Ermenegildo Zegna N.V. Ordinary Shares

Good morning, good afternoon everyone. Please note that today's material and presentation are available under our zaniagroup.com website. Joining us today, the Amenogildo Zania Group leadership team. Before we begin, I need to point out that we will make certain forward-looking statements during today's call. Our actual results may be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Also, statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those described in our SEC filings. Please refer to the forward-looking statements cautionary statement included at page 2 of today's presentation. I'll now hand over to Gildo Zegna, Group Chairman and CEO.

Good morning and good afternoon, and thank you for joining today's conference call on a Gildo Zegna Group H1-24 result. Before we speak about the numbers, let me make some comments on the sector and our strategy, and then I'll lead Gianluca to go in details through our results. So far, 2024 has been challenging around the world, and that caused many industries, including ours. The luxury sector is experiencing a deep normalization phase. These cycles happen. We have been through them before in our more than 100 years of history. and I know they might happen again in the future. It is our job to deal with them with clear decisions and sharp actions, not only to handle the current situation, but also, if possible, to come out stronger. This is what we did during COVID when we launched the One Brand Strategy for Xenia. This is what we are doing now with some important action for all our brands. At Xenia, we are doubling down on the One Brand Strategy. We are evolving our communication from a broad audience approach to a targeted audience approach to engage deeper with our community of value customers. We are evolving our clan telling from relation into experience. And we are evolving our collections from lifestyle to icons, as we did with our Triple Stitch shoe collection. We did here in New York the second chapter after we finished Shanghai. It is a clear example of the direction we've taken. Two weeks ago, we celebrated with an immersive experience the journey that our founder, my grandfather, took in 1938 aboard the ocean liner Rex to reach New York City to meet the Italian traders and started our group's American global expansion. Villagia New York was designed to celebrate genius heritage through a series of innovative invite-only on-site events. And during the five days, we welcomed in our villa existing and prospecting important clients from the whole America, also by having a team closely and effectively collaborating with the local team. We presented through the product, available only to the invited guests. And I must say it was a great success, exceeding the team and my own expectation, clearly indicating once more that we are walking on the right path. Alongside this event, we presented our full 24 capsule collection worldwide. introducing the Iconte jacket and iconic garment inspired by the wardrobe of Benedetto, our founder himself. Villa Zegna chapters will continue in 2025 with new important locations and events around the world. But not only Villa Zegna. Next year, we will also inaugurate our third Salotto Zegna, the best corner of New York. Our Salotto will be a permanent, private room where our clients will feel to be at home and to experience once more the unique legacy of Zegna brand. Moving to Tom Brown, with Rodrigo Bazan, the CEO, and with Tom himself, we are making significant changes and are reinforcing the managing team to strengthen the organization. This is the case not only in China, where the brand is experiencing some challenges, but also at headquarter level and in other regions. New leadership in marketing has been appointed in May, and new leadership in merchandising arrives before year-end. The team is working on communicating both the creativity, but also the commercial range of products the brand has successfully developed in the past year. From fall of 2024, we start to see the marketing of product to complement the increase in brand awareness. And the success of the women business of the seasonal collections and accessories, in particular in Japan and Korea, are early signs that we are taking the right actions. With a network of more than 100 doors, we are focusing on strengthening the local teams in China and North America, as we have done in Japan and Korea in previous years. And the results clearly show so. And we have also secured some important flagship locations to be opened in the forthcoming months, that is, New City, LA, and Tokyo. We continue to balance the channel mix, and at the same time, our all-state streamlining is ongoing. Just a small comment on the Tom Brown and Adidas case. Given that, after the U.S., recently also the German court ruled in favor of Tom Brown, a great achievement for the team and a bigger reward of their efforts. I believe 2024 will remain challenging for the brand, but I also believe that With Tom Brown's management, we are taking the right steps to prepare a healthy BTC growth trajectory in 2025 and beyond. Last, but by no means least, the new Tom Ford Creative Director. As you know, along with Hale State Loderre Corporation, we announced that Heider Ackermann is the new Creative Director for Tom Ford. Heider's deep knowledge of the luxury goods sector His superior creativity and wide experience in the luxury ready-to-wear for both men and women makes him the perfect fit to take the lead on Tom Ford fashion. I'm strongly confident that with his contribution, we will deliver on our long-term ambition. But before I close, I also want to mention our filiera. 2024 has been so far impacted by the over-the-top demand for luxury ready-to-wear. Our cutting edge in innovation and high-quality production capacity makes our platform more resilient and a unique advantage for this group. We continue to invest in our filiera, and for this reason, we fully confirm the important project of a new Italian shoe and leather accessory plant in Parma, Italy, to strengthen our internal production in leather. These are all important long-term projects for the group. To pursue them, we will continue on selectively investing in our brand, in talents, in our organization, and in the retail network. Even if these would cause short-term sacrifices, they are critical to support our long-term ambition. Let me close with some observations from my recent visit to China, Japan, United States, and Canada. I do believe that we all record that the situation remains difficult. August's performance has been even more challenging, and 2025 is expected to remain uncertain. But during my trips, I've been reassured by what I've seen, whether when visiting our stores or in the meeting with landlords and with main wholesale partners. The energy of our people and the trust from our partners for all our three brands make me confident about the future and that we have the correct strategy to unleash their untapped growth potential. Thank you, and now let me turn over to Gianluca. Gianluca, you're up.

