Thank you, and good afternoon to everyone. Obviously, I'm very happy to communicate these results, which I consider excellent, in a moment where the market is still what it is, basically stable or slightly negative, and to outline that we grew again in the quarter on top of a very strong quarter of last year.

In two years, the grow in the quarter achieved is near to 17-18%. Even if we look at the 9 months, we are growing 3% on top of the almost 7%, more than 10% the combined growth in two-year in nine months.

Being the market leader, this is, I think, really outstanding, given the market condition again, and given that the growth has been posted mostly in terms of organic growth. Not only I want to underline the sales performance, but even most importantly, the quality of this sales performance, because we are growing with all the good projects which are starting to generate results.

Project is something that we do constantly, but delivery is another aspect, and we are really in a moment where we started looking at the results in terms of good implementation of all the project that we are making. The most important and interesting result is that we continue to grow in the women.

The women is the mother of every buying decision in this segment. She buys for herself, she buys for the kid, and sometimes she buys for the husband or for the partner.

The women is the segment of business which is growing more, driven by the brand. The brand means creating value, not only creating sales, but creating intangible equity, because the brand represents a new and a different reason to visit OVS for each category of customer.

All the brand that we introduced are performing very well. Not only Piombo, which is already a solid portion of our strategy, which has been able to attract a new typology of customer, more demanding in terms of style and also price, but also Les Copains, which in the second season confirms to be another incremental reason to visit OVS with the attitude of kind of presenting a type of style which is complementary to the aspect which are typical of Piombo, where Piombo is more colorful and eclectic and Les Copains is more contemporary and very good for an everyday use.

B.Angel is growing more than the others, demonstrating that we are attracting younger customers, and the cross-marketing with the beauty segment is another aspect of the strategy which is working extremely well. Even Utopia dedicated to Generation Z is working very well.

This peculiarity of the strategy of OVS is really generating good and I think solid results also in term of future opportunities. Also the margins which those brand are generating to OVS are increasing.

Obviously, as more a brand becomes a brand, as more it worth to pay a premium for it, and this is exactly what we are trying to do also by making material investment in advertising in Piombo, Les Copains, B.Angel, and also Utopia. Each of them with his own peculiarity of advertising: traditional media for Piombo, Instagram for B.Angel, TikTok for Utopia, for instance.

Then the growth comes also from other project which are starting to became material. The beauty is already a very important component of our growth and also of our increase of profitability, because the sales density of the space dedicated to beauty inside the OVS store is double and sometimes triple compared to the average sales density of the apparel.

Also, on the back of the good success of the assortment that we've been able to create with the beauty department inside OVS, we started opening standalone stores. Now we have six stores, and they are generating more sales density than we expected with good margin.

We have another business to take care of, which is opening standalone SHAKA stores all across Italy. We think that the pilot period is over now, and next year we will enter in a rollout phase with the opening of, I hope, dozens of stores denominated SHAKA.

We created another small story, which for now is only a pilot, but seems very interesting. We decided to create a new format.

We called it OVS Atelier. OVS Atelier means being able to populate a space of about 200-300 square meters in high-end location, downtown, High Street, where sometime is not possible to find a big space for a full-format OVS, in cities where we are not present in the heart of the city, but only we are present maybe in the shopping mall around the city.

We have about 70 city in Italy, 60-70, where we are not still present in the main street because of the reason that I told, that we can target with this format. On this format, we will include only the better items of our collections: the higher price and the most qualitative.

The results of this opening, which took place in Novara in the first 60 days, are incredible, because the sales density of this store is almost three times higher than the average of the OVS stores, and we are much ahead of our budget. Even in this case, I think that if this pilot will confirm also in the next coming months the initial results, there is a possibility to open dozens of these stores in Italy, and maybe not only in Italy.

We are starting to take advantage of the first actions put in place by our team regarding Goldenpoint. I'm happy to say that Goldenpoint sales are growing double-digit since our real takeover of the business.

That we acquired the company last year, but given the time requested to manage the development of the product, it takes one year before being able to introduce the new collections. Starting from September, if you enter in a Goldenpoint store, you will start seeing that about 60%, 70% of our product range has been generated by us, and all the segments of this business where we have been able to activate our creativity and buying capacity are growing double-digit.

