Thank you and good afternoon and welcome to everyone to our conference call. With me today are CEO René Moos and CFO Maurice de Kleer.

In this call, René and Maurice will give a short introduction, after which we will open the floor for questions. This call is being broadcast live on a website, and the recording of the call will be available shortly afterwards.

As usual, I would like to point out that safe harbor applies. With that, I hand it over to you, René.

Thank you. Today we will start by looking at the group highlights from the first quarter of 2026.

As a reminder, the group consists of Basic-Fit and Clever Fit owned and franchised clubs. We ended the quarter with 2,184 clubs, a 35% increase over the same period last year.

Membership increased to 6 million, up from 4.7 million in the first quarter of 2025. Revenue for the group increased by 19% year-over-year to €396 million.

All in all, strong start of the year. Turning now to the Basic-Fit branded business, excluding Clever Fit, we grew our club footprint by 28 clubs, with the majority of clubs openings in our growth markets of France, Spain, and Germany.

The number of memberships increased by 215,000 versus 213,000 last year. The ingrowth is particularly impressive given that 13 fewer clubs were opened in this quarter versus the first quarter in 2025.

In total, Basic-Fit increased its memberships by 13% to 5 million. We now have an average membership per club of 2,981, an 8% increase year-over-year.

In the first quarter of 2026, Basic-Fit revenue increased by 15% to €380 million, driven by very good member ingrowth in our clubs and a solid yield development in the average revenue per Basic-Fit member. We are currently the market leader in six out of the 12 countries where we are present.

As we just saw on the previous slides, we opened 28 Basic-Fit owned clubs in this quarter and five Clever Fit franchised clubs. Let's look first at our own Basic-Fit club openings.

In total, we opened 29 clubs and closed one for a net growth of 28 clubs. We opened eight clubs in Spain, followed by Germany and France with seven clubs each, five clubs were opened in Belgium, and two clubs were opened in the Netherlands in the first quarter.

During the first quarter, we opened five franchised clubs in the German market under the Clever Fit label, bringing the total of franchised clubs in our markets to 440 clubs. Franchising is a key part of how we see Basic-Fit's future.

In the coming period, we will introduce Basic-Fit branded franchise clubs alongside the existing Clever Fit franchise. The first Clever Fit franchise is expected to be rebranded to Basic-Fit in the second quarter.

The aim is to reach critical mass of 200 Basic-Fit clubs in Germany in 2027, which will allow us to start nationwide marketing campaigns. We continue to see strong interest in both the Basic-Fit and Clever Fit brands in the DACH region.

Next to franchise opportunities in Germany, we have also reviewed the opportunities that exist in the other growth markets. We are considering franchising in France, where we see ample growth opportunities for the franchise business.

We expect the contribution of franchise to revenue and underlying EBITDA less rent to be limited in the near term, as it will take time for franchise club growth to reach a meaningful scale. Let's now turn it over to Maurice.

Thanks, René. As communicated on 15th of April, we received confirmation from the French public authorities that we can operate 24/7 clubs staffless in France.

Under this revised amendment, we believe that approximately 200 of our French clubs will immediately qualify for 24/7 unstaffed operations. In May, we will transition 50 staffed clubs to the unstaffed model, and in the summer of '26, we will be adding a further 150 unstaffed clubs.

Based on the specifics of the regulation amendment, like the requirement to have a maximum of 19 people in the club when it's operating without staff, we expect to achieve annualized cost savings of approximately €10 million, of which a smaller part will be realized this year. We expect that over time, further revisions to the amendment will lead to additional cost savings.

For 100 clubs already in the current 24/7 staff model that do not satisfy the current criteria, we elected to keep those clubs staffed. This morning, we communicated that we increased our expectations for underlying EBITDA less rent.

The increase is partly based on the changes of French regulation announced on the 15th of April for staffless clubs, as I mentioned in the previous slide. In addition, the postponement of the Belgian VAT will result in a tailwind compared to the guidance given in January.

It is still uncertain if and when the new VAT plans will be implemented, but each month postponement results in around €1 million additional underlying EBITDA less rent, and the postponement will be that is said at least 3 months. Further postponement will provide, of course, further upside.

The foundation for the adjusted EBITDA guidance is a solid start of the year, which gives us confidence to increase our expectations for underlying EBITDA less rent by €10 million. We now expect group underlying EBITDA less rent of between €415 million and €455 million.

