Redcare Pharmacy N.V.

Redcare Pharmacy N.V.

78.25
EUR
+0.25
(+0.32%)
-2.16EPS
1.34BMarket Cap
Oct 29Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptMarch 4, 2026

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Full Year 2025 earnings release analyst and investor conference call. I am the operator.

I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session.

You can register for questions at any time by pressing * and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press * and 0.

The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Olaf Heinrich, CEO.

Please go ahead.

Olaf Heinrich

Hello, and a very warm welcome also to everybody from my side. Before we start with the presentation, I would like to welcome our new CFO Hendrik to this round.

We are happy to have Hendrik with us in the management team to further scale Redcare Pharmacy. Welcome Hendrik.

Hendrik Krampe

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Olaf Heinrich

Let's look into the agenda of today. We would like to start with the highlights of 2025, followed up by the financial performance '25, an update on strategy, and then later an update on guidance.

Let's start with the highlights of 2025. The first three highlights are focused on Rx.

2025 has been a very successful year for Redcare on Rx. We almost doubled our Rx revenues in Germany, reaching €503 million.

If we look into the relevant competition, our share of 67% demonstrates our clear market leadership position. From a group perspective, Rx revenues are now exceeding €1 billion, more than 33% of total sales.

The Rx bonus for EU online pharmacies was confirmed not only at the ECJ again, but for the first time in history also at the highest German Federal Court. As a consequence, we introduced a new Rx bonus scheme in Q4, which supported the strong growth in Q4 of last year.

In 2025, including the beginning of 2026, digital health care in Germany experienced a major step forward. The specs for a new and more comprehensive identification technology, PoP, have been released for local, but also for remote use cases.

For online pharmacies, this will massively increase and improve the redemption options. Customers using eGK card will no longer need SMS verification as an additional step in the order process, and on top, the digital health ID can be used to redeem Rx at online pharmacies.

Please also keep in mind that at the beginning of 2027, the EU ID Wallet will be launched in Germany, expanding digital use cases, including the digital health ID, to the entire population in Germany. Let's go to the next slide.

2025 was not only very promising on Rx, we also delivered on our strategy to further increase customer satisfaction, scale, automation, and cost leadership. Our logistics capacity expansion in Pilsen went live in Q4 of last year.

Pilsen adds 15 million parcels annual capacity to our overall capacity. We are mainly serving the entire Austrian market from Pilsen, but the setup also allows to serve other markets on non-Rx.

For the Austrian market, we see since go-live faster delivery times, higher customer satisfaction, and a higher NPS. Since wages are lower in Pilsen compared to Sevenum, we also reduced operational cost per parcel.

In Sevenum, we launched our logistics automation project in 2025. Sevenum will always remain the heart of our pharmacy, including Rx.

Therefore, the automation has a clear focus on Rx, including mixed baskets, but can also serve non-Rx orders only. The strategic rationale is comparable to Pilsen: double our capacity in Sevenum by early 2027, and here good news, we are clearly on track to deliver on that; reduce labor cost by 70% per order; and higher speed, faster delivery will boost customer satisfaction and increase our competitive advantage.

Then we also strengthened our balance sheet in 2025: the €300 million convertible bond secures the cash we need to execute on our strategy. Let's get to the next section, Monika: financial performance.

Our full year revenues are up 24% to €2.9 billion, as a double-digit growth in the DACH region as well as in the international region. Non-Rx revenues up 15.5% to €1.9 billion.

Rx revenues up 43% to €1.1 billion, now comprising 36% of the total revenues versus 32% previously. The Rx Germany revenue, we talked about this already, 98% up to €503 million.

Overall, a 72% increase on adjusted EBITDA, 0.6 percentage points year-over-year margin improvement, ending up on 2.0% adjusted EBITDA. If we can go to the next slide, this is our typical breakdown into the different segments.

Again, overall, Rx is the growth engine or has become the growth engine of the company. If we look into the different segments, you can see DACH, 24.1% growth: non-Rx 12.5%, Rx 42.6%; and on international, a strong 23.7% growth on non-Rx.

