Safilo Group S.p.A.

Buongiorno a tutti. Good morning to all of you joining in person Saffilo Capital Market Day. And good morning to all the people connected via conference call and audio and video webcast. Today we are here to present the group 2022 results, its strategic outlook and the medium-term targets. The presentation will last... approximately one hour, a bit more, and then we will allow 30 minutes for the Q&A session, taking the questions from the course, but also from the webcast and the call. The speakers today are Angelo Trocchia, CEO, Gerd Gressler, CFO, and today we also have Alberto Macciani, Global Head Marketing, and D2C Home Brands and Communication, and Marcella Manzoni, Global Head, Digital Transformation and Customer Experience. Before we start, I just need to remind you that this presentation contains forward-looking statements based on current expectation and project of the group in relation to future events. Due to their specific nature, these statements are subject to inherent risk and uncertainties as they depend on certain circumstances and facts, most of which being beyond the control of the group. Therefore, actual results could differ even to a significant extent with respect to those reported in the statements. That said, I hand it over to Angelo to begin. Thank you.

Grazie, Paola. Thanks very much, Paola. As we were discussing before, I think it's great that after a while we see physically all together what is the agenda of the day. Gerd will take us through the 2022 results. Then we will have a specific session on the main achievement of these last three, four years. Then I will come back. We will go through a little bit Just a reminder, I think that some people in this room know more than us, but I mean, we will a little bit talk about what's going on in the eyewear sector. Then we will focus on the Saffilo vision and the strategy and the medium terms for the years to come. So I think let's keep, as I was saying, I think we have asked Marcella and Alberto to be also with us, so I think that also if you can have question more on branding, you know that brand is one of the obsession, the other obsession is digital. So Marcella and Alberto can answer, where on the last big topic, which is sustainability, myself and Gerd will try to answer more. So I hand over to Gerd, and then I will take from our sector.

Gerd. Thank you, Angelo. And good morning to all of you. So I start with the results of 2022. We closed 2022 at net sales of 1 billion and 77 million euros, which is a growth of 11% versus a year ago, 4% at constant currency, and 7.7% organic growth. We were very pleased with how our own brands accelerated in the year, especially Polaroid, Carrera, and Smith. and also how many of our leading licensed brands contributed to the growth in the year. Europe rebounded firmly in the year. You may recall that 2021 was still a little bit COVID-induced in the region, so we saw a 16% growth in Europe in 2022, as well as a good growth in the emerging markets. Conversely, in North America, we had already a big growth in 2021, So we have a more normalized performance in the market in 2022, along with some softer demand, especially in the second half of the year in certain price segments and in certain channels of the market. On the other hand, in North America, we had a very good performance of Smith. And in the fourth quarter, also blenders returned to a strong growth in the period. So the fourth quarter, at 245.4 million euros, up 5.7%, or slightly negative at constant currency, slightly positive on an organic basis. Some of the trends that I just mentioned have been a little bit more accentuated. Looking at our gross margin, I think we closed the year in a significantly better place than for many years now. at 597.4 million euros of gross margin, a 55.5% of net sales, that's an increase of 19% versus a year ago, and a margin improvement of 380 basis points. Clearly, we have some positive drivers. We have the early completion of our cost of goods sold savings plan, the 25 million that we announced back in 2019, and we had positive drivers in terms of price mix, both of the portfolio, but also as we very targetedly use pricing in order to offset inflationary pressures, which in the fourth quarter of the year started to recede. We saw both energy and logistics costs coming down in the fourth quarter, which has therefore allowed us to end the year on an even higher note with a 56.7% gross margin. Moving on to the EBITDA, we closed the year at 101.2 million euros, which is a 9.4% margin on sales, 24% above a year ago, and the margin improving by 100 basis points. Clearly, the positive development on the gross margin allowed us to also post a good recovery on the operating level. So not only were we able to improve the structural economics of the group, but we were also able to continue with some of the important investments, notably into marketing. We've been growing our own brands, and we have invested into them, and in the digital transformation, where last year we invested nearly 10 million euro in software as a service projects as we roll out SAP, as we roll out Salesforce, and our various digital technologies, which, as you know, are now accounted for in the OPEX. In the fourth quarter, the pace of our investments continued, but we had a softer end to the year in North America on the top line. Therefore, we had a little bit slower operational leverage than in the other quarters of the year. Still, we closed the year at a 6.5% margin in Q4, and that was also 100 basis points above the same period of year ago. Moving to the net result. So we finished the year at 58.3 million euros of net results. That is a margin of 5.4%. Of course, on the one side, we had a positive operating performance, which manifested itself also on the net result. We benefited additionally from a reduction in financial charges. You may recall back in 2021, we had some more expensive credit lines. We have refinanced those at the end of 2021 with a capital increase, which then has normalized, obviously, the debt structure in 2022. And we had this year, like last year, a lower weight from liabilities on non-controlling interests, which benefited the net result by approximately 30 million, 31 million, compared to the 32 million in the year before. On the financial side, we closed the year with a net debt of 113.3%. This is an adjusted net leverage of 0.7 times. The free cash flow for the full year was negative at 16.5 million euros. We had a positive flow from operations, which was then offset by an absorption of net working capital, in particular, receivables and inventories. On both of those items, though, we believe that we ended the year with a solid quality of both the inventory and the receivables on the books. which is also witnessed by lower obsolescence costs. And you can see that, obviously, in the gross margin results. And we continue to collect cash well with our customers. In fact, in the fourth quarter of the year, our free cash flow turned slightly positive at plus 1.3 million. We invested 15.7 million of CapEx in the period. And as I said before, we ended the year with a strong balance sheet that sets us up well for what we want to do in the future. So I think before moving on to our strategies going forward, we thought it is worth pausing a little bit and reflecting on what were the main achievements of the past four years and how will they in turn allow us to evolve our strategic choices that we go forward with. So we have depicted here five areas on which I would like to comment, things that have worked well for us, things that we will want to continue to leverage as we go forward. First of all, we believe that we have built a highly attractive portfolio of brands, and Angela will talk more about it both for the consumer and for the customer. And I think that we have a portfolio from a brand point of view which is diversified as it has never been before. So we have a much higher share of own brands than we've ever had, and we have a much lower risk in terms of licensed brands than we've ever had. And I'll comment a little bit more on that. We have grown our share of the online business significantly, and we believe that we have been earlier than most of the markets with the choices that we made in the last four years, and this will be an enabler also going forward. We have rebalanced our geographical mix and our product mix. These were important vectors that we talked about in the previous strategic plan, and I'll show you a little bit where we are in terms of portfolio there. And last but not least, economically, And financially, we have recovered good results that you have seen previously, but we also believe to have found a formula for profitable growth going forward. So let's look into some of those developments. The first one is clear that we have been recovering a level of net sales, which is about two years in advance versus what we said in 2019. So we surpassed the 1 billion euros We ended up at 1.77, as I said before. There is a benefit on the currency, but even without the currency, we have managed to surpass the billion last year. What is important to recall is that in the number here for 2019, we still had about 200 million of revenues from exiting licenses of the LVMH brands that you may recall, which over this period of growth have actually basically exited our portfolio, meaning that we have been able to grow despite a big block of licenses exiting our portfolio. Why? We have grown organically on our existing brands because we have added an attractive set of new licenses over the period and because we have made two acquisitions back in 2020 in the United States. So this dynamic manifested itself especially in our brand portfolio, so we can see The excellent growth of Carrera, Polaroid, and Smith, along with the acquisitions of Blenders and Polaroid, have now brought the share of own brands to about 42% of our net sales. So the own brand portfolio grew 9%. This is on a pro forma basis. So also Blenders and Polaroid with the growth rate that they have achieved over the period on their own. And so we have a share that is nowadays, I would say, much higher than it has ever been in the past. I would also say, though, that on the other 58% of our net sales, we're equally proud to have now really a strong portfolio with which we can win in the market and a portfolio which for us is diversified as it has never been before. We do not have anymore the concentration of license risks with big licensors that own large parts of our turnover across multiple brands, we have now no single licensed brands that accounts for more than a single digit percent share of our revenues. And we have no meaningful license that is owned by the same fashion house as any of our other licenses. So we have a much better spread of licenses across the portfolio. And I think that is the brand vector and is an important achievement that we want to further build on as we go forward. The second piece I mentioned before is the online channels. So in 2018, it was 4% of our sales, but we embarked quite early on the mission to grow the online part of the business because we saw the consumer was going there. So we invested early in partnerships with internet pure players. We invested early in our business with smithoptics.com and we acquired Blenders and Privé de Vaux also for that reason to add to our online sales and to add to our D2C So this has enabled us to almost quintuple our share of the online business, reaching the 15% that we have now. At the same time, also the other 85%, which is our core wholesale business, has grown. And this has grown because we have been modernizing the way we go to market with our customers. And Marcella will talk about this further. Our product mix has diversified also very nicely. This was something that we have in the past also said in our previous strategic plan. You may recall historically, now I'm going years back, Safilo was a company that was very much focused on sunglasses, luxury sunglasses behind some big licenses. Today, we have a much more diversified portfolio. So first of all, we have added a third pillar to the product mix, which is sport. So 12% of our revenues now are generated from sport products. Snow goggles and snow helmets, with which we are market leader in North America with Smith. Bike helmets, which is an increasingly growing part of our business as clearly the consumer in the outdoor space is evolving. So we have now 12% of our revenues in sport products. We have 40% of our revenues in prescription frames, so notwithstanding the growth of sport, notwithstanding the acquisitions of blenders and privé de veau that are predominantly sunglasses, our prescription frames business has grown in the period and is now at 50%, while sunglasses represent the other 48% of the portfolio. And we believe that from a product point of view, we have now found the right balance going forward. On the geographical side, so the brand channel and product mix that I outlined before also manifested itself in our geographical footprint. North America is now the biggest region in the group. It is about 46% of our net sales. Clearly, the growth of Smith, the acquisition of Blenders and Privé de Vaux have helped the geography. And we're happy to be a strong player in North America, which is by far the largest Iowa market in the world. and it is also a very profitable market. So it is good for Safilo to have a strong leg in that geography. Europe on the other side, which represents approximately 40% of our net sales today, grew in the period, but was more impacted by the portfolio changes. Clearly, the luxury licenses that we have, these were brands that were particularly strong in Europe, and they have exited. But nonetheless, we saw organic growth in Europe as we have really worked on bringing relevant new licenses to the region, and improving our commercial capabilities. Last but not least, we have our emerging markets, which today account for about 14% of net sales. They developed nicely. We did want to go towards the 20% mark as per the previous plan, but we also feel that we have not yet had the chance to fully develop the potential there, especially in Asia, where in the last three years we've had lockdowns and slowdowns and all kinds of restrictions in the business. But we believe emerging markets remains a big opportunity still for us going forward. On the profit margin, we've achieved a big turnaround. You can see that from the 50 odd percent that we used to be at in terms of gross margin, we have now increased by about 570 basis points, which was on the one side driven by pricing and mix dynamics, both because we've added high gross margin businesses like blenders, but because we've also been very targetedly and purposefully using price and innovation mix in order to improve our marginality. We have completed the 45 million cost savings program that we announced back in 2019. The 25 million of that is COGS and has helped the gross margin. 20 million of that was overhead and has helped us basically also achieved the 9.4% EBITDA margin that we have now. And not only that, we have therefore reduced and flexibilized our fixed cost structure. So as we grow the top line, we have a higher degree of operational leverage on the margin. Not just saving and not just margin improvement, we have also been able to invest in the period. We have invested in the growth of our own brands. We have invested in the digital transformation of the group as we strive to become ever more relevant to customers and consumers. Last but not least, we have, as I said before, a healthy balance sheet with a relatively low level of leverage. The path has not been linear. There have been numerous external developments, as you know, in the market. We have made acquisitions, so clearly in 2020, we acquired blenders, we acquired Privé Révaux, We subsequently refinanced the bridges that we drew for that in 2021. And we have also in 2022 refinanced our debt capital structure with our bank partners. So now we have a debt maturity that is 2027 at favorable conditions for the group, a low leverage, and therefore also the firepower that we need as we aim to invest in the future. I think this finishes my section, and I hand back to Angelo.