The only two categories where we didn't touch the product, that were the consequences of former decisions, are stable, basically. Very happy also because of this.

Last, but not least, international. We opened our flagship in Delhi, as probably I told you one quarter ago.

The store has been open since 60 days, basically. Even in this case, the results are higher compared to our expectations.

In this store, we are planning now to achieve sales density which are in line with the better sales density of our better flagship in the Italian shopping malls. All in all, I think we have a lot of good arguments to confirm to us and to you that the company is well placed to continue to grab market share, to consolidate the market, not only with the main format OVS, but also thanks to all the other element that we are managing.

Also UPIM is doing well, because UPIM is now confirming the great results of last year. Consolidating one year of growth like 7-8% that was the increase of sales of last year is something really noticeable, I think.

In terms of costs, everything is under control, and the prospective for next year are that the project that I mentioned will continue to generate growth and profitability, and also from the sourcing side, we confirm, as you can see from the exchange rate, that the dollar is going to work in our favor, while this year, basically, the margin increase is mostly determined by product development and not by currency effect. Sorry I've been a bit long, and I hand the word to Francesco Leoncini, usually, for more in-depth analysis of the figures.

Thank you.

Thank you, Stefano. I will start with page number 4 with the third quarter results.

On the left column, you see the reported results that include Goldenpoint and that sees, as said, a 9% growth in sales and also a 9% growth in EBITDA. If we disaggregate and we keep separate Goldenpoint on the pro forma perimeter, we see a growth still important, 4.1%, and an even higher increase in the profitability, which would be €54 million for the Q3 and +16%.

This obviously thanks to the operating leverage that is perfectly working in this context of growth driven by like-for-like performance. On page number 5, we see the 9 months.

The Q3 builds on an already very strong first-half results that we communicated in September. Globally, we are reaching €152 million EBITDA in the 9 months, which is of course growing versus last year by over €17 million.

Also in terms of EBITDA margin, we see a relevant increase from 11.5% to 12.2%. Even more interesting, I think, would be the view on the last 12 months, because on the last 12 months, that is a full year, we broke the €200 million level with €212 million recorded and a 12.5% EBITDA margin.

That means, if you compare to the 250 million of share outstanding, 83 cents per share of EBITDA achieved. Moving to page number 6, where we have some more details by channel and by brand, we see that the growth that over the 9 months was 2.9% on the pro forma perimeter, in reality is again close to 4% on the main channel of the directly operated store and e-commerce, while we see a slight decline in a franchising and B2B that needs some comment, because the franchising business is still growing.

The relationship between OVS and the partners is very good. We just have a technical reduction in the low-margin sales of old stock to marketplaces.

In fact, as we can see, the profitability is not suffering at all, is even increasing. By brand, this year, OVS is growing more than UPIM that we remember was growing significantly last year.

Just to provide you a data: in 2023, the sales were €257 million, we are growing by almost €25 million in the two years in UPIM. The higher growth in sales then determines an higher growth also in the EBITDA, that in OVS is growing by 10%, €222 million.

Also in UPIM, even with just a 1.3% growth, then we have an EBITDA growth of 4% to over €30 million in the 9 months. Overall, let me say, a globally positive performance.

Page number 7, we start having a look to the balance sheet items. The trade working capital is, let me say, basically steady in terms of incidence to net sales: 13.8%, 14%.

A flattish situation. We improved even more the performance on trade receivable.

Inventory is basically flat. It's growing by €7 million, that is the 2-3% growth in the business that we have.

While on trade payables, we see a slight decline, because we anticipated the fall/winter purchases this year that we were not able to do it in 2024 when there was the outbreak of the Suez crisis. In the end, we're talking about numbers that have a low impact on the total values of the company.

