ASBISc Enterprises Plc

ASBISc Enterprises Plc

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Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 27, 2026

Siarhei Kostevitch

Thank you very much for coming here and joining the meeting. Thank you for being with us today.

From management board, I'm alone. Costas was supposed to travel as well, but after he saw temperature is zero in Warsaw, he did everything not to do it.

In our agenda today, actually, there are three major topics. We update you about, yeah, major corporate events and developments, and financial results of Q4 and whole year of 2025, and then also give you first outlook of 2026.

First about the business units of of ASBIS Group and their development in 2025. Basically, you know that Apple is the biggest vendor for us.

Last year, Apple, however, had single-digit growth, 7% or about 7%. It was very weak start in Q1 of last year was oversupply and big price wars with illicit traders in Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

However, we have finished quite well in Q4 because after after launch of iPhone 17, demand is extremely strong. My take is that because it's renewal cycle after COVID time, and it just started.

Respectively, we have limited supply, we have shortage. Q4 was quite strong, and we see actually the demand is remains strong, and currently, the constraint is supply.

We manage supply. ASBIS South Africa, who started Apple distribution from July of '24, demonstrated very good growth and results, established quite well.

ASBIS South Africa gained strong position in in the in the market within one year. What I'm happy to to see and to announce that from September of 2025, they already became profit contributor to group.

It was one of the quite good, very good investments. ASBC, our premium and luxury retail business unit, grew 24%.

Now we have, it's like 58 retail stores and eight B2C e-commerce stores. I will talk later a bit more in depth about that.

Breezy trade-in business unit more than doubled the business, and they continue to grow. We have we gained number one position in CIS, but our major aim now is to expand and to develop in European Union and South Africa and probably in Gulf as well.

We're happy to support the growth. Consumer distribution last year was like only, yeah, almost flat.

The major driver of that was because Logitech, who is one of the big vendor for us and in that consumer route-to-market distribution, changed business model. We moved from master distributor to to to distribute in Middle East and in South Africa directly all retail, right?

It take us time to to develop it, but again, is growing quite well together with private label and third-party brands. Core business of ours, IT distribution, that's where we face and demonstrate more significant growth, like ICT distribution for data centers mainly.

Not only, it's client computing as well, and different peripherals and finished products, computing products and peripherals. Major it was the major growth driver is components and building blocks for data centers.

That's where we face serious growth because we are one-stop shop, and we are one of the leading distributors across EMEA for most of the vendors. Respectively, they select us to make a to and to conduct serious projects.

Then ICT and active equipment for data centers and building data centers, this kind of value-added projects, it's again, 20%, 20% growth last year. It just beginning.

We have continuously we have strong pipeline for data centers. We build data centers ourselves, but not housing, not passive cooling equipment.

We only focus on our core business: server, storage, and networking, right? NVIDIA and other vendors, they welcome, and they want us to to to do that this kind of installations ourselves.

Of course, we outsource it to third parties, but we manage it, and we're comfortable to continue that. This is a picture overall for of 2025 dynamics.

Geographically, basically, yeah, we already reported that we developed back in 2024 our distribution. Most of development to support the growth from distribution infrastructure standpoint, we completed in '24.

In '25, the only project was, the project which was serious, we built up 20,000 square meter distribution center in Kazakhstan, in Almaty, to support the growth in that area. Kazakhstan is the biggest country by revenue for group, driven by Apple, but not only lately.

In Kazakhstan, we also do data center business, data center infrastructure development business. In terms of geography, we already announced, I just highlight that this year, next quarter, actually, we start we plan to start local operations in Saudi Arabia.

Market is big. We wanted to be there.

We already have the business there serving from Emirates, but we see good opportunity to operate locally. Also next quarter, we starting operations in two more countries in Northwest Africa: it's Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.

We studied, and after studies and analytics and agreements with the vendors that they will support it, we open these two local operations as well. That's update from geography standpoint, right?

About startups of ours, look, the update is that all of them alive. All of them still promise and develop best-in-class technologies to impress the world.

Most of them started to sell their products, right? EnerCell and Clevetura and others.

Clevetura, they they mainly sell in US market because the the keyboards are quite expensive. End-user price is like €200.

It's well-adopted and accepted in in the US, and yeah, they do there. They also starting in Western Europe and in Middle East.

Basically, we may be looking for partial exit starting this year with Clevetura and Deepl. We'll see.

Others are growing, let them grow. That's update on on the on our startups.

We don't plan to buy more, we manage this what we got. Corporate updates.

Slide is here again. Basically, yeah, what I what have to say, interim dividend payment, November 2024, you know that.

New iSpace store in Moldova and Bang & Olufsen flagship store in California. Let us let us talk a bit more about retail business unit.

Basically, you guys heard from us and knew that, okay, this ASBIS, on one hand, is B2B company, that we have Apple stores somewhere in CIS countries, etc. Let me give you full picture.

What is a retail business unit now in ASBIS Group? It's not only 58 doors what we have already.

We position and we develop it as a premium and luxury retail business unit. It is growing nicely, and it's not only Apple anymore.