Thanks, Gerd. So I think that Gerd has covered what has been the journey till here, but I think it's more important to understand what we've been doing last year to understand where to go and to decide and work on where to go. I think it's always good to start from which is the market in which we operate in. And I have to say that coming from other industry, this is the things that I like more out of the eyewear industry because it is a market which structurally has been growing and it will be growing. It will be growing because there are some fundamental reasons behind that, which from a certain perspective are going to stay there and they will also accelerate. And I will try to cover a couple of them later on. But then there is also another characteristic, which I think this is an industry which has shown to have a very high level of resilience. I mean, I think IWARE compared to other categories, the bouncing back after the COVID has been very rapid. If you remember in 2021, we had a strong rebound in North America. 2022, we had a strong rebound in Europe. 2023, it should be the year in which the rebound will be more in Asia and in China. But the resilience, so It's a big market. It's a growing market. It's a resilient market. So these three characteristics, let me say, let me sleep a little bit better, the fact that we are in a healthy industry. But the other element where we've been spending quite a lot of time to understand, and this is why we took also the opportunity to take new resources into the company, is the consumer. The consumer moving forward is a consumer which is becoming more conscious to be a consumer. It's a consumer which is becoming more what we call here attention economy. It's a consumer which likes to be respected more as a person before as a consumer. So really catching the consumer, understanding the consumer is going to be one of the challenges moving forward. And then is a consumer which buys where he likes to buy. So this is why digital channel, B2B or D2C will be more and more relevant. And we think, at least from all the data that we are seeing, that they will keep growing disproportionately. And last but not least is sustainability. We will talk a little bit today, now and later on on sustainability. I think that sustainability is not anymore a nice to have. I think the consumer... will choose a brand or a product knowing that the company which is behind that product or that brand has a sustainability and a sustainability committee. So I think the sustainability is a narrative that you will see also later on has become more and more important moving forward. But, I mean... It's nice words, but where are the numbers? I mean, it's a big market. It's a 49 billion euro market. Obviously, we're talking about retail value. This is just looking to the eyewear. And this is the market in which we as Asafilo, Asafilo, we play. This is a market which has been growing around 4%. We are assuming in this plan that in a sort of post-COVID, we will have a growth of 3%. But here, I'd like to be very clear with all of you is that this growth we are assuming it's not going to be linear, what I mean by that. The 2023 is a year where, to be honest, still there are so many clouds that we need to walk the year, walk the quarter. But if we look to the long term, absolutely the growth is going to be between 3%, 3%, and 4%. Question is, 2023, let's see, we are a little bit more conscious on the 23. But by sure is a market that will keep growing. And why that? This is good and bad because there are fundamental demographic reasons behind the fact that this industry will grow. There is an aging population. I'm not saying anything new, but if you take China, if you take in Europe, Italy, Germany, more and more there are countries where the population is aging very, very fast. So more people is getting age. More people needs to have eye work. So myopia, presbyopia are becoming really big, big problem, but then are becoming a big, big need for the category to be expanded. And this is why I think that this industry somehow will become between 1.3 and 1.5 times what it is today. The other element, and I think anyone of us knows that we're always looking to – we're all in front of a computer. We were discussing before, or we have an iPad or a mobile phone. And especially the new generation, I mean, the number of hours that our kids or our young generation is spending – in front of a digital device is huge, it keeps increasing. And obviously this has an impact on the fact that this generation will need eyewear more than maybe what we were needing when we were young. And then there's becoming, especially after the COVID, more and more attention about the importance of sun protection in some part of the world and in the more developed world, attention to the UV light. And last but not least, eyewear is becoming more and more a fashion exercise. If you know that, if you look, one of the characteristics of this industry, which is quite strange, is the frequency, the buying frequency of the eyewear is one-third if you compare to other accessories categories. So we believe that step-by-step also the frequency will increase there. Another element is digital. I think that here Gerd has touched upon before. I think Obviously, 2022 has been a year in which there's been a bit of slowdown, but we were coming from two years of incredible, incredible growth. But digital will, the online will be growing. And we assume that the online will be growing low double-digit versus the offline will be growing between low single-digit. Here the point is not, is the offline going to disappear? Absolutely not. Is there, we will live in a world where people are going to buy eyewear only online? Absolutely not. But by sure, the weight of the online is going to increase. You were assuming that by 2027, the weight of the online will be more than 60% of the total buy. And this is the reason why we took some choice back in 19. And this is why we will keep investing on that because the consumer will go more and more on buying online. We see mainly of this phenomena is stronger on sun. If you see the sun is moving by far faster on the online, but we see mainly North America that also prescription eyewear is moving there. Obviously at a different pace, but we have data. We see also from on our smithoptics.com and on theblenders.com that The demand from prescription eyewear on the online keeps growing. And again, the consumer. I think this is the most tricky but also the most important topic. The consumer, I mean, by 2030, Generation Z will be the biggest consumer target for our category. Obviously, this is putting us a challenge. But I think a great opportunity because who will understand better how to get in contact with the consumer, we will win. And this is a new consumer. It's a more conscious consumer. It's a consumer which likes to be treated not like really a consumer but a bit more like a person. It's a consumer which likes to go on the online but like also to go on the physical shop to get more sort of emotional and experimentation experience. Understand the consumer, win the consumer is going to be even more fundamental. But this is why we think for us, this is going to be one of the areas that we will win because we are equipping ourselves to catch this new consumer. Thanks to Carrera. Thanks to Smith. Thanks to Blenders. We are really now learning a lot on influenza, how to catch this new generation. You will see, for example, this year for Polaroid, we have done this mad cool event in Spain. It's been a huge success. Socially, all the people which went there have become ambassadors around Europe. So catch the consumer in a different way is going to be a competitive edge, and we think that we are equipped to do that. And that's sustainability. I said before, again, I think, don't get me wrong, are all the consumers going to run to the shop and buy a sustainable product? Not at all. Is the consumer ready to buy a product just because we put the flag sustainable with 30% higher price? Not at all. The point is sustainability is more complex. The consumer will be more inclined to buy a product from a company and the brand which have a sustainability responsibility. It's a little bit more tricky. It's a little bit more 360 degrees. So it's not enough just to do window dressing. This is a challenge also. We have all of us, but they will look carefully on a company which on social impact, on the circular economy, all the impact on the world, is this company which is behind this brand is serious about this topic, yes or no? That is going to be the discriminator. It's not going to be enough to say I have a sustainable product. I think that if or who does that, we get the opposite effect from the consumer. now let's we've been looking to the 2022 we've been looking to the industry and the market in which we are in let's now really look uh look to the future and i suggest if i can ask or should i do something to do the video should i click again have you ever wondered who's behind a pair of glasses

It's us from Safiro, a company that since 1878 has in its DNA a principle that more than anyone it can call its own. Looking ahead. Looking ahead to allow millions of people to see the world at its best. Without avoiding change. but reaching out to it. Looking for innovative and responsible solutions and embracing digital transformation to redefine eyewear. So innovation and sustainability are not just nice words, but represent instead an inclusive path that involves us all. And the ability to create value through this becomes our aim. This is the Safilo way. Safio, see the world at its best.

