Ceconomy Stock

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CECONOMY AG Q3 9 Month 2025/'26 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I will now hand the conference over to Kerstin Achterfeldt, Senior Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Crystal, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Q3 results call. I'm joined today by our CEO, Remko Rijnders.

Before we begin, please take note that today's presentation and discussion may include forward-looking statements. Further information can be found in the disclaimer included in today's presentation. This call is being recorded, and a replay will be available on our website later today.

With that, I would now like to hand over to Remko.

Yes. Thank you, Kerstin, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today.

I'm happy to welcome you to our Q3 earnings call and to my first earnings call as CEO. I look forward to taking you through today's presentation. As our new CFO will join us later in the course of the year, I will guide you through both our operational and financial highlights.

But before I discuss our business development and financial performance, let me put today's results into a broader perspective. On July 9, we held our Strategy Day, and we shared an overview on where we stand and where we are going. I'm extremely proud of what we have achieved over the last years. We have taken consumer electronics to the next level. We have strengthened our strong customer relationships. We are seamlessly linking our core business with our growth businesses. This makes us an omnichannel service platform.

We combine multiple business areas under one roof. This is a strong foundation that we can build on. Our Experience Electronics strategy is working and paying off. This is why our new strategy is deliberately not a reinvention, it's an evolution of our direction. We create Experience Electronics that matter. This experience earned moments of trust.

Let me explain. We live in a world where rapid technology development and an almost limitless variety of products are making purchase decisions increasingly complex. There's only one thing that cuts through this noise, trust. Trust is a decisive factor for our customers. This is why our new strategic chapter will focus on creating moments of trust for our customers. We want to build trust in every interaction; online, in-store and through our services. And we set a new ambitious financial target, EUR 800 million in adjusted EBIT by fiscal year '28-'29. That is a 60% increase from where we stand today. You can see we are moving fast, and we are not slowing down. You will see this in our today's Q3 results as well. They are proof that we are on the right track.

Let me start with Slide 3 and our operational highlights from last quarter. All of them show customer centricity is not a buzzword for us. It shows up in how we run our operations every single day. The customer is at the heart of everything we do. Let me walk you through some of the concrete examples from the last month as well as things we are currently working on.

First, we will enhance our marketing capabilities even further and increase our efficiency in content production. An important lever will be our AI-enhanced content engine momentum. It will make us faster, more data-driven and more scalable. All of this contributes towards one goal: to reach our customers with the right message at the right moment at the right channel. Our offers will feel even more personal, and this is a key for customer relevance and trust.

The second area is sustainable services. We have achieved 3 milestones here. First, we introduced extended warranties for refurbished products. All refurbished devices that we sell will now have the same warranty as new devices. Second, we launched a new at-home care subscription model in Turkey. The offering enables customers to maintain their household appliances for the professional maintenance. With this offering, we help to extend product lifetime, improve product performance and strengthen long-term customer loyalty.

Third, we launched our trade-in at home offer in Turkey. Customers can now trade-in their products at their own doorstep. After the online pre-evaluation, the team comes by, checks the device and if customer agrees, they take it. This makes it possible to use our trade-in services with even less effort.

And last but not least, our logistics network is gaining momentum. We are moving even closer to our customers. 6 out of 8 urban distribution centers in Germany are now live. They cover more than 50% of our 2-man handling deliveries like fridges, washing machines and other bulky items. And the rollout to further countries is ongoing. This means faster delivery, better availability, higher customer satisfaction. These are not stand-alone initiatives. They are all expressions of our customer centricity.

Let me now give you an overview of our results on Slide 4. The headline is simple. We are on course. In the first 9 months of the financial year, we generated EUR 18.4 billion in sales. This is a 5% increase, adjusted for currency and portfolio effects. In Q3, we delivered very strong like-for-like growth of 8.2%.

Our adjusted EBIT reached EUR 342 million in the 9 months period. This is a plus of EUR 62 million compared to last year. This makes our Q3 the 14th consecutive quarter of profitable growth. This shows clearly our strategy is working consistently. Our focus on customer satisfaction is also paying off. Our NPS stands at 63, up 2 points year-on-year. All of this leaves us with a positive outlook for the rest of the year. We are on the finishing stretch of reaching our targets.

Let me give you a bit more color on what drove this performance in the first 9 months on Slide 5. Starting with omnichannel sales, our online sales grew by 10% in the first 9 months of the year. In Q3 alone, they accelerated by 18.3%. Our online share now stands at 28.2%, which translates to an increase of 190 basis points. And at the same time, our brick-and-mortar sales grew 3.3% in the first 9 months. In Q3, it even increased by a strong 4.8%. These developments show our omnichannel approach continues to pay off.

Our growth businesses also continued to grow with strong momentum. Our Services & Solutions incomes increased strongly. The Retail Media income nearly doubled, and our marketplace GMV is growing at a high double-digit rate. These businesses carry structurally higher margins. As they continue to scale, they make our overall business more diversified and hence, stronger and more profitable.

Let us now have a closer look on our countries. Turkey and Hungary delivered strong sales. Spain and Italy developed positively as well. Germany strongly gained momentum in Q3. Profitability improved in Hungary, Germany, Austria, Turkey and Italy. Overall, our profitability increased. Our EBIT grew by EUR 62 million in 9 months period. We are gaining loyalty customers, too. We now count 57 million members, a plus of 13 million year-on-year. At the same time, we maintain strong liquidity. Our free cash flow is stable.

You probably recognize the next slide, #6. We present this table each quarter to give you a detailed transparency about the development of the 9 KPIs that we introduced at our Capital Markets Day in 2023, and we are getting to the finish line now. Across the various business fields, Retail Core, Service & Solutions, Marketplace, Retail Media, we took a big step towards the targets for September 2026. The picture is clear. We are on track, and we will even exceed 5 of our targets. These are loyalty members, stock reach, Service & Solutions, Marketplace and Retail Media. And we will use our momentum to grow even more. This is what you will see on the next slide.

On Slide 7, you see the updated sets of our key pledges. We presented this at our Strategy Day. As I already mentioned, creating moments of trust will be our leading ambition. And we are anchoring this ambition in 2 critical KPIs, NPS and returning customers. Why these 2? On the one hand, NPS measures satisfaction. We have added 10 NPS points over the past 3 years and now target an NPS of at least 66 by fiscal year '29.

On the other hand, returning customers measure stickiness through loyalty. We aim to increase this rate from 46% to 54% over the same time frame. It reflects the percentage of customers who make at least a second purchase with us. Moments of trust create long-lasting customer relationships. And these relationships translate into concrete business outcomes in all our growth businesses. All of them will gain even more momentum. This growth achieved at moderate top line expansion will drive our profitability.

Over the last 3 years, we have more than doubled our adjusted EBIT. Now, we have set ourselves an ambitious target of EUR 800 million adjusted EBIT for fiscal year '28-'29, driven by further profitability gains in our growth businesses as well as expected synergies from the partnership with JD.com. At that level, we are moving firmly in best class in territory on margin.

And Slide 8 tells the structural story of how we will do that. Today, in fiscal year '25-'26, 40% originate from our growth businesses. By '28-'29, we want to see a different picture. More than half of our gross profit, 51% will come from our growth businesses. Retail Core will remain at 49%. This isn't just a shift in numbers. It's a proof that we are an omnichannel service platform. We are building a more resilient, more diversified business model. All business areas will significantly contribute to our gross profit, which is precisely the resilience the model is designed to deliver.

Now, let me share more details of Q3 results. We will start with Slide 10. Now, let me share more detail of our 9-month results. We will start with Slide 10. We had again another quarter of growth. This is the 14th consecutive quarter, resulting in a positive EBIT momentum for 9 months. And this is a market, which remains volatile and competitive. So, we are extremely proud of our results.

Let's look at the headline numbers. Our sales growth accelerated in Q3 by a very strong 8%, resulting in a 5% growth for the first 9 months. This number is adjusted for currency and portfolio changes and pre-IAS 29. Our like-for-like sales grew by 8.2% in Q3 and 4.9% for the 9 months. That is if you count only comparable selling space and stores already opened 1 year ago.

Our profitability increased strong for the 9 months with 22% increase in adjusted EBIT, leading to a 30 basis points increase in margin. And with a plus of EUR 19 million in Q3 and EUR 62 million in the first 9 months, we are definitely on track to reach our full-year guidance. Overall, this is a strong set of results that demonstrate the resilience of our business.

Now let's look at the segments, starting with DACH and sales on Slide 11. We recorded a slight like-for-like decline of 0.9%. However, I would like to highlight the positive trend improvement in Q3, where we have reported great like-for-like growth of 5.1%. This was primarily driven by Germany, where we performed strong during the heat wave, particularly in air conditioning products despite the overall customer electronic market remaining in decline.

Our profitability improved strongly with a EUR 25 million increase in adjusted EBIT. In Western and Southern Europe, our sales were strong with a 3.6% increase in like-for-like for the first 9 months. On profitability, we increased our adjusted EBIT by EUR 9 million and our margin by 10 basis points. There, Italy and Spain were the main drivers.

Moving to Eastern Europe. Sales were driven by Turkey, but both countries contributed to increase in profitability. Finally, let me highlight our other segments, which primarily represent holding costs in our private label business. The decline in EBITDA is primarily due to a higher risk provision on mobile phone contracts, reflecting the current macroeconomic headwinds.

So, let me come back to our EBIT development on Slide 12. Our gross margin increased by 30 basis points for the first 9 months to 18.2%, a strong performance. This improvement was driven by our growth areas. Now, circa 40% of our gross profit comes from our growth businesses. Our OpEx ratio was stable to 16.9% as we have mitigated the OpEx increase with strict cost management, particularly our location and energy costs.

Turning to the full overview on Slide 13 from adjusted EBIT to net profit. Walking down from the adjusted EBIT of EUR 342 million, we recorded EUR 105 million non-recurring items. The EUR 11 million increase year-over-year is mainly due to a lower profit share of Fnac Darty of EUR 33 million. Regarding tax, the improved operational results in combination with a higher tax rate led to higher taxes. All in all, this resulted in a reported EPS of EUR 0.06 in the first 9 months, an improvement of EUR 0.04 compared to last year.

Turning to Slide 14. Free cash flow was, as expected, seasonally negative in the first 9 months. Even so, our free cash flow was stable year-on-year in the third quarter, confirming the 6-month trend.

Now, let us have a look at how this financial development translates in our outlook. You can see on Slide 16. Let me come straight to the point. We confirm our guidance for 2025-'26. We expect a moderate increase in currency and portfolio adjusted total sales with Western, Southern and Eastern Europe contributing to that sales growth.

Secondly, we continue to expect an adjusted EBIT of around EUR 500 million. And here is an important update. Our improvement is now expected to be driven by all segments, not only Western and Southern Europe, as we previously indicated. This means we are on track to achieve our headline ambition of EUR 500 million in adjusted EBIT that we first communicated at our Capital Markets Day in 2023. We keep our promises. And we communicated on our Strategy Day for fiscal year 2029, our ambition in adjusted EBIT of EUR 800 million.

Let me give you an update on our proposed partnership with JD.com on Slide 17. We are still en route to closing. On the regulatory front, we have together and under the lead of JD.com made significant process (sic) [ progress ]. Merger control clearance has been granted everywhere as set out in the offer document in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Turkey. Foreign direct investment or FDI clearances have also been received in Italy, France and Germany. And we are very proud that we have received the FDI clearance in Spain yesterday. This is a very strong sign for the progress and underscores the viability of our transaction.

Regarding the FDI clearance in Austria, we continue to engage actively with the Federal Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism to meet the clearance conditions. JD.com has also submitted the FSR filing in Brussels. They are in the constructive engagement with the EU authorities. These processes take time, but they are moving into the right direction. Overall, we expect the closing in the second half of the year.

We remain fully committed to this partnership, and we are working diligently together with JD.com to bring it to completion. Allow me to repeat, the partnership between CECONOMY and JD.com is a strategic investment in us, but also in the future of retail. We choose this partnership as a strategic next step, not because we had to, but because we could. This partnership will be an acceleration of everything we have already built, and it will enable us to lead European retail in the future.

Let me wrap it up with Slide 18. The summary of what this quarter tells you about CECONOMY today and about the foundation for the future. There are 6 points I want you to take home today. One, the customer is at the center of everything we do. Our Experience Electronics strategy is grounded in this ambition, and we also see it in our numbers. Our NPS is up 2 points to 63. Two, we have successfully established a foundation to create moments of trust. Our new strategy is a consistent evolution of our existing way forward, and it will help us to accelerate even more.

Three, we posted a strong performance in the first 9 months of the year, driven by our balanced country portfolio and our scaling growth businesses. Our sales were at EUR 18.4 billion. Our adjusted EBIT amounted to EUR 342 million. This makes this Q3 our 14th consecutive quarter of profitable growth. Four, our focus remains on cost, liquidity and profitability. Five, we are ready to accelerate with JD.com. The regulatory process is on track, and we are in constructive talks to receive all approvals. We expect the closing in the second half of 2026.

Six, we confirm our outlook for 2025-'26 fiscal year. This means moderate sales growth and adjusted EBIT of around EUR 500 million. To sum it all up, we are on track to deliver on our targets. And with moments of trust, we will enter the next stage of our company growth journey.

Thank you for your attention, and we are now ready for your questions.

[Operator Instructions] And I am showing no questions from our phone lines. [Operator Instructions]

And our first question will come from Alexander Zienkowicz from mwb research AG.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you, Alexander.

One question on DACH. How much of the Q3 improvement comes from World Cup and weather versus how much is underlying visible there?

And my second question would be on working capital. Beyond your gross profit and cost levers outlined at the Strategy Day, how should we think about working capital development on your path to '28-'29? How does the growth mix you intend to follow affect your working capital? Could you decompose that?

Yes. Thank you, Alexander. And again, so how much of the Q3 improvement come from the World Cup and the weather impact? We had some tailwinds. That's true. So if you look at World Cup, our TV sales rose by 15%. So, that had a positive impact. We were also very much and very well prepared for that. And on the seasonal products, so the aircos, the fans and the mobile aircos, we saw an increase of almost 65%.

Then you had a second question when it comes to net working capital, working capital. So, we will keep it -- our estimation is to keep it stable in percentage of sales until 2029. That's the plan that we are working on.

Okay. So, no more granular movements there. So it's basically net zero, okay?

Yes. In percentage of sales, yes. So it will grow with the sales, of course, but it will stay stable.

[Operator Instructions] I'm showing no additional questions from our phone lines.

I'd now like to pass it back to the speakers to answer any web questions.

Thank you. We've got a question -- a set of questions from Charles Allen from Bloomberg Intelligence.

So the questions would be, what are your expectations on the impact of higher chip prices on computers and similar prices? Have you purchased inventory in advance to avoid some price increases? And last one would be, do you think consumers have noticed the rise in chip prices? And have you seen any difference in purchasing behavior?

Yes, Charles Allen, thanks for your question. Yes, the increase of chip prices is a, I wouldn't say, daily conversation that we have with our suppliers. It's very volatile, and we have all seen, I guess, the increase. The advantage that we have as a market leader in Europe that we have very, very strong relationship with all our suppliers. So indeed, we are an open discussion, but we also take strategic purchases very serious at the moment. So yes, we made for all our countries, an overall plan on the notebooks category where we buy 8 to 9 months in advance, also preempting that increase in chips and making sure that we don't have to, let's say, transfer that price increase to the customers. So, that's one.

When it comes to especially mobile phones, you see especially the lower price entry segments and mobile phone brands suffering the most due to the fact there is a chip price increase, but also a shortage there. And that we see as a retailer selling also average and exit prices as an advantage for us as the market leader also to get a bit more price stability in the market because the availability will go down overall and therefore, the competitive element is also less -- at the moment, less volatile for our business, let's say it like this. But yes, the chip prices, they will stay stable and increase even more. That's our expectation for now, at least for the next year, also the information that we receive from the suppliers.

So, there are a couple of topics that we are looking into. But we are trying to avoid with the suppliers to spec down the products, making sure that we don't need to transfer the prices, but we see a price increase in the market when it comes to notebooks, especially. But due to the AI integration, the notebook category is actually growing quite nicely and quite well in value, but also slightly in SKU still today. But we are well prepared.

Okay. Then we've got one more question from Frank Meßing from WAZ.

I think it was partly answered, but maybe you can repeat it, Remko. Can you please tell us more about demand of climate facilities?

Yes. So we are, of course, having a very diversified country portfolio with Spain, Italy, but also Germany, Netherlands. So first of all, it was exceptional, especially in the last couple of weeks, especially when it comes to the Western European countries. So, there are 2 things happening. First of all, we are increasing heavily our sales. So, that's 65% plus. And a big part of that is also coming from our own brands, KOENIC, that we're also selling very, very well in this period. It helps our margin, but it helps also our brand awareness and customer loyalty.

But second, of course, as a company, due to the fact that we see also Western Europe getting more and more in demand for split aircos, we're also working on new concepts and installation concepts also for next year to make sure that we can tap into that potential even more and we can learn from countries like Turkey, Spain and Italy, how to do that and to make sure that we have from an assortment perspective, especially from a service and an installation perspective, even more possibilities to gain market share. But overall, very, very successful, of course, highly demanded by our customers and our own brand share increased significantly.

And I am showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand the conference back to Remko Rijnders, CEO, for his closing comments.

Yes. Thank you very much. So yes, not too many additional questions. But again, I would like to thank all of you for your time and questions today. It was, as we mentioned, a very strong quarter for us, and we are confirming the outlook for the rest of the year.

If you'd like to engage with us again through our official channels, we are happy to do so and continue the conversation, of course. And looking into the future, we have 2 milestones coming up for this financial year. We will publish our trading statement for Q4 and the financial year 2026 on the 27th of October. We will then present 1 full-year results on 14th of December. Be sure that the start of Christmas holidays is not too early for now.

Kerstin and I wish you really all the best and hopefully, a very relaxing period during the summer with family and friends and talk to you soon. Thank you again for your time. Bye-bye.

Thank you. This does conclude today's presentation. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Strategy Day. My name is Fabienne Caron. I head Investor Relations and Corporate Communications Department, and I will be your guide today. Before we begin, let me briefly refer to the disclaimer including in today's presentation. We meet today in a hybrid setting, and the event is being recorded. A replay will be made available afterwards. The presentation will last around 90 minutes. After that, you will have enough time for your questions. For those joining us online, questions can be asked either by phone or via the chat box below the webcast.

So 3 years ago, we met for our last Capital Market Day in Cologne. At that time, we shared where CECONOMY stood, what we were focusing on and how we intended to move the company forward. Today, we meet again, but in a different place and also at a different time in our journey. This time, we are here in Hamburg in our lighthouse, the name we give to our flagship store format. And that is a fitting image. A lighthouse give orientation, create visibility and helps navigate through change. That is exactly what today is about. We will show you the next phase of our strategy, where we are heading, what will drive value creation and how we intend to deliver. For those of you here with us in Hamburg, we invite you to join us for refreshment after the event, where you will also have the opportunity to meet CECONOMY and MediaMarktSaturn leaders and take part in a store tour.

And now to open the strategic part of today's event, it's a pleasure to hand over to our CEO, Remko Rijnders.

Good morning, everyone, also from my side. Thank you, Fabienne. Three years ago, we introduced our Experience Electronics strategy to you. We had a clear target to reach adjusted EBIT of EUR 500 million by fiscal year '25, '26. Some were skeptical. Indeed, it was ambitious. It represented nearly doubling our adjusted EBIT over 3 years. Well, we are going to make it. Today, I'm proud to say we will hit that mark. We have worked hard to bring our Experience Electronics strategy to life. And none of it would have been possible with our 50,000 employees without the dedication, commitment and hard work. So thank you. Thank you again for everything you have done.

What we have built is great, but it's just the foundation because our world is changing, AI, digitalization endless options. We have infinite choice. There's one thing that helps us make decisions, trust. Trust is the decisive factor for our customers. Our brands embody trust, MediaMarkt, MediaWorld and Saturn are beloved by millions of customers across Europe. They stand for tech, innovation and for customer centricity. The customer is at the center of everything we do. We create long-term relationships across the entire customer life cycle. We create trust in every interaction, online, in-store or through our services. We create value and are determined to become best-in-class. Financially, this translates into a clear ambition by fiscal year '28, '29. We are targeting EUR 800 million adjusted EBIT. That means increasing our adjusted EBIT by 60% over the next 3 years.

