Puma Se Unsp/Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome and thank you for joining the Q1 2026 earnings call of Puma SE. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Manuel Bösing, Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Maura. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the PUMA conference call for the first quarter. Joining me today are our CEO, Arthur Hult, and our CFO, Markus Neubrandt. Before we start, please take note of the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information. Arthur and Markus will guide you through today's presentation covering our business recap, financial update, and way forward. After the presentation, we will open the floor for your questions. For the Q&A, we kindly ask you to limit your initial questions to two per person. With that, over to you Arthur.

Manuel, thank you very much and welcome and good afternoon from my side as well. Before we start to get into the business topics and the updates about Q1, I of course want to take a moment to also reference another announcement which we made this morning. Markus Neubrand, our CFO, has decided with the supervisory board to step down from his office as of today, end of the month, and will remain in the company until end of September. I would like to use the opportunity and say a sincere thank you to Markus for the support I got personally from him during my onboarding phase at PUMA and also for guiding not just the financial team, but the organization through what was not the easiest of times for our company. He was instrumental in terms of developing the reset program with us and also getting the company now into a transition mode for the years to come. So, Markus, thank you very much. We'll handle the call together almost as always. In fact, this is the last couple of quarters, and I wish you all the best for your personal future as well. At the same time, we have announced the arrival of a new CEO, which is Mark Langer. Mark will start with us early next month, i.e. on Monday next week. And I'm very much looking forward to welcome an industry veteran, someone that's very familiar to most of you in his new role as of early May. With that being said, we'll now start to get into the results. And I would briefly like to touch upon the top-line results Markus will of course in detail explain what you have also already seen in the announcement this morning. So first of all, Q1 was a result that is in line with our expectations and we would like to call this a very solid start into the year of 2026, a transition year as we called it out. We've made significant progress this year already in our operating model, which is necessary to build the foundation for our future growth here at Puma. Despite the macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties, we do remain confident on our track to achieve our plans for this year and beyond. When we look at the first quarter, sales are at a minus 1% versus last year currency-adjusted. The decline in demand is partially offset by continued clearance of our inventory progressing ahead of our plan. Wholesale declined due to a lower demand primarily in EMEA, with DTC continuing to show support by strong outlet performance, i.e. a clearance business there, and a modest growth in e-commerce, despite us continuing to have reduced promotion levels versus previous years. The footwear division declined to continue challenges we see in the style area, but we're also very encouraged by solid development with our Nitro franchises in running and in High Rocks IE training. Our profitability has improved versus last year, and our EBIT stands at shy of 52 million right now. Improved gross margin and a lower OPEX is certainly something which is worthwhile noting, and Marcus will go into more details later on. Let me start also by focusing what is pivotal and what is most important for a sports band like Puma, and that's the success of our athletes and our teams in the first quarter. We've talked about an all-Puma final at the Africa Cup of Nations in January. We've also seen an all-Puma final at European handball championships between Denmark and Germany. Great start to the year, which was then continued when you look at track and field with another world record, the 15th, set by Mondo Duplantis in pole vaulting, where he's now at a staggering 6 meters and 31. At the World Athletics Indoor Championships, 21 Puma athletes grabbed medals, and that was by far the best-performing brand that we've seen in a championship, including our Swiss Simon Ehrhammer setting a new world record in heptathlon. Armanal Pedros set a new German record in the half marathon in Berlin, Again, underlining the great achievements and the great potential that the NITRO technology has for us as a brand. Ferrari has seen three consecutive podium finishes in the first three races of the new Formula One season. And Joanna Witwiczek has set a new world record in the High Rocks women's racing in Warsaw only recently. Finally, a quick look at football, which is, of course, pivotal this year. Man City took the Carabao Cup against Arsenal a few weeks ago. And as you've also noticed, they have advanced the FA Cup final and are at the moment leaders of the table in the Premiership. So all in all, a great start to the year, a great sporting start for Puma as a brand. But at the same time, we can also record that our recent product launches have really achieved and in some instances even overachieved our best hopes. We have 11 teams qualified for the FIFA World Cup in North America in a couple of weeks' time. We've launched those kits with the so-called Rolling Nations event in New York just a few weeks ago, and had more than 10,000 businesses live for that event. From an Hyrux perspective, we're very, very pleased that we've been the first one to market that has launched a specifically developed product around the event in Las Vegas and product has been sold out, but will of course get restocked in the very near future. We've seen continued great results with our Nitro technology here with the launch of DV8 Nitro Elite 4 at the London Marathon, but also being displayed in Boston recently. Matthias Gitzel has launched his very own first handball shoe and also here a sellout result, which was unprecedented for us in that area. That was a lot of great news from a sports perspective, but also from a style perspective. When you look at our street culture, we're very intrigued by the continued success we have with low profile. In this case, the launch of H Street, a campaign was featuring the Puma ambassador and K-pop artist, Rosé. And at the same time, we're looking ahead into the future where we are revitalizing suede products. a key iconic footwear piece for Puma in the future with different activations, including our House of Suede at the Paris Fashion Week. So there's a lot of things which have happened which give us confidence that we are on the right track. But everything, of course, is framed within that three-year program that we have outlined to all of you at the middle of last year. Our transformation started with a reset in 2025 and is now in execution mode in 2026, a year of