On premium side, we have acquired recently, and from January of this year, it's already in ASBIS Group, this 13 stores of Samsung premium mono-brand retail here in Poland. We will grow number of stores.

I don't have picture yet how many. Bang & Olufsen, this is luxury.

Again, it's luxury mono-brand retail with very interesting clientele to serve because through this, we serve high net worth individuals and upper middle class. We already have three in in CIS countries, we have two in South Africa, two in Italy in Milano particularly, and one in San Francisco in California, which we opened in December of last year.

In California, it's only beginning. In next three months, we're opening three more stores: one in West Hollywood in Los Angeles, flagship store; one in Palo Alto, Stanford; and one satellite store in Orange County.

With this, we believe that setup in California will be good enough for us. This is our first expansion to the US market.

Through this retail business unit, we decided to learn how to do business in the US market. Because in my dream, I thought that I was naive enough to believe that they have everything so easy to do business: no no administration hassles, etc., very simple taxes, and everything computerized.

No way! It's so complicated!

Right. Everything is it's settled already.

We have got first experience. We manage it, manage it well.

This gave actually global scale and setup to this retail business unit. Our retail business unit became global: US, Africa, Europe, Central Asia.

We plan to support the growth of it. It is profitable business for us as well.

Completely new business unit which we add recently after board approved in September. We, we developed this Robo RoboCafes and RoboPubs, RoboBars, and etc.

We aim and we're selling to third parties to operate. After we saw, they raised my attention as well on P&L projections of conducting this business, I really like it.

It's not only because of our technology, but it's because business model is good. Return on investment on this expensive coffee machine or kiosk is more than one year, year, year and a half.

Then very high margin on on coffee market. I didn't expect, and it's growing market.

We do really also premium coffee. It's barista-quality coffee, but our baristas, they are not get tired and do not compromise after first two, three hours of work.

They do consistently 24/7. We populate it in right locations: it's hospitals, it's universities, it's malls, and other public locations with good traffic, big office areas as well.

It tested and and piloted already last year, this year we are very comfortable. We focus without our own retail to operate this retail business unit on our own in Emirates, particularly Dubai, because we do activations by cities, not by countries.

We need to have good economy of scale. We need minimum five machine per city because each machine requires service.

We have one here in Poland. We're piloting.

We see how good will be demand here. For sure, Emirates and Cyprus and Saudi Arabia, we already know.

It's matter of population, production is there. We have minimum 24 more kiosk.

What I like is retail is detail, right? Retail is location, location, and location, right?

Unlike brick-and-mortar store, this one, I can put forklift and 24 hours move to another location if this location doesn't work for me, right? Good business model on that.

That's what I wanted to update you about this retail business unit. Why we want to develop it?

What we want to do with that? Guys, we don't have particular project yet.

However, we see that this retail business unit, it's good subject to spin off on IPO in three, four years from now. That's our strategic objective.

Now, okay, I I mentioned about B&O and opening of this new stores in California. They have the major thing that it's we operate on platform.

We have lots of sensors. It's lots of automation.

We measure traffic in front of of the locations. It's really well-automated business unit and and machines as well.

We have predictive analytics of of the health of of the of the machines as well. We not only see to use it ourselves, we sell it to others already.

We finished development middle of last year, for second half of of last year, we started populating them. We had production here in Poland.

It didn't work well, we moved production actually to to Dubai because we see more demand as well from that market, logistically makes sense for us, but also it's too expensive here in Poland. Top line last quarter, 35% growth, mainly, again, it was combination of strong Apple, and because it's big, it gives serious impact, and data center building blocks and components, which is fastest-growth growth driver for us, biggest contributor to the growth.

We've been more or less we've been flat last previous four years, from '21, then '22 war in Ukraine, then '23 issues with Kazakhstan, right, and '24 again Kazakhstan, and we were like more or less flat. Now from 2025, or in 2025, you see 28% growth year on year.

We are of course we are very happy. It's also good growth on on profit margin and bottom-line result as well.

Main market, contribution by markets, Kazakhstan is still was, yeah, biggest single country in terms of top line. It's not only Apple.

It's already, yeah, in Kazakhstan, we complete several projects on AI data centers. It is first phase, we have projects to continue in 2026.

Serious businesses. Sometimes it's very nice when you get $50, $60 million to your bank account in one day like, poof!

It's big work behind it, of course. We have strong teams to to to do it.

Now we have comfort to also to to to support and to do to conduct installations. In Ukraine, it was also very good growth despite the environment where they are because lately, yeah, Russians even more active with missile attacks and drone attacks on Kyiv.

We, fortunately, everybody in our team, yeah, nobody get injured or nobody get problem. I admire our Ukrainian team.

They are very strong, and they develop, and they are very motivated to to to do business, and they do it. Good growth in Poland thanks to the team and, yeah, Przemysław and and then Juliusz, who also supervise it as a regional VP.

About Taiwan, basically I want to to to to clarify, Taiwan is not final destination for IT components. Basically, we have orders from data center, which could be Europe or Middle East, but we supply components by for these orders to known makers of servers in Taiwan.

