, and a very warm welcome from us here from the somewhat cold and sunny Oldenburg.

It's not yet springtime, I believe. It's a little bit April's weather, right, Sirka?

Völlig gemischt. Yeah.

A very warm welcome to all of you. This is our annual press and analyst conference in a bit of an unusual setting.

For the first time, we do this fully virtual. This allows more people to participate.

As usual, we will look back at the figures of 2025, which we just published. We will also give you a little bit more of behind-the-scenes information, a little bit what did we do to achieve these results.

Stay with us, and at the end, as said, you will have the chance to ask questions via the chat, also in German. We will have a moderator who will translate and transcribe that into the English language.

Let's start. Yeah.

That's us. Warm

welcome also from me. Good morning.

That's us. Warm welcome again.

As said, I don't want to go through all the agenda here—the results, a little bit development. We will do an outlook as well, right, and then a Q&A session.

How did we do in the past year? I would say quite strongly.

Our turnover and our EBIT increased. We achieved all the targets.

The group turnover of CEWE increased by 3.8% or by 31.7 million to 864.5 million. This actually is at the very upper end of our own expected target range.

We are very much not only within our range, but at the very upper end there. The group EBIT also increased by 2.1 million or 2.4%.

This is also very well within our target range. All our targets have been clearly met.

However, we can see that with the EBIT development, we are not at the upper end of our own target range. We know that.

We can comment a little bit on that one. If we had achieved our targets in the commercial online print segment—we missed them by about 3 million in EBIT—then we would have been at the upper end for the overall results as well.

Overall, quite a strong year for the CEWE Group in total. I don't want to read all of this to you.

There are a couple of comments I would like to make here. That we layout our targets also by product, by a couple of volume indicators, and also the financial targets.

Something which makes us really proud is that we increased our volumes. You can see that here in the photos.

The photos is not a product only by itself. Of course, we do sell printed photos, but it is also something which is within our products.

The CEWE PHOTOBOOK, for example, does also contain photos. We overexceeded our own targets.

We overexceeded our targets in the volumes by the CEWE PHOTOBOOK, and this is really a strong development. Our growth in photofinishing was driven by volume.

This is something which we really want to acknowledge here. On all the other figures, we will comment a little bit later, Sirka, right?

As all of we have three key business segments. We have the commercial online print.

We did 89.6 million of turnover there. The most sizable business obviously is the photofinishing, and you can see that here.

We will comment a little bit on also the fact that we're in the segment active with five brands. You see them here: our CEWE brand, the hometurf so to speak, WhiteWall, Pixum, DeinDesign, and Cheerz.

This is the core of what we're doing. Obviously, the majority of this call will be around photofinishing.

We also have retail, if you like, our most traditional segment, actually where the company comes from. We still operate around 100 retail stores in Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe, and actually one in Oldenburg, by the way.

This segment is really non-strategic in itself, but it is strategic in the role of supporting the photofinishing business. You can see that here.

The brands are clearly moving towards the CEWE brand. If you walk into these stores, you will see a lot of CEWE.

Actually, we will have a couple of pictures of one of the stores, and it really looks like a CEWE store. Overall, and I think this is really important, this company is on a good track.

It's on a good growth track, but it's also strategically on a good track. We are continuing our growth in digital photofinishing.

You can see that here. What you can see, it has been a record year in turnover.

It has been a record year as well in EBIT. It has been a record year, and our transformation path of this company clearly continues and did continue—well, it does continue in 2026, we'll come to that a little bit, but it did continue also in the year 2025.

The same is true for EBIT. It is also a record year in EBIT, as I said, well within our target range, quite nicely.

We would have been at the upper end, as said, if we had been delivered also in the commercial online printing area. As announced, yes, we will now focus on the photofinishing business, on what drives us there.

We will give you a lot of insights about the last year and how did we do that, how did we achieve these results, and actually what did the teams do, because it's not only the two of us or us on the board. We have a lot of team members who work every day very hard to make that happen.

Our strategic principles have not changed. To be quite honest, they will not change.

We're a customer-focused company, and this is very important. Probably every company will say that.

For us, it's crucial because we cannot sell a single product without the involvement of our customers, because they have to bring their personal memories. They have to bring their photos.

Only with their personal memories, we can create and actually then print maybe a CEWE PHOTOBOOK or a mug or a canvas and deliver to them. Their involvement is crucial, and it's really at the core of what we're doing.

We do need to focus on what our consumers bring with them to create really meaningful products out of their memories. Innovation, brands, efficiency, and sustainability, these are four topics you will learn a little bit—well, maybe not learn because you know us quite well, but we want to reiterate a little bit on that one.

Everything is bound together by one team, which is driven by one cultural mindset. We will go through some of these aspects now.

As said, customer focus, that's something which drove us, and we want to make customers happy. We are in a very special business.

You look at this picture, and you will say, 'Well, these are people which just smile.' We are in a smiling business, right?

If you walk into the photolab downstairs here, you see a lot of pictures, and on the pictures, people smile. If you look maybe on your camera roll, mostly you see smiling people.

If you convert these pictures into a CEWE PHOTOBOOK, you will see even more smiling people because you will delete all the pictures where you don't smile. We're really in a happy business, and that drives us every day to make our consumers happy.

We have one big success story. That's really important.

We have a very important brand and a very important product in our portfolio. This is the CEWE PHOTOBOOK.

We are so proud that in the past fourth quarter, actually, we did deliver the 100 millionth—difficult to pronounce—the 100 millionth CEWE PHOTOBOOK to one of our consumers. We are going to celebrate that.

We're going to announce that. On Q4, we actually focused on Q4, not on the celebration.

We are very proud that in the past, actually 20 years, we delivered 100 million CEWE PHOTOBOOKs. Actually, we delivered a lot of smiles, a lot of proudness, a lot of sharing.

We really create memories throughout whole Europe because this product, this brand is the most successful photobook brand in whole Europe. We are very proud about this one.

So 100 million is really a success story. We can only do that if we really make our customers happy.

We measure customer satisfaction by the Net Promoter Score, by the NPS. You're used to that.

