The Platform Group Stock

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's H1 2026 Earnings Call of the Platform Group. We are delighted to welcome the CEO, Dr. Dominik Benner; and Ms. Nathalie Richert from Investor Relations, who will guide us through the presentation followed by a Q&A session. We're looking forward to this presentation. And with that, I hand over to you, Dr. Benner.

Thank you, Ingmar, and warm welcome from my side. So we just directly start into our H1 results for this year. So to give you a brief update and a brief summary of the highlights of this H1 results. So first of all, we saw a positive development regarding the GMV and also regarding the revenue, both increased by more than 20%. And so overall, we can be quite happy on this result.

And also besides the revenue and GMV growth, we saw that we had a good development regarding our EBITDA. So EBITDA was increasing to EUR 40.8 million, which is a growth of 23%. The net profit is almost unchanged. So we had a net profit of EUR 33.5 million. And the EPS is lower compared to last year. It is EUR 1.34 for this first half year.

What is, of course, relevant in our case is that we have definitely less PPA effect. So last year, 2025, we had in the first half year, EUR 9.4 million. And due to our less acquisition activity in this half year, we only had EUR 3.3 million. That means our net profit, of course, is lower because of these PPA effects. But in total, it increased. So we think that this is a good sign, and this is a pretty good development of our group.

What else do we see? So we had a further decrease of our operational cost ratios, which is quite important for us because if we have increasing revenues, but on the same level, increasing costs for HR and logistics, it would not be good. In our case, we can be happy with this development.

The only negative thing was the lower gross margin. So we had a lower gross margin of 34.1%, which is more than 2% less compared to the previous half year. Also, our M&A activity was less in 2026 so far. So we had 2 signings and one additional recent acquisition in this month. And we also plan 2 or 1 divestments in 2026.

When we look on our segments, we saw a good development. So 4 of our 5 segments were increasing with revenue. There was one segment which we were not happy about, and that was a Freight Goods segment. So we had a decline here of 5% in the revenue and also the EBITDA, the profit margin was decreasing.

And so we were not happy on this development on this one segment, and we also have chosen and taken actions and measures already. Regarding the finance perspective, we presented you by end of June, our new strategy of deleveraging, and we started it already. So our current leverage is 1.8x, which is the lowest number in the last 3 years, and we expect a further decrease.

Additionally, we also signed a EUR 80 million finance facility last month, and we made this finance facility for new acquisitions. So this is a pure M&A focus. And so we have enough financial firepower to make further acquisitions in the next 2 years. All right. So I hand over to Nathalie.

Good morning, everybody, to our earnings call. Before we start with an update, let's get a short overview of TPG. We are now 7 C-level executives, each responsible for a different area. And together with CEO, Dominik Benner, we jointly lead the company.

When we look at the next page, we started our platform business in 2012. And today, we are very happy to serve more than 80 million (sic) [ 8 million ] customers across our platforms. And our vision is to become Europe's leading platform group. We see at the next page that we have a unique asset-light ecosystem, and we have now more than 17,700 partners and a diversified presence in 26 industries, and we serve both B2B and B2C customers.

Our growth engine is our operation and holding, which supports our portfolio companies, drives growth, reduces costs and leverage synergies across the different areas. Our software platform, TPG One, is unique. It connects more than 50 marketplaces across Europe. We are now active in 26 industries that you see in the next page, and we aim to expand our presence further. We grow both organically and through acquisitions.

All right. So let's take a look on the financials and the current M&A update. Nathalie, you also want to continue here?

Yes, sure. During the reporting period, we successfully completed 2 add-on acquisitions. That means we strengthen our existing segments. In August, we acquired Cocoli to strengthen our Freight Goods segment and reach new customer group for the existing furniture platforms.

We also launched the B2B platform bauraum24. We have more than 100,000 products there, and it complements our offering platform, We Connect Work, which provides B2B services. When we look at AEP, we announced that at the beginning of the year. We are now in the proceeding as planned with the fulfillment of the closing conditions.

And last but not least, when we look at our partner development, 2 years ago, we have 52% of organic growth. We expect this year, 91% of our growth driven organically through our existing business. And now I hand over to Dominik for the financials.

Yes. Thank you, Nathalie. And when we look on the financials for the first half year, we saw this already mentioned development of a positive GMV growth and revenue growth. So the GMV was increased to EUR 788 million compared to EUR 652 million last half year.

And also on the same side, we saw the positive development on the revenue. So we achieved a revenue of EUR 421 million. The other revenue declined because we had less PPA effects. We made less M&A activity. So this was a direct effect of that. The gross margin decreased. We already mentioned that in the summary. So this has 2 reasons.

So first of all, we saw that we had more discount activities in this first half year. And we also had in one segment, a lower partner take rate. That means in the segment of Freight Goods, we had lower partner take rates due to the situation there, for example, in the bike industry. And so we decided to lower the partner take rate and to support the retail partners. And therefore, we had a decrease in the gross margin of our group. This is not a long-term effect. We think that this effect is only affecting us for, let's say, around 6 to 9 months. But overall, we see at least a stable gross margin now or an increasing gross margin in the future.

The marketing cost ratio was 5.8%, which is lower compared to last year. And the distribution cost ratio, it was very successfully with 7.2%. Actually, this was better than our internal forecast because we saw higher AOVs. So we had higher prices. We saw that our central logistics hub has cost effect already for our subsidiaries.

And we also see that we have much more verticals where logistic cost ratio is much better, for example, optics and services and hearing, though there are distribution costs not really relevant in the P&L. In general, we think that we want to have less dependency on our logistic costs, and we want to really make several measures to improve that, that in future, we will become -- or we will achieve a number below 7%, and we are quite optimistic to achieve that.

So when we also look on the EBITDA, the adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 40.8 million, which is a margin -- an EBITDA margin of 9.7%. So the margin was on the same level as last year, and the reported EBITDA increased slightly to EUR 45.4 million.

When we look on the net profit, you see that it is almost unchanged. So we had a slight increase of 1% here and the minorities increased to EUR 2.7 million, which is a result of the acquired portfolio companies in the last year. The earnings per share declined. So we achieved EUR 1.34 per share, and this is due to the higher number of shares, which are in the current year.

So you can also see that in some graphs here, the GMV growth in H1, the revenue growth in H1, the EBITDA growth and the net profit growth in H1. So when we have a 3-year perspective on that, you can see that we almost doubled our revenue in the last 3 years. So we see this quite positive tendency also this year, and we also expect it for the future that we have this growth rate even with less M&A activity.

When we look on the split between organic and non-organic growth, this is also a figure which was always requested by a lot of investors. You can see that we achieved an organic growth, which was dominant in the first half year. So from the total revenue growth, 73% was organic and only 27% was non-organic. And we define organic and non-organic growth for the last 12 months as most other companies do it in the same way.

The reason or the main reasons why we had a higher organic growth rate was that we have more partners selling on our platforms. So we have around 17,700 partners on our platforms. And due to that, our number of products also increased. So we have more products and with more products to attract more customers.

And we also had a very positive retention on our core platforms regarding the customers. So these are the main reasons why we think that we can be quite happy on this development even in one segment, it was not a good development.

When we look on the leverage perspective, you can see the development over time in this slide here. So currently, we have a leverage of 1.8x. So taking into account that we had a net debt of EUR 113 million and an EBITDA LTM of more than EUR 62 million, you can calculate the 1.8x resulting of these figures.

As we already communicated by June this year, we started a leverage -- deleverage strategy and focus on higher profitability. And that means that we really want to decrease this number that we want to get better numbers in the leverage and that we want a further decline here, and we are quite optimistic to reduce it also until the end of this year.

Let's have a look on the financials regarding the cash flow. The operational cash flow was EUR 26.8 million, which was an increase compared to last year, and it was increased by 16%. We saw also from the investing activities that we have invested less because we made less M&A activity and also the AI project, which we started by end of last year, this had directly an effect regarding the software investments. So we could reduce our software investments and made much more with AI.

Regarding the finance activities, we had minus EUR 11 million, and that was because we made repayments to the loans to the bank loans and also we make repayments to lease liabilities. To give you an overview on the assets and equity and liabilities, you can see the overview here. So we have reached a total balance volume of more than EUR 400 million. And if you have further questions, we would recommend to have a look on the published H1 report, which you can find on our corporate page.

We also calculated the return on equity and return on capital employed for you. And here, you can see that we achieved quite positive numbers in the first half year. So the return on equity for the first half year was 20%, and we saw a return on capital employed of more than 17%. So both numbers are in guidance of our internal forecast, and we are quite happy to also achieve these numbers.

Let's have a look on the non-financial KPIs. So you saw that we had a slight increase of the average order value to EUR 129. We saw that the active customers LTM was achieving 8.4 million, and the number of employees also increased to more than 1,500. The number of partners, we mentioned it was also increasing and we saw more than 17,683 partners connected to our platforms. Nathalie, you take over.

Yes. Let's take a look at our segment report. Our Consumer Goods segment grew significantly. You see it in the revenue growth, and this was all in line with our internal forecast. And we have there further cost efficiency programs there, and we will close unprofitable units.

As next, as Dominik said, in the Freight Goods segment, we were not happy, but we planned detailed measures there on the one side to increase the customer base and marketing has been implemented, and we will expect the outcome in the next 12 months.

When we take a look at the Industrial Goods segment, there, we see an improved margin development. Next page, please. And the Freight Goods -- the Industrial Goods segment is also in line with our forecast. And what we see in the Industrial Goods segment that we have a good B2B customer outcome.

When we look at Pharma & Retail Goods, that is also in line with our expectations. And we see there stagnating margins, and we want to optimize it in the next 2 years, this year and next year. And our last segment is the Optics & Hearing segment, we started it end of last year in the second half. And that's also the development in line with our forecast, and we see a positive outcome here.

Yes. Thank you for that. And we announced that we make less acquisitions in this year. So we presented you this forecast for this year 2026. We expect in total up to 6 signings this year, and I think we are good on track with that. And we also expect 1 or 2 divestments. So far, we did not communicate any divestment, but we expect to sell 1 or 2 companies this year, and we will give you a further update when this is going to happen.

And very important is our AI first program because you already have seen that we use a lot of AI techniques in our different divisions, and we also implement them into our different departments. And so currently, we already want to achieve our goal that 60% of all our company processes are AI changed and optimized, and we are also on a very good track with that. So you see the departments where we have the most and significant impact is software development. So we can save a lot of money when we invest in software development, but we use AI techniques so we can reduce it.

And the next point is also online marketing. So we use a lot of AI techniques for optimizing online marketing and make sure that we attract more customers with less cost structures. HR and finance, very important that we make a lot of HR work and payroll work already with AI. And on the right side, you see the content creation, which was 2 years ago, a very manual process with models and photographers and so on, but this changed dramatically. So we really reduced a lot of workforce there and can save a lot of costs with AI.

Let's have a look on the outlook of our group. So first of all, you see our vision for 2030. So currently, we announced and communicated an expected revenue of more than EUR 3.2 billion in this long-term perspective. We are optimistic that we can achieve double-digit margins regarding our EBITDA.

And also, we want to decrease our leverage to around 1.0x to 1.4x. Our total GMV is going to be expected to achieve more than EUR 4.8 billion. And also on our partner side, which is the backbone of our group, we expect more than 40,000 partners connected to our different platforms. Furthermore, we want to increase our footprint. So right now, we have 26 different industries, and we want to achieve more than 50 different industries up to 2030.

Also here, you can see our strategic initiatives and goals. I don't want to repeat everything here because you have seen that in the last presentation. So if you have further questions on that, just let us know. Also, we have a guidance for 2026.

Today, we also confirmed it that we want to achieve a revenue of at least EUR 1 billion this year. We also communicated that we want to achieve an EBITDA of EUR 70 million to EUR 80 million and a leverage between 1.5x and 2.3x. The GMV will be around EUR 1.7 billion, and we expect to have more than 18,000 partners connected to our platform. So we confirm our guidance and do not change it. It is the same for our pro forma guidance. So in case of the AEP acquisition, we also confirm this guidance and have no change on that point. Nathalie, you are muted.

We are working further on the visibility on the capital markets, and we will join several conferences like the EKF in Frankfurt or events in Paris and Vienna. And we will also have selected roadshows in Europe. And Dominik and I look forward to meet many of you in person there. And if you have questions, please also always reach out to me or Dominik for Investor Relations activities.

All right. Thank you. And now we can start with the Q&A. And we received a lot of Q&A when we didn't start the presentation. So I was wondering why don't the people wait until we present everything. But anyway, let's start with the first question.

Please highlight when the AEP deal will be closed or will ever be happen. So yes, the answer is we are on the track with that, and we gave you already an update on that. So the CPs in the contract in the SPA have to be fulfilled by both sides. So seller and buyer are both working on the CPs. It takes longer time than we expected it and also takes longer time than the seller expected it. That's definitely true. But we are working on the CPs, and I think we are on a good track with that. And when we have an update for you, we will directly communicate that.

Next question is about a crisis of confidence. So Joseph Miller asks on that point. So I don't know exactly what you mean here. So maybe it is necessary that you make some more details what exactly you want to get as an information and what exactly you want to hear from that.

Harald Hof asked about the Q2 top line growth was negative year-over-year. Could you please provide some more color on what drove the weakness, in particular, the Freight Goods segment, what measures have been taken or implemented to address that?

Yes. So thank you very much. So overall, we think that our guidance for this year is on a pretty good track with that. So we have our increase in revenue and GMV. And we also think that we will achieve our guidance. And you are definitely right, we are not happy with the Freight Goods segment. So maybe you know that in the Freight Good segment, we have industries like furniture or bicycles. And these industries have a huge decline in their revenues in the last years. Usually, it does not affect us so much because when we have more products, we can also increase our customer base with that. But in this case, we also decided to reduce a little bit the take rate for the partners.

And also, we see a very, very low customer base here currently, and we did not increase the marketing, maybe this was a mistake from our side that we really were too much focusing on costs and not on the revenue side here. And so we took several measures to reinstate and to make sure that we have better results in the next 12 months here.

What exactly we did is different things. So first of all, we initiated a program to attract more partners in the low-price segment. So currently, for example, we have a lot of high-cost bicycles above EUR 4,000, but people look more for cheap bicycles in this current economic situation, and we changed a little bit our strategy here.

Additionally, we initiated a program for more marketing and more differentiated marketing that we do not so much rely on Google anymore and focus more on influencer marketing here. And third, in our furniture division, we make some changes here. You have seen that we made an acquisition with Cocoli. We made an asset deal from them. We bought the assets and also took over the employees. And we will have an update here for you, which shows how we can reduce the cost here and make sure that we have higher profitability because we are on the same page like you that we are not happy with the Freight Good segment here, and we have to change it with our system.

The next question is decline of share price from IPO. Well, actually, Mr. Outse, we never had an IPO. So we took over a company. It was a reverse merger in 2023. And yes, you are right, there is a decline of the share price, but I think your figures are from the former company, Fashionette, not from us.

Next question is about the outstanding bonds and our repurchase program. So we decided to give you an update when we achieved the EUR 5 million, and we expect an achievement here in this half year. So we will directly communicate when we have achieved our goal here.

Next question was again the AEP acquisition. We already answered that. And next point was about the auditor for Mr. Müller, the question. So the answer is that we will also make another AGM to go through that process. And then at the AGM, we can decide with the shareholders on the auditor. How many corporate actions have been increased, the number of shares outstanding? Are there any lockups for these shares?

So it is a question about the M&A activities and if the seller receive shares. So yes, we make M&A activities where also shares are part of the compensation. And yes, they have lockup periods for these shares. Usually, the lockup periods are between 1 and 3 years. So it's a little bit depending on each contract. But yes, we make every time a lockup period here.

There's a next question regarding the new acquisition. So Mrs. Freya is asking why we don't see an impact in EBITDA from these new acquisitions. So basically, we communicated a range of the EBITDA guidance for this year. So we expect EUR 70 million to EUR 80 million. And when we make an acquisition and this range is not changing because of this one acquisition, we don't make an update of the forecast every time. So we only make updates when we see a more than 10% change in our guidance, and then we will directly do that, not before.

Next question was about the bond buyback. We already answered that. The next question regarding the legal action against the Manager Magazin. Yes, so we have current court processes here in Germany. There's no decision because we have this Hauptverfahren. So I don't know exactly the current status, but it's still going on, and we have no update currently here.

Next question is about the objective of net debt EBITDA below 2.0 by end of 2026. And yes, we also expect a number below 2.0 even with the acquisition of AEP because AEP is by itself a profitable company, and so we do not expect a change in this ratio here.

Next question is about our KGV. If we have any comments on that. No, we don't have comments. We also see that our share is undervalued, but I cannot give you further comments on that. And yes, we are positive that we, in the future, have better numbers, but we cannot influence that.

Next question is again the AEP acquisition. So we already answered that. And there's next question about any probability to perform quarterly audit of TPG? No. We will not start quarterly audits. I don't know any company in Germany who's doing quarterly audits. So we will also not start that.

Okay. All the other questions have been answered. There's next question about why does the company have a pattern of generating negative working capital in H1. In H1, trade debtors increased while trade creditors reduced. So I would recommend that you have a look on the half year report, and we don't see any negative development, to be honest. So the development regarding the debtors and creditors are absolutely in line with our internal forecast. And when you look a little bit more detailed on the accounts receivables, so there's no real change. It is almost the same level. And when you look on our liability side, the trade payables decreased a lot. So we only had EUR 20 million trade payables compared to EUR 31 million by end of last year. So this is a quite positive development from our side. And I don't think we should give more comments on that because it's positive.

Next question about the stock price. We already answered that, and we cannot speculate here. And so we gave you our numbers and present our results here. The next question is about a bridge from EBITDA to operational cash flow. I think this goes too far for this discussion here. And so I really would recommend Mr. Heine to make a one-on-one on that and to make also a more detailed call here regarding the financials in our half year report.

Would you share any guidance about interest rate of the new EUR 80 million financing? Yes, sure. So the EUR 80 million financing for M&A activity, it is a finance structure in line with our current finance rates. So our current finance rates are between 4% and 10%, and we also have these numbers in our new facility here, but it is in the upper end of this range.

Could you talk about the revenue trends in Optics division? Is it lower to the last year? No, it's not lower. It's just the seasonality. So the Optics division also have seasonalities in the yearly review. And so the first half year results are absolutely in line, and we expect a further increase for the second half year.

So there are some questions regarding specific subsidiaries. So we do not comment any specific subsidiary here. So I hope that you understand that we do not start communicating here on each company by itself. Next question was about the weaker Q2 as a result of a strong Q1? Or what do you attribute the 27% decline in revenue to? Well, actually, we saw that, yes, Q2 was a little bit lower on the total perspective, but we always have in line what we want to achieve for the full year. And so overall, we were quite happy with the development here and also with the EBITDA development. And so we don't see a weaker Q2 here. But yes, you are right, the Q1 was strong here definitely in both ways in revenue and also profit.

There's the next question about why are the customer orders less than the total amount of active customers. So the answer is very simple. Active customers are last 12 months. So it means we have to consider 12 months regarding the active customers and the number of orders, it is always only in the period in 6 months. So that is the reason why, of course, this number is different.

There's next question about again, the Manager Magazin, the auditor, we also answered that. About the finance facility. There's a question if I will buy again shares. Yes, I also will buy again shares. I always have to consider the time line. So I was not allowed to buy shares before the publication of such a half year report, for example. But after such an event, I am allowed to buy shares. Next question is about the gross margin decline. The question is what is the reason for that? And yes, you are right, though there is a relevant change regarding the commission pressure. The take rate was less in our Freight segment. And so we saw this effect also in our total P&L. And additionally, we also saw that we have a pricing issue, and we had more discounts than we expected in some of our divisions. And so this leads to the situation that we had a negative development in the gross margin. Overall, we think that we are pretty good in line with our margin development. So currently, we have more than 34%. And on the full year perspective, we see a slight increase here, but not too much because as you might know, in the Q4, the margin is not very good. Now there are a lot of discounts in the Q4. So the Q3 is very important to get a good number and a total year perspective.

