Industria De Diseno New

Buenos dias a todos. Good morning to everybody. A warm welcome to all of those attending the presentation of Inditex's results for the entering first half 2024. I am Marcos Lopez, Capital Markets Director. The presentation will be chaired by Inditex's CEO, Oscar Garcia Maceiras. Also with us is our CFO, Ignacio Fernandez. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session, starting with the questions received on the telephone and then those received through the webcast platform. Before we start, we will take the disclaimer as read. Please, Oscar.

Good morning and welcome to our resource presentation. It's our pleasure to join you today. In the first half of 2024, Inditex has continued its robust operating performance driven very much by the creativity of our teams and the strong execution of our fully integrated business model. This performance relies on the four key strategic pillars you are all very familiar with. Our unique fashion proposition, an optimized customer experience, our focus on sustainability, and the talent and commitment of our people. These factors have propelled our competitive differentiation. Our Spring Summer collections have been very well received by our customers. We have had a very satisfactory sales growth of 7.2%. Sales in custom currency increased by 10.2%. The execution of the business model has also been very robust, with a healthy gross margin and disciplined cost management. On the bottom line, Net income increased 10.1% to 2.8 billion euros. Given the robust execution over the period, cash flow generation remains strong. This performance has continued going into the second half. Store and online sales in custom currency between the 1st of August and the 8th of September grew 11%. Our diversified presence in 214 markets with low market penetration allows us to enjoy significant global growth opportunities. We have complete confidence in our ability to grow this business, mainly because the unique model we operate continues to drive an ever-increasing level of differentiation. I'm going to hand you over to Ignacio now to go into the headline numbers.

Thank you, Oscar. As you have seen, our release in the test executed very well in the first half of 2024. Sales progressed well at plus 7.2%. They have managed the supply chain actively and they have driven a very healthy growth margin. Operating expenses have, of course, been well managed resulting in operating leverage. As a result, EBITDA grew 8.1% to 5 billion euros. In any case, we have also seen very strong progress in the net income line, with an increase of 10.1% to 2.8 billion euros versus 2.5 billion euros in the first half of 2023. Let me reiterate that sales have progressed very nicely, a plus 7.2%, reaching 18.1 billion euros, that's 10.2% in custom currency. Sales growth was strong, both in stores and online. Furthermore, sales have been positive across all concepts. Based on current exchange rates, we expect a minus 3% currency impact on sales for the full year 2024. We enjoy global presence. With operations in 214 markets, and with a low market share with him by remains and highly fragmented sectors. Growth has been strong across the board. We have previously mentioned that the United States is our second largest market. In the first half of 2024, gross profit increased 7.5% to reach 10.5 billion euros. and clearly illustrates a healthy execution of the business model. The gross margin reached 58.3%. Based on current information, we expect a stable gross margin of plus-minus 50 basic points this financial year. There has been very tight control of operating expenses across all departments and business areas. Operating expenses increased below sales growth over the first half of 2024. Including early charges, operating expenses grew 102 basis points below sales growth. Operating working capital remains negative as a result of the business model. The operating working capital is in line with the performance of the business. Over the first half of the year, we experienced a robust operating performance. Due to these factors, in the Texas inventory, as of the 31st of July, was 2% lower. As I know, the end of the period inventory is considered to be of high quality. As you can see from this slide, we continue to generate very strong levels of cash flows. Funds from operations before corporate income tax increased 9% to €4.4 billion. Capital expenditure reached €1.3 billion, reflecting the ordinary and extraordinary investments in 2024, focused on ensuring future growth. And now over to you, Marcos.

Thank you. On the back of the comments made by Ignacio, I would like to reiterate that the performance over the first half of 2024 has been remarkable. We are very happy with the execution over the period. The performance has been very strong at all levels, as you can see in this table. Store and online sales continue to develop nicely for all the concepts. We have continued with the expansion of our concepts and have opened stores in 34 different markets and have progressed with optimization activities. We continue to expand our concepts into new markets, including Massimo Dutti in the United States and Verska in India. Oiso, Stradivarius and Massimo Dutti also opened their first stores in Peru in September. In the strategy section, we will cover an extensive number of initiatives carried out in the period. Back to you, Oscar.