Looking into the orders, you can see there's a 19% increase in orders processed, lapping a very strong 2024, and of course also reflects somehow the higher average basket we have in our business right now compared to previous years. Now I would like to go give some additional insights into the non-Rx growth situation.

What you can see is that our growth came down in 2025, mainly driven by the DACH segment. We have identified four main reasons.

We did in 2025 not always find the sweet spot in the marketing mix, meaning the right combination of marketing, pricing, vouchers, and also things like minimum order value. Finding the right mix was not always we did not always perform in the best way.

Secondly, to some extent we saw or currently softer markets. Then number three, we see an increased platform competition, especially in the area of top sellers of BPC.

Number four, our overall push for more marketing efficiency, meaning at a certain threshold not to buy the next possible order. Overall, we increased the marketing budget 2025 compared to 2024, but improved the marketing ratio as percentage of sales, and especially towards the second half of last year.

With Q4 2025, we were working on top against a very strong Q4 '24, being pushed by, you remember, the Rx marketing boost campaign. The campaign of course had Rx as a target, but as a result of our one-brand strategy, also fueled non-Rx growth in Q4 of 2024.

Going forward, we will continue to optimize for growth and profitability using all elements of the marketing mix. By doing so, we expect to stabilize the growth rate at 8% to 10% in 2026.

Of course, we are intensively working on the details of the marketing mix to return to different growth rates. Non-Rx is the core competence of Redcare.

We consider also going forward non-Rx as a profitable, growing, cash-generating business. Having said this, I would like to hand this over to Hendrik.

Hendrik Krampe

Thank you, Olaf. Warm welcome as well from my side.

Let's jump right into the profitability analysis. You have seen we have improved our EBITDA significantly year-over-year.

At the same time, we are at the lower end of our guidance, and this is mainly due to the higher share of Rx or the lower share of non-Rx, as Olaf just explained in Q4. Whilst the gross profit margin for Rx is significantly lower than for non-Rx, please keep in mind that the unit economics are similar.

This is due to the higher ASP for Rx. We have reduced our marketing spend in percentage of revenues year-over-year, and this is because we consider offering a cash bonus directly to customers using Rx in some areas as more efficient than our marketing spend.

As we plan to continue to offer Rx cash bonuses throughout the year 2026 versus only four months in '25, we will as well continue to reduce our marketing spend in percentage of revenues, whilst increasing at the same time our ROI on marketing. Moving to gross profit.

Our gross margin is mostly driven by Rx and non-Rx mix. You see here the impact of the increasing share, especially via Rx Germany.

We have as well margin pressure on the non-Rx piece, especially as Olaf pointed out in the beauty and personal care category. We have a tailwind from country mix.

This is due to the lower share of our high ASP and hence low margin specialty Rx business in Switzerland, MediService. You see as well a positive impact of our marketplace business.

Our marketplace business has still a share of less than 5% of total revenues, and we are therefore not reporting in detail about this business yet, but we expect it to continue to lift our profitability going forward. If we look at scale, we see how this materializes in our selling and distribution administrative costs.

We have reduced our marketing expenses significantly compared to an extra investment in Q4 '24 to boost Rx. Whilst we label this marketing Rx, it has as well a spillover effect to non-Rx.

You see a significant drop in Q4 SG&A rate versus Q4 '24, but this is not representative for what we plan for '26. However, we plan to continue to scale in marketing, operations, and administrative expenses.

One example is our automation project in Sevenum, where we plan to reduce labor cost per unit by 70%. This will be completed at the end of '26, and so become effective in '27.

You see as well 0.7 percentage points headwind from our country mix and our marketplace business. This is due to the lower share of MediService, which has a low SG&A ratio, and the higher share of the marketplace business, which has a higher SG&A ratio versus our core business because our revenues is not the GMV of sellers, but is actually the seller fees.