And yes, I can already see some skeptical faces. But let me say this clearly, we will achieve this target. This path is clear, and you will hear the details from me and my colleagues today. We are turning customer experience into moments of trust and trust into sustainable growth. As you can see, we are moving fast and we are not slowing down. You all know that we announced our partnership with JD.com last July and expect approval for the transaction in the second half of this year. With JD.com as a strong partner, we will be able to accelerate our strategy. Today, we want to present the next chapter of our strategy for the next 3 years. As you have probably already noticed, the focus of this chapter is trust. Together with 9 of my colleagues, I will share the next steps we plan to take. You will hear from Niclas, our Chief Customer Officer; Iris, our Chief People Officer; and Michael, our Chief Marketing Officer. [ Kathy ] [indiscernible], [ Alex ] and Guido are also here to answer your questions.

Together, we steer MediaMarktSaturn and CECONOMY. And together, we are creating the future we are presenting today. I have one additional announcement to share with you today. I'm pleased to announce that we will soon have our new member of the Board. Our new CFO will start in Q4 of this calendar year, and we will share the details in due time.

Before taking you on our journey into the future, let's take a moment to look back. As I've already said, we are extremely proud of what we have achieved over the past few years. On our 2023 Capital Markets Day, we introduced our Experience Electronics strategy. Over the past 3 years, we have executed it, and we have been successful. First, we have taken consumer electronics to the next level. Classic retail has become Experience Electronics along 4 dimensions: employee, shopping, users and Impact Experience. Second, we have strengthened our strong customer relationships. We are building lasting long-term connections rather than simply shopping interactions. Third, we are seamlessly linking our business areas. This makes us an omnichannel service platform.

We combine multiple business areas under one roof. And this has made us more than a retailer. Looking back, some may have doubted our ability to deliver. Can we shift our business and become an omnichannel service platform? Can we increase our profitability? Can we grow in a challenging environment? Well, we can. We have delivered year after year. Our financial performance is strong. We are on track to achieve our headline ambition of EUR 500 million in adjusted EBIT and to strengthen our cash generation as reflected by our free cash flow of EUR 337 million in fiscal year '24-'25. We are delivering on the operational targets that we have set ourselves. What you can see here are our 9 key pledges. They help us measure the implementation of our strategy. The picture is clear. We are on track, and we will even exceed 5 out of our targets. We have achieved 58 million loyalty members. We have improved our net working capital by reducing our stock reach by 16%.

We have increased our income share of services and solutions to 6%. Our marketplace has a GMV of EUR 800 million. And finally, we have grown our retail media income to EUR 150 million, more than 3x our initial target number. This trajectory is clear and shows that we, as a company, together with the colleagues, are moving into the right direction. Why do I believe that we are ready for the next chapter? Because our foundations are stronger than ever. Our employees are proud to work for MediaMarktSaturn. Our Net Promoter people score which we measure our employee satisfaction is at an all-time high of 44. We have embedded a customer-first mindset into our organization. It has truly become part of our DNA. And our NPS shows this. It increased by 10 points to 63 over the past 3 years. We have successfully repositioned our brands around the theme of experience, and our brand value has grown to over EUR 2.1 billion.

We have transformed into a genuine platform business. More than 40% of our gross profit now comes from outside traditional retail. This is the foundation we can build on. I know you're all waiting for details on our partnership with JD.com. We are still going through the regulatory process required to close the transaction, and I will come back to that later on. The key point is this, JD.com and CECONOMY share a fundamental set of convictions. We both put the customer at the center. We both believe in omnichannel, and we both offer high-quality leading brands. Our partnership will enable us to execute on our strategy even faster, particularly in 2 areas that are central to our ambitions, supply chain and technology. The partnership will take Experience Electronics to the next level. We have come a long way, and we will accelerate even more.

We are taking our strategy to the next stage. What we are presenting today deliberately an evolution, not a reinvention. Our strategy has consistently been delivered. Our Experience Electronics strategy is working and paying off, and we want to continue on this path, always with the customer in mind. The core belief remains the foundation of everything we represent today. What has evolved is how we engage customers across the different touch points. We consistently link our offering. Let me give you an example. Customer search for a product on our marketplace. They can set an individual price alert. After push notification in our app, they order the product and pick it up in one of our stores. We will use both existing channels and new opportunities.

An important lever will be agentic commerce. It will change how customers discover, decide and shop. Niclas will share this with some more insights later on. AI is powerful, but we have something equally meaningful, unique personal customer experience. Combining the 2, AI-driven intelligence with genuine human interaction is where a true competitive edge is built. We create experience at electronics that matters. This experience earns moment of trust. Let me explain. We are living in a paradox right now. AI is delivering more transparency than ever before, more options, more information and yet we feel lost. Think about it. You walk into a store, open an app, browse a marketplace. Infinity choice stares back at you. Algorithms flat you with recommendations, prices flash, review contradict each other. New sellers appear. Your data is being tracked, analyzed, personalized, sometimes in ways that are rarely explained to you.

You ask yourself, who can I rely on? That is what millions of our customers ask us every single day in real conversations. They do not just want more options. They want someone they can trust. And here what's sticking. The more powerful the technology becomes, the more obscure the algorithm, the more data involved. The more critical trust becomes as a differentiator, price, product range, convenient, important, yes, but trust. Trust is the lever that builds real relationship. Trust is essential value driver and one of the most competitors simply cannot copy. We have 50,000 colleagues who will build trust through genuine human interaction over thousands of stores, a brand portfolio that is among the most trusted in consumer electronics across our markets. In a world of infinite choice, algorithm-driven decisions, trust isn't a nice to have. It's a competitive advantage. Trust is built through 4 experiences we have spent 3 years mastering, employee experience, shopping experience, users experience and impact experience. With each of them, we build moments of trust.

We have the best people. They create authentic personal interactions that cannot be replicated. We offer our customers the right selection, and we guide them through an increasingly complex market to the products that best meets their needs. We support our customers throughout the full product life cycle wherever and whenever they need us from finding and buying a product to, installing, repairing, upgrading and recycling it. And we take responsibility for the ecosystem that we operate in, always driven by the highest standards. Let me take a few minutes to bring this to life. Our single most important differentiator remains our employee experience. No online-only competitor can replicate what 50,000 trained colleagues deliver across 1,000 stores daily. This is primarily the differentiator. We offer our customer personal interactions. I truly believe AI offers many advantages, but it won't be able to replace face-to-face interaction.

Customers who interact with our colleagues convert at higher rates, spend more per transaction and come back more often. AI can be a facilitator to make our teams more effective. giving them the right information at the right moment with AI-generated insights. Niclas and Iris will come back to that later on. In shopping experience, our focus is on relevance. We offer the right products and services at the right moment. We select the best products for our customers. We bring global innovation to customers all over Europe. We put relevance over volume. We are deliberately moving away from mass communication. We create personalized touch points through tools like our price alert feature. We know what our customers need. We use rich data pool to exchange their shopping experience and to announce it and to create tailored services. In short, we deliver literally the same day. 90 minutes delivery is a clear example of what our omnichannel network enables.

Services is where most retailers abandon their customers. We do the opposite. Our smart bars are becoming full-scale support hubs. They offer rapid diagnostic and immediate resolution. But first aid support isn't everything. We stay with our customers across the full product life cycle. We are present. We are accessible. We are on their side. This is how long customer loyalty is built, not through loyalty programs, but through being generally useful across the life of the product. Impact experience reflects a straightforward belief how we operate matters as much as what we sell. We want to connect sustainability and affordability for our customers. However, impact experience has expanded beyond sustainability into how we select and manage the ecosystem we operate in.

We have a responsibility when it comes to selecting and managing our partners, whether they are service partners such as repair providers, operational partners such as logistics providers or partners who sell on our marketplace or showcase their products in our stores. We hold them to the same standards we hold ourselves on product quality, data ethics and customer service. If they cannot meet that bar, they don't operate in our platform. Trust ultimately also means taking ownership of the ecosystem we operate in. So how do we win in this environment? When customers ask, who can I trust? We answer with moments of trust, not just once, but in every interaction, every touch point. That's our strategy. It's built across 4 experiences working together. And there is the competitive edge against online-first retailers, our advantage is physical presence at scale, 1,000 stores with personal advice, hence on product experience and direct personal service in one place.

Against established competitors, our lever is personalization at scale, AI-powered customer journeys, delivered through colleagues who know their customers. This is human trust that drives real loyalty. Our partnership with JD.com will accelerate our logistics and tech capabilities. As a leading global supply chain-based technology and service provider, JD.com has cutting-edge retail infrastructure that enables consumers to buy whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want it. We link omnichannel depth with human expertise. This is what our competitors cannot match. We have a clear answer to the question that shapes retail right now, moments of trust delivered at scale across all channels. That's the driver of our competitive advantage. The data is ambiguous. Customers who trust us are worth significantly more. Trust is what sets apart the customer experience as MediaMarktSaturn.

The data also shows this customers who trust us visit more often. They buy more products, engage more with our services and report higher satisfaction. The result is a measurable higher customer lifetime value and a business model that compounds as trust deepens. Moments of trust aren't just the right thing to create. They are the most valuable thing we can create. We turn customer experience into moments of trust and trust into growth. Let me give you a concrete example. A customer walks into one of our lighthouse stores, like the one we are in right now, in a single visit, they experience the full power of what we have built, omnichannel core, services and solutions, private label, our boutiques as part of Retail as a Service, Retail Media, what we call our growth business have matured from an early stage to proven contributions. And I'm sure they will grow even more because they enhance our omnichannel core with even more relevance for our customers, one seamless experience, multiple value streams, multiple moments of trust.

You have already heard me reference our 9 key pledges. They show our commitment to keeping you regularly informed on the progress of our strategic implementation. What you see here is the updated set. Some pledges carry over, other reflect the evaluation of our strategy. We are anchoring our moments of trust ambition into 2 critical KPIs, NPS and repurchase rate. You can ask why these 2? On the one hand, NPS measures satisfaction. We have added 10 NPS points over the past 3 years and now target an NPS of 66 by fiscal year '28, '29. On the other hand, repurchase rate. It measures stickiness through loyalty. And we will increase our repurchase rate from 46% to 54% in the same time frame. Moments of trust create long-lasting customer relationships. And these relationships translate into concrete business outcomes. EUR 1.6 billion gross profit in Service & Solutions, nearly EUR 2 billion in marketplace GMV, a private label share of 7%, EUR 90 million in gross profit from Retail as a Service and EUR 230 million in Retail Media by fiscal year '28, '29.

This growth achieved at a moderate top line expansion, we will drive profitability. Over the last 3 years, we have more than doubled our adjusted EBIT. Now we set ourselves an ambitious target, EUR 800 million adjusted EBIT in fiscal year '28, '29, driven by further profitability gains in our growth areas as well as expected synergies from our partnership with JD. This would represent a strong 3.3% adjusted EBIT margin. At that level, we are moving firmly into best-of-class territory. And let me be clear about this with 50,000 exceptional colleagues, given that they're all building moments of trust day after day, the top is exactly where we belong. My colleagues will now take you through the growth plans behind each of these ambitions in detail.

Let me hand over to my dear colleague, Niclas Brandt.

Thank you, Remko. When we talk about moments of trust, one thing is crucial, delivering great customer experiences consistently at every touch point. Over the next slides, I will outline our operational and strategic priorities. They will help us to improve customer experience, and they set us apart in the areas that matter most. Trust from the customer perspective is straightforward. They expect us to understand their needs and follow through reliably. Our customers set a clear bar. It just works every time without exception. It starts with the basics of retail, having the right assortment available at the right price across channels. It's about good advice and support in store, on the phone or via chat. Another very important element is delivery or pickup. Here, it's not just speed that matters, but reliability and on-time performance, too. And it doesn't end with handing over the product or service.

As a customer, I must trust that if something goes wrong, MediaMarkt will take full ownership and find a resolution. My honest assessment at this point, we are already doing many things very well. Our aim is to build on this and deliver experiences with much more consistency, something that our customers expect. That is a strategic priority. Achieving this consistency will require us to build processes and deliver operational excellence. But strategically, it goes further than that. Consistency alone won't be enough. What will set us apart is relevance, making every interaction feel like it was designed for that individual customer and not just any customer. The right message at the right moment, personalized communication, a journey that reflects what we know about each customer. That is the layer that turns a reliable experience into a memorable one and a satisfied customer ultimately into a loyal one.

On the following slides, I will focus on a few selected examples. We have simplified the customer journey into key promises and service levels that define today's experience. I want to highlight where we set ourselves apart and show where we are investing further. Customer journeys always include digital elements. And whenever and wherever possible, we connect them to the in-store experience. It starts with the discovery. This is one of the most critical moments in the journey because it's where we must win an increasingly scarce resource. customer attention. Our focus is on strong content and an excellent online experience. If customers or agents cannot find us and if search and navigation aren't simple and effective enough, we will lose a significant share of customers and with that demand. And at the same time, we continue to enable omnichannel journeys. Appointment bookings is a strong example for that. And for customers who don't want to visit a store, we already offer personal advice through video live consultation, supported by many partners such as Apple, Dyson, Miller or JBL.

And the next step is to take this discovery one step further by offering live consultation directly from the store. As customers move from discovery to selection, they need to feel confident that they are finding the right product or service, especially when they don't know exactly what they are looking for. This is one of the areas where we still see significant room for improvement because search behavior is changing fundamentally, and AI will help us close part of the gap. What is changing is that customers are no longer only searching for a specific product. Increasingly, they describe a need or ask a question. Customer interactions in the digital world are becoming much more conversational. And this is exactly where conversational search becomes relevant. Instead of searching for a model, a customer might ask what is the best TV for a World Cup party? And even sorry to say if Germany is out, there's still a great excuse to upgrade your viewing experience. With AI and agents, we can support this type of search much more effectively.

Instead of getting lost in endless options, you simply tell us what you're looking for. And in seconds, you see the best choice for you, including prices, availability and customer reviews. As this example, you can ask follow-up questions, compare different options and ultimately receive personalized recommendations before making the actual decision and adding it to the basket. At MediaMarkt, we know that one of our strongest assets is our people, and AI won't change this. In fact, we are taking these AI capabilities and enabling our store colleagues. We are developing an AI-powered sales assistant for our employees, enabling better product comparisons, deeper product knowledge and more relevant advice directly at the point of sale.

When it comes to pickup and delivery, we have already set clear standards in the market with 30 minutes pickup and 90 minutes express delivery in many cities. And at the same time, we are continuing to improve the end-to-end purchase journey. One important step now being rolled out in Germany is the direct pay on shop floor, allowing customers to complete the purchase right on the spot. Another important element of the journey is 2-person delivery for bulky items such as washing machines or dishwashers. Delivering large appliances, including installation with consistently high quality is a very critical part of the overall customer experience. This makes it an important opportunity to further elevate our service promise. And beyond the sale, customers expect transparency at all times. This includes status updates for deliveries, repair orders and refunds. Providing this visibility is crucial to build trust and reduce friction across the journey. This is exactly why our teams are working on real-time tracking capabilities that give customers easier access to relevant status information throughout the entire process.

For example, this will be introduced for repairs by Q2 financial year '27. And just as important as the relationship, it shouldn't end once a purchase is completed or a service case is closed. As part of our personalized service program, we are rolling out additional contact options that can be assigned directly to individual stores, helping us to stay in touch with customers in a more personal and relevant way. Now our AI road map is built around 3 transformation bets to improve the customer journey end-to-end. All 3 bets are being piloted or tested this year and in future will be built on a shared data foundation and AI platform to create a connected customer experience. According to recent studies, electronics is the #1 category for AI-assisted shopping. We are adapting to this changing customer behavior by increasing our visibility on external AI platforms through enhanced content. And we will enable our own platforms to provide AI-powered advice and inspiration directly to our customers at scale.

Human-led AI-powered conversations bring AI into the in-store experience in a way that strengthens and not replaces human interaction. For customers, this means more personalized and more relevant advice. We are already testing a solution which helps our customers to better reflect each customer's individual misses and preferences, making every consultation more tailored, more informed and ultimately more valuable. And in customer care, we are evolving our existing AI-powered chatbot to the next level. It will become a broader customer support solution that delivers faster, more reliable and more personalized assistance. As an example, proactively reaching out to customers who bought a complex to install product and offering them support via chatbot that increases customer satisfaction and also reduces the likelihood of returns. And ultimately, we want to make this measurable. Revenue matters, yes. But as Chief Customer Officer, the most important metric for me is the NPS. And our long-term ambition is to raise it towards 70 points.

If we succeed in serving customers well and create experiences that make them choose us again, we will create real value and become more relevant in their lives. Once we are more relevant, customers are more likely to become loyal. And here, our ambition is clear. We want to grow our loyalty base. And crucially, we want it to be active. This means customers will choose to return repeatedly and not just once. We measure this as the share of returning customers, those who return to make at least one more purchase. And with the Experience Electronics strategy, we have already built a strong foundation in returning customers, increasing from 46% to 50% over the past 3 years. Now we are committing to grow it to 54% by the financial year '28, '29. This commitment requires us to deliver a more consistent, more personalized and -- more personalized experience where customers' needs are our responsibility.

At every touch point, if we get this right, we won't just serve customers better. We will trust, strengthen loyalty and create long-term measurable value. One key enabler for this is the app. As you will have seen in the previous slides, every customer gets their own version of MediaMarktSaturn, seamlessly connecting their in-store and digital experience, a personal concierge, proactive, relevant and always on. But more than convenience, the app is how we stay present in our customers' lives, not just when they need a product, but on every step of the journey.

Talking about every step of the journey, let me hand over to my dear colleague, Henny. She is our expert for services and solutions.

Thank you, Niclas. Let me show you why our service and solution portfolio will continue to be the key driver of customer value, strengthening our offering well beyond product. You all know the services we have been offering for a long time from telecom contracts and financing, insurances, repairs, trade-in, it's a strong growing business. And we are on track to exceed our target by the end of the fiscal year. We have added subscriptions and bundles starting with warranties and digital content services. In our bundles, we combine service products that are a perfect match in daily usage. For example, antivirus software and a new laptop. In doing so, we drive attach, gross profit and convenience for our customers. Following the same logic, we have launched live advisory services on our digital channels. We have provided personalized advice on goods and services online and remotely.

For many of our offerings, we work with a range of renown partners, but our promise to the customers remains clear. We take ownership across the entire journey, including the quality of what our partners deliver. Customer experience is at the heart of how we steer the business. We always have the customer in mind. How can we make life easier? How can we reduce complexity? This is how we are expanding our service and solution portfolio because we believe that retail is about more than sales incentive schemes. We have prioritized customer satisfaction measured by the Net Promoter Score, NPS, for short. Our customers also highly value our service and solution offer. We saw a 60% improvement in NPS for aftersales and repair over the past 3 years. In recent years, service and solution has evolved from a number of separate initiatives into a real value engine on where different areas strengthen each other and drive growth.

We've made things simpler for our employees, and we scaled the best practices across our countries to the entire group. We've made strong progress in expanding our online service and solution offering, including the rollout of our core portfolio in insurances, branded services in multiple countries. But we also know there is still significant untapped potential. One of our key priorities now is to bring online service experience up to the same level as the in-store experience already is. At the same time, we are streamlining the business around clearly defined service areas by unlocking international synergies. We have also started to integrate services more efficiently, for example, through bundles that combine laptop with installation and additional subscription services.

As a result, gross profit has grown significantly by EUR 300 million and is expected to reach EUR 1.4 billion in fiscal year '25-'26, going significantly above our pledge from fiscal year '22-'23. Going forward, we plan to continue growing and reach a gross profit of EUR 1.6 billion by fiscal year '28-'29. How will we get there? Operational excellence will remain a clear priority for us, but it's as important as our ability to scale the propositions that customers truly value and to scale them across the group quickly and efficiently. That is why the clearer structure we are building around distinct services matters so much. It helps us to make successful offerings for one market and expand them across the group, creating more values for customers and partners alike. We are also connecting our business much more -- businesses much more closely through service bundles, subscriptions, the marketplace, private label, Retail as a Service and Retail Media. We are building a more integrated offering. These aren't stand-alone activities.

They reinforce each other and make our customer proposition stronger. And through all this, the customer remains at the center. We expand our digital service offering. AI-guided selling will help customers navigate their decision journey and find the solution that fits their needs best. The telecommunication category is a great example of an opportunity ahead. It was one of our first service businesses, and it still has a strong potential to grow. Building on what is already live in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, we will expand internationally while also addressing where we can capture more of the value chain by operating as a so-called MVNO mobile virtual network operator ourselves. And then there is circularity, an area that is especially important to us from BetterWay products to repair, refurbishment and trade-in, circularity isn't only a growth driver, it is also a real differentiator for our customers.

