AMP Limited

And thank you for joining the Amplifon Q2 and H1 2024 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, They may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Francesca Rambaudi, Investor Relations and Sustainability Senior Director of Amplifon. Please go ahead, madam.

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to Amplifon's conference call on the second quarter and first half of 2024 results. Before we start, two logistic comments. Earlier today, we issued a press release related to our results, and this presentation is posted in our website in the investor section. A call can be accessed also via webcast, and dial-in details are on Amplifon's website as well as on our press release. I have to bring your attention to the disclaimer on slide two, as some of the statements made during this call may be considered forward-looking statements. With that, I am now pleased to turn the call over to Ampersand CEO, Enrico Vita.

Thank you, Francesca. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our Q2 results conference call. As always, let's begin commenting on the quarter's results, starting with the top line and the market dynamics, which in Europe showed remarkable volatility throughout the quarter. In fact, the European market was below our expectations, particularly from the second half of May to the end of June. I must say that it's difficult to explain the reasons for this clearly, but we might suppose that the better weather in some markets and perhaps the European elections negatively impacted the footfall in that timeframe. If we look at the market dynamics for the main European markets, we still saw an unexpected negative demand in France, positive growth in Germany, while the other markets contributed to an overall flat-ish European market with plus and minus. On the other hand, the US market was still strong and in line with our expectations, although it slowed down from the double-digit growth of the first quarter to around plus 5% in the second quarter. Finally, we estimated that Australia and New Zealand were again somewhere in the middle of the two regions. In this context, also in Q2, we delivered a strong revenue growth, over 7% as cost of exchange rate. And I see this as a substantial achievement if considering our geographical mix, which is, as you know, still more skewed towards Europe, although the Americas region is growing very fast. Commencing then on our performance by region. In Europe, our revenue performance was still positive despite the sluggish market demand I mentioned. I must also share that the region's performance was also affected by contingent operational challenges in Spain related to the rollout of our new IT front office system and the change in its leadership. Both challenges are now resolved. Then I'm very satisfied with our performance in the Americas, and in particular in the US, where we are proceeding at full speed following our strategic priorities to transform our network from franchises to direct retail. Thanks to the latest acquisitions today, we can count on a directly operated store network of circa 400 stores. Finally, I'm also happy with our performance in Asia-Pacific, which continues to deliver strong and above-market growth. Regarding the EBITDA return, we delivered around 160 million euros, with a margin stable at 26.6%. Here, let me underline that we were able to protect our profitability despite the market environment I described earlier, as well as offsetting the dilution related to the acceleration of our growth of the Miracle-Ear Direct Network, only thanks to the different productivity measures taken to realign our field structure in Europe in the second half of last year. Overall, let me say that I'm genuinely happy about how we responded quickly to the volatile market demand in Europe I described earlier. Now I will hand it over to Gabriele to give you more details about our numbers.