Hello. Good afternoon.

Thank you for being with us for this first quarter conference call. Let me start by saying that we are very happy, because the first quarter first of all confirms that we are in a very healthy moment with our company, and the rightness of our strategy has been confirmed by this quarter.

All the brands, and really all the brands or the business units of the group, performed well even thanks to a positive market behavior, but as usual, we overbeat the market by far with incredible performance in some cases, like Stefanel, or with super solid performance in our flagship brand OVS, also Upim. Very well also the integration of Goldenpoint.

Really we are happy. Inside OVS, all the brands that we have in coherence with our house of brands strategy, from Piombo to Les Copains, from Altavia to B.Angel, even Utopja, are performing very well.

The women, as we are starting to say as usually in the last years, is performing better than men and kids, which is exactly what we want to achieve because the market size of the women in apparel is much bigger than the men and kids. We are gradually, quarter after quarter, season after season, increasing our market share in the most important portion of the market, and still there is room for our growth.

The strategy has been rewarded by the result. On top of it, weather has been supportive this time, we must be honest, and I think that this is the main reason why the market has been positive up to now.

Basically nothing more to say. When things are doing so well, we have only to work in the direction we are already pursuing and continuing to provide support to our initiatives in term of attention from the team, CapEx when necessary, because even the return on CapEx when we refurbish stores, the return is very positive.

When we open new store, even in Italy, there is still room to open store, the return is positive. I think the company is well-placed with this amount of brands and initiatives to continue a solid trajectory of growth.

Also out of Italy, the early signals which we are receiving from our newly opened full formats are very positive and encouraging. I hand the word to Francesco for a more detailed presentation, and I will be with you for your questions as usual.

Thank you, Stefano. I will start from page number 4 on which on the left side you have the table with the P&L.

Last year first quarter, we realized €350 million of sales with an EBITDA of €28 million and an EBITDA margin close to 8%. 2026 figures are exposed both in the organic way, that is on the same perimeter of 2025 excluding Goldenpoint, and the total consolidated and reported values.

If we focus on the organic perimeter, we see that the growth in sales was 7.5%, and this drove, thanks to the operating leverage, a strong increase in EBITDA of 27% to €35.7 million and with EBITDA margin increasing by 150 basis points to 9.4%. Goldenpoint, which on itself had a very good performance with sales increasing by 11% and EBITDA improving by a couple of million versus last year, has a technical impact from seasonality because the first 3 months of the year are the weakest moment, because we just have the end-of-period sales of fall/winter and the sea collection is entering into the store in the month of May and June.

Has a negative contribution, but globally nonetheless, the sales grow to close to €400 million, just €3 million ahead of this good number, and EBITDA nonetheless is growing €1.3 million versus last year. The group was able to include Goldenpoint, keeping its growth trajectory, and we are close to complete our first year after the acquisition of Goldenpoint that took place the 1st of July, 2025, and the projections for this consolidated 10 months and 2 months ahead, May and June, should drive to a break-even situation over 12 months with the expectation to then land on the fiscal year '26 with a positive EBITDA as of January 2027.

I move to page number 5 where you have the usual breakdown by channel. Both channels are growing, directly operated stores and franchising, and by brand, by banner.

OVS had this time a better results in terms of EBITDA growth, but it is due to the higher incidence of directly operated store, and so the higher impact of operating leverage versus Upim. Both brands are growing significantly versus last year, and OVS also had an EBITDA margin above 10% also in this first quarter that, as due to seasonality, is the weakest quarter of the year.

Page number 6 provides you with some figures on cash flow. Last year, starting with €148 million of net financial position, the cash absorption in the quarter was €113 million.

This year, we improved by €7.5 million, and so the cash absorption is slightly above €100 million, but as said, with reporting a more than €7 million improvement versus last year. Differently from last year when buyback was close to zero, this quarter, the quarter February, March, April, was characterized, as you all remember, by the outbreak of the conflict in Iran, and this led to some higher than normal buyback moments, especially in the month of March when the share price dropped from €5 to €4.3, €4.4.