Let me say a few more words about this. Through circularity, our customers can engage with the circular economy at every stage of the product life cycle and benefit financially along the way. Take smartphones as an example. Customers can choose a BetterWay product, keep it in use for longer through repair, trade it in for a voucher when they are ready to upgrade or opt for a refurbished device as an affordable alternative to buy new. With BetterWay, we've created a clear product identifier that points customers towards the most energy-efficient and sustainably produced products in our range, and they value it as a genuine orientation tool. Using certified labels and the guidance of the European energy efficiency class label, we have more than doubled the sales share to over 11%.

Our refurbished offering is increasingly sought after by our customers. It's an attractive alternative to new products giving them access to leading brands at more affordable prices while making more environmentally conscious choices. This year, we expect to sell 675,000 refurbished units, significantly driven by smartphones. Our repair offer extends the life cycle of devices. Together with our partners, we have repaired approximately 3 million devices for our customers. We are particularly proud of our trade-in offer available across all channels. Customers can return their used device and receive a voucher in exchange. It is good for the circular economy, good for the wallet and another strong way to build trust. Over the last 3 years, we have tripled our trade-in volume to more than 600,000 devices.

Circularity isn't just a sustainability narrative. It's an established customer offering with real scale, and we see further growth potential in this area. Going forward, we will further grow our BetterWay sales share. We want to sharpen our focus on energy efficiency and attractive bundles. A major lever is combining BetterWay products and complementary services and accessories and integrating them with our private label range. Our refurbished offering will grow into a new category, guided by customer demand, including tablets, wearables, notebooks and selected household appliance categories. We won't take a blanket approach, but instead focus deliberately on the categories and brands where relevance to our customers is the highest. Quality is at the heart of our repair offering.

We follow a dual approach to optimize both customer service levels and operational efficiency. We leverage both our smart bars as our own local service centers for fast repairs and direct on-site support, and we work with a network of trusted repair partners to extend our proposition. We will continue to expand our trade-in offerings. A key part is a new model where multiple trade-in partners are bidding for one device and the customer gets offered the best price. It is already live in Spain, and Turkey, and we're now rolling it out internationally. By '28-'29, we expect this to grow to as many as 1.4 million trade-in transactions. So let me summarize. Service and solutions is a core trust engine for our omnichannel strategy, and its role is becoming even more important. We have built the foundation, proven strong customer relevance and create scalable service areas. Now it's about taking the next step, scaling these capabilities across channels and markets to deliver sustainable and profitable growth.

The next section also focus on sustainable, profitable growth. I'll hand over to Christian, CEO and Vice President, Marketplace.

Thanks, Henny. Let me now turn to our marketplace. We launched our marketplace back in 2020. Since then, it has become an important part of how we give customers more choice and how we make our offerings more relevant. At the same time, it helps us improve our net working capital position because we don't carry the stock for the inventory ourselves. Over the past 3 years, our marketplace has really gained momentum. We have launched in 6 additional countries and increased our assortment massively. It has grown from around 1 million SKUs in 2023 to 4.2 million SKUs as of today. Nevertheless, our approach is very clear. We aren't building a generalistic marketplace. We are building a specialized marketplace. And at the center is one thing, trust. This means we are working with carefully selected sellers. Together, we set a fair and transparent rule, and we offer complementary high-quality assortment in consumer electronics and adjacent verticals. This allows us to expand our portfolio in a very targeted way. How?

First, we keep strengthening our core consumer electronics business. We offer long-tail assortment, more choice, better availability and refurbished products. Second, we are expanding into adjacent verticals like health and sports, e-mobility, toys and energy. And right now, one of our highlight categories is gardening and barbecues. With a bit of sunshine and the World Cup on the screen, this category should be hard to stop. So to sum it up, marketplace isn't about volume at any price. It is about creating relevant choice for our customers through creation and quality. This approach fits our brand and lives up to the trust MediaMarktSaturn stands for. Looking back, Marketplace has developed strongly over the past few years, and it's increasingly becoming a strong traffic and EBIT generator for the group. GMV has grown from EUR 140 million in fiscal year 2022, 2023 to EUR 800 million in 2025, 2026. This means we have clearly outperformed the target we set at our last Capital Markets Day. This progress is built on much stronger foundation across the business.

We have rolled out our marketplace platform to 9 out of 11 countries. services that our customers known well are also entering our marketplace. We are having added several payment options for marketplace like TWINT in Switzerland and consumer financing in Spain and Austria. And since October 2025, customers in Germany have also been able to purchase warranty extensions for marketplace products. We have also expanded into new verticals. To give you an example, today, we offer more than 2,500 SKUs in solar panels and power stations. Refurbished is also growing massively. Over 33,000 SKUs have refurbished offerings as an affordable and sustainable alternative. We have also taken the first steps in establishing true omnichannel marketplace, including initial showrooms collaborations with marketplace sellers in our stores, our real USP. At the same time, our strong tech backbone is helping us move faster and create smoother experience for both customers and sellers.

In 2025 alone, we launched our marketplace platform in 3 countries. And this shows you how far we have come. Marketplace is no longer just an add-on to our omnichannel core, it's becoming much more important part of our ecosystem with more scale, a broader curated assortment and a strong operational base. Building on this foundation, we have set ourselves an ambition target to more than double marketplace GMV. We are starting from EUR 800 million, representing 3.5% of group sales. Our aim is EUR 1.9 billion, representing nearly 8% of group sales by 2028, 2029. This next stage of growth will be driven by a clear set of levers. First, we will finalize the rollout of our platform, bringing the marketplace to Hungary this coming September. Second, we will broaden the service offering. We want to give our customers on our marketplace access to those services that define our retail proposition. This includes payment methods, warranty extension in all countries and services for large appliances like washing machines and TVs.

Our plans range from delivery to the place of use and professional product installation to wall mounting and ready-to-use setup. Third, we will continue expanding the assortment, additional sellers, more SKUs and new verticals. We will use data-driven approaches to identify customer demand and high-demand products. This will help us to make them immediately available at MediaMarktSaturn. Fourth, we will deepen omnichannel integration. How so? -- we will enable in-store pickup and returns. Additionally, we will integrate marketplace sales more directly into our store portfolio.

And lastly, we will continue to strengthen the platform with features and features deeper into the system integration. We are working on a fulfilled by MediaMarktSaturn offering for our sellers. We will take over their stock management and provide the last mile logistics. This will make us an even more attractive partner while unlocking additional profit potential. Our marketplace has come a long way. And over the next 3 years, we will make it a central pillar of our offering, our customer experience and our value creation. Our private label offering has also come a long way since our last Capital Markets Day.

So let me now hand over to Michael.

Private label is a key part of our value proposition across the segments. Our private label brands stand for curated assortments, a strong price performance ratio, proven reliable quality and increasingly a clear sustainable profile. Over the last past 5 years, we have significantly increased the presence of our private label brands, both in-store and online. This means broader product listing, greater visibility and a stronger brand presence throughout the customer journey from discovery to purchase. Today, we operate with 4 brands: ok, ISY, KOENIC and PEAQ. Going forward, we will streamline the portfolio in order to sharpen the positioning, increase customer touch points per brand and improve communication efficiency, starting with the entry-level price segment. Looking back, we have made strong progress over the past last 3 years, both in increasing the economical relevance of private label and in building trust in our products.

Already, we will likely exceed the 5% sales share milestone only next year rather than this year. Looking at those categories, we will actually offer private label. The share is higher with 10.8% rather than 4.3% overall, showing that in the parts of the business where we're actively competing private label already accounts for more than 1/10 of the good sales. This momentum is also visible in several clear proof points. Product quality is increasing confirmed by our consumers. Our customer ratings in many categories are now at a level comparable to the leading brands. We also expand our presence beyond Germany and Austria, supported by additional logistical capabilities to import directly to Italy and Spain. And sustainability, we have continued to build on a strong foundation and supplier certification while the carbon fiber footprint for our private label products has improved faster than in the rest of our assortments.

All this strength customer trust and increase the relevance of our private label business even further. Our ambition is clear. Over the next 3 years, we aim to increase our private label share to 7%. We will report this in full transparency and include refurbished products as a part of our private label sales share from now on. Refurbished should contribute close to 1 percentage point. Now it's important to put this into a context. There are key categories in our assortment like smartphones, gaming consoles, where private label is simply not relevant. But in the categories where we're active, such as microwave, air conditioning and accessories, our private label share is already much higher. And in those categories, we want to grow in the sales share further from 10.8% to 12.8%. This phase of growth will be driven by a clear set of levers.

First, we will broaden the assortment into attractive giant categories just as health, pet care, gaming accessories. Second, we will streamline our private label portfolio to increase customer touch points per brand and improve communication efficiency. Third, we will integrate private label more consistently in our commercial execution with stronger links to promotions, campaigns and retail media. Fourth, we will broaden reach and further strengthen our operational capabilities through social commerce, direct import structures and more B2B processes. And fifth, sustainability will continue to be an important part of our proposition. We want to make our most efficient and sustainable products more visible to consumers and use this as a clear differentiator.

In summary, our private label business has built strong momentum over the past years. We will still see significant room to grow this even further from here. Our fourth field is the closest to my heart. Let's talk about Retail Media. Our Retail Media business has delivered continuously profitable growth since our Capital Markets Day in 2023. At the same time, our approach has evolved. Our portfolio is expanding from a mainly on-site offering to a more comprehensive 360-degree omnichannel proposition. We now give our partners the opportunity to be present at all touch points where customers make purchase decisions. This can be on-site, meaning on our own digital properties like our web shop, but also in our stores, and we will offer solutions beyond our own channels, for example, on other websites.

Additionally, our partners get access to data analytics solutions, which help them to make better decision when it comes to allocating their advertising spend. You can also see on the left-hand side here on the chart that we will continuously work on additional products over the next 3 years, for example, digital out-of-home offerings based on what we know about our consumers across our omnichannel touch points, we can deliver exactly the right offer at the right time. This means we are highly relevant to our consumers in the decisive moment, giving us another opportunity to create moments of trust in this case, through superior relevance.

The foundation we have established is clearly working. Gross profit from Retail Media surged from EUR 20 million in 2022 to 2023 to EUR 150 million in '25-'26. This means we have exceeded our capital market pledge for more than 3x, something we are extremely proud of. This is mainly driven by the international rollout of our product portfolio, and it is clear that our partners see real added value. On the sales side, we have managed to close the international agreements with partners. We also benefit from bundling of many offerings to our suppliers and partners. And we have generated significant business not only with brands, but also with advertising agencies. Looking ahead, we are staying on course for growth. Our ambition is to drive gross profit to EUR 230 million by 2028, 2029. And we have a clear plan how to get there.

First, we will enhance our existing products with our rich first-party data, introduce new advertising formats, for example, in-store display and connected TV. Second, we will unlock new business potentials with existing customers as well with near and non-endemic partners, such as advertisers from the automotive, financial services or insurance sectors. And third, we will further integrate our retail media offering with other areas. This is how we will -- this will allow us to optimize our entire media -- retail media sales approach to unlock further potential, for example, by offering full range of retail media products to our marketplace. And fourth, we will put AI to work. We will unlock additional growth potential through real-time creation of content and ads.

Combined with first-party data, this will allow us to partner to address customers with even more targeted, even more relevant and competitive offers. Overall, our holistic retail media approach is a crucial building block of our ambition to be European's most trusted consumer electronics platform. It makes our offering more relevant to our consumers and it increased the attractiveness of our media offerings. It encourages greater advertising investment and improves our ability to manage media inventory for stronger earnings and profitability. But our media offerings isn't the only attractive part of our business. Our stores are, of course, attractive as well. And let me now hand over to Marcus, who will give you -- or will guide you through our Retail as a Service offerings. Thank you.

Thanks, Michael, and happy to take over. When we introduced Space-as-a-Service on our Capital Markets Day 2023, the focus was mainly on the boutiques in our Lighthouse stores. This August, we will open our 12th Lighthouse in Cologne. And on top of that, we have built a portfolio of Space-as-a-Service offerings, catering to a diverse range of partners. Our partners can bring their products and brands to life where it matters most, right inside our stores at spaces with high traffic and visibility. Our entrance statements, for example, are positioned right at the entrance to our stores where thousands of customers pass through every day. While today, we mostly act as a landlord for our partners, generating recurring rent, we plan to become an active retail operator over the next few years. Our partners will get far more than just space. We will offer logistics and operations, experts and promoters and the insights they need to succeed. In other words, we are creating a fully-fledged Retail-as-a-Service offering, allowing partners to focus on their products while we provide the retail expertise and infrastructure.

This will open another opportunity to create moments of trust with our customers. We are bringing Experience Electronics to life, making products from a wide range of brands tangible and truly experiential. We curate with very high standards, selecting only partners that meet our quality and relevance standards. And our partners can be sure that they will get direct access to the most relevant customer traffic, while we take care of everything else. We have already established Space-as-a-Service offerings broadly across our stores. Gross profit has grown from around EUR 20 million to EUR 50 million over the past 3 years, which shows that the model is proven and scalable. And we have established the foundation in 3 areas. First, on the space side, we have internationally rolled out our standardized Space-as-a-Service portfolio with entrance statements, experience zones and boutiques.

Second, on the sales side, we have built a strong partner base of around 350 active partners. We have already expanded beyond classic endemic brands, for example, with Peloton and Therabody, fitness and longevity innovators. Customers could ride on Peloton bikes right in our store here in this store. That truly was a win-win situation in generating attention for both the brands and us. And third, on the product and process side, we have established the infrastructure, data integrity and transparency needed to scale even further. So the key message on this slide is clear. The foundation is in place. The portfolio, the partners and the infrastructure are ready for growth. Based on this foundation, our ambition is to grow from EUR 50 million today to EUR 90 million in gross profit by fiscal year '28-'29. For that, we see 4 key growth levers.

First, on the existing space offering, we still see clear headroom by increasing reach and by managing our portfolio more professionally. We will tackle this with a more tailored sales approach for different partners and smart pricing. Second, on the sales side, we want to professionalize further through a dedicated sales force and a much faster time to store. This is one of our KPIs, and it measures how long it takes us from closing the deal with a partner to see the concept live in our stores. Our target here is less than 4 weeks. Third, we are adding new products, especially managed retail and market entry packages for partners who want to turnkey access to our platform. Well, what does that mean? Imagine you're a start-up company with a highlight product. From us, you get the all-in solution, including placement in our stores, marketing materials with storytelling, promoters, payment services and last but not least, data and analytics.

Fourth, we are digitizing the offering itself, for example, through the digital boutique. This is a separate space with only LED walls surrounding the product placement. A change from one partner to another can be done at the click of a mouse. We see this as an autonomous room with zero touch operations and therefore, a very cost-efficient alternative. This will also go live, for example, in our new lighthouse in Cologne at the end of August. So overall, the path to a EUR 90 million in gross profit isn't based on one big bet, but on scaling the existing business further and adding few exciting digitized and more service-driven products.

Let me now hand over to Iris, who will walk you through our people agenda.

Thank you, Marcus. We've spoken a lot about our customers, but great customer experience doesn't start with customers. They start with people and how we lead them. Their motivation and engagement to serve all customers' individual needs at the right moment, this is what makes the difference. With our people agenda, we have already built a strong foundation. On our Capital Markets Day in 2023, we announced that we would invest heavily in our people. And today, we can see measurable progress. Let me point out some areas. We have embedded our company values, our leadership principles as well as diversity, equity and inclusion firmly in our organization. We established a strong compass 5 years ago how we lead, manage performance, collaborate and develop our employees. We have created an environment where 50,000 colleagues feel trusted to do their best work every day.

Our Net Promoter people score is our key measure of employee engagement and identification with the company. It works as the NPS, and it has increased by 13 points over the last 3 years and 44 points over the last 5 years. And we have initiated first use cases of empowered workflows. One of this use case is our recruiting process for sales employees in which we have embedded AI to increase speed, reduce human bias, focus on behavior according to our values and enable scalability. This is a starting point for more AI-enabled people processes to accelerate learning, boost human expertise and help our people to increase their impact across the organization for our customers. We are confident that we can become even better by focusing on 3 priorities.

First, shaping our culture. We will continue building a culture of pride, trust, learning, feedback, one in which our people can feel connected to the business, supported by leaders and proud to work for us. Second, growing our people. We will continue to foster next level leadership and invest in their capabilities our people need to thrive. For us, next level leadership means combining emotional intelligence with the opportunities AI creates, leveraging human expertise through a true AI human tandem. We will, therefore, continue investing in AI as well as transformation skills at scale enabling our people to serve evolving customer needs while strengthening effectiveness and employee experience across the whole organization.

Third, focusing on impact. We will organize work in a way that helps our people become effective, more empowered and better equipped to deliver results. This includes data and AI more systematically to make better database decisions for employees in the workforce management, for example, or by simplifying processes and increasing the impact of our teams across the organization. Therefore, we will continue to measure our Net Promoter people score as well as the leadership score and aim to reach a level of 46 and beyond over the next 3 years. We will also continue to measure diversity, focusing on several dimensions such as different cultural backgrounds or nationalities. For the share of women in the top 150 leadership roles, we will strive to achieve a level of 1/3 over the next 3 years. Ultimately, this underpins our ambition to shape a strong culture to keep developing our people and to focus on impact and thus foster employee experience at MediaMarkt throughout the whole organization.

After all, we strongly believe that our people are a true differentiator for our business and for the customers. Another differentiator for our business is a topic which is also very close to my heart, sustainability. We have delivered the foundation and are now moving decisively to the next level. As shown on the left, we have not only achieved the key commitments we set ourselves at the Capital Markets Day in 2023, we have gone beyond them. Our operations reached net zero as early as 2024. We significantly exceeded our target of 80 towns and cities with zero emission delivery and now offer it in 120 cities. Additionally, our targets have been certified by the science-based targets initiative. This gives us credibility. But more importantly, this is the basis for the next step.

Our focus is now on reduction of Scope 3 carbon emissions, where the largest share, of course, not share -- scare of emissions occurs in the area of production, transport and use of customer electronics. It is more complex part of the agenda, but also the one with the greatest impact. That's why we have set the ambition to reduce Scope 3 emissions by 33% by 2033. To do so, we have a clear road map, more sustainable products, lower emissions logistics and closer supplier collaboration. So the message is simple. We have delivered our commitments and are now scaling impact in the areas that matters most.

I will now hand over the floor back to Niclas for our data and AI technology.

Thank you, Iris. So technology is one of the key levers behind better customer experience, effective execution across the organization and scalable omnichannel growth. On the left-hand side, you see the progress we have already made over the past years. We have unified our data center environment and migrated 100% of workloads to the cloud as pledged during our last Capital Markets Day. We have advanced warehouse automation in Gottingen, and almost all countries now run on a single web and app platform. Our focus is now 3 areas. First, the customer front end. Based on a harmonized platform, we want to further improve the web and app experience and continue to scale and optimize the marketplace. The objective is simple, a more connected and seamless customer journey across channels, which is reflected in customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Second, enabling capabilities. This is where technology directly powers commercial effectiveness through data-driven, predictive and real-time decision-making. Our focus will be logistics and on our enterprise backbone. And increasingly, this will also include the data and AI capabilities needed to scale these use cases more systematically. We are ramping up a dedicated AI platform team to rapidly generate business impact via AI and enabling our product teams to become AI native. Third, the tech backbone. Here, the focus is on efficiency gains based on a harmonized cloud infrastructure. Cybersecurity remains a top priority for us. It is essential for resilience and scalability. But first and foremost, it's a crucial enabler of delivering moments of trust to our customers. Customers can trust that their data is safe with us, stored on European servers, protected by the highest security standards and independently certified.

Given the strategic importance of AI when it comes to advancing our tech stack, we use cross-platform agent reach to track our progress. This newly introduced metric captures actual usage, reach and depth of agentic solutions across the business. A theoretical maximum of 100% means universal consistent adoption by everyone. Our goal is to reach 40% by financial year '28-'29. This ultimately means that a much larger share of our customers can be reached consistently across our digital touch points and served in a more connected way. And we have established AI governance processes that go well beyond current industry standards, built for transparency, accountability and ultimately, customer trust. For customers, this means a more seamless and consistent experience across channels. For us, it creates a stronger platform for execution and growth.