Thank you, Marcos. We keep on strengthening these strategic pillars of our fully integrated business model. Our priority remains to continually increase the appeal of our fashion proposition. Creativity, innovation, design and quality are defining features of our collections and a key focus across all our teams. Our meticulous design process impacts every detail of our garments and collections, while striving to provide the latest quality fashion to customers around the world. Our approach involves integrating the talent of our designers with highly artisanal tasks carried out by our skilled teams and the latest technological solutions to achieve the highest level of quality and sustainability. The results of this unique integrated approach through teamwork is clearly seen in all the multiple collections we offer every season and our swift response to customer demands. We continue generating a very broad range of fashion propositions for each of our differentiated concepts. The focus on an ever more enhanced customer experience comes as a result of the continuous process of upgrading stores with strong architectural features and with highly curated internal spaces. One of the recent flagship projects this quarter has been the opening of the Zara and Zara Home store in Lisbon, Brazil, in an iconic historic building which extends over 5,000 square meters and four floors. This project is an example of our continued optimization program, with three city-centered premises transferred to other concepts once this new location has begun operations. This very unique landmark store opened last week. Thanks to our integrated store and online model, our teams have been able to take advantage of the remarkable growth opportunities we see across all channels, concepts, and markets. Underpinning this growth are new openings, enlargements, and refurbishments of stores in diverse locations, expanding to new cities and new territories, and the launch of new services that enhance the customer's shopping experience. We continue optimizing our store presence in all concepts, with key examples like Bershka London Oxford Street, Massimo Dutti Miami Aventura Mall, Zara Home, Milan, Palazzo Ferrania, and Oisio Lima Jockey Plaza. The full implementation of the new security technology at Zara by the end of 2024 is going to plan. A significant initiative for this season will be the arrival in the coming weeks of our Zara streaming experience in key markets, such as Spain, the US, France, Italy, Germany, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and Canada, following the launch in the Chinese market in November 2023. We will continue extending the streaming experience on our platforms to other markets in the following months. As part of our efforts to explore alternatives for new raw materials, in July we announced an equity investment in GALI, a U.S. startup that has developed innovative technology for growing cotton in a lab from cotton stem cells. In August 2024, we launched our second Cirque for Zara collection, designed by Zara Studio and made from textile waste. This collection is made up of garments with clean, timeless silhouettes and composed exclusively of silk lyocell. Our sustainability innovation hub is now working with more than 350 startups. In terms of circularity, the TheraPrium platform is currently available in 16 European markets and will reach the United States by the end of October 2024. Through this platform, we will continue helping our customers to extend the life cycle of their fragments through donation, repair, or resale. We are firmly committed to the talent of our people with the aim of remaining a benchmark employer, as well as looking for a positive impact on our communities. Inditex has obtained the top employer seal in 12 of our most relevant markets, a distinction that certifies companies that put their people at the center, creating work environments that generate a sense of belonging in which everyone feels accepted, has the freedom to express their ideas, and is heard. In terms of women in tech, we have carried out initiatives such as Technovation, a global program in which more than 30,000 young women from 50 countries have participated this year, empowering them to tackle social and environmental problems in their communities through technology. We operate in 214 markets with lows here in what continues to be a highly fragmented sector, and we see strong growth opportunities. To meet the current strong demand, which builds on the significant growth of the business in 2022 to 2023, we are undertaking a number of initiatives. We are investing to scale our capabilities, obtain efficiencies, and increase our competitive differentiation to the next level. The growth of annual gross space in the period 2024 to 2026 is expected to be around 5%. Over this same time period, Inditex expects space contribution to sales to be positive in conjunction with a strong evolution of online sales. For 2024, we estimate ordinary capital expenditure of approximately 1.8 billion euros. This investment is principally directed at optimization of commercial space, its technological integration, and the improvement of our online platforms. As you already know, and in view of the strong future growth opportunities, Inditex is implementing a logistics expansion plan in 2024 and 2025. This two-year extraordinary investment program focused on the expansion of the business allocates 900 million euros per year to increase logistic capacities in each of the 2024 and 2025 financial year. A short update on this logistic expansion plan which is on track. We expect test operations for our Zaragoza II distribution center will start in May-June 2025. A brief reminder on the dividend. The final dividend payment for 2023 of 0.77 euros per share will be made on the 4th of November 2024. I would like to finish with a comment on our current performance. Autumn winter collections continue to be very well received by our customers. Store and online sales in custom currency increased 11% between the 1st of August and the 8th of September 2024 versus the same period in 2023. Thank you all for attending this results presentation. That concludes our presentation for today. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