Also, we are very proud, and probably we would have not been able to deliver that volume growth which we did deliver. We are very proud that we did increase our Net Promoter Score again on a very, very, very high level to 66.7.

It's nothing we invented actually. It's a metric a lot of companies use.

We are very happy that our consumers are happy. This happiness is not only product quality, of course, but it is also their satisfaction with our ordering channels.

How easy is the software, the app, or the website, for example? How fluent is that?

It has also a lot to do with how well do we deliver in the fourth quarter. Because to have our products underneath the Christmas tree on time is really crucial.

The past year was really exceptional in that one. Consumers are happy with the product quality.

Consumers are happy with our ordering channels. They were also very, very happy with our delivery confidence which we gave to them.

I would say most products, out of millions and millions of products, was just a couple of hundred which did not make it in time underneath the Christmas tree, and this is also reflected in this number. What drives us is innovation.

Yes, we did deliver the 100 millionth CEWE PHOTOBOOK. Then you say, 'Okay, where is the innovation in that?

Has it been the same product?' No, it's not the same product.

If you look at toothpaste, it's not the same toothpaste which is sold now compared to 20 years ago. There's a lot of innovation in there.

If you compare the story of the CEWE PHOTOBOOK throughout the last 20 years, there's a huge difference in the way these CEWE PHOTOBOOKs are created now, ordering channels. It's a huge difference in the product variety.

The width and the depth of our product portfolio has changed greatly, and there's a lot of innovation in there. This innovation can only be done if a lot of people—and you see here a picture of the Innovation Days of the year 2025, and we will show you also a video of this year's Innovation Days in a couple of seconds—this can only be delivered if a lot of people from a lot of sides stick their head together and think about how to innovate products, how to innovate ordering channels, how to innovate this company.

This really drives us forward. We will give you a little bit of a feeling what made us proud in terms of innovation in the past year.

The memento pocket and photographic paper segment, this is really something where we all said, 'Okay, that's nice.' Some consumers said, 'It would be nice if I had a pocket in my CEWE PHOTOBOOK to just include, I don't know, boarding passes or entry tickets or something like this.'

We said, 'Okay, why not do that for a little extra on there?' We were really surprised by the success of that because it seems to be simple, but it just shows how important it is for the people to collect their memories.

Photos are important, but there's more, especially when you travel. There's more in your memories.

You have, I don't know, maybe a menu card or whatever it might be which you store with your CEWE PHOTOBOOK. Small product, big impact.

We were quite happy by that one. Designs is important.

Freemium is not only a qualification like you would say, 'Okay, is that a nice design or not?' It's not a qualification, but there's a business model behind it.

We really moved all of our design portfolio into a freemium model. You can order free designs, which enhance conversion.

A good design helps you to really, at the end of the day, finish your product. We also have premium designs for which we charge, and this also helps the bottom line.

We are quite proud that we enlarged this portfolio to many of our products, also to the covers. Sustainability is very important.

This is the kitchen calendar with detachable photos, you don't throw the calendar away with the photos. Some people even cut their photos off the calendar, I was told.

We did invent a method of how to keep your photos by having them detached. Also, the calendars is very important for Q4.

The XXL personalized wall calendar, it looks quite small here. It's huge.

It's really huge. It replaces a canvas or a large wall art on your wall.

It's almost A1 format, it's a really huge calendar. Very nice, especially for, let's say, ambitious photographers.

Designs, I told you, is important to drive conversion, is important to drive also the bottom line. You do need the right products for that, right?

Here, the avocado tomato toast, if that's the design, this looks a lot better if you have a colorful interior color in your mug, for example. It just makes the product better.

We have a couple of limited editions launched quite successfully. They were all sold out, by the way, quite nicely.

Pets, it's a photo treat jar. Some people put cookies in there for themselves, some people put cookies for their pets in there.

Pets in itself was a nice driver. We did focus a bit more on the pets business.

We have landing pages for pets. For some people, are the replacement of the children, right?

They also like to have the photos of their pets, maybe on a blanket, on a pillow. We saw all kinds of pets on the different photo products, and we want to support that.

Again, and I told you that story again, this is just one example of one of the designs we introduced. Design is important topic because you can say, 'This is a poster.'

No, this is not a poster. This is a product, right?

If you have an anniversary collage, this is a real product. Our designs help us, at the end of the day, to create real products.

We say sometimes a design is a product in itself. You will find a couple of these products.

Photo street map poster is a good example, which is at the end physically just a poster, but design-wise, it is actually a new product which we created. We have a couple of these, designs really drive our business.

That our target group, especially for the CEWE brand—and I will comment a little bit to the target group and to the difference of the brands in a minute—they like to be very creative. Yes, we help them to unlock their creativity with our photo products.

The creativity doesn't stop only with the photo products, of course. Some people say, 'Okay, it's nice that I can order an advent calendar with you guys which has chocolate in and I just put my picture on there.'

Others say, 'Yeah, pictures are very important for my advent calendar, but I want to fill this advent calendar myself. I want to buy some perfume, some sweets, some whatever treats by myself and want to do a little bit by myself.'

We created this photo advent calendar boxes. Actually, quite successful, was quite nice.

It actually addresses the target group of people who really want to put more creativity into their advent calendar. Digital greeting cards.

Greeting cards is a changing business. It's not our most important product category, but probably if you look yourself onto your shelf at Christmas, how many Christmas cards you receive in business, maybe how many Christmas cards you received as a private person, maybe how many Christmas cards you actually wrote as a private person.

This business is changing. It's not only because in the Christmas card business, it's also in invitation.

We created digital greeting cards. You would say, 'Why that?

You can just send something via WhatsApp.' The point is you actually want to design a nice card if you want to send out Christmas greetings, if you want to invite—this is an example here for a 60th birthday—if you want to invite somebody to a 60th birthday.

What we found quite successfully as a last-minute Christmas card, that was quite surprising to us. It wasn't something which was really felt in our business in the running up of Christmas like the calendar business or the CEWE PHOTOBOOK business, but on the 23rd and even the 24th of December, people used a lot these—not this one because it's an invitation, but a Christmas card design—to send out a digital Christmas card.