Now, if we look at EBITDA margin progression without mix effects, you see that it is mostly driven by selling and distribution expenses, mostly by marketing. The improvement of about 0.5, I think it's 0.6 percentage points in '25 is similar to what you can expect going forward in '26, and I will talk about more that in the guidance section.

If we look at the different segments, at the DACH segment. As you can see on the left-hand, we have constantly increased the share of Rx in our mix.

In '23, this was only our specialty business in the Swiss in Switzerland, and then in Q2 '24, we started to scale the Rx business in Germany. Now in '25, we have for the first time for the full year an Rx business in Germany and significantly increased the Rx share.

Despite of that, we have been able to improve our profitability. It's only slight improvement, but this is against the headwind of 0.7 percentage points on the gross profit.

We consider basically this as the turning point after the strong decrease '23-'24 in adjusted EBITDA margin for DACH. Going forward, we will improve our EBITDA margin continuously.

Now looking at the international business, there as well we see scale clearly materializing, coming from -6% in '23 to -4% in '24, and now -1% in '25. We expect to break even soon as the business continues to grow.

On the cash side, we have increased our cash position by €26 million, with a €50 million contribution from our operating results. We have actually improved some of our working capital KPIs, but our inventory was about €10 million higher than normal as we buffered a little bit of stock for the ramp of the Pilsen site and as well for the introduction of a new ERP system at MediService with cutover January 1st, but this will normalize throughout the year.

The majority of our investments are related to fulfillment capacity expansion in Pilsen and Sevenum, and will spend another €30 million on the Sevenum automation project in '26. After that, our investment in fulfillment capacity is basically done, meaning that for the next five years, we'll have enough capacity to serve our projected top line in the DACH region, and we expect '27 and beyond a CapEx below 2% of revenues.

With that, I'll hand it back to you, Olaf.

Olaf Heinrich

Thank you very much. Now I would like to give an update on strategy.

If we can go to the next slide, I would like to use the first slide in the strategy update section to briefly explain the competitive advantage of Redcare as the leading European online pharmacy. The combination of Rx, non-Rx, and marketplace offer gives us a unique value proposition towards our customers.

We can use, wherever possible from a legal perspective, Rx as the anchor to build trust as a pharmacy and to generate the necessary frequency, especially in the case of chronically ill patients. This trust anchor differentiates us clearly from the more non-Rx-driven platform models, and it also shields us against generative commerce.

Non-Rx and marketplace are becoming the drivers of basket, gross margin, and profitability. The combination of pharmacy trust, frequency, assortment, and higher customer satisfaction will lead to an increasing CLV over time.

The customer lifetime value will go up, and we will show initial results of this strategy later in the presentation. The increased use of automation and NI and AI will lead to both higher customer satisfaction and efficiency gains throughout the entire P&L.

If we go to the next slide, you will see that we used this slide already in last year's earnings call to explain the unique value proposition of the one-stop pharmacy in more detail. Still a very good slide, that is the reason why we are using it again.

It all starts with a highly trusted and top-rated pharmacy brand. One customer ID, one login, one-stop pharmacy, one product.

On our pharmacy platform, we offer the widest possible assortment. In the case of Rx, this often translates into the best possible product availability.

As you might know, up to 30% of Rx product is not really available at local pharmacies on the first try. We claim to have the highest product availability in the market; customers can check that in our app 24/7.

In the case of non-Rx, it is more about the breadth and the depth of the assortment we offer, in contrast to a lot of our competitors and platform models are focusing only on top sellers in the BPC area. The marketplace allows us to offer adjacent assortment to our customers, which makes our platform even more relevant and always a good reason to return.

Our enhanced pharmacy services are a cornerstone of our offer, especially relevant to chronically ill patients. While complying with national pharmacy standards, we already introduced more than 20 years ago an electronic health record for our customers, including advanced pharmaceutical checks.

This service is very well perceived by our Rx customers. Since the introduction of the e-script, we also launched additional services like repeat prescription service towards doctors.

The reliable delivery is one of the key NPS drivers for our pharmacies. Therefore, investments in automation in logistics do not only improve our cost position, but are also building trust and customer satisfaction.

