Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's Analyst and Investor Call of the Fielmann Group AG following the publication of the half-year financial figures of the first half of 2026. With this, I'm happy to hand over to Fielmann's CFO, Steffen Bätjer.

Please, the stage is yours.

Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Ingmar, and welcome, everybody.

Greg, that was very, very fast. Thank you very much.

We come to that later. The rules: two questions per head.

Welcome to our half-year results call. We obviously published interim results and preliminary results already on the 9th of July, the numbers are more or less well-known.

Let's go through that at speed. Before we start with the—yeah, we now—yeah, before we start with the with the overall summary, and you can go to the summary, Nils, thanks, obviously you all noticed last week that we issued an update to our guidance for the year, and it was obviously a downward correction.

Let's address that before we start about those numbers. When Nils and I started taking over Investor Relations for Fielmann, we talked to a lot of you, and we said we stand for honesty and transparency and reliability.

We feel that we already guided you based on our June numbers, we already guided you towards the lower end of our expectation, and when we saw July and August coming in, we felt necessary that we update our guidance because it became apparent that it might be the lower end, but it might be below the lower end, and therefore we updated our guidance to you guys. It was a year, let me say, full of surprises.

Who would have thought that we have a Iran war and a scarcity in crude oil and exploding prices all over again? Who would have thought that eight months ago?

We definitely didn't, and we need to, reflect that in the consumer sentiment, and we see that being reflected, and therefore we adjusted our guidance. We specifically chose a slightly broader range.

We chose a range, not just a 2% range, but a 3% percentage point range, 2% to 5% percentage points or percent growth. We also softened the language around the EBITDA margin going from around 23% to 22% to 23%.

The only reason is that, it's quite honestly, it's it's, it's not my favorite thing to give you a guidance update, and I'm good with doing one for the year, and therefore we chose a slightly broader range. I think the important thing is to note that this is a temporary demand drip.

It's not, there's nothing fundamental going on in our cost structure. You see that our gross profit margins are super intact.

We see actually that July and August have already increased in terms of growth pace, we're we're confident. We're definitely confident that this is the last guidance update we've been giving you in this year and hopefully for the foreseeable future.

Just to be on the safe side, once we do it, we said we want to give you a broader range so that whatever surprises all those people and presidents and whoever has out there for us in the making, we're basically covered. It would be probably stupid of me to say this is it and 100%, but I can you can rest assured that all the internal models point in a direction that we're definitely within, if if the world continues as it does today, we're definitely very comfortably in the range that we have given you.

Now with that, let's move into the half-year number one figures. We say that despite our challenging consumer sentiment, with everything that the macro climate, the geopolitical uncertainties, the consumer sentiment, the uncertainty that people, especially, in Europe feel because of the new geopolitical environment, the uncertainty that our US customers feel because of the, uncertainty around the price development, we still deliver growth, and we continue to grow.

We grew at 2.3% at constant currency. We see an acceleration in the growth rate in in our international markets.

It's the same pattern that we've seen over the last two years, that the further away you are from Germany, the better your growth. Unfortunately, Germany is our home market and our biggest market, but we've seen that Germany's been struggling, and we come to that later.

We've seen that Germany has been struggling, but, whilst we had a lot of, weather and uncertainty impacts in our other European countries, we see that they have, gone away, and for example, Spain is back to their usual 9%, almost 10% growth rate for the year. Our EBITDA margin is very stable at prior-year levels, almost 24%.

We continue obviously to do cost management, but we invest into growth. We do that through increased hirings because the more opticians we we the more opticians we have in our stores, the more customers we can serve.

Yes, we still have an issue with not serving all the customers that we could serve. The more doctors we have in the United States, the more exam capacity we open up, and the more exam capacity we have, the more glasses we sell.

There is an investment going on into personnel expenses, but other than that, we're still very much on a cost-conscious travel. You see the European margin at 25.1% for the first half year.

The US dropped by 2.5%, that's mainly due to personnel expenses and building up the capacity. Adjusted EBIT margin is stable, and we expect a improved growth dynamic for the second half year.

As I said, July and August, we already see that trend. We're, pretty significantly above Q2 numbers, but, there's also some seasonality always going on over the summer months when people are on vacation and and all that.

We're hopeful because fundamentally we are accelerating our our rate at which we open new stores. That's a tried-and-tested and over-analyzed way of growing for us.

We do targeted hirings, as I said. We still send away customers who we can't serve.

If we hire an optician in those stores, then that will immediately increase our top line, and productivity gains, mainly the AI-based refraction, I talked to you about that many, many times. Half-year two should be better than half-year one in terms of growth, and profitability is still intact.

Those numbers we talked about: 2%, 2.3% percent growth, 1.7% organic. We did a small acquisition in Luxembourg.

We disclosed that in our appendix. We added 10 stores.