Quite interesting how the landscape, I would say, is changing. I think it's good that we are all convinced that we do great stuff.

It's always good, right, if you're convinced yourself. Actually, we do have some external people who also believe that we do great stuff.

The TIPA awards from the past conferences we did here. It's a jury of journalists, expert journalists.

It's international. That's very important to us.

It's actually worldwide. They look at the innovation in the photo industry as a whole.

They also look at cameras and lenses and so on, but they also look at the photoprinting, as they call it, industry. They awarded many TIPA awards last year to us.

For the panoramic page again, it's, if we do it like this—

Is it nearly a meter?

It's exactly. We do it like this, right?

It's really big. It's an impressive product, they thought themselves.

It's actually not only impressive in physical terms, but also how easily it can be created, how flexible it is. It's not in a specific point in your CEWE PHOTOBOOK.

You can put it wherever you want to put it and so on and so on. It's a patent.

It's actually patented. They were also quite happy with our CEWE photo pass app which creates biometric photo.

Don't be fooled. Yes, the German market in terms of passport photos has changed.

We were aware of that because you actually need to, I don't know, walk into the mayor's building to have your pictures taken. This is different in a lot of other European countries.

Also, people still need pictures for their, I don't know, public transport card and so on. This app helps you, quite nicely.

We did reinvent the calendar, by the way. We did reinvent the calendar.

This is the fine line wall calendar. You see that there's no spiral binding here.

You don't turn the pages, you actually take it off and have a very neat, design-oriented hanging and changing system. This was very well received by the TIPA jury.

You see that here. It was a Red Dot winner.

Just very recently, actually, I know we talk about 2025 here, but we spoil a bit for '26, it did also receive the iF Design Award, quite outstandingly we believe, because usually that's not the award photo products are awarded with. It shows that we also have an impact by designing great products.

Ordering channels are important. Apps are important.

There's a CEWE smart layout concept which is not only in the mobile app, but also in the desktop app. You will see that in a video also in a minute.

Apps are not only in the CEWE branded world, they are also in the Pixum world. This is why Pixum also has been awarded a TIPA award for their app, actually as the best photobook app.

We will show you a video also of Pixum showing how they address, as a brand, their target group in a minute, actually. WhiteWall, best photo frame.

Looks nice. Also, we have that in oak.

I ordered it in oak, very nice. I can just recommend it to you.

We're exceptionally proud, I would say, not only about that we did receive all these TIPA awards, but then those winners of these awards, also from other industry players, I told you this is a journalist jury which does these TIPA awards, they have websites, they have blogs, they have magazines, they put out these awards and let professional photographers vote for their favorite products. Guess what?

We won also the Photographers' Choice Awards. Again, it's not only that we convinced the jury, but we also convinced the photographers that we did great.

The CEWE PHOTOBOOK with panorama page was very well received by those photographers. We're quite proud, actually.

This brings us to the question of will that go on? I don't know.

I have to tell you because we are in the phase of defining the roadmap and laying out all the product ideas. We want to create the environment in which all of our employees can really give an innovative input to the company.

This is why we do the Innovation Days. Every year, we do that in Oldenburg.

That's our hometurf. This year, we had about 1,300 people here in Oldenburg.

This is quite astonishing. It's about a third of our workforce which came to look at ideas, present ideas themselves, exchange on ideas.

The video will give you a little bit of just a feeling on what we do and how people collaborate, I think.

Innovation Days in three words: Team. Passion.

Innovation. Inspirations.

Future. Relationships.

Inspiring. People.

Together. Inspiring.

Creative. Social.

Fun. Joy.

Excuse the quality of the video. It's actually a good video.

It's just the Zoom platform which doesn't transmit that very well, sorry for that one. The idea is really to give you a little bit a sense of the spirit we all had.

It was your first time, right, Sirka? You enjoyed it as well?

Yes, it was really great.

Yeah. Good spirit.

The important thing is that everybody can bring an idea, exhibit it there, and go into discussion with all the others from the company, receive feedback, develop the idea further, and then hopefully at some point in time, it will become a product. This is actually the way the panoramic page was invented for the CEWE PHOTOBOOK, just as one of the many examples.

Brands is also important. We are one of the very few, if not the only one, but we can debate that a little bit, photofinishing companies which is operating with different brands.

We do that on purpose. We believe there are different target groups out there which need to be addressed differently.

We want to give you a little bit of a feeling of what we do with different brands and how we address our target group and what were some actions which were brand-driven. Of course, we start with CEWE.

You saw a lot about CEWE already. I want to start with the CEWE Photo Contest.

We are very proud that we were able to deliver again the CEWE Photo Award, which has been the greatest, largest photo competition in the world. We're very proud about this one.

Again, it's not us who delivers the content, we deliver the platform. It's the photographers.

This is the praying mantis here in a dancing, so-called dancing—it's actually defensive move—in a dancing move, the winning picture. This is just one of many pictures.

We did get 656,000 pictures, I believe. Yeah.

656,000 pictures which were uploaded to our platform. By far, it's really by far the largest photo competition we did, with very nice results.

We got them from all over the world. This is a picture from Indonesia, for example, and 153 countries.

A lot more countries which handed in their photos than we are active in, quite proud. This is one of my favorite winner photos, I have to tell you, because it's from a football match.

I'm a little bit of a football fan, just a little bit. This is actually a French supporter looking at well, I would say probably a missed chance.

This is my interpretation, I don't know really, a missed chance of the French national team against Argentina in the World Cup of a couple of years ago. CEWE Photo Award is one thing, addressing photographers.

That our behavior on how we consume media is changing a lot. We are on very different social media channels, maybe Insta, Facebook, or Pinterest, and so on.

Also, we ask constantly ourselves the question of how to present our brand, our products on these channels. TikTok, well, is a different channel, we need to be there in a different way, but still addressing our target group, still addressing our need.

This is just one of the examples of how the CEWE brand does that on the TikTok channel.