Which 3 single subsidiaries have the highest profit. So again, we do not comment specific units or specific platforms. So please understand that we have our segment report and that we operate with a segment report. Okay. The next question is about the number of orders, same numbers. I don't understand this question, Russell, to be honest. Maybe you give us feedback directly with e-mail, so we can understand what you mean here. Okay. And the last question was for Mr. Heine. With leverage trending towards lower than 2.0x and a positive free cash flow, how is the management rating debt paydown against opportunistic share buybacks to address the current equity valuation discount? So the problem is we are not allowed to make share buybacks because as long as we have the bond, the bond prospectus says that we are not allowed to make share buybacks. So we cannot make share buybacks until 2028. And so there is no other answer here.

There's a next question about the AEP deal. We already answered that, Mrs. Freya. And we expect a closing in this year? Yes, we do. And yes, I think these are the main questions. And Mr. Müller, you are commenting here some other comments. And so maybe you can directly send an e-mail to Nathalie Richert, and she can reply on that. So there are no other open questions here. So thank you very much from our side, and I wish you all a good working day and see you on the next conference.

And a warm welcome to today's strategy and update call of the Platform Group. We are delighted to welcome the CEO, Dr. Dominik Benner; and Mrs. Nathalie Richert, who will guide us through the presentation followed by a Q&A session. After the presentation, we will move on to the Q&A session in which you will be allowed to place your questions directly to the management. We're looking forward to the presentation. And with that said, I'm handing over to you, Ms. Richert.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to our strategy and update call of TPG. Before we begin, let me briefly introduce our company. Our company is led by an experienced 8-member C-level team and a 4 -- 3-member Supervisory Board. TPG is a leading software and platform company. We are a family business, and we are now in the fifth generation.

Today -- when we move on to the next slide, we operate platform businesses around 26 industries with a network in more than 16 partners serving both B2B and B2C. And our -- like you see on the slide, we have now 5 different segments. We are located in 19 locations across Europe, and our headquarter is in Dusseldorf.

With that short introduction, I want to hand over to our CEO, Dr. Dominik Benner, who will give now us the update of the TPG.

Yes. Thank you very much, Nathalie. And also a warm welcome from my side. We would like to give you a short overview on the current developments within the last months and also an outlook on the next months and the upcoming months until the end of the year. So first of all, we want to show and share some developments of the Q1. So of the second quarter of this year. So overall, when we look on our more than 30 platforms, we see that the customer confidence is quite positive. To be honest, we were a little bit critical after the war in Iran and the Middle East. And -- but overall, we saw that there was a decline in confidence, but now it was rising again. And so we are quite optimistic to see a good development here in the second quarter.

We also see a higher B2B order volume. That means our machine business and the machine sector is performing well, and we see increasing numbers here. What we see difficult is the market environment in the furniture sector. So as you might know, the furniture sector is not performing very well overall in Europe. It was booming in the COVID times, and now it's decreasing. So this is kind of a difficult market. And we also see that the increasing costs for logistics and transportation have an effect, of course, on our P&L, but I think we have a lot of strategies to mitigate this risk and also to make decisions which protect us a little bit on this cost effect.

What we also see is that we have good conditions and excellent conditions in the M&A sector. That means we can buy additional companies for very fair values. And I think we can, yes, see a lot of upcoming deals also this year, but we will also give you an update on this on the next slides.

And very important to mention our 5 segments, as Nathalie already mentioned, they continue to grow. So we have a number of partners, which is growing, and we also expect them growing on the full year basis. So we see no decline here, and we are very optimistic to achieve our guidance on these numbers.

When we go on to the next slide, you see our latest development regarding Q1. So these are the figures which we have presented in the Q1 earnings call. And as you can see, we had a positive development regarding the net revenue and also regarding the EBITDA. The margin did not increase, as you know. So we saw a stable development or a little decreasing development on the EBITDA numbers. But overall, we were quite happy about the development. And we also see different cost driver effects, especially regarding the marketing and the gross margin.

Let me now look on the financials, the nonfinancials. You see here the nonfinancial development compared to last year. So what we see here is also what we expect for the Q1 results. So we see currently a rising number of orders. And we also see that the number of active customers is increasing. And yes, so this is something which we expect to be continued for the second quarter.

When we look on the number of employees, we do not see an increase here because we did not make many acquisitions this year. So this will be more or less a stable number, obviously, maybe also a decline here.

Very important to mention is our proportion between the organic and the nonorganic growth. So overall, we had an organic growth rate, which was more than 71% in the first quarter. So we achieved the most growth from the organic side and not with M&A. And last year, it was a little bit different. So last year, we saw that we had 59% growth rate with organic, and it was 41% with nonorganic. So yes, overall, we expect to see the same tendency here also in the Q1 numbers. And we want to see a high number of partners and also a high number of products in our segments.

Now we look on the M&A and finance update. I think this is a part where a lot of you from the audience side is looking at and our current development. So first of all, we would like to give you an update regarding our current M&A targets. As we always did in the last years, we show you some upcoming targets or some current targets where we are still working on. So first of all, we have a significant target in Belgium and Luxembourg. With this target, we signed a term sheet, so it's still confidential. And we finalized our due diligence, and it's a company in the retail sector. It has a lot of online and offline activities. They have totally around 250, 260 people in that group. And from the current perspective, the SPA is being drafted, and we expect a potential signing by July and a potential closing by August to September this year. And so as far as we make an SPA here, and we'll proceed with the signing, we will give you directly an update on that.

The next update is regarding AEP. As you might know, AEP is a pharma target, which we announced as an acquisition by this year. And we are very optimistic that we have a very good ongoing process here. That means we are still -- have an ongoing of the contractual CPs. As you might know, in every SPA, you have certain CPs. And I think we make good progress here, and we also expect a good forthcoming here for the next month. We did an amendment of the SPA with the seller and the buyer. So both sides agreed on an amendment here, and we signed this amendment this month.

Also, we would like to give you here an update by July. So we will give you here more detailed information about the process and the potential closing of the deal. Very important is the final structure.

So in the last 4 months, we negotiated and discussed a lot of different finance options. And now we have 2 financial options, which are finalized and which we can sign. So option 1 is an option where we can make a finance volume of EUR 80 million. It has a duration of 2 years plus an extension option. The lender is an international finance group based in U.S. and U.K., and it will be completely in line with our bond prospectus and the bond restrictions regarding secured and nonsecured assets, and also the purposes for M&A and refinance. And the execution, if we will do that, would be by July.

The same is what you can see on the right side on option 2. This is another company. It's another lender. It's also an international finance group. It has a longer duration. It has a high amount, and we also have the offer here to sign this contract.

So as you can see here on the slide, you see that we want to make a decision until tomorrow. So we expect a signing of this finance structure until tomorrow and would like to execute it after that.

Next thing is about our reduction of debt leverage. In a previous call and the previous announcement, we mentioned that we want to reduce our debt leverage over the time. As you can see, we did it also in the last years. So in 2023, we had a debt leverage of 2.7 and -- which is, of course, absolutely acceptable level. And we had seen this decline over time. And currently, in the Q1 quarter, we had a 2.0 debt leverage, and we expect a decline also for the next year. And this year, we want to achieve our debt leverage of 2.0. And very important is that the new credit facility, if we would make it and use it for M&A purpose, it will not increase our debt leverage. So we will remain on the same level. That means if we make M&A acquisition and use the proceeds from that, we have to make sure that the EBITDA, which is coming from the acquired targets is in line with our debt leverage strategy and that we can use it for that. So this is important to understand that we make -- when we make new leverage, it has to be in line with our reduction strategy.

Additionally, we also mentioned in our last announcement that we make a bond buyback program. And we see that this is a quite attractive volume where we can start with. So currently, we start with EUR 5 million for the next month. And we decided to start with 6-month period. Maybe we will start another potential increase of the volume, and we will start this program by July. And I think this is also a good strategy to make our debt strategy for this year to reduce our debt level and also to start making this buyback program of our current bond structure.

On the next slide, you see our latest financial figures from end of 2025. So you've seen the bank liabilities, they were EUR 33 million for the noncurrent liabilities. And for the current liabilities, we had EUR 26 million, at EUR 26 million, yes. And we think from the current perspective, regarding the current ones, we expect more or less the same level until the end of this year. And from the long-term liabilities with our banks, we expect a decrease, which is completely in line with our debt reduction strategy.

Also regarding the M&A perspective, we think that we can make less deals and more significant deals because in the last year, we had a lot of deals. We had, I think, 11 signings, and we think that this is maybe too much for our organization. We should focus much more on relevant but significant targets. And so for this year, we expect 5 to 6 signings totally, not more and 1 or 2 divestments of existing potential small subsidiaries in our group.

What is also important to mention is that we make a very strong AI approach, and this is a real cost-cutting program. And this is also an efficiency program. That means when we implement AI in much more process in our group, we can reduce our workforce in some departments and can use them for better jobs and for better job descriptions. And also, we can increase our efficiency by several times. So just to mention our coding structure, we can use really Claude and other AI tools and can dramatically increase our efficiency and our speed in coding new software and new front ends. And so this has really a big impact. And if you would have asked me 2 years ago, we did not expect that, to be honest, but now it has a tremendous impact here in our strategy, and we use it definitely also to reduce cost structures in our group.

When we look on the guidance, you can see it here. We have the same guidance. So we confirm it also in this call that we expect total revenue of EUR 1 billion for this year and an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 70 million to EUR 80 million. And as you can also see, the number of partners will increase and the leverage has a broad range here, but we expect to achieve it here with around 2.0. And also, you can see the guidance, including AEP on a pro forma basis. These are the figures which we already presented to you. So this is the update from my side, and I hope we gave you some more insight perspective regarding our debt reduction strategy and also about our current M&A targets. And also, Nathalie give you a short brief update where you can meet us in the next months.

All right. So I think we can start with the M&A -- with the Q&A.

Perfect. Yes. Thank you very much for your presentation and the dive into your numbers. Ladies and gentlemen, it's your turn now. [Operator Instructions] We have already received, I think 4, 5, 6, yes.

So there's a question regarding share dilution expected for this year and next upcoming periods?

So we have actually no forecast on that. As you know, we usually make small share capital increases when we have a seller and when we buy a company and include the seller into our group and give them some shares, and sometimes, yes, we do this capital increases, but we have no goal overall, which we can communicate here.

Next question. Why doesn't EBITDA and profitability numbers shown in the company cash on the balance sheet?

This is very simple to be answered. Yes, we are a profitable group. But when you look on our cash flow statement, you see that we invest our money. That means every year, we buy new companies, and we invest in software. And if you go to our cash flow statement, you see that we invest a lot of money in new M&A activity, usually all the amounts which we earned in our operational profit business, that's what we invested into new targets.

Next question from Neil. The significant fall in the share price is driven by call-offs by the bond price. The bond price has fallen. Do you want to make more buyback and more aggressively?

Well, definitely, this could be an option. What you should consider is that we are make a safe harbor program. Safe harbor program means that you mandate a bank here, for example, in Germany. And every day, they can acquire 25% of the daily trading volume. And to be honest, the liquidity in the bond is very low. So it's not so easy to just increase the number of bond buyback because the trading volume is very low in our bond. And so we have no experience with that, to be honest. So we initiated that. It will start by July. And I think after 1 month, we can give you a feedback on how much we purchased from our bond and how much liquidity was in the bond.

And I think from the current perspective, as we did not start the program now, we'll start it by July, we can give you a profound answer by end of July.

Next question was about the manager magazin. Just what is our comment on that.

Very simple. We make a refusal, and we published it online. You can click on a corporate of The Platform Group. And you can also see our refusals here regarding the latest report from them.

Next thing is about will you make a separate announcement for signing a new finance structure?

Yes. So if we sign a contract and make a final structure, as we mentioned here in our call with option 1 or 2, we have to make an announcement. So we have to communicate that immediately. And yes, that's what we have to do.

Next question is about the elaboration of the new regarding loan cancellations by banks. What is the liquidity of the TPG at the moment?

So very simple to answer, the liquidity is going to be published in the quarter and also in the half year report. And so we have communicated it in the Q1 results, and we will also communicate it in the half year results.

Next question, what is the expected effect of M&A and M&A divestments in 2026 on cash flow and net debt?

So yes, I mean we are just by June this year. So I cannot communicate what is our total effect on divestments this year. So we have no forecast on that. When we make a divestment, last year, we did 3 very small divestments. So we had an effect on that, but not on a large number because these are very small companies, which we sold. And this year, we did not make a decision. So when we make a decision, we will immediately communicate that and give you an update on that.

Did I understand correctly that the plan for the bond buyback is EUR 5 million for the next month, and potentially more after that?

No. We communicated that we will make a bond buyback program starting by July. We communicated that we will start with 6 months period. And if we can do more, and we can always increase this program. So we will have to see how the reaction is and how the development of the liquidity is at the bond. So we have no forecast for that.

Our next question is about the 2 options regarding the finance structure. First, what is driving the range? And is it also fund for M&A firepower.

So yes, so definitely, we have to use it. The use of proceeds are for M&A and refinance and the focus is definitely M&A. So when we make a refinance structure, we have to combine it with a new company or several new companies and the new companies will bring additional EBITDA and profits to our group. Otherwise, it would not make sense. We don't want to use debt and let it stand alone in our balance sheet because this would not bring us any positive effect.

What about the closing of AEP deal? Will it be either option 1 or 2?

And the answer is, well, we will decide very soon as we mentioned it already, and we gave you already an update on the closing procedures.

Next question. Could you expand on the cash balance specialty within subsidiaries? There have been reports and they are unable to pay suppliers. Well, in general, we always have a consolidated statement. So every company which I know so far has consolidated statements, and that's what we also do in our group. So we will not start making reports on our subsidiaries. So currently, we have about 50 different subsidiaries, and it will not work that we make unconsolidated statements on there.

Next question was already answered. Thank you, Dario, for that. Next question was already answered. It's about debt-to-equity swaps. And we -- yes, we made debt-to-equity swaps, but I don't know the exact number, so this is maybe something which you should ask Nathalie in the next round in another call.

From Mr. Puskar, market expects almost bankruptcy of TPG, how stable is your financial solution or situation?

Well, I mean we have an audited report from 2025, and we give you also this update call here to give you more confidence about our situation, and we do not comment any rumors in the market. So basically, what we do is that we present our numbers. We give you, I think, a very good perspective on our current development and what is the planning here for the next months. And as you can see, when we make a bond buyback program, we do not make it for fun or just to make a signal. We think that we can make a buyback for very reasonable prices, and this has to be -- to be honest, this is a good margin for us if we can do that. So that is the reason why we do such a bond buyback program for bonds.

Then there's another question regarding the 2 options for finance. And the question is about the situation in line with bond restrictions. It is not substantiated.

Yes. Thank you for this question. So generally, in our bond perspective, we have different things about baskets, about restrictions, about securitization levels and so on. And therefore, we have to make sure that the 2 options regarding the finance facilities have to be met with these requirements and does not lead to any whatever, cross default or whatever. So we have to make sure that this works. And yes, our lawyers confirmed it. So we are quite positive to do that.

Next question is about the closing of 43einhalb?

It is already closed. So I'm wondering on this question. Yes, this is closed, this company, this deal.

And there's a specific question regarding different banks.

So to answer that in a general way, we do not give comments on different banks or bank relations. So please respect that we don't make detailed discussion on bank contracts because they are confidential, and I think it's not in the interest that we discuss here in a public call here.

Why do you buy margin-dilutive companies like AEP?

Yes. Thank you, Marcus. That is the right question, to be honest. And yes, AEP has low margins. So margins are around 2%, and definitely, they would dilute our total group with lower margins. But there are 2 perspectives on that. The one perspective is that we buy a company with lower margins. But on the other side, the question is what is the total number? And in my life, I always calculate with total numbers and not only with percentage, to be honest. And we think that this is a good deal. We think that AEP is a great company, and that we can work with that even if the margin in percentage is low. But on a total level, it is quite respectable and I think they make a good job there.

Given the share price, wouldn't share buyback be the best use for shareholders compared to more M&A?

The problem is that we cannot make a share buyback. This is not possible because the share buyback is not allowed according to our bond prospectus. So we cannot make share buyback because it's not allowed according to our bond. So our bond goes until 2028. And then after being repaid, we can do that, then it's possible, but not before. And of course, I agree with your perspective. We would think the same. That is quite attractive to do that, but it's not allowed for us.

And there's a question regarding the tax liabilities.

Yes, we already confirmed it on our written statement that TPG has not these tax liabilities. We already confirmed it in the written statement.

EUR 5 million buyback of bonds is good, but that amount would buy back around 20% of current equity with the share price. Wouldn't it be better or should be better to make buyback of shares?

Yes, that's what we already answered. We will do that, but we are not allowed to do it right now. That's not possible until 2028.

Next question is about the share price development. Are there any margin calls ongoing concerning Benner Group shares? Or what is your explanation?

To be honest, I don't know what that means to me because we -- there's no Benner Group, and there's not a listed Benner Group. So I don't know exactly what is meant with that.

Next question. Hello, your '28 bond trades near EUR 0.55. Buyback -- buying it back retires EUR 100 of debt for EUR 45. And this is a good decision. Why raise new debt for acquisitions instead of returning your own bond?

Yes. So basically, we do both. So our decision what we do in a group is not only focusing on financials, it is also focusing on operational and strategic things. And we would never decide to just make 2 years just paying down debt and nothing to else in our business. So we always have to find a balance between our financials where we have a clear debt reduction strategy since this year and also to have some improvements in our operations and strategy. And so we always have to find a balance between these 2 things. So yes, I'm very optimistic that we have a good balance there between these 2 strategies and that we will make a good decision on that.

Given all the planned investments, has a final decision being made to secure financing without diluting shareholder stakes?

Well, in general, yes, we want to make a deleverage strategy. And we got the feedback in the last 6 months that deleveraging and reducing interest cost is quite important for our shareholders, and we also seen that the interest rate was going up in the last 6 months because of the war and because of the economic uncertainties. And so yes, we also agree that reducing debt and reducing interest costs is quite important for shareholders and also for our group. And therefore, yes, we agree with you. And -- but I think we always have to make a balance between operational investments and, for example, buying back of our bonds.

There was another comment on this magazin, which we already made a statement on that. That is a good question. As a private stock investor, what's your strategy to let investor profit from Strategy 2030? Dividends question mark, buyback question mark, anything else question mark?

Well, yes, you are right. We communicated the strategy 2030, and we gave an update on that the last year, and we want to achieve these numbers. Did we communicate dividend so far? No. So we did not communicate, guide or do anything about dividend so far. If we would do that, we will communicate that to you. But before 2028, this is not possible. And of course, the buyback is a very good decision. It doesn't matter for bonds or for shares, both is possible for us. But the bond can be immediately done this year and next year and shares only from 2028 on. And yes, from my personal perspective, I think this is a very good idea to do that.

Next question is about the market capitalization that is decreasing over the last few months. Given the situation, are you planning to implement specific measures to reassure current and future shareholders?

Well, the question is, what kind of specific measures do you think about that? For example, you mentioned like a shareholder-friendly initiatives, such a dividend payment or other capital allocation strategies to support the stock?

Yes, as I already mentioned, we cannot do share buyback programs, it's not possible. And we cannot make dividends. It's not possible. But yes, you are right. I think we started already with a bond buyback program, and this is a very good start. And yes, we also want to combine it with operation strategies to increase our numbers and to bring with more confidence in the market.

There's the next question about the bond price development. So the question is about is the bond price affecting the bank willingness to lend to TPG or to other acquisitions of TPG?

No, there is no relation between the bond and the bank.

Next question. How high in percentage do you think the risk that big AEP deal -- now it disappeared will not happen, I think.

Well, I think we are quite optimistic to go on with the CPs and the SPA. And so we do our best to make a good job there and yes, to complete this deal.

Next question is about bond holders are asked for any amendment or restructuring question mark, haircut, maturity and so on?

No, absolutely not. So we do nothing like that. And we want to buy back our own bonds. From a reporting perspective, could it be possible to report in addition to the adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income figure in order to show even better the true profitability of TPG?

Yes. I think this is a very good idea. And it is not very difficult. So all our analysts and bank analysts and research partners do that, will they take our net profit and adjust it by the PPA effects and other adjustments. So you have these 2 numbers in every of our reports, and you can just directly subtract it. And yes, I think it would be a good idea, but you cannot officially take it to the P&L statement. You have to make it separately besides the P&L statement for legal reasons.

