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This call will start shortly. Hello and welcome to the 2026 half year results conference call and webcast. Please note that today's conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. If you require assistance at any point, please call our support number provided in the invite email to you. I will now turn the call over to your host for today's conference, Richard Piekaar, Head of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you and good afternoon and welcome everyone to our results conference call and webcast. And with me today are CEO René Moos and our CFO Maurice de Kleer. This call is being broadcast live on our website and the recording of the call will be available shortly afterwards. And as usual, I would like to point out that safe harbor applies. We will start with René, who will discuss the highlights and the operational developments during the first half, followed by a more detailed look at the financial results for Maurice. After these prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions and the call will finish no later than 3 o'clock. And with that, René, I hand it over to you.

Thank you, Richard, and welcome everyone to today's call. We have delivered a strong first half of 2026 with double digit growth across every headline metric. Our club network grew 35% year-on-year to 2,192 clubs and our membership base grew with 34% to 6.1 million. Revenue increased by 18% to 800 million euro and underlying EBITDA less rent increased by 36% to 204 million euro. Our results fully reflect the strength of our underlying business and the underlying EBITDA laser end is even tracking ahead where we need to be to deliver our full year outlook, which I will come back to later in the call. The Clubman membership growth rates are elevated by the consolidation of CleverFit, which we acquired last year. Stripping that out, our organic Basic Fit branded network is still growing very strongly. as I'll show you on the next slide. Looking specifically at our Basic Fit branded owned clubs, so excluded the CleverFit acquisition, we ended the first half with 1,696 clubs up 4% year-on-year and 5.1 million memberships up 13% year-on-year. The average number of members per Basic Fit Club increased by 229 year-on-year to 2,999. This compares to 2,902 members per club at year-end 2025, so up 97 members on average per club. This confirms that our organic growth engine remains strong while we integrate CleverFit and are in the process of closing the value acquisition in Germany, which we will discuss shortly. Let's now look in more detail at our club network development. At the end of June 2026, we operated 2,192 clubs, up from 2,151 at the end of 2025. A net increase of 41 clubs in the first half year. Of this growth, owned clubs added 35 net new clubs to reach 1,751, while our franchise network added six net new clubs to reach 441. The majority of our club openings were concentrated in our growth countries. Germany added 19, Netclubs, Spain added 11 and France added 8 clubs. As part of the sharpening our focus on market leadership in our core countries, we discontinued our franchise operations in Romania and the Czech Republic during the period. With the organic club growth of 35 clubs, we are on track to reach our target of around 50 clubs in 2026. Let's move to the membership development slide. As mentioned, we continue to see strong momentum in our membership growth. As of 30 June 2026, we reached 6.1 million memberships, a 34% year-on-year increase. Growth was recorded in every country in which we operate with particularly strong performance in France and Spain. Our membership base of Basic Fit branded clubs increased by 200 69,000 in the first half of 2026, up from 256,000 in the first half of 2025. This despite of fewer opening this year. On a year-on-year basis, our total membership base increased by 1.5 million. This was driven by the consolidation of the CleverFit acquisition together with the 576,000 growth in our basic fit clubs. Let's now turn to our multifactorial growth strategy. As many of you will recall from our capital markets day, we spoke about basic fit entering a new era. The first era was about rapid expansion and building scale in a stable environment. The second era spanning the pandemic and recovery that followed was about resilience. We kept investing through extreme uncertainty. We are now firmly in our third era, an era of quality capital efficient growth. In this new era, growth remains essential, but it increasingly needs to translate into stronger returns, cash flow and capital discipline. That is also why we introduced Group Roki as our new guiding metric. alongside our long-standing mature club hurdle of a return of invested capital of 30%. Group Roki let us steer capital to whatever route generates the best return at any point in time. A medium-term return target for the group within the next three to five years is low to mid-teens. This is powered by three complementary growth verticals rather than a single expansion route. Organic growth remains our core engine for the coming years. Inorganic growth adds speed and strategic advantage where the returns are sufficiently attractive, drawing on our scale and integration know-how. and franchising of the medium term as a capital light route that leverage our existing brand and scale and can meaningfully accelerate our group returns. Combining these three