Overall, the net financial position is the same of last year, and given the increase in the EBITDA, the last 12-month EBITDA, the leverage ratio is further reducing from 1.34 to 1.25, which, of course, also in absolute terms is a very robust number. I close with page number 8, what is ahead of us.

The current trading of the first 45 days of the second quarter is sales are maintaining a good growth, particularly high in May, a little bit less in June, but overall we are continuing the growth. We are continuing the growth alongside all the lines, that is the brands, Piombo, Les Copains, are even overperforming within the OVS banner, and the Goldenpoint and Stefanel are recording double-digit sales versus the same period in 2025.

We are confident to have in front of us a fiscal year 2026 with a further increasing sales, EBITDA, and margin and cash flow versus last year. We complete this successful quarter also with optimism versus the next quarters.

Thank you so much, and then we are waiting for your Q&A.

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone.

Few questions from my side. The first one is on Stefanel.

Sales have increased a lot, 30%, a sign that the recovery is gaining momentum. Could you tell us what factors are driving this acceleration and whether it is sustainable for the rest of the year?

Then on the apparel market, on your introduction you mentioned one of the reasons of this growth in the first part of the year, the weather, good weather conditions. I was wondering if there's something else that could explain this reversal versus secular negative trends.

Also another question on profitability, if you could give us how the gross margin changed during the quarter or if you prefer, to what extent the decline in purchases given to the FX contributed to the improvement in the EBITDA margin and residually what is the impact from the operating leverage. Thank you.

The first is regarding Stefanel, how sustainable is this growth. From a from a brand reputation point of view, we are receiving a lot of requests from international partner and also Italian entrepreneur to became franchisee partner for this brand.

This is based on a mix of appreciation of the quality of the collection. We are talking about fashion, and at the end of the story, the the way the product looks like is a a super important element for the success of a of a of a collection.

The other aspect is a great positioning in term of price, because customers, I mean entrepreneurs, B2B and final customer, which is even more important, are rewarding Stefanel because they consider Stefanel very well-placed in term of price to quality compared to other similar brand more in line with the average prices of the bridge or premium segment. Brand like Liu Jo, Pinko, Patrizia Pepe, this kind of things are more expensive, and they are, if you might consider Stefanel more similar to Massimo Dutti maybe, in term of pricing and also positioning, you understand why customers are paying attention to this brand.

How sustainable, honestly, depends from not from the second aspect, because the price-to-quality ratio is very solid and is related to the strong supply chain that we have, but the quality of collection remain more unpredictable. We are very happy about our team.

In this moment, our team is developing product which are which I'm convinced are very nice. We have to keep in mind that this this portion of the business is still depending from the the the way the quality perceived by customer in term of fashion content, quality of material, price, everything is a combination, difficult to to say.

We are very positive. I I would be surprised honestly to continue at this pace, because this pace is much higher than what we expected, but all in all, we remain very comfortable and positive because I have seen, obviously, the collection for the second half of the year, and from a qualitative point of view, if I may say, in my opinion it is even better than what we have in the store in the shop in the first quarter.

We will be prudent in opening new store because we want to open profitable stores, or even when we open franchisee. The good news is that if we we are growing by 30%, 20% is the rate of growth on a like-for-like basis for comparable perimeter.

There is a solid growth not only because we are opening new space, but because the the the like-for-like is positive, and this is the most this is the most important aspect. Regarding the weather, difficult again to to predict how the market will move because nobody knows how the weather will be.

We are getting used to very hot summer, in principle, I expect a good start of the sales because the the swimwear in general this year started later. Probably we there will be a good reaction in July when the sales period will start.