All right. So there are some questions regarding different subsidiaries. There's a question, do we plan to implement and set up an independent audit committee?

I don't know exactly on which level you asked me that, but I would expect this is a question for the Supervisory Board, not for the Board. And maybe this is a good idea that we can implement such a level on the Advisory Board, but it's not my decision. I can only ask the Head of the Advisory Board, Mr. Schutze, for that.

Next question. Looking at your owner earnings after all necessary capital expenditures is the organic free cash flow strong enough to pay down this debt without relying on bank refinancing?

Yes, I think we have a good cash flow situation, and we can work with that. And yes, I think this is a very good path to reduce our debt structure, definitely. Otherwise, we would not go this path to buyback bond because we think it's a good margin.

Could you please explain the new debt structure pro forma for the AEP acquisition? How much debt will be added to the balance sheet versus the EUR 20 million to EUR 30 million guided annual adjusted EBITDA for AEP?

Well, let's take the example. So if you have EUR 30 million of EBITDA in this case and you have a debt structure of EUR 80 million, and then you have directly this 2.2 impact in the leverage. So when you buy a company with EUR 60 million, for example, or make an EUR 80 million structure here, and you have EBITDA of EUR 30 million you have the structure of 2-point something. And in combined case, we expect a total debt leverage of 2.0 by end of this year with or without this acquisition.

Regarding cash management, there's another question. Do you plan to debt more conservative or safer long-term approach similar to the strategy and the debt management in order to build up higher cash reserves.

Yes, I think this is also a good opportunity to do that definitely. In the last 6 years, we had a very strong investment approach and acquired a lot of companies. And as you can already see in our latest developments for this year, we reduced the number of M&A activities, and we also increased our repayment of debt. And so when we combine that, make less M&A, have higher cash reserves and also pay back loans. I think this is a very good combined strategy.

So I think we are a little bit over time now. So maybe we take the last round for the next 3 to 4 questions. And then I think we can also offer a follow-up maybe for in July, that's all the remaining questions on next upcoming questions can be answered in July.

So let's focus on the last questions. What do you say about the share price, if your numbers are right, you have a PE ratio of less than 1 or 0.5. Why don't you buy back the whole company and go private?

Well, we are stock-listed company. So we are stock listed. And so we have not a private buyback program here. Otherwise, we would have to communicate that.

Just quickly, Dr. Benner, we actually have until 3:30. So there's plenty of time to answer more questions.

Okay. Great. I thought we have cut at 03:15. Okay. Next question. Can you buy back bonds OTC? Maybe the volume could be much higher than via exchanges?

Yes, yes and no. The problem is that according to all the recommendations from the stock exchange and the banks, you usually have to make the safe harbor program. And safe harbor program means you can usually make the daily volume and buy 25% of the daily volume on the public markets. But yes, there are options to make a direct bond buyback. This is possible as long as there is no insider information ahead or something like that. But yes, it is possible. And we, I think, have 1 or 2 possibilities to do that. So when we make such a possibility, we will immediately communicate it. And yes, it can be done in special situations, and we think that we can have a solid background in accordance with our lawyers to do that.

What is the number of free floating shares?

I don't know exactly. So it is published on our corporate page. So please go on to the corporate page and then you see all the public numbers.

When will the closing of AEP will be, and is the closing at risk?

Well, no, we have a contract. And in the contract, we have several CPs. And I don't know if you already had such a maybe more complex SPA. It takes a lot of time to be honest to fulfill all the CPs and seller and buyer have to fulfill them. So this is quite a complex case. It's not an easy case with a company of 10 people and just call the owner and say, come on, let's do like that. So it's a very complex case. And yes, I'm very optimistic from my side that we will go forward and go for the closing.

Could you please summarize the equity structure? Does it contain certain goodwills?

I don't understand this question, to be honest, because maybe you mean our balance sheet. So on the balance sheet, in our equity statement, you see how much equity you have. And usually, when we make acquisitions, our numbers for goodwill are not really high. So sometimes you make badwill acquisitions. Sometimes you make goodwill acquisitions. But our total number of goodwill compared to our balance sheet is not very high. And this is, to be honest, a positive message to you that we do not see relevant or whatever kind of write-down necessaries because most of the companies which we acquired have no goodwill on our balance sheet. And so any fair value test could have no impact on that. And this is something which is, I think, on a very good basis for having a conservative balance sheet basis.

Since you change from AG to KGaA, investor confidence appears to have fallen significantly. How you have planned any changes regarding your communication strategy? And how do you want to communicate to your shareholders and other bondholders? Maybe, Nathalie, you can give some updates what we currently do already and what we want to do in the next months.

Sure. We have different investor initiatives in Europe, in Germany and in the U.S. Most of the time, we do amount targeting. But we -- as you already know, we work together with different banks. And there our next presentation -- official presentation is in October, in Paris and the next will be in Frankfurt at the Equity Forum as well in Vienna at the Family Office Forum. And always check our Investor Relations calendar. And as you might see, we have a new newsletter where you could register.

Okay. Next question, the equity market is pricing your share extremely low compared to your earnings. Are you considering slowing down the growth?

Well, actually, we do not force the growth. So I think we have growth numbers since 15 years. We never doubled our revenue within 1 year. So every year, we had increases of the revenues in the last 15 years, but not in a large number. So maybe there are 1 or 2 exceptions. So one exception was, for example, fashionette when we acquired them. So that had a huge impact on our revenue perspective and also regarding the potential AEP acquisition. This also has an impact. But all our other acquisitions, they were not so much changing our profits and our revenue.

So I think, overall, we are quite very typically company, to be honest, which is growing every year by some amount and tries to focus on this profitable growth also in the next years.

Next question. How does the leadership give capital allocation decisions in the company to enhance the valuation of the company?

Well, we have a ROCE figure and we have a return on equity figure. And so both figures are calculated with every investment we do. And if we see an investment which is not good and where we think, yes, well, this is maybe cheap. But in a long-term perspective, it has negative effects on our ROCE, for example, that we go below 18% or something. So we always try to find good M&A activities, which are supporting our ROCE strategy and make sure that we do not have a decline here. So yes, our management is involved in that, and they all have the same interest regarding that.

Next question. There's a confidence issue regarding the TPG accounts. Can management offer a strong confidence signal to the public like hiring a new auditor?

Yes. So of course, I'm absolutely open for that. For example, at the AGM, I cannot vote for an auditor. So it's not my decision because I'm the majority shareholder. I'm not allowed to vote there. And of course, if the AGM makes another decision, of course, we will take another auditor. Until 2019 -- yes, 2019, we had KPMG, until 2022, we had Ernst & Young as an auditor. So we also work with the Big 4. So it's not something strange to us. And yes, of course, it's the obligation of the AGM to decide on that. It's about the restore of investor confidence. I think we already answered these questions.

Next question, given the TPG's EUR 20 million valuation, what is the benefit of remaining listed on the stock exchange?

Well, as I already said, we are listed, and I think we also learned a lot from the listing, to be honest. We see everyday good feedbacks. We include our investors in our perspective and decision-making. And we also see benefits on that. And yes, of course, our share is undervalued. I'm the majority shareholder. I never sold shares here, but my interest is that we have a long-term perspective here and that we see a long-term value creation. And I totally agree with you on that. Of course, we have to ask ourselves this question, but we have a clear statement for that, and we will remain with that.

I don't understand the next question. Why don't you launch a public tender offer for the bonds that would not be subject to safe harbor rules?

Yes, this would be possible. But actually, we made and initiated a bond, and the bond goes until 2028. And I think regarding to be fair with our bondholders, I think the first way is that we will just stay until 2028, pay back the bond. And if somebody wants to sell before, we can buy it. I think this is the best way to do that. And if somebody wants to sell on lower levels, you can -- he or she can do that. And that's why we also initiated the program that we make a complete offer, a tender offer for all bondholders, I think this is not a good idea or maybe most of them would not react on that because you will never find a perfect price to make such a tender offer. Everybody would complain on that probably.

What will you do to strengthen shareholder value?

At current market cap, further acquisitions seemed imbalance. What do you do think about using cash flow for paying a dividend?

Yes, I think it's a good idea. But as you know, according to the bond, it's not allowed to pay dividends so far. From mid of 2028, we are allowed to pay dividends.

Will you make announcement about AEP financing tomorrow?

Yes, it could be. We did not make a decision so far. But if we would decide tomorrow, then we have to make a communication on that.

From which moment, the AEP deal will push your business?

It will not push our business, to be honest. AEP is a good company. They make a great job, and we combine it with 1 or 2 other subsidiaries of our group. But AEP will not push our company. It has a very strong focus on pharmacy delivery and solutions for the pharmacies. And so we make no cross-selling here, for example, if you mean or something like that.

Next question. In response to the accusation from manager magazin, you write in your website that management is wrong on matters. Can this be true? Why is it attack you?

What we already communicated our perspective on that. And in our call, we will not comment that anymore. Because for us, it's a little bit of waste of time to do that. We have our written statement. We have some legal actions regarding that. And this is, I think, everything what we can tell here, and I think you should always respect that.

How big is the acquisition in Belgium?

Well, we cannot communicate a financial number here right now because it's still confidential, but it is a significant target.

And will it require a further bank facility?

Probably not. We will pay it by cash.

Number of shares increased. Please confirm if this relates to earnout, vendor considerations on acquisitions, not on cash rates. So we do sometimes make share increases. When we have a long-term investor, for example, then we do that. And sometimes, when we also -- of course, as you mentioned, we have earn-outs or vendor considerations, we also use that. But currently, we plan no cash increases just for getting money. When we see a cash increase -- capital increase, we always do it for strategic reasons. That's important for us.

How will you finance the AEP deal, 100% with other investors, or cash-only bond money used?

No. So we will make a mixture of own cash and of external financial sources, as we already mentioned in our call today.

Then there's again a question of 43einhalb deal. The question is, why did we make a debt-to-equity swap with this acquisition?

Well, I think we saw a good potential here to work with them together to remain them as a good shareholder in our group, and to be aligned that they are in line with our strategy. And I think, yes, it's a good decision to do that. And we have very good long-term shareholder, and we are very confident that we work very good together with them.

Why do you both financing options for AEP have different loan volumes?

Well, because they are different offers. So yes, let's be surprised on which one we will choose. And you ask also what do you do with the difference of EUR 35 million between option 1 or 2, actually, we can work with both options. So let's see which one is a better one for our company and which one is also reflecting our idea of making deleverage and reduce our interest costs.

What are the terms of the new facilities? Of course, they are confidential, so we cannot communicate it. And they are not public bonds. So we cannot give you an answer on that here.

Is there any recent market concerns regarding corporate governance and transparency? What are the specific steps you're taking to improve investor relations and ensure full transparency to restore market confidence in the coming quarters?

Yes. So I think Nathalie already mentioned some things which we already initiated. And I think we are also optimistic that we can get back confidence. And to be honest, we don't see a lag in our corporate governance. If you see specific things on that, just let us know. I would be very interested in what exactly you mean with that, and we will be happy to get your feedback also if you want in a personal meeting.

Has the management considered increasing its personal shareholdings?

Yes, definitely. There's only a question about if you have some upcoming potential insider statements, and insider transactions, you always have to consider that when you make transactions here. So it's not so easy for management sometimes to make and buy shares. So there are only some windows of opportunities within the year.

Does the future finance also forbid share buybacks?

So no, the future financing does not forbid any share buyback. But of course, our current bond structure, which we initiated with Pareto does not allow that.

Is M&A more difficult now with the low share price?

No. Absolutely not because if you sell a company, you're not looking on the share price of the buyer. You're looking for the strategic perspective, you're looking for your buying price, but you're not looking for the share price.

Why TPG doesn't stop M&A to repay the bond and once repaid, begin with a share repurchase?

Well, so 2 things. As I said, we already have to find a good balance between operational investments because we strongly believe -- we really believe that we can make good investments in such a market environment and that we can buy companies for 3 or 4x earnings. That's really a good opportunity. Even if our own valuation is worse, which is in fact right now, we think that we should make those investments because they are good investments. And we have a long-term strategy and long-term means we do not decide on a quarterly basis. We have a long-term strategy and want to invest in our strategy and find good targets with that. But yes, you are right, of course, we have to find a balance between investments for buying back our bonds and make M&A activities here.

How can you align debt reduction strategy with planned acquisitions?

Well, of course, you can find companies where you just pay 2 or 2-point-something EBITDA. So this is possible. And definitely, we do that. So this is a very simple answer on that. And yes, you are also right. When we pay some amounts by cash, we don't have to use the full purchase price with debt. So when you combine just an LTV of, let's say, 60% with debt and 40% equity or cash, then I think you have a good ratio, and you can always stay with the 2.0 leverage strategy. And this is very important for us.

Any share pledges?

No, should have insight to shareholder structure where we publish our shareholder structure on our public page. Paladin Asset Management fully liquidated their positions. How is the IR team actively working to rebuild credibility and reengage institutional interest?

I think Nathalie already answered that. And yes, I think Paladin is not invested here anymore, but this is already some months ago, yes.

Despite strong reported operational delivery in full year 2025, TPG share and bond price has declined significantly. How does management explain the disconnect between operating performance and equity market valuation?

Well, actually, I don't -- cannot explain that because we try to do our best. And yes, of course, you can criticize me, you can criticize other executives in our group. This is completely possible, and we have no problems with that. But at the end, we just make a business and try to continue our business in a very good way. And if the market is not appreciated in that, we try to do our best to change that. But at the end, we cannot influence it directly. But yes, we totally agree that the stock is undervalued, and we totally agree that we see higher valuations in the future. But yes, you're right. We have to take the critics, and we have to think about a new strategy, how to recover from here, definitely.

You say you can't buy back shares, okay. But you even diluted the shares for M&A. Why do you stop or stop M&A until you can pay upcoming M&A with cash?

Yes, we do M&A with cash. But usually, when we make M&A, we combine the purchase price between debt, cash and shares. So this is our deepest conviction that the combination is always the right thing, not only to rely on one source. And when we make M&A investments, we try to combine these 3 things. And so I think this is also from a personal perspective, a good idea, and we can work with that.

Okay. I think these are all questions we have already asked and answered before. And 1 hour was offered, Okay, yes, 1 hour was offered. Are there any cost-cutting initiatives you can undertake?

Yes. Definitely, we already started it. And if we define it as a whole program, we also will communicate it. But yes, you are right, we always try to reduce costs, but we are not a fan of saying, "Hey, we make a new program every year, we make a new name for that." So when we start a program, we will communicate it. And yes, then it has to be significant here, definitely.

There's a question [Foreign Language]. Well, I mean the biggest shareholder is the Benner Holding, so it's my family office. And I think there are not so many big parties behind that. So we have some shareholders with, I'd say, I think, around 2%, 3%, 4%, 4%, 5% and but they are not players like 20% or 15%. This is not existing in our group. So the free float, which we have is a pretty private free float, and it's very granular.

You have significant short-term debt. Why do you take such a big risk?

Well, to be honest, we don't think that we have significant short-term debt? Our debt numbers. I mean we talk about EUR 30-something million compared to EUR 500 million of balance sheet for this year. I think this is not a big number. This is a very good relation from our perspective. So I think we are quite on a reasonable level here.

Next question. Do you see all of your 5 operating segments as long-term strategic business? Or would you consider selling one of these to crystallize the value?

Of course, we always take offers if somebody wants to offer it, but we have a long-term perspective. And long-term perspective means for the big majority of our targets, we want to have an evergreen approach and make sure that we want to continue here.

Mr. Benner, we have reached the time limit exactly. Yes, as I said, in view of the time, we are coming to the end of today's earnings call. Please understand that we will not be able to answer all the questions during this call, but please feel free to contact Mrs. Richert for further questions. Thank you, everyone, for joining and your shown interest in The Platform Group KGaA. A big thank you also to you, Dr. Benner and Mrs. Richert for your presentation and the time you took to answer all these questions. I wish you all a lovely remaining week, and I'm handing over once more to you, Dr. Benner, for some final remarks.

Feel always free to contact us directly, and we can make a follow-up call by July for all the audience here. And yes, I'm very happy to meet you again.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the The Platform Group following the publication of the unaudited first quarter results of 2026. So therefore, we are delighted to welcome the Management Board, who will guide us through the presentation followed by a Q&A session, where we will be happy to answer your questions. And with this, Dr. Benner, I hand over to you.

Thank you very much for the introduction, and warm welcome from my side and also from Nathalie Richert. We would like to present to you our Q1 figures for this year and give you some more insights about the development of our company. So first of all, we would like to give you a short introduction to our group for those who do not know us, -- so here, you can find our C-level management and our Supervisory Board. And we, in total, run this company with more than 1,500 employees.

The history of our company is very unique, I would say. So it was founded in 1882 as a classical brick-and-mortar store for shoes. And in 2012, I took over the family business and changed it towards e-commerce and running e-commerce platforms. And until today, we increased this footprint. So we have a lot of e-commerce platforms already. And our goal is that we want to achieve a good and solid growth also in the next years, expand also geographically and also implement AI in a much more relevant way than we did it before.

On a total overview, we have in total 17,000 partners. Partners means retailers and manufacturers connected to our platforms, and we have more than 8 million customers which are buying all our products on several platforms in 26 different industries. How we do that? It is important to understand that we have a central operational holding. And the central holding has more than 130 employees, and they make all the background procedures in our subsidiaries. So when we buy a company, for example, we try to change the software system to our system.

We make a centralized marketing approach. And we also take care that we implement other department and services like business intelligence, like our AI hub or like finance, HR and legal stuff. The backbone of our company is actually a software system, which is proprietary and developed over the last 10 years. And this is a backbone on how we run our different platforms, how we manage our e-commerce activities and how we make sure that we can expand our e-commerce and our platform strategy to new industries because currently, we cover 26 different industries, and we strongly believe that we want to increase this number and can use our software also in other industries, which fit to our strategy. Nathalie, you are...

Thanks, Dominik. Our goal is to become the leading platform group in Europe. We are now active in 5 segments in more than 26 industries. We sell our products and goods directly to customers in both B2B and B2C. We started the Optics and Hearing segment last year. That's a new segment. And -- when we want to give you an update, that's on Slide 10.

It's always important to know that we enter new industries always that we buy platforms that you see on the right side that are the platforms we enter last year. And on the other side, it's important for us to strengthen our segments where we require companies that deepen our expertise at supply or expand segment and industry know-how.

We have the closing from 43einhalb [indiscernible] done in May 2026. We buy them in end of the December. And that's important to know every acquired company brings new products, partners and new customers to TPG.

Thank you for that. And let's have a closer look on some of the acquisitions. So regarding AEP, we will provide you with an update. So the process is still ongoing. We have several CPs managed in the SPA through the purchase contract and for the closing conditions. And right now, we are working on these CPs, so as well as the buyer side and the seller side, and we expect an update here by June. And additionally, we also plan a mixture of debt and cash investment here.

So from our side, we are happy to go forward in this process and also give you an update by June. And so far, there's no further development, which we can communicate here. And the other thing is the platform We Connect Work. We acquired it last year. Therefore, we launched a new platform additionally to the existing business of We Connect Work, and it was a very important development for us.

So we initiated this B2B platform. It's not for private people. It's only B2B platform for craftsmen and craft businesses, and we have more than 100,000 products there. None of these products are in our inventory, so they are completely from partners and the focus is sanitary, heating, electronics and construction. Let's go further with the luxury portfolio.

Yes. We have here as an example, our luxury portfolio. You see here five platforms. We have, for example, FASHIONETTE, where we sell [indiscernible] LOFT bags, for example. On the other side, we have CHRONEXT watches or we could sell the luxury bags on the platform, Joli Closet, which we acquired last year. The most important point and that it could you see in all the studies is the verification process, and we offer this process at our different platforms.

And as you can see on the right side, the secondhand luxury market is growing 3x faster than the firsthand market. And when we go to the next slide, it's always important to know that we scale our ecosystem through partner expansion, both organically and via acquisitions. Since 3 years, we have increased the number of partners from 5,000 to expected 80,000 more in 2026.