The telephone Q&A session starts now. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 5 on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, please press star 5 again. We request that you limit yourself to only one question per turn so we can maximise the number of participants in the session. If you have further queries, you may press star 5 again after the next person's question has been addressed. Please ensure your phone is not on mute. The first question goes to Georgina Johanan from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead, Georgina.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I just had a question on the Asian business, please. I think growth there was sort of flattish XFX in the half. And of course, we're all aware of some of the difficulties being faced by the Chinese consumer at the moment. And I was just wondering if you could give a little bit of color on your performance in that market specifically and and whether you expect Zara could sort of continue to outperform in that sort of environment. Any comments would be really helpful, please. Thank you.

Thanks, Georgina, for your question. Well, as highlighted in previous conference calls, we remain considering China as one of our co-markets. Our fashion proposition has always been well received by our Chinese customers. And we keep on executing important projects to enhance their experience, both through physical stores and online. This 2024, we are in the process of reaching additional degrees of optimization in our physical footprint with some emblematic projects to come in the following quarters. For instance, an important refurbishment of our flagship store in Shanghai is Nanjing Road, or the opening of a new store in Nanjing's Fanbao. Additionally, we keep on improving our presence in the online space. Our stream service through Daojin remains with very good feedback from our customers. So we see a continuous positive progress of our operations in the market going forward. Marcos, if you would like to add something, please go ahead.

Thank you, Oscar. Yes, Georgina, as you have mentioned, our sales in Asia is when you just take them into constant currency, we're almost stable, which we believe is quite remarkable in the current context. The fact that we have quite a number of currencies in that area that depreciated explains that. But we can say we are pleased with the global performance for the group. Thank you.

The next question comes from Monique Pollard from Citi. Go ahead, Monique.

Hello. Morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I just had a question on the sales productivity in the stores. You obviously mentioned that you expect that to continue to increase going forward. And that's in the context, clearly, of the productivity in the stores having already seen a major uplift over the past few years. I just wondered if you could pull out what you would attribute the further opportunity to? Is it, you know, the rollout of the flagship stores and the larger stores? Is it more around the security technology and the RIFID rollout, you know, improving checkout times, et cetera? Any color we could get would be great.

Thank you, Monique. I think that the question that you made is very, very important. Over recent years, our productivity in general has increased significantly. The main reason for this is the business model, right? That's very, very clear. We believe that a fully integrated store and online platform provides the better way to address our market. Secondly, there are a number of specific initiatives that we have been carried out, specifically, you know, all the – that refers to optimization. We have put some examples into a presentation. This idea of having the most exciting, the best stores. in diverse locations while absorbing other units that we can then hand over to other concepts remains very, very strong. In this presentation, we have put a number of examples. The first one is Lisboa-Rosia, of course, but, for example, is the same situation in other geographies that we have done recently. We have heard from us what we did in Bilbao, what we did in Seville, that we did in Valladolid, what we're going to do in Zaragoza. So this is a constant effort. Then also to help productivity there are a number of very, very clear factors like RFID, like self-checkouts, like all the projects we have to include technology into our stores because a store today looks completely different to what it was five to ten years ago. So it's a number of initiatives that create a very, very significant differentiation and this is why we keep providing very strong productivity in our stores and we believe this is sustainable.