Looking into the development, let's go to the next slide, Monika, please. Looking into the development of our active customer base, we can see that this strategy is working out well in the German market.

In total, we increased the number of active customers by 1.4 million. On Rx, we increased the number of active customers by 0.6 million in 2025.

If we break this number down, we see that the additional active Rx customers are joining us in two ways: converted non-Rx customers who like the Rx offer and are making use of this additional offer, good effect of our assortment strategy; and secondly, first-time completely new customers to Redcare liking the Rx value proposition, starting their journey with us on Rx. Additionally, they are buying non-Rx at an increasing rate.

This slide should also look familiar to you. Let's talk about customer lifetime value.

We are here comparing the Q1 '25 cohorts of non-Rx customers with the Q1 '25 cohorts of Rx customers, including all follow-up orders throughout 2025. Key takeaways, like also in the past, the accumulated revenue and gross profit confirms that Rx customers have a superior customer lifetime value compared to non-Rx customers, and also including the impact of an Rx bonus in Q4 of '25.

Also non-Rx cohorts are growing and are generating customer lifetime value. What the cohort analysis of course also shows is that from a customer lifetime perspective, it is best to have the combination of both cohorts: higher baskets, higher frequency, increased share of mixed orders, and higher gross profit.

If we go to the next slide, you can see we would like to give you some more insights into the drivers of our Rx business. Most important to see that the average eRx basket is improving significantly to €130 in Q4 '25, with two main drivers for that.

One is the mixed order rate, meaning additional non-Rx items in the basket. We see an improved mixed order rate about 40% already in Q4 '25, and as part of our platform strategy, you can imagine we would like to bring this number further up.

Secondly, the other main driver is the increased eRx NPS. Existing customers are trusting us as a pharmacy once they had an experience with us on Rx, and that means they are redeeming more expensive and more complex Rx products with us, and also more scripts and Rx units at the same time, also pushing the average basket value.

If we can go to the next slide, you can see as a result of the one-stop pharmacy strategy, we have an increasing gross profit per average active customer over time, currently at €47, almost €48. Please keep in mind that we have been only for less than two years in the eRx business in Germany.

The marketplace also still, as Hendrik pointed out, represents only a smaller part of our sales. Nevertheless, you can already clearly see that the CLV of our customer is improving, and this is just the beginning of it.

Having said this, I think we should go to the next section, update on guidance. I will hand this over to Hendrik.

Hendrik Krampe

Yes, gonna build on what you just said, Olaf. If we look at the key drivers of our EBITDA margin improvement, you will see all of this is things that we are already doing.

We're not inventing a new strategy, but we're basically continuing on the path that we are on. Going forward, we have sketched out a plan to consistently improve our profitability with the building blocks that you see here.

Increasingly, we expect Rx to become the driver of organic new customer acquisition, reducing the cost of new customer acquisition. Then we will, with upselling and cross-selling, increase the customer lifetime value of all customers, Rx and non-Rx.

We will continue to see automation in all areas, not just in logistics, but as well there. Some of this automation will reduce costs, some of it will as well improve the customer experience.

We'll continue to see the scaling effects that we have on our overall overhead costs. We continue to drive marketing efficiency to some extent by scaling, but as well as we make our marketing more sophisticated and differentiated.

Then we expect over-proportional growth and profit contribution from the marketplace and the retail media business, who are structurally more profitable than our core business. With these building blocks, we lead over to the guidance.

Our '26 guidance is for total sales growth between 13% and 15%, for Rx revenues in Germany in excess of €670 million, for non-Rx growth between 8% and 10%, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of at least 2.5%. Beyond '26, we have slightly adjusted the articulation of our outlook, but we stay committed to the above 8% in the long term.

We will achieve a margin of 5% in the mid-term and above 8% in the long term. At the same time, we want to announce that we are changing our forecasting practice here, we will going forward no longer provide EBITDA guidance beyond the next financial year.