routes gives us more flexibility to allocate capital to the best return opportunities and over time that will lift our group returns by optimizing the capital intensity behind our future earnings growth. The franchise growth was started with acquisition of CleverFit. In the coming period we will launch our basic fit franchise and in the coming years it will contribute meaningful to our returns. But it's now too early to give any guidance on that. We continue to see interesting inorganic growth opportunities. The acquisition of value that we expect to close in the coming months is a good example of bolt-on acquisition that we aim to do. Which brings me to the next slide. Let's turn to the value acquisition in Germany. The acquisition of value is fully consistent with the multifederal growth strategy we set out on the Capital Markets Day in 2026. In addition, it is important for us as it accelerates our path to critical mass in Germany. The transaction has 41 owned clubs, mainly located in northern Germany and around 110,000 members across the acquired locations. The purchase price of 52 million cash and debt free represents a multiple of 5.3 times 2025 club EBITDA. We have received government approval and the transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026. Once closed, the transaction will expand our German-owned club footprint from 74 to 115 clubs. Rebranding the value clubs to Basic Fit will bring it closer to the goal to reach the 200 branded basic fit clubs in Germany, which is the critical mass we need to unlock national marketing campaigns and build strong brand recognition. All clubs and networks will benefit from this, as we have seen previously in Spain and in France. Let's move to the operational performance. Since this year, new clubs are being built with a refreshed club design. After the extensive testing last year, and showing us good results. Those present at our CMD in April this year and who joined us with our field trip have seen clubs with a new look and feel in real life. But for those that could not be there, we give some impression on this slide. This refreshed look is important as we believe our members expect our clubs to always look fresh and well maintained. This will help both for the retention of our members but also contribute to the attraction of new members. Through the maintenance cycles we will bring the new colours and lighting to our existing clubs over time. The changes to the visual identity of our club support our member value creation engine. The engine is based on three core drivers. Grow, Keep and Value. We focus on grow, so we acquire members efficiently. This is delivered through brand strength, creative excellence and smart investment. Keep, we retain members longer, is the focus point. and this is delivered through experience design, habit formation and service quality. Value, we increase the revenue per member. This is delivered through an involving offering, targeted upsell and secondary revenue streams. Combined, this ensures we optimize member per club under both our own and franchise models. and ensure that new club openings reach break-even increasingly quickly over time. This de-risks our growth strategy. In the past period, we made some major improvements to boost the member value creation engine. Behind the refreshed look of our clubs, we continue to improve our service to our members. More clubs have extended opening hours, of which many are open 24-7. This mainly applies to the growth countries Germany, France and Spain. As in the Benelux countries, the vast majority of our clubs have been already open 24-7. We are continuing with the testing of our relax and recovery zones in our clubs, as this fits the more holistic trend towards well-being. We have expanded the testing and will evaluate the results so we can further optimize the perceived value of our offering by our members. In the same trend towards well-being, there is also increased demand for health information and guidance. We are facilitating this with our improved body composition measurement and tracking Our Body Analyzer 2.0 offers more details and broader information about one's body composition and tracks the progress that you're making as you continue to work out in our clubs. We also continue to build on the service in our app through our fit bodies and developing even more engaging virtual group classes. We help our members stay motivated, engaged and active. This all supports our mission to make fitness accessible to everyone and getting people to love their fitness habits. Let's now turn to the updated outlook for 2026. As mentioned, we are on track to achieve our target of 50 NetClub openings and membership continue to develop well. We are therefore confirming our revenue guidance of between 1.64 billion and 1.69 billion euro. As our focus on cost control is paying off and operating leverage is kicking in, we are now also able to increase our expectations for underlying EBITDA less rent for the second time this year to a range of 430 to 460 million euro compared to the old range of 415 to 455 million euro. We confirm our expectation of a significant improvement in positive free cash flow compared to last year. And like last year, the second half of the year will be significantly more cash generating than the first half of the year. And with this positive note, I would now like to hand over to Maurice, who will elaborate on our financial results.