Another point that we see on the trade payables is that the decline is also due to the fact that for the spring/summer 2026 orders, the cost is lower, because the euro/dollar is providing us an advantage that we will see in the P&L just next year, but we already see it in terms of the price of the goods that we purchase in Far East. Page number 8 is a snapshot on the investments that, as envisaged, are reducing versus 2024 and are reducing basically on logistics, where we completed the automation on the Pontenure warehouse, on the Pontenure transit center, and while we are not reducing our efforts in growing the network and in making it as beautiful as possible with the refurbishments that then are putting into the P&L a growth of almost 10% versus the previous baseline.

Is an element on which we continue to invest also in this year. Page number 9, we have the 9-month cash flow.

Just to remember, of course, the cash flow is something that has a full view only on the 12-year basis. Nonetheless, also in the 9 months, we see an improvement versus last year thanks to the growth in EBITDA partially absorbed by the trade working capital.

We are more or less stabilizing the cash-out for financial charges and taxes. Due to the normal seasonality of our business, in the 9 months we still have a cash absorption, but it is lower than in previous year.

This leads, on page number 10, on the picture on the net debt. We have always to put the second decimal to see the changes into the leverage ratio, which are stable: 1.4, 1.3, depending on having the position right now or the average.

On a level that is steady now since some period of time, and with treasury shares amounting to almost 4.4% of the total capital. I move then to page number 12 just to summarize what Stefano already told about the outlook for a positive conclusion of this year, levering, as said, on a 2012 last 12-month actual EBITDA.

In a situation where the outlook is positive for 2025 and also for the incoming 2026. I think we are ready now to get your questions, and thank you very much.

Yes, can you hear me?

Can you hear me now?

Okay. Yes, thank you.

Good evening. Thanks for taking my question.

A few questions from my side. The first one is on profitability.

I see very, very, very good developments on each line on each brand, on OVS and UPIM. I was wondering if you can just additional color on the other brands.

I am assuming that also Stefanel is very close to break-even at an EBITDA level, Stefanel and GAP, while Goldenpoint, as anticipated, suffered from seasonality, and it was something that is expected. I was curious more on the Stefanel recovery, if you can add something on this.

Then on the margins of Goldenpoint for next year, do you think you will be already able to normalize the seasonality of Goldenpoint more than this year? Or we will see also next year some volatility, better margins in the key season, summer season, and then some weakness in the winter?

Then I would add, if I may, an additional one more on the strategy. On international expansion, do you have some target or midterm goal on how much sales will come from international in the midterm or if you have some target or something that you can share with us?

Thank you. Hello?

Sorry, I was speaking to nobody, sorry. Thank you for the question.

I was saying that, first of all, every brand is improving, including Stefanel and GAP. Regarding Stefanel, it worth to mention that if in the first half we decided to be very prudent in the intake because I wanted to be sure that the new quality of the organization and the people which is in charge of developing collection was satisfactory.

Once we realized that since the beginning of the season the quality of the new collection was good, we decided to buy the normal quantities for the second half. This generated a situation where, starting from September, the like-for-like of Stefanel started becoming +10% basically every week and even more.

This is the first point. The second point is that the margin of Stefanel improved, and it improved not because we basically saved in the sourcing, but we adopted all the synergies that the group might have generated, and, what is important, we reduced drastically the markdown.

It was not necessary, like in the past, to generate sales thanks to an exaggerated policy of markdown. This disciplined markdown approach combined with a better quality of the product generated a very good sales performance, which turned into a good profitability.

I think, coming to your question, that by the year-end, crossing finger, Stefanel will be break-even at EBITDA level. In the three quarter, Stefanel is already positive, let me say I would be surprised if in the 12 months Stefanel would be negative at break-even at EBITDA level.

On GAP, we confirm that we are downsizing all the activity, and basically what we'd expect for next year is not anymore a focus on the EBITDA, which is more or less zero, but a focus on getting rid of the stock. According to our plan, GAP will generate from €3 million to €4 million of net positive cash from the liquidation basically of the activity, because we will sell the stock that we acquired, and the new stock that we will buy will be much lower than the stock that we have in hand now.

The second question was regarding the seasonality of Goldenpoint. One thing is important for each of us and for you, which are taking care of our company in terms of analysis.

You must became familiar with this seasonality. The company is mostly exposed to summer with the swimwear, and we cannot, and we don't want, to lose this peculiarity.