It's important to say that this is not just a video. I think we've done a full cascade in any office, in any, with all the employees around the world. We've been really for months cascading this vision to the full company. Why that? Because I think in this vision there are a couple of words. I mean, first of all, let's be very clear. We respect our past. But we don't need to stay and be killed by our past. So we need to use our past to build the future. Because we can use our past and remain constrained in our past. No, we think and we respect our past, but we need to understand where to go. First concept. Another important word is innovation, is innovative. I think we are trying to do with innovation. at our level, with what we have, I believe that we are really digitalizing the company, but more important, we are looking to a different way, a different kind of relationship with our customer. In other words, we are looking a different way, an innovative way, how to drive this category. So innovation, inclusivity, this is something of the world that we've been really spread, and this is what I really like to hear in any place of the South Florida, independently if you go to South Florida, India, or if you go in South Africa or in North America. So we are really trying to have a company which is strongly behind this. I mean, this can sound, anyone can write that, but I believe more and more moving forward, we need to have people which are fully engaged on what are the fundamental direction that this company likes to have. You have heard digital, you will hear it before later on. People know me a little bit better. I'm crazy about that. I think that digital and sustainability are changing this company. One of the reasons why in Europe we are winning, in Europe we are winning. One of the reasons behind that is the fantastic work we are doing behind our brand, but it's also the Unique, I would call unique work that we are doing on digitalizing our way of making business. And next year, we will, in 2024, we will accelerate even in North America. Okay, so what is our strategy? Honestly, our strategy is very simple and can be judged even too simple. But I believe to be simple is already a key of success. what we like to be as a Saffilo. We said we operate in an industry which is health industry. We operate in an industry that will grow. We operate in an industry where the consumer will become more complex to catch. And then we think that our strategy is going to be linked to have what we call a balanced portfolio. And now we build on that. And when we talk about balanced portfolio, we try to read the definition of balance according to very specific dimension. We like to be balanced when we look to the brands. We like to be balanced when we look to the channels. We like to be balanced when we look to the geographies. But all this will be done with two enablers, digital transformation and sustainability. So the rest of the presentation of myself and Marcello, we are going to give a little bit more meat on the bone on this chart, which sounds simple, but is fundamental on what we are going to do. Let's start from the channels. Obviously, we will keep being focused on our main channels, which are the chain, which are the opticians, which are the retailers. That obviously remains our focus. But we will keep investing on the online. As Gerd was saying today, we are around 15%. In our plan, we will keep investing to get our online percentage at 20%. You will hear more and more all the investment we've been doing on the B2B digital channel. We are investing heavily in Europe. We will keep investing heavily. We start investing heavily in North America. So our B2B digital channel has to represent, in the time horizon of this plan, has to get to 12% of our total top line. And then the sport channel, I think that you already understood from Gerd, our sport channel will get to 12%. And why sport channel? Because we have Smith, we have Blenders, we have a part of Carrera, we have Under Armour. So we've built in our portfolio a series of brands which I think can be our lever to win, by the way, in a challenge in the category which is growing. I mean, outdoor is growing. Bike has been booming. Obviously, bike has been booming, has been growing 70% in the last two years. It will not be, it's not able, it's not possible that it will keep growing at 70%, but it will keep growing at high, at high double digits. So this, he says, focus obviously on our Main channel, but online, B2B digital, sport channel has to be from a channel perspective where we are going to invest and we think that both in capabilities, both in brands, we have the right lever to win there. Geography. I think we will keep, obviously, strong. We build on how strong are we in North America. On how strong are we in Europe? I think I've already commented before about Europe, but obviously the emerging part of the world has gone through three years, which have not been the easiest way. So we think that on the time horizon of the plan, the emerging markets remaining strong position in North America, remaining a strong position in Europe, but we think that emerging markets should get around 20%. So our total net sale. And then let's go to the brand. I'd like to spend a bit more time here. I think we've been doing really a huge work on the brand, and I will get in more detail there. And here I'd like to be very clear to avoid misunderstanding. We say focus on a diverse set of license while accelerating on home brands. This is very important. So we are not saying that Sanfilo will not have license. We are saying that we will have a set of license that we think are crucial, but on top of our home brand, which needs to represent more than 50% of our total net sale. So this is why here it's very fundamental. We will keep And I think we have been, we have demonstrated that it's possible to grow. Smith has been growing. Carrera has been growing. Polaroid has been growing. Blenders is more than two times and a half what was when we bought it. So it's possible to grow. So we will keep a set of specific license, but our home brand is where we are going to grow so that our home brand is needs to represent more than 50% of our portfolio. And let's talk about our portfolio. Just to be clear and to avoid license to get offended, the list here is poor from A to B to Z. Our first line is what we call our home brand, Carrera, Smith, Polaroid, Blenders, Prevedivo, 7th Street, and Polaroid. And then we have, who I believe personally, one of the strongest portfolio of license in this industry. And you see there that we have global brands, we have regional brands, we have brands which are stronger more on sustainable topic, there are brands which are more on stronger in some geography. So we think that I'm not saying that we will not have new license, but we don't need to be obsessed to have a new license. We need to have a new license which makes sense for the consumer. You know, for example, we have had Carolina Herrera. Why we have had Carolina Herrera? Because we felt that we were missing women premium. And Carolina Herrera, by the way, is going very well. Then we have BOSS. BOSS is repositioning themselves. this kind of portfolio yes we will add other license but the license need to answer to a consumer need doesn't need to answer to the need to have to have a press a press release and here you say you have global player boss tommy you have strong regional player like kate spade north america japan UK, you have luxury, not big luxury brand, but luxury brand that have their reason. Missoni, Moschino, we have Isabel Moran. We have brands which have a local reasoning. Ports. Ports in China is an amazing success. Yes, the Chinese, they love fashion brand. But I can tell you, they will love more and more Chinese brands. I'm sure we will have, maybe with someone else, this conference in 10 years' time. They will love luxury brands, luxury international brands, but they will love more and more local brands. Ports, huge success, is a brand just for greater China. So I think that our brand portfolio overall, I personally think, is very, very strong. We have here some babies I don't mention, otherwise some of the fashioners get offended, but we have some brands here which are growing 40% for the last two years. It means that the portfolio is there. But as I said, we will take our home brands above 50% of the net sales of Safilo. And I think what is important that when we talk about the home brand, each of our here we define strong core home brand, have a role. This is very important to understand. So we don't look to our brands like only single brands, but each brand has a role in the portfolio of the home brand. Obviously, anyone can define two axes. If you call BCG or McKinsey, they will find different axes. But the point of this chart is not so much to look to the axes, but to say, what is the role of Carrera, I think, Alberto will take you through that. What is the role of Smith? What is the role of Blenders? What is the role of Polaroid? Which is a consumer that we are going to attack. And we have done, thanks to Alberto, thanks to the Smith team, thanks to the Blenders team, we have done a quite detailed exercise so we know by geography which is a consumer we like to tackle, how we are going to tackle, and how we are going to win. So it's not only an issue of single brand, it's an issue to have a full portfolio of home brands. I think now I'm going to do switching. Yeah, okay. And there are four main topics, driver, which is common to, and just to be clear, each of these brands have a dedicated team because they It's not that we don't like to be generic. So there is a dedicated team working on Smith. Smith is run out of Portland. Why Portland? You know, Portland is the world of outdoor. There is Adidas. There is Nike. All the outdoor companies are in Utah. So Smith is full run out. The brand team is in Portland. Blenders, they are lucky. They are in San Diego. I think they are a little bit more lucky than living in Portland, which is not definitely the most sexy place where to live. But by sure, a lot of people like to go to San Diego. I'm not sure if they like to go for blenders or for San Diego, but they are in San Diego, straight on the beach. So the blenders brand is fully run out of San Diego, as Carrera and Polaroid is fully run by Alberto out of Padova. Obviously, then we have execution, local execution, I think Alberto will cover later, but any brand has a dedicated team. So consumer first, this links to what I said before. I believe this is where really we are doing things that I believe other guys are not doing to catch, to really connect in an intimate way with the consumer. Digital, digital, digital, digital. That is my obsession. This is So it's also the obsession of the people in Sunfield for a pure voluntary base, but that is where we are really, really focused. Some activity we are going to do this year in North America, no one has done in North America what we are going to do on Carrera, and I think that Alberto will go there. Then people engagement and culture. This is very important because, yes, these brands are fully run centrally, but I just give you an example of Smith. As I said, Smith is fully run out of Portland, but we have a team which sits in Padua for Europe. One of the elements of Smith is to accelerate the growth in Australia. We have a small team of Smith people in Australia. So strategy is global, strategy is central, but then the team in Europe needs to work with Portland to understand what is needed in Europe, or what is needed in Australia. And then omnichannel, I know everyone is talking about this omnichannel, but we are doing, I will cover, just keep it, I will cover more when I will talk about blenders and I will explain a little bit more in detail what we are doing. So let's start from some of the baby and let's start a little bit with Smith and let's start with the video.

I think I just need like a little bit more belief in myself and then I would have it. And I feel like that's one of those moments where it's like, oh, I can do the thing. I can try the thing. If I don't actually believe that I'm going to land it, I feel like the gnar can tell.

We believe the experience is everything. We're inventors, dreamers, reimaginers. We're skiers, surfers, anglers, cyclists, seekers, artists who ride and riders who turn gravity into art. Together, we're a community driven by the pursuit of one hell of a time. We draw inspiration from life beyond walls, from the places that open our eyes and elevate our heart rates. From the wonder of the great outdoors and wondering what's around the next corner. We equip you for the moments that keep you coming back. The gear that turns seeing into experiencing, experiencing into connecting. Because what we do today defines who we are tomorrow. We're Smith, and we exist to enrich life through experience.

Smith is a fantastic brand because it's by far more than eyewear. It's opened up to us a completely different world. Smith is looking to the guy which they'd like to have advantage, so there is a sort of performance and competition attitude. It's for there, they just like to have an adventure, and it just is a brand which is sort of inclusive. They would like to be a brand for everyone. Smith is number one snow goggle helmet brand in North America. We have 54% of the North American market. We are absolutely market leader on the snow goggle in America. in North America. But what is Smith? I think this chart is summarizing more than everything. Our aim is to own the hat. So we do helmet, we do goggle, we do eyewear. We are technology innovation driven. Technology and performance is part of what Smith stands for. And protection. So technology and protection and hat. These are the three famous words for Smith. So Smith is goggles, I hope you don't see goggle enough in Europe. I can tell you, you will start seeing a lot. It's performance sunglasses. We have, by the way, we own a special technology on our lenses that people don't believe in, but we produce in Italy. We have prescription eyewear that you can buy on our website. If you go on the smithoptic.com, you can load. If you are in North America, it will be possible also in Europe in a couple of months. But if you are in the U.S., you go on smithoptic.com, you load the prescription, we build the lab in ClearFit. In four days, we send home the full, the full, the full pair. And then it's bike. Bike is growing. We are growing crazy. Bike is a huge, huge opportunity for Smith. So Smith is a brand which is by far more than eyewear, and this is a brand which can also in terms of channel, This doesn't go to the traditional retail. So Smith is allowing us not only to cover different categories, which are close to the eyewear, but now not only eyewear, but is allowing us to enlarge our footprint when you talk about retail, because the sport retail is not the traditional optical retail. And I'm assuming you understand what I mean by that. So Smith, geographing and channel expansion. As we saw, we are very strong in North America. We will be very strong in Europe. We have approved a very aggressive expansion plan starting in Europe and in Australia. I think, Smith, we have not been using our strengths on iWare, so we will use that, and obviously, as I said, Mike. So, I've been doing a sort of marketing work. I now jump back to my job, and I leave to Alberto to comment on Carrera and Poland.

Okay.

So thank you, Angelo, for the introduction into the world of brands. My name is Alberto Macciani. I'm heading the global brands portfolio for Sapphilo and the communication part. And basically what I'm going to share with you is a little bit of the roadmap to growth for Carrera Polaroid and Starting from a little video, and this is, you know, in a way, the Carrera world.

Thank you. Thank you. So, well, this is a presentation of the newest campaign for Carrera, which was started last Friday.

