Good morning, and welcome to the Watches of Switzerland Group's FY 2026 trading update webcast. We're joined this morning by Brian Duffy, Chief Executive Officer, and Anders Romberg, Chief Financial Officer.

If you would like to ask a question during today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand over to the Watches of Switzerland Group management team, Brian Duffy.

Please proceed. Right.

Thank you, Dom, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our full-year fiscal 2026 trading update call.

A few introductory comments from me, and then we'll open the line for your questions for myself and Anders. Our group sales coming in at plus 13% in constant currency, plus 11 in reported, a total of £1.83 billion, well ahead of the high point of our guidance and of market consensus.

H2 growth trends were marginally better on H1 despite being up against tougher comps. We expect adjusted EBIT of between 152 and 155 million, also ahead of expectations.

Our team delivered great results navigating through challenges, including changing import tariffs, gold price inflation, some other challenges. They really did a great job.

Sales in the US of 1.24 billion were 24% up on prior year, and the US is now more than 50% of group sales. This is a major milestone for our group, achieved in just 8 years since we entered that market.

The US luxury watch market is the largest and fastest-growing major market globally, and we continue to see the market as underdeveloped. The high-income segment in the US has benefited from significant increases in wealth due mainly to the appreciation of financial assets, and the luxury watch market in the US is buoyant.

The US luxury jewelry market is also the number one market globally, and our Roberto Coin wholesale business has shown great sales progress at plus 22% in USD for the year. The Roberto Coin brand performed very well in our Mayors stores in Florida, and the three new mono-brands and new website all performing in line with our expectations.

Our acquisition of the Deutsch & Deutsch four stores in Texas has proceeded well, and the business is performing well, too. In the UK, sales have improved in H2, and we continue to view the UK luxury market as stable.

Sales for the year were plus 5%, and we had a particularly stronger year for luxury jewelry. Looking ahead to fiscal year 2027, we're carrying in strong momentum and good confidence into the year.

Our guidance is for sales growth of between 5 and 10% in constant currency. That is, of course, 52 weeks on prior year of 53.

If we adjust for that, the guidance we're giving is between 7 and 12%, and we're guiding to a profitability improvement of between 40 and 80 bps compared to fiscal year 2026. Our growth pillars are all performing well, and we have a strong pipeline of projects in the UK and US.

We look forward to another year of record growth. Many thanks to our wonderful colleagues for showing again their commitment and enthusiasm, excellent client service, and delivering these strong results for fiscal year 2026.

With that, we'll open the line for your questions.

Hello, hi. It's Chris Huang from UBS, and first of all, congratulations on the results.

I have two questions, the first one maybe on the UK. The momentum of the UK market seems to be turning as you did 7% in H2 for the region.

Could you perhaps help us understand better the regional expectations you baked in for the FY 2027 guidance? Asking because your comps get quite easy in H1, would it be fair to assume maybe some further acceleration in the UK, even into the double-digit range in H1?

Secondly, on the US, we saw in H2 another very impressive half year. I'm just wondering here if you could help us understand the underlying drivers of the growth of this 27% in H2.

How much was driven by new stores and how much by the uplift in average selling price and volumes within the existing stores, please? Thank you.

Right.

Thanks, Chris. UK UK market is is good and we've we've characterized it as stable.

It stabilized in fiscal 2025, which we reported. We we continue to see it as stable.

We have picked up a bit of momentum. We have areas in which we're performing very well.

Our Bond Street Rolex flagship store is doing extremely well. Very proud of the performance and particularly the feedback from clients on that store, which really couldn't be better.

That's that's a great success. E-com business in the US in the UK is doing very well, and we had a real standout performance on in jewelry.

It's honestly, it's just a lot of the good things that we're doing across across our network. We are the, the year two, year three of, major expansions that we've done in prior years, seeing the benefit of them seeing the benefit of them coming through.

We don't split our guidance, by by market, we we can't tell you what our assumptions was for the UK other than to say that we are, we're carrying good momentum in. We see the market is stable.

We see it as continuing to be so for the year. There's obviously disruption around politically or or whatever, but honestly, we see the circumstances that we're in today is is better than they've been in in the last couple of years with the the amount of instability that there's been overall.

US market is, on the other hand, very strong for reasons that I said: the underdevelopment in the category, the watch category in particular, and the very kind of positive frame of mind of the high-income consumer combining to create good market conditions. Again, we we we carry into the year experiencing the new year experiencing those conditions.