The guidance for revenue of between €1.64 billion and €1.69 billion, net club growth of around 50 clubs, leverage ratio of just over 2 times, and a significant improvement of positive free cash flow remain unchanged. When we look at the longer term, the positive membership trends and the expected continued increase in yields will support the continued growth in revenue and underlying EBITDA less rent in the coming years.

On a site level, we will continue to focus on the return on invested capital of a mature club of at least 30%, and in addition, we'll focus on group return on capital of low-to-mid teens in the medium term. I will elaborate more on our focus on group returns at our Capital Markets Day next week.

With this last remark, I open the floor for questions.

Yes. Hi, good afternoon, all.

Thanks for taking my questions. Let's do three then.

First, on the group memberships, it was 6 million at the end of Q1. Can you provide maybe the exact split between owned club memberships, which is Basic-Fit and a few Clever Fit clubs as I understand, and the franchise memberships?

That's my first question. Shall I wait or shall I continue?

No, we can answer that. We have 5 5 million members 5 million Basic-Fit members.

Then we have around 1 million Clever Fit members, and of those 1 million, around 100 100,000 owned club. It's around that number.

Owned is 5 million Basic-Fit and over 100,000 Clever Fit.

All right. That's very clear.

Second question. You said in the press release that you added five new franchise clubs in the first quarter, and that they were all Clever Fit clubs.

I would assume that with clear benefits from operating one brand instead of two brands eventually, why were they all Clever Fit clubs? Was that because of pipeline, they were about to be opened as franchise clubs, or why were they all Clever Fit clubs?

That's my second question.

As you said, it's because of the pipeline that they were in. As you may remember, it takes at least 1, maybe 2 years to get a license, once you started the whole program as a Clever Fit, then you also have to build it like a Clever Fit club.

Maybe somebody can put it on mute? Yes, it is because they were in the pipeline, and you will see more openings of Clever Fit this year.

For the same reason.

That's clear. My third question is yeah, you said that the near-term revenue and EBITDA contribution from franchise is expected to remain limited.

Is there a possibility that you can provide some guidance on that more specifically for 2026? Related to that, if I'm not mistaken, revenue contribution amounted to €5 million in Q1, né, which was the revenue contribution of franchise, but it was also €5 million in Q4, whereas Q4 was only 2 months and Q1 is 3 months of contribution.

Why is it not a bigger step-up than the flat number of €5 million in Q4 and €5 million in Q1? Thank you.

I think it also has to do with timing, and it also has to do with what the franchisee are paying when they're opening a club. The kickback and so on.

It's not as logical as a member-based monthly subscription that it's every month the same, it varies. If you look at the full year 2026, we expect if you look at the current situation, that the turnover will be at least similar to what we had in the last 2 months, it will be between €60 and €70 million turnover for the Clever Fit organization.

That is full year, and that is, of course, a combination of the franchise income, the kickbacks, and the owned clubs from Clever Fit.

That's clear. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon and thank you very much for taking my questions. I'll ask them one by one as well, just for ease.

The first one is just on the membership trends, up 8% membership per club, up 8% year-on-year. Can you just give us a bit more color how that compares by region and how it compares by the different cohorts of clubs?

Is that really driven by new clubs or is that existing clubs improving as well? Just any more color you can give us on that trend, please.

I think when you look at the 8%, I think the countries that did best in the first quarter are our growing countries, our new countries Spain and France, so that did both very well in the first quarter. If you look at the new club compared to last year, that is of course lower because we opened less clubs, you will see the ingrowth at let's call mature clubs that we have.

Overall, we're very happy to see that France and Spain are doing very well, and also that our mature clubs are continue to grow.

Perfect. Thank you.

The second question is about the franchise opportunity in France. If you can just give us a bit more color on why France.

Is it just that's the first one to start with, but we could see markets after that or have you discounted the other markets as well?

No, there will definitely be more countries than France. We think we can still add an additional 500 clubs because of the fitness penetration being low and the fact that we see that new club openings are doing very well.

Being able to grow with more than 500 clubs in a country is interesting, we are currently investigating that, and we think that will be a good country to start. After that, we will add other countries as well.

The focus will be on Germany, for sure, because we have already there, of course, a franchise organization, and the second country will be probably France, and after that, more countries will follow.

Okay. Understood.

Then my last question is just on the changes to the French regulation. I was very skeptical, it's great that it's come through.

You mentioned some anticipated changes as well. Can you just set out what they might be and how that would drive further cost savings?