And in a little bit of a summary of what are the brand values and what we want to express for the brand. What you're going to see today is our growth strategy, how we move from the brand positioning and the values of the brand to the architecture of the product, and most importantly, how we lend it in the market. As you know, Carrera is doing a big re-engineering job because it's a brand that wants to aim to get to a leadership position in the market. And as always in brands, you start with the values. So we did, you know, deep dive analysis, you know, led by the global team, but of course with a big input from every market to define what are, you know, the key pillars. And, you know, generally when you talk about pillars of brand, you want them to be authentic. You want them to be true to the brand. You want them to be relevant. You know, the product needs to, you know, fulfill a need and answer to a problem. And you want them to be talkable. You want people to talk about it. The values of Carrera are, of course, the heritage, you know, born in 1956, which is the aim to do something highly performing, highly technical, but with a big lifestyle impact. The products of Carrera, you saw Smith before. Smith is really pure performance. Carrera is performance for lifestyle. So you want to look good when you're skiing, but you want to look even better after the ski is done when you're with your friends. That's why this idea of the community and getting people to share Carrera. Carrera is a little bit of an exclusive club, you know, because it's out of attitude. That's why we talk about the relevance of the brand being technology and style, the role of design. It's so important. We want to build products which are not for everyone. And you can tell from the design of Carrera there is a product which can't just be worn by anybody. There are brands which are, I call them the big normalizer because everybody looks good in some brands. Carrera is not for everyone, and I think that's a big advantage because you want people to enter the world with the right attitude. Talkability, very important, is the right attitude. You saw the people before in the movie. They're not models or actors. They're real people. They're real influencers. That's their job. The lady is a boxing girl. The guy is a real DJ. The guy is a car lover. He's a big celebrity in the U.S. So they all use their passion to to make their life, and Carrera is a sort of an enabler in that space. The architecture of the product, again, very important. You want to be sure that the customer is able to sell the right product to the right person because everybody ends a Carrera with a different type of point of view. So we have a part which is named Signature, which is the collection we do for the more wearable products, the one that needs to be worn every day but with a touch of personality. Then in the middle, you see our icons. Those are the products that really qualify the image of Carrera, what people want to see out of Carrera, a little bit of the iconicity of the brand. And then all that we do for sport and outdoor, which again, very, very important, but always with a touch of lifestyle. They are not designed just for performance. Of course, power of collaboration. Carrera has a huge history of collaboration. You remember, you know, from Porsche, all the type of huge brands, Supreme, all the others asking really Carrera to create this melting of technology and lifestyle. Carrera is one of the very few brands that can really go into the cover of fashion magazine being not a purely fashion eyewear brand. So this is very important. And for example, what we did with Ducati, partnership, long-term partnership, developing of a product. which is designed for people who are using bikes. So with all the technicalities, which are really make the product different, but also with a high lifestyle impact. Big success, you know, now Ducati is a big part of the Carrera portfolio. And I tell you, very interesting, all incremental, zero cannibalization on the core, and also very, very good in opening new doors for Carrera. Because through this collaboration, you find a new meaning for the brand. In market activation, again, very important that all we do from the product point of view gets amplified. I always say the real challenge now is really moving from product-centric to brand-centric, which means to build a whole set of values around the product for which people not buy you only for the functionality, but they buy you for the experience. The campaign idea that we use on Carrera is what you saw before. We call it Drive Your Story. Which is really, you know, if you look at it in a superficial way, well, it's about driving and cars. But, you know, the deeper meaning is this is about getting people to do their best and change their destiny. This is a huge insight, especially in a lot of new markets. What is interesting is that Carrera is a highly urban brand. We sell Carrera more or less in 15 cities around the world, the big ones. where people are really making an effort. They move to the city, they start a new job, they start a new life. Carrera is there to help this journey. And using real people. Again, we moved this year from classic use of models and testimonials to real ambassadors. These are the five that we're using today. And, you know, they just love Carrera. So it's not just about doing... a sponsorship of Carrera. They use Carrera in their life. Actually, they were the one who came to us saying, we love the brand. We love what you're doing. Can we do something more? And they create a community because I think the good thing of modern marketing and communication is that the barrier between the testimonial, the celebrity, and the real people is gone. Anybody can connect with these people, and you may get to a closer interaction. Some of the highlights of the campaign, I chose these two guys. Martin is a resident DJ at Ministry of Sound in London. He's traveling all over the world to talk about new sound, but also very strong on this idea of empowerment. And Mia, US, Asian, working on activation for women empowerment. So a lot of interesting story where Carrera is not just an enabler for seeing better, But I always say it's an enabler for a new life and accompanying you to your daily challenges. Then, of course, what is very important is that all we do comes alive to create a desirability. Because the real value of a product like Carrera is that you see it and you want it, even before asking too much, you know, is it the right for me? But there is a sense of desirability. And that's why we invest so much in creating partnership with customers in the key countries. This is Dubai. This is New York. This is India. All the countries in the world where by promoting the image of Carrera in a relevant way through also visible display, you get traffic and you get people to try the product and the brand. I tell you, Carrera is a brand which has a high loyalty. The moment you try Carrera, you keep using Carrera because it's really a bit unique in the market. Celebrities and phenomenon, you know, there's a number of celebrities in the world who actually love Carrera. They use Carrera, but of course, sometimes they have contracts with other brands. Jennifer Lopez is one of them. You know, she's a big lover of Carrera and, you know, she uses Carrera. This, for example, is one of the latest example, Anita. She's a big, you know, Brazilian-American celebrity with over 60 million followers. And she came to us saying, can I wear Carrera in my videos? And, of course, we said, yes, very, very happy and flattered. But, you know, when the celebrity is asking for something, you know that it's not just a financial advantage, but there is meaning because she does it because she likes it. And you can see that it's very visible. The moment this video came out, I think we're talking about like 150 million views, the product itself, this model became number one in U.S., simple as that, because people just see it and they go and they ask for the Anita Carrera. And, of course, power of collaboration. This is some of the celebrations we did when Pecco Bagnai and Ducati won the championship. Again, very big partnership, not just, to be honest, not just to sell the product. We are selling a lot, but to create meaning because even Pecco now believes that Carrera is bringing him good luck. So anytime he goes on a race, after the race, he's asking to have Carrera on to do the shooting. And I think this gives meaning to the brand because, again, it's really performing. but is also for lifestyle, you know, for imagery that are hitting also off the track. So this is a little bit of, you know, where we are heading on Carrera, trying to create this ignite of performance and lifestyle. And I can tell it's really working in all the key markets. We come to Polaroid, which is a little bit of a different story. You know, I always say, you know, imagine Carrera is a bit of an exclusive brand, Carrera is like a club, but not everybody can get in. So you need to be a Carrera thinker to get into the Carrera club. Polaroid is the opposite. Polaroid is really there for everyone. The history of Polaroid is, by the way, amazing. Sorry, you know that Polaroid was invented in 1937 by a guy named Edwin Land, which is the second person in the world in terms of number of patents created after Thomas Edison. So, you know, not an easy benchmark. And he's considered to be, by people like Elon Musk, one of the gurus of innovation because he was really able to understand that innovation is real when it has an impact on many people. Innovation is not niche. Innovation is where you can really do something that has an impact on the world. And he created the polarized lens as his first invention. Then the instant camera came later because he just realized that his daughter was having problems looking at the sea. So she was struggling with the reverberance of the sun, and he said, maybe we can remove the disturbance of the light. That's why colors are so important to Polaroid, and this is a little bit of the expression we want. So, again, what you're going to see, you know, quickly, starting from the position to the architecture to the activation, the same recipe for any brand. And the positioning of Polaroid is really relevant to the growth model because there is something on the functional benefit about the ratio between price and quality. Polaroid is a brand where the quality is so important and is so relevant for the price. That's why we call it a smart choice in the sense that you buy much more than what you pay. The quality of Polaroid products are outstanding, but we want to keep the sensible pricing because we want to give anybody the chance to try Polaroid on an impulse purchase. This is very important. We don't want people to think too much when they have to buy Polaroid because they do it on the go. Maybe they do it when they're on holiday. Maybe it's the second part of glasses. We want people to buy Polaroid with a free mind. You know, sometimes eyewear, especially certain brands, they have, you know, a bit of a barrier because you think a lot about buying it because it's very important, not just, you know, from the out-of-pocket point of view, but also they define you so well and so importantly. Polaroid is good for everyone from 1 to 99 years old. Everybody can have a Polaroid. Roots, of course, is this idea of innovation, mainstream innovation. Everything we do on Polaroid needs to have a tangible benefit. Just to give you an example, you know, we see that a lot of people use Polaroid when they go to the seaside. Well, we invented a pair of sunglasses that is floating. So whenever you lose it in the water, you know, you won't lose it. And, of course, World of Color for the emotional benefit. Customer and consumer, we have the cool, we have the active, a lot of work on kids. This is very important. We have a campaign, educational campaign. We want to get people to get their sight checked as early as possible. Forty percent of the people, we just did a survey in Italy with over 3,000 families and moms, say they never check the sight of their kids before school, which is a big issue. Because if you do it too late, then you might have just bigger problems. So Polaroid has this social angle, which we believe is very important. And again, very, very driven by inputs and viral at heart. We want to showcase the color. Again, we want people to love Polaroid even before trying it. And we do interactions between brand and digital transformation. This is a billboard, something that we tested. It's going to be live again soon. in the whole of Europe in, I think, a couple of weeks at the beginning of spring. But basically people could scan the QR code and do an instant try-on where they could just try the product directly so that you remove one barrier. The moment you can also see that the product is fitting well, then you're going to have a very high motivation to go and look for it. The world of Polaroid, we call it the Riviera simply because it's a place of fun and color, and we want people allowed to be seeing the world at their best. Again, the visuals, very impacting, very interesting for the whole of the community. And again, very, very important, create dedicated windows where the color is cutting through. The inside is very simple. The cities are gray. Polaroid is there to put color in the life of people and create desirability. That's why we use imagery. This one is the gummy product, the one that you can tear apart because it's made of rubber. It's virtually unbreakable. We want people to get interested by the feature, the technicalities, and then go and look for the product and try the product. And, of course, cutting through the gray of the city, very important. Huge billboard. Again, this was in front of the Cadorna station because traffic is really what makes Polaroid work. Don't think too much. You just see something interesting. The right price, you go and buy it.

Thank you. Thanks. Thanks very much. I think we will be very fast. Just cover the latest, the latest brand. And I think what people said, I was crazy to do this.