Yes, thank you, René. Before I turn to the numbers, I would like to take a brief moment to mark a special milestone. On the 10th of June, we celebrated 10 years since Basic Fit listing on Euronext Amsterdam. And on that day, I had the honor of sounding the gong at the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, together with a group of fellow Basic Fit colleagues, many of whom have been with the company since long before the IPO. They helped shape the company and make the success of the last 10 years possible and they continue to do so today. Let's move to a well-known slide highlighting the success of this period. We continue to show this slide in our presentation as it perfectly visualizes the strong growth of the last 10 years. In this decade, every one of our key performance indicators increased by a double-digit compound annual rate. Between 2016 and the first half of 2026, our club network grew at 19% per year, our membership base at 18% a year, revenue at 21% per year and underlying EBDLS rent at 19% per year. We can see the success of our previous strategic cycles and will continue this growth trajectory. Our new era of quality growth will maintain the momentum through our multi vertical growth strategy while at the same time focusing on quality returns. And with that as the backdrop, let me turn to the results for the first half of this year. Total revenue increased 18% to 800 million euros and within that club revenue grew 17% to 783 million euros. This strong growth was driven primarily by the excellent membership development in our clubs in France and Spain. Our pool, defined as average club revenue per member per month of owned clubs, came in at €25.64 per month, up 1% year on year from €25.46. We changed the underlying metric for our ARPU calculation from fitness revenue to club revenue, following our new reporting structure and to better reflect the economic value per member. Founding membership campaigns and flat other club revenues muted ARPU growth. However, this is in line with our expectations and ARPU will continue to increase going forward. As part of our new era of quality growth, we are prioritizing cost control and operational excellence. We have hired key personnel across procurement, property and facility management to drive further organization of our operations. These improvements are already delivering results. The underlying EBITDA-less rent increased by 36% to €204 million, with disciplined cost control, including the hedging of energy costs, being a significant contributor to this graph. Operating profit increased by 67% to €96 million. Continued operating leverage is playing a major role in that improvement, as an increased number of members per club dries up returns per club. This strong EBIT improvement is also a good outcome for our Roki focus. Net profit was 24 million euros compared with a loss of 8 million euro in the first half of 2025. Free cash flow improved to 25 million euros from a negative 57 million euros in 2025, which I will come back to shortly. Let's take a close look now at Capex on the next slide. Expansion Capex was 39 million euros down from 68 million euros a year ago, explained by the lower number of club openings this year. The average investment per newly built club increased to 1.47 million euros from 1.38 million euros in the first half of 2025, reflecting the increased size of the new clubs opened in the first half of this year. We continue as you may know, to only sign a lease for a new club if we expect a mature club rowing of at least 30%. And then maintenance capex. Maintenance capex was 54 million euros or 31,000 euros per club compared with 36,000 euros per club a year ago. And we continue to expect approximately 60,000 per club for the full year. Other CAPEX was 11 million euros compared with 9 million euros a year ago and we continue to expect approximately 25 million euros for the full year. Let's now look into our free cash flow generation in the first half of 2026. Free cash flow came in at 25 million euros in the first half, a strong improvement from the negative 57 million euros in the same period last year. The main driver behind the strong improvement versus last year is the 55 million higher EBDA. The lower maintenance and expansion CAPEX as discussed in previous slides in combination with a less negative working capital offset slightly higher interest, tax and other CAPEX cashouts. In summary, this leaves us with a positive free cash flow after expansion Capex, which we expect to increase further in the second half, thanks to continued EBDA growth and fewer club openings. The first half performance shows we are on track for the significant free cash flow improvement we have guided for the full year and validates our strategic focus on improving ROKI. Let's move over to an overview of our liquidity on the next slide. We finished the first half of 2026 with access to liquidity of €359 million. Our cash balance grew €30 million to €145 million at the end of June. This growth came from two main sources. Free cash flow contributed €25 million, and as you may know, in April we issued a new €308 million convertible bond, maturing in 2031. After repaying the previous convertible and other loans, this added €21 million to our cash position. This was partly offset by €16 million cash outflow relating to financing costs and other items. The new convertible allows us to replace more expensive short-term bank facilities and slightly reduce our overall financing costs. This strengthens our financial flexibility. Together with our undrawn RCF facilities, we have 359 million euros in total liquidity. This gives us substantial room to fund both organic and inorganic growth from our existing cash position. Let's take a look at our future debt applications. In April, we issued a new 308 million senior unsecured convertible bonds, maturing in 2031, and used part of the proceeds to fund the June put option on our existing 21 convertible bonds. This replaced more expensive short-term bank facilities and extended our debt maturity profile. Bondholders representing €138 million in nominal value exercised at put option, while holders of €166 million did not exercise it. With our main bank facility maturing in 29, we have no short-term debt obligations outstanding. Our net leverage ratio improved to 2.3 times at the end of June from 2.7 times at both the year end 2025 and a year ago. Together with our free cash flow generation and our 145 million cash position, this gives us sufficient financial flexibility to execute on our multi-vertical growth strategy. With that, let me look back to our 2026 guidance. To conclude, The results we have outlined today demonstrate strong progress against our guidance. Revenue growth, improving profitability and positive free cash flow momentum give us confidence to reiterate our revenue guidance and raise our underlying EBDA less rent guidance for the second time this year. Our leverage ratio is also on track to reach just over two times by year end. This performance reflects the continued execution of our multi-vertical growth strategy, combining organic, inorganic and franchise growth, and it reinforces the new era of quality growth we set out to deliver. And with that, I will end the presentation and we can move to the Q&A. Operator, please open the lights.