Adjusted EBITDA margin on same-year level, and adjusted EBIT and margin at same levels as well. That sounds like, oh, these guys are only growing €4 million in in adjusted EBIT, EBITDA, but please bear in mind that last year was a record profitability year for this company.

Whilst with an updated guidance just a week ago, I should be careful, and Nils always says be careful and tune it down, but I'd say it's still it's still it's it's less than we expected, but it's still pretty good that we're beating a record year, at least on the half year. Next page.

Total consolidated sales, we said that, 1.8% versus prior year. You still see the US dollar impact.

You remember Liberation Day early April last year, the dollar tanked, and we're translating about $300 million in revenue into euros. If the dollar tanks, that's not good for us.

The dollar has been stable now since roughly June last year, so that effect will taper out. 2.3% in constant currency is our growth.

Swiss franc works on the opposite, Swiss franc appreciating against the euro, and those two level each other out, but, 0.5% uptick from the dollar weakness that we have here. The the growth, which is which is great, is still across all our product categories, we're not a one-trick pony.

We're actually accelerating our growth in audiology. We we're good on sunglasses.

That was a lot of sun, and therefore sunglasses are great. Adjacent healthcare services grow.

Prescription or Rx eyewear not growing as much as we wanted to, and that's that's the reason why we felt the need to communicate an updated guidance to you last week. Contact lenses sales is down by 4%.

Reason is very simple. I think we talked about the price development of branded contact lenses, competitive environment which is going up quite significantly, the competitive environment in Europe where you don't need a prescription to buy contact lenses, our biggest competitors are Amazon, for example.

You can just order them online, and that's a pricing game that we cannot win. Therefore we're focusing more and more on our private label contact lenses, Atrea, which have a slightly higher margin or significantly higher margin.

We see that actually a positive margin development, but obviously we're selling a lot less because they're also cheaper, and therefore we have a minus 4%, but that's part of our contact lens strategy and is totally as planned. Countries are growing as well.

You see Germany here at 1% for the half year, 0% in the second half year, a reversal. The first quarter was weak because of weather and strikes.

The second quarter was weak because of consumer sentiment. You see, and that's what you see.

You see the half-year numbers, and you see the Q2 down there. US, you see half-year growth at constant currency 3%, second quarter was 5%, an acceleration of growth.

The same for Spain, 7% overall, 9% in the second in the second quarter. Then you have Switzerland and Austria and the others, which are primarily driven by our acquisition in Luxembourg.

The other countries are slightly down compared to prior year because we're adjusting our market approach to to Italy. That it's been an ongoing story.

First was, let's try and bring this back to profitability. Italy is now mid-teens EBITDA profitability, okay, not great, but okay and very good compared to where they come from.

We're still working on the product-market fit, and we're cleaning out our store network, and we have a new managing director for Italy, the Spanish guy is also running Italy. All that is going on, and that's why Italy is down half year about 3% compared to prior year, and that's the main driver here why the others are slightly, if you rip out the acquisition, why the others are slightly slightly lower.

Overall, we see, other than Germany, an improved growth dynamic, it's great because it proves that diversifying into several countries, diversifying into the US—the US is the largest optical market—is really something that pays off because, we're not so dependent on Germany anymore. Next slide.

Profitability, talked about that. Profitability, €4 million higher in absolute numbers, and margin more or less where it was last year, which we think is a good achievement given that typically lower sales translate into, the lower lower expected sales turn into a a a margin impact, but you see here that we keep it all relatively stable because our cost control is still ongoing.

Next slide. It's a half year, we're going to talk about balance sheet as well.

We have a quite significant cash position of €265 million. After dividend, we still had about €150 million in the bank, and yes, we do have plans what to do with it.

The our leverage including leases is at 1.1, excluding lease liabilities at 0.1, you might call this a somewhat underutilized balance sheet, and we're working on that. Equity ratio went up 2.5 percentage points, almost to 42.8%, balance sheet is not our issue, balance sheet is healthy.

We're spending a lot of time in the board thinking about how we can bring the money to use and expand further. We come later to that, we're really accelerating our expansion in the markets because we feel that's a great way of growing the company.

It's a very safe way of growing the company. The we we calculated basically the IRRs for every store opening of the last 15 years, and I can tell you the IRRs are also very good.

It makes all the sense in the world to take the money and spend it on new stores, new openings and additions, smaller tuck-in acquisitions to actually increase our market share, as we did, for example, in Luxembourg, where we're now number one. Looking at the cash flow statement, cash flow from operating activities slightly lower, cash conversion at €188 million.

Cash conversion was impacted by some temporary working capital impacts. We built some inventory, that's a seasonal thing, but it sometimes happens, on this side of end of the end of the half year, sometimes it happens on the other side of the of the half year.