Wieso macht eigentlich keiner mehr Fotoalben? Kennst du das, wenn du so alte Fotos von deinen Eltern oder Großeltern siehst und dich so fragst: Wie haben die eigentlich als Teenager oder junge Erwachsene gelebt?

Damit ich meinen zukünftigen Kids später mal zeigen kann, was sie eigentlich für eine coole Mum haben, halte ich jedes Jahr meine persönlichen Jahreshighlights in so einem CEWE FOTOBUCH fest. Hier sind keine perfekt inszenierten Fotos drin, sondern ganz viele Schnappschüsse.

Geht wenigstens nichts in meiner Handygalerie verloren und ich kann das Jahr einfach mit allen Emotionen Revue passieren lassen. Hier waren wir an einem See, es war richtig cute.

Hier hatten wir auch einen richtig schönen Mädelstag. Und es gibt jetzt auch diese hübschen Designs hier.

Das erinnert mich doch direkt an ein Coffee Table Book. Also jetzt ist auf jeden Fall die beste Zeit, kreativ zu werden.

Deswegen speicher dir die Idee zum Nachmachen ab.

Yeah. Sorry for the German video.

We actually selected the videos mostly from Germany because we know most of you are actually from Germany. If you're not, you can look at your local TikTok channels and find similar videos on there.

Again, we have different brands addressing different needs. We will show you here a big screen as we call it, it's for the bigger screens, may be YouTube, may be TV, may be CTV like Netflix or whatever advertising.

On the big screen, something from Pixum which clearly addresses a different need.

Fotobuch in 5 Minuten geht ganz einfach mit der Pixum App. Gestalte persönliche Fotobücher aus deinen schönsten Bildern.

Wird aus jedem Foto im Handumdrehen ein Geschenk. Schnell, einfach, Pixum.

Dein Online-Fotoservice.

Quick, simple. It it really addresses the mobile target group.

It clearly goes on the app, very important. It's an important ordering channel for us, the app.

Most of our consumers actually also visit our websites via their their smartphones. It's not only the pictures taken by the smartphones, it's also visiting our our channels via the smartphone.

This is why we have apps. We have apps at CEWE as well.

Pixum in their communication focuses totally on on the app. Very different need, very different target group.

Just the the last example—we could show you a lot more—is a video from WhiteWall. The target group from WhiteWall is very different.

This is probably not probably, this is why this video also is very different again. Yeah.

That was too early, right? There were still some music playing there.

Excuses again for the video quality. Again, it's driven by the Zoom platform here.

Usually, the video quality is as good as our photo quality at at WhiteWall. They're addressing clearly a different target group.

They're addressing rather professional, very enthusiastic photographers. You you've seen a couple of them there cooperating with the so-called WhiteWall Ambassadors, and that's what also they address in their brand activity.

It should just give you not only a sense of what we do, but also why we have different brands. That's important.

This is clear strategic vision behind it, that there are different target groups out there in the photofinishing segment which need to be addressed by different brands. Coming to something totally different, but still clearly very, very, very important to us.

I say that in in an I would say in an environment where people have the feeling—and we got actually the question on the Innovation Days to the board, 'Well, is sustainability still important to us when, everywhere else people talk about not being important anymore, cutting climate goals, and so on and so on?' We always said, sustainability is at the heart and within our the DNA of what we're doing way before Fridays for Future.

Also, we believe in that also in these maybe difficult times where people do actually a sustainable sustainability bashing. We do not.

We actually work towards that goal. I want to give you a glimpse—it's a little bit more technical slide here—of our CO2 footprint, what's what's there.

We are really proud, we are really proud. We were one of the the few companies, the first actually, in 2017 which set climate goals, SBTi, Science Based Targets initiative, climate goals, CO2 goals based on the year 2015.

In our Scope 1 and and and 2 area—and this is basically the direct emissions and the indirect emissions by purchased energy—we overfulfilled those goals. We are very proud.

We're talking about the year 2025, clear reduction. We did a lot of initiatives.

You will see most of our buildings now with photovoltaic energy, green electricity. You will see us see us driving electrical cars, right, Sirka?

We are replacing gas heatings. We do a lot of initiatives to bring that down quite successfully.

All the targets met. We have to be honest, we did not meet all the targets in the Scope 3.

This is the so-called indirect emissions out of outside of CEWE in in our value chain. This, for example, the material we buy, the paper we're buying, for example, the wood we're buying, the logistics, like the DHL courier we're we're using, for example.

This is largely depending on third parties. We did not fulfill our own targets.

We're not alone in in this world. There are two main reasons for this.

We can discuss about this, but two main reasons. Number one, our setup in the year 2025 is totally different than in the year 2015.

We did acquire WhiteWall, we did acquire Cheerz, and so on. We we would have needed to to actually recalculate our base year technically.

We did not do that because actually it's more important to work on the things than just to calculate. This is one reason why we didn't achieve that.

The second is we over over-estimated actually the impact of how suppliers would work in their own production, like our paper suppliers worked in in their own production in reducing CO2 emissions. It did not work out that well.

We are working with the suppliers very, very hardly to reduce CO2 emissions. This is, for example, why we have the CEWE Supplier Sustainability Award to award those suppliers who do really great things.

We ourselves make sure that we buy the right material. FSC is is one of the things.

We we use a lot of paper in our production, we make sure that we use certified paper, very important, is one of the things. We have the clear goal of reducing our CO2 emissions further.

We have the goal to work further and further on the sustainability in general. CO2 is just one of the little aspects with many sustainability aspects we are working on.

This is despite all of the talks which are going around us. Coming to efficiency, very important.

I will address that in the photofinishing, in the in the summary in a little bit as well. That we have production sites.

Scale is is an important topic for us. Expansion of production capacity has to do with volume growth.

Volume growth needs to be needs to be worked on in our production site, we need more space. Has also a lot to do with scaling, bringing together volumes in in production site in order to be able to automate even more.

This drives a lot the efficiency, and this is something we clearly have as a target. I will come back to the to that in a minute.

