HORNBACH Baumarkt AG

Good morning and welcome to the half-year update call for Honda Holding. My name is Antje Kelbert, Head of Investor Relations. Earlier today at 7 a.m. we published our financial results for the first half of fiscal year 2025-26, covering the period from 1st of March until the end of August 2025. I'm especially pleased to welcome our new Chief Financial Officer, Dr. Joanna Kowalska. With her deep industry expertise and many years of experience in financial management at KPMG and within the DIY retail sector at OBI Group, Joanna will be a great addition to the HORNBACH team. Since mid-August, she has taken over responsibility for the finance resource and will be presenting today's results, guiding us through the presentation. We are also joined by CEO Albrecht Hornbach, who has served as interim CFO during the transition period. Albrecht will be available for your questions during the Q&A session. Please note that this conference call, including the Q&A session, will be recorded and made available along with the transcript on our company website. Kindly also take note of the disclaimer which applies to the entire presentation and the Q&A session. To ask a question, please dial into the telephone conference using the numbers provided in your confirmation email. The operator will provide instructions at the beginning of the Q&A session. You can join the queue to ask a question by pressing the hash key and 5 on your phone. With that, I'm delighted to hand over to Joanna to walk us through the key developments and financial highlights of the first half year.

Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Antje, for the kind introduction and warm welcome. I'm truly delighted to be part of the Holmbach team and to join you for today's half year update call. Since stepping into the role of CFO about six weeks ago, I have been deeply engaged in learning about the many facets of our business. It's an exciting time and I'm grateful for the support of my colleagues, especially Albrecht, who have been instrumental in helping me during the transition process. To Honbach, I bring over 17 years of experience within the European D&Y retail sector, alongside dedication to financial management and operational improvement. During my time at KPMG, I advised and audited many listed companies, and I'm truly delighted to contribute to Honba's continued success, as well as to long-term value creation for our shareholders. And I also look forward to getting to know all of you, meeting with you over the coming months and continuing the open and constructive dialogue that Hornbach is known for. And now let's dive into the key developments and financial highlights. At a glance, We delivered further profitable organic growth in the first six months of our current fiscal year. Next sales grew by 4.4%, driven by a very satisfying spring season and solid summer period. In addition, we saw continued higher customer footfall. This growth was further supported by the store openings in Nuremberg and Duisburg, both in Germany around the start of the fiscal year. On a like-for-like basis, Hornbach Baumbach sales rose by 3.6%. Growth margin increased by 4.6% in line with the sales growth. And the growth margin came in at 34.9%, matching the level from prior year's period. This development contributed to the adjusted EBIT growth of 2.5%. CAPEX reflects the active execution of our expansion strategy with a focus on acquiring attractive properties and building a state-of-the-art DNY store network. Nevertheless, we achieved a good free cash flow. We are pleased with our performance in the first half of the current financial year. And despite ongoing macroeconomic burdens and soft consumer sentiment, particularly in Germany, we have achieved solid results which are in line with our expectations. They also reinforce our confidence in strength and resilience of our business model and underline our relevance to our customers. Therefore, we confirming our full year guidance today. Before we dive deeper into financials for the first half of the fiscal year, let me start with a brief operational update. As you know, customer satisfaction is one of the most important KPIs to our business. A clear indicator of meeting our customer requirements. And we truly believe that a great shopping experience and assortment combined with a highly efficient operational setup is what drives our market relevance and long-term profitability. That's why we are especially proud of the results from the latest customer service. In Germany, the independent service Kundenmonitor ranked us number one for overall customer satisfaction in the D&Y sector. We also came out on the top in several other categories, including webshop, assortment relevance, selection, quality of the goods and private labels, as well as service offered. In the Austrian edition of the Kundenmonitor customer survey, we secured a leading position as well. We were ranked number one overall in customer satisfaction, achieving strong results across multiple categories. And also in Netherlands, the survey retailer of the year named us the best D&Y online shop. That's an important recognition of our team's hard work and a clear sign that we are on the right track. We are also continuing to invest in infrastructure to support our organic growth and improve the shopping experience for our customers. Just recently, we opened two new stores, one in Bucharest, Kolentina in Romania, and another one in Eisenstadt in Austria. Both are modern big box D&Y stores designed to give our customer everything they need for their home improvement project. This opening follows the launch of our new store in Duisburg, Germany, which opens in March. And there's more to come. Another store is set up to open in Timosara in Romania just tomorrow. All of these new locations demonstrate our commitment to expanding our store network and growing across all Hornbach regions. With that in mind, let's take a closer look at the sales figures for the reporting period. As mentioned earlier, group net sales in the first half of the year were up by 4.4%, driven by a strong spring season and solid summer. Compared to the same period last year, we saw increased demand for gardening products and construction materials. Customer frequency increased by 3.3%, reflecting a positive trend in store traffic. We also recorded a slight uptick in average ticket. After two years of stable performance, we are now back on a growth path. And now let's shortly have a look at Honbach Baustoff Union, our subgroup that mainly serves professional customers in the construction industry. Looking at their sales development, we saw a slight sales decline of 0.8%. That said, we believe the construction sector in Germany may have reached its lowest point and could now be starting to recover. The latest official statistical figures show a modest approach in both order intake and building