They make finished products, server storage, and then they deliver to our customers. That's why because our transactions to Taiwan, you see Taiwan, but in fact it's not that we supply Taiwan market.

Yeah. Then, by geographies, if you look, I'm very happy also to see and to share with you that every region grew quite coherently, right, about 30%: and Central Eastern Europe, and Middle East, and and West Europe, and and CIS, right?

In others, it's again, it's data center components. Because we supply, again, the owners of of the data centers would be US companies, but they build data centers in Europe, right, or they build data centers in Central Asia, or they build data centers in Gulf area, right?

In EU as well, every single member state got budgets for to build AI data centers. It will continue, we believe, for next five years.

Because this AI era and AI saga, we need to be careful about that, but need of computing infrastructure is there. It's not short-term; it's long-term.

It's minimum five-year plus. In terms of product categories, yeah, smartphones, good growth eventually.

The biggest is, again, the server, server block, and components. This is, yeah, number one growth driver for group in '25.

Basically, we, ASBIS, were are for decades, we are IT distributor of components and building blocks for not only for computing, but for for servers, for for data center equipment or for data center infrastructure. In CPU, we are strong, and with AMD and with Intel, and now we work with NVIDIA.

We don't buy directly from NVIDIA, but they for our project, they supply CPUs to Supermicro, and Supermicro provide us finished servers. Every single project, lots of documentation, releases from US Chamber of Commerce, etc.

Again, we do it. We we we have all processes in place, we have teams in place and competencies.

We continue that. For AMD, for Intel, we are number one, number two in EMEA.

That's why we, being leading distributor, they comfortable to to to to give us projects also because we have expertise, and and we do it. On SSD and hard drives, we have all major brands for decades, starting from Seagate, with whom we are from '92 in distribution.

Was my first distribution agreement, actually. Then Samsung, Kingston, Western Digital, SanDisk, etc., we have multiple brands.

For that, for RAM, we have multiple manufacturers, and that's what plays a role because in this time of severe shortage, being working with different manufacturers, we manage to provide supply to customers of ours. That's what they value, that's what they like.

We like because in the time of shortage, it also allow us to gain a little bit bit more premium, right, you saw margin of ours. We are we are in a good position to to continue to support the growth, being one-stop shop in that area.

That, okay, we have Dell and HP. We have Dell in six or seven countries, HP Enterprise we have in two or three countries only.

We have Supermicro in every country where we operate, and they support us. I tell you that if you look analytical reports, for AI data centers, Supermicro is already bigger than Dell worldwide from 2025.

This vendor became critically important for us, and we have this we cooperate with this vendor in more than 25 countries. Right.

NVIDIA, we didn't work with them before. As I said, we don't buy from them directly, but we work very closely with them in every region.

It's win-win because they navigate us also for new projects, and they have good they got good level of comfort of working with us, cooperating with us, right? We are getting the the deals and projects, right?

Another good thing, if you move to next slides, please, is that we manage the growth without growing number of employees. In fact, it was 24, if I remember, or 30 people less than end of 2024.

Because we have established teams. For that, we don't need extra staff.

The only employees where we we grow is in a new business units: it's US operations or operations like we opening in in Africa or in in in Saudi Arabia. It give us opportunity to gain economy of scale going forward, right?

SG&A expenses, they grew, but they grew because many compensation packages are linked to gross profit or net profit commissions, and they are variable, respectively. We have good setup from this perspective as well.

Now, that's it from my side so far. Costas, can you take care of—

Costas Tziamalis

Yes, Siarhei.

Siarhei Kostevitch

Glad we hear you, my friend.

Costas Tziamalis

You hear me well?

Siarhei Kostevitch

Absolutely, yeah.

Costas Tziamalis

Very good. Guys, it's not only the weather that I saw, but also LOT, Polish Airlines, decided that I will not fly to you.

It's good to see you all. Thank you very much for being there.

I will try and give you some more flavor on our financials, although Siarhei said almost everything. Now, if we touch a bit the networking capital, we will see that not only the group delivered a very good result on revenue and profitability, but also to the other extremely important KPI of ours, which is cash flow.

We managed during this intensive quarter four to deliver super revenues, but even a much better cash flow. We managed to turn around the company and deliver more than 200 million of cash from operating activities, ending the year with a stunning 150 million, 155 million from operating activities, not to mention the extremely strong cash position of the company at the end of the year.

This, I repeat, is a result of the group being able to take opportunities, but also excel in operational efficiency. A relief on the financial condition of the company, literally a zero-geared company that we are today with very little reliance on debt.

This makes the company rock solid from all perspectives, given that our net position, if we exclude factoring, is almost zero or negative. Ability of the company to obtain financing is at its best.

Plus, financial cost, weighted average cost of debt for the year, went down from 9.9 to 8.5 for when compared to 2024. I repeat, this is a clear indication of how important for us is to have not only strong profitability, but managing internally our cash flows and our financial expenses as well.