So technology enables our journeys and also enhances our supply chain to live up to our delivery promise. Customers expect fast, reliable and convenient delivery options. And when we get that right, it drives conversion sales and again, creates moments of trust. Over the past 3 years, since our Capital Markets Day, we have built a much stronger supply chain foundation. Today, vendors mostly supply to a national distribution center from where replenish stores and make stock instantly available for online fulfillment. This helps us, on the one hand, to optimize our net working capital while also boosting availability.

Online availability has significantly improved to 86%, and our goal is to go to beyond 95%. On the last mile, we are leveraging our omnichannel network to offer customers options which competitors often cannot match. We now offer 90 minutes express delivery in 6 countries and 30 minutes pickup from all stores sourced in all countries. Our focus areas for the next 3 years are to double down on speed, digital operations and integrated planning. In the last mile, we are planning to go even further, extending cutoff times, expanding next-day and same-day delivery and broadening access points. This also includes bulky items where there is a significant potential for an improved experience in the market. We are not only improving every step from checkout to delivery, collection and returns, but also communicating in a much more personalized and proactive way.

In the middle mile, the focus is on using our network more intelligently and at greater scale. While competitors often optimize locally on a country or channel basis, we are continuing to build a more connected European fulfillment backbone. Our inventory can be deployed more flexibly across stores, online channels and countries, and we will continue to leverage smart digital supply chain capabilities as we have already successfully started doing in our national distribution center in Gottingen. And in the first mile, we are replacing fragmented planning with an end-to-end process that connects commercial demand, supply planning, inventory positioning and execution across our network. We will leverage advanced capabilities such as automated replenishment and event-driven demand forecasting. The result better asset utilization, less firefighting and higher customer satisfaction.

We plan to improve our delivery NPS from 54 today to 60 in financial year '28-'29. In summary, supply chain isn't just about moving goods more efficiently. It's about making our omnichannel model stronger with better availability, faster fulfillment, greater convenience and more reliable experiences for our customers. Ultimately, this is also reflected in how our customers perceive our brands.

So I guess, Michael, the stage is yours.

Thank you, Niclas. Let me talk about the 2 brands that play a key role in our strategy and continued success. Starting with MediaMarkt. Over the past years, we have sharpened the brand around a clear purpose, refreshed its identity and made our communication more consistent across Europe. As a result, the value of our brands doubled to around EUR 2.3 billion from 2023 to 2025, and MediaMarkt entered the top 100 retail brands globally in 2025 according to Brand Finance Institute for the first time. As we have explained several times today, the brand positioning is evolving from experience electronics to translating customer experience into moments of trust. For customers, trust built in every single interaction through a clear advice, reliable service, availability, delivery, installation and aftersales. This means our promises must be tangible. Customers should feel that we make technology easier, more personal, more reliable.

Our ambition is clear: to become the first choice not only on price or assortment, but also in customer hearts. In Germany, we also have a second brand with a strong potential, Saturn. A brand most customers know and value, but also a brand whose future role needs to be more clearly defined. So the question today is what's next for Saturn? To answer that, it's worth looking at that what we have achieved over the past 3 years. Four years ago, we made a very conscious decision to bring MediaMarkt and Saturn closer together in our communication. MediaMarkt has developed very positively. Saturn has remained a highly recognized and trusted brand. And we have gained efficiency in media spend, content production and the visibility of our strategic messages. The modernization and rebranding of selected stores to MediaMarkt has also created positive momentum with rebranded store achieving a 10% sales uplift. We will continue to build on this success. At the same time, Saturn continues to offer a strong potential. The brand has 92% awareness in Germany and is closely associated with innovation.

This is why we see a clear opportunity to give Saturn an even sharper and more distinctive role within our brand portfolio. Going forward, Saturn will address tech and CS customers who are passionate about discovering new technologies and expect a curated offer and exclusive experiences. The concept is built around 3 pillars. Select means Saturn will focus on a very selected assortment of highly sought-after innovative and trendy products. Certified means Saturn will give customers a strong orientation by checking and viewing products in a collaboration with an external testing institute. Drops means customers will get early access to new technology with an exclusive launch event. Saturn will be a digital-first brand. The revamped app and web channels will feature a new look, a new feel, a modern use and experience and a rich content for the deep discovery of this innovative assortment.

Saturn will combine a strong digital presence with selected physical experiences formats, including flagship showroom concepts within MediaMarkt stores as well as other selected locations. You can see a rendering here on the right-hand side. Customers will experience a modern setting with plenty of space to explore and engage with the products. This is -- with this differentiation positioning, Santon can address potential additional customer groups, strengthening our innovation profile and add another distinctive growth lever to our brand portfolio as a sub-brand under the umbrella of MediaMarkt. So this is the future of Saturn.

Let me now hand back to Remko to go through our business plan. Remko?

Thanks, Michael. As I said earlier, I'm a number person. So now that you have heard from all areas, I'm happy to take you through our business plan. You've heard the strategy in detail, how we turn customer experience into moments of trust. Now let's see what that delivers financially. 3 years ago, at our CMD, we set clear pledges. We have achieved or exceeded most of them. Our strategy has delivered, and we will continue to do so. All our growth businesses feed into concrete financial targets for fiscal year '29. Let me now walk you through how we create value and what we expect to deliver over the next 3 years. The financial targets are specific. The assumptions are grounded and the bridge from today to fiscal year '29 is clear. Let's dive in. Every part of our business will contribute to the EUR 800 million in adjusted EBIT in fiscal year '29.

The model is straightforward, strengthening the core, accelerate the growth businesses and let both compound together. That's where our financial strategy comes from. We are not betting on a single business area to drive growth. We are strengthening every part of our business simultaneously because every touch point with our customers create value. At the top, you can see our omnichannel core delivering strong fundamentals. Net sales of EUR 24 billion, 1.3% CAGR versus '26, an NPS at 66 across all touch points, 54% returning customers. These are the metrics that show we are building lasting customer relationships. And then all our growth areas accelerate in parallel. Service and Solutions will generate EUR 1.6 billion in gross profit. Our marketplace will reach EUR 1.9 billion in GMV. Private label will grow to a 7% sales share. Retail as a Service will generate EUR 90 million in gross profit. And Retail Media will contribute EUR 230 million in gross profit.

Each of these areas has its own growth path. Each has its own margin profile. And together, including the expected synergies from our partnership with JD.com, they deliver EUR 800 million in adjusted EBIT. That is what diversification means to us, not just more growth, but more resilience, more ways to create value, more ways for customers to engage with us and more ways for us to win. The mix shift in our gross profit tells the clearest story of our transformation. Today, in fiscal year '26, around 60% of our gross profit comes from our retail core. 40% comes from our growth areas, Services and Solutions, marketplace, private label, Retail as a Service and Retail Media. By '29, we want to see a different picture here. More than half of our gross profit, 51% will come from our growth areas. Retail core will remain at 49%. The core remains essential. It will fund the platform fuel the customer relationships and how we build our growth momentum.

But growth areas for the first time will now lead the gross profit. This isn't just a shift in numbers. It proves that we are an omnichannel service platform. We are building a more resilient, more diversified business model. All business areas will significantly contribute to our gross profit, which is precisely the resilience the model is designed to deliver. Now let's look at what this means for our bottom line and our overall financial targets. Let's translate this evolution into concrete numbers. The acceleration across all business areas will drive our increase in profitability. By '28-'29, our adjusted EBIT will reach EUR 800 million, up from EUR 500 million today. That's 60% increase supported by operational improvements and the expected synergies coming from our partnership with JD.com.

Our net sales will grow to approximately EUR 24 billion, a 4% increase compared to fiscal year '25-'26. Our ambition isn't only driven by operational performance. Cash investment will increase to approximately EUR 350 million per year, reflecting our strategic ambition going forward, these high investment levels will allow us to capture new opportunities and capabilities, particularly in technology and logistics. The exact breakdown of these investments will be further refined as overall strategic road map is refined and execution is in progress. On free cash flow, we see significant improvement to more than EUR 300 million. This will primarily drive our EBIT expansion. We will generate stronger profitability growth, our margin improvement and discipline on cost management. This will directly translate into better cash generation, sustainable underpinned by EBITDA growth rather than working capital optimization.

Now how will we achieve this? We have identified 4 key levers that drive this transformation. First, gross profit improvement by focusing on the high-growth areas. Second, strict cost discipline. We will keep our OpEx ratio stable even as our sales grows. Third, sales growth slightly above the market. We won't change aggressive expansion. We will grow steadily, but profitable. which will give us margin discipline and operational leverage. And fourth, we expect JD.com to provide some support. These 4 levers working together are what we will get us to the EUR 800 million adjusted EBIT and free cash flow of more than EUR 300 million. Let us now come back to our planned partnership with JD.com. What you have seen today is a story of a company choosing its future with its eyes wide open. We have a strong strategy, and we have a strong financial foundation. We have chosen to work with a strong partner because we can, not because we must, JD.com is a partner with global scale, digital infrastructure and a long-term investment horizon.

We are a European company, and our partnership reflects this. Rigorous governance, worker representation, regulatory discipline and cultural respect built into every single layer. We expect to have all the regulatory approvals in the second half of 2026. The delisting is then planned for the beginning of 2027. I understand that you will have detailed questions in this context. But before closing, we are subject to legal restrictions that prevents full disclosure. So the time line is clear. The process is underway, but a time line only tells you when. What matters even more is why. It comes down to the values, the strategy and the customer focus that both organizations share. Together, we can build moments of trust beyond our own capabilities. The best partnerships are built on what each site needs. They are built on common understanding. And on that front, JD.com and MediaMarktSaturn are speaking the same language with keywords such as customer centricity, omnichannel conviction and a long-term investment horizon.

Both companies are convinced that the physical store isn't relic. The store network is a strategic asset. JD.com has a store network with more than 10,000 outlets. Both JD.com and MediaMarktSaturn have made sustained material investment in the omnichannel model. For this partnership, MediaMarktSaturn will gain access to JD.com's industry-leading technology, its omnichannel retail architecture and its logistics infrastructure. For us, this is a leap forward years of technology development compressed into one partnership. This is acceleration. Let me be ambiguous (sic) [unambiguous] on this point. MediaMarktSaturn will maintain its own strictly independent IT system and technology stack. We are being integrated into JD.com's infrastructure. Furthermore, JD.com has committed to building a separate fully independent European technology stack.

Our data, our systems and our customer architecture remain sovereign. Both companies have a track record of building deep, durable relationship with suppliers and partners. We build partnership on mutual investment and long-term commitment. What we are building with JD.com is exactly what we are building with our own customers, a relationship based on trust, transparency and shared ambition.

Let me show you the governance framework. We have built around this partnership. Strategy without a structure is just an intention. The governance framework is built around 4 pillars. First, we are the Board. We will continue to be in charge, driving our strategy we have just introduced today. And all operations is also in our hands. JD.com has also pledged that it doesn't plan any material changes to the structure organization or our brands over the next few years. Even after delisting, MediaMarktSaturn will continue to operate as a separate German legal entity, subject to full rigor of German corporate law. Our Supervisory Board will maintain equal representatives of shareholders and employees. Co-determination isn't a courtesy we extend to our workforce. It's a legal obligation and the competitive strength. A joint implementation committee with operational leaders from both sides will align priorities, develop implementation plans and turn strategy into action.

Related party transaction governance service as our commercial firewall. All commercial interactions between MediaMarktSaturn and JD.com above a certain threshold must be reviewed and adopted by a separate committee in accordance with the arm's length principle. Culture is treated seriously as a compliance. Cross-culture awareness training is already underway access both organizations to prevent misalignment, expectation or even communication. We are investing in the human infrastructure of this partnership now so that the cultural alignment is built from the start. The governance framework on this side isn't minimally required by law. In several areas, it goes beyond it. For example, with regards to the involvement of our Supervisory Board. And this choice is deliberate. It tells you something fundamental about the posture of both organizations. They are building for the long term, not managing for the short term. JD.com brings world-class technology, logistics capability and a proven track record of building lasting partnerships.

MediaMarktSaturn brings unrivaled brand presence, deep customer trust and 40 years of retail experience across 11 European markets. Together, we are compounding strengths. Now let me summarize the last 90 minutes. There are 5 points I want you to take home. First, we are solving a paradox, infinite choice, infinite options. That's what our customers navigate. They choose shop with us because they trust us. Trust isn't a slogan that we print on a wall. It's a reason they walk through our doors. It's a competitive advantage that neither a price nor an algorithm can replicate. Second, we invest in creating these moments of cross about our 4 experience fields, and they work as one integrated system. Empowered employees, we give trusted advice, a shopping experience where relevance replaces volume, a user experience that extends far beyond the checkout and an impact experience that holds our ecosystem to the same standards we hold ourselves.

Every moment of customer experience create a moment of trust. Third, we build trust through resilience. By '28-'29, over 50% of our gross profit will come from our growth businesses, more than doubling their share over 6 years. We are not dependent on a single revenue source anymore. When our businesses faces headwinds, the other carry the load. That gives us structural strength. Fourth, our focus on trust base of financially EUR 800 million in adjusted EBIT in 3 years. That's not an aspiration. It's the financial translation of our strategy. Fifth, we are ready for our partnership with JD.com. We have done the preparation strategically, operationally, culturally and legally. From day 1 of our partnership, we can move. What we have shown today a strategy that delivers and a platform positioned to deliver even more. We have successfully translated our strategic partnership in economical success.

And I have trust that having seen our plan, there are now fewer skeptical faces in the room than 3 years ago. We will now track delivery against our updated key pledges. This is the same accountability framework that has held us to our commitments over the last 3 years. I'm extremely proud today.

But of course, I can understand that there will be some questions. But before we go to the questions, let me invite you back to the stage, Fabienne.

Thank you, Remko. I would now like to invite all presenters and ExCo members to join me on stage for the Q&A session. We are happy to answer your questions. For the audience here in Hamburg, please raise your hand and my colleague will come to you with microphone. [Operator Instructions].

Full house. So we've got the first question already from [ Thomas ] [indiscernible]. Will MediaMarktSaturn continue to operate its large-scale retail format covering more than 4,000 square meters in the long term? I would give this question to Marcus Tengler.

Thank you, Fabienne. Well, I would not like to answer that on the size level. I would rather go for the perspective of our formats. As you -- many of you most probably know, we have changed from a one-size-fits-all strategy to a 4-format strategy with our Smart, Xpress, Core and Lighthouse stores. And the real driver behind this is not the size, it's more the customer demand. So we are positioning our stores in the right size in the catchment area where the customer demand actually asks for the specific format. Mid- to long term, we are focusing on that 4-size -- 4-format strategy. And that, of course, then has an impact on the average size of the stores. In the last couple of years, we have reduced our store size in average. And now we had 2,200 square meters approximately. But as I said before, I would rather go for the formats. And there, we already have 10% of our total portfolio in the new formats, and that will continue to grow.

Thank you, Marcus. I'm looking at the room. It's quite dark, but is there any question from the room? So let me -- we have got a question here from Alex from mwb Research.

Maybe a simple one for the beginning. Seeing what's out there in the markets in terms of AI projects, how do you manage your costs in terms of new investments and keeping overall costs flat?

Good. So I think let me -- or you want to take?

No. You take it, please.

You are more than welcome. We can do it together. Thanks, first of all, for the question. So I think what we have presented also today is relatively clear, right? So AI brings a lot of capabilities to the market and will change the market overall in Europe. But for us, this human interaction with AI is going to be extremely important. And this is what we will do. We have 3 pledges that we have presented today where we focus on. It doesn't mean that we don't implement it in the other departments. By implementing that in the other departments, we will also see certain efficiencies. And what we said, we invest also in that efficiencies, but also making sure that we have the right people in the right place. So that's first of all. Apart from that, on indirect spend, we still believe we have quite some potential. So there, we see a lot of efficiencies to be gained by also standardizing certain frameworks more over the 11 countries. And with that, we make a commitment, although the turnover will go to EUR 24 billion to keep the, let's say, the cost on a flat level.

Thank you. I see a next question from [indiscernible] from Targobank. Referring to the Slide 56. To what extent did you benefit from JD.com's expertise in warehouse automation like Gottingen and logistic capabilities? How does this translate into numbers? So for you Remko, for Niclas. For you Remko?

No, I can take it. So I should be careful that we don't -- I'm so passionate about what we do. Anyway, so long story short. So first of all, we need to be a bit careful, right, because the authorization approval is not there yet. So we are really thinking in synergy directions, but we did not implement them logically, and we expect that authorization approval to come to the second half of this year. So -- but what you can think of, for example, is a couple of things, right? We have a 1,000 store network. it might make sense to really work together with JD on logistics last mile to use these stores as fulfillment hubs and therefore, more volume from us, JD and maybe even other retail partners to bring the net cost per unit down, but not only that, also be even faster towards our customers.

We can deliver in 90 minutes, but I think if you put volume together, we can even have a better customer proposition. On the warehouse capabilities, two-folded. If you have more volume, it's easier to automize because it's in the end also a bit of a business case. With automization, you can be again faster to the customers, all about speed and of course, service. And of course, Joybuy is building their own warehouse structure over the different countries. They have already warehouses in different countries. So of course, when we get the approval, it might make sense to look at the different warehousing structures between MediaMarkt and Joybuy to see, okay, where is overlap and where can we work together.

Thank you. I'm just looking at the room. Do we have any other questions in the room? No, I'm looking at my colleague. Do we have other questions? Alex?

Yes, sorry for hijacking this. I would like to ask about the top line. If you could walk us through a more granular picture perhaps because your measures, especially your initiatives improving customer journey and customer experience, you want to drive returning customers. And I would assume that you could also drive basket conversions. So maybe you could put into perspective what you expect also in terms of competitive pressure and macro environment.

So I will start, and then I will hand over to Niclas. So what we -- there are a couple of things, right? So we are not chasing aggressive growth when it comes to top line. But what we do see, we have -- and that's also what we have shown in the last 2 years that we are increasing our online market share rapidly, and there, we have implemented many different capabilities. But to answer your question even more clear, when it comes to conversion, both offline and online, personalization is going to be key. So we have a loyalty base that is quite high. But we also see when it comes to agentic commerce, when the customers come in, basically, we see a higher conversion and higher average spending. So that's what we see. And therefore, we are investing there on that area quite aggressively to make sure that customers come in also using agentic commerce on our site because they get a better proposal and that creates both a high average spending, has a better conversion rate. So I think these 2 combinations are the biggest driver behind that top line growth.

Yes. I can just really quickly add one more element because, yes, the traffic side is the one thing, right? We try to optimize traffic in the most efficient way. We look at the digital channel, but obviously also omnichannel because we want to catch the customer where the journey starts. But then whether customers convert online or in the stores, it's for us the same. And therefore, we also put so much effort in getting the journey much more seamless. But beyond the top line basically increase from generating new traffic and attracting new customers, we obviously also put a lot of effort in more effective base management because we have nearly 60 million customers in our loyalty base and with more personalized conversations, more personalized activation, we are also able to cross and upsell. So when we look at customer lifetime value, where we put a lot of focus on additional top line potential will eventually come our way as well.

Thank you. I'm looking again at the room. Alex, you've got a third chance. if you want. I'm looking as well online at my colleagues, do we have any other questions? No. No. So I give you back the word Remko, for the closing remarks.

[indiscernible] to stand my colleagues. So don't leave me alone, first of all. So thank you for also the contribution today. It was giving me a lot of energy again. So apart from that, I also would like to thank everybody here in the room. Thanks for coming. Hopefully, you experienced in this store, again, an amazing store in Hamburg with an amazing store team. So please do enjoy it. And hopefully, we have good conversation afterwards. But also the people that are not here physically, I invite you to come to Hamburg. We have also a Cologne opening from a lighthouse perspective coming up. So many, many different possibilities, I think, right, Guido. So that's, first of all. Yes, exactly.

So there's something a message that I want to bring across. When we were standing here or most of us here in 2023, there were some skeptical phases when we said we will double our EBIT, adjusted EBIT to EUR 500 million, and we generate a free cash flow. Actually, we delivered. We delivered with 50,000 employees. We are resilient. So we are not depending on one market. We are in 11 markets. We are not only depending on one sales channel. We are depending on many sales channels. But most proud is the satisfaction and the day-to-day translation of our strategy of all our people working for us in the store, in the warehouse. That's the beauty about retail. I'm 100% sure that's why most of us started in retail. What you do today, you see tomorrow. Most of the time, the good thing, sometimes and you make a wrong decision, you also see it the next day.