I'm convinced that people is still waiting for sales in this moment of the year, and that's why, as Francesco said, June has been a bit lower compared to the other month. If I have to to to to say my opinion, I think that when the sales period will start, we will assist again to a positive market dynamic, and hopefully we will overbeat the market again.

Regarding profitability and gross margin, before maybe handing the word to Francesco, which is more detailed and precise than than me for sure, but the gross margin has been impacted basically by a a portion of the year with the markdown of February, which has been not higher than normal, but because sales in February has been higher, much higher than the year before, the impact of the markdown in absolute value has been higher, even if percentage-wise has remained stable. While in March and April, we sold almost entirely at full price, and the intake is much higher than last year, as you have been guided, you have been informed, because we are benefiting from what what was a stable cost of material and a favorable dollar.

We expect that this effect will continue to be in place for the remaining part of the year. I think I'm looking to Francesco, he has nothing to add, so.

Okay. Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, Stefano and Francesco.

I just have a question on if you can tell us something about how the international expansion and your international tests are working with Goldenpoint and also with OVS.

Okay. Luca, with Goldenpoint, we are not having in this moment a plan, we are not paying focus and attention on expanding Goldenpoint out of Italy.

We are working hardly in order to relaunch and make Goldenpoint profitable again, and we are in the right trajectory to to to achieve our goal. Regarding international expansion, we are focused finally, as I think I told to the one of you that were present to former conference, in a more strategic way compared to the past, because we are starting opening full format store in selected geographies.

It's still early to to to to draw conclusion, but the initial openings are giving us extremely positive indications. In Spain, we opened two full format in two important shopping mall.

The store are not as big as we would like, but they are they are big enough to present a full an almost full assortment of an image of OVS like it you may see today in Milan, Rome, or wherever in Italy. The two store are performing better than our budget, in one case much better, and in the other case a little bit better than the budget.

We are very happy with Spain. We are about to open a third store, and we are looking to we are assisting to a great interest from the landlord in exploring the possibility to have other OVS store in the country.

H&M is not that is not performing that well as it was in the past, probably some landlord is also looking at OVS as a possible outsider. This is true also in other geographies.

We open also two store in India. This is very important because Spain and India, we have direct subsidiaries, we don't have franchisee.

We have direct directly managed store. Spain is positive, I mean to say in term of country EBITDA, largely positive.

In India, we decided to have a direct subsidiary because we we need, we want to control the market, to have a full capacity to understand mistake, opportunity in order to readdress also the evolution of our merchandising. The first store we opened in Delhi was open in October, if I'm not wronged.

The store performed The store is big, and in the same shopping mall, we have one Zara, one Uniqlo. The store, according to to unofficial information, was performing very very similar to Zara and Uniqlo in terms of sales density, much higher compared to our expectation.

You can say 20%, 30% better than our budget. What what is interesting for for for for us, and was also expected, very very much driven by the buying of young generation.

Basically 60% of the sales are made to people which are below 30 years old. The store started decreasing sales suddenly with the war, because a few weeks after the war the war has been declared, the shortage of gasoline in India, also Bangladesh, has been more material than in other countries, like in Europe, for instance.

You might have read that the President Modi invited, more or less 1 month ago, the population to limit internal movement, to stop going to to to to the office, doing more smart work, etc. We have seen the sales decreasing.

In the last 10 days, sales are again up, in this moment in line with our budget. The second store we opened in Mumbai is another big store, just near an Apple Store.

The shopping mall is still in a moment of growth because all the all the all the store mix that was expected is still not there, we are waiting to have one H&M and one Uniqlo in the in the shopping mall. The shopping mall is performing less than expected in term of traffic, and our store is performing a bit less than expected just because of traffic.

In my opinion, very good indications. We also opened the our first big full format in Saudi Arabia with a new partner, which is performing better than budget.

The partner is super happy. We will open another two or three store in the next coming months.

All in all, the remaining stores are performing positive like-for-like in spite of the war. We have a material portion of our turnover in the Gulf, maybe 40 stores, something like that, and they are performing well even if impacted by the war.