Our growth model is highly scalable because new partners can onboarded quickly through our software solutions, TPG ONE. Today, as we showed, we operate more than 35 platforms, allowing local retailers to digitalize their businesses. I think this demonstrates that the ecosystem becomes stronger with scale. Once partners are integrated, they generate additional growth within the platform network.

And in 2024, around half of the partner growth, you see that in the slides came from acquisitions. In 2025 and especially 2026, the majority came from existing platforms and cross-selling within the ecosystem.

Yes. Thank you very much for that. And now we go to the financials. So first of all, we would like to mention that we had a very positive Q1 result. So the GMV was increasing by more than 23% and the revenue had an increase of 51%. So it was totally in line with our own guidance and also with our internal forecast. The profitability was positive. So we increased the EBITDA, the adjusted EBITDA by more than 37%. And actually, it was really a lot of cost cutting and cost efficiency in this first quarter.

So we definitely have positive synergies through that. especially is something really worth to mention, it is our AI cost project. We will come to that later. There you can see how much we already do with AI and how we improve our cost efficiency here. So especially the distribution costs and marketing costs and HR costs are directly affected by our AI measures, and we can show you later on what specifically we do there. Additionally, we see also good conditions regarding new M&A activity.

And we also see that our five established segments are growing and the number of partners, as Nathalie already mentioned, are increasing. We will give also an update on our debt strategy because we changed it a little bit and also on our M&A activity for this year. Overall, we would like to confirm our outlook and our guidance for this year, which we communicated by January this year. So let us go to the figures.

So in Q1 2026, we had a total net revenue of EUR 243 million, which is an increase of 51%. The margin -- the gross margin was decreasing. So we had less margin in this first quarter, and this was due to discount activities and higher provisions, which we paid. So we had a decrease of 0.4 percentage points. And actually, we expect a slightly better margin development in Q2 this year. AI is a very effective and very important efficiency driver in our group already.

So we can definitely reduce costs for product data creation for customer service and for marketing costs. And you see that now and you also see that in the future that we can step-by-step improve our cost figures with AI and through AI. There's one thing which is important to mention here. As you know, the war in the East is affecting -- in the Middle East it's affecting also our cost structure. So we see higher rates for logistics in the future. We see higher cost of transport in the future. And so we had a lot of activities to mitigate that and to make sure that our cost structure in the distribution segment is not increasing.

So what we did is that we also achieved a higher AOV. And -- but we to have a higher AOV, the logistic costs are not so relevant anymore. The next thing is we finalized our central logistic hub in Gladbeck. As you know, we initiated it last year. We established it and now more and more subsidiaries are onboarded into this new logistic hub, and therefore, we have significant cost effects. Additionally, we also have logistic cost ratios optimizations like companies in the optics sector, in the hearing sector or in the service sector, they have actually no logistic costs or almost no logistic costs.

And with the increasing relevance, we see that there's a shift towards a little bit more of these companies, and they have, as I mentioned, almost 0 distribution costs. Next thing is about the EBITDA development. We had a 37% increase here. Also the reported EBITDA was increasing by 28%. So we can be very happy on this development, to be honest, and think that we are right on track with our margin goals for this year.

On the net profit, you see that there's not a real change. So you might ask yourself, why is it not increasing while the EBITDA goes up. But this is actually a very simple effect. In Q1 last year, we had a onetime effect of a positive depreciation through one M&A activity. And that was the result why we had last year lower EBITDA but higher net profits. And so this onetime effect is, of course, recognized in last year. Our net profit was EUR 18.2 million. And this year, we had EUR 17.7 million.

When you eliminate this effect, we had an increase in net profit, but totally, we had a small decrease of the net profit. And our earnings per share was a total EUR 0.85 per share, and last year, it was EUR 0.90. So you can see also in charts the development regarding GMV and regarding the EBITDA and net profit. So you can also download this presentation if you want further information on that. And here, you can see the development over time. So on the last Q1 results, we always had an increase in the revenue development, and we can also be happy that we are almost reaching our 10% goal for next year.

And I'm very optimistic that we will also achieve it within the next upcoming quarters. Very important to mention, and everybody is asking that how much was organically and how much was nonorganically. So here, you can see on the left side, the proportion last year. So last year, we had 39% of nonorganic growth rate. And this year, it was improved to 29% only. So you can see that the number of acquisitions is lower and the contribution of acquisitions is less compared to previous years.

And so we are quite optimistic that these figures -- something between 30% and 70% will also continue in our business performance for this year. What are the main reasons for our higher organic growth rate? One is the number of partners. So this was definitely increasing, and we had more products with that compared to last year. We had a higher growth rate in our consumer goods segment and also in the freight goods segment.

And important, we have a good and better customer retention on our core platforms. When you see the nonfinancial KPIs, we had in total an increase of our numbers of orders to EUR 3.4 million. The average order value was increasing to EUR 128. The active customers reached 8.1 million. So also a very positive development and also it was growing with the GMV. The number of employees was increasing to 1,537 employees by end of March, and the number of partners was 17,221.

So overall, there was also an increase by more than 12%. What is very important, and this is, I think, the first time that we make a change regarding our debt strategy is that after the crisis in the Middle East and after all the interest rates went up in the last 2 months, we made a decision in the Board that we want to reduce our debt leverage -- that we want to reduce our debt leverage over time. So you can see here the forecast.

So right now, you see that we have a debt leverage of 2.0. Last year, it was 2.1. And we decided as a Management Board to definitely decrease this leverage. So in previous presentations, we were thinking about 1.5 to 2 for 2030 as a debt strategy leverage, and we completely changed that. So we want to reduce the debt in a much faster way. And actually, in times of high interest rate, we see debt reduction really as a key for further profitability, and we want to make sure that the interest rates are not killing our P&L.

So we are a more risk-averse strategy here and try to reduce our debt structure and make it more simple. Also, with our cash flow, and we have a good operational cash flow and our equity potential and -- we also think about portfolio management. I will show you that later. We think that we can decrease the debt over time, and we also started some projects regarding that.

On the next slide, you can also see the ROCE and the return on equity development for the last 2 years. So overall, we always had with our investments about 19% to 25% in these two metrics in these two figures. And so you can see every euro which we invest has a return rate of at least 19% or when you regard the return on equity of 25%. So this is very important to mention here because sometimes people ask us to say, how can you spend 8% or 9% for the interest rate of Nordic bond when you only have a return -- when you only have an EBITDA margin of 8% or 9%, how does it work?

And we always show, okay, this is nice to know that our margin is 8% or 9% but it is important to underline what is our return on equity here and what is this number and the number is above 20%. And you can see that with a strong portfolio discipline and a really strong focus that we want to be more active in the portfolio management, we want to optimize our return on invest and want to make sure that we have good companies in our portfolio.

Sometimes, of course, a company can also have a bad development. This could always occur. We have more than 45 different companies in our group consolidated in our group. And so it can always be that one company is not performing perfectly. But of course, it is our obligation as a management to make a decision, should we change that, should we sell it or should we do something else with the company.

And this is what we call the disciplined approach to optimize our portfolio. Also here, you can see our M&A activity. So in our guidance for -- at the beginning of the year, we communicated that we expect around 5 to 8 acquisitions for this year. And actually, we expect a reduced number.

So we decided as a Management Board that we want to make less acquisitions this year because the integration takes a very long time, and we want to make sure that our acquisitions are integrated in a very good way and 11 signings are maybe a bit too much for the organization. So we adjusted this number to low figures, so 5 to 6 signings this year, and we could also imagine to make 1 or 2 divestments in this year. So AI.

AI. AI is not the best word for us. We changed to an AI first strategy and cost reduction program. Today, around 12% of our processes are already optimized. In the next 5 years, we expect these figures to exceed to more than 60%. The strongest impact we think will come in software development, online marketing, HR and finance and content creation. Important, this strategy supports both scalability and profitability at the same time.

As we continue to grow organically and through acquisitions, AEP becomes a key lever to integrate businesses faster and operate the platform more efficiently. And when we jump over to the next slide. This slide explains how we use AI not only as a technology initiative, but as a directly profitability driver.

Our approach is clear, AI first. For us, AI is primarily cost efficiency and scalability program. The biggest impact in 2026 will become the software development and marketing. On the other side, we could reduce in human resources and the costs and the headcount in all subsidiaries.

And the new structure of CPG needs less executive. And what's really changing, and we see that all is the customer behavior. And that's a really big impact for us. And our goal is clear sustainable margin improvement through technology-driven operational efficiency.

Thank you for that. And as you can imagine, this has also impact on our own organization. That means if we reduce the number of organization levels and if we reduce the number of MDs, this has a big impact on our group. But we think that the cost efficiency and the AI efficiency is so high that we can go really this step and bring the organization to the next level here.

When we have an outlook on our strategy and here, you can see our vision for 2030. So as you can see here, the revenue is going to be more than EUR 3 billion, what we plan for the next years to 2030. We want to achieve double-digit margins and want to make sure that we also reduce the leverage. So here, you can find the new figures for 1.0% to 1.4% leverage. So this is definitely reduced to everything what we presented before.

And the number of partners, this is our key driver for further growth. We expect to be more than 40,000 active in different industries, and we want to achieve more than 50 covered industries. Also here, you see some more details on our strategic dimension. We are right now still very active in the region of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Netherlands. So around 70% was generated in these countries. And we strongly believe that we want to expand into further other European countries and also make sure that our U.S. expansion is getting a bigger footprint and we want to make sure that more platforms are active in the United States.

On the right side, you also see our M&A approach. As we already mentioned, we want to reduce the number of further acquisitions slightly and want to make sure that our TPG ONE is perfectly integrated and that we can grow together with these subsidiaries in our group. And on the right side, on the bottom, you can also see our Optics segment, which is running in a very good way.

So we are very happy with that investment. We achieved an EBITDA margin of more than 25%, which is pretty high compared to our other activities. And we want to expand to up to 60 stores in the next years. And currently, we have almost 30 stores.

So I think we are quite good on track, and we can combine it with our online platform, MyGlasses. Here, you see our guidance, which we already confirmed for this year. So this is a guidance without the acquisition of AP, it is unchanged. And within this, we confirm our guidance. And also here, you can see our guidance on a pro forma basis, including the case of AEP.

Here you see our next touch points. They are all on our Investor Relations page. And we invite you all to come to our annual meeting. It's physical because it's very important for us to get a personal in touch of you.

All the documents are online on our Investor Relations website. We had some roadshows in Switzerland. We will do some roadshows in Amsterdam, and we will be in June in Paris. And if you don't follow actually our newsletter, then you have the QR code here to get all the information from the platform group.

Thank you very much. And now we can start with our Q&A.

Thank you so much for the presentation. So with this, we are happy to take your questions if you may have. [Operator Instructions] And during the presentation, we received a couple of questions. So we will start with the first one. Can you give us an update on the EAP acquisition and especially to the planned new financing structure?

Yes. So we already provided this information. So let me just share the screen again as you can see that. So we provided this update for you right here -- so here, you can find it on Slide 11. So feel free if you have further questions on that. And you ask also for our vision without AEP and with AEP. So we already presented that in the last year -- in the last presentation.

And so whenever you have questions, just feel free to contact us. You also asked the question of new capital increase. So we had two capital increases, which you mentioned here of EUR 9.8 million. So these are two investors, one investor from Switzerland and one investor from Germany. And so you can also see that on the German public company register. You wanted to have a some more detailed overview on the higher trade volumes of shares.

And actually, maybe Nathalie can give you some short update on that because as you already mentioned, the trade volume of our shares increased over the last 2 years. And we are quite happy with that because as you also know, the free float is also increased in our shares. So I did not sell shares, but we saw that the free float with the capital increase was higher in percentage.

And so of course, the trade volume is higher, especially on [ Xetra ]. Nathalie you want to mention something here?

Yes. As Dominik said, the trading volume is increasing. But on the other side, we have some days with smaller volumes and some days with higher volumes with no news flow. I mean everybody could see this on the different regional changes, but we think it's a good sign to have more trading here.

Yes. Next question is about the question regarding the bond price. You mentioned that the bond price is lower compared to the initial price and despite the fact that the performance of TPG is outstanding, how you're thinking of the refinancing it as a maturity is approaching. So to answer that, our maturity is in the mid of 2028. We have -- I think, good perspective, how to refinance it or how to pay it back with our cash flow.

And so you will get definitely an update 6 months before that so that you have a full perspective and transparent view on that. Next question is regard to the share price. So you asked that this is not reflecting the financial performance and that also maybe another auditor could help and restore this confidence and other things. And yes, so actually, as a CEO, I don't want to comment the share price because this is a market price, although I have not a real influence on that.

But yes, we agree with you that definitely there is an upside potential. And -- if there is a loss of confidence, it's up to you. We get different feedbacks. So we also get a lot of positive feedback. So I'm not sure if this is a majority or not. But yes, it is your own decision, absolutely.

Next question is regarding the double-digit adjusted EBITDA target. And it was a question with AEP, is it still possible or not? Definitely, with AEP, it is more difficult to achieve that. And AEP also when we integrate them, has to achieve higher margins that we can achieve that. Otherwise, this is very difficult.

Next question is about how many shares were issued since 2026 January. Here, you can go on our public page. You can see the number of shares there. And that is the current number of shares. The interest rates, given your bond is fixed rate and matures in 2028, can you quantify your actual floating rate exposure today? So actually, I don't know what is the rate -- floating rate exposure, to be honest.

And -- but maybe you ask what kind of interest rate we expect in 2028. Maybe this is a question. And we would assume that it will be more or less on the same level. And yes, I think this is our estimation currently. Maybe it can be a little bit higher. It depends on the interest rate in 2 years. There's also another question regarding buyback of some bonds in the open market. And of course, this is definitely an option.

So together with our Supervisory Board, we discussed that. And yes, maybe if we make a decision on that point, we will update you. But yes, this could be, of course, a potential decision point. Then somebody is asking us, [indiscernible] for the closing conditions of AEP. So actually, this is a confident contract, so we cannot give you details on that. But there are closing conditions, CPs on both sides, and we are still working together with the seller on these points.

And if they are done, we can continue there. There's the next question about the AGM authorization of capital measures to finance AP. No, if we don't want to plan to finance the acquisition with such kind of capital increase. This is not our plan.

Next question was about the development of the bank debt. So you say that thank you for the strong quarter results. What level of bank debt is TPG aiming for end of the year? So actually, we always have relational bank debt figures. But if you ask me on a total level, it will be something between EUR 45 million to EUR 55 million, maybe EUR 60 million totally because there are also credit facilities on a variable basis, and it's hard to calculate exactly where you stand at the end of the year. But this, I think, is a realistic perspective on that.

Next question is about TPG share price. Again, I think I already answered that.

Next question is about the EBITDA margin, which declined by more than gross margin deleveraging of the staff cost. And I don't understand the question, to be honest. So -- but yes, it is right. The margin is a little bit lower compared to last year and the gross margin also is a little bit lower. And because of the gross margin is lower, it has a big impact, of course, on the EBITDA and also on the net profit side, definitely. But as I mentioned last year, we had a onetime effect regarding the positive amortization. And so you should consider that you -- without this effect, our last year figures were a little bit lower compared to what we've shown here.

Can you give more color on your plan to pay down debt? And what is the status of the decisions and relationship with existing lenders? So actually, our bond lenders, our bondholders, they have a formal contract regarding the Nordic bond, and we plan to reduce the bank debt, as we mentioned in the presentation, this year and also next year. So it is a continuous process here, and we think that we have a good strategy to reduce it and also to reduce our interest costs because, as you know, interest costs are -- a point of our P&L.

And of course, we want to reduce that. Can you give more color on the EBITDA adjustment of the decrease of 90 percentage points as the gross margin was only down by 40 percentage points. Yes, this is right. And in total, the gross margin, of course, has a higher effect in the decrease compared to the other things. So when you just see the relational HR figures, for example, the personnel costs, it is not so relevant compared to the material expenses. So actually, this is the most important cost driver in our structure.

You mentioned that you achieved 2.0 leverage in Q1. Why leverage decreased materially from here given ongoing M&A? Well, as you know, M&A, we do with three different components when we pay it. So on the one side, we have cash component. On the second side, we have debt. And on the third side, we also use earnouts and sometimes shares. So this combination of these three instruments, I think, are very important to underline why we develop it over the time and why we have a good mixture when we make M&A activity.

Next question is about the stated target is 1.0 to 1.4 leverage by 2030. How much of this can be achieved with ongoing M&A? Well, actually, we cannot make a forecast on how much M&A we will do in 3 years. This is not possible. But you can be sure that when we communicate such a goal, we want to achieve that, and we took the right measures to achieve this goal in the next years.

How many acquisitions are planned in Optics and Hearing? Definitely, we will make acquisitions this year, at least 1 or 2 in the Optics and Hearing segment, and this is definitely one of our focus.

TPG Pay is it still working? Yes, it is, and we have successful projects here. I think this is a good idea that we can communicate that in the next Capital Markets Day, and then we can give you a more detailed overview on our status there and what we have achieved there.

You mentioned divestments in 2026. What companies does this concern? Nonperforming assets question mark. No, these were companies which we also communicated in our corporate deals that we sold them last year. These were companies with revenues below EUR 1 million, where we decided this is too small for us where we do not want to continue there because we have the same management attention.

We have the same capability there, but we think that our investments are better and bigger assets, and we want to force that.

Can you give us an update on the strategy regarding U.S.A.? Yes. So we increased the number of sales channels there. We also connected more partners to United States selling activities. What we did not so far is to open an office with people there. So this is one of the next steps, which we carefully do because you can easily lose money when you enter a market in a not very good way.

And so we make it step by step. We have three steps. First thing is selling there. Second is build up an office there and run our own platforms. And third step is connecting local U.S. retailers to our platforms.

Next thing is about CHRONEXT. Maybe you should also maybe contact directly the people there because we do not comment individual subsidiaries here.

Do you plan further share issuance? Could you please share any guidance about potential size? So actually, we have no guidance on that. So we do not plan to double the number of shares. That's not what we plan here. But of course, it can be some -- with some investors where we have close and long-term relationship, we can always consider that because if the parties are interesting and contribute something to the growth and profitability of our company, we are open to that.

Are you aware of any legal or other restrictions preventing professional investors to invest in share? No. I don't know anyone.

Great first results. Thank you for that. So what is your thought process on equity issuing? Are you planning to issue more shares in the near future regarding M&A and for reducing leverage? So when we make M&A activities, I would say, in half of the transactions, we sometimes use shares. So for example, Nathalie mentioned the acquisition of the Schuh online store, the sneaker store. And therefore, we made a small capital increase for the seller of the company, and they received the shares, and it is a long-term relationship where we think this is worth to do, and they have a strong connection to our group.

Since share buybacks are not an option at the moment due to your bond covenants, yes, you're right. Are you willing to repay the bond earlier in order to start share buybacks at this share price? Good question. Yes, it could be an option. But on the other side, it is not so easy to make a rebuy of the bond because when you start doing that, you have directly a price impact that it will go up very fast again. So right now, we made no decision on that. And so I cannot give you an update here.

All right. So these have been all the questions in the chat.

Great. Then with this, I think we would come to the end of today's call. So thank you, everyone, for joining and your shown interest. So maybe if there are some further questions, Nathalie will be happy to assist you. And with this, Mr. Benner, some final remarks from your side.

Feel free to contact us. Nathalie, you can always reach out by e-mail or cell phone and happy to get your feedback. Thank you.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the earnings call of the Platform Group following the publication of the preliminary figures of 2025 and the outlook of 2026. We are delighted to welcome the CEO, Dr. Dominik Benner; as well as Head of Finance and M&A, Bjoern Minnier; as well as Investor Relations, Nathalie Richert who will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation and the results. Afterwards, you will have the possibility to place your questions directly to the management.

Having said this, I'm handing over to you, Dr. Benner. The stage is yours.

Yes. Thank you, Judith, and welcome to everybody on this call today. So first of all, we would like to give you a short update about the current development of our group. As you know that we published an announcement yesterday regarding our significant acquisition, we will also give you a short update on that acquisition and the strategy behind this acquisition. And after this, we continue with our financial figures for 2025, which we published also yesterday.