So

Siarhei Kostevitch

2026 outlook. You can read this from a screen.

What I want to say, how we see it: very dynamic. It's so, on Apple, we see and we started quite well.

We see double-digit growth this year, meaning from 1.8 billion last year to close to 2.2. It is shortage.

At least they say that shortage till end of this quarter. I believe it will be longer because shortage most probably driven by shortage of memory, because all memory worldwide, all memory producers worldwide, they move to make server memory today.

It's massive. Right, but we manage supply.

Team make a great job on that. Major driver of growth going forward, we see again, we continue with components and building blocks for data centers infrastructure.

You saw most probably top-line growth in January, 78%, if I recall. We don't promise every month like that.

Don't take us wrong. We see strong demand so far.

We foresee two, three months ahead. As I said, business is so dynamic.

The memory prices update every week. They can grow 10%, 20%.

We cannot secure any contract with data center owners on a price. They must accept the price of that time when they get supply.

If they don't accept, they're out of the game. Because today nobody in the world can predict, including Tim Cook.

Everybody pay not new market price. Same time, we see that supply-demand ratio is 80%, meaning we get supply.

Not 100%, but we like this kind of terms and conditions because it allow us, again, to gain a bit more premium on the products. When industry will move from undersupply to oversupply, analysts say after 2030.

Same time, I have to say my personal take and my personal opinion that valuations of AI companies are huge, and corrections may take place. It may reduce demand to build new data centers because, in fact, cost of data centers, it's already more than two times more expensive than year ago.

Companies, when they plan to build data centers, right, they will calculate. Yes, AI okay, most many of you are analysts, you follow this AI saga and AI-driven demand.

Yes, AI is new era, and it is huge technological competition between US, China, Europe. Everybody want to get a pie in this thing, because you if you're not supporting AI going forward, then your economy risks to be the economies, such economies risk to be behind, right?

What I said, I repeat: fundamental need in data center infrastructure is huge. Not short-term, minimum five years, if not more, right?

If Chinese or Americans or Europeans will succeed actually to that humanoid robots, what they say, are will serve us soon, right, and we will have here lots of humanoid robots to serve us, right, it requires so completely different level of data computing, right? I will buy my first humanoid robot probably next quarter from China, in order to try it, right?

We as ASBIS, in era of humanoid robots, our strategy is following: in time of gold rush, one of the good businesses is to sell shovels. Everybody knows that.

We don't aim to design humanoid robots, but we designed already, we producing, we started production actually here in Poland, for last quarter, actuators, motors for humanoid robots, and our motors are well-demanded. Market is small yet, but, yeah, in a couple of years, we see it will be growing exponentially.

We supply, and it in today, I would tell you, the motors cost of hardware of humanoid robot today is 60%. Majority of cost of hardware of humanoid robot is my shovels, my motors.

We do better motors than Chinese, etc., so far. That's what we do.

It's small business today, but everything was small one day. To summarize: today, name of the game for ASBIS is to support this growth mainly for AI data centers: support it financially, support it with from risk management standpoint, support it from supply.

To support the growth, we need bigger credit lines, we need to control more Forex, etc. We are very comfortable to do it.

We do it. Yes, Marios and Costas and IT distribution team, they're very busy weekly and daily sometime, right?

This is our core business. We know how to do it.

We did it for years, right, and we continue. We have right fundamentals, we are one-stop shop, we have right contracts which we did, how to say, succeed to get years ago.

We have right processes, we have right team. That's what I want to tell you and share with you about outlook of 2026.

Then, Costas, if you like to add something? No,

Costas Tziamalis

Siarhei, I think you covered it all, and yeah, I think we are ready to take any questions our guests have.

I have a simple question on tax rate. Probably Pillar Two is a problem to you, at least as—

Siarhei Kostevitch

We live with that already. Costas or Marios, you take it?

Pillar Two?

The question is the tax rate is quite high, it's 21.5%, it's over 20, pretty high, right? Is there any possibility to reduce it in the future, or do something about it, or will it remain like this in the future?

Siarhei Kostevitch

Marios, you take,

Marios Christou

yeah? It's a good observation.

Even the introduction of Pillar Two full impact in 2025, we expected the effective tax rate of the group to increase. We were sitting before with an effective tax rate of about 18%.

Now we are sitting with about, rightly said, about 22%. We are trying different directions.

We are running different projects with tax experts to legitimately see what else refinements we can affect to further reduce the 22%. If one, and especially this is addressing the investors and the analysts, want to draw their projections, I would ask them to assume 22%.

Though we may see certain improvements, I believe that 22% is a fair effective tax rate to plan on.

You had extremely nice revenues in January. Could you tell a little bit more what's behind us?

Siarhei Kostevitch

It's combination. The major contributor, again, data centers component projects.

Also Apple was with 25% growth year on year. I like shortages when you have supply into the shortage.

We managed it so far. Consumer distribution also showed growth, low double-digit, but growth.

Right, that's what is behind.

Data centers should be like triple-digit growth, yes? Okay.

The nearest months, do you expect this trend to continue?