Thank you. We are now ready for the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press the hashtag followed by the number five on your telephone keypad. Please ensure that the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. If you find that your question has already been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing hashtag sticks. The first question comes from Natasha Brilliant from UBS. Natasha, go ahead.

The next question comes from Natasha Brilliant from UBS. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much for taking my questions. I've got three questions, if I may. So the first one is if you could just give us an update about the CleverFit integration. So how are those conversations going with the franchisees? Have you had any learnings or any changes in how you're thinking about it? And can you tell us how many clever fit franchise gyms have converted to basic fit in the first half? My second question is just around the average members per club. So for the basic fit owned clubs, it's up 8% year on year. Can we think about a similar trajectory for the full year? And then my last question is back at the CMD, you talked about the possibility of maybe selling some clubs in France for a franchise opportunity. I just wondered if there have been any conversations or anything you can share about that, please. Thank you.

Yes, something to share about the CleverFit learnings. I think it's going very well. We are working very closely with the franchisees. There's a new franchise board installed with eight people on it and that's working very well with us. What we have seen is that we have improved already some of the suppliers contracts or suppliers of equipment and so on. So for better deals for the franchisees also marketing we have taken some really good steps already. But it's still early days. There's still a lot to improve, which is good for Basic Fit, but also for the CleverFit franchisees. Your question is about how many clubs have been converted. It's a bit too early for that. If you look at... We are definitely in different conversations with franchisees. But I think what is important, especially for Germany, is that we first reach the 200 clubs, basic fit clubs in Germany, so we can start the national campaign. And then it also makes sense to really join that group since the basic fit name currently with around 70 locations, 60, 70 locations is just a very small footprint. So we are in conversations about converting. We have also some franchisees that have currently clever fit clubs that want to open a basic fit franchise clubs. But that will take some time before that starts. And again, the focus first should be to reach 200 clubs and start national marketing. The average member base that increased in the first few months is, we don't give any guidance for the rest of the year, but we do expect as of last year and the years before that also you will see growth in the second half of 2020. The question is about the CMD selling franchise. I think it's pretty much the same story. We are having several conversations, but it will take some time before if and before some transaction will occur.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Robert-John Vos from ABN AMRO, ODO BHF. Robert-John, go ahead.

Yes, hi, good afternoon. I have a few questions as well. The free cash flow guidance. If I take the updated EBITDA guidance plus the impact from lower expansion CAPEX, yeah, free cash flow should be at least 50 to 80 million higher in the second half versus H1. So my question probably to Maurice is, is that it or are there additional positive drivers for free cash flow in the second half? And my second question also related to free cash flow. Can you explain the working capital component? It's quite different from the working capital component in the consolidated cash flow statement. So how should we bridge that? And my third question is, what do you mean by a ramp up in franchise revenue in H2 versus H1? Maybe you can quantify this a little bit. Thank you.