So let us start. So currently, you see our management structure with the Supervisory Board and our management. Today, Mr. Minnier, Ms. Richert and me, will present the current status of the numbers and also our current strategic initiatives.

And let us just jump directly to the current development. So I would start directly with Nathalie.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining. The Platform Group is still a young company. We are on the capital markets since 2023. And since the end of 2022, our share price has increased by approximately 39% despite a challenging market environment where benchmark indices performed weaker.

From a capital market perspective, we are supported by 7 active research providers and the average target price is clearly above the current share price, reflecting confidence in our long-term strategy.

On the next slide, in 2025 and beyond, we are intensifying our dialogue with European and international investors. through targeted road shows, conferences and direct one-on-one engagement.

Trading activity increased year-on-year. You see that on the slide, supported by more active investor outreach. We also see an higher engagement from international investors. Our objective is a stable, long-term oriented shareholder structure.

On the next slide, you see our share and bond performance in 2025. We are not happy with that development. Our share price declined by 29%. The development was driven by market volatility, investor structure and specific one-off effects rather than a change in operational performance. It was driven by a fund redemption, what is now over, and we can move forward. Since January, we have registered shares. This provides us with an increasing visibility on our shareholder base.

From an [ IR ] perspective, this is an important step towards more targeted, transparent and proactive investor communication. Alongside this, our focus remains on operational execution and disciplined capital markets allocation.

Turning to the bond. Since December, we were technical in nature and largely driven by market structure, not fundamentals. Larger sell orders executed on German trading venues lead to following on selling in small ticket sizes across a highly fragmented and illiquid German market. At the same time, the bond stays stable on the Oslo Stock Exchange. There was no change in our operating performance.

We fully acknowledge investor questions, and we believe the recent price movements do not reflect the underlying fundamentals on the business. We believe that better transparency and closer engagement will support sustainable value creation over time. I will hand over to Dominik.

All right. Thank you for this. And so we continue with the current status of our portfolio companies. Here you see our current status, which is segmented into 5 different segments. So on the left side, you see the Consumer Goods segment, the Industrial Goods segment. And since last year, since mid of last year, we also have the Optics & Hearing segment. Additionally, you find on the bottom line, the freight goods segment and the Pharma and Retail Goods segment. So those are segments which are quite important and which are growing on a very good development, and we are very happy to see this development in the last year.

When we look a little bit more on the M&A detail side, you see that we have strengthened our existing segments. So in the last year, we have acquired 2 relevant companies in the luxury goods segment, one is Joli Closet. It's a company based in Paris. They are focusing on vintage luxury products, and it is 43einhalb. This is a shoe sneaker company in the luxury sector here in Germany, and we acquired them by January this year.

On the pharma side, we will come to that later that you get an overview on these developments. On the furniture side, we already had 2 existing platforms. We acquired a third one. And with the B2B SaaS business, fintus, we acquired them also last year, a very successful SaaS software company, and they are making platforms for financial institutions in Germany.

On the right side, if you see that we also entered new industries. For example, Optics & Hearing, that was one of our major acquisition last year. So we bought different companies. In total, we have 28 stores already. We have a successful online platform where we sell online glasses and sunglasses. Additionally, we acquired 2 companies, which are called Herbertz and Lyra Pet, both very much focused in the niche industry like pet food and like outdoor equipment.

And on the right side, if you see one of our latest acquisitions, it is called Weconnect Work. It's a platform for construction businesses. And on this platform, you can book as a business company, construction operators. And yes, they have also a very profitable niche business here.

When we go forward, you see also our luxury portfolio. As you know, since 2022, we are engaged in the luxury sector. By end of 2022, we acquired fashionette. And since this time, we made some additional acquisitions to go forward in this industry and to make sure that we get a bigger footprint there and also to find attractive niches in this luxury segment, for example, vintage goods where we can expand our revenues and our profits.

On the next page, you see a very relevant overview of our partner development. Why we do show you this year? Sometimes people ask us, why do you grow in a stagnating market. And the backbone of our growth is always that we want to increase the number of partners. Partners means retailers, partners means the manufacturers. And when we have more partners, we get more products from them. And when we have more products, we directly increase our total number of customers because more customers are attracted to our online shops and to our goods.

And so as you can see here in 2023, we started with more than 5,500 partners. We have increased it a lot since last year. So last year, we increased it organically to more than 7,000 partners. And additionally, we reached more than 6,500 new partners, and we did it with acquiring companies like Avocadostore, like Winkelstraat, just for an example, these are very successful companies in their niche segments. And yes, they are connected with local partners, retailers and online retailers.

On the right side, you see the development for 2025. So here, you see that we have a very strong organic growth here. That means in our existing platforms, we attracted a lot of new partners. And you also see that we have acquired some new companies here like Joli Closet or like Herbertz, Lyra Pet, and they are also contributing to this growing number of partners. Well, that means with that strategy, we can also increase this year in 2026, our number of partners, and we expect to have more than 18,000 partners by end of this year just from an organic perspective.

When I go a little bit further, you see our latest acquisitions. So here, you can see the acquisition of apothekia. This is a market leader for digital learning and digital education in the pharmaceutical sector. They are working for hundreds of different manufacturers, like Novartis, like Roche and so on. And they make it for almost all the pharmacies here in Germany. So they are quite well connected.

On the right side, you see the acquisition of AEP, a company which we will present to you now for some more updates on that. And also important, you see that we made the acquisition of 43einhalb. This is a little bit strange name, but a very successful niche player in the fashion sneaker sector and with a very high price level on the average price.

We also made the change in our organizational structure. So last year, we announced that we will change from AG structure to KGaA. We approved that by our AGM in the summer. And finally, we realized this strategy by end of last year. So now we are officially the KGaA. And we also have registered shares that we can work with that and have our control on all our shares and know who is the owner and know who is selling and buying our shares every day.

And very important also to understand here is that we also have our organizational structure. You see below our holding structure, which is not operationally organized. You see below that, we have our operational holdings and sub holdings like the Platform Group AG, like fashionette GmbH and Brandfield BV and Fastylo BV on the right side. These are both located in the Netherlands, and they are in our company, in our group for more than 4 years already.

All right. So we continue with our AEP acquisition. That's the deal what we announced yesterday. And it's -- I think it's very important to give you a better understanding on why we did it, what's our strategic rationale behind that and why we think that this is a good strategic move to continue with that and to make sure that we have a good progress in this industry in the future.

So first of all, you see our overview on the companies which we've acquired in the last few years. So on the left side, you see ApoNow. This is a company which we acquired in 2021. We increased our share to 80% in the last few years, and they are connecting more than 38,000 pharmacies, local pharmacies with manufacturers. So it's really an attractive niche business. And we make sure that all the pharmacies which are connected to our system that they get online orders from all the -- where we sell. And so we can make sure that they all get the orders every day to the local pharmacy.

On the right side, you see apothekia. apothekia is an online education platform, which is a market leader in Germany, as I mentioned. They have more than 8,000 pharmacies working with them, working with the system. And this is also quite important to understand that this is a perfect combination that we make all the online orders for the pharmacy, that we make the education for the pharmacy, and now it is the next step that AEP is the central order platform that we can work together with them.

So here, you can see the structural chart on why we think that this is a very good strategic acquisition. On the left side, you see the sourcing platform. So the manufacturers in the pharmaceutical industry sell their products to AEP. On the bottom, you see the educational platform. In the center of this chart, you see the pharmacies, and we try to cover all the relevant services and needs of pharmacy to really become an important partner for them and to really complete the value chain in the sector. So this is our really strategic focus on how we can increase our footprint there, how we can realize synergies and how we can make sure that we are a good partner and supporter of local pharmacies. That is our intention here, and that is how we want to go further with this.

So on this slide, if you see the question on, is it a good business to be in? Because, of course, we get questions from our analysts or from shareholders when they ask us, is this business healthy? Do you think that the pharmaceutical business is a good business? And can you really increase revenue and profit there? So overall, I think you know that this market is right now in a very much customer focused because new companies like dm and Rossmann, they are entering the market right now. For us, they are not a competitor because we are not an online seller here.

So I think it's quite attractive to see this development, and we see that more and more competition is going to be there. And I think we can be proud to support the local pharmacies here and also to make sure that they have a stable partner and to really increase the revenue together with them. Because overall, this market is very attractive. You see increasing revenues here. And the regulation, of course, it is always a risk factor. So it's a downside potential that regulatory can change things here, that regulatory can change prices here. But overall, we think that this is a very attractive way how we can increase our numbers here and how we can make sure that we have a good progress in this business here.

So let's start with AEP. On the right side, you see the headquarter of AEP. It is in Bavaria, very close to Schaffenburg and Frankfurt. And you see on the bottom how the headquarters look like. So they have a big logistic hub there. Additionally, they have all their offices there in Alzenau and the company was founded in 2012 as a pharmaceutical wholesaler, as a B2B platform, and they only have B2B revenues. So they are really a pure B2B player. They only have B2B revenues.

Additionally, they had a very good growth perspective in the last years. So in 2021, they started -- they had a revenue level of EUR 500 million. Now they have doubled it within 4 years. And so you can see that there's a really high market dynamic and that you can see that they have a very good market position. They are not the biggest in the market. So they also have additional other competitors like the PHOENIX group, just to mention one. But from the cost-income ratio, from the cost ratio, they are best-in-class, and I'm more than happy that we would like to acquire them and combine a good pharma group together with them.

On the bottom, you see the corporate structure. So currently, the Austrian postal company, which is a state-owned or state majority company, they have the majority stake here at AEP. And on the right side, you see that they have some minority shareholders. In total, they have, I think, 5 shareholders.

Yes. And so this is our acquisition process, and I'm very happy that Bjoern Minnier take over for the next pages to give you some more details on AEP. Bjoern you're muted.

So hello to everyone. And in my position, I should be less emotional, but still, I'm very happy that we managed yesterday after a very long process in the acquisition to sign the SPA for AEP. And I believe that the extra about EUR 1 billion, Dominik probably mentioned that right before in sales, the approximately EUR 20 million in revenue, in profit, EBITDA profit will really be a great benefit to our group.

So the AEP, and we have been conducting a deep dive and they are really is a jewel in the pharmaceutical industry. It has excellent connections to the pharmacies and also on the procurement side to the pharmaceutical industry. It is wholesaler, which is -- which has specialized in the industry. And you can see that by a very, very slim cost line, which it has all over the entire production, which is the logistics process, and we are looking right now here at the logistics process. So I'll keep this short.

And overall, this is regular pharmaceutical logistics process. It's asset heavy. As you see, we have to procure the goods at the beginning then we take them in the warehouse. The warehouse is highly automated. It has special areas for different kind of medications. It has regular warmth rooms and also it has cold storage rooms. It has a highly automated picking and packaging process. Same is valid for the shipping, which is being conducted by certain specialty carriers. And the entire delivery is being performed overnight. And this is why it is important that the AEP is located east of Frankfurt, as you have been seeing on the page before because Frankfurt, as most of you might be aware of, is located relatively in the middle of Germany, and so we can reach all areas in Germany within specialized overnight process.

As you see, the AEP partners with all major relevant pharmaceutical manufacturers. You can see it's Novartis, it's Bristol-Myers Squibb, it's Pfizer, it's Eli Lilly, it's GlaxoSmithKline, it's Bayer. So all the major brands are a supplier, respectively, a partner of the AEP.

AEP managed a very, very strong growth in sales. From 2021 to 2025, sales have almost doubled from EUR 500 million to now almost EUR 1 billion in sales. The lever behind it is that the AEP in this business is relatively small. So it's not largely inflated. So this is why it has a chance to be a price leader. And it has a broad customer base with about 7,000 pharmacies. It has all the necessary licenses to be a major player in the pharmaceutical market. And we have a very strong educated senior management team and about 250 specialized employees in AEP.

What I like if I look at the business is that the customer base is not too much concentrated on just a few small customers. And what you see here, this is actually almost ideal. You see a spread which is 1/3 each between A, B and C customers. And to have a relatively large group of A customers indicates that you are not depending on just a few and you have a lot of growth potential with the B and C customers. So that's a perfect base to start with.

And you see that the development of the registered customers, pharmacies that is, has been rapidly growing from 1,800 2 years after the start to now 7,000, and there still is a lot of potential left over for further growth. So we can develop the number of registered pharmacies. The process is the signing, as I just mentioned, just happened yesterday. And then we have the cartel procedures, which we have to go through. This is going to be another 2 ideally, maybe up to 4 months. And then we will continue with the closing probably at the end of Q2 in 2026.

All right. So we continue with the financials. Right now, we just have the preliminary figures. So we do not give too many details right now because, of course, the annual report is not finished. We do not have our financial figures audited right now. So these are just an overview of our financials preliminary to the last year 2025. So overall, just to start with that, we had a positive development in 2025. So that means in total, we had 11 signings and acquisitions. And we also had 3 divestments in Q4.

So we mentioned and we announced that we sell 3 very small companies, which are too small for our group, which are not suitable to our size already, and we divested it last year. And very important to underline is that we increased our profitability. So in total, we had an increase of the EBITDA adjusted of more than 65%. And I think this is quite a good result regarding the market circumstances and the increasing loan costs -- the increasing personnel costs in Germany.

Also very important to underline is that we had a good decrease in the operational costs. So that means marketing did not go up, which we expected at the beginning of the year. Distribution is on a stable level. So we are very happy that this is not increasing all the time. And also HR costs, we really try to focus not to hire too many people and also reduce staff when we think that this is necessary and when we think that AI is a relevant driver here.

Additionally, we see excellent conditions for new M&A activity. You saw that in 2025, we made a lot of acquisitions. In 2026, we will continue with that. That means we are very confident that we see good targets and that we will buy other companies this year for a very reasonable price and for good valuation levels.

Very important to underline is that we have our TPG One software, and that means we can connect partners like local retailers in a very fast time. We expect on average less than 4 months when we adapt and integrate new partners on our platform. And so this is a very good basis how we can scale our business and how we can also enter into new industries.

Our 5 established segments continue to grow. So in all our segments, we had a growth in the revenue and also the profits and the numbers of partners achieved a record level of more than 16,600. So this is the highest level achieved -- we ever had in our company, and we are a little bit proud of that because not in every industry, you see so many partners coming to us. But overall, we are on a very good track for that.

On the right side, you see that we have increased our guidance 2x last year, and we achieved a revenue of EUR 728 million, and this was in the upper half of our own forecast range. And the EBITDA adjusted was EUR 55 million, which is an increase of 65%. So here, again, you can see the summary of the guidance for the revenue, for the EBITDA and the leverage. And I will go on the details on the next page.

So GMV increased by 44% to EUR 1.3 billion. Revenue increased by 39% to EUR 728 million. Here, you can see the EBITDA adjusted, we increased from EUR 33 million to EUR 55 million. And on the right side, you see the net profit, which increased to EUR 46.5 million last year.

And also when you see it on the long-term perspective, you see the 3-year perspective, we saw, I think, a very stable and continuous growth path as well as for the revenue and also for the EBITDA margin. As you know, we try to increase our margin. And so we are quite confident that we will also do it this year.

When we go a little bit more into the details, you can see here our preliminary financial figures for the P&L statement. So right now, we have no full balance sheet statement, but you can already see our preliminary unaudited financial figures for 2025. So here you can see that our other revenue amount was less compared to last year. That is directly relating to the PPA effects. The PPA effects were around EUR 18 million last year. So it was less than 2024. And so it was less other revenues compared to 2024.

The gross margin, also important, it was on a stable level Actually, we expected a little bit more, to be honest. But in the last quarter, in Q4, we saw lower margins and we saw a higher price volatility due to black week and cyber week, and so the margin was a little bit lower-than-expected from our side.

Marketing cost was 5.9%. This is pretty much in line with our Q3 figures. Distribution costs were on the same level. So there was no change in the percentage and HR costs was a little bit less because we have some scale effects in the revenue growth.

The EBITDA was EUR 55 million, which represents 7.6% compared to our net revenue.

On the earnings side, you see that earnings per share was EUR 2.26, and this is a growth of 41%. This is pretty much in line with our forecast. And actually, we just had lower PPA effects compared to last year, so also this is affecting these numbers.

Our minority results were EUR 4.5 million due to the new acquired companies in 2024 and 2025. As you know, we make a lot of 50.1% or 51% acquisitions at the beginning and increase our share over time. The debt leverage, also to show that, we have a range in our forecast. And last year, we achieved a debt leverage of 2.2, and we want to decrease it within the next few years.

Here, also important to show you that is our organic and inorganic or nonorganic growth, because we always get the question on how do you grow organically? How much was from M&A activity in the last 12 months? Here, you see the overview. So compared to 2024, we increased our organic growth. So we had more organic growth compared to last year. Overall, in 2025, we had 63% organic growth and the rest was nonorganic.

Why do we do that? Why do we get organic growth? This is very simple. You see it on the right side. So we have more partners. We have 24% more products compared to 2024. And we have also a good growth rate in the Consumer Goods segment and in the freight goods segment.

Also, here you see the relevance of artificial intelligence. This is a thing what we did not really covered 2 years ago. So last year, we completely changed our strategy here. We implemented an own AI team, which are really much working for our subsidiaries, and they take care that we have cost effects here that we can reduce the cost basis and that we can increase the automation on our process here.

And you see that last year, we only had 12% of our group-wide processes being automized or AI affected. This is going to be changed dramatically in the next years. So we expect an increase to more than 60%. That means 60% of our processes in our company will be affected and possibly changed with AI. And this is a huge impact in our organization and it is affecting directly the departments, the departments like software development, like online marketing, HR finance and content creation.

All right. So coming to the last chapter of our call today, you see our vision for 2023. This is what we already presented to you last year. So it is not in your slide, but we just want to remember what was our starting point when we presented that. So our goal was that until 2030, we want to achieve a revenue of EUR 3 billion. We want to achieve double-digit margins and a leverage below 1.8 as a multiplier. And we want to be in 50 industries at least and to have more than 40,000 partners.

When we look on the development on this path, you see that in 2022, we started with EUR 300 million. So this year, we expect stand-alone EUR 1 billion revenues. And for 2030, we expect it according to our last year guidance that we want to increase it to EUR 3 billion.

How do we do that? If you have seen that we have different strategies, how to achieve that. And here you see that organic is quite the most important one. So with organic growth like new partners or new products, we see the most relevant growth coming to the EUR 3 billion. The second is the synergies. So we want to enter new industries and also want to enter into the North American market.

And on the right side, you see that we also want to do M&A in existing segments. And that is what we do right now also this year. So AEP was an acquisition or is an acquisition, which is running this year. We hope that everything will go well and that we can acquire the company.

And here, you can see a guidance on the one side without AEP and on the other side with AEP. So including AEP, if we close this transaction in the next month, you see that our pro forma revenue will go up to EUR 2 billion. Our pro forma EBITDA adjusted will be up to EUR 100 million and the GMV will increase up to EUR 3 billion.

And also very important to understand, AEP has around 7,000 partners, pharmacies. And so the number of partners would also increase from this acquisition. Here, you can see also the charts regarding the stand-alone guidance and the guidance with AEP, so you see for the revenue and also for the EBITDA adjusted. All right, Nathalie.

Yes, Here, you see our financial calendar. We are on many conferences this year and actually scheduled some road shows in Europe. And yes, if you have questions, come back to us at every time we react very soon. And if you are actually not in our Investor Relations newsletter then please join our QR code is in the presentation, and I'm very looking forward to the exchange this year.

Thank you very much for your presentation and the dive into your numbers.[Operator Instructions] And I will give the word to you, Dominik.

Yes. So first question is if the stock dropped without any change in the operational business, why we don't see an aggressive buyback program?

Absolutely. I completely agree with you. The issue is that according to our bond terms, we are not allowed to make a buyback program. So we are not allowed to do that as long as we have the current Nordic bond. Otherwise, of course, we will do that definitely.

Next question. It is about the domains, which domains are most relevant for your results right now. I'm asking from a zero perspective. So this is a technical perspective on Google. So actually, we do not have a chart where we can show our most relevant pages. But of course, you know that fashionette is quite a relevant page. Chronext is a relevant page. 0815 is a very relevant page. And so you can see on our portfolio, which are the bigger Google domains and which are smaller Google domains.