Siarhei Kostevitch

We oversee Okay, we almost finished February, right? We publish when we publish, but it was very strong as well.

Right, we oversee two, three months ahead,

yes,

Siarhei Kostevitch

maximum. Because, as I said, it's very dynamic market.

There are many projects, but we supply only what we can supply so far. That's why, yeah, prospects are good.

Okay. You say that you sell a lot of NVIDIA GPUs, but you don't do it directly.

Is it possible—

Siarhei Kostevitch

We sell servers on these GPUs. CPUs by servers, yeah.

Is it possible to have a direct business relationship with them, or—

Siarhei Kostevitch

We don't need it. We have direct business development with them.

Their sales team work with my sales team on every project, right? It's very transparent between us.

Do I need to buy or I have saga to buy GPU from NVIDIA? I still need to somebody to build a server.

I'm not building servers on GPU, right? It's anyway to go to Supermicro.

So.

Okay. In the financial statement, we've seen that US market appeared in top 10 markets, taking fourth quarter.

It's same like Taiwan? You buy they are players who they are buying your—

Siarhei Kostevitch

US market,

I think it was highest.

Siarhei Kostevitch

We sell IT components to US companies, but the components go somewhere in Europe: Nordics, Scandinavia, Finland, Norway.

Okay.

Siarhei Kostevitch

Yeah.

You also have impressive growth in Germany. Can you say what's—

Siarhei Kostevitch

Similar story.

Same story. Okay.

I think the last question from me. Costs, general costs, they increased a lot.

Is it some sort of reserves or for some years?

Siarhei Kostevitch

Combination. Costas, maybe you take it?

Costas Tziamalis

There are three major reasons for the increase of expenses of SG&As, yes. The first, and obviously the most obvious one, is that we deliver more gross profit, more net profit, we pay more compensations to the people that are getting commissions and salaries based on the performance.

The second very important factor, if we take all the expenses of 2024 and we extrapolate the exchange rate of the local entities, we used to run in December 2024 euro to dollar rate 1.05 as opposed to 1.18 in end of 2025. These are the two major ones, plus we didn't have offices in the US, in Italy, in Saudi, in Uzbekistan, with multiple expenditure there that have not been delivering as yet to the group.

These are the three major reasons of the increased expenditure.

Okay. Maybe the last one, the gross margin, it's improved in F24.

Do you expect further improvements in in the near future because of what's happening in the memory and this short supply, not only in memory, but as well in Apple? Is possible for the gross margin in the first or second quarter to reach $0.08, $0.07?

Siarhei Kostevitch

We'll see. It's possible.

It depends, again, it's only driven by supply-demand ratio, right, including Apple. Apple doesn't allow us to gain much price to raise prices much.

It's

Siarhei Kostevitch

been like 40%, they were being 40% of our revenue, right? It's serious.

Which you cannot we gain a little bit, but you cannot gain much. The, however, with IT distribution, respectively, these components, it's more flexible.

It is possible.

Piotr Grzybowski

Hello. Congrats on your results.

Siarhei Kostevitch

Hello, Piotr. You addressed one of my questions regarding tax rate.

I also wonder about use of factoring. Why do you use factoring to such a extent whereas your cash position is so strong?

Does the conditions of this factoring is better than keeping cash, or that the potential alternative for using of factoring is using your cash pillar, which gives about 2%, 3%.

Costas Tziamalis

Piotr. I don't see, but I recognize the voice of Piotr Dziedzic.

Thank you for the question. Factoring, which we see there, it is used for from us as a very good tool to hedge our positions, especially in countries where we cannot really have much or any other financial tools to hedge.

Yes, we have enough cash, but factoring is necessary from our side in order to turn the local balance sheet into the same currency and save ourselves from exchange rate movements. In addition to that, factoring is used in multiple other countries to pull cash early and pay and gain on early payment discounts.

If you remember, our factoring lines used to be much higher utilized in the past years. Now what we need is what we use, and the major reason is mostly to hedge our local balance sheets.

Piotr Grzybowski

It's complementary to growing debt in the currency that you operate in.

Siarhei Kostevitch

Look, factoring, like Costas said, is extremely important tool for us for hedging local currencies.

Piotr Grzybowski

Understand. Thanks.

The provision guidance for 2026, I don't expect fixed numbers for now, but do you even plan to publish any guidance for 2026?

Siarhei Kostevitch

Look,

Piotr Grzybowski

taking out the current situation, geopolitical and financial.

Siarhei Kostevitch

Look, first of all, let's see that first year ASBIS didn't provide forecast, we grew significantly. It's a joke, but look, our position, as I said, today, it is so dynamic market.

As soon as we see it's more settling and it is more clear, we will come back and we will provide forecast. We remember that, and we work with that.

For time being, we are not ready.

You said in the past that you don't expect that revenues from data centers will increase, will overtake your revenues from smartphones or Apple components. What is your approach now?

Has something changed?

Siarhei Kostevitch

When did I say that?

Maybe—

Costas Tziamalis

I did, Siarhei.