Thank you Robert-Jan, very good questions. Maybe first about the free cash flow and looking forward. As you've seen, we made in the first half of this year a significant improvement of our free cash flow if you compare the negative of the first six months, 25, and the 25 million positive free cash flow in 26. So we're taking steps in the right direction. Also important to see that there's quite some seasonality in our free cash flow. If you look at 25 and you compare the first half and second half of that year, then you see really a ramp up in the second half. And that's what we expect also for the second half of 2026. And that's also reflecting of course in our, let's say, adjusted guidance on EBDA for this year. If you look specifically at working capital, that is something that tends to fluctuate also because of a lot of time differences. When you pay for, for example, new club openings, etc. So that influences the working capital. And what we also start to do is that actually we're paying our suppliers much sooner than in the past. So that has an impact on fluctuations in working capital. If you look at franchise, and that is specifically then the CleverFit franchise of course, and you compare for example the last two months in 2025 and first six months in 2026, The main difference is actually now the commissions that we have received on, for example, fitness equipment and et cetera, which tend to be more at the end of the book year, of the calendar year. So we expect also for the coming six months an increase in our fitness revenue, our franchise revenue. So, but that explains the difference between the first six months, 26, and the last two months of 25.

Okay, maybe to come back on free cash flow, first on working capital, I understand what you say, but why is there such a significant difference between the bridge in your press release on free cash flow for the working capital component versus What do you show in working capital movements in the consolidated cash flow statement? I think it's 20 million in the cash flow statement and it's 35 million in the bridge that you show in the press release. So why is there a big difference there?

Yeah, I think that, as I said, it has to do with the timing differences, you know, in Capex.

But we will get back on that. We'll look at it into more detail and we come back at it. But a lot of them is about timing. OK, thanks.

The next question comes from Leo Carrington from Citigroup. Leo, go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Take three, please, all around CapEx. Firstly, in terms of the free cash flow outlook for the year, refer to an improvement in H2 barring any unforeseen circumstances. Is that a particular risk that you see or investments you're considering making? Just wondering if there's anything specific in that comment. Secondly, in terms of the maintenance CapEx, It appears to be synchronized towards H2 this year. Any particular reason H2 loaded? And then lastly, in terms of the expansion capex, I get the point about the larger clubs driving up the capex per club. Is this something that we should expect for 27 and beyond too? Or does the size factor in the capex per club normalize somewhat going forward? Thank you.

Thank you, Leo. So your first question was on expansion Capex. So any risks or surprises in there? No, I don't think there will be any major differences between, let's say, the first half of this year. Of course, as you know, based on the multi-vertical growth strategy, we're always looking for, let's say, bolt-on acquisitions, if that really fits our profile. but that's difficult of course difficult to predict also the timing of that so No risks or surprises there, I would say. If you look at maintenance CAPEX, you've seen that we are pretty well in line with our expectations for the full year and lower in the first six months of 26 compared to the first six months of 25. But also that has to do partially with some timing differences Some of our maintenance is only done in, let's say, non-companying months. So we are always in a, let's say, in a squeeze, timing squeeze to do that maintenance capex without hindering a lot of our members. and there's also some one-time deep cleaning programs that can be either in the second half of the year or the first half of the year. But again, as I said, we expect to come in around that 60,000 euros for a club on average. Expansion CAPEX, yeah, that's what I shared. So mainly due to opening of bigger clubs, we have also higher expansion CAPEX per club. If you look forward, Then probably it will tend again to a lower amount because of a larger amount of clubs open then and will tend more to the average. That's what we expect. But of course, there's also an element that the new club openings that we do in the new look and feel certainly in this phase has a, let's say, an upward effect on our expansion capex.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, sure. Thank you. I was just going to add my first question was, yes, about capex, but also free cash flow outlook generally. I just wanted to check that in that outlook comment about buying unforeseen developments, There wasn't anything in particular to call out there.

No, you're right. Not anything new or anything particular for the six months, no.

Thank you very much.

Next question comes from Bodemond Flavian from Bernstein. Bodemond, go ahead.

Yes, good afternoon and congratulations for the results. I have two questions on my side. First, can you give us an update on the CleverFit branded own club in Germany and Austria? Did you already refurbish them into basic fit club and if not, are they going to be converted by the end of the year? And the second question is on the cost. Can you have more color on the trajectory of the overhead cost excluding the CleverFit effect?