Actually, in the B2B sector, we do not work with online shops, which are public. So these are closed online shops and you see no Google ranking, for example. So HOOD group, for example, they have a really big revenue, but you see no online products available for you because it's only for B2B.

Next question was about the -- could you give an indication on how much cash you spent on acquisitions in full year '25? Would around EUR 50 million cash outflow be a good estimate?

So right now, we did not publish a cash flow statement because it's not finished at this time. We have to consolidate all the different companies and get the preliminary annual reports from them. So right now, we cannot give you an answer on that.

The next question from you was the nature of AEP business? As a pharma seller is to have a high inventory position, how does it fit to the Platform strategy? Actually, yes, the inventory of AEP is between EUR 40 million and EUR 70 million. But on the other side, it is a very fast servicing product. So it is not there for 2 years or something. So every day, it is changing there. And so it is really a part of our pharma strategy to build a pharma group where the Platform Group is the owner and the pharma group should really give a whole perspective on how we can support local pharmacies and how we can cover the full value chain here.

And so this is -- yes, you're right. The inventory is higher than other companies. But on the other side, it's very important for us to cover this value chain piece because this is a very relevant piece for our local pharmacies.

The share price is directly tied to the market, lack of trust in the company, for example, Manager Magazin, why don't you mention it and give more transparency around it? So actually, we do give transparency, and we have an own website where you can see all allegations and our response on that so that we can give you a transparent overview on that. And I think this is a very important step to give you a better understanding on how our perspective is and why we completely deny these allegations.

The number of offline pharmacies decreased by 2% to 3% per year in Germany. So why did AEP grow so fast in the last years?

The answer is very simple. AEP is a very successful company and the number of pharmacies, which are connected and delivering every day, it is increasing. You are right, the number is decreasing, but the number of connected pharmacies is increasing from the AEP side. Additionally, also the revenue is increasing in the market. So the market is getting bigger, the population in Germany is getting older and older, and we spend more on pharmacies and not less. So this is also very important to understand why this is increasing. All right. Let's continue.

A small note in between, please understand that we are only accepting questions via chat box today. For a direct exchange, please contact Investor Relations, Nathalie Richert afterwards.

The next question, Bjoern, maybe you can answer that. The warehouse is owned by AEP or is it leased? Bjoern, you are muted.

Yes, it's leased.

It looks like an EBITDA margin of 2%, I suppose the net margin will be very low or even negative?

No. We have a positive margin, it's a net positive margin. It's a net positive EBITDA, and so it is above the number what you have mentioned.

Then there's a next question regarding the total transaction value. So for reasons of confidentiality, we have no public announcement of the purchase price of the company. So we cannot give you a detail on that.

Okay. The next question about understanding of our group. So when there's a low stock price, why do you think investors do not understand your business or your business model and your future prospects?

Yes, basically, that is may be right because maybe our business is a little bit more complex. We have a lot of different portfolio companies. And yes, you are right. Sometimes it's a little bit difficult to understand it. When we talk with American or North American investors, we see a very high understanding of what we do. They also have some peer group companies there. But you are right, in Germany, sometimes people just do not understand our business model. And it's not just a simple, yes, we buy and sell online products. It's more complex, and we have 5 different segments. This makes it even more complex compared to just one pure-play company, for example, in the fashion sector. So yes, you're right. And yes, we have to really give better understandings and better explanations on how our business model works.

Next question. In the last call, you expected for the full year 2025 an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 58 million and an earnings per share of EUR 2.49. Your current numbers are below. So did the cost in the last quarters had an effect on that? The answer is very simple. We always communicated a range. We increased our guidance last year for 2x already. And this increased guidance, we met as well as in the revenue and in the profit. So I think we can be quite happy on this development. And the Q4 was okay. So we had a good Q4. And to mention that we had good Q4 numbers. But as every time, the Q4 is always the lowest margin in the full year because you have to give higher discounts, you have to participate in the cyber week and the Black Friday week and so on. So this is quite relevant for the margin effect.

Okay. And maybe I would like to add 3 more points why we believe that AEP can grow faster than the market. First of all, we plan to focus on specialty pharma, which is very, very high sales prices. This is, for example, in the area of cancer, oncology, it's immunology. These are Rx medi communications where you have very high prices and where you can rapidly boost your sales.

Secondly, all cold chain products are growing faster than the market, and AEP is very professional with their cold chain logistics, which they have. And it's actually new areas. I mentioned earlier on blistering, for example, would be a service we are analyzing to offer. Blistering means that actually in the warehouse, you are packaging the single medi communication for patients in hospitals, for example, or for the pharmacies. And this is an extra service which is paid well.

Thank you. So next point was that we announced a raise an increase of our shares, you give us more details on that. So yes, we did 2 capital increases because 2 long-term investors contacted us and said, we want to invest in your company. We have a strong perspective on the future on that. And so we offer this opportunity. And it is also part of our strategy that we have long-term shareholders besides the Benner Holding. And so yes, this is the background for that.

And it was a market price, of course. So when they signed a capital increase, it was a market price as of the days.

Why was the EBITDA margin in Q4 was lower than in Q4 2024? Yes, so there was almost the same margin. So there was not a big difference. But yes, it was slightly below that because we had some companies with lower margins, which are more active in the Q4 this year, and they were not active in the last year. So for example, Lyra Pet and Herbertz, they are both companies, which came to us in 2025, and they had affected that a little bit in this last quarter.

In sum, what multiplier did you pay for the acquisition? As you mentioned, we do not communicate the purchase price as reasons of confidentiality are in our contract. So we cannot give you the answer here. What.

Is your goal for the EBITDA margin of the pharma business? Well, we expect between 2% and 4% of the EBITDA margin in IFRS. And this is currently our expectation in this market. And this is very similar to our competitors here in this market.

And your next question is about the expectation after AEP acquisition? So currently, we have 2 business cases and 2 different guidances in the market. And right now, we expect 2% to 4% margin in the long term or a midterm perspective for the pharmaceutical group here.

Is there any chance to publish main KPIs on a monthly basis? Of course, not because I don't know any company in the stock market who publishes monthly statements with KPIs.

So next question is a question to Bjoern. How resilient are AEP's earnings under continued pharmacy pressures? Pharmacies are more and more under financial stress. How do you see the structural risk? It seems that in the business cash flow, it's working capital driven, it's not EBITDA driven.

What I think this is not correct, but Bjoern, maybe you can answer that directly.

Well, you have to understand how the market works and the market is -- we indicated that it is low margin, but it is high volume. And if you take this into consideration, then you know why we still pursue that deal.

Yes. Okay. So we continue legendary compounders like Mark Leonard of Constellation Software and Warren Buffett view their shares not as a mere paper, but as an extremely prestigious currency. And are you concerned that the capital increase at current price level and a fire selling? No, we make no fire sale here.

We have 2 long-term investors working together with us. And this is, I think, a very attractive way how we can really have a close relation with them. And if they would have asked us 2 years ago, we would have done it, and we also would do that next year if they would have asked us in 2 years or next year, whatever. So this is really a thing or we say this is a good and attractive way how we can work together with them.

Next question, why didn't a PE buy AEP? I don't know. There was a bidding process. So there was a bidding process of a lot of companies and competitors and maybe also PE players were part of that. But at the end, we got this signing here.

So there's a next question regarding the 2026 perspective on the forecast for AEP. You're right, for 2026, management expects strongly increasing revenues to around EUR 1.3 billion with an EBITDA margin of approximately 1%. Actually, I don't know where you got this from. I don't know this number. So I cannot confirm this number. In our business case, we have different numbers. So we expect a revenue of at least EUR 1 billion and a margin of at least EUR 20 million EBITDA.

[ Harold Wolf ], mwb research. Two questions. How do Contracta GmbH and AEP compete with each other in a market worth? Very simple answer. They have the same clients. So Contracta is a very small company compared to AEP, but the problem is they also only work for pharmacies and there's an overlap, and this is quite critical when you work with the Catalent in Germany and when you want to get an approval there. So it was the decision from us and from the seller that we should say, okay, this is dangerous when we combine it together. And so we don't want to risk this control process with Catalent.

Could you please provide further details regarding the financing structure of the deal? Yes, we will do. But as you know from our yesterday's announcement, we will give an update until March this year, how we can make the whole finance structure when we do the AEP deal and how it's going to look like in the future. So yes, we will provide you an update, but not now, we will do it until March this year.

Next question. The audio wasn't clear. Please share why you can't do a buyback again. Yes, again, the answer is very simple. We have a Nordic bond and in the Nordic bond prospect, it is not allowed to make buyback programs as long we have the bond. So it is not allowed, basically, I would do it. I think it's a good investment, but right now, we are not allowed to do that. If we would like to change it, we have to do a written procedure with all the bondholders that we get allowance for that, and that is not so easy.

Okay. We get so many questions. I think in terms of -- when I look on the time line, we should focus on 5 last questions. So there's another question regarding the stock decline and the bond price.

Yes, I think Nathalie already mentioned that we saw a decline in the stock price and the share price in the last 4 months. And maybe you know that Paladin was one of our major investors and they sold all the shares. They reduced their fund also by a lot of amounts. And so that was the reason why we saw a big decline here.

And regarding the bond price, Nathalie already showed you the difference between the Oslo Exchange and the German Exchange. And we saw -- she already explained that to you.

How will the new acquisitions be financed? We always have a finance strategy from 2 components. So we have own equity, own cash and also debt with our banking partners, and that's also how we do our further and upcoming acquisitions in the next 12 months or 24 months.

What is happening with your entry into the U.S. market? We prepared already. So we are on a very good track, and you can be sure that you get some announcements this year regarding our U.S. entry.

Do you have a guidance on 2026 expected free cash flow? Very simple answer, we do not give guidance on free cash flow.

Next question about the big 4 auditors. Do you want to change to the big 4 auditors? Well, we are generally open to that. So we've worked together with KPMG until 2019. We've worked together with Ernst & Young until 2022 or '23. And now we have a smaller auditor. But of course, we can imagine that on the next AGM, maybe we propose another auditor. So in general, we are open to that, and we are happy to discuss it with our investors.

So 2 last questions. Is the purchase price of AEP still in the 2 to 5x range? Or did TPG spend more for this pharma acquisitions?

Well, again, we did not disclose how much the purchase price was, but you can expect that we try to be in line with our general expectation, how much we pay for that.

There's another important question. So when AEP has only 2% margin, how does it fit to your overall margin strategy in 2030? This is very important. Of course, AEP has currently 2%. Maybe we increase it to 3% or 4% margin, but it's not going to be more. And so if we would combine these businesses here, indeed, we would have lower margins, but total euro total higher margins. So it is, in fact, that if we merge and bring it together, the euro margins will go up and the percentage margin will be diluted because of the AEP acquisition, of course, this is just mathematically.

Do you acquire 100% of AEP? Yes. We acquired 100%. What about synergies from AEP? This is a detailed question. We should do this maybe in the next call. This is too much detail for this discussion here now.

And the last question was about the guidance for 2030. So the EBITDA margins with double digits are still valid. And how can you achieve that? It is the same answer as I did already give you in my last comment.

Okay. So I think we've covered 80% of the questions in our time here. And Nathalie is always available for you for further questions, and we can also offer you direct calls, one-on-one meetings if you want. And I'm happy to answer then you up for your left questions here.

Thank you very much, Dr. Benner and Mr. Minnier. Thank you, Ms. Richert, for your presentation for answering the questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please understand that we are not able to answer all the questions during this call today as we had over 140 participants today.

Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, please feel free to get in contact with Nathalie Richert afterwards for further questions and a wonderful day. Thank you.

Thank you. Bye.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to today's business update call of the Platform Group AG. I'm delighted to welcome CEO, Dr. Dominik Benner; and Head of Investor Relations, Nathalie Richert. The Executive Board will present TPG's 5-year vision until 2030 and inform us on current M&A topics. Please note that in today's call, we will only provide the chat to take your questions after the presentation.

And with this, Dr. Benner, the stage is yours.

Yes. Thank you, Judith. Thank you for the introduction and also a warm welcome to the audience from my side. Today, we present our Vision 2030, and this is quite an important part of our corporate strategy because we have a very strong growth plan for our group. And so let's just reflect with the current position here. So Nathalie and me will present today, and we will go through the next and following slides on this presentation.

So here, you can see the overview of our group. As you can see here, we had a pretty good and very successful development over the last years. So we are almost for 2.5 years at the stock exchange. And all our guidance we always delivered and all our outlooks for revenue, for profit and so on, they were, I think, quite reliable. And as you can see here, we also had a good increase in our EPS ratio, and we also can increase our margins.

And the margin is a very important point today because we will outline how we will increase it, and we will show you how we can achieve higher margin levels in the next years. So the background of our company, as you know, is very old. So one of my ancestors started the business in 1882 with a brick-and-mortar store. And in 2012, we changed the company completely towards e-commerce and platform strategy, and this change was quite successful.

So now for 14 years, we run this business. And today, we have the e-commerce activities for almost 16,000 partners. And we do it because we now have almost 7 million customers in 28 different industries. And the key features is really that we are an asset-light model. So we do not have huge inventory. We can really scale it up with our software. And I think we have a pretty good process excellence established in our company. Nathalie, when we look at the stock, what can you say here?

Yes, we are a scale-listed company in Frankfurt, that's a growth segment. And we get into scale via a reverse IPO. That means that you can see in the chart, since 2023, we are a scale listed company, and we started to enter fashionette in the year-end of 2021 -- 2022. And you see we have a very good development since that. And we have 6 houses which cover us. You can see the research reports on our Investor Relations web page. And we -- you can trade, TRADEGATE and [indiscernible], and we have a market cap in average from EUR 200 million.

And very interesting why we show you that what we see since the last year, since September 2024, we have a very good development in international trading that you can see in the chart. We have more than 50% more international trading -- and on the other side, what you see, and I think that's very important for our scaled listed company, our liquidity continues to strengthen. That means we have now 4x more trading volume per month than a year ago. And in August, you see that the trading volume was a little bit higher. That was because we have news flow with our figures and other topics. Yes. And we engage actually so much with international investors, and I will think our strategy rise in the international market perception will we see in the next years in the trading activities.

Yes. And I hand over to Dominik.

All right. So let's start with our Vision 2030. So here, you can see the cornerstones of our development. So we changed our strategy in 2012 with the digital transformation. This was quite successful. And in 2025, so currently, we run 37 platforms, and we have a huge customer base. And with our platform and our software, we can enter new industries in a very simple way. And when we decide to enter a new industry, we only need 4 months, sometimes 5 months. So it's pretty fast, and we can expand there.

So now we come to our Vision 2030 because it's very important that you understand what kind of business we built here and what is our growth strategy. So we plan for the next 5 years, a total revenue of EUR 3 billion. And the most important thing is that we just don't want to grow because we want to grow. Now we also want to increase our margins. So right now, we are around 8%, and we will really increase that with a lot of different measures. It is not coming by itself.

So we really have to work on that, but we are very optimistic to achieve that. And we will make double-digit margins in the next 2 years, we will achieve it. So this is also possible in 2028, not in 2030. So we will also increase it before. And additionally, we'll also mention the leverage. I will come to that later that we want to decrease our leverage factor. And as you can see here, the basis of our growth is the number of partners. So if we have more partners, we have much more customer base and we have more products, and this is quite important for us.

All right. So how we can do that? I will show you that. So right now, in the last years, when you see that we have a CAGR of 30% each year, and we expect more or less the same level for the next years. So there will be not such a big difference here. And we are quite optimistic that we achieve also in the next year, our growth rate. So as you can see here, when we started in 2022 with the stock listing, we had EUR 330 million revenues.

Next year, we will achieve EUR 1 billion. And the difference to the EUR 3 billion is just a continuous track with our CAGR rate. How does it come with the increased revenue? So we have 3 very important factors. One, it is scale. So when we talk about getting new retailers, new partners, this is the most important thing of our growth rate. And when we want to grow, we have to get more partners and more industries. So this is the most important one. And coming with more partners, we will get more products. And we'll also increase our B2B share. I will show you that. So this is the most important point. So we expect EUR 900 million revenue additionally from this segment.

So when we look on synergies, we will enter new industries, and we will also enter the U.S. market next year. And on the right side, you see also that M&A will also continue to be a relevant part of our company, and this will bring additionally EUR 800 million in the next years.

So let's start with the first point, growth of partners. So as you know, we work for retailers and for manufacturers. And right now, we have around 16,000 partners, and we will increase this number every year. So in the last years, we had always a CAGR of around 15% to 20%, and we will definitely continue with that track. So here, you can see that with the CAGR, we expect another increase of 19% per year, and we will achieve -- we want to achieve 40,000 partners until 2030.

And very important, and this is directly related to that, we will increase our products by more than 220% because every partner brings us new products and new categories, and this is quite important for us to achieve this growth rate in an organic way. Next thing is the B2B share. So right now, we are with 62% in the half year in the 9-month figures. We are very much focused on consumer goods. So this is a B2C business. But in future, we will focus much, much more on B2B. So here, you can see our prediction for 2030 that we will almost achieve 60% revenue from them.

So all the other segments like industrial goods, freight goods and especially B2B, they will come to up to 60% from currently 38%. So this is really important to understand that our growth rate is on all segments. So all segments are growing, but we really want to add much more B2B customers and clients here, and they will bring us additional revenue and profit.

Also important, right now, we cover 28 industries. For 2030, we plan to expand it to 50 industries. So each year, we have to get more industries that we can run our software there and ramp up our platform there. Very important, and we also announced it at our Capital Markets Day, we will enter the U.S. market because it will be one of our core markets. So we have a very specific plan now that we will enter next year. We make it with a low-risk strategy because entering a market is always a difficult project. It's not free of risk. So we always have to manage it that we have to take a low-risk strategy. And we have multiple small steps to enter this market. But now we have a very clear strategy and our strategy is that we start with our own platforms there and start with delivering goods from Europe.

And the next step is also next year that we will acquire 2 companies there, focusing on an e-commerce and platform. And with these companies, we start connecting retailers and partners there. And with this strategy, we can really do this expansion with a very low risk profile, and we really try to avoid any kind of cash burning because we don't want to burn any cash with such an expansion.

Next thing is about our track record. So we will also continue our track record with M&A. In the last 5 years, we had 35 acquisitions. And on average, we had 3 to 11 acquisitions per year. And so when you see here, our return on capital employed was always above 20%. So this is quite a good number when you compare it with our own loan costs, interest costs. And very important is also to mention that we increased the EBITDA margin of our acquired targets by more than 42%. So this is, I think, a very good track record. Not every acquisition is perfect. Not every acquisition is an easy case. But overall, we can be quite happy about our development here, and we will continue with that.

Next point, and this is even more important than revenue, it's about our profit. To increase our profit and to get higher margins, we have several measures, which we will do and which we will execute now. So first one here, you can see our margin development. So in 2023, we had 5% EBITDA margin. We improved it now to 7.5% as our estimation for this year. Maybe we will achieve a little bit higher, and we will directly continue this track to achieve double-digit margins in the next years.

As I mentioned in the introduction, we will also achieve it -- not in 2030, we will achieve it before. So we can also evaluate that in 2028, it's a realistic goal to already achieve double-digit margins with above 10%. So here, we have our internal planning, and we are quite optimistic that we can already achieve it there. And when you see on our portfolio list, and this is also a very clear thing to mention, we acquired a lot of companies here. And we bought big companies, we bought medium companies and small companies. And we decided to focus much more on relevant subsidiaries.

That means we think that very small companies with a very low contribution to our revenue, we will sell them. And we think that they are not much more in our focus anymore. So right now, we think that there are 3 subsidiaries, very small ones. They only have 0.2% of our revenue. They are okay, but they are not big enough for us in the future, and they cost us too much management attention. And so we really have a clear portfolio focus to have much more discipline on that and to strengthen our portfolio and to say, okay, we focus much more on bigger companies instead of small companies where we don't know how long it takes to get them bigger.

Next point is the AI first program. So to be honest, 2 years ago, if you would have asked me how much is AI important for our company, I would say, well, we can use it maybe for some things, but it's not so relevant. But we completely changed our mind there in the last 12 months. So we took all our executives to Silicon Valley to Palo Alto. We really had great workshops and deep dive sessions with the leading companies for AI there. And we realized how important it can be that we have to implement it into our company. And this is just not a buzzword presentation here with AI. This is about changing our company in each of our processes.