permits. Looking at the geographic split on the right, Slightly more than half of the HONBAS BaumaX revenue, 52.7%, comes from the eight European countries outside of Germany, representing an increase of approximately one percentage point compared to the previous year. Now, let's turn our attention to like-for-like sales growth. Generally speaking, underlying demand across most European countries in the first half of the current fiscal year benefited from warm and mostly dry weather. That said, July was quite rainy in Central Europe, which had some impact in Q2. For the group as a whole, like-for-like sales growth reached 3.6%, clearly above last year's period. Germany contributed 1.5%, which put us ahead of the German DNY sector that saw a slight overall decrease in sales of 0.7%. In other European countries delivered a strong 5.6% growth rate. Here, the Netherlands really stood out with growth of over 10%. We successfully strengthened our position as a big box player in Netherlands. Customer particularly value our outstanding product availability in large quantities, which set us apart from competition. Thanks to store openings in recent years, our locations in Netherlands are younger in average and showing their up-ramping growth contribution. In Q2, all countries showed positive like-for-like sales development, with the exception of Germany, where performance was impacted by 2.8 fewer business days. Let me now present the most recent market share improvements. We continue to focus on growing our market share and strengthening our position across Europe. In all Hornbach countries where market share data is available, we managed to expand our footprint between January and July 2025. In Germany, our largest and most competitive market, our share has now reached 15.5 percent, an increase of 0.6 percentage point compared to the prior year period. In the Netherlands, driven by a very positive footfall development, we gained 1.3 percentage point, bringing our total market share to 28.8%. In Czechia, we continued our positive momentum, increasing our market share to 38.5%. Austria and Switzerland also showed positive developments. This truly reflects the dedication and outstanding performance of our teams on the ground who consistently go above and beyond to serve our customers. Let's now continue with a closer look to our e-commerce business. Customer engagement across our interconnected platforms remains strong, which confirms that these are now well-established sales channels. E-commerce sales at Hornbach Bauma grew by a strong 10.1% in the first half of the year. That pushed our e-commerce share of total sales up to 13.1%. Both direct delivery and click and collect performed well. with growth rates of around 11 and 7% respectively. And with that, I would like to take a closer look at costs and expenses in the P&L. Our gross profit increased by 4.6%, which is mostly in line with the growth in the net sales. Gross margin came in at 34.9%, matching the level of the same period last year. This reflects a good product mix and an innovative assortment. Now let's take a look at expenses. We are now seeing the full impact of wage increases across all countries, which led to a rise in absolute personal costs. Personal expenses totaled €580 million, representing a 5.7% increase. This development is in line with expectations given the wage adjustment. While selling and store expenses increase in absolute terms, the expense ratio remains stable relative to total sales. And the same applies also to general administrative expenses ratio. Pre-opening costs rose by 4 million euros, driven by new store openings. All of this contributes to a positive development of our adjusted average, which I will present to you on the next slide. Overall, we improved our adjusted EBIT by 2.5% compared to the first half of last year, driven by successful spring season and solid summer performance. As a result, the adjusted EBIT margin remained broadly stable at 7.6%. Countries outside Germany contributed 62% to adjusted EBIT, making a 4 percentage point increase year over year. Once again, there were no significant non-operating items or adjustments in the first half of the year. And now, let's now move on to the cash flow statement. Our cash flow from operating activities increased significantly compared to previous year. The main drivers was a lower cash outflow from changes in working capital, This was predominantly due to reduced use of our reverse factoring program, as well as stronger reduction of inventories than in the prior year period. Funds from operations remain at the same level as last year. Capital expenditure in the first half of the fiscal year totalled 107 million euro up from 51 million in the same period last year. As planned, 56% of that was invested in land and real estate, mainly for the new stores developments. The remaining portion went toward stock conversions, equipment and software. Free cash flow after net capex and dividend improved to 129.6 million euros, reflecting the changes in working capital I just mentioned. Now, let's take a look at our balance sheet. As of the end of August, Hornbach once again delivered a robust balance sheet. The total balance sheet stood at 4.6 billion euros unchanged compared to February. Decreased inventories reflect the usual seasonal reduction after spring. Our equity ratio increased slightly to 46.9%, maintaining a strong and healthy position. Our net debt to EBITDA ratio improved to 2.4%. All in all, this underlines the strength of our financial foundation and the resilience of our business model. We are confirming the guidance for the fiscal year 2526. We continue to expect net sales to be at or slightly above the level of prior year and adjusted EBIT to remain at the same level. However, given the strong earnings performance in Q1 and the solid development in Q2, we currently expect adjusted EBIT growth within the upper half of our guidance range. Before we open the floor to questions, I want to take a moment to highlight our continued focus on strategic priorities, cost management and sustainable growth. Through target investment and operational efficiency, we are building a solid foundation for the future. With our strong private levels, everyday low price strategy and clear commitment to sustainability, We aim to support our customers, maintain market leadership and deliver long-term value to our shareholders. In summary, we were positioned to navigate the current macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges and to size medium and long-term growth opportunities in the home improvement sector. That gives us strong confidence in Honbach's continued successful development. As I mentioned at the beginning, we are satisfied with our results for the first six months, which are in line with our expectations. And with that, I will conclude my presentation and hand back to Antje for the Q&A session.