As we become profitable company, we will as well move to earnings per share, but we'll focus on the next financial year and not provide any outlook beyond that, aligning with the practice of most DAX companies in Germany. With that, we conclude the presentation and we move to Q&A.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press * and 1 on their touch-tone telephone.

You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press * and 2.

Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press * and 1 at this time.

The first question comes from Jan Koch from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Jan Koch

Hi Olaf, hi Hendrik, thanks for taking my questions. I would like to take them one by one.

The first question is actually on your sales guidance, which implies a steep growth slowdown in OTC compared to the full year 2025. Could you try to unpack this and explain how much of the lower growth rate is driven by: a, the market weakness; b, your decision to spend less on OTC marketing; and three, on intensified competition.

Any remarks on the new entrants would also be helpful.

Hendrik Krampe

Happy to take that. We consider the Q4 drop in non-Rx growth as an anomaly, and we see to some extent that this is proven by the current year trading, where we see a rebound in non-Rx, especially in Germany.

Why is it a one-off? The drop is mostly driven by, and mostly in the order of 60% to 70%, by the marketing spend reduced year-over-year.

As I laid out, we have spent in Q4 '24 significantly on Rx awareness, but every time we do this, there's a clear spillover effect on non-Rx. Whilst internally we label this Rx marketing, it's actually marketing for Shop Apotheke.

With our understanding of our marketing efficiency, we can clearly attribute 60% to 70% of this drop to our marketing. Now, overall, the market has been soft if you look at the offline pharmacy reporting.

That is true to some extent, that was true as well in Q3, yes, there's a soft environment, but it's a small share of the explanation. When it comes to new market entrants, I think we discussed this before, we take dm obviously serious as a competitor, but we have not seen any significant traction.

It will probably take them time to build a larger business, but at this point, we don't see any impact of dm on our non-Rx business. Does that answer the question?

Jan Koch

Just as a follow-up. Essentially you mentioned that Q1 was impacted by some one-offs, in OTC, but you still printed 9% growth,

Hendrik Krampe

and essentially

Jan Koch

your guidance for 2026 admit and is also for 9%. Q4.

Hendrik Krampe

I'm not sure I got you. Q4 is impacted by one-offs,

Jan Koch

and then

Hendrik Krampe

what we expect for '26 is that this one-off is not really a change in the trend. However, we acknowledge that there is a longer-term trend of decrease in non-Rx growth.

We have seen this basically since Q4 '24, and as we look at our current trading and our understanding of the market, we assume that this will stabilize and balance out over the year, and hence the 8% to 10% guidance that we're giving. We see a rebound versus Q4 and a stabilization overall.

Jan Koch

Understood. Then on capital allocation, thanks for providing the comments on the planned spend for the automation project.

Could you also share your assumptions for the overall CapEx and net working capital assumptions for 2026? Given that the low share price and your strong balance sheet, would you be open for a share buyback program?

Hendrik Krampe

We're not providing a cash flow forecast. Our guidance is our guidance as articulated here.

As you can see, we're well-funded. We have this €30 million as kind of a one-off.

Everything else is similar to the past in terms of IT capitalization, and this means that we're going to see a very much reduced CapEx in percentage of revenues to below 2%. At this point, I think we are obviously not happy with our stock price, but we think that we will wait for any announcement on buybacks until we have reached profitability, and this is the current plan.

Obviously, this is a constant discussion that we have, but we have nothing to announce in this area at this point. There's nothing planned in terms of share buybacks.

Jan Koch

Understood. Then finally, could you help us with the phasing of your sales and margin guidance for 2026?

Last year you provided some comments on the Q4 call for Q1, especially given that Q1 is typically the quarter with the lowest margin in the year.

Hendrik Krampe

Yes, we expect the same seasonality, if you want to call it this, in '26. Overall, we obviously think of this as a very balanced forecast, but yes, you should expect the same lower margin in Q1 as we have seen this in the past.

Jan Koch

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Sarah Roberts from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Sarah Roberts

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. I have two, if that's okay, but we'll probably go through them one by one.