So when we started it, right now, we have already optimized 15% of our processes in our group, but this is not enough. We can absolutely not happy with that. We really have to implement it in all our relevant departments and segments. And so this is the biggest project in our company internally. We never had such a big project here and it is affecting almost every process. So here on the bottom, you can see that we will directly change our software development. That means we have to change with AI, our coding system. This is not a thing for some weeks. It's a project for 2 years, but we are very optimistic that we will make a good job there.

The next thing is online marketing because as you might know, online marketing is a very automated and very efficient process already, and AI will also change that. When you look go on Google, you see all the AI results already, and this will bring a humongous change in the e-commerce world. Additionally, also in the content creation, you know that we make a lot of pictures, content creation with models and so on. We will ramp it down by 50% because we can do it with AI in the future, and we already started with that.

And the last point is HR and finance. We think that accounting can be much more simplified with AI, and we can use the people from the accounting department for much better things than just stupid things in the accounting system.

Next part is the leverage. Also very important. We think that we can decrease our leverage ratio by a lot. So right now, we have 2.2 leverage ratio, and that means net debt to EBITDA adjusted, and we will decrease it in the next years, and we can also decline the cost here for interest because I think we have a good cash flow, we have a good operational cash flow, and we can use it much more to reduce our debt structures here. All right. So that was it from my side. We also uploaded this presentation with some backup slides to give you more detailed information.

And now we would like to hand over to the Q&A session.

Yes. Thank you very much for your presentation and the infusion of your strategy, Dr. Benner and Ms. Richert. [Operator Instructions]

Dr. Benner, Christian Wall from Cantor. First question, could you elaborate on the scalability of the TPG ONE platform? How much sales would you be able to generate with the [indiscernible] setup? And second, could you provide some color on how TPG creates cost synergies when integrating new platforms and give some examples such as lower fulfillment costs per parcel thanks to scale advantage.

Yes. Thank you for that. So absolutely, you are right with that. The scalability of TPG One is quite good because we developed it always with the perspective, how can we enter new businesses, new industries and how can we increase the speed for that. So right now, we think that we can generate a very high increase in the sales.

But this question is very broad. So maybe it's a good thing for our next earnings call to provide you more information with that. And also, we can provide you directly more information about TPG1 in the next presentations here. So your next question is about the cost synergies. So currently, we expect something between EUR 8 million and EUR 15 million directly within the next 2 years with our decrease in costs with AI. So these are direct cost effects.

And I think -- this is a very conservative number. We really just planned it on a very basic way that we go through every department, say what kind of process we can increase, how can we reduce costs in utilities and software and also HR costs, of course. And so we calculated this number with EUR 8 million to EUR 15 million. And I think this is realistic where we can work with definitely.

The next question is about how much AI benefits is included in your EUR 20 million to EUR 80 million EBITDA for next year. So actually, we expect next year between EUR 8 million to EUR 10 million in EBITDA for next year, it is included. So we expect this EUR 8 million to EUR 10 million cost savings for next year. And our guidance with EUR 70 million to EUR 80 million EBITDA, it is also reflecting this. So we included it.

An uplisting...

So next question, about uplisting, yes, uplisting. So right now, we are in the scale segment. I think next or next 2 years, we will prove if an uplisting makes sense. Right now, we have no decision so far.

Next question. It's about a capital increase or a new bond. So right now, we have no decisions on that. And so we will go our own way with the current structure and the current strategy. But as you know, we make a lot of M&As every year. So if we have a bigger target or if we have a big acquisition where we say it could be necessary to do that, of course, we will evaluate that. How is the acquisition closing of the pharmaceutical companies progressing?

So actually, we have 2 portfolio companies already in the pharmaceutical sector and the other ones, we just can say we have a signing and the closing, we expected a closing until December or January. That's what we communicated, and that is our current communication here.

Next question is about more color on our expansion on the U.S. market. How much of your future organic growth could be attributable to the United States? And what are the key challenges there since the largest market for e-commerce with fierce competition?

Yes, this is a complex question. So first, yes, it is a big market. Yes, there is competition. But to be honest, when you look on how many platforms you find for retailers with our business, what we do here, we do not find so many competitors. So we -- as you know, we really much focus on niche markets. So we don't want to sell T-shirts for $10. It's not our focus.

We really want to sell niche segments like used machines. It's a very big market in the United States. And there are not many competitors out there or when you look on the luxury sector, I mean, there are, of course, other players in the luxury sectors, but there is no platform for retailers, for luxury retailers.

So I think we have very attractive possibilities to enter there. And to make sure that we have a successful business model. We would not enter a market if we are not sure on that. And as you know, we have still a very -- we have 70% revenue share with Germany, Austria, Netherlands and so on. And we want to change it, and we will change it in the future. But it's not a hardcore step from 17% to 20%. This will really go every year step by step.

And we think that U.S. will definitely contribute to our future growth, but we are very conservative with our estimation. So we always want to go low balling here and say, okay, we start with little steps. We make little revenue contributions here. And when we see it's getting better and higher, we will communicate that.

Next question, it's about our EBITDA margin premium size the assortment with less SKUs and less discounts and less products contrast to the core idea of the platform. Well, this is wrong, what you ask me, we do not reduce the number of SKUs. We do not reduce the number of products. We just said in our vision that we definitely delist cheap products. So we just makes the decision that with cheaper products, for example, in the luxury sector, everything below EUR 80 or EUR 100, it is not useful for us. It's not too much contributing to our profit. And that's what we will delist and reduce.

But in total, we really increased the number of products by a huge amount. So we expect an increase of 220% in the next 5 years. So this is really a tremendous upgrade from the current status. And there, you can see how much new products we will get with our new partners. So we will grow also in the number of products. And yes, we will delist cheap products and products which are not bringing enough profits here.

Russell Pointon from Edison. Can you talk about TPG with more focus on B2B customers in future? Is there something inherently more attractive about them less cyclical or more profitable? Good question. Thank you for that. B2B customers in generally are not more profitable, but there's one big difference. We are focusing on software and e-commerce. And to be honest, e-commerce platforms for B2B, they are just in the beginning.

So it's like 2012 for B2C platforms. It is a very early stage. They are still even in the year 2025. So the most B2B business, they have no platforms for B2B players. So this is quite an attractive market where we can have good growth rates. And that's the reason why we want to expand more there compared to B2C. But of course, with B2C, we also grow, and we have no fears that this is not going to happen.

The next question is about -- now that I understand the EBITDA margins level better, do you have any idea of the magnitude, rough percentage of each lever? Do you see a particular one? Yes, that's a good question. Maybe we need a more detailed talk on that. Definitely, the EBITDA margin levers are quite important for us. And when you look on them, I think, to be honest, the AI one is the most important one.

As I said, 2 years before, I made a big mistake, and I did not realize what potential AI has and how much AI will affect our process, but I realized this mistake in the last 12 months, and now we changed that completely. And when you really focus on the process, reduce workforces and have better processes, you can definitely increase your cost structure, you can make it better and you can be faster and you can do it with less people.

Not everybody likes that, but that's the truth. What are the infrastructure requirements from investing in the United States? We have no infrastructure requirements in specific. But of course, we can use our software. We will need no changes on our software, but we need people there. We need good people, good companies there who we can work together with. And that's what we have to do in the next 12 months. So our ramp-up plan also includes buying 2 companies there.

That's our plan for next year and also to get the right people here to ramp up our platform business in the United States. And that's the most important thing for the infrastructure there. Even if a target is promising, the valuation of TPG shares is low. Given this, what are your thoughts on the capital structure and equity offerings? So basically, where we think that, of course, our share can be higher, and we would appreciate higher share prices. But I think it's not our job as a management to comment on this if the shares are lower or not.

We can only think that we are a good company and our value of what we do is quite good. And we will hopefully see higher share prices in the future. And to be honest, I don't know any company in Frankfurt with EUR 3 billion revenue with such a low valuation level. So maybe when we achieve this revenue level in the next years, you will also see higher stock prices, but let's see if it happens or not.

Next question, it's about related to the change in the focus to nonconsumer segments. Do you have and existing example, for example, I have the Optics and Hearing segment in mind. Yes, the Optics and Hearing segment is not a B2B. Of course, it's a pure B2C game, and it's quite profitable. We have 25% margins there.

But on the other side, we see the industrial goods segment as a very good growing market with increasing margins. We have not 10% margins here. We have lower margins. But every year, we can increase our margins, and we are on a very good track with that. So actually, we think the industrial segment like machine trade and other B2B segments are very attractive here.

Interesting to see you expect a 50% cost reduction in content cost creation from AI. Are you able to quantify what content cost do you have in a percentage of revenue? Well, that's a good question because in our P&L, we have marketing costs, and we have other costs here. And including the other costs, we have our content creation costs. So it's not in the marketing.

So actually, we expect content creation costs of about 1.5% to 2% every year, and we can reduce it by 50% definitely because AI gives you such high options to create content in a much faster and easier way. You can reduce the number of models, you can reduce the number of photographers and you can also cancel all the contracts. We have some photo studios where we pay rent with, where we pay a lot of utilities and so on. We don't need that so much in the future. So it's really changing our content process, and we can save a lot of money there.

Next question, would TPG consider listing on NASDAQ as a software company? Right now, we have no considerations to go to the NASDAQ. And to be honest, I'm also not an expert in that. So I cannot really answer this. But right now, we have no plans to make a listing in the United States. All right. So these are all the questions. Thank you very much.

Yes. Thank you very much, and we will come to the end of today's business update call. Thank you, everyone, for joining and your shown interest in the platform Group AG. Should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. A big thank you also to you, Dr. Benner and Ms. Richert. Greetings to Munich, to the Münchner Kapitalmarkt Konferenz. I wish you all a lovely autumn time, successful businesses. And with this, I hand over again to Dr. Benner for some final remarks.

Yes. Thank you very much. And maybe for some of you who are in Munich today, you can visit us. And when we thought about publishing such a Vision 2030, we were not sure to do that. But at the end, I think it was the right decision to give our shareholders a good perspective on our long-term perspective. and also to show you what our plans in the future and not only for next year, also for the next years.

And I think from this background, we are very happy to share this vision with you. And as you know us for 3 years now, we always delivered on what we promised, and we also try to do that here, that we will achieve these goals and that you join our journey here very much. Thank you very much.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of The Platform Group AG following the publication of the Q3 financial figures of 2025. We are delighted to welcome the CEO, Dr. Dominik Benner; and CFO, Bjoern Minnier, who will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation, with an estimated duration of about 20 to 25 minutes. Please note that there will be a short Q&A session in this call in which you will be allowed to place your questions to the management. And having said this, we are looking forward to the presentation.

Mr. Benner, please. The stage is yours.

Thank you, Ingmar. Thank you for the introduction and a warm welcome from our side on the Management Board. So let's start with our financial figures and the current financial year. So right now, you see the overview of the development over the last years and also the development in the current year, including our guidance for 2025 and 2026. For those who don't know that, we always publish our midterm forecast and midterm means the next year. And so you can see our financial figures with a strong growth rate and also with a very good development on the profit side.

So let's start with our presentation today. Today, we have Bjoern Minnier as the CFO. You can see also Nathalie Richert, our Head of Investor Relations, and you can see me as CEO of the Board, and we would like to welcome you to our earnings call. So coming back to where we started from 2012 was the initial point where I took over the family business, which was founded 140 years ago. And we transformed it to an e-commerce business based on software and the software that we developed in the last years is the backbone and the basis on how we run now more than 36 platforms with more than 50,700 merchants across Europe. And I think this is a very strong development. And we also want to establish a much more increasing growth rate in the next years.

So one of the aspects here is that we will publish this year, a vision for next year. So here's just a short teaser for that. And we expect to announce this in the next weeks for the financial goals for the next 5 years and also for the profit goals for the next 5 years.

So our overall goal is that we want to become the #1 platform group in Europe, and this is a very strong goal that we have. We mentioned and presented this goal 4 years ago. And I think we are on a pretty good track to achieve that. We almost have 16,000 partners running on our platform. This is quite big. We have very good balanced organic and inorganic growth rates and every year, we enter new industries with our software and our platforms.

The backbone besides the software is the operational holding. Some of the people always ask us why do you have so many people in your holding? And the reason is very simple. So when we enter a new industry, we always have scale effects with that because we have a lot of people in the operational departments like marketing, software, marketplace and design and so on. And we have centralized departments like the AI Academy, talent and training, legal, HR and finance. And when we take over a company and enter a new industry, we always can reduce costs with that and we reduce it in a significant way. And we can always ramp up the revenue and make sure that the new business model which is running on a platform basis is increasing the revenue basis. And with these two sites operational and centralized departments, I think we have a pretty good track record now for many years, and that's why we can integrate companies in a good way and can increase their profitability.

You already know our software architecture. In our next Capital Markets Day, we will give you an update on that. What are our latest developments on that and how we can improve the scalability because software allows us to enter very fast into new markets, into new industries, and that is the best way for us to grow in a very good way and to make sure that we cover new industries in less than 4 or 5 months. Nathalie?

Yes. Hello, everybody. And let's take a look at our share price development. We have positive development since the start of December 2020, where we acquired stake in former fashionette. And actually, we have a share price of more than EUR 8. We are listed in the scale segment. That's a growth segment and have a market cap from EUR 160 million. And you see we have a research that comes from 6 retail houses with a target price of more than EUR 90. And when we look at the next slide, we see our trading volumes. And what we see there, we see a positive development depending since last year in September, we see international trading is up to more than 50% and we have an increase in trading volume more than 4x. I think that are really good steps. And yes, in the next weeks, we are in Munich. We are in Frankfurt. We are in Amsterdam, in Zurich and North America to meet you all.

And now I hand over to Dominik.

All right. So here you can see the overview of our 28 different industries, which are covered. You can see that we also have now our fifth segment, it is called Optics & Hearing. So here, we have our online platform, which is called MyGlasses, and we have our local stores covering Germany, the central hubs and so it's a really good combined strategy, what we do there. But we will come to the figures of the segments later.

So here you see the first chart. These are the nonfinancial KPIs. So in the first 9 months, we increased the number of partners by more than 23%. So this is a quite good growth rate. And actually, we expect the rate between 15% and 20%. So we can be very happy about this development, and it is really bringing us towards the next level. The active customers, they also grew in a large number. So we had an increase of 49% to EUR 6.7 million. And the most important thing is when you have more partners, you get more products. And when you have more products, you attract more customers. So it's always a cycle between the partners, the products and the customers.

Correlating with the number of customers, we also have much higher order numbers. So we had an increase of 49% there. And also the order value, the average order value has increased a little bit to EUR 125. The number of employees is much higher compared to last year. So this is just because we have consolidated new companies and hired more people for software development. And on the right side, you can see also our increase in our revenue. So we had a huge increase of the growth rate of the revenue. And so we can be quite happy on that. But Bjoern, our CFO, will give you more details on that in the next slides.

Let me just cover 2 or 3 things in our different segments. So 1 thing was the entry of the Optics & Hearing segment. So we announced it by June this year. And I think we had a pretty good start with that. So in the first part, we just opened our platform, MyGlasses, and we acquired stores here in Germany. Now we expand to more stores. You will see that in the next 6 months that we acquire more and more stores to cover really all relevant regions. And the third part is that we want to connect more and more opticians to our platform. And this is the most important development for us because when you make glasses, you always have to combine local business with e-commerce with platforms. Otherwise, it will not work.

Also here, you can see our market development with the German optical market, though this is just a market where only 6% has an online penetration. So it is really not an online market. That's the reason why we combine online and offline activities here. And it's still very fragmented. So 55% are fragmented local small opticians, and there's a huge potential of further M&A activities if we want to do that. Most important is the M&A, the EBITDA margin. So we have more than 25% margin in the sector, at least for the companies which we acquire. So we are quite happy with that. And we have a clear growth road map of totally 60 to 70 stores, and we will achieve that until next year.

Here, you can see also our luxury portfolio. This is part of our Consumer Goods segment, and the luxury portfolio is developing quite successfully. First, as you know, 2 years ago, we acquired fashionette. Fashionette was at this day, when we acquired it, it was a pure e-commerce player. So just with a big warehouse and try to sell the product on the front end. And when we acquired it, we said, well, we have to make a dramatic change towards platform business. So we changed the business model of fashionette. We changed it towards platform. And now we have several hundreds of local boutiques in the luxury sector. Now we are covering a lot of luxury fashion. We have more than 40,000 products there and the number of products is growing every month.

Additionally, and a lot of you know that maybe is Chronext, we acquired them 9 months ago. It is a company focusing on luxury watches like Rolex or Patek and so on. And this is a very good combination to our existing luxury portfolio, which you can see also here with Winkelstraat and Brandfield. And on the bottom line, you see Joli Closet. This is a vintage luxury platform based in Paris and in France, and this is a really growing market. On the right side, we showed you how this market for secondhand luxury is growing. It is 3x faster growing than the first-hand market for luxury. So this is really an attractive market, and we are in a quite good position to cover this and to grow with this development.

All right. Let's come to the financials. I hand over to Bjoern.

So thank you, Dominik, and thank you, Nathalie. And also from my side, a warm welcome to our viewers. As Dominik has given us the overview, I'm now going to break down into the details. So if you look at our guidance, this year, we are working on the acquisition of -- 11 acquisition targets. And if you look at it, you will quickly realize 11 targets means nearly one per month. So this is about the max we can do. If you look into the future, we continue to see excellent conditions for our M&A acquisitions, and we do not see that the relatively low multiples are going to change anyway in the near future. And if you look at the organic growth, then the enabler for all of that, of course, is our TPG One platform, which enables us to connect all of our partners so quickly that we are able to do 11 acquisitions in 1 year. And in total, our 5 segments, which we now have continued to grow, and this enabled us to increase our guidance already twice this year.

And you see I skipped the two lines regarding profitability. The reason is because I will go into detail on the next page. And we are very happy to report that overall TPG has successfully continued its growth story. The already strong results that we have been seeing in the first two quarters have been further improved. So what does that mean in detail? It means in detail, our GMV is now at EUR 902 million, and that is an increase of over 48%. Our net revenue is now at EUR 531.6 million and that is an increase of over 43%. At the same time, we were able to increase our EBITDA margin by 1.3 percentage points and is now is at EUR 36.7 million. If you look at the costs, you see that we were able to reduce our marketing costs by approximately 9% in regard to the comparing 9 months of the previous period. And I believe that this is one of the best KPIs you will be able to see in the industry. And the drivers are centralization, its AI tools that we use to generating content, such as text and photos and also to automate our internal transactional processes.

If you look at the distribution costs, we get them stable and the HR costs, we also were able to strengthen slightly, and that is due to the successful integration of all latest acquisitions. So all of this together leads to an EBITDA adjusted of EUR 45.8 million, and that is a plus of 86%. And the reported EBITDA is EUR 59.4 million. And if you look at the margins, the adjusted margin is at 8.4% and the reported is at 11.2%. So if we look at the net profit, the net profit in the previous period was EUR 25.5 million and is now EUR 41.7 million and that again is an increase of 64%.

If you see the minorities, they have doubled, but on a relatively low level. And the earnings per share are now EUR 2.03. A question that we are often asked by investors and potential investors is how does your organic growth develop? And my answer usually is a very general assumption. It is around 50-50. So if you look at it closer, then we can see that in 2024, the organic growth was about -- the organic share was about 54% and 46% was the acquisition growth, and we have increased this now to 64% in the current period.

So this increase is an increase by 18%. And what are the reasons? How do we achieve organic growth? So organic growth can be achieved quite easily in our structure by adding new partners. And we had several initiatives to add more partners, and this is why the number of partners now is close to 16,000, this comes with a high number of products, which is up about 23% and more products, of course, attract more consumers. And the growth we see, we see it especially in two of our segments. One is the segment, the consumer goods. I mean this is a segment we started with, and this is the largest segment, and this is where we are very strong. And we also see a strong growth in the freight goods sector and that is large machines and furnitures, especially. And of course, we always work on retention on the customer side for our platform.