Thank you, Joanna, for your views and remarks on our results. I now hand over to Bastian, our operator, to explain the technicalities of our Q&A session Please go ahead.

Thank you, Antje. For the Q&A session, if you would like to ask a question, please dial the hash key followed by the 5 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please dial the hash key followed by the 6. As a quick reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please start the hash key followed by the 5 on your telephone keypad. So, the first question comes from Thomas Mauer from Dissetbank. Please go ahead and ask a question.

Yes, good morning. Can you hear me? Yeah, Thomas Mauer, Dissetbank. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got two. The first one, yeah, you achieved a nice increase in gross margin. Maybe you can elaborate a bit more on the drivers, especially with regard to the innovative products you just mentioned, and what is actually the share of private labels in your assortment? And second question, can you please shed some light on current trading in September with regard to footfall and average basket sizes in Germany and abroad, and what are your expectations for gross margins in the months to come? Thank you.

Good morning, Thomas. Thank you for your question and happy to answer. I will take the first one on the margin. You know, we improve our margin, of course, in connection with our innovative product. During the year, always change our assortment. Nearly 20% of our assortment is changed during the year. And with the innovative assortment, we of course reach a better margin. And this is an effect of our great purchase department. The second one, The second question was how we expect the margin development in the half of the year, when I get you correctly?

Yeah, it's actually on footfall and basket size and also, yeah, the development of cross-motion.

Okay, okay. Thank you for the clarification. You know, the footfall, we... The football is increasing in the first half of the year. We are gaining our market share in all countries. Therefore, of course, we hope that also this trend will still remain also for the next half of the year. Of course, we are It's pretty clear that in Germany, the D&Y sector faces near term macro challenges, particularly in customer sentiment due to layoffs in industry. Many people are cautious about large products, but nevertheless, nevertheless, customer traffic remains really strong, showing continual relevance of D&Y and gardening. And we are pretty sure that our everyday low-price strategy and strong private labels position us well, and we gain further market share. We will gain also further market shares in the next half year. Your question was also about the private label's share, yeah? So let me comment on this point. So this is about 20%. So in Germany a little bit more. I think it was 28% and in Germany 28% and in average for the Hohenbach something about 20-24%.

Okay, great. Thank you. Very helpful.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Jeremy Garnier from Otto BHF. Please go ahead and ask your question.

Yes, thank you for my question. I have two questions. So, yes, you begin to have strong market shares in all countries you're present in Europe. Do you plan to open new countries soon or to accelerate in the in some countries, and also M&A is still not an option for you?