We have a slight increase in in our, new stores and in our, sorry, in our audiology sales, there we have more outstandings to to the people who actually get the money from the health insurance for us. This is all, more or less a seasonal pattern that will normalize over the course of the year.

Investing activities is impacted by accelerated store expansion and also by the acquisition that we undertook in Luxembourg at €23 million. Financing activities are, slightly lower negative than last year.

The biggest item is always leases, so, the IFRS 16 rent payments, to say, or part of that. We didn't we didn't take any new financial debt.

You remember that last year at this point in time, we refinanced the short-term acquisition debt for the US acquisition into long-term debt and paid down €25 million. That was one big one big impact.

Then we took over the remaining 30% of our Slovenian entity and paid out the owner at €11 million, so that's ours now as well at 100 at 100%, and that gives us a lot more control, and we can integrate much closer with them on a lot more also operational things like, lenses, frames, et cetera, et cetera. Overall, cash flow statement, balance sheet, very happy with that.

We're very cash generative, and that's not, that's not the first focus point, obviously. How do we accelerate growth is the main focus point of this company at this current point in time.

Next slide. Capital market guidance.

We just issued it last week, we don't have any changes and obviously confirm it: 2% to 5%, €2.5 billion to €2.55 billion; adjusted EBITDA, €560 to €580; adjusted EBITDA margin probably around 23%, but, giving you, because of the year of surprises as we call it, a slightly broader range to make sure that we're not going to need to come back to you and communicate again. Now one is enough, as I said, one guidance update.

Adjusted EBIT margin should be around 12%. Our customer satisfaction definitely around 90%.

We don't see any dip in any customer satisfaction, really working on that. As I said, July, August already with some favorable trends going forward.

Now, this is the normal slide deck that we show you because you're probably interested what's going to happen in the second half. We're going to accelerate our growth rate.

Why is that? We do have accelerated expansion, and I have a slide on that.

We're also going to increase productivity. Let's talk about Nils says let's talk about accelerated expansion.

Nils, I do that. Why don't you go to the next slide then?

This is the number of net new stores that we're adding to our footprint. As I said, we analyzed new stores of the last 15 years to death.

We looked at the IRR. The IRR is extremely double-digit nice, it makes a lot of sense.

We had a lot of discussions in the board where basically I said, let's talk about it, because the IRR is right, we have the money, we have the management teams, we have a great market position, we have great EBITDA, let's do a little more. Our sales board member also said, I have the teams, and I have a very clear view of where our where our white spots are, why don't we do it?

We got together, and basically the teams opened a lot more new stores. You see 2024 we opened 10, 2025 we added net 22 stores in the full year.

We're now at 37 already in the first half year that we added: 11 of those acquired and 26 opened. We have in the pipeline another 33 stores for the second half year that we're going to open.

That's excluding any acquisition, this is pure store openings across Europe and the US, every country does something. This is a this is a this is a push for expansion that's not just, singular in terms of we only do it in Germany or GSA or the US, we do it across the company.

Every store obviously adds immediately revenue. We typically have good brand recognition.

If we open a store, they tend to be full. We have, they turn then profitable depending on the on the country and the and the repurchase interval is between, one and three years before they turn profitable, which also explains the slight margin dip from from the expansion, but, once we built that and once they turned profitable, as I said, the return on the capital invested is quite significant positive, and that's why we do this, because we're building a foundation that will carry us into the next decade.

So 33 more 33 more stores, then we have about 70 open this year, which would be a significant acceleration compared to 2025. We're currently in budget discussions for 2027, and well, sneak peek would be more.

Let's see how many more we're going to do. Besides accelerating the expansion, we're also increasing our productivity.

I talked a lot about AI-based refraction that's now in, many, many hundred stores in operation, and it's day-to-day it's a day-to-day thing. Basically, as I said, I did it.

It cuts down refraction time by about or eye test time from about 15 or 12 minutes, by about four minutes, which opens opens up a lot of productivity for our opticians to then serve more customers. Then we're going to expand eye exam availability, and that's mainly through hiring doctors, through hiring opticians, so that we really have, the capacity.

In in Europe, we're adding the capacity that's needed to serve customers that are coming anyway. In the US, and that's why you see the margin dip, we're adding capacity so that customers get used to, hey, there's a different experience if I go to a Shopko and SVS in the US than to another optician, because we have the capacity.

To offer that, we first need to build it, and then people need to realize it, and then it will pay off, but that might take a while, but that's the dip that you see in our margin from the expansion of that capacity. With that, I'm done with H1 and outlook H2.

Thanks very much for your continued interest in our company. As we're doing whatever we can to grow this company and but grow it carefully and not do, strange or difficult things.

Summer is over, I'm going to see a lot of you probably over the next two months on, in Paris, in Munich, and or in Frankfurt on these conferences, stay tuned. Again, thank you very much for your continued interest.

Much appreciated, and have a great Thursday.