French is French, so that it's always a bit different than the rest of Europe. What you see in the rest of Europe, that all countries are exactly the same, you have the system in place.

If the system is good and safe, then you're able to open it without staff. France starts with this number, this 19 people maximum.

That makes it, of course, difficult. That means you have to implement a reservation system to be able that you don't have 18 people in the gym.

That's a limited factor, so that means that we can only do it between 1:00 and 6:00 in the morning, because then we know for sure it will be below 20, so that means you save only 5 hours. If you would do it like all the other countries, you can start already at, say, 10:30 till say 6:30 in the morning, so that is a big difference.

The discussions that are ongoing with the French government we think at least there were discussions about that this is the start, that they first want to test it a period, and if it's going well, then that they will continue to to change that and to optimize it, because of course we clearly explained what the rest of Europe was doing, but this is the start. We do expect that in time, that number 19 will become maybe 29, 39, and eventually, like the rest of Europe, if you have a good system, unlimited.

That is why we think that we can grow this €10 million to what we said before, around 50% of the extra investment, so that we could grow that number to €17.5 million, and that we could also do it on more clubs than the current 300 that we are talking about.

That was really clear. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yes, good afternoon. I've two questions in relation to to the German market.

The first one is what what's the feedback from some of your franchise partners now, hey, or you've now for a couple of months, what are you hearing back, what do they think about Basic-Fit? The other thing is is the dynamics in the German market in general, hey, with with a strong player coming in.

What are you seeing in terms of competitive behavior? Thank you.

If we start with the last question, strong competitor, I think the German market is a very mature market with very sticky members. The fitness penetration is still very low.

If you look at the 83 million inhabitants in Germany and the fitness penetration, it is very strange that it's not similar to what it is, let's say, in the Netherlands. There's huge room for improvement.

We will discuss that a bit more on our Investor Day in next week, but we see huge improvement on the German market. How we look at the German market, we see it as a huge opportunity to grow our business there.

What you see a lot at the moment is that some chains are acquiring other clubs, that is of course also a model, but that's not how you grow the market. We also of course always look at potential add-ons, but we're mostly focused on opening and building our own clubs, and with that, we will grow that German market.

Even though there are players, there are not a lot of big players. I think the biggest chain has around 250 locations.

If you take that on a member or 83 million inhabitants, that is very low. We have 250 clubs in the Netherlands, and we have around 250 clubs in Belgium, which, of course, have much less inhabitants.

Huge white space, we think we can grow a lot, and that's why we're happy that we will do both in Germany, owned clubs and franchise clubs. The reaction of the franchisees were mixed.

Overall, it was positive. They were happy that there was change, and they were happy with the first steps we have taken.

We have improved some of the purchase things that they're doing. The equipment for them as of last week is cheaper, the marketing is more interesting and cheaper, and so on.

We, of course, have to build the trust. It's not that you buy something and that people fully 100% trust you and believe everything you say.

We have to build trust, and we have to show them that we are a good partners, and that's also our goal to grow the company and to make the franchisees more successful. I think it's going very well.

I had a call with the franchisees actually 2 weeks ago. Normally, around 100 of the 160 called in, and now we had more than 200 different people calling in.

That meeting went very well. They were very positive, also in the Q&A.

I think we're starting to build more trust, and and some of the franchisees are interesting to open the first Basic-Fit clubs. They're actually looking to see who's the first one to open the clubs, everybody's really motivated.

A lot of them are also really focused on their current Clever Fit club that they own already for 10 or 15 or 20 years, and very comfortable with that label, so that will also continue, and we will also support them in that way. Overall, I think the start, it's like a new marriage.

It takes time to build trust, and we're in now for 4 and 1/2 months. I think overall, it has been going well.

Super. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Couple of questions left on the staffless solution in France, yeah?

Why are you so sure that at some point the French government will say, okay, let's go to 29, 39, or at some point in line with the other countries, because this already took a while. Why are you so confident that that will happen?

Again, it is France, there is a risk there, but with the discussions that we had, and what was discussed, we know that they're open, and they said that, for improving that amount of members, but they wanted to have a slow start. It's just the trust came out of the discussions that we had, put it that way.

Is there then a checkpoint in the future that you say, we sit together and we review how it went after 6 months or so, and then take it from there, or is there any milestones agreed with them, or is it? No.

No.

Nothing. Okay.

Nothing.

Because at some point, you could also go with your own staff, and that would also save you money.