Just a surf coach who wanted to shake up the sunglass industry. I wanted something different, radical and fun. I didn't want to blend in. So I created blenders born on the beach, San Diego now rock with pride worldwide. We're bright, We're bold at a price that everyone can afford. Don't blend in. Welcome to your new favorite sheds.

Good. So, Samurai, I think there is something common between Carrera, Polaroid, and Blenders. We need to move from selling product to selling brands. It can sound easy. This is the winning element. We don't sell product. We sell Carrera brand. We don't sell product. We sell Polaroid brand. We don't sell in eyewear. You can have 20 different of this kind of company in North America. And by the way, what is interesting is that Blenders is eating up market share. for some brands which cost three times or four times the price of blenders. So the product is crucial, don't get me wrong, but it's more important the story behind that. What is the strategy to be fast on blenders moving forward? Domestic international online will remain the focus. Domestic North America is the biggest eyewear digital market, so we will be the focus there. What we have launched in Canada, we have launched in Australia. In a transparent way, we have slowed down in Europe. We think that the next step is going to be a Spanish language-based platform. San Diego is quite close to Mexico and another South America. So it's North America, North America, North America. It's Australia, it's Canada, and it's a Spanish language platform. Then retail. This is very interesting. Just to be clear, I'm talking about monobrands. We open now four stores. By the way, if you go to Santa Monica, you can have a look on that. We have San Diego. We have Encinitas. We have Santa Monica. We have Houston. We're going to open Austin. We have four shops now. What is the concept here? Bring together D2C and shops. So if you go to this shop, in the shop in Encinitas, every week there is an event. So it's a shop, but it's by far more than a shop. They need to make money, don't get me wrong. They need to be all profitable. But the aim is go there, experience, and then you can buy where you like. So it's really a combination of the two experiences. And apart from the Joe Gifford to go Santa Monica, it's a huge shop, really fully experiential. And for example, in Cinitas, what is interesting, we see that once we have opened the shop, we sell even more on the D2C. So there is a link between Ecom, D2C, and online and offline. This is the concept in the plan. Just to give you an idea, there is a plan to open three, four shops per year. Focus mainly in North America. Wholesale, just to be very clear, when we talk about wholesale here, we talk about sport of sale. So specialized sport of sale. Remember, go back to what I was saying before. Smith, Blenders, Carrera Sport will grow exponentially. in sport wholesale, which is opening up for us a different go-to-market. So this is on brands. Let's go. We said that we have two enablers in our plan. If you remember the first chart, one is digital transformation and the other is sustainability. These are the two fundamental enablers which will assure sustainability that we are going to deliver the number that Gert will share with us. An important point is that here, when we talk about digital transformation, digital transformation for us means touch all the points of the company. Digital transformation doesn't mean only what Alberto showed. When we talk about digital transformation, our fundamental aim is to change completely the way in which we engage the consumer and the customer, is a way to empower our employee. And then we will talk, Marcella will cover and we'll talk a little bit about people. But there is also another important dimension. We are digitalizing our full operation. And I will say something more. So if we open up the digital transformation, we have also here different block. Let's start from the first, design and concept development. We are one of the few. There is also another player in this industry, which obviously I will not mention. We have all our collection, all our portfolio, we have in electronic version. This can sound easy. It's not. First of all, behind, there is a system which is quite complex. It costs quite a lot. But it can sound the detail. But this gives us that any time a product is designed, we can electronically transfer on all our digital platform. Most of the company, they have the product, they take the picture of the product, and then they can put on the digital channel. We are now in a position to say any product is designed, two seconds after, I can put on the D2C, I can put on the B2B, I can put on my, with some, for example, IPP, we can send to them directly the electronic version of all our collection. And here, there is a digital stream going on there to put together a completely digital way how to manage or how to, oh, don't get me wrong, you need the designer, you need the craftsmanship, but behind, we are really building a sort of big digital system. Supply chain and demand and marketing. This You know better than us that this business model, it's a tricky model. You know, we have all the collection, we have the factory, we have thousands of SKU. What we have done, this is a priority for this year. There is a full team of digital people which have to say, how can we optimize everything which goes from the moment which we design the collection, even before. How should I design the collection? Reading the data. And, again, it's going to be data-driven. It's not because I like or I don't like. It's not like today is sunny or it's windy. It's based on data. So we will start to optimize how we design the collection, and then we optimize the full shape. And you can imagine, I mean, you know our financial number better than us. This is going to have an impact on obsolete. It's going to have an impact on our cost. It's going to have an impact on our working capital. Digital is touching supply chain, is touching demand and marketing. This is one of the fundamental pillars on which we start working already this year, and then we should start looking to the advantage as of 2024. Big area here, digital can really work to tie up this very complex system of collection, of launches, of marketing, on demand, on on a very complex supply chain. The last bit is people, and I leave the floor to Marcella.

Good morning all. So, as we said, the digital transformation for us is one of our enablers. Digital transformation, as you know, is not only about system and technology, but people is one of the pillars in digital transformation. We are proud to say that in Saffilo today, we have two digital hubs. One is in Portland, San Diego, and the other one based in Padua. As we were mentioning during the presentation, Portland for meat and San Diego for blenders, those are our digital hubs that are fully focused today on consumer side. While, and we will talk a bit later, Padua focus on customers, B2B channel. When we talk about portal in San Diego, we have a combination of capabilities. And for us today, those are representing our home Saffilo online business capabilities rooted in the Smith and respectively blenders e-commerce teams. They are really focused on omni-channel and also where Angela was mentioning and Gerd before, those are working and doing extremely good job on integrating the experience between Saffilo shopper and consumer between retail, offline and online in-store experience. When we talk about the capabilities for the team of Portland San Diego, of course, those that have a very, very strong capabilities in digital marketing, both in terms of online content creation and performance marketing execution. Let's talk now about Padova. with a strong focus on customers. This is a journey that we have started more or less two years and a half, and on which the team has done an extremely, say, good job on building what we call, and we will talk later about you and Saffilo, our first digital channel fully dedicated to our opticians within Europe. Talking about people, as we said before, is a question of creating capabilities, as Angelo was mentioning before, empowering our employees in order to be able to execute the strategy that we want. This is the reason because we invested and we kick off in, at the end of 2022, Digital Academy, named Digital Force, on which we decide to create an internal Digital Academy in Saffilo. There is a combination of acquiring technical capabilities and people that have mindset of moving forward a digital transformation. I said at the very beginning, this is also meaningful, what I've seen in my experience in the last year and a half, digital transformation for us, it has not only been a technological project, but it's a question of changing our mindset and our way to do business and create a relationship with our customers. Digital Academy, It's now at its very first step. We are working with a team of six people, plus two people that will come very soon. And we will also invest in the second part of the year to complete our academy in hand embedding within Safilo, our internal developers. Why is it important to have a digital hub? This, of course, will help us to be faster in the execution, faster in design our digital product, and faster also to reach the need that our customers are telling us in order to be able to meet their expectation. Data analytics, this is another important chapter, the one which we are investing in our company, Safilo. Why data analytics? We want to become more and more a company who is a data-driven company. Data are the one that, of course, they can help us to understand, not only, I mean, our financial trend and how we are performing on the safe side, but there is a lot of data that can help us to simplify the job of our people and having them not focus on getting this data from somewhere into the system, but being able to receive data and using data to take decision and understand what's happening outside. We, in the digital transformation, we are always using more and more data to understand also the behavior of our customers. Data analytics is a combination of integrating new capabilities and also helping all our employees to better understand how to use data and giving them the instrument and of course also the knowledge they need. This is the reason because since one year we have developed a strong program of training within SAFILO, more than 150 people involved in PADWA team and more than 600 hours developed in terms of training. The combination of those capability and those the team and the people leading digital transformation, of course, they are getting results on what is one of the most important chapter for us when we talk about digital transformation, this is customer experience and sales. It's important the fact that we decide to call this area customer experience. So for us, the obsession, as Angelo was saying at the beginning, is digital and is customer. We are, within my area, fully obsessive on how can I offer the best experience to our customers. And this is the reason because everything that I will show you in the next couple of chart is a result of a constant listening to customer and getting feedback from them. There is a very nice things that we have done embedded in our digital transformation in Padova and also for the team of Portland and San Diego, is the fact that we are working 100% in agile. For sure, you know what is an agile framework, and this is a way to work, a new way of work that is, of course, I mean, fully focused on creating digital products that can easily evolve and easily they can also be proposed to our customers. UNSafilo. UNSafilo is our first B2B digital channel product that has been designed with opticians for opticians. It was born in the end of 2020. And we are very happy to say that UNSafilo is more than an e-commerce platform. UNSafilo is not only a nice catalog where customers can see products and they can buy, But UN Saffilo is a digital product that since a couple of years is evolving, evolving in order to offer a new digital experience to our customers. When we say digital experience for our customer, Here, what is important to say is that, of course, we are trying to create a door for our customer to be in contact with us 24 hours a day. We are trying to create an environment, a digital environment for our customer where they can easily do the request and get in the support they need whenever they want. This is the reason because, of course, we have been able to create an innovative interface to offer to our customer an easy shopping online. This has been our first target when we decided to start with you and Safilo and creating this new B2B platform for our customer. We have added a fully digitalized after-sales experience for our customer. What I mean is for fully digitalized after-sales experience, we are now able to offer to all our customers in Europe the chance to request assistance for warranty, whatever they need for the product. They don't need to call us anymore. They can do easily using their mobile phone, a QR code, sending us a picture, giving us the detail of the product and receiving the product in a couple of days. And of 2022, we have been able to move 80% of our customer using the digitalized process of after sales. Why this is important for us? Because it's telling to us that the time you are able to design and offer digital experience to our customer that in some way are making for them the life easy in their shop, This customer, they will come with us and of course adopt what we are offering to them. We have also evolved in the customer care support. We are, since a couple of months now, able to offer to our customer to get in touch via WhatsApp. And this is super nice because we have seen that without explaining to the customer why they should use WhatsApp to get in contact with us, They have found the easy way and also the best way and the best use case, as we say, to get in contact with us. And in some countries in Europe, the WhatsApp has replaced the email channel. So there is a world of customer opticians. They are ready to move and, of course, I mean, to take the opportunity that we are offering to them. we are continuing evolving on our you and sapphilo i said more than e-commerce platform omnia is our latest digital product that we have launched in in europe end of 2022 omnia is the access for our customer to all brand digital assets and again omnia is not a different space that we have created somewhere omnia is now becoming and is embedded in UN Safilo. UN Safilo, one door to offer to our customer to get in contact with us. Why is important to, and it has been for us, one of the challenge for 2022, being able to build a fully digital library where our customer, they can download video, they can download images, because of course it is a way to grant to our customer to get and being able to have all the contents they need for their social channel, for their shop and et cetera. All the nice video that we have seen so far about Carrera, about Polaroid, our campaign, Smith, all those elements and all those contents are in Omnia.