The next question comes from James Grisnitch from Jefferies. Go ahead, James.

Good morning, all. I have two very quick ones. The first one, factual. Store count was down 1.5% for the Group 1 year-on-year. What did you base relative to that change in store numbers? And secondly, at what stage of the current autumn-winter season will the Zara offer be fully compliant on the soft tag RFIDs, please? Will it be later in the autumn-winter season?

Okay, regarding your first question about store count and then space, the usual, you see that the process has been through optimization to reduce the number of stores, but we have much larger stores. And this means that while space keeps on growing around 2% net, as we did last year, this is something you should continue to expect, probably a lower number of stores while we keep on growing net space. And in the trading update, nothing we want to comment because, as you know, this is a short period of time and the most important part of the season is September and October. So nothing to comment on that.

The next question comes from Sridhar Mahamkali from UBS. Go ahead, Sridhar.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Really just a technical one, if you don't mind, please. If you just help us understand the trend in depreciation, amortization, the quarter, which is down 3%. I think, Marcus, you just said space was still positive, 2% next phase. Is that something that could reverse in the second half in terms of DNA? It could be down as CapEx results are coming through. So how should we think about DNA for the full year? That would be very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much for that question, Suida. As you know, depreciation relates mainly to the depreciation of the asset base, the depreciation of the right of use, impairment changes, and accounting right of assets. So this means that we cannot provide guidance under any circumstance. However, it's true that in the first half, DNA growth was almost flat. This is partially due to higher interest costs impacting the IFRS 16 accounting on the right of use. The renegotiation of rents and the flexibilization of contracts has also helped, but also bear in mind that the right of use asset has decreased 3% from the first half 2014 to 4.8 billion from 4.9 in the first half of 2023. So there are a number of moving parts and obviously we cannot provide guidance on this. Thank you.

The next question comes from Richard Chamberlain, RBC. Go ahead, Richard.

Yeah, thanks, James. Yeah, another question on costs, if that's all right. You've mentioned, you've talked about sustainability initiatives and so on, and I just wondered if you can comment on the costs of those. Is Inditex pushing a lot of that cost onto its suppliers and that's helping with its efficiency there, or is it incurring more of those costs? sustainability costs itself these days. And then I guess linked to that and also on costs, it looks like Inditex showed a particularly strong performance on rentals in the first half. I just wondered if you can give any more colour on what's happening to rental costs. Thank you.

On your second question, not very significant changes. Obviously, we keep on renegotiating rents and trying to do our best on that. And as you can imagine for any retailer... It is a constant effort to try to combine very disciplined cost approach with sustainability, but to try to transfer sustainability costs to other parties, we believe, is not sustainable in the long term. So the effort to try to obtain efficiencies is constant. You see it in many things. You do it. through organizational measures but also through technology we keep on improving things obviously the new stores are tremendously effective as you can imagine but nothing to measure on that obviously to grow operating expenses below sales for us is like a mantra that we try to convey to all the organizations extremely disciplined execution and this is something you see quarter after quarter Thank you.

The next question comes from Fernando Abril from Alantra. Go ahead, Fernando.

Hello. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just on sales, so regarding your temperature sales growth in H1, could you please break it down slightly into price, like for like price increases, product mix, and volume changes? Thank you.

Fernando, very much the same as in previous periods. There is no significant price increase at all, with the exception of those markets which are inflationary. But, again, it's all volume-driven. And then it's the usual combination of very strong store and online platform and some space growth very much in line with what you saw last year in net terms. But I think that what explains clearly the performance is very much the execution of the model, the creativity of the teams, the execution at store level, online, and then the opening of very selective, extremely high-quality stores through the optimization program. So nothing has changed in the fundamentals of our growth algorithm.

The next question comes from Warwick O'Kines from XM BMP. Go ahead, Warwick.

Thanks very much. Good morning, everyone. Just wondering if you could comment on anything you're seeing in external sourcing factors. You've left your full year gross margin guidance unchanged, which I suppose at the bottom end implies quite a lot of weakness. Is there any reason for this or you just don't like to adjust your guidance at this year? So just anything on the external sourcing factors would be very helpful. Thank you.