Yes, so if you look at the Owned Clever Fit Clubs, they are currently in Germany being built to change to base fit clubs. I think the first two clubs are finished. So in Germany it's going smooth. Austria, it will take a bit more time because we have to get approval from local authorities. We've been working on that already for quite a few months, but we're not sure when that will be done. And we will not change labels in our sales period like September, October or January, February. So all we can do it in November, December. And if that's not the case, we will postpone it till summer next year. But it all depends on authority approval. So it's not in our hands. If you look at the questions about overhead, I think the overhead is slightly higher than the first half of last year. Reason is clear. Last year we did not have the overhead of CleverFit in our numbers. This year we have. So that is the big difference. And we think that we're optimizing the head office cost as we speak. So the second half it will be better, so the percentage will be lower.

Okay, it's clear, thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Lynn Houteketen from KBC. Lynn, go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two left, so congratulations on upgrading your EBITDA guidance. I was just wondering in which buckets do you see the particular cost reductions because especially there might be an inflationary environment coming up so that's already one of them and secondly is part of it also related to an anticipation of further personnel cost reductions in France on the 24-7 clubs

Well, I can answer your last question. I think yes, the second half, we will have definitely less cost than we had in the first half because it took some time to convert all the clubs to the system and we did it gradually. So the second half of this year, we have all the clubs that we converted to the staffless system. We have them for the full six months. So for sure it will be lesser cost, lower cost. in the second half this year. Maurice, can you?

Yes, of course, Lynn. Thank you for your questions. And if you look at costs, we're still making quite some progress in our procurement department. So we are much more efficient and effective in using the purchase power that we have. That's one thing. Of course, as we said before, we're still also focusing continuously on our overhead so that certainly as expressed in percentage of revenue that will come down in the second half of this year and further to let's say procurement we see the main advantages in still reducing let's say the maintenance OPEX and maintenance CAPEX for the second half of this year.

Okay, that's clear. And then for my second question, it's already been touched upon very briefly in the beginning of the Q&A, but it's indeed on the CleverFit revenue coming down. So if I extrapolate the fourth quarter of last year, you would have had around 19 million. That came down to 16 million in the first quarter this year, and then 14.8 in the second quarter. So I'm just wondering if it's Is this fully related to the commissions on the fitness equipment or if something else is going on there?

No, good question, but we made a let's say breakdown of that revenue streams and it is about commissions which are of course very Subject to timing, subject to of course the decisions made by franchisees doing their investments in new fitness equipment. And if you look at actually at EBDA for CleverFit in the first six months, which is also part of our half year results, then you see that we've made 11.5 million EBDA. and we expect that actually to increase in the second half of this year and that comes in the guidance that we already shared before so we are actually quite happy with where we are today with CleverFit still needs of course needs attention still needs some work but it's going in the right direction all right thank you Maurice thank you

The next question comes from Mark Zwetsenburg from ING. Mark, go ahead.

Yeah, good afternoon. Two questions for me. First, coming back again on the free cash flow. So we had 25 million in the first half. We have an higher guidance for the full year, so more EBITDA in the second half. But also, yeah, net working capital last year was, in the end, for the full year, a positive. So a huge swing from one half, first half, to second half. Given normal seasonality and not knowing about the timing and you're opening not that many clubs in the second half, I guess it could not be that far off from last year. So I would then guess that you will have with the extra EBITDA lower club openings and the networking capital swing, which is tens of millions positive in the second half, you should get the triple digit free cash flow in the second half. Is there anything wrong in what I'm saying now? Is there any color I miss?

That's a very good question, DeMar. I think that, let's say, the fluctuations in the working capital are a bit less predictable, of course. We're getting, of course, in a much more, let's say, mature phase of basic fit where we expect to see that even out of time. So we expect those situations to become less and less, but I think you're in the right direction. We are not giving specific guidance on on let's say the free cash flow. We are of course considering to do that in the future a bit more, but we haven't done it so far. And part of that is of course that fluctuations in the working capital.

Yeah, because that should get more predictable with less clip rollout, et cetera.

Yeah, correct.