So proudness. What brings us now to the EUR 800 million is really focusing on the strategy that's already working and enhancing this with basically creating these moments of trust. The world outside is getting more dynamic. We will see AI as an accelerator, but it brings also certain questions. What happens to my data? We are the on solving that because you can talk to us. We have the 50,000 employees. We can combine basically all these different sales channels. And with that, we are resilient.

So proud to stand here in front of you today with the team and so much looking forward later on also for all the discussions. And if you have additional questions, please use our normal, let's say, channels as well.

Thank you very much for today. and I wish to see you very, very soon. And we will deliver.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CECONOMY Q2 and Half Year 2025, 2026 Results Webcast and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker today, Fabienne Caron, Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sharon, and good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to welcome you to our Q2 results call today. I'm joined by our CEO, Kai-Ulrich Deissner; and our CFO, Remko Rijnders. Before we begin, I'd just like to briefly remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. Please refer to the disclaimer in the presentation for further details. This call is being recorded, and the recording will be available on our website later today. With that, I'm pleased to hand over to Kai.

Thank you, Fabienne. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Together with my trusted CFO and my soon-to-be successor, Remko Rijnders, I will now take you through the results of our first half and the second quarter of this financial year. As many of you know, we set out on this transformation journey 3 years ago, and we made some bold promises back then at our Capital Markets Day '23. We said we would put customers first and that we would establish a new category, experienced electronics rather than consumer electronics. We said we would build a business beyond traditional retail, and we said we would deliver consistent profitable growth.

Well, I'm happy and proud that we are delivering on those promises once again with a strong half year result. The result, you'll see aren't just numbers on the slide, they are proof that our strategy is working quarter-by-quarter, step by step by step, and that we're on the finishing stretch to those promises from 3 years ago. If you want it in 2 sentences; we're strengthening our customer relationships and we're increasing our profitability. But we must not get and we are not arrogant. We know there is still significant work ahead of us to serve our customers and to achieve our vision even beyond the commitments from our last CMD. I'll come back to this at the end of this presentation today.

Now let me start with Slide 3, some of our operational highlights this past quarter. I am super proud that our loyalty program, so myMediaMarkt and mySaturn have been ranked #1 in the shopping category at the 2026 German Bonus awards. Almost 150,000 consumers voted across 7 categories, and they chose us over many other well-known programs.

If you take a step back and remember where we come from, this recognition becomes even more meaningful. Our business used to be purely transactional, fire and forget. People came in, bought what they were looking for and left the stores again. No true customer relationship, no loyalty, no CRM. That's different today. By now, we know many of our customers. We stay in contact and we reward their loyalty. Actually, according to this award, we're now the top player in that space. Our app is where customers want to be. That's an excellent proof of our strategy.

Another example of strict customer focus is our marketplace. When you browse our online shop, you now have access to a huge assortment through our marketplace partners, way beyond traditional consumer electronics. To give you the numbers, in our stores, you can usually find up to 10,000 individual products. Online, we sell a few more. But on our marketplace, there is nearly 4 million individual products available. And this marketplace has reached meaningful scale.

With our launch in Switzerland in January, it now covers 98% of our footprint. This is no longer a pilot or an experiment. It is a core part of how we serve our customers. These are just 2 examples that show customer centricity is not a buzzword for us. It's a strategy. It's what drives every decision we make, every innovation we implement and every service we deliver. When customers choose us, we want them to choose an experience that puts them first.

We now give you an overview of our results on Slide 4. With one big headline. We are on course to reach our midterm targets. We're on the finishing stretch. In H1, we delivered sales of EUR 13.1 billion. That's growing 4%. This number is as always adjusted for currency and portfolio changes. When you look at Q2 alone, we achieved like-for-like growth even up 4.8%. That's solid momentum in an admittedly challenging retail environment. And so our market shares increased in Q2 by 20 basis points.

And profitability, our adjusted EBIT grew by EUR 43 million. That's a 14.2% increase in H1 and including another growth in Q2. Remko will, of course, walk you through the dynamics behind these numbers in more detail, but here's what I am very happy about. Customer satisfaction continues to grow. Our Net Promoter Score increased by 2 points year-over-year. It now stands at 62%. That tells us something fundamental. The investments we're making in customer experience are paying off. Our customers are noticing the difference. Not perfect, but better every time. And most importantly, we confirm our outlook for '25, '26.

We're delivering exactly what we promised. This consistency is what builds trust for our shareholders, with our stakeholders and confidence in our strategy even beyond our targets for September 30, this year. We will give you a bit more color on what drove this performance in the first half on Slide 5.

First, looking closer at our omnichannel sales. We saw strong momentum in Q2 even better than in the first quarter. Online sales grew by 7.3% in H1 and even by 8% in Q2. Our online share for H1, thus was 28.5%, including marketplace. That's up 150 basis points. And similarly, our Bricks-and-Mortar sales grew by 2.8% in H1, but with 3.9% in Q2. For me, this is proof that omnichannel is the right strategic approach in our sector. Our customers are visiting our stores. They shop online and they use the app across all touch points. And this integration is our competitive advantage.

Then our growth businesses continue to scale rapidly. Services & Solutions income increased strongly. Retail media income nearly doubled and again, high double-digit GMV growth in marketplace. I'll come back to these growth fields in a minute, but let's have a look at countries.

Sales performance was especially strong in Hungary, Türkiye and Spain. Profitability improved in almost all countries, but even more in Poland, in Türkiye and Hungary. On the other hand, demand in Germany and Austria remains somewhat subdued, but we are managing that actively. Most importantly, this overall development shows why our diversified international portfolio is so valuable. It gives us balance.

On profitability, we grew EUR 43 million in EBIT with EUR 10 million of that coming in Q2 alone. That's 30 basis points up in EBIT margin. As promised as in the last 3 years consistently, we're not just growing. We're growing profitability. And our cash generation rose slightly by EUR 7 million above last year, with free cash flow now at minus EUR 165 million. That's typical for a second quarter. Again, Remko will share more details on this later. So when I say we're on the finishing stretch to reach our midterm targets, this is exactly what I mean. Our strategy is working. Every business line is contributing and every market is playing its part.

You'll probably recognize this also on the next Slide #6. We present this table each quarter to give you detailed transparency about the developments of those 9 KPIs and that we introduced at our Capital Markets Day back in '23, the essence of our strategic focus. We're getting to the finishing line now. Across the various business fields, Retail Core, Service & Solutions, Marketplace, Retail Media, we took big steps towards those targets for September. And all of this, if you take a helicopter view, has changed the structure of our business.

You can see that on Slide 7. Our growth businesses now represent approximately 40% of our gross profit. That's up from 35% a year ago. This is what we mean when we say to move beyond traditional retail. All of our growth businesses contributed to this increase of our EBIT and gross profit, Services & Solutions, Marketplace, Private Label, Space-as-a-Service and Retail Media.

This matters because these businesses carry structurally higher margins, and they are less dependent on the classical consumer electronics cycle. The more we grow these segments, the more resilient and profitable our overall business becomes. This is exactly the kind of structural change that positions CECONOMY for sustainable long-term growth in the future too. Again, I will come back to this at the end of my presentation.

Let me share an operational initiative that is making a real difference for our customers on Slide 8, our Hub rollout. So what's the Hub. Hub is a regional logistics infrastructure that handles supply and demand of larger products, for example, white goods. Not just for 1 store or 2 stores or 3 stores, but for all stores in a larger region. Now when you're buying a washing machine or a fridge, it's usually not a fun purchase, right? It's a household necessity. And very often, it's urgent. You want it quickly and you want to make sure it comes when we say that it comes. That's what we're delivering with these hubs.

And the rollout of those is far advanced. We're targeting in Germany, 14 hubs overall, and 10 are already live now. This is already now reducing pressure on stock levels and improving product availability and delivery speed. And our customers appreciate that. Our delivery NPS is growing compared to our traditional approach. This is why we also have clear plans to expand this Hub model to Spain, to Benelux, Italy and Türkiye, so across our European footprint.

I already spoke about customer relationship management, CRM at the beginning with our Bonus programs. Let me come back to this because it's really key. Knowing our customers is so important for us because we can design our shopping experience to precisely what they need and want. Our loyalty program at the basis delivers outstanding results. Our active loyalty base grew by 26% year-on-year. This shows that customers aren't just signing up and then silent, they are actively choosing to shop with us. And our overall loyalty community now stands at nearly 60 million members.

And we're using this potential. The sales from direct marketing campaigns in Germany grew by 62%, almost 2/3. We're successfully shifting from broad mass market messaging to relevant targeted offers that customers actually want and how they want to offer those offers. Mobile engagement continues to accelerate. Our app and mobile channels are now becoming the primary touch points for those campaigns. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, we'll scale this personalization further. This means, for example, real-time targeting and log in via existing social media accounts that you may have as you know it from other services.

Before I hand over to Remko, let's have a look at our sustainability numbers on Slide 10. To start with BetterWay sales. Those increased by 5 percentage points, with solid growth across the entire assortment. Secondly, trade-in volumes grew by 6.7%. It shows that customers increasingly value the ability to bring back their used devices.

But here's the real one, right? Our refurbished business grew by 380%. Let me repeat that for you, 380%. That's driven by our own new refurbished offers. And by the way, these are now part of our private label business in segment and driven by better presentation and search results, for example, online. We see that this is bringing entirely new customers to this category. Admittedly, in absolute numbers, there's still a lot of potential. But with these growth rates, there's a clear trend that extends into the future.

At this stage, let me now hand over to Remko for a closer look at our financials. Remko?

Thank you, Kai, and of course, a good morning to all of you. Now let me share more details of our Q2 results. We will start with Slide 12. Before digging into the numbers, let me quickly highlight an accounting restatement, we had to do and which has an impact on our numbers. Let me be clear, this is an accounting correction, not a change in underlying trading performance. And this relates to the timing and release of voucher-related accruals after redemption. There is no impact on cash generation, liquidity or the economics of our business.

Our previous treatment was too cautious, which means sales and earnings were reported below the appropriate level. We have now corrected this and restated the comparative period for transparency. Our fiscal year adjusted EBIT for fiscal year '25 is now EUR 406 million compared to the EUR 378 million that we have reported. Our adjusted EBIT in Q1 increased by EUR 9 million to EUR 320 million.

The chart highlights that we increased our adjusted EBIT by EUR 43 million in H1 and need another EUR 51 million increase in H2, which makes us confident we will reach our targets. We had another quarter of growth, resulting into profitable EBIT growth in H1, and this, in a market which is volatile and competitive where consumers spending is under pressure, so we are extremely proud of our achievements.

Let's look at the headline numbers. Our sales growth accelerated in Q2 by a solid 4.9% resulting in a 4% growth in the first half of the year. This is the number adjusted for currency and portfolio changes in pre-IAS 29. And our like-for-like sales grew by 4.8% in Q2 and 3.7% for H1. That is, if you count only comparable selling space and stores already opened 1 year ago. Compared with the overall economic developments, particularly in retail, this is a very good result.

Now let's look at the segments, starting with DACH and sales on Slide 14. We recorded a 3.1% decline in like-for-like as consumer demand was rather soft in the region over the first half of the year. I would like to point out that we noticed a trend improvement at the end of the quarter. Our market share in Q2 was broadly flat in the DACH region. Still, Profitability improved with a EUR 7 million increase in adjusted EBIT. This achievement was made possible by an improved gross margin and effective cost control allowing us to counter the decline in sales due to the soft market.

In Western and South Europe, our sales were strong with a 4.1% increase in like-for-like in H1. And we gained 0.2 percentage point market share. On profitability, we increased our adjusted EBIT by EUR 15 million and our margin by 30 basis points. A great performance, in my view, where Spain and Italy were the main drivers. Moving to Eastern Europe. Sales were once again driven by Türkiye and Poland continues to improve as well. We gained 0.5 percentage point market share in the first half. Both countries contributed to the increase in profitability.

Finally, let me highlight our other segments which primarily represents holding cost and our private label business. The decline in EBITDA is primarily due to a higher risk provision on mobile phone contracts, reflecting the current macroeconomic headwinds.

Now turning to Slide 15. Let's take a look at the performance of Services & Solutions, our biggest growth area. You can see that we grew sales over proportionally with a plus of 12.5%. The strongest growth came from our insurance warranty business. Then to online. Our first party online sales also grew over proportionally with 7.3% increase in H1 and now reached a total of EUR 3.5 billion in H1. And on the back of this, our online sales share increased to nearly 28.5%, again, a great performance.

So let me come back to our EBIT development on Slide 17. Our gross margin increased by 30 basis points in H1 to 18.1%, which is a strong performance. This improvement was driven by our growth areas. Now circa 40% of our gross profit comes from our growth business. Our OpEx ratio was stable to 16% as we have mitigated the OpEx increase with strict cost management.

Turning to the full overview on Slide 18 from adjusted EBIT to net profit. Walking down from adjusted EBIT of EUR 347 million, we recorded EUR 62 million nonrecurring items. The EUR 50 million increase year-on-year is mainly due to a lower profit share of Fnac Darty of EUR 32 million. Regarding tax, we paid more tax due to our better profitability. All in all, those 2 elements impacted our net profit and resulted in a reported EPS of EUR 0.20 in the first half of the year.

Turning to Slide 19. Free cash flow was, as expected, seasonally negative in the first half as the second quarter is typically when we pay our supplies for the Christmas period. Even so, free cash flow improved by EUR 7 million in H1 and by around EUR 100 million in Q2. This improvement was driven by strong operating performance.

In April, Standard & Poor's upgraded CECONOMY's long-term credit rating from BB- to BB. This rating remains on credit watch positive. The upgrade reflects recognition of CECONOMY's sustainable profitability trajectory and improve stand-alone financial risk profile.

On this positive note, I will now hand back to Kai for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Remko. Look, what you've just heard from both of us, we continue to have positive momentum, and we expect this to continue for the full financial year '25, '26. But before I come to our outlook, let me address what's obviously relevant, our management transition, Slide 22. As you know, I have personally decided to step down from my role as CEO for personal reasons, actually stepped down from any executive role in the future, and I feel privileged to be able to take this step because our company is so well placed now. The path for the future is set, there is a strong leadership team here for the handover.

Remko Rijnders, who you've just all heard, will take over from July 1. Most of you know Remko, of course, well from his time as CFO. But before that, as cluster CEO and CEO of our Benelux business. He's been with MediaMarkt, Saturn for 17 years. He brings deep operational knowledge, proven track record, the strong strategic vision. He's been part of our omnichannel transformation from day 1.

Second, Jan Niclas Brandt has been serving as our CCO, Chief Customer Officer since April 1. Niclas has an outstanding track record. He led our business in Switzerland and Austria, and before that was the driving force behind our experience electronics strategy as VP Corporate Strategy. His mission now is to take us to the next level. Niclas will help us move beyond just putting customers first to really understanding what matters to each individual customer and delivering exactly that through customer relevance.

To make our leadership team complete, only one is missing, as you can see on the slide. For the Chief Financial Officer position, we expect a timely announcement in the coming quarter. I'm personally deeply convinced that this board setup is strong. They bring the right combination of strategic vision and execution to deliver. They understand what it takes to win in this market, and how to position us for sustainable growth in the next chapter. And we're also already working closely together as a team to ensure a smooth handover without missing a beat.

Now to our outlook on Slide 23. As I said at the very beginning, we confirm our guidance for '25, '26. We're on the finishing stretch. But we did specify the details with a closer look at the performance of our countries this year so far. We expect -- continue to expect a moderate increase in currency and portfolio adjusted total sales, with Western, Southern and Eastern Europe contributing to that sales growth. Secondly, we continue to expect an adjusted EBIT of around EUR 500 million, driven by Western and Southern Europe. And to remind you, one more time, this is still the target for the financial year '25, '26 that we first communicated at our Capital Markets Day back in '23 and ever since.

On to Slide 24. I've mentioned the next chapter and the future path and the next level several times today. So let me cordially invite all of you to our Strategy Day on Thursday, July 9, 2026. It will be a hybrid event. You can join us in person at our lighthouse in Hamburg or participate via stream. My board colleagues will lay out our way forward to 2028, '29. Our new midterm ambitions, strategic priorities and the many, many initiatives that will make us not just an experienced electronics player, but an experienced champion. This will be an important event for both the financial community as well as for media and Remko, Niclas and their teams look forward to sharing our vision with you in detail.

In this context, let me give you an update on our proposed partnership with JD.com on Slide 25. We're still on route to closing. On the regulatory front, we have, together and under the lead of JD, made significant progress. First, merger control clearance has been granted everywhere as set out in the offer document. Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Türkiye. Second, Foreign Direct Investor, FDI, clearances have also been received in Italy and in France. As per the offer document, 3 more countries are required. First bunch, Germany and Spain, we expect the FDI clearances to be granted in due course. And regarding the FDI clearance in Austria, we released on March 27.

We now continue to engage actively with the Federal Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism to meet the clearance conditions. This dialogue is now constructive. Thirdly, JD.com has also submitted the FSR filing in Brussels, again, as defined in the offer document, and so no surprise. They are in constructive engagement with the EU authorities. This process takes time, and they're moving in the right direction.

Given the complexity of these approval processes, we said in our talk in late March that closing is likely to extend into the second half of the year. But let me be clear, we remain fully committed and confident to this partnership, and we're working diligently, together with JD, to bring it to completion.

Allow me to repeat. We chose this partnership as a strategic next step not because we had to, but because we could and wanted to. JD.com will be a powerful partner to accelerate our development. This partnership will strengthen everything we're building here at CECONOMY and it will enable us to lead European retail in the future.

Let me wrap it up with Slide 26. A brief summary of what this quarter tells you about CECONOMY today and about the foundation for the future. Our experienced electronics strategy continues to drive higher customer satisfaction and deeper engagement, even stronger loyalty. Are we already done? No, of course, not. Are we on a good path? Definitely, yes. You've seen the proof today.

Our H1 performance underlines we have a strong and balanced portfolio. Our growing high-margin businesses make us strong. Together, they make the company more resilient and more profitable. They're an integral part of our business now, and they continue to expand. Our focus continues to remain on cost, liquidity and profitability. And with our strategic partner, JD.com, we have a unique opportunity in Europe to accelerate this development even further. We're making progress on the approval process.

Finally, to repeat one more time, we are confirming our outlook for '25, '26. We expect a moderate sales increase and adjusted EBIT of around EUR 500 million. Before we now open it for questions, allow me a personal word because this is the 14th, but also my last earnings call personally.

Thank you. Thank you all for our many, many good conversations in the past 3.5 years. Thank you for your continued interest and openness. But most importantly, thank you to the 50,000 people in this wonderful company. They have pushed us to where we are today with a clear strategy, with a path into the future, and above all with many, many happy customers. It's been an honor for me to be part of this journey and to lead it.

Thank you for your attention, and we're now ready for your questions.

[Operator Instructions]. There are currently no phone questions. I will hand the call back for the webcast questions.

Yes. So we take the first question from Frank [indiscernible]. The first one is why are we structuring costs so high in Germany? Are there plans for further store closure? And the second question is, are there any details in the acquisitions by JD.com -- delays, sorry. .

Thank you, Frank, for your questions. Remko's going to take the first one, I'll take the second one. Remko?

Yes, indeed, I will take the first one regarding Germany and the restructuring costs. Yes, we did quite some restructuring in the first half of the year in Germany, to make us for mid- and long-term scalable and viable. And of course, we always reviewed, as we always have said before, our store performance and where we see capabilities and opportunities. Do we plan for any additional store closures in the future? At the moment, we don't. That being said, with always the statement that we say, we will always, as any retailer would do, look at the performance of our stores and may we see opportunities to open new store, we do evaluate current stores.

Yes. And you also asked whether there are any delays in the acquisition by JD.com. Let me repeat what I've just said. We remain confident in this acquisition process. And on the details, we've already cleared all merger control clearances that we need or that JD.com needs according to the offer document.

On FDI, as I said, we're now in constructive discussions with Austria, and we expect, in due course, the [indiscernible] for Germany and Spain. And for the FSR process in Brussels, the filing has been made and we're now in constructive discussions again, to ease and constructive discussions with the EU authorities.

Thank you, Kai. Let me take the next question from Alex from MWB. Congratulations on the results. Wishing you all the best. Thank you, Alex.

First, can you give us more color on what has changed in Poland? And second regarding the key pledges, how should we think about the remaining upside for those open KPIs? Is there any meaningful EBIT and margin upside that can carry over behind '25, '26? And is it more -- or is it most already in our target of EUR 500 million?