Thank you, Gildo. Good afternoon, everybody. Let me move to page eight of the presentation, where you find the first task 24 results key highlights. The preliminary revenues for H124 were already disclosed at the end of July, so they confirmed, and I will not comment much further on that. I JUST REMIND YOU THAT IN THE SEMESTER, WE REPORTED 6% GROWTH, YEAR-ON-YEAR GROWTH, DRIVEN BY ZENIA BRAND AND BY THE CONSOLIDATION OF TOM FORD FASHION THAT, AS YOU KNOW, ENTERED IN OUR PERIMETER LAST YEAR ON APRIL 29, 2023. THEREFORE, IN ALL THE RESULTS YOU SEE TODAY IN THIS PRESENTATION, TOM FORD FASHION PERFORMANCE COMPARES SIX MONTHS CONSOLIDATED THIS YEAR VERSUS a two months and two days consolidated year. In the first semester of 24, the group generated 637 million of gross profit, 81 million of adjusted EBIT, 31 million of profit intended as net profit. I will not add many comments at this point since in the next pages we will go more in detail on the dynamics and analysis of this result. So let's move to page nine. to deep dive on the main metrics of our P&L, starting with gross profit. In H1 of this year, gross profit rose by 10 percentage points to 637 million euros, with a margin of 66.4% on the revenues. The 220 basis points improvement from H1 of last year has been driven mostly by two factors. First, a better channel mix, given that the DTC revenues generated this year 76% of branded revenues, vis-a-vis 72% a year ago. And as you all know, DTC gross margin is longer than the wholesale one. And second factor is a better inventory management. Channel mix, the first of the two factors, is estimated to justify around half of the gross profit margin, proven being the other 50% driven by the inventory side. I would also remind you that H-124 cost of sales includes still 3 million euros from the PPA purchase price allocation related charges from the Tom Ford Fashion Consolidation. The absolute amount is similar to the one that we have booked in the first half of last year, which was 4 million. And this one of this year, the 3 million of this year, is the last tranche of the PPA charges from the acquisition of Tom Ford business, namely Tom Ford International, that is the only company that owns the 20 plus 10 year license agreement on the Tom Ford fashion business. Moving now to SG&A. Selling general administrative in H1 of this year reached 498 million euro. with a 51.8% incidence of revenues compared to 46 last year. Dipping now down on this increase in terms of SG&A incidence over revenues, I would like to underline two factors. First, the Tom Ford consolidation contributed to almost half of the incidence increase. Tom Ford Fashion SG&A incidence is affected on one side by the royalty fees that Tom Ford Fashion pays to a seller. and by the amortization of the right of use of the license agreement over the 20 plus 10 years. This amortization is roughly 1.7 million in six months, 3.4 million over a year. And on the other side, the other factor affecting the incidents is the step up within Tom Ford fashion of organization and systems after we took over the business. The second relevant item that affects the H&A group incidents is the impact deriving from brand expansion initiatives, both in terms of business structure and the newly opened stores, especially on the Zegna and Tom Brown side, which includes, I remind you, also the conversion of Korean monobrand stores to DDC. Also, given the current environment, we observed that some of the stores newly opened is experiencing a slower ramp up to their full potential. Analyzing now the marketing expenses. Marketing expenses increased to 7% of revenues this semester, compared to 5.3% in H1 of last year. As already anticipated, this increase is largely linked to a different timing in the advertising cost, given that in H1-24, the group and Zegna Brand in particular, at many events concentrated in the first six months of this year. For instance, the Aussie Xenia takeover in Milan, Villa Xenia in Shanghai, de-amplification that was very intense around the second skin collection launch, and the fashion show of Tom Ford, which last year did not exist in our perimeter. Let's now move to page 10 of the presentation where we report the adjusted EBIT for the group and by segment. As you know, the main performance metric used by the management to analyze the economic performance of the business at group and at segment level is the adjusted EBIT and its related adjusted EBIT margin. You can find all the reconciliation in the appendix of the presentation, and I remind that the difference between the adjusted EBIT and the operating profit reported in the P&L page in the P&L page at page 11 relates to adjustments that do not impact our underlying operating activities and regarding this six months are entirely related to SG&A expenses. As I already mentioned, in H1, our adjusted EBIT reached 81 million, down 33% compared to H1 of last year. This performance has been impacted namely by the top line decline at Tom Brown, by the costs at Tom Ford Fashion to build up the organization and the team of talent, and