On the other side, or maybe to be more precise, you have to be familiar with the first quarter, which is very weak in terms of sales; second quarter, very strong; third quarter, weak again, but less weak compared to the first quarter; and the fourth quarter, which is the strongest in term of sales. In term of margin, probably the second quarter will be the highest because most of the sales are generated at full price, while in the last quarter, generally sales are totally impacted by the sales.

Anyway, we have in place several arguments to minimize the seasonality. One is that there is one segment of business, which is the leggings, which is going to be replaced by leisurewear, a different kind of trousers, and we are doing a new typology of trousers, and these are very important in the second quarter and also in the first quarter.

This is the first measure to reduce the seasonality. The second measure is the much stronger weight in the mix of the underwear.

The underwear means the lingerie is basically much more stable than all the other categories. With giving more space to underwear, and the results are already very encouraging, we are again minimizing the seasonality.

The third level of merchandising mix changes which will contribute to minimize the seasonality will be the knitwear, the light knitwear. We are introducing superlight texture like silk and cashmere, cotton and cashmere, cotton and silk.

These arguments are interesting in spring and in autumn, which are exactly the two portions of the year where the company is weaker. All in all, we have several reason why to believe that the seasonality that will continue to characterize this company will be reduced.

International expansion. Yes, we have target.

We are not used to share with our investor our target, because we normally do not communicate our business plan. Obviously we have target.

What I can say is that for the first time in this very long period during which I'm managing the company, something new is happening. I would say two important factors are now in place.

The first factor is that we are not anymore forced to limit our international expansion to opportunistic activations which are basically motivated by our former very weak balance sheet. Having too much leverage, we couldn't invest in new countries with our own subsidiaries, contrarily to what Zara, H&M, Uniqlo did.

Basically we were forced to find independent franchisee that basically were interested in opening small store by taking small risk and investing their CapEx, given that we didn't have the priority of investing CapEx, and our main goal was to consolidate, as we did successfully, the Italian market. Now we don't have this constraint anymore, and we can consider in a very selective way where to take some more risk, becoming more solid and focusing better in some market which are material also in term of size and where we do see interesting opportunities.

In a second, I will tell you which are those market. The second, even most important reason, is the strength that we feel we have achieved in the women.

Thanks to the improvement in this category, which again is the most important in this business, we feel that we have the physique du role now in order to be able to target international market and to compare and to offer international customer a brand and an opportunity to buy which is getting similar to the best-in-class. As a matter of fact, we are focusing now in consolidating the market where we are present, because we don't want to exit from market which are generating good results in any case, but we are focusing in new market like India.

This is the most important market where we are putting energy and some CapEx. We created a subsidiary.

We opened one full format in the third biggest, most important Delhi shopping mall. Our competitor in the same mall are Zara, Uniqlo, and Marks & Spencer.

Happy to say that in this shopping mall, we are achieving sales density which are in line, as I said, with the better store in the better Italian shopping mall. We are projecting a sales density of about €3.5 thousand per square meter, which is excellent.

According to information that we are achieving by our people which are discussing with the store manager of Zara, Uniqlo, Marks & Spencers, seems, I say seems because there is nothing official, seems that we are very close to Zara in terms of sales density and three times higher than Marks & Spencer. Considering that Marks & Spencer has 100 store in India, I think we have a target which is already implicit in this number.

We will open a new store in Delhi and a new store in Mumbai in a few months, and starting from once we open the store, all the landlords, which were a bit not skeptical, but maybe prudent in offering us new location, are now offering good location at a very attractive rent. India is going to be an important test for us.

Dubai will be another important place, because we already have four stores in Dubai, and since we improved our operation by opening a new hub in Dubai in order to be closer to the Middle East area, the hub is also used to supply our stores in Saudi Arabia, for instance, and in the rest of the United Arab Emirates. Our sales are improving by 40-50% in the same store, simply because operations are more fluid and effective.

I think that international expansion for us will be the real priority for the next coming years. Today, we are already making money, because if we consider the country EBITDA before the overhead, we are generating about €10 million EBITDA on €70 million sell-in.