Very early, but everything is happening is to me is encouraging, and it means that our format, like it is today, with a very strong women that 10 years ago we didn't have, is legitimating, if I might say, expectation for a continual growth out of Italy. As I said, Goldenpoint, there is in this moment, it is not on my radar, but hopefully it will became because in principle, because of the of the high gross margin, the format is suitable for finding a large number of franchisee ready to invest in this brand.

Can you hear me now?

Thank you. Thank you for taking my questions.

A couple of questions. The first one, I would say, on current trading again.

You confirmed a good growth continuing in Q2. Did the growth profile remain broadly stable through May and June compared to the high single-digit trend that you indicated at the end of May, or you have signals or just the last week's performing better than that also in light of the actuals?

On the contribution on the other businesses, the Stefanel in particular, Goldenpoint continues to improve. Has Stefanel now reached the break-even?

The secondary brand like Gap continue to remain dilutive? Can you help us have an idea on the contribution of profitability of these businesses, what you expect in terms of timing for Gap to stop being a drag, until when it will be in the perimeter?

Okay.

Thank you for your question. First, regarding current trading, even if we are never so granular to say week by week or quarter by quarter where we are in term of numbers, what I can confirm is that May has been super positive, even a bit higher compared to the 7% growth that we achieved during the first quarter.

June has been weaker, but mostly because a lot of summer-dedicated sales has been anticipated due to weather aspects. We believe that the weak beginning of June has been only commanded by shifting weather.

If I have to say a number, today we are higher than 5% in the second quarter. Very much will depend from the sales.

If the sales will be similar in term of consumer behavior, to what we experienced in January, February, well, it will be another super good quarter. If not, it will be a good quarter.

This is the way I see it. Then you asked regarding the small format.

Let me start from Gap just to clean the table from misunderstanding. We told Gap management that we don't want to continue with Gap, and we have an agreement based on which we can close all the stores which are not performing.

Based on this agreement, which expires in '29, we know that we will arrive in maybe 6 months, 12 months to close basically all the network. This is what we believe.

Anyway, we are reducing the number of store. The turnover is not material, we're talking about a few millions.

The cash flow is positive. Why?

Because we are reducing the new buying and we are exiting the old stock. Basically the combination of these two aspect is driving to a neutral EBITDA, a lower dilution because the top line of Gap is decreasing, and a modest positive cash flow because based on our actual performance, which is still decent, but we are not looking for decent performance and we have no strategic reason to keep this brand anymore, but based on our financial planning, from now to the final wind-up of the relation, we expect to have maybe a couple of million of positive cash flow.

On Stefanel, Stefanel is making 35, something more than €35 million turnover on a yearly basis. Obviously, we are not looking for the break-even, we are looking for at least a 10%, 15% EBITDA margin, which means to make €4 million, €5 million positive EBITDA.

If you consider what we made 2 years ago, we were losing probably €3 million, €4 million, now we are break-even. The goal is to achieve a €3 million, €4 million profit maybe in 1 year, 1 year and a half.

My real goal with Stefanel is not remaining at €35 million, €40 million, my real goal is to achieve maybe €100 million. In how long?

Maybe in 3 years. Also considering that we have some situation which we want to leverage, for instance Korea.

In Korea, we are selling €10 million only with a partner on digital sales. We do not report this €10 million sales because we only have the royalties on this €10 million.

Or today, in the last 6, 7 months, we have opened seven store in Turkey with a local partner, and the store are doing very well. I think that we need to be patient.

We are not draining any money here, and I'm convinced that with Stefanel in good shape, we have another project, another interesting format to offer to Italian and international customer. Goldenpoint, well, we are happy because everything we are doing works rightly.

We have increased the space dedicated to categories where we are very strong and they were very weak, like nightwear, like knitwear. Everything we did in term of product has been well appreciated by customer, and that's why like-for-like we are more than 10% in this moment.

