Puma Se Unsp/Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome and thank you for joining the Q3 2026 earnings call of Puma SE. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in 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 Boesing, Director Invest Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Maura. Hello everyone and welcome to PUMA's third quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining me today are our CEO Arthur Hoeld and our CFO Mark Langer. Before we begin, please take note of the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information, which is included on the next slide of the presentation. Arthur and Mark will then take you through today's Our business recap, financial update and way forward. Following the presentation, we will open the line for questions. To give as many participants as possible the opportunity to ask questions, we kindly ask you to limit your initial questions to two. And with that, over to you Arthur.

Manuel, thank you very much. Good afternoon from Herzogenaurach. Mark and myself are looking forward to taking you through our Q3 results in the next few minutes. So let me start that overall our Q3 results reflect the progress we are making in our transition year against the backdrop of a challenging market environment, specifically in key markets like Europe and North America. Despite continuous macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties, we do remain on track to achieve our plans for this year. Sales are at minus 6.3 versus last year, and that is currency adjusted. That's an improvement versus Q2, as expected, but remains below last year, mainly due to our continued reset measures. We see weaker consumer demand that's also waiting on sales, while we also see double-digit growth in Asia Pacific and our e-commerce channel that provided some positive momentum for our results overall. Additionally, strategic growth categories are gaining traction that's led by a double-digit growth in running and a single-digit growth in training. Our reported EBIT landed minus 11.4 in Q3 this year. That is a sequential improvement versus the last quarter. Compared with last year, the improving gross profit margin was more than offset by a higher OPEX ratio. and finally we see an improvement in cash flow landing Q3 at 92 million despite lower profitability. That's supported by an improved working capital management which Mark will allude to later on. As outlined we're clearly a sports company, we're a sports brand and therefore I'd always like to share the highlights from a sports perspective when we talk about the previous quarter. Clearly on running we're building our momentum. We're showing up stronger than ever before at key races like, for example, a recent Berlin and Chicago marathon. With Project 3, which is a sub-elite program, we had in both races 300 athletes competing, and more than 100 of those 300 achieved personal bests in Puma gear and equipment. In Berlin, we nearly doubled the share of our runners versus last year, and we're also the number four brand within the top 10 finishers of the race. Activation around the marathons also included ShakeOut runs, a relay to Berlin, and most importantly, we have had 6,000 visitors during the weekend in our Nitro Lab, where we have an amazing opportunity to showcase not just our innovation, but how PUMA is really a leading force in the world of running. And speaking about activation, it's also worth mentioning that our Mediation in Motion campaign generated more than 1.2 billion organic reaches in more than 40 markets globally. And that's an amazing result for us to also demonstrate that the new DVA Pure is really getting consumer traction. Moving from running into track and field, which has always historically been a stronghold of Puma, I'm happy to report that we've been a number two brand when it comes to footwear gold medals at the recent European Athletic Championships in Birmingham. Our Swiss athlete, Swiss partner, Aude Vero, was definitely standing out, not just at the European Championships, but she has won literally every possible event this year. And she also was nominated the Female European Athlete of the Year, next to Gianmarco Tamberi, our partner in Italy, who was also named Male Athlete of the Year. And last but not least, of course, also to mention again, Wanda Duplantis, who was winning the Ultimate Athletics Championships whilst at the same time This he has been clocking his next world record at 6.31, which means the 15th time he has broken that record. Moving on to Formula One, we are very pleased with the performance of our partners. Ferrari is at the moment taking the second place in the Constructors' Championship, both between Ferrari and McLaren. They had multiple podium finishes in Q3, but we have also seen amazing activations around the Monza race weekend, for example. where our activation around Charles Leclerc specifically generated more than 15 million online impressions. A similar success story in Singapore where we had in-store activation with Charles Leclerc and Landon Norris, both in-store but also using TikTok live streams in six different countries in Southeast Asia. And last but not least, we've also merged our motorsports activations with culture and fashion We have celebrated a fashion show recently where we had us joining together with McLaren to celebrate the legacy of Formula 1 Acon, James Hunt. For our performance from a sports perspective, last is our DNA category football. So we've seen very good sellout results. all of our major partnerships when it comes to our football clubs with the pre-season activations also happening across the globe. We have also had a very, very significant cultural collaboration with ASAP Rocky with the likes of Man City and AC Milan that was supported with local activations around those jersey launches and his European tour. Speaking about European club football, We are also very pleased with the start of the season with our clubs, most notably Galatasaray and Man City leading the table of their respective local leagues. Closing off the Q3 achievements from our football federations, Portugal and Switzerland opened the UEFA Nations League with four wins in four matches in their respective groups. Portugal is already secured the qualification for the UEFA Nations League quarter-finals and In Africa, Morocco and the Ivory Coast have opened the AFCON qualifying with maximum points and both no goals conceded. A lot of highlights on the sporting side of things for Puma and our partners. And in a similar vein, when we now transition into sports style, we're very pleased with the continued success that we have with Speedcat. It does remain our best selling sports style franchise in the third quarter. And we continue momentum with partnerships specifically with Rosé and launches we had around the Speedcat Croc for example. Suede we're building up as the next franchise for us visible in Q3 supported by a global campaign with the tagline Never Not Suede. We do see significant uplift in our DTC sales for that franchise which is important for us in the future.