Here, a video.

Thank you. Thank you. What you have seen, this is Omnia.

And Omnia will be one of the chapters that we will continue to focus on 2023 because listening to our customers, for them it's super important and they really need to have simplicity on evolving themselves in a more digital marketing within their shop. Looking at the future, of course, everything that has been done so far is because, I mean, the intention and the objective is to become more and more the best partner and offer the best experience to our customers. As we said at the very beginning, this is a completely new way to get in communication with our customer and is a completely new, modern relationship that we are building with them. We want to go, and of course, this is what we have done so far, UN Safilo going beyond sales. So it's not only, as I said before, an e-commerce platform. This will be one of the most important touch points where customers can get in touch with Safilo. We will focus and we will continue on the further customer adoption in Europe. We close 2022 with Safilo. Plus 23% of customer active in UN Safilo, we reach more or less in absolute volume, 24,000 customers in Europe out of more than 30K that we have so far when we talk about optician. We have been able, just to tell you, some achievement. to increase 50% of orders if compared to 2021. And one other important point is that our customer are, of course, I mean, increasing also the transaction in the platform. So this is telling us that the street and how we are doing is the right way. Europe will be still an area of focus now in the geography. And of course, UN SAFILO is one of the elements to reinforce an hybrid SACE model. As Angelo was mentioning before, and also Gerda, this is a combination of online and offline. So what we want to achieve, and this is part of what we already are doing, we want to create and reinforce and consolidate an hybrid SACE model where UN SAFILO online, our SACE team team, offline in the traditional business model, combining the two of them to amplify the reach to our customer, to amplify the interaction that we can have with our customer, and of course, their loyalty and their satisfaction. And Angelo was mentioning before, of course, next step is to prepare ourselves to roll out UN Safilo in North America, bringing, of course, the experience done so far in Europe. Last point, I was mentioning that for us customer feedback is becoming our third obsession. There is nothing that we don't do before trying to understand if this is important and a priority for our customer and there is nothing that we don't launch if after we don't ask the customer how he is perceiving the new service, the new product that we digital product that we offer to them. Customer perception, you may know every year we run our annual customer satisfaction survey. Those are the results of 2022 CSI survey. Two main indicators for us that for us are super important is net promoter score and overall satisfaction. When we talk about Net Promoter Score, this is a concept of recommendation. How lucky is that the customer would recommend Safula as a business partner? So how much customer would recommend us as a business partner? Results for 2022, combining North America and EMEA, we reach a score of 66.6%. What is nice to see is that EMEA itself has been able to reach 81%. And this is one of the achievements that in EMEA we have been able to reach thanks to the digital transformation and being able to offer new services, new relationships to our customers. Second KPI, important as well, overall satisfaction. How satisfied are customers with SAFIL overall? With a scale from 1 to 5, we reach 4.4. And EMEA, leading 4.5 with a higher score than North America. Those are one of the reasons that are telling us that so far what we have done is going in the right direction and the best practice that we will be able to roll out and embed also in North America will also help us to increase overall our results. I now leave to Gerd for sustainability.

Thank you, Marcella. So I will take on sustainability, and then I will close with our financial goals for 2027. So let me say that on sustainability, in the last six years, we have been reporting our annual sustainability report, and I think we have used those years to deeply understand which are the ESG drivers of our business model, of our processes, of our choices, and we are now ready to announce our goals for and our commitments for the medium term around the pillars, people, product, planet, and partners. Starting, of course, from the purpose of Safilo, which is to help people to see the world at its best. We make sunglasses that help people protect themselves from sun rays. We make optical frames that help overcome myopia, presbyopia. We make sport products which help people protect themselves from accidents. So it is very much, I think, in the DNA of a company like Safilo to play seriously on the sustainability area. Looking at planet to start with. So in 2022, we decided to join the Fashion Pact. The Fashion Pact is a coalition of leading players in the textile and apparel industries, and they are aligning themselves around the common set of goals that we're going to follow. We've invested in those years in energy transition, energy reduction, renewables, photovoltaic investments, et cetera. And you will see in our sustainability report of 2022, We've reduced our CO2 footprint by 57% compared to 2019. Now we want to take it a step further. We will validate our goals with the science-based target initiatives, but we aim to reduce our own, i.e. scope one and scope two emissions by 70% by 2030. And we are now tackling also the scope three emissions of the group, which we expect to reduce by 20% by 2030, which is in line with what the science-based target initiative We will have 100% of our energy needs covered by renewable energy and we will be eliminating all unnecessary plastics over the course of the next years and replacing everything that we do need with more than 50% recycled content from 2025 for B2C businesses by 2030 on B2B businesses. Moving to product, we aim for more than 25% of our new collections to be made from sustainable, i.e. recycled or bio-based materials. On some brands, the percentage will be much higher than that because many of our licensors are obviously also making strong commitments in the sustainability area. We believe that we have, with new collections, an important lever because they are so frequent in our industry and they account for such a big part of our sales every year that if we target new collections, it will be the best way to reduce the environmental footprint of our product going forward. We did an extensive lifecycle assessment in 2022. We understand exactly which kind of product combinations, material combinations in our product have what kind of CO2 impact, and we can then also design new collections in an always more efficient way. When it comes to people, our current performance and everything that we have been doing will be evidenced or is evidenced in our sustainability report. We are going to prioritize employee engagement as one big focus area, and every year we will be defining the right areas on which we want to focus worldwide. And secondly, we will continue to create a positive societal impact, like we have done partnering with Special Olympics, with Save the Children, with Fondazione Veronese, and we will find other partners that are relevant to help us advance this pillar. Last but not least, we want to be a responsible partner. Marcella has talked about customers and Net Promoter Score, which is a KPI that we will monitor every single year. We have licensors that represent many of the brands that you've seen before. As I said, many of them have made strong and public commitments. We believe that with this journey, we can not only continue to deserve the trust of our licensors, but to give them yet another set of reasons to choose Safilo when it comes to entrusting their brand. in this industry. Last but not least, we need to orchestrate for success. So this needs to happen. These are strong commitments that we want to make happen. We have a robust governance in place. We will put in place systems, processes to track, trace, and report on our progress. And last but not least, in our incentive for key management, sustainability goals will play a role so that we ensure we are moving into this direction. I will close with our financial KPIs that we aim for. So what we want to achieve by 2027 is a level of net sales of approximately 1.3 billion euros, which represents more or less the 4% compound annual growth rate over the period. With a focus on our home brands, we expect them to grow mid to high single digits, so grow faster than the rest of the business. we have made M&A a key element of our strategy. We would like M&A to contribute one point of the CAGR over the planned period, and we have the means, obviously, to do that going forward. And we want to focus especially on those new channels where we want to accelerate, as Angela was saying, the online business, the B2B e-commerce, and the sport business, so that by 2027, we have also a balanced portfolio in terms of channels. We are not overly dependent on on the traditional channel that we will continue, obviously, to focus on, but that we have a broad set of channels and a balanced SAFILO also for the long term. We don't see here, but by geography, we aim to grow all three macro regions in the plan. Clearly, North America will benefit from some of the portfolio dynamics, Blenders growing, Smith growing, but we also aim to grow Europe, and we aim to bring our emerging markets to more or less 20% portfolio shares. We don't expect that the growth will necessarily be linear, so this is a CAGR. This is not necessarily a growth rate in every single year. We know that 2023 has its own peculiar context. We have a very uncertain and volatile external environment, but we are very confident in being able to get to the 1.3 billion at the end of the plan period. When it comes to EBDA marginality, we aim for 12% to 13%. by the end of the planned period. The main driver for us is gross margin. We expect gross margin to improve by 200 to 300 basis points. We are at 55.5% at the end of 2022. This will bring us into the high 50s. We used to be there in the a bit more distant past of Southfield. This is where our competitors, larger and smaller, are playing. And we believe that we have the right reasons to get there. We have a portfolio mix that is beneficial. For example, a brand like Blenders that is growing will help. We have a pace of innovation, which I said before, more or less half of our net sales every year are renewed with new collections. We craft our new collections not only to fit the brand, not only to use maybe more sustainable materials, but they're also financially crafted to build the gross margin year over year. And we will continue to optimize cost, we will optimize our procurement, we will optimize our obsolescence, and we will optimize the factories that we have, especially in China and in the United States. We are investing in marketing. Clearly, our own brands are meant to grow faster, so the marketing investment will increase by approximately 100 basis points of net sales over the planned period. So this is a negative in terms of structural economics, but it is an investment to accelerate the growth of our own brands. And last but not least, we have the operational leverage, which we expect to contribute about 100 to 150 basis points as we grow sales and we keep our overhead space under strict control. Last but not least, Marcella was talking about digital investments and why we fundamentally believe that this is important for Safilo. we see 2023 and 2024 as years in which investments will increase and will peak 2025 through 2027. Investments will then ramp down and we will be using and benefiting from those new capabilities that we are developing. Last but not least, we have cash flow. So as you know, we have returned the company firmly to sales growth. We've improved operating margins. We have been able to post also a positive net income for the past two years. Now we want to be sure that over the planned period also free cash flow will be positive going forward. Obviously, sales growth and margin expansion will continue to improve our free flows from operations. We expect a more moderate working capital absorption going forward as also our business environment has been normalizing. And we expect quite a moderate level of CapEx investments between 15 to 20 million maximum per year over the planned period. Because you also know that we have less industrial footprint and we have many of the investments moving into OpEx for the reasons of the cloud behind. Last but not least, we will engage in M&A activities over the planned period. And this will have on the one side a cash outflow, but it will add new revenue sources, new synergy sources, and new capabilities to Safio. With this, we end the presentation. Thank you very much for your attention, and we can open to any Q&As you may have.

Domenico Gilotti from Equita. I will start from the top line targets. So you are targeting 4%, including 1% M&A, so 3%. There is probably some price mix contribution or not. So price and volume, so it doesn't sound really aggressive, say really challenging. And on the profitability, just a clarification. So on the profitability improvement, you said that 200 bps from gross margin, that's the idea, and 100 bps or 150 from operating leverage and negative marketing of 100.