We're up against tougher comps, of course, and we we project forward our business based upon what we're experiencing, but obviously, the comps that we're up against are going to be that bit that bit tougher. Our advice would be not to, this is our our our best call for the market as the guidance that we're giving.

We we wouldn't, get carried away beyond that at this point. There's there's obviously things going on in the world that can, still affect the the climate that we're doing business in.

The ASP and pricing, we can get back to you on the average price for the year.

The most of the pricing action that we saw as a result of the tariffs impacted this last fiscal year, FY 2026, predominantly. There has been a few price adjustments due to the gold price and that's the part of the segment in watches that has been somewhat impacted, but it's not been of the materiality that we saw in last fiscal year.

We never anticipate price increases. That.

They generally happen at the start of the calendar year, not always, but they generally happen at the start of the calendar year, but we never assume it in our in our numbers.

Your line is open, please go ahead. A bit quiet on you, Richard.

good morning, Brian, Anders, and Caroline. By the way, I just wanted to thank you, Caroline, for the work we've done together the last few years and good luck in your next endeavor.

Have a couple of questions if possible. The first one is if you could please comment on the momentum ex weight-listed products, both in the UK and in the US.

My second question would be with regards to the pre-owned category. Relative to your midterm targets, how is Rolex CPO progressing?

Are you now selling Rolex CPO in all of your stores, both in the UK and in the US? Is it still the second-biggest brand in the group nowadays?

Thank you very much. Good

morning, Adrien. Thanks for your questions.

The situation with regards to the mix of our business on the supply-constrained sector of our business has been very steady. Again, with the demand in the US, we could be selling everything to waitlist clients for those brands.

In the case of the UK, as we've reported, we have an element of walk-in business and an element of stock that's available. Again, that seems to be steady.

It's a very good experience all around, obviously, for our sales people and clients. At least they have some access to product.

A big part of our business is highly predictable because it is based upon supply and it's based upon the list that we have. We continue to add to the lists, UK and US.

When new products come along following Watches and Wonders, we get another wave of additions to the list, and that happened, of course, this year with the new products that were announced in Geneva. It remains very steady and a core part of our model and mix.

Pre-owned is going very well. It's at least in line with what we would have expected it to be, maybe even a wee bit better.

In the case of the US, we're in all of the doors for Rolex CPO. In the UK, we've a few more doors still to add that we'll do in this fiscal year.

It's really just been a matter of when are we reorganizing or re-laying out the store, and we obviously coincide with the development with that. We've a few doors to add yet in the UK.

It's a core part of our business.

D&D.

Yes, and the other thing I'd emphasize, Rolex Certified Pre-Owned business is going very well, and the other brand pre-owned business is also going very well. As a category, it is our number two brand, if you like, from that standpoint and a great business for us.

We're learning more and more as we go, developing more and more relationships, and obviously, developing a great awareness with our clients who come to experience some really interesting product that we can now present. It's been a particular success in Bond Street.

Again, if you've been there, we have a beautiful presentation of very interesting products to see and understand quite apart from shopping. We have clients coming to us asking to source vintage products and so on.

It's really a great space for us. Our new acquisition in Texas, Deutsch & Deutsch, we'll be bringing Certified Pre-Owned to them as well as some other elements of business that we can add.

It's really good category, and it's contributed well to our growth over this last couple of years, including fiscal 2026.

To add to that, the team is getting better and better at procurement and stock management. The health of our inventory has never been as good as it is today.

The market, as I'm sure you track, is very stable as well from a pricing standpoint following that crazy volatility of 2022 and 2023.

Thank you very much.

good morning, everyone. I've just got a question on Roberto Coin.

I was wondering if you could update and give a bit more detail on the four mono-store trials, how they're going, performing, and sort of expectations for the year ahead, and also perhaps update on progress with discussions getting more space in some of your wholesale partners? Thanks so much.

Thanks, Kate. The whole Roberto Coin business with us, we're very, very pleased with the integrations, the collaboration that we have with the teams in Italy, with Roberto himself and his family, and the team under Peter Webster in the US that we are obviously getting to know.

The four mono-brands, it's three at the moment with a fourth coming in Tampa, all going well. The website as well as Roberto Coin DTC going very well.

What's going extraordinarily well is the expansion of Roberto Coin within the Mayors Group, where we've installed shop-in-shops and clearly the training and really focused on the merchandising and so on. We're using, to your last point, we're using these experiences, these projects, to clearly take them out and present to our other wholesale partners.