Remko, you want to start with Poland and I'll do the second one.

Yes, I'm more than happy to give an update on Poland. As we said, we are happy with the performance in Poland also with an EBIT increase compared to last year, also again in Q2. What changed? First of all, we put our so-called matrix structure in play where we put additional efforts from our HQ when it comes to supply negotiations, supporting the organization in Poland, but we also have a new board that has a new CFO, a new CEO, a new team, and together with the senior management, we see now actually that dynamics is also working and the position in Poland is getting stronger and stronger from a performance perspective, but also from a team perspective, which we then also see in MPP for example.

Then, Alex, so first of all, thank you for your good wishes, very kind of you. You asked on those open pledges, which we've given at the Capital Markets Day where many, but not all KPIs are already on the target level for the 30th of September. Look, it's a package, right? We made a commitment in 2023 for those KPIs to reach the targeted level and to deliver the EUR 500 million. So that is a package. Now I cannot preempt what will be said in July about the next phase. But what I can preempt that we don't believe that EUR 500 million is the ceiling here and everything else will need to be set in July. .

Thank you, Kai. We take the next question from [indiscernible]. She's asking some questions regarding the JD.com transaction. We expect the closing in H2. Is it calendar year or fiscal year? And the second part of the question is when do you expect the delisting to take place under the Q1 plan? .

Thank you for the questions. It's Kai. So the closing date in the second half of the calendar year is what we're referring to. Remember, there is a long stop date in this transaction in November. So we expect it in the second half of the calendar year, but obviously before November 10, which is the long stop date to be very precise on this.

On delisting, you know how these things go. It's -- let's say between 3 and 6 months after closing, we would expect delisting to take place, but that's part of -- not 100% easy process. So I can't give you a precise timing, but between 3 and 6 months.

Next question is from Fred Ward from Verition Fund. Please could you give a little more detail on timing expectations for the Austrian approval on the JD.com deal? And will remedies be required and how does that -- those remedy process could work?

It's Kai. Thanks, Fred, for the questions. Please understand, these are very sensitive discussions, the confidentiality of which we respect 100%. So I cannot comment on ongoing discussions. What I can repeat is that we remain confident across all necessary approvals that includes the Austrian one in the second half of this year, as I've just specified, but further details I cannot give you at this stage.

Thank you, Kai. We see no more questions in chat. We have seen one from Charlie, but I think we gave the answer during the presentation. So we'll still wait a few minutes if you want either to type your question on the chat or just to raise the questions per telephone.

We see no further questions here on our end. I'll give you a time to brief; 3, 2, 1.

Look, thank you all for your time today and your questions. If you would like to engage us again through our field channels, we are very happy to do so to continue the conversation. We hope to see you in our Strategy Day on July 9, either in Hamburg or virtually and for our Q3 results on July 30. For now, Fabienne, Remko and I wish you all the best and a wonderful day. Thank you, and goodbye for now. .

Thank you. Goodbye. .

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CECONOMY Q1 2025-2026 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I will now hand over to Fabienne Caron, Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q1 results. I'm joined today by our CEO, Dr. Kai-Ulrich Deissner; and our CFO, Remko Rijnders.

Before we begin, a brief reminder. Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. Please refer to the disclaimer in the presentation for important information. This call is being recorded, and the recorded (sic) [ recording ] will be available on our website later today.

With that, I'm pleased to hand over to Kai to walk you through the key highlights. Kai, over to you.

Thank you, Fabienne. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Together with my partner in crime, our trusted CFO, Remko Rijnders, I will soon take you through the results of our first quarter in financial year '25-'26. But let's first recognize, Q1 is a very important quarter for us. It includes the full peak season around Black Week and Singles Day and Cyber Week and Christmas.

And in that quarter, we see millions of customers visiting our stores and our app. So at least statistically, you personally will have been part of those customers, too, and hopefully, even in real life and not just statistically. But effectively, it's a stress test for us, a stress test to our business model and how well we serve customers. So the key message here today is we've delivered, and we have successfully completed that stress test.

Now over the past many quarters, we said it time and again, we have been on a clear strategic journey, transforming CECONOMY from a traditional retailer into what we call a true omnichannel service platform. Quarter-by-quarter, this strategy is paying off also in this quarter.

Just to remind you, we're tackling this transformation from 2 angles. First, we're building our business beyond traditional retail with some significant growth areas, as we call them, that continue to perform really well. On a full year basis, this is now already a EUR 1 billion business. But the second, the real driver here is our customers because they fundamentally changed how they think about shopping and therefore, what they expect from us.

Now every team member across our 11 markets understands this shift and is very focused on delivering what we call experience electronics, putting the customer experience at the heart of what we do every day. We're creating shopping journeys that match what people today want and today need. Even though we still have a lot of work to do naturally, we're making real progress, and we're committed to getting better every day.

The results we present to you today underline this, that we're on a path of progress, growth in sales and profitability and customer satisfaction and online share and in our growth businesses. We think this is an exceptional achievement in our sector, particularly in a retail environment that remains highly competitive and volatile.

Together, all these elements are a strong foundation for future growth and of course, to reach our midterm targets by the end of this financial year '25-'26. For us, this makes this year so important. It's the finishing stretch of our journey since the Capital Market Day in 2023.

Ladies and gentlemen, CECONOMY is on the right path strategically, operationally and financially. Our consistent performance gives us confidence, and that is why we are also confirming our positive outlook for the full year '25-'26.

With that, now let's look at those details of Q1.

Let me start with an overview on Slide 3. This quarter sends a very clear message. Our strategy is continuing to work and our business continues to have strong momentum because we are ruthlessly putting the customer in the center.

Two points to back this up. One highlight I'm particularly proud of, our online share is at an all-time high, 30%. This is not just a number. It's a clear sign of our successful transformation from traditional bricks-and-mortar into an omnichannel retailer. Customers are choosing us across all touch points. And this seamless integration between online and offline is our core strength.

Second, at the same time, we've achieved a record NPS, Net Promoter Score, so the recommendations by our customers of 61 in Q1. We read this as a signal of trust from our customers for our focus on service quality, for personalized advice and for simplifying their customer journey. Customer satisfaction is not an add-on to our strategy. It's the core of our experience electronics approach.

And when you look at these 2 records together, online share and Net Promoter Score, we are strengthening our foundation and building the basis for future growth. We're improving convenience through our omnichannel capabilities, and we're elevating the experience through service and expertise. That balance is exactly what differentiates us, and it positions CECONOMY with MediaMarkt and Saturn for sustainable long-term growth even in the future.

Let's turn to Slide 4. You will see here that our growth continued across all key financial KPIs. Sales, EBIT, EPS, our major performance indicators, all moved in the right direction. We grew our profitability now for the 12th quarter in a row, 3 years quarter by quarter by quarter. That's uniquely meaningful considering the challenging economy that all of us in this sector are facing.

Second, sales grew by 3.4% to now EUR 7.6 billion. Adjusted EBIT in absolute figures grew by EUR 31 million or 11% to EUR 311 million in the quarter, and EPS was up 23% to now EUR 0.37. The basis of all of this, our strong sales development, was driven by 2 key factors. First, the increase reflects the strength of our international portfolio of countries. We will tell you more about our countries a bit later.

Second, our growth businesses gained even more momentum, proving once again how critical they are now for our long-term profitability profile. Taken together, these developments do give us confidence, confidence that our strategy is working, that our organization is executing with discipline and focus. And that's once again why we are reiterating our full year guidance today. More on that at the end.

Let's take one step further and go deeper into the operational performance with the next slide, that's Slide 5. In summary, what you can see here is the strength and the resilience of our business model during peak season. Online sales grew by 6.9%, and I will repeat that our online share increased to an all-time high of 30% and our bricks-and-mortar business also grew during that first quarter.

Profitability increased for the 12th consecutive quarter, and our free cash flow was strong at EUR 1.4 billion with an equally strong liquidity position underneath. Even more customers now trust us, become my MediaMarkt or my Saturn members. We grew our loyalty customers to now 57 million.

Next, our growth businesses now scale rapidly. This is becoming a defining element of our strategy. As you can see, Service & Solutions income increased significantly and so did Retail Media income. And here's an interesting one. Refurbished unit sales grew almost 400%. There is clearly more and more customer demand for affordable and sustainable options, and we are meeting it.

Several of our key countries delivered excellent performances. Turkiye, Spain, Hungary, Italy, all achieved strong sales momentum and better profitability. Now we did see a softer demand in Germany and Austria, but this only shows how valuable our diversified international portfolio is, gives us balanced stability and multiple engines of growth.

Overall, Slide 5 demonstrates we're scaling the right businesses. We're executing consistently across the markets, and we're thus building a more resilient and more profitable CECONOMY and MediaMarktSaturn that will continue to grow in the future.

The next slide, #6, you will probably recognize. We presented each quarter to give you transparency about the development of the 9 KPIs that we introduced at our Capital Markets Day back in 2023 because these 9 KPIs represent the essence of our strategic focus. And we are getting to the finishing line now. Across the various business fields, Retail Core, Service & Solutions, Marketplace, Space-as-a-Service, Retail Media, we took big steps towards all those targets that will become due on the 30th of September 2026.

You take a step back, retail at the core, strong momentum in our growth fields and all of that with a focus on the customer. That's the architecture of our journey that I've outlined. And you can see how this materializes in numbers on this slide.

When you look at the structure of our EBIT development, it becomes very clear how significant our growth businesses have become for the group. Our revenue and profit mix is becoming more diversified, more resilient and more future-proof and most importantly, with more growth. As you've seen over the past quarters, this is not just a temporary effect. It marks a structural shift in how value is created within CECONOMY.

We're no longer dependent on the traditional retail cycle alone. Instead, we're building a balanced portfolio that combines the stability of our Retail Core with the high margins of Service & Solutions, Marketplace, Private Label, Space-as-a-Service and Retail Media.

Now next, a closer look at our peak season on Slide 8. In summary, what we can say, our teams executed exceptionally well across all major product and service categories.

Let's start with product. In our Retail Core, we saw strong performance, especially in gaming hardware, floor care, toys and computing. Here's what's sold best, the Nintendo Switch 2, the PlayStation 5, as well as robot vacuum cleaners. And interestingly, we had a substantial sales increase in toys.

For example, LEGO, I'm told LEGO flowers are really hot on the market at the moment. So you can see that products that are beyond our core assortment can also become favorites for our customers. PCs also sold very well, mostly driven by laptops. And in this context, here's another interesting detail. We've also just released our very first private label, so own gaming laptop. It's called the [ Experian ].

Now in parallel to this Retail Core business, at the same time, Retail Media grew substantially across the whole portfolio, nearly doubled its web shop ads volume. This business is really scaling rapidly now. And we're -- also, as we anticipated at the end of last year, we're extending our customer base for Retail Media with customers outside the traditional consumer electronics sector. For example, Opel. Opel showcased the new Opel Frontera in various MediaMarkt stores in the Netherlands, another example outside Retail Core.

Services & Solutions delivered another strong quarter. This was primarily driven by bundling campaigns and by preparation of those bundles and value-added services in central warehouses, so a more efficient way of producing this. These bundles are key for us to reduce complexity for customers, it's easier to buy and of course, reduce complexity for employees as well. So they drive on the one hand side attachment of service and income, and they also drive efficiency for us.

Two examples. We launched maintenance packages in Turkiye. These are designed to extend the lifespan of the device that the customer may have, improve long-term energy efficiency and even help with hygiene conditions, in particular, for household appliances at home. Now, in real life, each maintenance procedure is carried out either on site at the customer or at the service workshop by specialized technical personnel.

Second example is the successful launch of what we call the SparKette bundles in Germany. Here, we focus on subscription contracts like antivirus or Microsoft 365 licenses, combined with devices like smartphones and tablets, and there's always a clear price benefit for customers.

Final milestone and interesting detail here is the collaboration between our growth field Service & Solutions and Marketplace because we now also offer insurances, not just for the products that we sell in our retail business, but also for Marketplace in Germany, so for third-party products from independent sellers. As you can see, our peak season performance was really broad-based, fully in line with our strategy and operationally really strong.

Now before I hand over to Remko, let me have a closer look at one of those longer term trends that we continuously emphasize, and it's circular economy on Slide 9, because this really had some extra momentum in Q1. Customers are actively choosing more and more sustainable and from their perspective, affordable alternatives. You can see that in the numbers. The BetterWay sales share increased another 2 percentage points to 16%.

Now those of you who follow us more often and more regularly, please note, we had to redefine our BetterWay scope. So what you're seeing here is the new BetterWay logic. Why? Because new energy labels are being introduced on an EU level. So we withdrew categories [ without ] such a label, that's, for example, vacuum cleaners and coffee machines, and we also introduced new criteria for smartphones. That's why it's the new BetterWay scope increasing 2 percentage points to 16%.

But most strikingly, perhaps and importantly, refurbished sales, mainly on the Marketplace for us, grew significantly by 380%. This came from more and more specialized sellers and thus a broader assortment. In December alone, one in 4 products sold on the Marketplace was refurbished.

And finally, trade-In numbers also grew. In Spain, we already launched a more efficient trade-In platform for us internally, and it shows promising results. The technology that underlies this simplifies the customer journey, and it increases conversion, and it gives us a better return as a retailer. We'll roll out this platform in more countries throughout this year.

But as you can see with all of these developments, we're not just responding to customer expectations. We're actively shaping a more sustainable, more innovative and future-oriented retail model around circularity.

Now let me hand over to Remko for a closer look at those financials. Remko?

Yes. Thank you, Kai, and good morning to all of you. Now let me share some more details of our Q1 results. We will start with Slide 11. As Kai already highlighted in the beginning, this is our 12th consecutive quarter with positive EBIT growth, and this in a market which is volatile and competitive. So we can and are extremely proud of this result.

Let's look at the headline numbers. We grew sales in Q1 by a solid 3.4%. This number is adjusted for currency and portfolio changes and pre-IAS 29. And our like-for-like sales grew by 3%, that is if you count only comparable selling space and stores already opened 1 year ago. Compared with our overall economic development, particularly in retail, this is a very good result.

Now let's look at our regions, starting with DACH and sales. Over the peak season, we faced intensive competition and many customers held back on spending. This was most pronounced in Germany and Austria, leaving sales down with 2.9% versus last year in the DACH region. We balanced that with a better gross margin, thanks to our growth business and by running a tighter cost base, especially our location costs. Overall, EBIT margin was up 10 basis points in the quarter.

In Western and Southern Europe, sales rose by 4.7% with growth in every country. Spain and Italy were particularly strong performers. On profitability, EBIT increased strongly with EUR 11 million and margin expanded by 30 basis points.

Moving to Eastern Europe. Sales were once again driven by Turkiye. We are pleased to see that our restructuring measures in Poland are gaining traction, leading to a double-digit million improvement in adjusted EBIT in the quarter. For the region overall, adjusted EBIT reached EUR 46 million, equivalent to 4.1% margin, a very strong result, and we are extremely proud of a starting turnaround in Poland.

Now let me turn to our largest growth business, Service & Solutions, on Slide 13. In Q1, sales grew by nearly 14% with momentum across both online and in-store channels, truly omnichannel. All service categories increased with extended warranties showing the strongest growth. We are pleased to share that extended warranties are now available on our marketplace in Germany and are being well received by all our customers. We plan to roll this out to additional countries soon.

Then to online. Our first-party online sales grew also with 6.9% to EUR 2.2 billion. We recorded a particular strong performance in Hungary, Poland, Switzerland, Turkiye and Spain. And on the back of this, our online share reached a record 30%, the highest level since COVID, a very strong performance in my view.

So let me come back to our EBIT development on Slide 15 in more detail. Our gross margin increased by 40 basis points in the quarter, driven by our growth businesses. This highlights that our strategy is working and helps mitigate the impact of a challenging environment.

Now on cost. Our adjusted OpEx ratio improved by 20 basis points, thanks to a relentless focus on cost. We are more efficient in marketing while maintaining a stable share of voice in the market. We have also taken measures to further optimize location costs. We will remain disciplined on cost for the remaining part of the year, particularly in DACH region given the market environment.

Turning to the full overview on Slide 16 from adjusted EBIT to net profit. Walking down from the adjusted EBIT of EUR 311 million, we recorded limited nonrecurring items. The bulk of those are due to IAS 29 hyperinflation accounting. Consequently, our reported EBIT reached EUR 293 million, which is a robust increase of EUR 64 million year-on-year. Our net financial result improved, thanks to Turkiye. Overall, Q1 delivered higher reported net income and EPS. EPS rose by 23% to EUR 0.37, a solid performance.

Then let me continue with free cash flow on Slide 17. Overall, we generated EUR 1.4 billion of positive free cash flow, a very solid performance. This was driven by strong operating performance and seasonal working capital inflows typical for the peak season. We closed the quarter with a strong net position of EUR 2 billion.

This completes then as well the financial section, and let me now hand over back to you, Kai.

Thanks, Remko. Now what you've just heard from both of us, we continue to have positive momentum strategically, operationally, financially. And we do expect this to continue for financial year '25-'26. That's why we are confidently confirming our outlook. You can see that on Slide 19.

We continue to expect a moderate increase in currency and portfolio adjusted total sales with all of our regions contributing to that sales growth. Secondly, we continue to expect an adjusted EBIT of around EUR 500 million. This is still the target for the financial year '25-'26, that we first communicated at our Capital Markets Day in 2023 and ever since. This improvement this year will be driven by the DACH region and the Western and Southern Europe.

Finally, as we look ahead, let me give you a perspective on the innovation trends that will long-term shape customer demand in the future. We can see them on Slide 20. First, in household robotics, we expect major progress that will bring smarter, more autonomous solutions into everyday homes, like this picture that you can see here of a floor care robot that can actually climb stairs. We also see strong momentum in smart glasses, where the next generation will finally bring the form factor out of the niche and closer to the mass market.

Finally, health tech is another innovative field that we think caters to a larger trend because in this day and age, who doesn't want to be fit. We see fast improvements in health tracking and the use of data here, new devices, new services emerging every month. For us, all of these trends will support traffic, demand and category expansion over the coming quarters. They fundamentally reinforce our belief that consumer electronics will remain one of the most dynamic retail segments.

And so we're happy to be in that particular segment. Most importantly, we are ready for this and now stronger than ever. Our stores, our online platforms, our omnichannel infrastructure are well positioned to bring these innovations to consumers in Europe with advice, with service, with installation, with a full set of solutions around the product. And yes, with our partner, JD.com. But to be sure, today was about our Q1 performance, but you will have seen the result of the tender offer, and you will have seen the progress of regulatory approvals.

Of course, we will continue to update you always on our website and personally at every major milestone. But to reiterate and to confirm, we continue to expect closing of that transaction within the first half of this calendar year.

Now let me conclude with Slide 21, a brief summary of what this quarter tells you about CECONOMY today and about the foundation for the future. Our experience electronics strategy continues to drive higher customer satisfaction, NPS and deeper engagement, even stronger loyalty. The combination of expert advice, seamless online journeys and a growing set of value-added services is clearly resonating with customers.

Our Q1 the stress test, as I called it, performance demonstrates we have a strong and balanced portfolio. Our growing high-margin businesses make us stronger. Together, they make the company more resilient, more profitable, exactly what we set out to achieve with our transformation in 2023. By now, our growth business are an integral part of our business, and they continue to grow.

In all of that, [ core ] focus remains very disciplined on cost, liquidity and profitability. And with our new strategic partner, JD.com, we now have a unique opportunity to accelerate this development over 12 quarters even further in technology, in logistics, and assortment and many more. Last but not least, we're confirming our outlook for financial year '25-'26, we expect a moderate sales increase and adjusted EBIT of around EUR 500 million.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are the main takeaways. We stay confident for the rest of the year. Our execution is in full swing, and we're on a path of future growth. We've started this year with strong momentum, and we're well on track to deliver on our ambitions.

Thank you for your attention so far. We're now really looking forward to your questions.

[Operator Instructions] We are now going to proceed with our first question. The questions come from the line of Matthias Inverardi from Thomson Reuters.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you perfectly well. Proceed.

Not so surprising, I have a question concerning your Fnac Darty shares. Have you decided yet if you're going to sell them to Mr. Kretinsky or not?

Yes. Look, we're still waiting for the concrete and detailed offer. We will then look at that offer in detail and analyze it, and then we will take a decision. No decision has been made yet.

We have no further questions on the phone line. So I'll hand back for any written questions. Thank you.