That's correct. And the gross margin is between 200 and 300. So 200 to 300 gross margin, 100 on marketing negative, and 100 to 150 from operational leverage. So these are the building blocks. I mean, with regards to the top line, let me say that we have tried to build a plan which is pragmatic, a plan that is reasonable, a plan that has also, let me say, a degree of appropriate prudence. As I said before, the 4% is over the five-year period. I think that at the moment we see a little bit more challenged macroeconomic and geopolitical environment than I think from from the future years onwards, we will see a faster growth rate. So this is how we have built our plan.

Do you see price mix contributing?

We see price mix contributing. On the one side, we see it from the portfolio mix. On the other side, from the innovation that we do, which gives us an opportunity not to price, but to establish new collections and new products at a new price point that basically adds to the gross margin. And as we have done over every of the last seven, eight years, even more every year, we very targetedly and purposefully, we take pricing as there is also inflation in the markets and on the cost. So both volume will grow and price mix will add on top.

Just to conclude my question, on the marketing side, the message was it would be more front-loaded, so the investments.

On the digital side, it will be more front-loaded. So when we come to the cost, for example, of the software as a service because most of those investments that Marcella showed are cloud-based. That will be front-loaded into 23 and 24. The marketing investments, they will go across the whole plan period as we grow the own brands.

Okay. And the last question was on the current environment. Because you sounded with a pinch of prudency in looking at 2023, last time we spoke it was... you were committing some volatility in the market, so now it's March.

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, March is just beginning. It's difficult to judge March after, I don't know, today is the 10th. Also, January and February, you know, they are small months. So, to be honest, this market day is not right in the day in the sense that we don't have much in our hands. I think that Today, honestly, we see Europe continue on the trend of last year. China still, we see a few signs, but honestly, we have not seen yet the famous rebound, which should come maybe more in quarter two, quarter three. Honestly, in quarter one, we don't see that yet. And North America, I think that we don't see yet sort of North America start growing growing again. So in this moment, to be honest, we are, I mean, we are positive. I think we are absolutely positive on the full year, 2023. I think we need to have a little bit more time to really understand, I mean, all the pressure, all what you read, what's going on in China. China, it's not really yet where we were expecting to be. The war in Russia is there, you read more than me. So to be honest, we try to be on the 2023 level Absolutely positive on what we are doing, but cautious because still, I think, at least in my view, there are quite a lot of clouds there. Obviously, we will be more clear once we have the full quarter one and some numbers, some months of quarter two. Honestly, today, having only JAN and FAB is a bit too early to really have strong stance. on the 2023. On the overall plan, it's challenging or not challenging. I mean, I don't know. I think that we are absolutely okay with the number that we are showing. As I said, as I was saying, the point is really the 2023 because we don't think that it's going to be a linear trend there. With some more months in our pocket, we can be more clear about I think it's a good plan. It's a solid plan. If the situation will get better, I mean, obviously, we are ready to absolutely catch it. But the important point, to be honest, that, no, we will work hard on gross margin using all the operating level, but investing, as Gary was saying, no, we will keep investing mainly on our brands. Because If we don't invest, then we are not serious. And what we've been doing for the last three years, we have been investing, and the growth is there, and we will keep investing moving forward.

Yes, Mark Bacaglia from Kepler. First question on the plan is, basically, it's almost flat on the licenses business, if you do the numbers correctly. So should I assume that there is a bit of pruning of a license portfolio, maybe of non-critical brands which were maybe signed before the plan?

Okay. No, go ahead. Sorry. Let me say the plan has the priority to take our home brand about 50%. I will start from there. The plan is to focus on a certain number of license where I think we can grow faster and But I think we need to look to our license portfolio in a more flexible way. So I think managing a portfolio licensing means that you need to manage this. So you live in and out. I think for me is the obsession is our own brand, our home brand, a certain number of strong license that we see we have huge opportunities and then manage the rest of the portfolio in a way that's is allowing us to be flexible. I think any license has a role, but it doesn't mean that we need to have necessary more license. We need to have the right license in the portfolio. That is the criteria. And the license needs to answer to a consumer need. That is, for me, consumer need or regional and geographical need. We don't need to have a license just to have a press release.

And I think to build on that, so in our 4% CAGR, we have not assumed that new licenses will contribute to that. They will be there to offset any potential exits or potential pruning that may happen over the period.

Okay. Second question is about 2023. So, and the question is, we have probably less inflationary pressure, maybe logistic costs will maybe be even lower in absolute terms than last year. You are trying to sell it a plant in Longarone. Let's assume that sales are flat, organic. Do you think that profitability can improve compared to 2022 or not?

The answer is yes, we believe so. I think on the one side is dynamics that you mentioned before that we already saw in the fourth quarter. So there is an easing of inflationary pressures. energy costs and transportation costs have come down. The counterbalancing that we've done last year in terms of pricing will annualize in this year. So I think that there is absolutely the ambition of us to continue expanding the gross margin. This will help us also expand the EBDA margin. While I said before, 23 and then 24 will be also years on investment. So to your hypothesis of a flat net sales scenario, yes, we would aim to continue expanding the operating margin.

And last question is a bit more tricky, and it's about the minority purchase commitment that you have, which was 70 million just a couple of years ago, and now it's 13. So one side obviously means that you will not spend this money probably in the next couple of years. On the other end, one could cross-read and say, okay, the acquisition were not performing as initially expected. So can you elaborate a bit on that?

Yeah, I mean, the two acquisitions are a little bit different. Let's be very transparent on that. I think blenders, I think it's delivering what the expectations were, a little bit with a different time schedule because 2022, as you know, the D2C award has not been the easy year yet. for the D2C, with the privacy, with the Facebook. So obviously the 2022 has been slowing down a little bit. What was the curve? So it's more a little bit of moving forward. Pre-very well, I mean, in a transparent way, it's slightly under the assumption. Also for some changes which has happened, that brand has a role in what we call affordable luxury. The assumption behind that was to use very, very much that brand in some retail chain. Some of the retail chain is not with us anymore. So obviously we need to take that into account. And this is why we will focus pre-variable more in North America. And also this is changing a little bit, which were the assumption on a pre-variable. But on blenders is more time It's more a time shift because after three years of growth, obviously the 2022 has not been an easy year for the overall D2C world. But to be honest, pre-variable is changing related to external choices, a little bit the role that was the original role, where on the other side, I think we remain absolutely positive behind blenders.

Okay, maybe I read, Angelo Gerd, I read a couple of questions from the webcast. One is from Adam Crocker, Logbook Investments. Just read as it comes. You exceeded the last midterm goal well ahead of schedule, but have had to raise capital along the way. Would there be any circumstances under this new plan where you might need additional capital? And then it relates a bit to the Domenico question before. Also, is it fair to assume similar conservatism is embedded in this plan that was in the prior midterm plan?

I think I can take the first question. I'll leave the second to Angelo. Obviously, when we started the previous plan, we were in a very different position as Asafilo. We were a different starting point. And when we did the acquisitions, it was necessary for us to finance them through equity. Now we have a new chapter. We ended 2021 with a very low level of leverage, with a very good structure of profitability, with a good plan, I think, to generate cash going forward. For what we have assumed to be included as M&A in the plan, i.e. the one-point contribution to the CAGR, I don't believe that a capital increase would be necessary. We have a new debt structure on the company right now with a longer maturity. We have 300 million in total of facilities. We have drawn 150 of those, so there is 150 million available facilities, and we have a starting leverage of 0.7, which obviously allows, together with with nearly 80 million of cash that we have on the balance sheet on top, allows us to fund acquisitions from within the firepower that we have. So with regards to what is in the plan.

For the last question, I mean, due to the fact that we are almost the same people which wrote the first plan, the approach has been exactly the same for this plan.

Okay, and the other question is from Cedric Rossi, Brian Garnier, a couple of questions. Three questions. Category, could you provide us with a growth roadmap by category? Do you expect to grow further your prescription frames or do you see more growth opportunities for your sport business? Maybe you can start with this.

Yeah, I think I start from prescription. I think that now we have a balanced portfolio. So I think we were, if you remember, we were 70 sun third prescription as Gerd was showing today. We are almost balanced. So, yes, I think that we will increase slightly the prescription percentage. But to be honest, I feel that now we have quite a balanced portfolio. So the discussion is not going to be more sunglasses prescription. I think we are there. Maybe we will increase a couple of points on the prescription, but it's not a big deal. We believe strongly on the sports. As I said, we have Smith. which I think it's an amazing brand with huge opportunity we have not been catching. And Smith is going to be catching steel opportunity in North America and mainly outside North America. Carrera, as Alberto was explaining, has three legs. One out of the three is what we call active, which is sport. So I think that Carrera will grow not only on the two legs, but also on the sport. And then we have Under Armour in our portfolio where we are still at the beginning. And then we have Blender. So absolutely the sports slash outdoor is the product category where I'm assuming we will have higher growth. In terms of category, what do you mean category? What does it mean category?

That was it.

Ah, okay. Fine. Good.

That was it. And then there is another one on sourcing. The COVID endemic showed that players with a big Asian sourcing were – a risk due to supply chain disruptions. With your Chinese sourcing growing, how do you mitigate that sourcing risk?

I think that, first of all, I have to say that we went through the storm of the COVID and we didn't have any disruption on our supply chain. This is very important. But taking the question on the broader perspective, obviously we are looking to scenarios to de-risk the pure Chinese supply chain. So it's a topic on the table. We are obviously working with other guys, but obviously it's an area where we are looking carefully how to differentiate or how to de-risk the pure supply chain sourcing. And later on, I think by end of 2023, 2024, I think that we can come with more concrete solutions out of that.

Okay, maybe we have partially already covered the last one on gross margin enhancement, the drivers of the 200 to 300 basis point growth margin in the plan.

So I think just to recap, one is the mix effect of where we aim to grow our portfolio. If we grow online especially, Those are much higher gross margin than in the wholesale business. The second driver is, as I said before, there will always be a component of pricing as we go forward. The third lever is innovation. So with the huge intensity of innovation that we have, every new collection that we launch is a new opportunity to position the gross margin at a higher point. And last but not least, cost optimization. remains a focus area. So in the procurement, nowadays, most of our cost of goods sold are clearly in the procurement area, as well as in the obsolescence, which is always a good thing to reduce in terms of waste.

A few other questions.

First, can you clarify the stock auction plan? How does it work when it would be given and the assessment of the the size, the stock price. And then on blenders, do you expect a recovery already in 2023 or it will take longer to see a rebound? And last question, just to give you, on the Longarone negotiation, what can you add on top of the press release?

