Birkenstock Holding plc Ordinary Shares

Good morning, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Birkenstock fourth quarter and fiscal 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. If you have dialed in to today's call, please press star 9 to raise your hand, and star six to unmute. The company has allocated 60 minutes in total for this conference call. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded. I now turn the call over to Megan Kulik, Director of Investor Relations.

Hello, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. On the call are Oliver Reichert, Director of Birkenstock Holding PLC and Chief Executive Officer of the Birkenstock Group, and Evita Krolo, Chief Financial Officer of the Birkenstock Group. Niko Boyov, President of EMEA, Klaus Baumann, Chief Sales Officer, and Alexander Hoff, Vice President of Global Finance, will join us for the Q&A. Today we are reporting the results for our fiscal fourth quarter and full year ended September 30th, 2025. You may find the press release and supplemental presentation connected to today's discussion on our investor relations website at birkenstock-holding.com. The company's annual report for the year ended 30 September 2025 on Form 20F has been filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and has also been posted to our website. We would like to remind you that some of the information provided during today's call is forward-looking and accordingly is subject to the safe harbor provisions of federal securities laws. These statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks, uncertainties, and assumptions are detailed in this morning's press release, as well as in our filings with the SEC, which can be found on our website at birkenstock-holding.com. We undertake no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements or information except as required by law. We will reference certain non-IFRS financial information. We use non-IFRS measures as we believe they represent the operational performance and underlying results of our business more accurately. The presentation of this non-IFRS financial information is not intended to be considered by itself or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with IFRS. Reconciliations of IFRS to non-IFRS measures can be found in this morning's press release and in our SEC filings. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Oliver.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. As we enter year three as a public company, I would like to spend a few moments to highlight our accomplishments since our IPO in 2023. We have delivered strong double-digit top-line growth in constant currency and generated a consistent 30% plus EBITDA margin without compromising on our disciplined engineered distribution. We made significant progress in unlocking our wide space potentials. We deepened our retail footprint and doubled our own store fleet to 97 stores. We have grown our APEC business at an average rate of 36% per year. And we have significantly increased closed-door share of business by 10 percentage points to 38%. We generated significant cash flow allowing us to deliver from 3.3 times to 1.5 times while investing over 150 million euros into our production capacity and buying back 200 million dollars in shares. We achieved all this in an environmental phase by fundamental changes in global tariff and international trade. A war in the Ukraine an energy crisis, and a significant decline in the US dollar. Even for a brand like ours, with a history spanning two and a half centuries, these are unusual times. As our results show, we have navigated them consistently and successfully. Our brand delivers growth since 250 years. Our performance during these unusual times proved the resilience of our beloved brand. Our healthy brand momentum continued in the fourth quarter. We are very proud to report strong results for our fiscal year 2025, which came in ahead of our guidance. We delivered full-year revenue growth of 18% in constant currency above the 15% to 17% range we provided at the beginning of the year. We reached 2.1 billion euros in revenue, the best year in our history. We grew double digits in every segment and channel. And we improved profitability. Gross margin was up 30 basis points to 59.1%. Adjusted EBITDA margin was up 100 basis points to 31.8%. Meeting the high end of our target. Most importantly, we accomplished this in the face of significant tariff and currency pressures. Demand for our brand remains very strong across all segments, categories and channels. We sold over 38 million pairs in fiscal 25, up over 12%. ASP was up 5% in constant currency, supported by targeted price actions and a higher share of premium products, such as closed-toe shoes and leather executions. We are winning in both B2B and D2C, gaining shelf space and taking share. Bittenstock had a very strong back-to-school season, with retail sales at our top 10 partners increasing over 20% year-over-year. Importantly, we see a continuation of this momentum during the important holiday season, and over 90% of the growth in B2B came from within existing doors. We remain committed to maintaining relative scarcity and managing tightly our distribution growth. Full-price realization, the ultimate indicator for brand health and demand, remains over 90%. This shows incredible brand strength in a market faced with significant discounting by others. We delivered as promised in fiscal 2025 in our wide space growth opportunities. In own retail, we added 30 new stores, ending the year with 97 stores and more than doubling our own store fleet since the IPO. The new stores are performing ahead of our expectations in terms of productivity and return of cupboards. We plan to open about 40 new stores in 2026, putting us well on track to reach our 150 store target ahead of schedule. This will allow us to capture more in-person shopping demand and younger shoppers within our own DTC business and allows us to showcase the full range of our collection. Close-toe share of revenue increased by 500 basis points year-over-year to reach 38% for the year, supporting continued ASP growth. Ten of our top 20 silhouettes in 2025 were close-toe. The Boston, a category-defining hero silhouette which turns 50 years in 26, continues to lead the Glocks category, a category like sandals we believe we own. At the same time, non-Boston closed-door silhouettes grew over 30%. Finally, our third white space, APEC, grew 34% in constant currency, approximately double the pace of the more mature markets. APEC increased to 11% share of global revenue and the APEC segment has the highest ASP. We expect to continue to steer APEC growth at double the speed of the other segments. Our growth is only limited by our production capacity and disciplined distribution. We, as many other brands did, saw a continued shift toward in-person shopping, especially in the important Gen Z group. This consumer most often shops in the multi-brand curated retail environment, which is supported by our B2B channel. We are a consumer-centric brand in its core meaning. Our desire is to be where the customer is, reach first-time users who need to touch and feel the product and transform them into brand fans for a lifetime. This strong wholesale growth, driven by the younger demographic, which we expect to continue, requires us to produce more pairs in a situation where we are already capacity constrained. At the same time, the strongest demand we see is for our premium executions, which require even more production minutes. The combination of more wholesale and more premium execution is creating additional pressure on our vertically integrated supply chain. We need to manage growth in our production responsibly. This is why we are steering towards a mid-teens pace of growth for fiscal 26. I will now turn it over to Vivica to discuss our financial results and outlook for 26 in more detail.