We already have a more than decent profitability. Then once we consider the overhead, which are about €4 million, we end up with approximately €5 million EBITDA generated on a full-year basis from international.

The future growth will not require a linear increase of overhead, because we have achieved the number of people and organization that is needed in order to sustain even a much higher turnover. I think that we will continue to work in order to generate material growth also in international now with full format, not anymore only with a small kids store.

Thank you very much, sir, for these details. Thanks.

Thank you.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question.

Some of my questions have been answered, but I would like to know if it's possible to have recent development on Kasanova, if any. As far as the US dollar, how much did you cover for next year, if it's possible?

Okay. Thank you, Andrea.

Kasanova, basically, I can answer in two ways. From an industrial point of view, the initial work and cooperation that we are working on with the Kasanova team are demonstrating the good reason for this interest.

We are discovering opportunities in the merchandising mix. They are very strong in the in some categories, in general in hard goods, and they are very weak in textile.

Because textile represent more than 20% of the total sales of Kasanova, we believe that in this case there are material savings that we can offer to the company without an exaggerated effort. On the other side, we are receiving confirmation from vendors that once the situation would be stabilized, we can buy at better condition also the existing categories that they are sourcing: on one side, by getting rid of middlemen which they are using in order to source because they do not have a stable organization in the Far East market, in the Far East countries, differently from what we do have, basically they might take advantage of our know-how in managing directly the sourcing from Far East suppliers.

The second reason for this is that once in front of a buyer which is reliable in term of payment terms, the vendor will improve the condition simply because they they are talking to a more solid buyer, and their credit will became a real credit and not a big risk like today. In term of cost, we are realizing that the lack of good instrument in order to manage planning of goods, planning of pay of working hours, managing the labor cost in the big number of stores that they have with different time shift, given the different opening times of shopping mall, downtown, and because they do not manage this in a I would say in a normal way, not in a sophisticated way, they really manage it in a very primordial, if I might say, way, there is a lot of advantages also to be to be taken at at cost of labor store cost of labor level.

You only an example: they do not place the label of the ticketing in the need neither in the vendors' warehouses or in the general warehouse. Every store put manually all the tag, the price tag, product by product.

You can imagine the number of hours which are wasted in doing these activities in a such a disaggregated way. Finally, we have understood that once merged with us, if and when, there would be another material cost-saving due to reduction of overhead.

From a financial, legal way point of view, we are still working, we can say that we are not in the closing mode. We are still working with banks.

The banks are super happy to have OVS in. The suppliers are super happy to have OVS in, but the board of the company still debating and asking things that we will not deliver.

This, just to give you a little bit of color, we are very demanding, obviously, because the company is a dead man walking, in in our opinion, with excellent industrial opportunities once saved and incorporated by us, but we are still working in order to achieve a a kind of a optimal final agreement with vendors and banks, in absence of which we are still ready to retire. This is not the mood, but we are very demanding now, and we will keep you posted once we have news about it.

US dollar. In the last two weeks, we hedged another big portion of our total needs, we are hedged at 90% for the second half and I think for the first half, 100%.

Sorry, we are hedged 60% on the second half, 100% on the first half. We are still hedging now is in this weeks, in total, we have covered something more than 80% of our total US dollar needs.

Thank you, Stefano.

Thank you.

Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions.

I have some on the top-line growth. I would like to go into depth particularly as regards like-for-like growth, particularly if there were any seasonal effects or weather impacts in October that boosted the like-for-like growth, and thus if we should expect some reversal in Q4, and then if this is the case, if you are seeing anything like that in November and December.

Also about the impact of closures and new openings on the like-for-like growth. The very last piece of question regarding like-for-like growth, if you can disclose the share of cosmetics in the overall top-line figure.

If I may, regarding the free cash flow generation, if you have any indication, particularly as regards the last quarter cash generation and CapEx commitments, and if you can tell us something about the buyback, if you are going to maintain the level of buybacks you have maintained in the last couple of quarters, and if this can be defined as a capital allocation policy that can be assumed also for the next years. Thanks.

Sorry for the amount of questions.

I wrote a Bible with all your questions, I filled three pages. I hope I can remember some of them.