Siarhei Kostevitch

You did. Okay.

Costas Tziamalis

What?

How does the situation look like now?

Siarhei Kostevitch

Different. Look, the growth of this data-centric equipment, it is, like I said, not double-digit, it's sometime triple-digit.

It's not small business for us as well, right, already in terms of revenue for group. That's why it may be bigger.

Right, same time, again, we are on a smartphone segment, the segment itself doesn't grow anymore. Right, we are gaining share, we are growing because we are on emerging markets, but the growth is between 20% to 30%, that's what you see.

Good question.

Maybe now a question regarding more the financial statements. Did you have an write-offs in quarter four that affected P&L?

Costas Tziamalis

We had some write-offs, but nothing outside the ordinary course of business. We had some bad debts to write off, we had some provisions for inventories, but nothing extraordinary.

In general, what was the amount of this write-offs?

Costas Tziamalis

It is I don't recall the number exactly, but it was between 1 and 1.2 million, where it was budgeted before.

Siarhei Kostevitch

Provisions were a bit more, yeah.

Costas Tziamalis

Maybe 1.5.

I will follow up on this if you wouldn't mind, because if you compare report for fourth quarter with the prior one for third quarter, actually the provision for the inventories increased by 3.3 million, which is quite high in my opinion, and for receivables, 3.8. Is there some inconsistency, or I'm talking about the increase of provision for current year.

It's totally if we mix this together, it's 7 million, it's pretty much, I would say.

Costas Tziamalis

Look, the question I answered was referring to quarter four standalone,

and

Costas Tziamalis

now you're referring to the overall year, yes?

No,

Costas Tziamalis

yes.

Change between third quarter and fourth quarter,

Costas Tziamalis

because

I cannot see fourth quarter alone, but I can see the change, how the provision changed. The change in fourth quarter alone for inventories 3.3, for receivables 3.8, which is quite high.

Costas Tziamalis

I think you're looking at the year, yeah?

I compare prior report with current report.

Costas Tziamalis

The provision for obsolete stock in Note 13, yes?

Mhm.

Costas Tziamalis

That's what you see, right? We see the same thing, right?

Yes.

Costas Tziamalis

It was 9.6.

Siarhei Kostevitch

Is

Costas Tziamalis

that one?

Siarhei Kostevitch

[foreign language]

Costas Tziamalis

There is a 3.7 provision for the year, yes?

Yes, but after three quarters, it'd been zero before. Now it's 3.7, as you mentioned, exactly.

Costas Tziamalis

The increase

is 3.3.

Costas Tziamalis

Look, we can provide you analysis for that. We did not have one-offs, and usually our provisions are coming into the towards the end of the year, all right, we accumulate and we make them at the end of the year.

Marios and myself will make sure that we send you analysis for both inventories and receivables so you can see and, yeah, we resolve this.

Perfect, thank you very much. Maybe one last question for the interest expenses.

The net itself has been rather stable between last quarter and this quarter, at least end of it, but the interest expenses increased quite materially. I think everybody noticed worse financial results, the result from financial activities.

Why have interest expenses increased in fourth quarter, or why was the financial result worse?

Costas Tziamalis

The question about Q4 increasing interest expense, I think Piotr mentioned it earlier, it's cheaper to borrow on a cash line versus on the factoring line. To the extent we borrow in hard currencies,

Siarhei Kostevitch

namely euro and dollar, we buy we borrow this money more cheaply. Therefore, we have a tendency to use throughout the year, this is representing the quarter and the year, we borrow more from overdrafts and from loans, yeah?

We do use factoring, we do need factoring in the countries because of the range reasons mentioned earlier, but given the huge growth exceeding 800 million in the course of 2025, we had to grow the lines and we had to increase the utilization of these cash lines. This brings the increased interest expense shown on Note 7 of the financial statements.

Okay.

May I have one more question? You're writing that financial statement about entering new markets in Africa.

Just wondering whether it's something material in terms of so—

Siarhei Kostevitch

It will start so this year we will be starting here. We selected to enter locally Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire because our analytics showed, and our practice showed this is two most transparent market where we can do local operations.

We want to have a base there in that part of North Africa to supply other countries from there, not only locally. It will not be material this year.

It's it starting here.

Next year? Just to understand what's what kind of business you are fighting for.

Siarhei Kostevitch

Wait, in couple of months, we will make announcement.

Okay. Thank you.

Piotr Grzybowski

Can you tell something more about your investments in generally cooperation with Bang & Olufsen? Because you are making a very big investments.

What is the percentage of sales or profits? Is it just idea to support ASBIS, or what is the—

Siarhei Kostevitch

We distribute Bang & Olufsen products exclusively in 40 countries: in Africa, Eastern Europe, Middle East, former Soviet Union. Business itself, it's about $40 million business for group with good double-digit margin.

We also see that to conduct retail, it's quite interesting for us as a part of our premium and luxury retail business unit strategy. For us, it's also good way to penetrate new markets which are not known to us, US.

In Italy, we also started with this retail business unit, but we learn how to conduct business, and we learn it fast, because connections also what we get through B&O business is quite interesting.