We are also very happy, again coming to to an external acknowledgement here, that we were recognized by Deloitte, UBS, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and BDI as one of the Germany's Best Managed Companies. They clearly addressed our our thrive for efficiency as well.

Very proud to get this stamp, this actually very renowned award here as as one of the Best Managed Companies. Which brings us to the team, because everything which I told you about right now is only possible with a great team.

This is a picture actually from the Innovation Days. I don't know if if it's this is all the 1,300 people, but you see it's a it's a lot of people.

We have great team, we have about 4,000 employees. They work really hard every single day, and sometimes night if we talk about the Q4.

That we work in three shifts there. They really work hard to make our consumers happy.

I can talk a lot now about what they're doing. Actually, we let them talk because we put together a video of and asking them, 'What are you exceptionally proud of in the in the past year?'

They handed in those scenes. Great team, great spirit, and we are extremely proud of them as well, and take this opportunity also to thank the whole CEWE team for what they delivered in the past year.

This brings me to my final slide in this section. I just want to give you kind of a strategic wrap-up of how we see us in the photofinishing industry.

We're convinced that we are extremely, extremely well-positioned in this photofinishing industry. You see the brands where we're active with in this industry.

We're driven—and this is something I really wanted to bring across in this session today—we are driven by consumers, by customer satisfaction, retention or loyalty, however you want to say that. It is only possible by continuous innovation.

We don't stand still, never as a company. We don't stand still in terms of product innovation.

We don't stand still in terms of ordering channel innovation. We don't stand still in innovation in our factories, very important.

If we look back, the photofinishing world is not very transparent. We have a couple of figures.

All of the figures we have, all of them show that we did have market share gains in the past year. All the figures we did not have, but we have a good market feeling, indicate the same.

This company drove market share up. This is very important.

Why? Because we have great brand positions there.

We also able to deliver steady organic growth, which is largely, not totally, but largely independent from economic development. As long as people travel, this is one big driver, and as long as Christmas does exist, this business will be healthy, very clearly.

We have a focus on efficiency in production and administration. However, we are not yet there.

I think this is something we also need to address here. We are not leveraging the group size enough.

How important it is to have different brands. How important it is to be active in different countries.

Do we leverage the group size enough? We saw our EBIT increase less than our turnover.

We clearly have as one of our targets the goal to scale better, still retain our brand positioning, still retaining our local touch and feel to the markets. We're working clearly on programs of how to scale this company better because this is something where we want to improve and need to improve.

We have a good financial strength. Sirka will tell you in a minute more about this one.

We have a good financial strength. It enable us for additional growth in an unorganic way, we are looking actively for acquisitions.

Today is not the day where we are able to send out any ad hoc messages, but be assured that we're working on them. We select the targets we want to very carefully, we negotiate very carefully, we have them all still on the table.

As I used to say, well, we have deep pockets, good financial strength, but we have short hands. Whatever we do, we do very carefully.

We have clearly opportunities in front of us, and we will use them. This, dear Sirka, brings me to the hard figures, right?

Yes, and I guess I will have a hard job to do here because myself, I can say I'm still touched from the videos. I don't know how much are you still interested in listening to my dry numbers here.

Anyway, looking into the business segment photofinishing, which is our most important segment, at least 86% of our turnover is fed by the photofinishing business. The turnover over '25 grew by 4.4%.

Thomas mentioned already a little bit what made our photofinishing so successful. I guess the most important story about the turnover is here really that we are proud of volume growth instead of just increasing the prices.

It's obviously, and this is here really across all the products the case, while the revenue per photo rose by 0.3%. Looking into the EBIT, also Thomas mentioned already a little bit, which is true for the entire group, that our EBIT is not so fast growing than our turnover.

This is mainly driven by higher personnel costs, in fact 12.5 million additional personnel costs. This is a mixture of wage increases, new hires, but also one-time effects because in '25, we had board changes.

For the top line, we need also to spend a little bit more on our marketing budget, and 7.6 million more marketing costs helped also us for supporting the top line. With the third impact of our EBIT, we also have to notice that the IT costs are rising.

I guess we are not the only one in the market who is suffering a bit from the entire development, and also the strength of our IT partners. Our IT license fees rose only for the photofinishing business by 1.7 million.

We can conclude that photofinishing continues to grow both top line and bottom line as well. For the top line, we are happy about volume growth.

Analyzing the seasonality effect across all the quarters show us how important the last quarter is. If you look into the numbers turnover-wise, you can really see that we double up the turnover from the quarters in our last quarter.

That has something to do with Christmas, which is for sure, and reserved and blocked for our customer base obviously. Also we could see a continuously growth over all the quarters, which is also a very good sign for us.

The targets were all the time exceeded, and which is not only a good motivation for our team, but also it helps us with the numbers. Looking into the EBIT, of course, you can see here again a massive seasonality fast effect.

These graphs show you that we make our money only in the last quarter of the year. All throughout all the quarters, we were within the expected targets, which is also something where we are happy about.

Let's change a bit the perspective and looking into the number of prints and the turnover of the photofinishing. You can see here the number of total prints is exceeded.

It was exceeding our targets of 2%, we have an increase of 4.1%. Then if you multiply the turnover per photo, which is also increasing, that makes our turnover of the photofinishing, and is increasing, of course, our revenue in total.

Very very proud, and very good to see. If you move now to our core product, Thomas mentioned it, and also maybe you have seen it in the video, and you got a bit the flavor, again 3.5% increase.

It's the plus of our core product. Only in the last quarter with an increase of 1.6%.

This is following the trend. Also, a success of our constant innovation, the power of our teams.

You have seen the beautiful layouts, the premiumization. All our customers, especially the creational ones, really like the nice designs and materials.

Good story, I would say. Let's switch to our other business segment, the commercial online printing business.

We combine here viaprinto, SAXOPRINT, and Laserline, and focusing on business advertising prints, flyer cards, stationary, packaging, promotional items, merchandising, business cards, etc. If you look here into the numbers, we must say, if you only see the dry numbers here, you would say, 'Okay, what's going on there?'

