Geox S.p.A.

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.

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.

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