Just firstly on the €670 million guidance for Rx, can you just walk us through, beyond offering bonuses to customers, that seem to be having a positive impact, what other levers do the business have in terms of driving that penetration of Rx online further? I think particularly given there seems to be an education element around consumers today, and you seem to have pulled back a little bit on brand advertising and television advertising, just wanted to understand what you can do that's within your control to drive that online penetration higher.

Thank you.

Olaf Heinrich

I will try to give it So first of all we need to apologize a little bit about technics. Yes, sometimes you probably only see me or Hendrik, apologize for that, and also for some of the noise in the back.

I will try to answer that question. We see that there that the change of behavior is not happening at the pace we would like it to be, yeah.

That is also the reason why our growth rate on Rx is coming down. What is really in our hand is to have a great product, great delivery.

We have the bonus now out there, and of course we need to continue to do the education. Additional things which could come in and might change this is the introduction of the digital health ID, and maybe also a change more on the way how often chronically ill patients have to see the doctor throughout the year.

What it comes down to in 2026 is really we have to continue to do the education, and at the same time need to want to have a efficient marketing spend. That is the reason why we ended up on this growth rate rather than on higher growth rates.

Sarah Roberts

Got it, thank you. Then my second one, there's been a little bit of noise around proposed Section 35b regulations around the pharmacy supply chain and reforms there.

I think some concerns around the temperature control elements of those reforms as well. Just wanted to understand how materially you think these changes could impact the business, and should we expect any meaningful cost increases going forward?

Any thoughts that would be helpful.

Olaf Heinrich

That's a good question. There's this pharmacy reform going on in Germany having two parts: one is really a new law being introduced, and the other is more a regulation on the pharmacy operations.

In this section, there are new proposals how to introduce, let's say, new measures on temperature control. The current version we think is not going to be the final one, therefore we are currently working on this one with all of our partners.

Therefore, it's really too early to say something to this one at this point in time.

Operator

As a reminder, in the interest of time, please limit yourself to two questions. The next question comes from Christian Salis from Cantor Fitzgerald.

Please go ahead.

Christian Salis

Hi everyone, thanks for taking my questions. I've got a follow-up on the non-Rx growth topic.

You mentioned the increased competition in Germany. From which channels is this really coming?

Is it coming from multi-channel retailers that are entering the market or is it from other online pure-play? Could you just please provide a bit more color on that?

The second question would be regarding the Fixum. There have been positive comments by the German Health Minister.

Could you confirm that this would have a positive impact on your profitability, and to which extent is this already reflected in your full year '26 guidance? Thank you.

Olaf Heinrich

I will give it a try on the competition. There has always been competition in the market, yeah.

We did the platforms, the big ones like Amazon, they have been out there for 10 years, and we also always had other online pharmacies competing against us. That is not really something new, and it's we simply have to find a good way to deal with the competition.

If you to be more explicit about because of your question, we see more the platform businesses out there currently who are offering, let's say, especially in the area of BPC top sellers via lower price. That is more the competition than some of the new entrants and new guys entering the market.

Right now we don't see any impact of those brick-and-mortar drugstore chains entering our market. Of course we are watching them closely, but so far there is no impact.

It's really more about the online platforms. Again, this has been out for many, many years, and we will find a way to deal with this also going forward.

The second question, second of your questions on the Fixum. Yes, we also read that there that there are, this discussion on the Fixum has been going on for quite a long time now already, it's already part of the coalition agreement.

Now the question is when, if and when there will be a Fixum increase. We don't know more than you know.

We also follow that discussion, but what is going to happen, nobody knows at this point in time. they Ministry of Health also set up a special, let's say, committee to look into a reform overall on the health care system.

Therefore, at this point in time, we cannot give you any additional information. For sure, we don't have any increase in our guidance for this year or in our long-term plan, there's no assumption of an increase on the Fixum in it.

Christian Salis

Thank you, very clear.