transition. And at this point in time, I would just like to briefly recap again our objectives for 2026 that do remain unchanged. It is, on the one hand, a continuation of a three-year transformation journey that our company and our brand will undergo. We will definitely accelerate Puma's brand momentum, and that brand momentum will fuel future commercial success. It is very key that we continue to remind ourselves that commercial success will follow brand success, and that's exactly the order in which we're working towards. That also means we're going to shift towards a higher quality revenue with an improved focus on profitability, including better placements in our retail environment and with our customer collaborations. We will continue to work on our financial discipline and will deliver reliable results in the quarters and in the future. All will be underpinned by us building a high-performing team around the world and some key efforts, not just from a structural perspective, have already been taken in 2025. When you look at the continued execution of our rightsizing efforts, there are a few which are worth mentioning. We have a continued focus to elevate our distribution quality, particularly in key markets like North America. As previously shared, our mass merchant business in the U.S. will see a steep double-digit decline until end of this year, and the work has started already. In a moment, I'll also elaborate on the take-back of Overstock at Wholesale Partners, who have made some significant progress. In our very own channels, we have significantly reduced level of discounts and will further decline, will however always remain on industry standards. Our industry does see significant promotional activities and Puma will of course at key moments, key commercial moments, be on par with our competition to also make sure we liquidate our inventories. We'll see continued efforts to improve our cash management. We've made an immediate reduction of our purchase orders, and these are fully implemented already for the fall winter 26 season. We have a dedicated work stream in place to analyze our account receivables, and we have put tangible actions in place to optimize those. we are equally continually focused on our cost base. For short-term tactical cost reallocations, which will be part of the ongoing transition, but equally, and I'll show you a detail of that one, with the full elevation of our range size and the complexity in our organization. And finally, a continued assessment of our operational efficiencies in line with the ongoing efforts to improve PUMA's operating model. To name here is our reorganization of our home market Europe, which is in full swing and has been communicated to all affected teams in the first quarter already. Looking at specific examples, here is our progress on a continued right-sizing efforts. We talked about the overstock reduction at wholesale partners, and I can report that we have in North America achieved a mid-double-digit decline of inventory levels at selected wholesalers. I will call it a very solid progress in the first quarter of 2026 to also liquidate our excess inventory. The target for us remains that we normalize to healthy levels and they were rebuilding a sustainable business with our strategic partners based on the better segmentation, consumer activation, and also life cycle management. Last year, we have announced that we're going to right-size also our range size and the complexity that comes with it. Historically, PUMA has had a fairly complex and specifically for the size of our organization, partly inefficient range. We've immediately reviewed starting in July and August last year, and we've taken decisive actions which already impact and affect spring summer 27 as a collection. Significant progress has been made by the teams to increase the efficiency of the range and to also normalize our SKU content to a healthy level for the size of our Puma business. It's worth mentioning here that our storytelling product and distribution approach, which we have concerted and aligned together, have really led to a better point of view as a brand and ultimately will allow us to have a more succinct brand identity today. both in terms of the customer presentation, but also in terms of how we energize our consumers around the brand again. And then finally, we have an ongoing reduction of our corporate positions by 20% from the end of 26 versus the beginning of 2025, so in the span over 24 months. As a reminder, 500 positions have been successfully reduced in the first half in 25 as part of the next level cost efficiency programs. Middle of last year, we then identified another 900 positions to be reduced until the end of this year. And here is the status of where we are with the execution of that program. 50%, i.e. 450 positions were already identified, communicated, and executed. i.e. the affected employees have already left the organization latest by the end of Q1. Out of the remaining 50%, That's another 450 positions. 80% were already identified and communicated with the departure of the affected employees ongoing. So it's only 20% remaining, and they are entirely identified with communication in different stages depending on the local requirements and processes that we, of course, adhere to. And then last but not least, it's also worthwhile mentioning that we continue the leadership changes in our senior line-up. We have briefly mentioned the switch from Marcus to Mark from a CEO, a CFO positioning, but underneath also we continue to have adjustments in our leadership organization. Four new additions have been communicated recently. Emily Muller-Lennox will return to Puma and will start her duties as vice president of the business unit KIDS under Maria's leadership. Also in Maria's team, we have recently announced and appointed a new vice president of creative direction. Creative direction for us is pivotal for the turnaround of the Puma brand to strengthen our brand identity and really to discuss a next level from a creation to product execution perspective. James has vast industry experience between innovation and product excellence, and it's really exciting to see him on board now. To further, leaders have been announced, starting with Maria's organization, Loro Flickr. We'll start in June to take up the position of VP BU Style. And in that capacity, we'll be overseeing our select and our prime business. That's a business which we last year separated from our core business to make sure we're going to have really a different and a prosperous business in that pivotal area, also from a commercial perspective. Last but not least, moving to commerce, Bertrand Blanc will take up the position of Vice President Wholesale in Matthias' team starting next Monday already and his key mission is to ensure that we are rebuilding a healthy and sustainable business with key strategic partners across our markets. Finally, we are also in the final stages of closing our hiring with a new VP of e-commerce who will then complete the lineup in Matthias' Center of Excellence across all channels. That's it for me from now, and I would like now to hand over to Markus. Thank you.