We are also opening new stores, which are performing according to the expectation. We are refurbishing stores, which are giving a contribution to the positive like-for-like.

We have still another 30% of work to be done in certain categories which we haven't the time to reset up, to adjust. We are happy with our style department and product development.

All the synergies are in place. The goal there is to achieve at least €15 million, €20 million EBITDA, and we are in the trajectory, in my opinion, to achieve that number.

This company, I think that in 3 year, with a new store and with a better performance of the existing store, with also some enlargement of stores because the store are small and we want to improve the mix in term of privileging bigger store versus smaller ones, can achieve at least 12%, 13% EBITDA margin, but in principle it should achieve an higher EBITDA margin compared to the group. This company should be accretive in a 2- or 3-year period of time.

Okay. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Two questions or maybe three.

The first is a follow-up on Goldenpoint expansion plan, because I remember you were mentioning the target to expand the network. Far, looking at the number of direct operated stores, I see that it has remained basically the same as compared to the time of the acquisition.

I'm trying to understand if you have already in the pipeline some new openings already for this year, if you see an acceleration more '27 or '28. Far, you have been mostly working on the organic improvement.

Second, on the profitability side, I didn't understand if at the end the gross margin of the quarter, you were mentioning a say dilution in February and then a good recovery in March and April, overall should I assume that gross margin has been similar to last year? I try to understand the cost trajectory.

I am assuming some numbers on the gross margin, a 5% growth in Q1, I try to understand if this is the trajectory that you're expecting also for the full year or was a matter of phasing among the different quarters.

Domenico, thank you. On Goldenpoint, no, we opened, as of now since the acquisition of the company, more than 20 DOS.

Only this year, we opened 15 new DOS, more or less in line with the with the budget in term of performances. Then we opened several new franchisee stores.

The company was basically having a business model mostly based on DOS, contrarily to the bigger competitor, which is Calzedonia Group, they have mostly franchising store. As of today, we have 55 franchising, and 30 of which has been opened since the the more or less 30, I have not the right number in front of me, since the day since the acquisition of the company.

All in all, we opened 70 70 store, 15, 20 DOS, and the remaining ones franchising, more or less. If you need more precise information, we can provide you maybe on a separate basis, on a separate call.

Also we refurbished, as I said, I think we refurbished 50 stores. All in all, out of the 300 and something store that we had, 50 has been refurbished, and these 50 stores are achieving +10, from +10% to +15%, in some case +20% performance.

I was in Messina last week. The Messina store, which is in the best shopping street of Messina, is increasing by 40%, for instance, after the refurbishment.

We still didn't invest that much in marketing, but we sustained the CapEx to have 200 stores with a new digital screen to be used as a main communication tool to sustain the brand positioning, because the brand is still worth a marketing effort to be communicated again after years of a sluggish position, if I may say. On gross margin, before handing the word to Francesco, which is more informed than me, I tell you that the gross margin is improving.

As a combination, as I said before, of a February characterized by higher markdown because the the length of sales in absolute term has been higher, but the intake for the new buying, the new intake for year '26 has been better than last year, there is a gross margin improvement in the first quarter to be continued also in the next coming months of the year. Francesco, do you have anything to add?

Yes, we do not normally release the absolute values, but we talk about 40 basis point increase more or less in the gross margin of the company. We expect also for the following months to have this increase in the weight of the sale season, because this is also where the market is going.

More and more people wait for the sales, and then they make the purchases in that moment of the year. On the other side, the improvement in the intake margin, that is the ratio between the price and the cost paid in Far East, is increasing in the spring/summer '26, is increasing even more in the fall/winter '26 because of the dollar of last year when we made the orders.

We expect that the gross margin trend will increase even before the effect of Goldenpoint, because Goldenpoint has a business model with about 10,000 10%, 1,000 basis points more than OVS, and so this in the blended consolidated figures will have some impact also.