by higher concentration of costs, especially in marketing, in the first six months of the year. Opposite to last year, where we generated close to 55% of full year adjusted EBIT in H1 and 45 in H2, I think that this year, the balance across the two semesters will be more skewed towards the second half of the year. Let's now look at our results by segment. Zegna segments that, as you know, include Zegna brands, the textile division and third-party brands, generated 12.8% margin vis-à-vis 15.5% in H1 of last year. The difference in the margin between the two six-month periods is largely related to three aspects. First, the above-mentioned concentration of marketing cost in the first half of this year, while last year it was much more skewed into the second part of the year. Selected business structures to set up, such as, as an example, the themes of personalization, make-to-measure CRM, correlated activities like the Xenia Brand Retail Summit with Wiel in the Q1 of this year. Third factor was the As I already mentioned, that few newly opened or remodeled stores, so non-com stores, are experiencing a slower ramp up to their full potential. As already highlighted, some brown adjusted EBIT margin performance has been determined by the decrease in revenues, only partially offset by the increase in gross profit margin driven by channel mix and better inventory management, therefore lower obsolescence accrual. Going to Tom Ford, Tom Ford recorded €12 million in negative results. This result reflects two things. First, the investment the company deserves to make in talent, in organization, at the quarter and market level, and also in terms of compliance to a public entity requirement. Second, our strategic decision to continue investing on Tom Ford fashion brand and retail, even if top line is performing below the initial expectations. Let me also repeat here what I have already said. Each one of Tom Ford fashion performance is not comparable to the numbers we have seen in the first half of last year because the latter reflects only two months consolidation and even more because the first two months after the acquisition did not reflect many of the investments that we started making later on. I know that it is difficult for you to estimate how Tom Ford Fashion Performance will evolve through the year, but let me just say here that I do not expect H1 loss to double. Moving to page 11, you can see here summarized our reported income statement for H1 and H2. of the two years. Let me make here two comments. First, on the financial expenses line, which declined from 44.6 million euro to 29 million euro this year. This expense, financial expense reduction, largely reflects the cost that we had incurred at the beginning of last year for the warrant reductions, whose cost was higher, slightly over 20 million euro. On the tax rate, you see an implicit slight increase in the tax rate in H1 of this year. For the full year, to help you navigate through the year, I confirm what we already said in April. So we expect the normal tax rate to be more in the region of 30%. Let me now move to page 12, where we comment on CapEx and trade working capital. The cash out for CAPEX in H1 reached €60 million, over 6% of revenues. Of this €60 million, about 55% relates to store network, opening and remodeling, and the remaining to investments in production, including the land for the shoe factory that Gildo mentioned that we are going to build close to Parma and in IT systems and digital applications. as we already anticipated, 24 and 35 are going to be important years for investment in key projects that we decided not to postpone because they are fundamental to pursue our long-term ambitions. Starting from the shoe factory where we are going to in-house at least 50% of the Zegna shoe production. And second, because selectively, we will continue to invest in store network to open some key location for our brands. As already anticipated, in 24 and also 25, we expect CapEx to be slightly above 6% on revenues. Trade working capital reached 476 million euro at the end of June, or 24% on revenues. Trade working capital has remained fairly stable versus June of last year, thanks to a better inventory management, stable trade receivables, also as a consequence of some conversion of wholesale store-in-store into directly operated concessions. Looking at page 13, we look at the free cash flow. Like we just commented, the negative 7 million free cash flow was mainly due to the above-mentioned capex trend, the 60 million cash out related to capex. Final page. Net financial indebtedness, I would like here to outline the 24 million euro of cash outflows related to the acquisition of a 2% stake in Tom Brown in relation to a contractually defined put option, 15 million euro related to the acquisition of the Korean businesses in Zainia and Tom Brown. As a result of this, our net financial position at the end of June was equal to 66 million of net debt versus 11 million of net debt at the end of December. I will finish here my presentation to leave space to your questions.