Apart any joke, thank you for the question. Like-for-like, I think your main question is regarding like-for-like.

Yes, weather is, as always, has an impact in our sales, mostly in the kids, which is more sensitive; less in the women, which is able to buy independently from weather sometime. Anyway, coming more precisely on your question, yes, we had an advantage a small advantage in September disadvantage in September and a small advantage in October.

All in all, in the Q, we don't see material weather effect. You can consider the the Q neutral.

The the the real incredible thing is that the Q has been much has been higher compared to last year, where, also thanks to a weather impact, we have been received a good boost. Being able to replicate in 2025, in the third Q, the good the excellent impact that weather and quality of assortment generated one year before, I think is really important.

In the in the last quarter, which is now halfway, where the temperature in December are higher than normal, as you can see, particularly North of Italy, the sales are positive like-for-like in spite of this negative trend. November was very good.

December started weaker because of the weather. Let's see what is going to happen from now onward.

I think we we will have a good sales period, because people is more and more oriented to look to look for bargaining in this difficult economic environment. I think that we will continue to benefit from people which are buying our brand during the full season, but also people which are waiting for the sales period to to buy the brand at a lower price.

I I I guess that January will be very solid this year. Anyway, as I told, positive like-for-like in the quarter-to-date as of today.

Cosmetic, the weight of cosmetic on the total of the assortment is about 8% today. The cosmetic is growing double-digit, but not anymore by 20% per year, because we grew 20% per year in three consecutive years, if I'm not wrong, or 2.5.

It's important to to notice that we are continuing continuing to grow at high speed thanks to a combination of continuous improvement of the assortment and also some increase of square meter dedicated to this segment to the detriment of mostly of kids. Also good to notice that if we are growing in women, we are also positive in men and neutral in kids.

We are not losing market share in the kid market to the advantage of the emergent cheap player like Pepco, etc. This is also because we reduced a little bit our price of kids, because we want to keep going with maintaining good relations with our old customer base.

Then you made other questions which are very technical: cash generation, CapEx in the in the fourth Q. Honestly, there is not a precise answer to to to this question.

Cash generation on 4Q will depend from sales, obviously. Sales will depend very much also from how January, which is a very important month for sales, will perform.

I expect that cash generation will be as normal, let's say, will be similar to the one that we had last year, maybe something more. In CapEx, nothing special to mention.

In the fourth quarter, we don't expect either a boost or a slowdown in CapEx, it will be in trend with the full-year the full-year results. Obviously, if you need more details on this question, happy to offer you Enrico support to speak with you anytime.

Thanks. There was the last one as regards buybacks, if you can tell us anything Thanks.

It was in the second page of my notes,

sorry.

Now on buyback, the policy is still in place. Nothing changed.

Obviously, like we did in the past, it will depend from the behavior of the share. In the moment in which the share is going up like this morning, we are not buying, obviously.

Maybe this afternoon we will buy, because after a +8% in the first three hours, now there is a minus something in the. No, apart any joke, the policy is in place, and we will continue like in the past.

In term of capital allocation, nothing special. We are working on, if I may say, reformulating our mid-term sources of funds.

We are, as you can imagine, we receive banks every two weeks, because when you don't need money, all the banking system is offering you money. When you need money, the banks are turning their eyes on somewhere else.

Because today we don't need money, we are working on the reformulation of our balance sheet structure, making longer expiration times and longer maturity at very attractive financial conditions. We are still working on it.

Clear. Many thanks.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My first question just is a clarification, follow-up on the international expansion.

When you say the expansion with, let's say, full format, but are you referring to directly operated stores or franchise? This is the key point.

I have a question on the profitability that we have seen, the very strong improvement in profitability. Can you elaborate on how are you managing costs, what is the rents and personnel inflation that you are seeing and if you are benefiting more from a cost containment or gross margin expansion?

Maybe also looking at 2026, some preliminary thoughts on I'm not talking about profitability, probably is too early, but how are you managing really the cost side, if you see the main tailwinds and headwinds that you see in 2026? Very last question on, let's say, a competitive environment.