We must admit that, and if you observe the market, there's an unchanged and ongoing trend of digitization for our commercial online printing clients, and the entire market is undergoing significant reductions. That's why we can be satisfied with the only reduction of turnover by 0.4%.

Obviously, our best price guarantee strategy is helping and supporting that still we are gaining market share. EBIT-wise, we cut obviously our result into half compared to last year.

We're still earning money with the business, and so the EBIT was mainly reduced due to the competitive pricing level in the market, but also due to our investments into the international business. We grew out a bit more to Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, and also UK.

We also spent some money into our efficiency-enhancing ideas, the term is here hybrid production, and what does it mean? It means the combination of offset and digital printing.

It's really impressive if you would be on site in our production. Retail, also, when I go through our shops in South and Central Eastern Europe, but also to Scandinavia, it's really nice to see, walk through the CEWE stores.

We have more than 100 retail stores. This segment is also about the e-commerce web shops where we sell hardware, and so this a point of sale where we get really physically also in touch with our customers.

If you look into these numbers, and honestly didn't expect this good development, after years of stagnation, we can see a increase of turnover, and even everything is on a still on a low level, but it's going into the right direction. We have a plus of 2% in turnover.

We are even more proud also on the even EBIT development, which shows us a very positive result development. Great development, a bit surprised.

I was really also surprised how much interest a lot of our customers have also in these products like frames, and also all the products we sell around the photo and the photobooks. Less exciting, but for the completeness, we also have to talk about the remaining segment others.

This is mainly about the structural and corporate costs. We are generating also our EBIT out of renting out properties.

This year, the income was a bit higher, so that we have a improved EBIT, but it's not our core business. Moving to our financials.

If we look into our balance sheet, and this is the snapshot, I will come back to that snapshot information message once more later. You can see here that we are following the trend growing our asset base.

This is in '25 not only driven by some effects what happens over the year-end, over the date 31st of December, it is also because we builded up our inventory. We stored for more than 4 million photopaper for our photofinishing business, but also for the commercial online printing business.

We prepared us and for supporting also the prints for the elections we have across Germany. The total asset base increased also because of our build up in the properties, the renovations we had.

The asset base increased by 23.7 million. If we look into the equity ratio, it's following again the increase pass.

This is what Thomas, when he's talking about full pockets, we have a massive financial power also to invest with such an equity ratio of now 61%, 61.2% exactly. Of course, the equity is reflecting also our solid results, and corrected by the dividends, we come later also to that.

A very healthy balance sheet, and but also it's showing a bit we are ready. We are ready for the growth.

Let's move to the free cash flow. See the operative networking capital decreases by 22 million due to the reduction of trade receivables and 3 million higher tax prepayments, and as I mentioned beforehand also the increase in inventories.

This movements over the year, and at plus the investments we had, and so this is mainly into our property plants. Where we produce, we usually own also the property, also to keep our best freedom to build up our production in a way we would like to produce.

This is, of course, also reflected here in the investing activities. That leads to a free cash flow as a snapshot of the end of the year by 30 43.7 million.

For the analyst purposes, we showed a bit also these single effects, to normalize the cash flow, to give you a bit the flavor what the overall relation is. As I mentioned, analyzing the one-off effects, what would we anticipate if we would normalize our cash flow to see and understand a bit more where we are, you can see here the advanced debt collections by retail partners compared to last year, the tax payments, but also the higher inventory built up year-on-year, but also the earlier repayments of liabilities, and the specially investments in to real estate, renovation, and construction, and corrected also by the subsidies we got for our renovation and new built in Freiburg.

That leads to a normalized cash flow here of 70.8 million if we would take out these extra and extraordinary and one-off effects. To show you a bit compared to the last or what happens over the last years, we did the same exercise by taking out these special effects over the last years, and there you can see we're following the trend, and we are within the corridor, and so this is nothing to be concerned about these days.

Return on capital employed, 17.6%, it's at the level of '22. As this is influenced also by segments where we have not such a high profitability as the commercial online print.

We can see here the dilution, of course, of the return on capital employed for the group's level. It's 17.6%, which is still strong, and where we can be very happy about, and where we are satisfied about.

Last but not least, dividends. Obviously, a I would say unique story.

Only a very few companies at the stock exchange can tell this. The seven for the 17th time in the row, we recommend as management board the increase of the dividend by 15 cents to €3.

This will propose to the general meeting, which will take place in June. The €3 is also a bit anticipating our results situation, and but also showing our strong commitment also to the investors.

That leads me to hand over to Thomas.

Thank you very much, Sirka. I believe the dividend story is really a great, great story, very well received by all of you, by all of our investors.

I think we have a dividend ratio of 3% compared to our stock price right now, which is also quite attractive, right? Now it's time to take out the crystal ball a little bit, and look into the outlook.

Why the crystal ball? Sirka has told you how important the fourth quarter is.

Everything we do will be dependent, of course, of the fourth quarter as usual. How do we see the year 2026?

Let's first maybe look a little bit in the environment around us. We see inflation has calmed down a lot, which is nice.

Consumer confidence, well, this depends now a little bit also of the global situation probably, but consumer confidence is not really under pressure. We have stable labor market conditions.

People travel. This is important.

Also, if we look at the travel companies, we follow them quite closely, how are they doing in terms of travel? What is it TUI, for example, doing?

Do people travel? They also confirmed their strong position.

They had a strong first quarter. We are quite confident that we can grow the business again.

We lay down a range between €870 and €900 million for the turnover, again driven obviously by photofinishing here. Everything will depend, as usually, on the fourth quarter.

With this expected range we lay down here, we will continue our growth path. We have this long-term growth path, and we are constantly on this growth path.

We watch that very closely. We see it develop very well.

The same is true for our EBIT. We are always a bit cautious there, the EBIT range almost at the lower end being roughly at where we were in last year, but we also see a goal of 93% here at the upper range, maybe I see.

Thank you very much. A little bit more to the details here.

Again, in the photos, we were at 2.6 billion photos. We see a growth path here of up to 3%.