Thank you. Operator, can you open up to the Q&A?

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question today, please do so now by pressing Start followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind or you feel like your question has already been answered, you can remove yourself from the queue by pressing Start followed by 2. Our first question today comes from the line of Anthony Charfagy with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead, Anthony.

Yeah, thank you. Good morning. It's Anthony Charfagy from BNP Paribas. I hope you're doing well. I have two questions, please. So the first one would be on China trading. If you can give us some comment how it was during the summer in July and August. And if you have early indication... of September. And my second question would still be in terms of top line. So your mid-term target that you laid out last December was calling for 10% top line CAGR and 20% EBIT CAGR with 2023 base. So just wanted to know if this still holds, so you expect a rebound and if we can have this rebound in H2 or in 2025. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Anthony. On China, I'll ask Gianluca to answer, and then on the mid-term target, I'll ask Gildo to answer for you. Thank you. We are fine, actually. Sorry, you started your question asking how we are doing, so thank you so much.

No, hi, Anthony.

So China, we are still seeing the same trajectory of challenging and volatile environment. So July and August has not been, we have not seen an inflection point. on China so far.

Let me add one piece of information. I was in China two weeks ago and I met all major landlords. Surely the situation remains challenging for almost everybody. I would say they all are still positive on the mid-term, as we are. But, you know, it's a, I would say, kind of a normalization process of consumption. And everybody is watching closely the dynamic. But from our standpoint, we have the full trust of landlords. We have a good traction by our potential and loyal customer. And I think that the event of Villa Zenia in Shanghai a few months ago was approved. And so we are watching the situation with a positive mind. And I think that we will be still be careful on 2025, hoping that the situation can evolve rapidly.

Yes, maybe I'll interrupt.

Within the quarter, if we need to give you a flavor within the quarter, August worse than July.

Yes.

Versus August, we have seen soft traffic, soft demand. So softer than July, August.

And also by brand, clearly Tom Brown in August was softer.