Caron tells me that we should wait for 1 minute or 2. So please do feel encouraged to ask questions. We're really very willing to engage in whatever conversation you may have. So we'll give you another minute.

Currently, we have no further questions. [Operator Instructions]

Thank you. We've got a question on chat from Alex Zienkowicz from mwb research. The first part of the question is regarding gross margin. Is it purely driven by mix? Or did you benefit from a lower promotion share? Or were you better on price?

Yes. Alex, thanks for your question. So we have stated a couple of times already that we are very [ rigous ] on to grow, but to grow profitable. So first of all, we are really analyzing the profitability per category. It's not mix driven. That's what I can already tell you. So it's a benefit on the gross margin of really [ rigous ] negotiation and pushing the products and offering the products with a better margin.

That's true. But it's also related to how we do the customer journey online and offline with better accessory attached, for example, and that helps also in the mix because, of course, the average margin on accessories is for sure, much, much better. So it's a mix effect on accessories and of course, the goods margin as such by being very [ rigous ] where we want to grow and profitable to grow based on customer demand.

The second part of the question is on Poland. Can you provide more color on the EBIT improvement in Poland, please?

This is Kai again. I'll take the question on Poland. Remko will take the next one. Now as Remko said, we are actually very proud of the initial signs of turnaround that we've seen in Poland. As you know, we are operating there in a very competitive environment. So we've done several things actually. We set up a new management structure with a new CEO and CFO, both of whom are now on board.

And in particular, we improved our capabilities in online and in Service & Solutions. So the positive results in Q1 that we're here reporting are largely due to online, a much better performance in online also in technical capabilities. For example, if you remember, we introduced the Marketplace in Poland only last year.

In parallel to all of this, of course, we are reviewing cost structures to get further efficiencies out of the business. But I would -- what I would highlight is, in particular, the new management structure and our increased online performance and capabilities.

The next question is from Philip Brandlein, Lebensmittel Zeitung. First part of the question, looking at the DACH region, how do you plan to improve sales and EBIT?

I will take this question. So looking at the DACH region, we started Q1 slightly below expectation from an EBIT perspective, mainly driven by top line. So what we have an -- a customer demand decreasing. So the next implementation that we are doing at the moment is to simplify it. We have a clear action plan in place where we have on the top line a lot of focus on the top 200 products. So of course, we have many more products, 15,000 SKUs online, but we focus on 200 products that make around about 40% of our sales.

And what are we doing? We secure really end-to-end for these 200 products together with our partners, our suppliers that there is always availability on the products that we are really on par with pricing, that we have visibility online but also offline. So to explain, when you as a customer enter the store, these products are immediately visible. And these products also generate 40% of sales. We also make sure that the right accessories are there next to it, both on and offline to make sure that you have the right experience as a customer.

On the EBIT side, we have also implemented a very strong cost program. And this cost program, we already mentioned it, is focusing on location costs, but also a lot on indirect spend. So we see that the cost percentage in Germany, percentage of sales has potential also compared to other countries. So we are really benchmarking the cost between the countries, making sure that we get on par with the cost. So to summarize it, on the top line, a extreme focus on the top 200. And on the cost line, it's really making sure that we get for every cost line in Germany on par with the benchmark of our company.

I will bundle the 2 questions together. First is from Philip Brandlein, and the next one is Paul Dean from Churchill Capital. So it's both regarding JD.

First, you stated that CECONOMY is ready to accelerate with JD. What will that look like? Is that true that the Joybuy Express service will be available for MediaMarkt soon?

And the second part of the question from Paul is asking regarding the AU FSR review, which has been in pre-notification stage since August last year. If you could provide more color on how is this progressing?

And I'm happy to do that. Thank you, Philip and Paul, for the questions. Now first of all, on what's our plan with JD. Now let me remind you and reiterate, this is all about growth. So think of this as both top line and profitability growth in the future, centered around what has been the essence of our transformation here as well. So an omnichannel approach, both companies believe in both online and bricks-and-mortar and an approach centered on delivering excellent customer service. So that's the big headline what this is about.

Now we've also highlighted a few areas in which we believe there is most potential for them -- for that future growth. One of them is indeed logistics. So we will be looking at faster delivery, better delivery, more reliable delivery quality for our customers. At this stage, however, it is too early to comment on specific services like Joybuy Express. But what I can confirm and what I can reiterate is that delivery capabilities are very much in focus of what we think as growth opportunities together with JD.com. That's on the first part of the question.

On the second part of the question on FSR, I cannot give you any color on this. We are in very constructive discussions with JD, and we are in very constructive discussions with all regulatory approval authorities, including the European offices in Brussels, and it is all progressing, as I said, as we had anticipated to be concluded in the first half of this year.

The next question from chat comes from Darja Lema from Bloomberg Intelligence.

With EUR 311 million EBIT achieved in Q1, can you provide more color on how you plan to achieve EUR 500 million by the end of the year? Does it involve cost cutting or a significant uplift from your growth businesses such as Retail Media or Services?

Yes, this is Remko. Thanks for your question. So in our EBIT, to start off with, there is always a seasonality, right? So in Q1, we reached 64% of our EBIT ambition or budget and in Q2 at 6% normally, Q3 is around about 1% and then Q4 is -- our Q4 is 29%. So looking at Q1, that's why also Kai already mentioned that our Q1 is and was extremely important to reach our EUR 500 million ambition, and we are right on track with our, yes, projection of the around EUR 500 million EBIT achievement.

Now to answer your question a bit more in detail, when it comes to cost, we have said from the beginning, and we keep on doing that, when there is a soft line in DACH, mainly at the moment, we are very [ rigous ] on costs. So especially on the indirect cost, we are taking the initiatives, but also on location costs, for example. So the cost in percentage of sales needs to stay in par of reaching that EUR 500 million.

Other than that, our strategy is working. That's what we have seen also in Q1. We keep our strategy. And yes, a big part of that strategy is focusing on accelerating on our growth businesses. And that's what we will do, what we believe in, has paid off for 12 quarters in a row, still paying off. And with that, we will reach the EUR 500 million.

There are no further questions at this time. So I'll now hand back to Dr. Kai-Ulrich Deissner for closing remarks. Thank you.

Yes. I'll take a deep breath to give anybody a chance to still raise their hand, but -- and wait for one more minute before I will close with a few additional comments. But just give everyone one more minute.

Okay. Look, thank you for your time and your questions this morning. If you want to engage with us any further through our official channels, we're always very happy to continue those conversations. And if you can't wait for another 3 months to speak to us again, you're very welcome to join our Annual General Meeting. It happens exactly a week today. There are dial-ins for the press available, and you get to see more of this wonderful company in a week's time. And we will be happy to present our Q2 results to you on May 13.

Until then, Remko, Fabienne and I wish you all the best. Thank you for your interest, and see you very, very soon. Goodbye.

Thank you. Goodbye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you, and have a good rest of your day.

Welcome to the CECONOMY MediaMarkt Full Year Results Webcast. We are live from our headquarters in Düsseldorf in a hybrid setup with participants both on-site and online. I'm joined by our CEO, Dr. Kai-Ulrich Deissner; and our CFO, Remko Rijnders. They will present the highlights of the year, followed by a Q&A session. Today, we meet in a new setup, one joint call for both press and analysts. We are pleased to welcome journalists online from our 11 countries. The presentation will be held in English with live translation. You can switch the language in the live stream.

Before we begin, please note that today's discussions will include forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to our disclaimer. The full presentation is available on our website.

With that, I'm delighted to hand over to Dr. Deissner, who will guide you through the highlights of the year.

Thank you, Fabienne. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us here today. I'm really happy to have you here with us today, now whether you're joining us here at our CECONOMY headquarter in Düsseldorf or participating virtually, as Fabienne said, from 11 countries of our footprint. Today, Remko Rijnders, my trusted CFO, and I will take you through the details of our financial year '24 and '25.

Now we had already shared some preliminary numbers with you back in October, but I'm sure you will see some very strong performance across the board today, because we've been on a strategic transformation for some 3 years now from a classical retailer into what we call an omnichannel service platform. And last year's results show very well how that strategic transformation is gaining momentum. It's only the tip of the iceberg, but let me remind you from the very beginning, 11 quarters of EBIT growth. That's a very strong track record.

Now there's 2 levels to this. First, for our business model, we are enhancing our Retail Core business model with what we call growth businesses. These are by now substantial in size and they continue to grow. But secondly, and actually much more fundamentally, this transformation is about the customers, about customers that think and feel and go shopping differently now than they did in the past. And all of our teams in the stores, in our logistics centers, in the offices throughout our 11 countries, they do want to put those customers first front and center, to give them what we call experience electronics. Our goal is to create a unique shopping experience that is tailored to their needs.

Do we get that right every day? Of course, not. Not yet, but we're moving in that direction and into the right directions. As you will see today's results underline that. We've set, over the past 3 years, a solid foundation for future growth, and we're proud of that. Ladies and gentlemen, we're on the right path, and we will see this consistency pay off in the new financial year again. That's why we will publish a positive outlook for the current financial year '25 and '26. I will get to that later.

Now let's first have a look into the details of those results of last year. Let me start with an overview, and you will see that we delivered strong results across all our key metrics. First, sales reached EUR 23.1 billion. That's a growth of 5.7%, and that's more than the moderate growth that we initially guided. And we grew EBIT by 24% to EUR 378 million. That means profitability is growing steadily. Just as a reminder, for 11 quarters in a row now. And finally, a very hard measure. We increased free cash flow by 180%, now reaching EUR 337 million.

And as I said initially, fundamentally, our customer satisfaction reached a new record. Our Net Promoter Score improved to 61. That's up 3 points from the previous year. So our focus on customer experience is indeed paying off. Now we want to accelerate even more based on this momentum. We know that we still have a way to go in terms of our transformation. But we are ready for that next step. And we believe we have a really good partner to take this on with JD.com. This partnership will help us accelerate even faster. JD.com brings significant experience, especially in logistics and technology. In teaming up with them, we want to create not just experience Electronics, but the future of European retail.

Just so that you know where we stand with this partnership. As you all know, we've signed our investor agreement back in July this year. Now at the end of November, JD.com had secured a total shareholding of 85.2% in CECONOMY. And now we're working on and waiting for the outstanding regulatory approvals to finally close this transaction. We expect that closing still for the first half of the next calendar year. And I'm more convinced than ever that this partnership will make us even stronger and will take us to that next level.

But independent of that partnership in the future, let's look at the progress we made in our business, and that's on Slide 4. The performance of our growth area shows we are on the right track with diversifying our business model. Each of our strategic business segments contributes to our success. This diversified growth gives us the ability to adapt to changing market conditions even in the future. And we're adapting to our customer needs. Our all-time high of the Net Promoter Score isn't just a number of 61, it reflects fundamental improvements in how we serve everyone that shops with us across all touch points and every day.

In this context, we've made significant progress with what we call personalized service, a specific program to let you design your visit to the store. We've completed that rollout in 4 countries already, and we're currently expanding to 5 additional countries. This, by the way, demonstrates that we scale successful concepts internationally, but of course, we do adapt locally to reflect the different expectations that may exist in different countries. And we also invest in our backbone, our logistics and infrastructure, especially for those omnichannel capabilities. Here's an example. We've rolled out 16 regional fulfillment centers that's across Germany, Spain and Turkey. These centers then help us reduce delivery times and improve reliability of delivery for our customers.

On the technology or IT front, we are leveraging data and AI to improve our customer experience. For example, with personalization to help our customers discover products that truly meet their specific needs and to help us with conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Additionally, we're driving our sustainability measures, one of the key pillars of our strategy. Our refurbished sales nearly tripled this year. This also reflects changing consumer behavior. More and more often, customers choose high-quality refurbished products, because it makes sense for them economically and at the same time, it is an active contribution to putting less pressure on the environment.

You probably recognize the next slide, #5. We do present it each quarter to give you transparency about the development of the 9 KPIs, which we introduced at our Capital Markets Day back in 2023, because these 9 KPIs represent the essence of our strategic focus. And once a year, we provide you with an update that includes precise figures. That's today. And I'm very proud to show to you that we've reached 3 of those nice strategic KPIs ahead of time. We achieved 53 million loyalty members, we increased our income share of Services & Solutions, and we grew our retail media income, all before the official deadline, September '26. This shows we have made huge strides in becoming more than a retailer. Our growth businesses are now a significant contributor to our business, and they still continue to grow steadily.

This will become clear on Slide 6 too. Our growth businesses now represent a total of 36% of our gross profit. That's up from 33% last year, and it's a substantial increase from the 31% in financial year 2022, '23. So we believe we're well on track to reach our target mix for financial year '25-'26 when we expect our growth businesses to contribute even more significantly to our overall profitability.

Now for the next few pages, let me walk you through some of the key operational developments last year, first for Retail Core, but then also for those growth businesses that I keep talking about. Let's start with Retail Core. It continues to be our strong foundation. And we're making some progress across all key areas in Retail Core. Let's look at loyalty first. As I said, we already surpassed our midterm target of 50 million loyalty customers, and it's now 53 million. Why is that? We successfully integrated our MediaMarkt and MySaturn programs in Germany for a more customer-centric approach. And our loyalty program is now available in nearly all countries. Why is that important? These 53 million customers come to our stores and to our app and to our website far more frequently than unregistered customers. And we are approaching them with more targeted offers that convince them and they do drive our revenues.

As you can see, we also improved another key metric, and that's inventory management further. It's now down to 8.8 weeks of stock reach. And of course, online, our online sales were driven by strong growth, both in visits and in conversion rate. And also our omnichannel approach is paying off. We're successfully linking for customers, store visits and online journeys. It's finally reflected in our pickup rate, the rate of customers that chooses to go into a store, although they ordered online. And that's now 37%. That's a great example of what omnichannel means. Not to forget the app, the percentage of online sales generated through the app has grown to almost 30%. That's very strong growth, and it's mainly driven by Turkey, Spain, the Netherlands and Austria. Final element, store modernization. It remains fully on track. We've promised a target of 90%, and we're on track to achieve that.

Last year, we opened, in particular, smaller store formats, 29 new Express stores and 8 new really small smart stores. That brings our innovative formats closer to our customers. Looking ahead into next year, we are preparing for the future through even more small format stores and at the same time, a few more large lighthouses. As in the past, this differentiation, which is untypical for us historically, comes together with a cost focus and better logistics. So it serves our customers better and it is more efficient. All of this together shows our Retail Core is the strong foundation, and it is making steady progress to get even better.

Now based on that foundation, next to our growth fields, and let's start with Services & Solutions. Now we did grow all product categories in Services & Solutions, but what stood out last year were insurances and installations and configuration services when customers buy new devices. It's what we internally call power services. Turkey and Spain were the 2 highlight countries for that part of the service business. For this year, we have 2 major objectives. We want to make it easier for customers to buy services online or in the app because, frankly speaking, this is still not as convenient as in our stores, and our attach rate still here has some potential. And we want to focus secondly on growth in the telco segment. We believe that there, there's still a lot of growth for us, potentially even with MVNOs like our own mobile brand, Let's Go Mobile, which we launched in the Netherlands only this year.

Second element of Retail Core is what we call Space-as-a-Service, and it also expanded successfully. We're now offering what we call experience zones and entrance statements in over 700 of our 1,000 stores. And we're working with around 25 very special partners. We call them internally non-endemic partners. What that means it's partners that are not our classical industry partners, but where actually we establish a new relationship, and there's also new business potential.

Let's move on to Private Label, our own brands. Now to be fair, the progress in Private Label has been slower than progress in other areas. But last year, our Private Label business benefited significantly from our audio line with Peak and there, especially by the Robbie Williams campaign. Strongest product category is still accessories. And why is that? Because we tailor our accessory offers to highlight products. Take the Nintendo Switch 2 launch as an example. When we launched it, cases and many other accessories, cables were also in high demand. And so we used that momentum and posted strong numbers around private label around the Switch launch. Finally, we are improving the usability of our products. We've just recently introduced an AI chatbot that's been really well received by customers, especially with the use of smart manuals.

Then after Private Label, let us look at Retail Media business. This grew especially strong in Benelux, Spain and Turkey. And we extended our offer again. We've introduced our first off-site program. In case you're not familiar with that solution, advertisers can reach MediaMarktSaturn shoppers not just on our website or app, but elsewhere. With this, we open new potential for our partners in addition to our own platforms. And that is also very much in focus for this financial year. Secondly, we want to onboard here as well non-endemic partners and thus build new relationships, very similar to what I've just said about Space-as-a-Service.

Then Marketplace on Slide 10. With Turkey now active, we are operating our Marketplace in 8 countries now. The GMV, the gross merchandise value, reached EUR 527 million. That's another 90% year-on-year growth. Importantly, our EBIT generation more than doubled in that period. So we've also made strong improvements in our profitability as we scale this business, and we're not done yet. We're preparing to roll out Marketplace next in Hungary and Switzerland for 2026. At the same time, as we roll this out, we will enhance our assortment and add what we call verticals, I would call them topic areas. This is important because these verticals or topics have been very successful in the past. And you will see that they are different than our core assortment. For example, energy, fitness, e-mobility or even gardening. These verticals expand our assortment, and they make us even more attractive for our customers.

And as you know, and as I said, sustainability is a core part of our strategy. And again, we doubled down on this last year, as you can see on Slide 11. There's 3 aspects. Let me start with BetterWay. We reached our BetterWay targets ahead of plan. Let me remind you what BetterWay is. BetterWay products are products in our assortment that are more sustainable, for example, by being more energy efficient. And these BetterWay sales now account for 25%, so 1/4 of our total sales. That's already now a lot more than the 20% target, which we had given ourselves for the financial year '25-'26.

Second, the number of trade-in products. So when a customer returns a used device, this increased by 11%. At the same time, the average trade-in value also increased, and that helped us make this a very profitable business for us. Finally, refurbished products. So used products, refurbished to be as good as new. This showed exceptional growth and increased by 191%. That's a very clear sign that we really are offering what customers nowadays are looking for. So overall, we do feel encouraged to stay on this path. We will expand our trade-in offers. We will sell even more refurbished devices, and we will continue to focus on reducing the emissions footprint of our products.

Now all of this that I've just so proudly presented to you, all of this would not be possible without our great team. I strongly believe that for us as an omnichannel platform, people and the human touch make all the difference. So we consistently invest in our people because we want, as MediaMarktSaturn, to be the best place for them to work. And so we ask them, we ask them twice a year, would you recommend us as an employer. The results, we call that the Net Promoter People. And in our last survey, it was at an all-time high of 42. That's up 4 points year-on-year, or 10%. And of course, we also invest in their development. We now use AI actually as a core tool to empower and to train our employees. And at the same time, strengthening those AI skills across all levels in our organization is a key priority for us in this next phase.

We also made progress looking at diversity. Our female share in the top leadership increased by 250 basis points year-on-year and now stands at 16.3%. Come to think of it. Perhaps even more importantly, we have so many different cultures on board in our team. And that's a very important aspect also to me personally of diversity that shapes our company culture. Across Europe, people from over 130 nations work with us. Yes, that's right. More than 130 nationalities at MediaMarktSaturn.

I want to take this opportunity not to speak to press and analysts, but to thank all those amazing people, to thank you guys that you work with us. All of this wouldn't have been possible without you. So thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Before I now hand over to Remko for the financial results, I want to highlight the 3 points that I want you to remember after our presentation today. Number one, the customer is always in the center of everything we do, not always perfect, but better every day. We are convinced that our omnichannel model is the right way to go, and it delivers on their expectations. So we will build on that in the future. Second, we have proven once again that our strategic direction, which has been stable for 3 years, is the right path. We continue to diversify our business, and we do become more than a pure retailer. Our growth business are no longer small. They are a key pillar of our success, and they continue to deliver consistent growth. And thirdly, as I started, we performed strongly despite an arguably challenging economic climate. Our sales grew more than moderate and our profitability improved for the 11th quarter in a row.

Let me now hand over to Remko for a closer look at those amazing financials. So Remko, please join me.

Thank you. And also a big thanks from my side as well, and a warm welcome once again. As Kai already highlighted, we achieved a strong result this year and delivered slightly ahead of our updated guidance with both a strong sales growth of 5.7% and adjusted EBIT of EUR 378 million, slightly above our updated guidance of around EUR 375 million. This represents a 24% increase year-on-year or EUR 72 million compared to the previous year. In my opinion, these results are visible and measurable success. They are proof that we are making good progress in our transformation, which began just under 3 years ago, as you can see on Slide 16.