I'm trying to understand, because you're referring to a, let's say, very tough market and you are referring to a market that is not growing overall. I'm trying to understand if there are some players that have been, let's say, more aggressive, more taking share on the market, as you are, and or if you see really any change in the consumer behavior.

On international on the international, we will focus on continuing with our growth in existing market, mostly with franchising players. There are market where we make a good money with franchising, like Saudi Arabia.

We will continue with franchising. United Emirates, we will continue with franchising, with the exclusion of the of the flagship in Dubai.

We will maintain our franchising partner, which is happy to notice that we are opening one full format with our personnel, because this will became a flagship and they hope they will benefit from the visibility of the better perception of OVS in the in the in the area. In Cyprus, we are growing only with franchising.

Like in the in the most of the Central Europe, we opened a store in Bulgaria a few weeks ago with a partner. We have a store in Spain with a mix of direct consignment and franchising.

Our model is pretty flexible. What what we will do differently from the past is that we will focus in a new country like India, which is not totally new for us, because you might remember that we already opened more than 10 years ago a few stores that were performing very well, by the way.

Our partner, because we were in a minority position in a joint venture, he went bankrupt because of other businesses, and he stopped clearing custom on our goods, we have been forced to stop, unless we should have acquired the majority of the of the stake, but we didn't feel ready with the with our assortment. Now that we feel ready, in India we decided to stop having partner.

In a such important country with a population of more than 1 billion, and with a much lighter competition compared to other areas in the world, like Europe or like China, and with a customer which is clearly interested to Italian brand, and with a customer which is younger, it worth to put some money and to do direct, like most of the other partner are doing in this period. One aspect which I didn't mention before: 65% of our sales are generated by customers which has less than 35 years.

It's a young country, and seems that the young customers are appreciating OVS offer. A mix: franchising, consignment, and in some case, where it worth, full format.

I think I mentioned also that in a couple of important market where we are making test, which is Mexico and Japan, we have a partner, it's a pure franchising. In Mexico, we will open 60 corner with the Slim family in the Sears hypermarket, and Sears in Mexico is totally different from Sears in the US.

In Japan, we we have opened I think seven-eight kids corner, and we are about to open some Piombo corner with AEON, which is the biggest shopping mall in Japan with 80 billion turnover. Likewise, we we are opening satisfactorily Stefanel and Piombo corner inside Galeria, which is a department store in Germany, or inside Galeries Lafayette in France.

In this case, the agreements are franchising. As I said, it's a mix.

In term of cost, first of all, the gross margin is growing, one element of the contribution to the profitability is generated by the like-for-like combined, the operating leverage combined with a higher gross margin. In term of cost, there is still a negative tail of the national labor agreement, which will expire this day this day next year.

In 2025, we have the second third It was basically split split in three years, the total increase. We are in the end of the second year of increase.

Next year will be the last year covered by the former national labor agreements. I don't see other negative element on the cost other than this.

On the positive side, I don't remember if I informed you that we entered in a cost review, let's say. I want to review all the cost of the company.

We are in the middle of this activity, and I think that for next year, we have at least €2 million, €3 million, €4 million of overhead reduction generated by this cost review. In term of rent, nothing special.

In term of energy, nothing special. I think that's it.

We are still waiting for a normalization in the Suez Canal interdiction, basically. We're still suffering from the water case.

Still waiting that operation will continue to will became better. Not nothing worse compared to 2024 or 2025 in term of logistics.

Competitive environment: small operators, like Pepco, are continuing growing; big operator, like Benetton, strongly suffer suffering still strongly; H&M, slightly reduction; Primark, surprisingly, started reducing market share, because probably because they are not opening new store in this period. In the last in the last 12 months, apparently, according to Nielsen, their market share is going down from 2.7% to 2.6%.

Ecco, Pepco is going up from 0.5% to 0.6%. Piazza Italia is in trouble, I think.

They have been recently they recently changed the the governance. One of the two owners sold to the other one, I think they will be in a middle of high-debt situation where I don't think they can overinvest in order to improve their performance.

They have to pay down leverage acquisition leverage, basically. Zara is still doing very well, like us.