We've more than doubled the business in the Mayors stores from what we've done, and it's become a very important brand and even comparing well to and exceeding, actually, the productivity of some major brands in the store. It's great, but I'm off to Vegas in a couple of weeks.

The biggest event of the year is the Couture JCK event, takes place in Wynn where we happen to have our stores. We have a lot of meetings set up with our big department store partners and our big independent retailers.

We have a program of expansions that we're working on. Obviously, they all take time to negotiate, to get the space, to procure the furniture and everything else.

We're on it and delighted with the results that we got last year. Delighted with the fact that we continued to do well despite the fact that we had to put prices up, obviously, since it's predominantly gold, the product.

It's going to be an important part of our business and obviously makes a disproportionate contribution from a profit standpoint since we have both a wholesale and retail margin when we do this direct-to-consumer business, and the stand-alone wholesale business is nicely profitable as well. That the business that we acquired was a 20% EBIT business.

Very, very positive about Roberto.

Great, thanks so much. Have fun in Vegas.

Thank you.

Morning. Hopefully, you can hear me this time.

I've got a question on the margin guidance. I know you have the Roberto Coin debtor that was talked about in the Q3 statement, just keen to understand how much of the 40 to 80 bps uplift you're talking to is an underlying improvement versus some of that unwound?

Thanks very much.

We never really disclose the absolute number for Roberto Coin, but obviously, the write-off that we had to take in as part of the Chapter 11 proceedings, which now is closed, by the way, we don't expect that to annualize next year, obviously. That has a slight impact, you can make up your own number.

I think it's out there. I know most analysts have put in around 3 to 4 million for that.

That's a benefit that we'll have next year. The rest of the margin expansion is coming from operational leverage, which is historically how we've driven the profitability in this business over more than a decade, actually.

It's coming from that, the margin expansion, and we expect that to contribute to the 60 bps, which is the midpoint.

We've worked on our brand mix. It's a great thing that we have.

We're a multi-brand. We're a true multi-brand retailer in the main, and we're able to change the mix of our product as we go.

We've had some really great success as we kind of reorganize the mix of our brands in terms of productivity and a margin impact. We continually look at our store portfolio as well.

A few things contributing to the improvement that we're guiding to.

Got it. Thanks very much.

Great, thank you. Morning, everybody.

Congratulations on a great print. I had two quick questions, please.

The first one relates to the 2027 guidance, the 5 to 10% revenue growth ambition. Could you help us understand how we should think about the price versus volume split?

Then the second question relates to potential US tariffs refunds. Is there any benefit accruing to Watches of Switzerland from that, or is there any way in which you could leverage your supplier partners to help you with CapEx or OpEx contributions against any potential windfall coming from that side?

Thank you.

I'll take the second one first. The tariffs obviously are paid by the brands importing the product, not paid directly by us in terms of our watch brand partners.

To your point, it takes the pressure off that was there from them in terms of pricing and margin. Of course, as we discuss projects with them and plans and so on with them, we're well aware that the tariff situation is now much more favorable to what it was at one point in fiscal 2026 and what we may have feared going forward.

The specific for us is the importation of Roberto Coin product, and of course, we've made our applications and working on that as we speak, but we don't pay the watch tariffs directly.

In terms of pricing, obviously, we've seen less aggressive pricing coming through from the brands this year than what we saw last year, where brands were making up for the cost of the tariffs and the price of gold that was skyrocketing. In our guidance, there is a component of pricing that is rolling forward.

For instance, a brand like Cartier took their pricing up in September of last year by 10% in the US. Obviously, that benefits us in the first half of this fiscal year.

We always incorporate pricing that we know of. We do not include any pricing that hasn't been announced by the brands.

To answer your question, it's going to be a mix of price and volume that's going to drive our growth in the next fiscal year.

Thank you. Sorry about the echo before.

No problem.

Thank you. Do we have some further questions that have come in online?

We have no webcast questions at the moment.

Okay.

Back for closing remarks.

Okay. Listen, thanks again for joining the call, everybody, and a particular thanks to our team for managing their way through what has really been a bit of a volatile year that we really feel is settled down through the year and carries a more stable perspective in fiscal 2027 that we're now in.

The teams have done an absolutely amazing job, are obviously very well positioned. We are now more than 50% US business.

It is the best market to be in right now. Long may it continue, but we're confidently getting to a year that we think is a lot more predictable than we might have experienced over the last few.

Appreciate your support and interest in our business.