Yeah, I would say, yes. I would say that Zegna is holding up better than Tom Brown. And I think Tom Ford, I mean, is a small, you know, Potential, not more potential, I mean, it's more reality. We still have big potential. We just opened a new store in the China world, and we will be watching the development of that very carefully. But we are still a bit on the mid-term, and we will not slow down our plan on China. In terms of targets, you asked Anthony about targets. whether the target of the center are confirmed. I must be fair to you that there is no doubt that 24 has turned to be below our initial expectation. These are facts, both for internal and macro reasons. And in particular, the whole sector is facing a similar situation. And this, I think, goes beyond one country. I think that is a macro situation. However, as anticipated for China, our ambitions are unchanged and it could possibly take a bit longer, but we are committed to delivering our promises.

Okay, thank you. It's very helpful. Maybe I have just one follow-up on China and maybe to talk a bit about margins. So your gross margin... up to 120 bps, which is a nice surprise. I mean, you mentioned, Gianluca, that half of it was on channel mix and the other half on inventory management. But could you quantify maybe the impact of China in the regional mix? Was it a drag? And maybe then the magnitude of the of the inventory boost, if you can quantify it. Thank you.

We don't disclose the gross margin by country. So, of course, it's no surprise. China is the longest margin in the industry. So, of course, having China soft is not helping. But despite this, we have been able to defend our gross profit. So, it means that the actions on prices, the actions on inventory were able to more than offset the fact that the longest country in terms of margin has not been positive. So I think we're not going to disclose the margin by country because we have never done so. But definitely you point out the point that we read it as a positive thing. The fact that the brands were able to make a further step in terms of margin, and that was one of, and still is one of the areas where we want to recover. Vis-a-vis some peers, it's having a stronger margin, knowing that, of course, we have part of our business is B2B, so it's not really like for like, the comparison of our first margin, but compared to last year, we were able to increase, and this despite, as you correctly pointed out, the fact that China went behind, and so I think it's an indication that our initial margin, the brand power of our brands is sustaining the prices, although we have little by little increased the prices. At this point, maybe touching also point that you might ask or someone else, I don't think at this point we still have huge price increases on a like-for-like to be done. As we have already said, we want to manage prices to offset costs and to offset currencies, which we have been doing. We expect still to have positive input from MIPS, because we are increasing even more, and the current drop to of Il Conte is an example. We are more and more creating products, iconic products at high price point. The fact that we are seeing recognition of customers means that we are in the right direction as you have mentioned.

I think that, let me just say something about the importance of the merchandise mix. I think that for any brand, it becomes key. What you drop in the market and the timing of the drop. and we see the importance of a continual product. However, there is a risk that the brand relies too much on continual products and not enough on innovative products. So we've seen that the drug, too, that was delivered after the summer had a positive effect across the world. So this is a... a push for us to continue with this new strategy, not only in Zainia, but also in the other two brands. Because we see that when you come out with a unit belonging to your brand, delivered well in the store to our customer, potentially a new customer, you get a reaction. Whether it's China, the United States, or wherever. So, I think that since fall-winter was the first drop strategy season, we confirmed the validity of that strategy together with the validity of the continuity program, replenishment program, that however has to be moderated in order to leave more room for newness. And I think that we are gearing up the entire supply chain, the filiera, you know, the material, the fabric, the yarn becoming extremely important. We are ready to unveil a couple of new projects that we need to have early next season and we think that on the upper end of our scale and we think that those projects will be really coming out at the right moment. So the customer is there and is able to react provided you come out with newness. And that's, we see it across the board.

Okay, thank you very much. Very helpful.

Thank you, Anthony. And we can move to the second question, or set of questions, actually. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Louisa Singlehurst with Goldman Sachs. Louisa, please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Gildo, Jean-Luc, Paola, thanks for taking my questions. Just one quick follow-up on China, just to clarify. Are there any changes in terms of the plans for stores, or have you delayed any kind of store rollouts or refurbishments for the time being, just to check that there's nothing happening medium term? And then my main question is actually in regards to the EBIT and the profitability. Obviously, a really good gross margin expansion. Can we expect that to hold just in terms of gross margin in the second half? Are there any kind of factual in terms of like currency, et cetera, headwinds that we should be considering in the second half. And when we think about the underlying OPEX, the OPEX cost growth looked as though it's around 20% in the first half, obviously accelerated with Tom Ford. But can you help us think about the underlying inflation and the outlook for the second half and if there's any cost-saving activity to consider and to help protect the margin in a tougher macro environment? Thank you.