Operator

The next question comes from Volker Bosse from Baader Bank. Please go ahead.

Volker Bosse

Thanks for taking my question. Also two questions.

On the CapEx in '26, you said it will remain on an elevated level before it drops down then to 2% of sales, where will be the CapEx in 20 '26? Is it fair to assume 3% to 4% in that range?

You mentioned the €30 million for automation in Sevenum, but perhaps more details on that, please. The second question would be on current trading.

You said 9% you reported 9% non-Rx growth in Q4 and also said this was an abnormal slow growth. Can you confirm that you expect a return to a robust 9% means double-digit growth in non-Rx in Germany, or how do you see the momentum?

It also linked to the question of Mr. Koch from Deutsche Bank regarding the phasing of growth, as for the full year you expect 8% to 10% non-Rx growth and said 9% in Q4 was abnormal slow.

Perhaps a bit more details of the phasing. Thanks.

Hendrik Krampe

Starting with the CapEx question, we don't provide a cash flow forecast. I will leave it as, the CapEx in '26 planned is below the CapEx in '25.

I will leave it there, but we don't provide more specific guidance. On the non-Rx question, as I said, this is basically the fact that we are seeing a stabilization of a long-term trend, and we are trying to be prudent here in our forecast because yeah, we have seen a drop in Q4.

We now see a rebound, but it's only two months into the year, and it's hard to assess with, as well a dynamic environment how this is going to evolve. What we are saying is that we will optimize our marketing and our pricing to reinstate growth in the non-Rx area.

At this point, we assume that we are breaking the long-term trend of gross erosion and that we are stabilizing that. We are not predicting that we can really go back to '25 growth rates and turn around completely the longer-term trend.

Does that help?

Volker Bosse

Yep, thank you very much.

Operator

As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press * and 1 on your telephone. The next question comes from Olivier Calvet from UBS.

Please go ahead.

Olivier Calvet

Hi. Can you hear me?

Olaf Heinrich

Yes.

Hendrik Krampe

Yes.

Olivier Calvet

All right, cool. Thanks.

Just first question on sort of non-Rx Germany. You basically have touched on the fact that it was more driven by online than offline competition.

I just wanted to get a sense of specific categories that were under pressure, you mentioned BPC. Then the second question on Rx, just curious why you're focusing on a point estimate as opposed to a range.

Is there a specific reason to point towards a point estimate or, any reason why you would try to go meaningfully above that level or just towards that level? I guess also related to that, if you could touch a bit on the main drivers of the higher Net Promoter Score for eRx that you've flagged.

Olaf Heinrich

Maybe we can split this a little bit. My understanding was first question is on non-Rx Germany competition.

Olivier Calvet

Yep.

Olaf Heinrich

Also giving a little bit more of insight into this one. Yes, there is competition.

For example, we mentioned the categories earlier. We always talk about non-Rx, but non-Rx has actually two elements: the one is the OTC part, where a pharmacy license is required; and then there's the beauty and personal care part, those products are usually sold in a pharmacy, but you do not need to have a pharmacy license.

We see especially in on that area in let's say on some of the top sellers in those areas, we see a little bit more competition also driven by a price. That means when I was saying earlier in the presentation that we need to adjust our marketing mix, that also need means that we will look going forward a little bit more into the pricing strategies in different channels, different product categories, etc.

Of course also working on the other elements of the marketing mix: vouchers, minimum order values, those kind of things. We do not want to give really a detailed insight into our strategy, but this is something we really have looking deeply into it, working on it, and we're pretty sure we can going forward also develop a good strategy to get back to growth.

I would like to reiterate again that competition has been out there for many years, and to also ask answer the second part of your question, it is not so much about retail chains, drugstore chains entering into the OTC market right now. The second question, I think was on Rx guidance, or is it, Hendrik, would you like

Hendrik Krampe

to take it? The question was on why not a range for Rx, but similar to '25, a statement of what minimum will be achieved.