Just to avoid any misunderstanding, the gross margin for the full year, as a combination of all the aspects that we remembered, is supposed to grow materially compared to year '25.

On the cost? Because if you had expansion in gross margin, is it correct to say that costs were, say, mid-single digit, more or less, and so what has been driving?

Sorry, the cost,

you mean the company SG&A, you mean?

The operating costs, between gross margin and EBITDA.

There is nothing particular, nothing special to change. They are proceeding in line with a little increase of energy, but not that much compared to the year when energy was a problem; a slight increase in cost of labor as a consequence of the evolution of the national labor agreement.

All things that are under control and more than covered, more than hedged also by a price increase. Let's keep in mind that this company, to me this is extremely important, thanks to what the company's made in the last year in term of brand reputation, better window, better store, store refurbished, Piombo, Les Copains, we are able to increase prices because we are attracting new customer, which are sometimes demanding, asking for better quality, and they are ready to pay higher prices.

All the people which were buying, I don't want to mention listed company, but I can mention Replay, for instance, if you want to buy a denim and you are a customer of Replay, they are suffering. Why to buy Replay?

You can buy a denim in OVS, and the price is lower, lower that we can even increase the prices. If today we are selling suede jacket at €170 and we will increase the price to €190, we do because we have a lot of customer which are asking us to deliver even higher quality items, ready to pay more for something that out of OVS, they would pay much, much more.

Finally, let me reiterate that we are always paying attention to cost, to SG&A. We have in place a project in the last 1 and 1/2 year, the project has a name, is called Pruning.

Maybe the name is not sexy, but it means that we are cutting every month something that is not delivering the right value to the company. We have a team, an internal team in place, and this work has provided as of now in the last 2 year, almost €10 million cost savings thanks to single initiatives.

We have 70, 80 single initiatives, each of them accounting for from €20,000 to €4 million, €3 million. Because there is one initiative regarding efficiency of equipment,

[unclear], yeah, equipment,

which has a worth of more than €2 million. Attention to cost is always in our culture.

Thank you.

I had a follow-up. The first is on Upim, in the sense that, okay, the profitability in Upim has remained broadly unchanged despite a very strong top-line growth.

You were mentioning clearly there is less operating leverage because it's more linked to franchise, but anyway, I was a bit surprised to see the same EBITDA with much stronger sales.

On Upim, there is another element that works this year in the first quarter. Because of working capital reason, Upim has been more active in getting rid of old stock compared to OVS, there has been a higher amount of markdown in Upim in the first quarter compared to OVS.

This is the other reason.

Okay.

Nothing structural, nothing. The first quarter is already the weakest in general, every effect in the first quarter becomes higher in magnitude when operating leverage is taken into account.

Nothing which can suggest that Upim has any kind of problem. Okay.

My last question is on category mix. You were mentioning for sure the women contribution as a key driver for the strong top line.

Any comment on men, kids, and beauty, I would say?

All positive. Women +9%, +10%, something like that; men +3%; kids +1%, something I'm looking to a slide now, yes, as I said.

The biggest contribution is women, followed by men. We are very happy that still kid, in spite of the birth rate decreasing, is still positive.

It means that the price adjustment that we made last year has been done correctly, and we have a customer happy to come to OVS because what happened, even from a market research, customer of kid are aware that the quality of OVS is much better than Primark quality. Basically they recognize that if they go to Primark, then very often they come back to OVS.

That's why we decided to readjust a little bit downward the prices of kids, and that's why we are positive also in this category where the market, if I'm not wronged, Francesco, is not positive. The market in kids has been neutral this year.

While women in the market and men has been positive, kid has been neutral. We are positive.

Okay. Very helpful.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Good. Thank you for attending this call again, and hope to see you or to speak with you soon.

When is the next call? The 23rd of September.

I wish a good summer, good holiday to all of you, and ciao.