Birkenstock Holding plc Ordinary Shares

Good morning and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Birkenstock's first quarter and fiscal 2026 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'd like to ask a question, please press Start 1 to raise your hand. The company allocated 45 minutes in total to 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 Birkenstock Group, and Ivica Krolos, Chief Financial Officer of Birkenstock Group. Alexander Hoff, VP of Global Finance, will join us for Q&A. As a reminder, we pre-announced certain first quarter results in conjunction with our Capital Markets Day on January 28th. On this occasion, we took a deep dive into our business model and our growth strategy for the next three years, combined with a Q&A session, which covered a wide variety of topics. For those of you who are not able to attend our Capital Markets Day or follow it via live stream, the presentation materials and replay are available on our Investor Relations website at birkenstock-holding.com. Today we are reporting the financial results for our fiscal first quarter ended December 31st, 2025. You may find the press release and a supplemental presentation connected to today's discussion on our investor relations website at birkenstock-holding.com. Results have also been filed on Form 6K with the SEC. We would like to remind you that some of the information provided during this 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. 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 financial information prepared and presented in accordance with IFRS. Reconciliations of non-IFRS measures to IFRS measures can be found in this morning's press release and in our SEC filings. Now I'll turn it over to Oliver.

Good morning, everybody. It was great seeing you in New York two weeks ago. Just to recap some key points from the day. We believe we are one-of-a-kind, purpose-driven brand with a huge runway ahead. Our unique business model is designed to deliver resilience with sustained long-term top-line growth, industry-leading margins, and a strong free cash flow. Over the next three years, we expect to continue to deliver 13 to 15% top-line growth in constant currency and 30% plus EBITDA margins in an environment that has substantially changed since our IPO. Why are we so confident in our growth potential? Our total addressable market includes every Homo sapiens sapiens. That provides a very long runway for global growth. The three year growth algo of 13 to 15% in constant currency reflects our commitment to manage the business with discipline by geography, channel and product. By being vertically integrated, we are capacity constrained by design. So to grow our business profitably, We are committed to maximize profitability per pair while protecting brand equity. The Americas, our largest segment, continues to grow double-digit. Even in our most developed market, the US, we sell only 45,000 to 50,000 pairs per million people, or roughly 5% penetration. So there is still substantial room for more growth. As you know, our margins in the US face headwinds from additional tariffs and the weaker dollar. However, our resilient business model allows us to steer growth between geographies to optimize margins under this new reality. In EMEA, our highest margin segment, markets like Germany, Denmark and Austria have reached penetration levels similar to the US. and still generate double-digit growth. But we are under-penetrated in other markets like France, Spain, UK and the GCC. So we see even stronger growth potential in these countries and very high margins. Finally, the largest opportunity for long-term growth remains in APEC countries such as China, Japan, South Korea and India. where we are highly under-penetrated, but realize strong margins and some of our highest ASPs. We will steer APEC growth at double the pace of the other segments over the next three years. This means we will double our APEC revenue by 2028. For the foreseeable future, we expect B2B growth will continue to outpace B2C growth. But we are working to balance channel growth and strengthen our DTC business. B2B growth is driven by the trend towards in-person shopping. We are investing in our own retail to capture more of this in-person demand and promote newness. In online, which accounted for 80% of our DTC revenue last year, we are not sitting on our hands. We are transforming our capabilities to convert more of the lifetime value of the brand fan to our e-commerce business. We do this all within the context of our vertically integrated supply chain and manufacturing capabilities. Our supply chain will deliver the unit growth required to achieve our three-year targets. Now on the quarterly results. We delivered again a strong quarter with revenues of €402 million, up 11% on a reported basis and 18% in constant currency, well above our 13% to 15% full-year guidance. We saw strong demand and brand momentum during the important holiday shopping season. As expected, our B2B business outperformed B2C during the quarter. B2B was up 24% in constant currency, while DTC was up 12%. As you know, over 90% of the B2B growth comes from within existing doors. We tightly manage our distribution as relative scarcity and channel health remain top priorities for us. We will never compromise on our pull model. The ultimate truth for the brand health is sell-through at full price, and that remains very high, over 90%. We continue to deliver as promised in our wide space opportunities. In APEC, we grew revenues 37% in constant currency, more than double the pace of growth of the Americas and the Neons. In all retail, we added nine new stores, ending the quarter with 106 stores. We are well on the way to deliver the 40 stores we promised for this fiscal year. This will allow us to capture more in-person shopping demand and younger shoppers within our own DTC business. It also allows us to showcase the full range of our collection, newness and special editions not available in B2B. The close-toe share of revenue reached close to 60% of revenue during the first quarter, which is seasonally the highest quarter for our close-toe business. We saw very strong sales in clocks, including the Boston, a category-defining hero silhouette celebrating its 50th birthday this year. We also saw strength in other clock silhouettes, such as Naples and the Lutry. we are successfully developing the brand beyond sandals, making it a true four-season brand. I will now turn it over to Ivic to discuss our financial results and outlook in more detail.