Good morning, Jeremy. Thank you for your question. Let me comment. It's too early to go into the detail, you know. But yes, we already announced the new country, yeah. So, but I hope you can understand that we cannot comment in very detail at the moment.

Okay. And regarding the working cocktails, it's... It will improve during H1. Do you still have room to continue to improve the level of inventories and if yes, what is your target?

Of course we always look for the working capital. Retail is about working capital management and of course we have a deeply look always at this issue. Of course we have to consider the the current situation, also with the assortment changes. Therefore, sometimes, you know, you have a little bit more inventories, sometimes a little bit lower level. But nevertheless, of course, we look very, very focused on this issue. And, you know, we plan very good initiatives in respect of AI solutions with this matter. Of course, it will not be effective in this fiscal year, but nevertheless our strategy is to use the AI solutions in the future to really focus on the working capital management and to really plan even better than in the past the distributions, the logistic processes. We are on a good track in this matter. Thank you very much. Thank you.

The next question comes from Ralph Marinoni from Quirin. Please go ahead and ask a question.

Yes, good morning, everybody. First question is about your new store in Romania. You mentioned that Hornbach has provided more than 2 million euros for the expansion of public infrastructure to support development in the area. And you have also created 120 new jobs for the new market. So the question is, did you receive any government subsidies or tax benefits for this? And my second question is about the four new openings. Can you quantify the annual sales potential of the four new markets when they are running at full steam? So I estimate it's clearly above 100 million euros. Thanks.

So I think the infrastructure you're mentioning, sorry, is the infrastructure around the normal stores. So we have streets and all those things that help us to connect also the store to our network, to make it more efficient and to help us around that. I think this is meant with the infrastructure thing. With respect to the subsidies, I'm not sure about that. We can take that afterwards, I think.

Okay.

Sorry on that. Expectations, yeah, for sure. We do not disclose our business for each and every new store that will go on stream. However, we assume that this is a very good location because we know this is the key thing to select a location for us, to have a good area, to have a good visit surrounding there, and so we expect that this will be a good location.

And the second question was... Okay, thank you. And the second question was what does a new store bring in terms of revenue, yeah?

Exactly, exactly.

You know, Ralf, it really depends on the location, on the square meters, on the country. We are happy to open each store, yeah, but it's always based on a detailed business case. So, yeah, the decision is made very, very cautious, but I would don't like to disclose very detailed information on each contribution of each market or store, yeah. I hope you understand.

I understand. But maybe you can give us an education with regard to profitability in your markets in Romania. On the one hand, we have purchasing power from the people there, and which leads to less revenues compared to, like, Germany or so. But on the other hand, we have... much smaller personal cost. So maybe you can give us an indication for the EBIT margin and profitability in these stores in Romania.

You know that we do not disclose on the base of the different countries, so what you see is that the contribution from outside of Germany is very good and as you can assume we are also on track to expand in Romania because it's a very interesting and attractive market, so this will also help to contribute that.

I can only add, you know, of course there are countries which contribute more and which contribute less, but nevertheless all countries are on a very, very good track. We are really happy with the development and also in Romania. It's a really, really good country and therefore we have attractive location there and we are happy to expand in this country.

Okay, understood. That was a clear answer to me and very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, Ralf.

The next question comes from Miro Srusak from JMS Invest. So please go ahead and ask a question.

Good morning and congratulations from my side as well to the numbers. I have a couple of questions. I'll take them one by one if I may. The first one is, is regarding the situation in Germany. You mentioned during the presentation that you expect the German construction and renovation market to bottom out. Can you please substantiate this and elaborate on this, what the indicators are that you are looking at?

Okay, so I think you're referring to construction market versus DIY market. I think this is an important thing.

You know, the building sector shows early signs of recovery, like a recent increase in building permits and orders, but we expect that activity will only start to increase next year. However, with Hohenzollern Baumarkt, we are mostly active in the renovation and modernization business, which has different dynamics than the new construction. In this matter, you know, We need to focus on such topics as renovation backlog, need for energy efficient upgrades, and demographic challenges. And this is what we are looking very positively towards this issue, because the need is there. We increase our market share, and therefore, even in Germany, we see really chances for us.

Okay, but you don't feel like at this moment already a recovery. It's just an expectation that in the future, next year or so, it will recover.

Yeah.