The two companies which are doing very well in the market are OVS and Zara. Still OVS has a banner, as a as a brand, is gaining market share.

Zara is gaining market share. According to Sita Nielsen, OVS is about 6.5% and Zara is about 6.2%.

Then if we consider all the other format of OVS, Zara, Inditex, etc., the the market share goes to about 9%. Nothing else.

I would say nothing else, nothing special other than this.

Just to complement on your comments, the online channel, do you see online channel still growing or, frankly speaking, is not anymore a trend? They are growing

They are continuing to grow. We are growing more than the market, the online channel, than the online market, but the growth is not anymore very big.

I think that the shares, the market share of digital and online and offline market are are stabilizing, and the growth will be much lighter from now on.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, Martino. Thank you for taking my questions.

Just a few things I wanted to ask you: do you track the average age and the average ticket, and can you tell us how they've been evolving this year? Then I have a second question on Altavia, which this time you haven't mentioned it, maybe there is something you want to say there.

Luca, this is Stefano speaking, and I have not understood the first question, if you can re-elaborate the question, please.

The question is on the average age of your customers, whether you track it, I know you track it, and where is it going, and also the average ticket.

Okay. The average ticket is growing continuously, and now the average ticket, I'm looking to figure if my team is showing to me, I think it's about €30, growing 3-4% compared to last year.

I ask my team while I speak if I'm correct or not, but they say yes. Apparently this is the size.

The age is getting lower and lower. We track, but I don't have the figure now.

We have several data point and several way to measure, from the loyal customer to interviews. Obviously, the ones that are not getting part of our customer base, the loyal customer base, which represent more than 60%, if I'm not wrong, of our sales, we don't have the age of the others, but according to also interview and inside view that we have out of the store when they get out and we make them question, clearly they are getting younger.

The reason is that B.Angel and beauty, as I said, are attracting younger customer, and also Utopia. In this moment, I don't have an answer, but I would ask my team to ask our people of the marketing to get with an answer, and because I have your address, I will send you, or you can ask to Enrico.

On the second question, Altavia, I didn't mention simply because I forgot, and because we have many projects. Altavia is doing very well.

In this year, Altavia is growing by 30% in the second half, if I'm not wrong, and no, 40%. 40%, this is year-to-date.

Year-to-date, Altavia is growing 40%. It worth noticing that the total intake increased by 14%, with 14% more gasoline, we achieved a 40% higher speed, which is very good.

Obviously, the consequence of this is improved profitability and better sell-through.

Done. Carry on like this.

Thank you.

Yes, hello, good afternoon, everyone. Just two follow-up from my side.

The first one is on the FX. At one of the previous call, you flagged meaningful cost savings next year from a weaker US dollar.

Now you hedged 80% of next year needs. If you have an update on the size of these savings and how you intend to deploy them.

The other follow-up is on Goldenpoint. Sales grew 10% year-on-year thanks to new product offering.

Can you comment on the EBITDA impact and any cost efficiency you achieved with the initial initiatives you put in place? Thank you.

On US dollar, basically, I cannot say how much of the advantage will be delivered at bottom line. It will depend also from the price policies, and for the second half, the price policies has still not been decided.

In this moment, I don't see reason why to be aggressive on prices, and I think that a big portion of the advantage will be maintained. Then how much marketing cost we will decide to do, which price policy we will decide to do, which kind of aggressiveness from competition will emerge and will force us to be partially transformed into markdown, this we don't know.

I cannot answer in a such precise and quantitative way. I can say that I'm confident that a material amount of this advantage will be delivered at bottom line.

In term of profitability of Goldenpoint, if the question refers to the profitability of the third Q?

Yes, right. Yes.

The last year was almost -5, and this year is about -3, the third Q. The full-year expectation are for a solid, positive EBITDA for this year and obviously for a much higher EBITDA next year.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks.

I think that the conference call is over. Let me only say that I look forward to seeing or to meeting you maybe February, once we have elaborated our business plan for 2026, '27, and '28.

In that occasion, we will be able to be a bit more wide in presenting you guys our main goals. Obviously, let me wish you on behalf of all my team also Merry Christmas and best wishes for the next coming year.

Thank you.