No, we're not seeing any significant change in our operations on that field. Clearly, the gross margin has evolved in a very natural way. The gross margin is very much the result of the execution, not something that we build ex-ante. And we're not seeing anything significant. This is why we remain guiding for a broadly stable gross margin plus minus 50 basis points. for the year. I mean, as you know, our results have never been reflecting an expansion or significant expansion or reduction of margins. It's very much the top line and then the gross margin is the final outcome of our execution during the period. Thank you.

The next question comes from William Woods from Bernstein. Go ahead, William.

Hi, good morning. Just on Stradivarius and Bershka, they seem to be performing pretty well at the moment. What do you think is really driving their performance over the last year or so? Thanks.

I think that first of all, thank you for the question, basically we are happy with the performance of the group as a whole. I think that all the concerts have performed in a very, very significant way. It is true that some of the younger concerts are performing at a very, very significant pace because they are very, very successful and they're executing very, very well. But I think that the most important message from our side will be the consistency of the different concepts will keep on growing because they share the same business model. They focus on different parts of the market. Some of them have specificities in terms of product. But in all, you can see that the growth has been very healthy across the board. Thank you.

We'll now move over to webcast questions. We've had a few questions today. Okay. The first of which relates to online sales. Perhaps you could provide us some colour on the performance of online.

Thanks for the question. Well, we are very satisfied with our performance through our online platforms. The evolution remains very positive throughout first half 2024 and we keep on seeing strong evolution of our online sales going forward. On a daily basis, we are receiving more than 22 million visitors in our platforms. For the customers that visit us, we are implementing new initiatives that could contribute to improve their experience. As an example of this, in the coming weeks, as we mentioned during the presentation, we will launch our third streaming experience in some key markets, including Spain, Italy, France, or the UK or the US, following the initiative launch in China in 2023 that I have previously mentioned. It's important to highlight something that we have reiterated in previous calls. Our results are a consequence of our fully integrated model in which it's not possible to understand the strength of our online sales without taking into consideration the operational support provided by our stores. And, of course, it's also not possible to explain the positive evolution of our sales in physical stores without bearing in mind the strong prescription capacity of our online platforms.

Thank you. The next question on the webcast platform relates to logistics. Perhaps you could give us an update on the logistics investment plan, please.

Thank you. Well, I guess that we mentioned that during our presentation. The logistics investment plan we announced at Fiscal Year 2023 results is on track. The different projects are being executed as planned. In the case of the new distribution centre for Zara, Zaragoza 2, this new distribution center will begin test operations in May-June 2025. Just a quick reminder, this plan is consistent with the evolution of our business and builds on the significant growth that we experienced recently. And with our new capabilities, we will be in a position to keep on offering our customers what they are looking for, where, when, and how they want. Thank you.

The next question on the webcast platform relates to Spain. Perhaps you could provide us some color on the performance of Spain.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, as we mentioned in previous calls, we are very happy with our performance in Spain. As a reminder, in 2023, sales in Spain grew 13%, the fastest growing region for the group alongside Europe ex-Spain. Another data to be considered, from 2019 to 2023 in Spain, we have had 27% fewer stores, but sales have been 20% higher. Our store optimization program remains on track. Following another successful project such as Sevilla or Bilbao, mentioned by Marcos, at the end of August 2024, we opened a flagship store in Valladolid, Constitution, absorbing three former stores. This type of initiatives that has also been executed in other markets outside Spain, such as Portugal, with our new flagship store in Lisbon, Rocio, Not only are they allowing us to better showcase TARA full collection, but also are improving the experience of our customers with self-checkouts, automated online pickup, or return points. So we continue to find opportunities for profitable growth in Spain with all our concepts.

Those conclude the webcast questions for today.

Thank you all to all of those participating in the presentation today. For any additional questions you may have, please get in touch with our Capital Markets Department, and we will welcome you back in December for the nine-month 2024 results.