Prada Spa Ord

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Prager Group First Health 2024 results presentation. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please be aware that we'll take and answer one question at a time before moving to the next question, and please also know that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Andrea Bonini, CFO. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining Prada Group's first half 2024 results call. I'm delighted to be with you again. Alongside me today are Mr. Andrea Guerra, Group CEO, and Mr. Lorenzo Bertelli, Group CMO and Head of CSR. Mr. Guerra will start today with highlights for the first half of 2024 and a business update, followed by Mr. Lorenzo Bertelli with an overview of our marketing activities and ESG initiatives. I will then present our financial performance before Mr. Guerra signs off with some closing remarks. We'll then move to Q&A. Before we start, Please be reminded that during today's call, we may discuss forward-looking statements which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and factors beyond our control that could cause the actual outcome and returns to differ materially from such statements. Please refer to the disclaimer included on slide two of our presentation. With that, I will hand over to Mr. Guerra.

Buongiorno a tutti. It's a great pleasure to be here with you. On one side, it's by definition tougher. Current macroeconomic situation is no longer so positive as it has been for a long time. And I think it's also worthwhile not to forget what kind of an incredible decade this industry has gone through. So for sure, current macroeconomics is a little bit tougher, maybe tougher. but there is a lot of opportunities in the market yet. As Prada Group, we continue 2024 on a positive stance, and we finished the solid first half of 2024, top line and bottom line. Month after month, we have been leaving a similar growth rate, and we finished the semester with retail sales at plus 18. and an EBIT percentage increasing to 22.6%. Both Prada and Miu Miu have moved through Q2 with same velocity as Q1. So this means that the two brands are strong and have a voice in this specific period of the world. As a group, we're continuing to work on sharper position and capturing unique identity on Prada and Miu Miu. For sure, this is a period where identity, position, desirability of brands make the difference. We have substantially increased our branding investments as well. We're constantly trying to elevate, motivate, upgrade, train our people in our organizations across the world. We think that this is critical and we feel that this is even more critical in this period of time. We discussed about our journey in retail excellence. We are happy to remark and to say that we reached today a different level. We still have a huge gap comparing with the best in industry, but we are improving and we are proud of our improvements And we feel that the most difficult part of the job, which was the beginning of this, the creation of the toolkits, the creation of everything that was needed for this journey, it's over. Now we need to keep on doing it and doing it well. Last, but still pretty important, we kept on with our CAPEX on digital infrastructural IT evolution. of the group. And we are happy of our progress, of our efforts in this field. And again, at the end of this year and next year will be another big chapter of evolution. A couple of comments on Prada and a couple of comments on Miu Miu before going with Lorenzo in a more specific manner. On Prada, I would say that what has happened so far is really a great long-term journey on a brand strategy, uniqueness, and creating bigger and more solid roots in the cultural world. And these roots are stronger day after day. Collections are strong. Products are strong. and we keep on having this strong traction on ready-to-wear and footwear on one side and we keep on evolving and we keep on getting stronger on our leather goods. On Miu Miu it's tough to say something in specific because when you have such results it's tough to say this was good, this was better, this was excellent. So What is important is that this is not just something that popped up. I would say that this is a result of many years of work on the brand, on the products, on the people. And today, the strength of Miu Miu, it's obviously the brand, it's obviously the silhouette, it's obviously the look. Team effort, teamwork to be able to serve clients growing at this significant rate is for sure one of the most important things happening in this last couple of years. And we got no shortcuts in front of us. We remain humble. We remain non-complacent. And we know that once we go over and over, the likes for likes will become even more difficult to face. But we are positive and we feel the responsibility. Now, let me give the stage to Lorenzo and I will come back for the closing remarks.