Okay, let's, I will start with vendors. Let me say it like this. It's I mean, I think blenders, to be honest, as you saw, we saw growth again already in quarter four. Obviously, March, April are two fundamental months. We see good sign in Jan, Feb, but to be honest, we need to wait March. By sure, what we see is that Facebook is back. Last year, what we had with the privacy rules, Facebook hasn't been working at all. So, we were forced to reshuffle our investment. So we move a lot on TikTok and other media, where, by the way, TikTok with great, great results, but some digital television, I mean, the level of return was not so high. What we see, we see already starting from October, that Facebook is working better, and we see this trend keeping going in Gen and Feb. So I think that 2023, we should see the recovery. the recovery from blenders. Also because, as I was saying before, 2023 is the year in which we are going to have this combination between, you know, shop, read, monobrand, retail, and D2C. So I believe that in 2023, except that strange things happen, we will see already a recovery for blenders. By the way, we have also launched Carrera.com in North America recently. building on what Marcella was saying, really this digital hub in North America is the hub which is running all our D2Cs. So we have smithoptics.com, we have blenders.com, we have priviligo.com, and now we have launchcareeraworld.com. So that hub is there. So I think overall we see, we start seeing a D2C coming back. On the question on Longarone, obviously I cannot say anything more than what is in the press release. I think I'd just like to be clear that the choice of Longarone is related to an overcapacity which has become structured. So fundamentally for all the shift of the market, for all the shift of our portfolio, the topic is structured overcapacity that we feel we cannot overtake. So we are looking to how is it in English, transfer the asset to potential buyers. There are discussions going on, so I think that any update on Longarone will be done at least at company level in the right moment and in the right table, because there are tables with the institution, there are tables with the union, so you will give update once decisions are taken on the proper table. But the decision is we are going to transfer the asset, folding two lines, one preserved, I don't know how, and try to reinvents as much as possible the employee which worked there. The last one.

I think that's it. And just to complete the picture, in the 2027 goals that we have articulated economically, Longarona is expected to be out of our perimeter and solved by then. The third point is on the stock options. So our previous stock option plan expired in 2022. So basically we are going to propose to the shareholder meeting a new three-year stock option plan 2023 through 2025. There will be a maximum of 22 million options that will be assigned to the beneficiaries over several tranches. As the previous plan, you have a three-year vesting period, you have a five-year exercise period, and our remuneration committee has done an extensive benchmarking on the various criteria. We will request a reserve capital increase to support the stock option plan, but not for the full 22 million, but for half of it and anything else on top of that. that we assign will need to be managed with the share buyback program, which we also intend to go to the shareholder meeting with. But as you know, where the share price currently is, and considering the magnitude we are talking about, this is a very digestible amount of cash that Safido then will accordingly manage over the coming years.

There is a follow-up question from Cedric on Smita. If you can give some additional color on our expansion plan in Europe, since Europe is often perceived as a complex market by U.S. brands, will the expansion be managed by a Safilo team or in Europe or from America?

Yeah, I think thanks for the question. As I said, I mean, Smith has very strong position in North America. The expansion The expansion plan of SMEF is based on Australia and Europe. These are the two geographies where we have decided to expand. Australia is closer to North America, so I think the question is well posed there. For Europe, what we have set, we have set a team which sits in Padova, which is composed by sales, marketing, and trade marketing, and this team will work tight with the American team to adapt where needed the Smith proposition to the European market. The Smith team has been here two weeks, one month ago, to really do a sort of proper assessment on what Europe needs, because I think it's right. Europe, it's different. It's mainly Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Italy. So we have done an extensive work on what is needed to win in Europe. And this is the reason why we set up this team, which is fully in the Saffilo head office. And country by country, there's going to be a trade-off between everything is going to be run by Saffilo or is going to be by Saffilo sales team or is going to be a combination between Saffilo and Smith. But the local team, which sits in Padua, is going to run Europe exactly to be flexible to what Europe needs. There are some commonalities, but there are some differences from the American. But the European team is going to drive Europe, obviously in alignment with Portland. But the question is very well, is the right one.

Okay, there is a question also from Lauren Stokely from Aquero. Any plans on smart or audio glasses?

Look, I mean, let's be here, I'd like to be very clear. We are looking on this... area of business. We are looking seriously at that. My personal opinion that in this moment, at least in the timeframe of this plan, is not going to be something which is going to change dramatically the category. We are working on that. We are carefully looking at that. But I think the time horizon is longer than this plan. You will see that we will come out. I mean, there are specific projects on which we are working. but our angle is a little bit different from some of the propositions which are currently on the market. But I think it will become significant on a longer time horizon. An area where we are really thinking, working very, very hard is, I think maybe in one of the charts of Alberto, and maybe you should test later on, is this campaign with the QR code. So we believe more than more smart is also connecting in a smart way advertising with product experience. That is an area where we think there is more growth and that is the area where we are investing more.

Oriana Cardani, Intesa San Paolo. I've got a question on M&A. So can you give give us some color on time, potential target, and an idea of the target of financial leverage at the end of the plan, including M&A, that you included in the revenues projection. Thank you.

I'll leave the last one. To get on M&A, obviously, to be honest, it's already a while that we have quite a map on what we think are the right targets. which are fundamentally in three areas. North America as a geography, D2C as a channel, trendy optical as a category, if I like to summarize. So these are the three main areas. We are very clear what the potential targets are, but we're also very clear that, at least personally, I'm not ready to pay some of the multiple that someone thinks that they deserve. So, I mean, doing M&A is fundamental for Safilo. As you see, we are putting the numbers here, but there's going to be a right business plan, a right value out of what you can buy. So we are very clear, but obviously, as in the marriage, you like to, to take someone to marry, but you need to find also the lady or someone else that is decided to come with you. But obviously, we are very clear. Time-wise, M&A, you never know. It's an era where we are very, very, very, very focused, but we need to get reasonable, reasonable multiple. We are not ready to just to do an M&A to overspend. That's not the approach.

So in terms of size, what we would have assumed by 2027, considering that it contributes about a point to our growth, it's a size in the range of 60 to 80 million net sales. We would like to acquire, obviously, businesses that are already profitable. We have nothing in the short-term pipeline that, let me say, tomorrow we go out with an announcement, and we would probably have wanted to include that already today, like we did in 2019. I mean, it is very difficult, let me say, to judge exactly what will be the price. There's a pretty wide range in the market. But let me say that what we have assumed in this plan is something around that level of sales in terms of investment as well. Then what exactly we buy and how much exactly we will pay then depends on the individual transaction. The leverage, I mean, so right now we are at 0.7%. Let me say that, again, it depends on the target. I mean, a structural leverage for Safilo that we would be comfortable with as a maximum is around 2.5 times. If there are compelling synergies, maybe one could go higher in the first year, but the leverage has to get down to a reasonable level pretty quickly. So our strategy is not to become a highly leveraged company buying brands for huge multiples at which some of the recent deals have been transacted on. but we want to keep our leverage quite contained. So what I mentioned is really a maximum. So ideally, we would like to be well below that level structurally. And don't forget that we have the ambition every year to generate a positive free cash flow. So that should help counterbalance some of those effects.

Very last question. So in the past, working capital has been a drag on cash generation including 2022. So what has been your assumption over the planned period?

So 2022, indeed, we had a buildup of working capital. As I was saying before, receivables and inventories have been the key drivers, also payables to a lesser degree because of the mix in the expenses. So going forward, I think, I mean, we've obviously had a couple of years of very fast growth. We had a quite, let me say, strong normalization of the external environment. So inventory levels post-COVID, pre-COVID, they have to be replenished, and things have moved to other different spaces. So I expect that the percentage of net working capital is going to come down in the coming years. Net working capital should be absorbing cash as we are growing, but let me say underproportionately to the level of sales. On the inventory, Angela was mentioning our interventions on data and analytics and better demand planning processes that we are seeing, and we're seeing the results already now. On the receivables, to be honest with you, I don't expect any fundamental changes to trade terms or to DSOs, and I'm not concerned with what we're seeing. It's just a matter of phasing of invoicing and collection, so bad debt levels are historically low. Customers are paying, so that is just some normalization.

One question from Roberto Casoni, Autos Capital. Back to the expectation of the market growing 3%. Stripping out the M&A of 1%, we are basically in line with the market, so there are no market share gain, despite the opportunities for growth that we mentioned. So he's asking to elaborate a bit more on the level of prudence embedded in the top line assumptions?

Yeah, I think as I was saying, this 3%, I think it's in our assumption is not going to be linear as our 4% as a card starts from 2022. In other words, we don't know exactly what the growth of the market is going to be on the 2023 and then clear this change, how you read the growth and then how you read the market share. Obviously, our aim is to grow is to grow market share. Question is, what these 3-4%, how is going to be impacted by the 2023? And to be honest, today, we are prudent on the 2023. But the aim is by sure to gain market share. By the way, in 2022, we know, we have the data, we have been gaining market share in Europe. So the aim is always to continue to do that. But the CAG on S2 is strongly influenced by The 2023, and to be honest, at least this is my perception, is too early to really judge what's going to be the dynamic of the 2023. We need to have at least quarter one, at least March, April, to have a little bit better view on how the 2023 is going to look like. And our style is not overshoot. Our style is work, deliver, move on. And if there are opportunities, be reassured, we will not leave opportunities on the market by sure not. But this will be too early. We need to, I know, but we need to have a little bit of passion to see what's happening in this 2023.

And just a follow-up from Roberto, just an explanation why the stock option plan is set for 2025 and the plan for 2027?

I mean, this is most of our stock option plans. They have a three-year validity. So we have chosen that horizon again this time. And then I think in 2025, there will be again an opportunity to assess which is the best way to continue remunerating the management, whether that is stock options or whether there is another set of tools, because also here clearly the market evolves, the benchmark evolves. So to be not too static for too long, we chose again a three-year horizon.

Maybe the last question from the webcast is by Anthony Zanier. Amiral Justion is asking if in the 15, 20 million CAPEX guidance, we include the leases CAPEX. Yes.

No, so this is not the leases. The leases is a separate line in the investment, so this is really capital expenditures mostly on the molds and tools for the new models, for the new collections that we produce each year, a little bit of industrial CapEx that we have in the remaining factories, and then any IT projects which are not anymore cloud-based, but obviously the vast majority in the modern world is going on cloud.

Okay, I think we can close here the Q&A session.

Thanks very much. Thanks for all present here. Thanks to the people which are connected, and thanks for your question. And, yeah, thanks. I think it's time for a nice coffee for the one which are here and a virtual coffee for the one which are connected. Enjoy. Thanks very much. Thanks.