Piotr Grzybowski

Do you have an idea of increase business with Samsung after this buying shops in—

Siarhei Kostevitch

Look, again, first, yes, we do have mid-term. Because, okay, Breezy already have contracts with Samsung on second-hand, second-life products, but this is a bit different.

However, we need six months now to make sure that we fix all basics in this business unit what we got in from January, right? Because it was good interest in business unit, but it was heavily undercapitalized here in Poland, right?

We already provide and I think double credit lines with Samsung for this business unit here in Poland, right? Now we more and more often we talk with Samsung on different level.

Piotr Grzybowski

In different market?

Siarhei Kostevitch

Yes, and for different markets as well. We have established good dialogue with Samsung now, because now we are in a business.

Because

Piotr Grzybowski

it will be there will be competition between Apple and Samsung.

Siarhei Kostevitch

Apple in CIS. I don't have Apple for Eastern Europe.

We try not to mix up.

Piotr Grzybowski

Given the higher prices of RAMs, it could switch to other components as well, what inflation do you expect in mid-term, '26?

Siarhei Kostevitch

Inflation in terms of—

Piotr Grzybowski

On your total portfolio.

Siarhei Kostevitch

I didn't get the question. In inflation in terms of what?

Piotr Grzybowski

Your unit prices.

Siarhei Kostevitch

That's I don't know. Nobody know.

We just, yeah, start every Monday with the new price list from the vendor. It cannot be forever.

This prices growth mean huge incremental cost for data centers. Then AI guys who use these data centers, right, question: do they have enough business, or for how many years they have to extend return on investment?

It's not for, it's not so flexible. That's why I said it's very interesting question.

We monitor the situation. Again, our job, we supply to demand what we have.

I hope it will be less than last year, because last year is triple, the cost of RAM for servers. That's why every maker of memory, they switch from memory for computers or smartphones to build memories for servers because they gain so much additional premium.

Also, memory makers and, yeah, big corporations, they building up new factories for memory. It will take couple of years.

Then also we need to monitor when it will be oversupply. Because we've been in the industry many years, we face undersupply situation and oversupply situation, right?

Again, we are living in the era when this AI is not just future, it's next to us. Every country, every region doesn't want to lose competitive advantage, not to be not to use this AI assistants and agents and predictive AI, yeah, right?

Big game between China, US, Europe.

Marios Christou

No, we go the questions first, and then I will make a comment actually.

Siarhei Kostevitch

Guys, I need to leave in 5 minutes.

Piotr Grzybowski

Regarding your business activities AROS, Breezy, and operations in South Africa, could you give us some color on the revenues and net result that these businesses made in 2025?

Siarhei Kostevitch

South Africa in '25 was $50 million. Breezy was about $100 million.

AROS, we just started. AROS is not big, it's what I remember, this year should be about $10 million, but with margin 30%, 40%.

Piotr Grzybowski

Okay. I understand the revenues, and what about net results of these businesses?

Are they profitable?

Siarhei Kostevitch

Okay. AROS should be profitable in from '26.

In Breezy was, it's still in investment mode, but we easily can gain profit from Breezy. Our strategy is to expand and to get bigger pie.

Now we expanding in Europe, we expanding in Africa, and it's very fast-growing sector, and it's not small anymore. For us, it's more important to gain and increase portion of a pie for us, meaning markets.

It doesn't eat much of our cheese.

Piotr Grzybowski

Could you give some rough numbers of this losses that Breezy and AROS made in 2025?

Siarhei Kostevitch

Of AROS, I don't remember. Probably we better Costas, do you remember, or we better answer—

Costas Tziamalis

I do not, Piotr. Piotr, I will gather and send you.

Siarhei Kostevitch

We will send you analysis more precise. I don't want to speculate, Piotr.

Piotr Grzybowski

In last years, you are developing a lot of many new businesses. Did you close any of them?

Siarhei Kostevitch

What do you mean, startups or what kind of—

Piotr Grzybowski

Yes, I am thinking about different businesses you started. You started to develop.

If you decided to close any of it?

Siarhei Kostevitch

Look, we on AROS, on robotics, we started to work on six or eight different kind of solutions. Now we narrowed down to three.

Yeah.

Piotr Grzybowski

Your own brands like Prestigio, AENO, Canyon, they are still developing, yes?

Siarhei Kostevitch

Still develop. Prestigio is how to say, is in incubators.

In incubator, now we actually don't have much of expenses, right? It is very small.

AENO is growing as all domestic appliances. Lorgar gaining, we finished all developments last year, already we start selling from end of last year, and, yeah, they predict us good growth.

Small business still, but good growth this year, and it's well out and well received by customers, by retailers. Canyon was kind of flat.

It's accessories, mobile accessories, etc. For this year, we see good growth opportunity with Canyon.

Again, it's how to say, safe, about $20 million business.