Our efforts have translated directly into financial strength. We have significantly improved our profitability with our adjusted EBIT growing by an average of 22% year-on-year. That's a performance that speaks for itself, and we are certainly very proud of it. These results come from robust sales growth in our Core Retail business, the increased contribution from our successful growth business and our strict cost discipline. I will go into more detail on all 3 areas shortly.

Let me now take a closer look at the full year results. We reported solid sales performance in all our 4 quarters and released very strong 6.9% like-for-like in Q4. Our profitability increase was driven again by our growth business, while we remain focused on cost. For Q4, our gross margin increase of 40 basis points was the main driver behind our profitability improvement.

And now per region, the region DACH performed strongly over the year, and Germany reported the highest improvement in the region. This is a strong achievement, continued in a muted market, and we are pleased to report that we held our market share. In Western and Southern Europe, there Spain was the strongest contributor, both in sales and in EBIT growth. Note that the Netherlands had a strong EBIT growth, too. Finally, for Eastern Europe, Turkey continued to perform strongly. While we are still in restructuring mode in Poland, as we said before, it will take a bit more time.

Let's now take a look at our sales from Services & Solutions. As a reminder, this includes insurance and warranties, telco and digital products, installation and repair, consumer financing and sustainability services. Overall, sales from Services & Solutions increased by 12.5% for the full year. Regarding the individual service categories, extended warranty and consumer financing achieved strong results for the full year. These figures show once again that our efforts to improve our service offerings are paying off. We have successfully convinced our customers that we are not just product providers, but above all, solution providers.

Let's move on to our online business. Over a 12-month period, online sales increased by 13.3% to EUR 5.7 billion. This corresponds to an online share of 26%, including our Marketplace, and this is 240 basis points more than the previous year. Please keep in mind here that our Marketplace is currently active in 8 countries with the recent opening in Turkey. We expect the final 2 countries, Switzerland and Hungary, to go live in 2026. We still see a great deal of potential here as the marketplaces to continue to ramp up.

Let me now return to EBIT development. Our gross margin increased by a strong 30 basis points for the full year. This is essentially due to the positive impact of our growth areas. If you look at our operating expenses, you can see that our adjusted OpEx ratio has decreased again, although only slightly by 10 basis points to 17.3% of group sales for the full year. We have improved our location costs as well as the efficiency of our marketing spend. We also place strong emphasis on managing our indirect spend. In simple terms, we are working hard to control all our internal costs that don't directly relate to customer-facing side of our business.

Let me walk through from adjusted EBIT to net profit. As explained before, we increased our adjusted EBIT by EUR 72 million this year, which is a strong operating performance. Below the line, our net profit came in at minus EUR 34 million, mainly impacted by nonrecurring items like impairment we made in Poland for EUR 34 million. Remember that we are in restructuring mode over there, as I mentioned before. Second, we recorded a EUR 32 million transaction cost for our coming partnership with JD, and clearly see this as an investment for our future. So it's fair to say that excluding those, we would have reported a positive net profit.

Let me finish with cash. Indeed, cash is king, particularly now in retail. While profit is an important measure, cash is the true livelihood of the company. A strong free cash flow demonstrates that our business model is working efficiently. In this case, that gives us the strategic freedom to fund growth, reduce debt and ensure we are resilient and agile in any economical climate. In essence, it's the engine that powers our long-term success. We generated EUR 280 million more cash than last year, which is a fantastic performance in my view.

On this positive note, let me now hand back to Kai.

Thank you, Remko. You see, we are having what I call positive momentum. And this, we want to carry it into this year. So now in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to share our outlook for the financial year '25 and '26. We are confident that we will continue to improve. We very formally expect a moderate increase in currency and portfolio adjusted total sales with all our regions contributing to that sales growth.

Secondly, and arguably more importantly, we anticipate an adjusted EBIT of around EUR 500 million. This is also the target for the financial year '25 and '26 that we have communicated our Capital Markets Day back in 2023, and ever since. This improvement will be driven by the DACH region and Western and Southern Europe. And we already started into this new financial year strongly, as you will see on the next slide.

As you know, Black November and Christmas are very important times in the year for us. They set the tone for our Q1 performance and our Q1 is usually our strongest quarter. So it's important. And I'm very proud to tell you, we had a successful Black season. Many of our countries delivered strong numbers. Especially [indiscernible] this year, in case you're interested, floor care robots, computer hardware and small domestic appliances like kitchen devices, usually smart kitchen devices. At the same time, our attachment rate for Service & Solutions, one of those growth areas, also was very strong.

All of this performance was, of course, made possible by working on the engine by excellent product availability and by our marketing campaigns. Here, you may remember, we turned November into Yovember, because we want to say yes or Yo to offering our customers whatever they need, be it the best product, the best service or the best possible price. I'm very happy to look into more detail here together with you in February when we present our Q1 results.

So in wrapping up, what have we presented to you today? First, we delivered strong performance in a challenging market environment, again. Second, our experience electronics strategy translates directly into greater customer satisfaction. Our record NPS underlines this. Third, our growth businesses are no longer small. They are an integral part of our business, and they continue to accelerate. Fourth, our focus remains unwavering on cost management, liquidity and profitability. Fifth, we are ready. We are ready to accelerate our development with our new strategic partner, JD.com. And finally, we maintain, unlike others, a positive outlook as we enter the new financial year.

Ladies and gentlemen, as we conclude our presentation, I want to emphasize this positive momentum that CECONOMY has demonstrated throughout the past financial year. We still are not transformed fully, and we have a way to go. But that positive development shows we are on the right way. We're not just developing consumer electronics and experience electronics, we are paving the road to become the experienced champion in consumer electronics in Europe. Our dedicated team of almost 50,000 employees from more than 130 nations is working very hard on this vision. We will continue to stay close to our customers until we become a truly customer-centric omnichannel service platform.

Thank you for your attention. We're now ready for your questions. Thank you.

So we will now open the Q&A session. So in the room, please raise your hand and wait for the microphone. Online, you have received a QR code with your registration. Otherwise, you can scan the QR code that may appear on screen to submit your questions. [Operator Instructions].

So we've got the first question online from xyz.pl, so from a Polish journalist. The first question is, are you still ready for major capital injection into MediaMarkt Poland? Second, do you plan to keep fighting for market share to become #1 in Poland? And third, how big will the change be after the JD.com transaction?

Yes, Matthias, thanks for the questions. Remko will take the first 2 questions, and I'll round it off with the third.

Yes. Matthias, thank you for the question indeed. And let me highlight a bit how we see Poland at the moment. Poland is extremely important for our portfolio of countries. It's an important market, and it's a growing market. And of course, as we look at the results right now, we are investing in the team. We opened our marketplace in Poland that is now paying off. So we treat Poland as a very important country and a country that is very important also for our growth in Europe and also in a Europe that is at the moment consolidating. So that's foremost.

Secondly, basically, how do you keep on plan fighting in Poland. We have mentioned it a couple of times, and it goes for all our country portfolio. For us, it's extremely important to be indeed #1 or the #2 in any country. And that's our ambition that we have together. And that's what we want to achieve in Poland where we go to that direction. But as mentioned already, this will take time in Poland. Poland is a very competitive market, and we are looking at the options as we speak. And let me now hand over to Kai.

Yes, let's talk about JD. Actually, it's no different for Poland than for any of our other markets. What do we look -- what are the likely first changes that we see from our partnership with JD. And we've talked about it. We are, in particular, looking to their expertise in logistics, in particular, in delivery towards customers and in technology. And those are the 2 areas that will all materialize most likely in all countries, but most certainly also in Poland to help us, as Remko said, to fight back for that important market position, which we are committed to get.

Good. So we will show the QR code again for people who didn't have time to register to do so. So the next question is from Javier Garcia Ropero from Spain. He is from Cinco Días, a newspaper. He is asking, Spain showed a significant sales growth last year. What do you expect in the market in terms of sales growth and new store for next year?

Yes. So Javier, thanks for the question, and let me take this one. Yes. The Spanish market in 2025 was a very positive market. First of all, from a market perspective, overall, but in that market, we were able also to gain significantly, market share, both offline and online without opening stores. So basically, what we are looking into for next year is still that the Spanish market is going to grow. And in that market, we have still enough potential to grow more than our competitive environment, gaining more market share. So we are very positive about the Spanish market, but we are even more positive about our performance in that market, both on- and off-line.

Good. Next questions. We cannot see where it comes from. It's a question regarding if we plan to cut jobs at CECONOMY MediaMarkt.

So I'll make sure that everybody heard that. So the question was whether we plan to cut jobs. And the answer is no. We do not plan to cut jobs. Very clearly, we do not plan to cut jobs. Let me explain that a bit. The business we're in means we constantly review our performance, as any normal retailer would. We're looking at that store and see whether it's still performing. We are looking at that area and seeing whether it's still performing, or at that area. So there will be changes. And yes, we will, of course, like in regular business, sometimes close 1 store here to reopen it there. And that may also mean that there is 1 or 2 or 3 jobs lost in the process. But that's very different from planning to cut jobs at large scale as a company strategy. That's not our strategy. We invest in people. We expect more stores. We expect to grow. So the answer is no. But of course, in day-to-day business, this may appear.

Thank you, Kai. The next question is from Matthias Inverardi from Reuters. Can you outline in detail how logistics will be improved by your partnership with JD.com?

Let me try to take that, and I'm sure Remko is eager to add some details, but I want to place it first. Without wanting to be too defensive here, no, we cannot outline this in detail yet. Please respect that we're still in a phase where regulatory approvals are outstanding when there is no detailed discussions between the 2 companies, so we cannot give you a detailed answer.

What I can tell you is what our ambition is and what we believe JD.com is strong. And I think I hinted at that already. They're very strong in very efficient delivery to customers. More than 90% of the deliveries in China reached their customer the same day or the next day. And just let that sink in. We're talking about China and not just the cities, I mean all of China. So as JD is rolling out these delivery expertise to Europe, it is our expectation and actually our agreement that we will be able to participate in this. This is what I can say in general. But detail is probably difficult to share at this stage.

Yes, it's difficult. We acknowledge that logistics is a very, very important part in an omnichannel strategy that we, as CECONOMY MediaMarkt have. And we have made very good progress. Automatization in Germany. Our NPS of delivery is going up. But yes, as Kai said, 1 of the reasons to look into synergy effects to thinking direction is, of course, this enormous strength on that last mile logistics, which accelerate basically our strategy that we have defined together. So I'm very much looking forward to that cooperation. But of course, logistics is going to be a customer-facing logistics topic for all of us. So yes.

Thank you, Remko. The next question is from Alexander Zienkowicz from mwb research. Congratulations on the results. You have your focus on the finish line, but could you provide us some glimpse beyond '25, '26. And secondly, with your free cash flow improving significantly, could you elaborate on capital allocation?

Yes. Thank you, Alexander, and good to hear from you again. Let me give you a perspective where we stand, and then Remko will say something about the numbers. First of all, where we stand. The #1, #2 and #3 priority is making sure that we deliver our promises for the end of the current financial year. So the infamous EUR 500 million EBIT and the EUR 200 million steady cash flow. That is and remains our priority. Now we realize, of course, that we're confident to achieve that. So we are already thinking about the phase afterwards. And what I can anticipate that we expect to invite all of you towards the middle of next year, calendar year, to a strategy update where we will share the outlook on the next phase of our journey. So beyond the 30th of September, 2026. Expect that to appear in your diaries eventually for some time in the middle of next calendar year.

And on the financials, Remko, do you want to dare to give an outlook already, or be careful?

No, I'm always careful, but very confident, of course. So first of all, thanks for the congratulations, Alexander, and good morning. So yes, we are very proud as well, as you mentioned, and I mentioned already, cash is king, on our achievement on free cash flow. Of course, as I mentioned already in the presentation, is that gives us a bit flexibility also to invest in our future and our future strategy. As Kai already mentioned, we will come back towards the next step. However, 2026 has been clearly defined, above EUR 200 million, EUR 500 million, and also how we want to get there with growth areas. So yes, there will be significant investment also in logistics, but especially also in the growth areas, because as you have seen, this is paying off. But the detailed capital, let's say, allocation, of course, we will come back on that topic later. But it's supporting our current strategy. That's for sure.

Thank you, Remko. The next questions come from Javier Mesa at elEconomista in Spain. What stage in the process of modernization in MediaMarkt are you? And will the smart format arrive in Spain in the coming months?

Yes, Javier, thanks for the question. I'll be slightly evasive about this, but I ask your understanding. Let me be very clear. Each of our store formats, so that's the core format, the classical MediaMarkt, the Smart and the Express and the Lighthouse. Each of those formats is designed for each and every country. This is not country-specific. We expect to have these formats in each and every country. But I'm not able, and frankly, also not willing at this particular moment to share details of the rollout plan in any particular country. I would have given the same answer about Turkey or Italy or so. But yes, you can expect all of our store formats to be available in all of our countries in the future.

Thank you, Kai. The next question comes from Carlos Torres, [indiscernible] Spain. You have pointed out our important spend is for the group. Could you specify the company sales for Spain? And what are your forecasts for next year?

Yes. So let me take that question, Carlos. Thank you very much. As you, we are very proud of Spain as a country. It's a growing country. As I mentioned, we are doing better in the market in Spain, and that's due to really the team working for us in Spain and basically using all sales channels, B2B, online, off-line and, of course, marketplace. So from that perspective, we are happy. We see the market growing. We see us also growing in that market. We are preparing, also the Spanish team are preparing really some nice new propositions also from a customer perspective. So we are very much looking forward. Do I want to pinpoint a number specifically on the country today? I do not. But we are very positive about Spain and the performance and also about the future for Spain next year, or this year actually.

We love Spain.

Yes, Spain is good.

So at this point in time, I see no further questions.

My personal experience is, we will wait for a moment or so. Sometimes people need a moment to warm up. I'm afraid we haven't got anything planned to bridge the time now. So you'll just have to bear with us for a moment.

We made a nice Christmas movie, so maybe.

Okay. I'm checking with our back-office team here. No questions or more questions? One more coming. Okay.

Yes. The question is as well from Frank Meßing of [indiscernible]. He is asking how many stores we're going to modernize next year in Germany?

Frank, thank you for the question. I will give you the -- I think the answer has already been given. We have a target of modernizing or having modernized 90% of our core formats. Let me just be clear what that is, that's your classical MediaMarkt, right. 90% at the end of next financial year. And so that's also the answer for Germany. As to the numbers, that's roughly 400 stores. I'll give you the number now, 400 stores in Germany. So 90% of that is 360 stores that we will plan to have modernized by the end of next year.

The next question comes from Philip [indiscernible]. First, is there any further changes planned on Saturn in 2026? Will the brand continue to exist in Germany on- or off-line? And second, your adjusted EBIT improved, but not your reported EBIT. Could you give a guidance for reported EBIT?

Yes, Philip, thank you on the Saturn question. I want to be very clear about this because there are so many rumors and often also so many questions around. Look, we have 2 brands. Actually, if you're really picky, we have three. MediaMarkt, MediaWorld in Italy and Saturn here in Germany. And we are proud of every element of that brand architecture. Now there's people out there who tend to buy more with MediaMarkt and there's people who tend to buy more with Saturn. We take that very seriously. That's why whenever we do modernize a store, as we've just talked about, we look at that store in a lot of detail and really come up with a decision that is specific to that store.

And in Germany, we have 2 options. It's MediaMarkt and it's Saturn. And it stays like that. What I would want to emphasize is the value of our brands, of our joint brands, yes, MediaMarkt and Saturn. And we've just recently, from Brand Finance, received confirmation that our brand equity increased significantly, including Saturn by EUR 500 million year-over-year increase to EUR 2.5 billion now. So that's a strong argument for that double strategy of our brand.

And for the second part of the question, I'll give it to Remko.

Yes. Thank you very much, Kai, and thank you very much, Philip. Let me repeat the second part of the question maybe. Your adjusted EBIT improved, but not your EBIT. Can you give a guidance on EBIT? And let me come back to what I said before, so adjusted EBIT indeed improved to a staggering amount of EUR 378 million. What is causing the EBIT to be negative is the investment that we did in our future, in the JD Corporation, accounts for EUR 32 million from nonrecurring items. It had a big impact. And also the Poland restructuring to build for the future, but we already mentioned where we want to be with Poland. So that had the biggest impact. What is our future outlook? Our future outlook is a positive outlook on EBIT and, of course, the around EUR 500 million in adjusted EBIT.

Thank you. The next question is from Jerome [indiscernible] from The Telegraph. So we are moving to the Netherlands. Question on data. You leveraged consumer data successfully with the off-site program. We're thinking -- we're talking here Retail Media. Do you expect regulatory scrutiny of this program also with JD.com in the Chinese context.

Jerome, thanks for the question. Look, we are right in the middle of a regulatory approval process, and perhaps let me outline just where this stands in a bit more detail. There is merger control, there is foreign direct invest, and there is subsidy control by the European Union. Now I'm very happy to say that merger control has already been improved in each and every country where this is relevant for us. On foreign direct invest, the process is ongoing. We're happy to already have received an approval by the Italian authorities. All other processes are ongoing. And I do imagine that, of course, questions of data are always part of that, but none that are particular to these off-site campaigns, as you mentioned. Furthermore, I cannot and it would not be adequate to comment at this particular stage. I would want to close and emphasize again, we remain very confident and expect to close in the first half of 2026.

Thank you, Kai. The next question has come from Ulrike Dauer, Dow Jones. First questions. At the 2023 Capital Markets Day, beyond the adjusted EBIT target for '25-'26, you gave out other target for adjusted free cash flow and adjusted EBIT margin, which seems a bit outdated now. Can you update those targets at this point in time?

And I'll take that perhaps together with the second question for a dividend because it's also from Ulrike, yes. Now let me say here that we will not comment on numbers in any detail. If we are really picky, we gave an adjusted EBIT target for the end of next year, that's EUR 500 million. We gave that number in our Capital Markets Day, and we have repeated that number precisely to the last decimal since. We have, at the Capital Markets Day in 2023, said that we expect a stable cash flow of EUR 200 million per year, and we're also not changing that number.

As for the dividend, we have a standing policy as a company. And that policy, I think we revealed it here last year, exactly a year ago, if I remember correctly. Let me just reiterate that, because that policy is still in place. And it is that between 15% and 25% of the net profit or EPS per year can be distributed as a dividend. That has not changed. We've reviewed it here a year ago, and it is still stable. That policy has not changed and will also be relevant in the future.

Thank you. We have an additional question from Alexander Zienkowicz from mwb research. Retail Media trends to grow because marketing budgets are tight as brand shifts spend towards more performance-driven channels. To what extent is your growth benefiting from this dynamic?

Yes. So Alexander, thanks for that question because, first of all, as mentioned, we are already extremely proud of our growth when it comes to Retail Media. That being said, we are just at the beginning also when we look at our competitive field. There is a huge possibility to make that even a bigger part of our growth area, our growth business. It's true that basically the SEO, the whole world is changing there. AI comes into play. So yes, there is huge opportunity already in the Retail Media area where we are today, because we are just at the beginning. Yes, we are already better performing than we expected for 2025 fiscal year, and we expect a growth there as well.

That being said, it will not be only on paid. We are also working very, very hard on the organic traffic in our organization. It's about brand awareness. So that also plays a role in this partner marketing and Retail Media. But you're right, it will play a significant part in combination to paid search and organic growth of our company, which helps then non-endemic or our suppliers of MediaMarkt to turn as well.

Thank you, Remko. I see no further question at this point.

Still going to give it 30 seconds. Last time, I was successful in tickling out a few more questions.

Okay. Look, thank you all for your time and for your questions and all the energy today. I trust that you've seen that Remko and I and Fabienne and the whole team, actually, that 50,000 people here at MediaMarkt and Saturn work very hard to bring what we call experienced electronics to life. And we will continue that journey. And we will continue it also in a partnership with JD.com after that transaction closes in the first half of 2026. We will, of course, keep you posted about this process. And in the meantime, if you would like to engage with us in any of our regular channels, we are very happy to continue those conversations.

Please also mark February 11 already in your diaries. That's when we will present our Q1 results and, of course, share much more details about the Christmas and Black piece.

Until then, Remko, Fabienne and I and everyone here at MediaMarktSaturn wishes you a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful holiday season. Enjoy your time with your loved ones. And if you don't have all the presents yet, come to our stores or order online, even on the last day before Christmas, because with a 90-minute delivery, we'll make sure that you got something to put underneath the Christmas tree. Thank you very much for today. We are very much looking forward to speaking to you next year. Thank you very much, everyone.