Fielmann Group Ag U/Adr

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the Fielmann Group AG following the publication of the Q3 financial figures of 2025. I'm happy to hand over to Fielmann's CFO, Steffen Becher.

Thank you very much, Ingmar, and also a warm welcome from me from very, very exceedingly sunny Hamburg, which is a rare occasion, so we really should be outside and not sitting in here. and doing the call, but obviously it's a pleasure for us to present you our nine-month figures and our Q3 results in this call following, as Ingmar said, the presentation and the release of the publication this morning. Tobias, we're not so fast yet. We can't do questions now. We do the question at the end. So, disclaimer, very important obviously for you to take note of that should you listen to the recording. But with that, let's go to our nine months and Q3 numbers in a nutshell. You're going to hear from me a lot about expectations and within expectation because really what we do and I think what we stand for in terms of the dialogue that we're having with you guys and on the investor and analyst side is that we walk the talk. So we're not a stock that super overperforms. We try to be not a stock that super underperforms and therefore you're going to see a lot of it's within expectation. The focus remember for this year is that we're really focusing on profitability and we really want to change the profile, the profitability profile of Fielmann Group for good. so that we have a more flexible P&L structure and we can actually reap the benefits of that going forward. Coming to our group sales, they increased by plus 9%. 4% of that is organic, 5% from the U.S. acquisition. You remember that July 2024, we for the first time consolidated Shopko. So this is the effect of the first half year. In Q3 alone, there is only organic growth because we didn't do any acquisition. And that's why the growth rate is slowly coming down. And we always guided that we expect for the Group A organic growth of 4, 5, 6%. So 4%. You know, within the expectation, as I said, within the framework that we presented to you, obviously not at the upper end, but more on the lower end of that, but still within that guidance that we provided to you. Q3 at constant currency grew by 4%, all of which are organic. As I said, U.S. grew 4%, Europe grew 4%. Very proud about that, that the U.S. returned to growth path. We had a lot of discussions. a lot of questions from you. You know what's going on in the US and why is the growth a little sluggish and I explained that that we're in the middle of a business model transformation which is still ongoing but very happy about us having returned to a growth pattern there and we come to that a little later. Relentless focus on profitability and when you know every word as you can imagine every word in this presentation is very carefully chosen relentless is exactly what we mean, a relentless focus on profitability. This organization has been working for the last two years to bring our profitability back up to where we think it should be. Adjusted EBITDA up 18%, adjusted EBT also up 20%. So that has been the primary focus of what we're doing. And what I'm especially proud of is we managed to Flexibilize costs that were previously deemed to be fixed costs like personnel expenses and and therefore we have become we have gotten a much better and sustainable sustainably better P&L structure. Adjusted EBITDA margins are exactly where they should be. We always said Group 24%, Europe 25%. The U.S. at 14%, not quite where we expected it for this year, but we changed our outlook for the U.S. and said, look, It's going to be more around the mid to high teens than the 19%, and I think that still holds true. Adjusted EBT margin also improving compared to prior years, so very happy about that. As I already said, U.S. platform regained growth momentum, 4% year-on-year in U.S. dollar terms, and all that while we're changing the business model, which is a lot of preparation, takes a lot of attention from a lot of people on, you know, running a business at the same time, building up doctor capacity because that's really what's missing. And then at the same time, thinking about what should be, you know, our presentation of SVS and Shopko, our Fielmann USA business in the future. That takes a lot of thinking and it's very difficult, you know, to do it all at the same time. But we obviously have to. As I said, we didn't manage so well in the first half year. But in Q3, we actually went back to growth. So we managed a little better. Our outlook for 2025, we're confirming. And revenue is very simple. We have the 25% rule. So really, Q4 is typically around 24%, 25% off. Our yearly revenue. So if we if we multiply that all out we get to the nearly two and a half billion We're looking at two four fifty two four, you know low sixties maybe for year-end so that we are confident that we have within that framework of nearly two and a half billion and Sellout structure, we're improving, we're optimized our personnel expenses. We're pretty cost conscious on overheads and that will drive margin expansion also in Q4. So given that we have about among those personnel expenses and consulting and marketing, We have like a 30 million saving more or less for Q4 compared to prior year. So we expect that the margin trend that we've seen so far during this year will be stable for the remainder of the year. And that's why we are confirming our outlook for 2025. Let's go to the next page. You know, these numbers are basically very happy and still very happy looking at it. Organic growth, as I said, 4%, 9% reported numbers, including the First consolidation of shop goal for half a year. EBITDA growth is great. EBITDA growth is great. Margins are within what we said. And as I said, we have built a better, more flexible P&L structure, which is going to help us for the future.

Let's look at sales in a bit more detail.