The same is true for the CEWE PHOTOBOOK. We want to invest a little bit more.

This has a lot to do with some movements which some investment we didn't do in '25 to '26. The most important things is our turnover growth between 1% and 4% and an EBIT between -1% and +6%.

At the end of the day, the goal is to become more profitable. I think that's the bottom line which you should take with you.

This concludes us, and it concludes this presentation, not the session, because, as said, we will have a Q&A session with you. Please feel free to post your question in the chat.

We will take them together, transcribe them. If you put them in English, please do so.

If you only do that in German, no problem. We will translate them and answer that over the air.

If you go home from that session, you should take one thing with you: everything we do here is to make customers happy. That really drives us.

Thank you very much.

Yes, and we do have a first question from the audience. The question comes from Niklas.

I can only see his first name here. Niklas asks, 'The upper end of your guidance assumes no significant negative impact on consumer sentiment.

Considering the geopolitical situation and the recent escalations, do you already view this as a potential headwind that could decrease consumer spendings in general or, for example, in terms of traveling and generating a photobook out of this? Or is this already factored into your 2026 outlook?'

Thank you very much, Niklas, for your question. That's a difficult one, definitely, because I said before, right, if people travel, we are very confident on our outlook.

What we see right now is that people do travel. The travel companies are quite happy.

We do see that they do change their travel plans to different destinations. That's very clear.

If you follow these travel companies, right now we do not assume that travel will be hindered. Looking at consumer spend, in the past years we have been quite independent from this consumer sentiment.

Of course, now taking into account all the ifs, if this really deteriorates in a significant way, this is hard for us to foresee. As of now, we're quite confident with our outlook.

The second question is about the effective tax rate.

Yes, I guess that is something I can answer. We have one-off effects.

These one-off effects are mainly due to the legally required revaluation of deferred tax assets, especially related to our pension provisions, and one-off income tax effects from prior years. These one-off effects sum up to nearly 2 million, so that's why so the tax ratio is over 34%.

If we take these one-off effects out, we have a normalized tax ratio of 31.2%, which is in line to what we have seen over the last years and also what we expect in the next year.

Great, you already answered the second part of the question: what would be the effective tax rate going forward? I think that question is answered.

The third question is about the plans for commercial online printing.

Is there any specifics in there? Generally speaking, what are the plans for commercial online printing?

Actually, and I think we were quite open about that one, we were not entirely satisfied with what commercial online printing did deliver. As Sirka said rightly, turnover-wise, actually a good job.

With the same turnover, we did reduce our EBIT, and we know the reasons why we did so. We did prepare for 2026.

Actually, the outlook is more positive in 2026. Whatever we see, whatever was done in 2025 has a nice effect in '26.

We can see that already. However, the strategic question behind is what do we do with commercial online print in the future?

That remains, and we will answer that the same way like we answered that in the past analyst calls here: all options are on the table, we're working on all options. Important is in that respect, our focus is photofinishing.

Let's say the willingness to invest in commercial online print into the future is, compared to photofinishing, quite limited. I think that's fair to say.

We expect to deliver results there, but we also consider strategic options in let's say many variations here.

The next question comes from our visitors from the media, from Lisa Schrödter from Weser-Kurier. She's wondering, will product prices go up?

What about photobooks?

Very good question indeed. As you mentioned, Sirka, our costs are rising, and the same is true for everyone right now.

We're looking at the gas prices right now, they're rising, they're rising as well. We always reconsider our product prices.

We did increase them in the past years. We don't exclude price increases in this time.

There's no major increase, I think that's fair to say, there's no major increase planned. We have to work constantly looking at our own cost base, looking at what our suppliers charge to us.

We constantly look at the actually pressure also on us to increase our prices. You might see a couple of things, but not major.

The next question is a little longer, I'll try to summarize. It addresses the current situation in Iran and how it impacts our business, specifically, what is your exposure to energy costs and higher oil prices?

What margin compressions to EBIT would you see?

It's a little bit linked to the question before. I think I answered the top-line thing.

Number one, we are not immediately affected by the Iran crisis in terms of supply chain. Let's start with that one.

Do we have anything stuck? As long as the Suez Canal is open, for example, this is something where we would have an effect on containers being delivered from China and so on.

You might remember this ship where a ship was kind of stuck in the Suez Canal, we felt that for a couple of weeks that our containers were not delivered. No direct effect there.

The probably most immediate effect we would have exactly is the oil price increase. Where would we see that?

Mainly in logistics. This is something where we also constantly adjust our logistic prices.

As an e-commerce company, we need to deliver via mail order to our consumers. We, in very early days, always charge for delivery.

This is a habit all our consumers are used to. Sometimes it's unusual to other e-commerce companies which, I don't know, have free delivery in general or free delivery orders over €20 or €30 or €40 or €50.

We don't do that, and we actually pass on these increases. We will get mostly by DHL in Germany and other suppliers in other countries.

I'm not saying we're bulletproof in that sense, but we have no direct effect on that, it's rather an indirect effect. Why don't we have direct effects?

Because we have long-term energy contracts in terms of energy like electricity and all of these other things. We don't see any short-term effects on that one.

Could there be a long-term effect over the coming years? Yes, probably.

That's the question of how long this crisis will go on.

The next question addresses the increase in capex expectations for 2026. What are the key investments broken down by business segment?

What I can share with you here is that our level of operating investments will be for '26 around 47 million out of the 77 which are planned. So 30 million will be allocated to our property and plant investments.

We invest into our WhiteWall production facility in Frechen. On the other hand, also we just built or bought a facility for our business in UK.

This is it.

The next question again goes into the geopolitical. Fuel prices are expected to increase given that airlines are not fully hedged for 2026.

It is reasonable to believe that ticket prices for flights will go up at the end of the year. Why are you so confident that travel will continue to be strong?

It's a very good question. We see that, and this is based on our experiences from the last year, travel is the last bit of consumer spend where people really save.

The travel is so important. That we have a big footprint in the German market.

The Germans are considered to be the travel champions. I think that's the word there.