Piotr Grzybowski

One personal question about Breezy: do you believe that Breezy can benefit from this trends on the market with increasing prices of memory and smartphones as well? Do you believe that— I cannot

Costas Tziamalis

Piotr, I'm not sure whether Breezy would benefit from increases in memory given that it will inflate the number, the absolute number of the devices. The nature of second-life products, it's also a price sensitivity included there, I would be more neutral as opposed to positive with these increases in memory.

Piotr Grzybowski

Okay. I thought that it can be more appealing for customers to buy at discount used products because of increased prices of the new ones.

You see,

Costas Tziamalis

the new ones if we see, because first of all, we haven't seen inflationary pressures on brand-new smartphone devices yet. All right?

All I'm trying to say is that if it will happen, and a brand-new smartphone will cost from €1,500, €2,000 or dollar, and then the second life would become from 500 to 800, which again makes it less affordable given the fact that the purchasing power of people will not grow so fast.

Piotr Grzybowski

Maybe I have also the question: can you maybe once again comment on the gross profit margin, which showed a very good increase fourth quarter? My question is if it stems from the inflation of on your inventory, or maybe better good purchases, or maybe you managed to increase the margin on data centers?

Costas Tziamalis

It's it's a multi-layer effect. Yes, part of it is because of of shortages.

Let me tell you that for the big for the big projects that we had pre-agreed pricing, there is no chance that you can come in and raise the price in the middle of a project. You you sell at the price you have agreed.

However, now what this boom has created has created an adjustment of pricing almost weekly. By next week, you get a better pricing and you might get an arbitrage and make the better gross profit margin.

I I want to remind us what we have been discussing in June, July, and then September when we on November when we met: the ability of the group to bundle and sell more products, high higher-margin products, when it sells to all these big data center providers, because that time it was mostly SSDs and hard disks for servers. Now memory became extremely fashionable, extremely demanded.

We are, because we have the portfolio, because we are the one-stop shop for these clients, we have the ability to bundle and increase our gross profit margin, taking also the advantage of shortages, of the price movements and the inflationary pressures, as well as the extremely high demand that it is around us. It's a combination of of factors that drove the gross profit margin up.

I repeat, and I want us to again to remind that during quarter two of last year, when we announced the 6.67% gross profit margin, we said and we declared that we believe that we reached the bottom on that respect. That's why in quarter three was higher, yes, in quarter four was much higher.

Now quarter one in front of us, having seen this growth and having seen how the the demand is around us, we are very optimistic. Like Siarhei said before, we cannot be certain for what's going to happen from a period of more than 3 months now.

As

Piotr Grzybowski

far as I remember, in quarter two, you said that gross margin for data service was around 4%. Does the current situation allow you to increase this margin up to maybe 5%?

Costas Tziamalis

Yes. this current situation allows for higher gross profit margins on these products segments.

Maybe can you comment on situation in Kazakhstan regarding the illegal competition, anything doing?

Costas Tziamalis

Yes. Situation in Kazakhstan is better than it used to be quarter one last year, much better, but it's not optimal.

The situation with illegal traders is there. Some of them went out of business, but some new ones appeared.

We know how to work with them, we learn how finally to work with them. The reality is that the exchange rates outside Kazakhstan did not help them recently, they cannot buy cheaper much cheaper from outside and get also the advantage of illicit importation.

This is why we are in a position to gain some more market share given that also the IMEI registration legislation came in. We are optimistic that if this situation will continue and the government really imposes all these strict controls, we can be on the winning side of things.

I repeat, the situation is better, not the optimal we would want to see yet.

That's clear. Thank you.

I have a question regarding the shortages in memories and SSDs. AB during the conference today said that the memory producer, it will take more or less two years to build new factories.

Do you expect at least two years of shortages, or what is your market expectation in this terms?

Costas Tziamalis

I confirm that the ability of manufacturers to build a full-scale manufacturing plant is between 18 to 24 months. Now, the statement that they did is valid, and we also confirm it.

However, the demand and how and where this manufactured modules will go is very important. If it will only go to the data centers and it will create a shortage either on PC computing or on laptops or on all these segments, then we will see an anomaly in the market.

All right? However, from what we see, memory makers that weren't so important in the past, now they've become more and more important, and what Siarhei said before, the demand-to-supply ratio is 80%.

For every 100 there is a demand, there is 80% supply, which is not a bad thing in our days. At least we get 80% ratio.

I don't know about any others, I cannot speak for them. It's a matter of fact that memory is today like gold in our markets.

Basically, these two years should put ASBIS in very good positions as you are a big supplier and probably you have some advantages in the supply of the goods as far as I can understand this, yes?

Costas Tziamalis

We have the official distributorship, which makes us puts us on the priority list to get supply. All right?

We have the advantage that with one bill to, suppliers get access into multiple markets. Therefore, yes, de facto, we have an advantage to get this supply.

Now, what the situation will be in the next two years, three years, nobody obviously can predict. A potential conflict in Iran might change things dramatically and might postpone things dramatically, because we don't know how the overall situation might look like.

As a general statement, we are optimistic on what the situation can be going forward. We close it.

Once again, apologize for not being there. Thank you very much for everything.