And then on your outlook, You're basically raising the midpoint of your guidance by 15.15 million and part of it is explained by a further postponement of the VAT increase in Belgium, let's say 4 million for extra three months. And then you have the contribution from, well, you acquisition and looking at the multiple and since EBITDA is geared to second half, if you consider at least a quarter of four months of contribution, it can be something like, well, 5 million or so. They are already close to 10 million. And the midpoint only increased by 5 million and underlying. Looking at your membership in growth, which is trending above last year, and I think also above expectations, you only need 10, 15,000 extra members on average on the year to get to that number. So isn't it then a fair conclusion that you're still being very cautious in your outlook? There's not that much added if you add the external factors that are just there.

Yeah, Mark, maybe to start. So we started the year with the guidance of 405, 445. And then we increase it with 10 million on the low end and the high end. And now in mid, we now increase it again, 15, the low end and five in. So in mid, again, 10. So two times 10 million increase from the beginning of this year. and you're talking about the VAT that is already also what's included already in the first 10 million we talked about and we don't know exactly when it raises so it could be that in August that will be the higher number so overall the the 430 and 460 million which we are giving guidance on now is something we feel comfortable and in the mid in midpoint it's 445 we think it's It is something that we feel good about. So overall, I don't think we are keeping it extremely low. This is what we think we're going to reach.

Okay, fair enough, because you mentioned the VAT. Part of the former increases a little bit, the VAT, and then we had, of course, the savings in France, etc.

We increased 20 million. And the value, of course, is, so let's say we close the deal in September, then you have one quarter. So that's 2 million. And the VAT is, I don't think... No, not really. Last quarter is the strongest.

All the members contribute.

Okay, well... Yeah, but not the René's mention.

Well, okay. But fair enough. Okay. Okay. You feel comfortable with your outlook and let's say, but I'm also trying to guess maybe that I missed something. Maybe there's a bit of extra cost somewhere for redesign or indeed some maintenance or whatever. That's not the case.

Okay.

All right. Those were my questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next question comes from Jeremy Kincaid from Landschot Kempen. Jeremy, go ahead.

Good afternoon. Two questions from my side. First, could you just talk about the state or condition of the value locations or clubs and give us an idea of how much capex you expect to spend to rebrand those? And then my second question is on France. If I look at the revenue per location in France, it's gone up maybe around 14% this half. Can you talk to why that increase looks so strong? Is it a regional versus city split, or is it due to the fact that the locations that are now 24-7 are getting a lot more members?

I can start with the first one, value. I think we are still working on the Capex cost, but there's for sure Capex involved. I think we have a good side of the value transaction is that their average RPU is much lower than ours. I think that's a very good opportunity to actually get them in our system and that way increase the turnover to what they have currently. So for that, I think we see very good upside on that. They have a lot of newer clubs also, so it's not only the 41 clubs, but they also have three clubs that they are currently building. So we think it's a very strong brand and a good group of people. So we were happy that we could do this transaction and the Capex costs will be there, but we don't have the exact number yet. But it's not that we have to change the equipment, but of course we have to rebrand it, paint it and put the camera system in. It will be for sure around something like €250,000 per club. So it will be a substantial amount. It could be something around that number. We're still working on that.

Yes, Jeremy. And as for your second question, specifically for France and revenue development there. If we look at France, we are of course very happy with the results in the first six months. We really think that the investments that we made in opening those clubs 24-7, where that was possible, are really paying off. If 24-7 is not possible, then we go for extended opening hours to get a better member experience than we had before. But it's also really at, let's say, steering at operational excellence. We developed a specific set of KPIs for staff in France, working with that now for a year. We heavily invested in the maintenance of our clubs, not only the clubs, but also the equipment. and we also invested in extra equipment on our clubs. And I think all in all that is what now is delivering the positive results in France right now. But let me be very clear, we are not there yet. And that coin has two sides, so we are not there yet, but there is also a huge upside potential in France for us. Great, thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you want to ask a question, please press hashtag five on your telephone keypad. We have reached the end of today's conference call. I would like to hand the call over to Richard Piekaar for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Well, thank you Bert-Jan. And thank everyone for dialing in for today's call. And if any other questions come up, we are here to answer your calls. So stay in touch. Have a nice day. Bye bye.

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