Based on our experience looking back in similar crisis, travel was not dramatically affected. When was travel dramatically affected?

That was in the COVID crisis where travel was not possible, and this was something which we really felt. You see that in our long-term revenue development there.

Probably maybe one thing to add is that people maybe choose other targets, and maybe people will not prefer sitting at the airport and going somewhere by plane, but people will still travel. We see really massive increase of bookings in South of Spain, for example, where people can go by car instead of flying.

Does it change the way of taking pictures and enjoying vacation? I don't think so.

The next question has two parts. One addresses capex, which I think we've already addressed.

The other addresses the photofinishing EBIT, which slightly declined. Special items declined slightly from— Did not decline.

—revenue growth was somewhat absorbed. Could you shed some light on that development?

Silke,

do you want to take that? The EBIT in photofinishing did not decline, right?

So—

Margin in the photofinishing declined by 0.6%, and this is mainly coming out of the effects I explained already a bit. We have seen in the business segment photofinishing the increase personal costs with the wage increases, one-time effects, and new hires, higher marketing costs, and also in combination with the IT costs.

That is the explanation why our EBIT margin was a bit more under pressure than in last years.

The next question addresses price inflation. How much of price inflation are you accounting for in your EBIT guidance given that the upper end of the range is lower than the upper end of the range from last year?

How much?

I didn't get that question of price inflation is in there?

I'll just read it again, we have the time. How much of price inflation are you accounting for in your EBIT guidance given that the upper end of the range is lower than the upper end of the range from last year?

Yeah. Difficult question because price inflation, I think it rather refers to higher prices which occur to us by our suppliers.

That's the way I read that question. Of course, it's not to be answered because we do have fixed contracts in parts of our supply chain.

We have others where we do not have fixed contracts, and so we are variable, I would say, on the general cost assumption and cost budgeting for the next year. We, for example, budget for higher prices due to our wage agreement, which still continues, the trade union agreement here in Germany.

We account for inflation, to speak, price increases for personnel costs, for example. For others, we budget with stability because of longer contracts.

Let's say a mixed picture there.

The next question asks us to comment on our ability to pass through higher energy costs onto consumer/raise prices.

I think that's already answered. Again, higher energy cost in the year 2026, let's answer that one, would affect us mainly on the logistics side.

There we have the ability to pass that on, not, I would say, unlimited obviously. Again, then we would not be the only ones in raising prices for delivery, for example.

This is a good ability to pass that on, and we saw that that's well accepted by consumers. On the general price level, that would be rather a strategic question: how much spend willingness, let's put it that way, do consumers have in general for photo products?

I would say that goes rather in line with any other product. If energy prices drive up inflation, we would be able to raise prices accordingly.

We saw that during the Ukrainian crisis, for example, which is still not over, but when we had the energy crisis over there, we were able to raise our price and was accepted. You saw our volume growth quite well by our consumers.

However, we always would need to level that with our competitive actions. We're not the only ones out there in the market, and we have other players which work a lot with discounts, it's not an unlimited ability, I would say.

Can you comment on the length of our contracts for electricity?

I can comment that, as far as I know, there is not a single contract which is up for renegotiation in 2026. I can't tell you really how many are up for renegotiation in '27 or '28 or '29, different length in different geographies actually.

You mentioned in the presentation the lack of operational leverage visible over the last two years, and also implied in the outlook for 2026. When do you think this will be reestablished?

Number one, we need to scale better. I think that that's what this question is referring to, and I'm very open about this.

We do have a strong operational leverage if you look at our Q4 figures, right? If you look at the past Q4, you see how big that operational leverage was, and which was actually quite strong, quite well.

We're very happy about the Q4 development in general. However, looking at the general cost development we are having, taking all four quarters, looking at the volume growth we are having, we need to leverage better.

This is not a short-term action, I have to tell you. This is not like a button we can push.

We're developing a couple of programs actually of how to collaborate better across the group. Do we really—Silke was referring to IT license costs, for example, which are skyrocketing—do we need different IT systems in different sites?

This is one of the question. How can we automate even better in production?

How can we scale marketing across brands better? How can we make an operational leverage?

This is not a short-term leverage. Again, we are quite happy with how we leverage in Q4.

This is a long-term view. We know we have a topic there, we know we need to work on that one.

We have the clear goal, and this is reflected in our budget numbers, to increase profitability. This is something, I would say, is probably something we would need to look at in two to three years on a major impact there.

We are on to our last question, which addresses our business development in the various countries. Could you comment on that briefly, especially in Germany?

Consumer sentiment here is tense.

Yes, consumer sentiment is tense. We are very international as a group.

Global footprint, I think, is a bit exceeding. We have majorly a European footprint over many countries.

As always, we're talking about 20-plus countries here, and we don't comment on single ones. I can say that international business was stronger than our German business.

Is that consumer sentiment? Good question.

We talk also about a market which is probably a lot more saturated than Central and Eastern European markets where we have developing economies, for example. We're very happy with our international development.

However, we grew also in Germany, I want to make that very clear. We grew also in Germany, which is not true for many other e-commerce companies in Germany, which again shows us that we are largely independent from economic development.

Are we totally independent from that one? No.

Do we have countries where we grew stronger? Yes.

Also we have countries where our market position is not yet as strong, and where it is easier for us to snatch market share from competitors. We had many, many countries where we're very happy with the development.

I think it's a good balance we are having with our international footprint there. We always said we are the European market leader.

We are market leader in many countries, but not yet in all European countries. We still have some ability to grow.

If we look at the ability to grow, probably it's more international than in Germany given our very, very strong market position here in this country. No more questions.

Yes, thank you very much. Vice President Investor Relations is actually sitting with us in this room.

You don't see him, but you all know Axel Weber, and you can give him a call, you can send him an email. He will be very happy to answer that.

Jokes aside, thank you very much for your interest in CEWE. We are very proud of what this company delivers every single day to millions of consumers, and we are happy that you continue to invest into this company, that you uphold your interest.

We will deliver good results also in the year 2026, be assured. Thanks very much.