Yeah, I picked the first one in China. At least in 24, we let it go. And so we had a few projects, a few opening, a few, you know, refurnishment of stores, and so we did them, and I think that we are happy to have done it. For 25, we are reconsidering certain doors, whether to, you know, confirm them or to postpone them. And there is a potential study to consolidate some doors. Maybe in certain markets we have too many doors and maybe we have to consolidate. And so we are working on a plan that doesn't stop, if you want, the development of our brand in China, but maybe consolidating some doors and rebalancing, if you want, the the small, with the mid, with the big size doors that would help. I'll just make an example. In Europe, we had a good traction with some resort doors. You know, we have opened smaller doors and this is quite new to us. And so, the testing we are doing in some areas could be helpful to the others. I mean, another example, Villa Zegna, Villa Zegna in South Virginia. have been tested, will be tested in New York. And we will try to take the best out of it. So there could be maybe fewer or less doors and maybe an addition, a few addition of Salotto Zegna to current doors in major market that can make our offer even more precious and even more upper luxury than the one we have in line with the personalization approach of our brand, which is going to be very effective. And the same experience can hold true for Tom Ford and Tom Brown. What Rodrigo and Tom are doing in Tom Brown with the Couture events, also with the help of our made-to-measure service in the in the most commercial part of the collection is proven to be effective. Likewise applies to Tom Ford. To Tom Ford, we have given them the maximum, the best of our made-to-measure organization, and they see the event, the organizing meant, and proven to be very effective, in particular in the United States. I think there is an important cross-utilization also among brands in terms of product, in terms of what is right and what is less right in order to foster growth for each of the three brands regardless of the geography.

Thank you, Luisa. And for the second one, I leave to Gianluca.

So the question was on the EBIT.

It was on gross margin. If what we have seen in the first part, Luisa, correct me if I'm wrong, but is it something that we can project in the second part of the year? And actually there was some differences. And on the office. And then on the office, yes.

So Luisa is right. On the gross margin, the number that we are publishing which is between 66 and 67 percent is something we don't see a major element that can move the needle up or down that i called out already but it's not material there is a 3 million ppa that is not recurring for the right i'm not calling out anything that is material that might move the needle for instance also some currencies we are already covered on the flow winter 24, so from an edging perspective. So I think we are in good shape to bring the same gross profit margin through the year. In terms of OPEX year, I would decouple marketing from SG&A. In marketing, the incidence in the first half has been 7%. Last year, Full year, the incidence was more close to six. And so our full year will be closer to the six rather than 7%. And that's exactly the point that we mentioned before. So we have a balance of expenses in marketing that is much more weighted on the first half. But the full year will go back to an incidence that is closer to the one-off. In terms of SG&A, I don't call out any major trajectory of change compared to last year. Of course, we are reducing selectively some capex, which might defer depreciation more through next year. We are reconsidering some discretionary cost. We are intervening, and that is mostly on the G&A side. But I don't think it's a major change if you look at the first half. It's more an inertial pattern from an inflation standpoint. And of course, we are paying all the attention to no priority and discretionary cost that we can reconsider. So that would be probably the only element of inflection point in the second part of SG&A.

the biggest one being on market uh i don't know if louise if we answered to your questions uh or if you have any follow-up that's great thank you thank you um i don't know if we have any follow-up questions otherwise i think we can um uh we can close the the call uh uh if you have any follow-up question any question we are here uh operator but let us know otherwise we thank everybody at this time we do not currently have any questions registered Okay, so thank you so much for the questions. And we are going to see in a very short period of time. So on October 22nd, we will have our Q3 revenues results conference call. We will meet again there. Thank you for the time, Gina, and for any follow-up, any question, any deep dive. Alicia and myself, as usual, we are here whenever you want. Thank you. Ciao.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. This concludes our call, and you may now disconnect your lines.