Yeah. We will do that if it's clear.

It makes a decision. You need a bit of a milestone.

No, but it's clear. If that is the case, if it feels like that, then we will do that, because that saves, of course, also a lot of money.

Then we can also grow to the €17.5 million. Again, we are confident that the 19 number will be pushed up, and if we lose that trust, we will convert.

Yeah. Okay.

Very clear. Then on the outlook, a €10 million extra on the outlook, €4-5 million for France, if you just take the pro forma what the number of yesterday, you take 3 months of extra postponement for Belgium, which is three just over €3 million, there's a limited, a slight underlying increase in your outlook, if I read that then correctly.

Correct, yeah.

Is that because you're still cautious cuz, yeah, the first quarter was definitely above expectations, if I hear you correctly on the membership ingrowth?

Correct.

Is that just a bit matter of caution because it's so early in the year, that you keep it a bit for yourself, or how should I read that? Hello.

No, Marc.

Or is April not looking so good? No,

no, no. Actually, April already started very good, yeah.

No, we really had a strong first quarter, of course. You saw that.

That is both on top-line P&L, but also we see that reflected also in the costs, both the overhead and club costs are in line, actually. As you saw, we can profit from the change in 24/7 regulations only partly this year, hey, so that's one part of it.

Of course, we're only calculated the first months of postponement of the Belgian VAT. If that's further postponed or changed in a good way for us, then that will give us extra tailwind.

For now, we feel comfortable with the extra €10 million that we communicated.

Okay. That's clear.

Then a last one, if I may. I think, René, you mentioned by '27, we expect to be at the level of clubs on the Basic-Fit brand in Germany that would warrant a nationwide campaign, so that's the 200 clubs, I guess.

Mhm.

Can you give us a bit of a roadmap how you get there? Because you're now at 74, you will open some yourself, you will have some converted at once, but then still there's quite a gap.

How do you get there?

We get there by more clubs opening, but I think as you said,

some You can only do 20 or 25 or so, there's a bit of a gap still.

No, that's correct. It should be the franchise part should grow.

What we see is that some of the people that started getting the licenses and are still able to transfer it to Basic-Fit are doing that, we will see some of those. We also have a lot of new franchisees that will start with the Basic-Fit franchise, so that is also part of it.

We will do some small add-ons. We have a couple of Clever Fit franchisees that want to sell the one, two, or three clubs to us, we're in negotiations there.

Outside the Clever Fit, people want to sell the club. We also have some small add-on acquisitions that we are talking to now.

In that combination, we expect during 2027 to reach that number.

All right. Those were all my questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Marc.

Yes, hi. Apologies for coming back, but I have two remaining questions.

You say that you expect a number of Clever Fit franchise clubs to transition to own clubs. I think, René, you mentioned a number in the previous question, but what number should we assume for 2026?

Just to be clear, does this number come on top of the 50 or is it part of the 50 new owned club openings that you expect for this year? My second question is probably for Maurice.

On the convertible bond, you mentioned €159 million is locked up, there won't be early redemption. My question there is, is this it or could it even increase further because the exercise of the puts is possible as from, if I'm not mistaken, 18th of May?

Could it increase further or is this it? Those were my two remaining questions.

Thank you.

Thanks, Robert. Let me start with the second question.

You are correct, hey, currently, €159 million of the bonds waived their put option, the remainder of the bondholders, we can expect to exercise their put option before the 17th of June, but of course, that largely also depends on the share price. Hey, if the share price is about €34 and higher, you can expect that they stay in.

For now, we assume that they will exercise the put option, and we have, of course, our bank facilities in place to meet any demand from our bondholders.

The other question, acquisitions are on top of the 50, they will come on top of the 50 clubs. I think I don't have a concrete number of how many clubs this year, how many clubs next year.

We are in discussions with many franchisees, with many people, and yeah, you never know where that ends, but as soon as we know actually once a deal is done and when it's substantial, we will come out and communicate it.

To be clear, if you do

Go ahead.

Just to be clear, if you do 10 transitions, then the actual number of new net owned clubs could be 60 then.

If you

On top, you said.

That's correct, yeah.

Yeah. That's clear.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I think, yeah, Richard.

Right, and if there are no further questions, then it's time to close the call. Thank you all for dialing in and for your input.

If there are any remaining question at a later time, please don't hesitate to call Heather or me. Thank you very much.

Have a nice day.

Thank you. Bye.