Sentiment. Okay. Okay. It's more or less a sentiment, which leads to the meaning that beginning maybe with 2026, the construction market will rise again. and that the bottom of the valley is reached now in the moment. But this concerns Hornbach Baustoffunion mainly, and it's not a matter for Hornbach Baumarkt, for the do-it-yourself business. Do-it-yourself business is more contributed to renovation and what Joanna explained just before. And fortunately, we are rather independent from construction markets in 96% of our turnover.

Okay. Super, thank you. Very clear. Another question regarding costs. If I look at the OPEX, Just basically the cost between gross profits and EBITDA. I see a jump of 30 million in Q2 versus last year, Q2. This was a much higher jump compared to the 15 million in Q1. So the OPEC seems to have increased much more in Q2 compared to Q1. to continue in Q3 and Q4? Or was there any like special effect or reason in there which led to this higher increase compared to Q1?

So, you know, the most important point is the increase in the personal expenses, of course. As you know, last year we had a lot of increases of the wages nearly in all countries, especially in Germany. And the effect, of course, we see now in the comparison of the half year. Yeah, so the wages increased, of course. Just for your information, the total cost amounts to 5.7. And we had an increase in full-time employees in connection with the new store openings, you know. Therefore, we have two effects. The first one is the amount of the people and employees, and another one is the increase of the wages itself. To your question whether we expect more increases during the next months. I would answer the question in this way. Of course, we do not expect such big increases as last year. Last year was something special, especially in Germany. We were talking about 7% increases in the wages. This is not planned for Germany now. Of course, there will be some increases to balance somehow the inflation rate, of course, but we expect lower increases than 3%. You know, this is the most point which explains the difference. And there are two other points also which, yeah, unfortunately contributed to our result. We had FX effects, yeah. As you know, we have derivatives, US dollar derivatives, and from the evaluation of the derivatives we have now, last year it was plus, and now we have plus from the derivatives. Therefore, we are talking about an effect of 5 million, which is big, of course.

Where are they booked? Sorry, by the way, are they in Cox or are they booked in the Handelsspanne? No, no, no. Or in the financial result?

They are booked in the financial result.

So that's below EBIT then?

Yes, yes, yes. I thought your question was about the EBIT. EBIT?

Well, I was asking about the OPEX. which is typically the above. But anyway, no, that's fine. It's good to know. That would have been my next question.

Okay, okay. So the most effect is really the wages and the personal costs.

Okay. There are two more questions. One more question and one suggestion. So the first one is the U.S. dollar change, which was like significant, right? How much will it contribute to the gross profit margin in the next quarter to come? Or to put the question the other way around, how much of your cogs of your purchases are in U.S. dollars?

It's a good question and I'm really happy to answer this. You know, we are lucky in this respect that we do not source a lot of products in US dollar. Therefore, it's even slower amount than the 5% of our assortment. Therefore, we are not really impacted by the US dollar in the margin. Nevertheless, of course, there are some. And our policy is always to hedge our direct US dollar purchasing volume. 90% of our volumes are hatched. Therefore, yeah, for the future, I do not expect really changes in the margin.

Okay. Maybe we can get some points of price decreases from your European suppliers and who buy in China or in the U.S. area, right, which is now 10% or 15% U.S. expansion.

Yeah.

One more. We have one more. Yeah, no, they can't. Which is one suggestion you have on page 13 in your free cash flow definition. You don't include leasing, which makes a big difference. I think it would be a more meaningful number for me at least to include leasing because you show 130 million free cash flow of the capex dividends. I would include, it's just my personal opinion, I would include leasing there, which brings the free cash flow to a more accurate 70 million instead of 130. That's probably more accurate.

Okay. It's of value to hear your view on that, so thank you for this.

Hornbach is always very solid and humble in terms of capital market presentation, which I like, and therefore I would show the lower number rather than a higher number in this case.

Okay, thank you for your hint.

Welcome. That was my last point. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.

So, as there are no further questions at this time, I will hand back to Antje for any closing remarks on this conference call.

Yeah, thank you very much for your question. And I think we have at least all addressed. I would also like to thank you, Joanna and Albrecht, for your valuable contribution today. And in the coming weeks, you'll find us also at various capital market conferences. We are very much looking forward to engaging with you in personal conversation. So please come to us if there are any further questions arise. And the details of our plans for IR travelings is also available on our website. And as we now head into autumn with its rich variety of colors and abundance, perhaps it will inspire you also to start a fresh DIY project around home and garden. Thank you again for your interest and time this morning, and we hope to see you soon. And until then, take care. Thank you very much.