As Olaf pointed out as well, this is a very new and nascent business, right? We have really started this in '24, and it is not easy to predict this business, and therefore we're saying we are giving a minimum target here instead of a range.

It's nuances, it's maybe a question of taste. I wouldn't read too much into this frankly.

What we are overall seeing, and I think Olaf pointed this out as well, is a constant, steady increase in the penetration. We're not reaching a tipping point where we have a step change.

Now at the current level where we are, at 1.5% to 2% penetration of eRx, it's really very small. At some point, you could expect that it really takes off because it becomes much more commonly known and used.

You asked about the impact or the drivers of the increased NPS. We think what really works is the cash discount.

Giving the money to customers that use the product is supposed to create kind of word-of-mouth effect, or at least the stickiness where people see, not only it's a smooth experience, and with PoP and everything going on as well on our side, we make it even smoother, less friction, which experience in '26, but I have as well a very concrete cash advantage. It's only a couple of months that we're doing this cash bonus.

I don't think this is widely understood and perceived, this adds as well uncertainty to our Rx upside. Again, loose reference to current trading, we're happy with the performance of the Rx business in year-to-date.

Olaf Heinrich

Maybe to add to the NPS, because in there has been a discussion for quite a long time, especially on Rx. When we started the Rx business, the NPS came down a little bit because we were not so experienced.

I think some of you will recall this, and I think now over a period of one year, we really have we really better understand the entire journey, we understand the pain points, and that really starts already in our product, in the app, when talking about availability and and other things like this, interaction checks, all the way into the delivery service and the promise we make. It is of course the the bonus we we we are giving in Q4, but we already saw in Q3 an improvement.

We complete we better understand the customer journey, customer needs, and and throughout the entire value chain we optimize the product. I think that's a that is that happened within one year, and that is actually a good achievement allowing us also to to to to be number one on the Rx and not only on the non-Rx.

Olivier Calvet

Super helpful. Maybe if I can squeeze in a tiny follow-up on the mid-term or sort of fulfillment commentary.

Is there a level of revenue or total orders that you are comfortable with once the fulfillment capacity expansion CapEx that you planned for in '26 is over, in billion euros or in number of orders, yeah? I didn't get what

Hendrik Krampe

happy with? We are And the message is that we don't need that In the past, you've seen significant investment, obviously the Pilsen site as such, but as well the build-out of Sevenum.

Going forward, we're good on capacity for the next five years. Obviously, we're now very eager to leverage all that capacity and make good use of it, and obviously the main driver is going to be the Rx business, right?

Olivier Calvet

Thanks.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Olaf Heinrich, CEO, for any closing remarks.

Olaf Heinrich

Yes, thank you very much. Again—

Operator

I'm sorry to interrupt. We have a follow-up, a last-minute follow-up from Jan Koch, Deutsche Bank.

Please go ahead.

Jan Koch

Thanks for taking my follow-up questions. The first one is on your updated mid-term and long-term targets on the margin.

Could you define what mid-term and long-term means? Do you expect to achieve the 5% adjusted EBITDA margin in 2028 or 2029?

Then secondly, on the margin guidance of at least 2.5% in 2026, should we view this as a floor and what needs to happen that you exceed this target?

Hendrik Krampe

On the first one, we understand mid-term as about three years and long-term five years and beyond, so that's to your first question. To your second question, as discussed, the biggest contributor to our EBITDA margin is the mix of Rx and non-Rx.

If we have a bigger rebound of our non-Rx business, then obviously we will do better. That would be the main driver of exceeding the 2.5%.

Jan Koch

Understood. Thank you.

Operator

Now we don't have any other questions from the phone. Back over to you for any closing remarks.

Olaf Heinrich

Yes, okay, so many thanks. Again, for some of the complications we had throughout the presentation from a technical perspective, and also many thanks for all of your good questions.

We understand that the 2026 guidance is below the expectation, but we are convinced that we have the right strategy in place and we will deliver on our mid- and long-term outlook. Wish you a great day, and looking forward seeing you next time.

Thanks.

Hendrik Krampe

Thank you.