So these are now stand-alone the Q3 figures. Before I was showing the 9 months figure this is Q3 stand-alone. I keep it relatively short. So the GMV is now EUR 250 million in this period. The net revenue was EUR 188 million. If you look at the gross margin, we were able to increase the gross margin further compared to the relative segment previous year. And if you look at the marketing cost, you can also see the reduction I just explained. Distribution costs overall were reduced. And the only thing which slightly increased in this comparison quarter-by-quarter are the HR costs. And the reason is the acquisition of the Optics and they come with slightly higher personnel than we are usually used in our online businesses, pure online businesses.

So all in all, the adjusted EBITDA is EUR 12.5 million, which is equivalent to a margin of 6.7% and the reported EBITDA is EUR 50.7 million, which is equivalent to a margin of 8.3% and the net profit is EUR 8.4 million. If you look at the cash flow, then you can see that we have a very strong cash flow coming from operating activities. But what you also can see is that we spend it nearly all on our investing activities and taking into account that, of course, we have to pay certain interest, overall, we have a negative cash flow in this period. And this is why our cash reserves, which you had at the beginning of EUR 22 million were reduced by nearly EUR 7 million to now EUR 15.2 million.

If you take this EUR 15.2 million and look now at the debt situation and then we look at our bank loans, which remained in the same range as they were last year. Then the only thing that has significantly changed is the bond. We tapped the bond by another EUR 20 million. So it went from EUR 50 million up to EUR 70 million now. And this increased our net debt now to EUR 122 million. And if we put this in relation to the last 12-month EBITDA, then we come out with a leverage of 2.23x which is still within our defined -- self-defined borders, but we are now on the upper side of that.

So to those of you who are new, when I showed you the chart two pages before, where we saw that the EBITDA adjusted is actually smaller than the EBITDA reported, you might have asked yourself whether we just confused the columns. No, we didn't. The reason why this is so we do not necessarily like it, but we are required to state it this way. And due to Paragraph 34, to the IFRS 3, we need to recognize our gains from bargain purchases as a profit. So what we're talking about here is our PPAs and since we, in general, managed to acquire our acquisitions at a relatively good price, we have to put this gain into our P&L. But since it is a one-off effect, we do not want to show it actually in the EBITDA adjusted. And this is why we are very transparent here. This is why we reduce it. And as you see, the main part of it is the PPA corrections in the amount of EUR 12.6 million. And this is why we are one of the few companies where actually the EBITDA adjusted is actually lower than the EBITDA reported.

All right. Thank you for that. And here you can see our development over the last 3 years for the 9 months period. As you can see here, we have a pretty strong development not only on the revenue line but also on the margin development. And this is quite important for us because when we acquired the fashionette Group in 2023, fashionette had almost 0 profit or had 0 profit. And so the combined entity had lower margins. Now we develop each year towards higher margins and we can be quite optimistic that we also achieve in this margin and increase for next year.

Let's have a look on the segment report. So we start with the Consumer Goods segment. So consumer goods segment typically are fashion, shoes, watches, whatever. So all kind of stuff with usual packaging sizes, and which is attracting our customer base. So here, we saw an increase in the GMV of more than 51% and the revenue grew by 60% because we had a very high organic growth rate and also our number of orders increased by huge number. Secondly, we saw that the EBITDA also increased by more than the same proportion. So the EBITDA adjusted was increasing by more than 104% to EUR 31 million. And we also had a look on our cost structure because we really have to make sure that in e-commerce, it really counts that you do not hire too many people, that you do not spend too much money from marketing and I think we have a good year and a very successful year here in 2025. And you can see the 9.5%. It is the best margin from the last years.

So we can be quite happy about this development. From the number of employees, the increase was just because we acquired some companies like Herbertz this year, Chronext, by December and so on. So these are all companies which came up into the segment. And so this is the result of the acquisition. The same for the freight goods segment. Here, we see only a slight increase in the employees by a little bit more than 30 people. But you can see that the net revenue and the GMV grew by 13% and 24%.

So it was also very good organic growth. So we had nonorganic activities here and also the AOV increased by more than 3%. Very important, the EBITDA also grew by 19% because the sales just grew in this amount, and we also had a very good cost efficiency in this segment. The segments with the lowest margins, and it was always a kind of difficult segment for us in the last years, but it's now performing very good. So we see a really good comeback of the machine trade business. So as you know, our platform GINDUMAC, it is one of the leading platforms worldwide for machines -- for used machines. They have a very good track record this year. And as you can see here, we have an EBITDA margin of 4.9%.

So it is really growing compared to last year. And you can also see our revenue is growing and our GMV is growing in almost the same amount. On the service and retail goods segment, you see the same growth rate, so 17% to 23%. There was one acquisition. It was a Fintus Group. And this also contributed a lot to our EBITDA. So you can see the jump in the EBITDA of almost EUR 2 million or 65%. And we see a very good development that we will continue that next year. Also here, AI, Artificial Intelligence is a really key driver and efficiency driver here. So with this AI layers and AI developments, we can reduce our software staff for next year. And we can also make sure that our costs are decreasing in our software development and in the marketing spending because a lot of all these manual things, what you do in the marketing, we can automate it and we have really good significant improvements here.

Last report, and this is something special that is our [indiscernible] segment. It is new. Though the segment started by July 2025. So it is our smaller segment. It is only for 3 months here. So only 3 months figures are here. And the latest acquisitions, which we announced, they were closed by October, though they are not included in these numbers. But you can see here our first acquisitions, and they were quite good. So in these 3 months, they had a revenue of almost EUR 5 million. And the EBITDA margin was 26%. So it was a little bit more of what we have internally expected and we can also confirm that we grow there in a very good path and performance. And next year, we will see here numbers between EUR 55 million and EUR 60 million revenue and the EBITDA margin will be at least 25%.

And last but not least, our M&A pipeline is quite strong there. So we see a lot of profitable targets, and we want to expand with our MyGlasses platform and connect to a lot of opticians next year. So this is really right now a small segment when you see only the numbers, but it will be 1 of the best segments which we have in our company.

All right. Let's come to the outlook. You see our guidance 2025. So we want to achieve a revenue between EUR 715 million and EUR 735 million and an EBITDA of EUR 54 million to EUR 58 million. The debt leverage is unchanged and also the GMV was EUR 1.3 billion. It is unchanged. And we raised already this guidance 2 times this year. And so today, we confirm this increased guidance, and we are quite optimistic to achieve it until the end of this year.

Because we are very optimistic, and we see a very good development in this fourth quarter, so in the month of November and also October, we think that we are on a good track to have a good development in 2026. So this year, we also increased our midterm guidance for next year. So we expect a revenue of more than EUR 1 billion and an EBITDA of EUR 70 million to EUR 80 million at least next year. And as you know, we are always conservative in our planning tools. And we think that this is quite good, but very conservative planning what we have for next year.

From the strategic dimensions, I think we have 4 important things. So first, as you know, 1 of our big disadvantages is that we are too much focusing on the DACH region, so Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. So these are our core markets Additionally, we are also strong in France and Italy, but none of the other EU countries and not really in the U.S. and Asia region. So this is one big topic that we have to expand. We are getting better, but we are still at the beginning of this expansion.

The next thing is our TPG One software. With AI, we can much better scale it. We can much better develop it, and we can develop it with lower costs. So this is really one of the biggest advantages and biggest improvements with AI, what we can see here besides marketing that our software development is getting cheaper in the future, and it's getting much more efficient. On the right side, you see our M&A path, so we still continue with that. We will buy new companies also next year, and we will connect them with our TPG One system.

On the bottom, on the right side, you see that our next segments, which we will also invest is Optics & Hearing again and we will also buy maybe the one other company in the pharma sector. Nathalie?

Yes. You see our finance calendar. We will update it for the first quarter 2026 in the next weeks. We are this month in Munich for MKK and at the Deutsche Börse and Capital Forum also end of November. But please, if you are interested to speak to us, reach out. You see the contact address here, we're happy to speak with you.

Meet us there.

Thank you very much. All right. So this was it from our side. So we're happy to start with our Q&A session.

Yes. And we move to the announced Q&A session now. [Operator Instructions] We already received questions in the chat. I'll read it out to you. How much sales and adjusted EBITDA contributions from the new segments, Optics & Hearing and Pharma is baked into the full year '25 guidance?

All right. So I see a lot of questions from this person. So thank you very much. So first answer regarding the segments, Optics & Hearing. We showed you our Q3 figures, so 3 months for the segment. And this was not including all companies which we acquired because we had some closings by October. So this year, I think, realistically, we should expect between EUR 12 million and EUR 50 million revenue with the 25% to 26% margin. I think these are realistic numbers.

From the pharma segment, we cannot answer you that because we don't know when the closing will be. So it really depends on the closing, and we have some regulatory issues on that. So we cannot answer you this right now.

Next question was the full year guidance implies 5% adjusted EBITDA margin in Q4 compared to 8.6% in the first 9 months. Well, yes, we are always conservative in the fourth quarter. But actually, as you know, always, the fourth quarter has the highest revenues, but the lowest margins. So we are always very restrictive on that, and we think that this will also happen this year that we will see lower margins compared to the previous quarters, but with a much higher revenue. So there will be no change in this aspect.

The next question was initiatives about TPG One. And the key drivers for the strong organic growth. Yes, I think at the next Capital Markets Day or in the next conference when you can meet us, we can give you a much more detailed perspective on that. And I think this is the best way to answer your question here.

There was also a question about the organic growth from you. So this is just to mention the organic growth rate, take it from the revenue. And when you count how much was the increase there, it was a 26% increase. And on the other slide, what you can see here we just compared the growth rate to the growth rate this year. So this is a difference. Maybe it's good that you asked us this question to clarify that.

And TPG Pay was your last question. So we published our track how we want to go there and how we want to proceed there. And we have our live status already done for some internal platforms. We expanded at the beginning of next year to external partners, though we are in line with this development.

Next question. How do you keep corporate income tax so low? What is the future expectation in this regard? So as you might know, we have some loss carryforwards from acquired companies. And that is the reason why we have, compared to other companies, low taxes here. But of course, they will increase in the next years. So when you see our forecast from our analysts, you can see that they also estimate some increase there. M&A contribution was around EUR 36 million in the first 9 months, if I'm not wrong. I don't know what is the question here, to be honest. Maybe you can specify what's your question. I do not understand the question here.

The next question was about the antitrust side for the pharma acquisitions. So we cannot give you an update here. We have to wait for the further progress here. And so we wait until we have closing announcements here.

The next question was about cash conversion this year, last year. You don't think that we have provided the cash flow figures for 9 months. We did it for 9 months. So maybe -- we also want to inform you that these numbers are for this year. Yes, you are right. Last year, we did not communicate this cash flow figures, but the analysts asked us to communicate them. And so we started to communicate it each quarter this year. So this is implemented for this year.

The next question was about the growth and the net income for the company. I mean, if we do not grow, I think this has no effect on our net profit because actually, when we have a growth rate of 0%, we have the same EBITDA margin. So there is no correlation that we do not grow and then the margin is going down. There is some correlation. So actually, we see no difference there. And your next question was about Optics revenue developing in 2026. So we announced it already. The revenue, which we expect is EUR 55 million to EUR 60 million. And for 2027, we have no forecast so far. So our overall forecast is for next year, not for 2027.

On cost item, the increase in other operating expense stands out, what are the reasons for this increase? Well, basically, there are all the rest figures. So when you cover HR marketing and distribution, you always have some other costs like software and so on, cars, whatever and so this is basically the same level which we see last year in a percentage of the revenue. So there's not a real increase. So I think we are quite good on track with that.

The next question was about our partners. So we added 150 new partners, which was the lowest number for some time. Actually, this is not true because we did not acquire companies with big numbers for partners. So for example, last year, we acquired a company HOOD. And only with HOOD we gained 4,000 partners in 1 quarter. And this was outstanding, but this is not the standard or the average. So basically, we are quite happy and we have the goal to increase it to 16,500 by end of this year and we are very optimistic that we will achieve it. So this is not the lowest number because some previous numbers were influenced by the acquisitions.

Next question was for Nathalie. It looked September had a big reduction in revenues from the slide that Nathalie showed, is that correct, seasonality? But -- I think this question is about the volume of share trading. Nathalie, can you give us an update here why September is lower?

Yes. We see here a lower volume then that's right. But it's like in July. I think the August was more trading volume. And -- but that's a good question. I will come to you back. But it's in line with the other months with June, July and August, the trading volume was a little bit higher. That's right.

All right. Next question was about the gross margin has been from selling more via your own channels or own accounts versus other channels? If not, what has improved or how has increased. Well, the answer here is very simple. We see a growth rate on all the channels because the reason why we grow is that we have more partners and with more partners, we have more products. And these products, we will list on several platforms. And so we see also an increase in the revenues from third-party platforms as well as on our own platforms, So it's not really different on that.

So next question was about the organic growth rate. The person says that this is impressive. But isn't there at a certain point a kind of cannibalization because newly added partners and so on? Yes, you are right with that question. Of course, when you double the amount of shoe sellers, for example, you cannot double the revenue for all of them. It's not possible. Absolutely, you are right. Though a lot of partners have stagnating, but very high revenues with us. But this is pretty fair. I mean, you cannot grow as a partner every year even if you stagnate or have a small increase in your revenue, this is quite a good revenue for you because it is additional revenue to your local business. It is additional profit to your local business. And so yes, we do not worry about this. I think we are on a very good track with that.

Next question is about our stock. Why isn't it moving? Why is the trend downwards even if the results seem strong? What should I give you as an answer, I don't know. Now we can only speculate on that. But as you see as a CEO and shareholder, I buy shares, I did it also this year, and I will continue to buy shares also next year. So I think also here from Bjoern as the CFO, he also bought shares this year. We are quite optimistic on our own company. And we believe in the story and we believe in our figures that they are good and that they also will be even better next year.

Next question is about the Optics & Hearing. What is the firepower to acquire more optic stores? Do you have to consider to pay for these acquisitions? Yes. So I think in the next month, you will see some announcements regarding the sector, the segment and we will buy additional companies. The firepower for that is a double-digit million investment, what we do there. And we think that this segment is so attractive, and we have such good margins there compared to other peers that we will invest even more in the sector and grow in the sector. So we will invest more money there.

Next question. This is a long question. It's a question about the EBITDA development. To be honest, it is -- I think it's a little bit complicated to answer it here. because the EBITDA grew rate or growth rate and the revenue growth rate, as you can see, the EBITDA growth rate is much, much better than the sales growth rate. So I'm not sure if this is the right question. So maybe you can ask us this in the personal meeting. This question is maybe too long for this around here.

Next question from you was about the U.S. and Asia expansion plans. Absolutely. So we started making small steps there. And also, we have some companies to have a look at with due diligence and so on. So we are active there, but we are on a very small amount and a small level there with some activity. And this is a thing that we have to change there next year. But we always have to be risk averse, so we cannot spend whatever, EUR 100 million and see how it is going. We have to be very risk averse to do that. Don't waste money, don't burn money. And make step after step. And this is our philosophy here. And so we make it in small steps, and we have no blueprint for that. We just take our platform strategy here. do it in a very similar way in the United States and ramp it up there, but we do it in small steps.

Next question was about the opticians, how many can be connected. Is 1,000 opticians optimistic or realistic? Well, yes, it is definitely realistic here. And I mean, we don't connect them in 6 months. This is not possible. But this is a project for at least 2 years, how we can connect so many partners here. But on the other way, there is no competitor. So there is no platform for opticians in the market. So we think that we can get a lot of opticians here and connect them to our platform.

Next question was about the EUR 39 million or EUR 40 million, expenses for acquisitions include the pharmacy targets yet? No. It's not including the pharma targets yet because these pharma targets are not included in our 9-month figures, and though they are not part of this 9-month report here. Why has the Optic segment such high margins, even so scale is relatively small compared to market leader Fielmann? Well, I'm not an expert with Fielmann, but Fielmann has almost very good margins like we have it. Fielmann has currently 22% EBITDA margin, but Fielmann is in the low price sector. So the average order value of Fielmann is, I think 55% of what we achieve here. So we are really in the premium segment. And in the premium segment, you always have higher margins compared to the low segment. But Fielmann is really making a great job. So I don't want to compare with them because the strategy is completely different. But overall, their margins are not far away from our margins. All right. Do we have any additional questions?

Well, thank you very much for cruising through the questions and answering them all. We are done, in fact. So there are no more questions and dear participants. We will come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you for your shown interest in the platform group and have a lovely remaining week. If there are upcoming questions, please contact the IR department. And for some final remarks, I hand over to you guys again. Goodbye for now.

Thank you very much. Have a good day, and we will see you at the next conference. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. If you have any questions, don't hesitate and come back to Nathalie and me or Dominik. Bye-bye.

So a warm welcome from our side to this strategy and update call or meeting today. Thank you for being here in Frankfurt in the central hub here in Germany and also a warm welcome to our virtual audience, which is hopefully attending a huge amount in our conference call today.

So today, we would like to present you the current figures of our group and also to give you a deeper insight perspective on how we grow this year and what kind of current acquisitions we did in the last months and also today.

So let's start with a short overview.

[Presentation]

So today, we have some executives here in our room and also available for our digital audience. So first of all, my person as the CEO; Bjoern Minnier as a CFO; Nathalie Richert, she is the Head of Investor Relations; and also Christoph Wilhelmy as the COO; and Frederic von Borries, as a CPO. So this is our short agenda. So we don't want to spend too much time for introductions. We just want to directly start with the update to our group. Then we follow up with some far more information and about the segment Optics & Hearing.

This is our latest segment, which we started by July this year. And at the end, we also give you some more deep dive information about strategic projects regarding TPG PAY. That's a payment project, which we announced by the beginning of this year and also give you some more information about our M&A activity and the outlook for this year.

So let's start with the TPG update, and we compromised, I think, some good informations for you. So today, we also announced that we increased our next year guidance, 2026 in terms of the GMV. So you'll see a long-term stable growth rate in the GMV and also in the revenue. Our revenue will climb up to or at least EUR 1 billion next year. And this year, we also confirmed our guidance with EUR 735 million in the revenue for the group.

Our EBITDA and our EBITDA margin is also increasing. You can see here, we have a range of EUR 54 million to EUR 58 million as a guidance for this year, we are quite optimistic that we can achieve it, and we already increased it several times this year. And also for next year, we expect EUR 70 million to EUR 80 million. With the EBITDA, I think this is quite a very good development from our side.

The earnings per share ratio is also increasing. So as you can see here, we took the estimation of the coverage analysts, and I think that you can also see this development in a pretty good way. I think we can skip that. So our strategy is basically focusing on being the #1 platform group in Europe. For some people, it's a little bit strange because some people ask us, what are you really? Are you more software? Are you more e-commerce? What are you really? And so we will give you some more updates and information on that.

And how we want to achieve that? We have 3 strategic goals. First, we never want to rely just on M&A. So we always have to get organic growth. And additionally, we do M&A when we think the fair -- the price is fair and when we think the industry is attractive for us. Second, we always should have a balanced organic and inorganic growth rate. And third, we want to expand to 30 industries by end of this year. And here, you can see how we do it. So we acquire small companies or mid-sized companies. We invest a lot in our software platform. And we also increased our number of partners. And this is on the right side, a very important point because we are very much focused on Germany and Netherlands and Austria. So we really want to change that a little bit in the future. How we do that? We explained to you today.

So the question, what we are is basically, we have 3 things in 1. So actually, we have 3 different focus topics. One is that we are an e-commerce specialists. So we have 35 platforms in 28 industries. And on these platforms, more than 15,000 partners selling products there and we have more than 6 million customers. And how we do that, we have 45 people just working on the online marketing segment and make, I think, a pretty good job for performance marketing.

The next thing is the platform pioneer. So we enter 3 to 6 new industries every year because we think we have a platform. We have a software model. So what is the next industry where we can enter with this specific skill set? And we think that M&A actually is not the only but I think a quite efficient way to enter into a new industry and also to ramp up the business there because we always acquire directly people, people with knowledge and the network in the industry. And I think this is quite a good way how to do that. And I think we have, after more than 30 acquisitions, I think we have the right knowledge and skill set, how to integrate these small companies into our group.

And the third thing quite important is the software, of course. We have a proprietary flexible and capital tech stack. And also, we connect this tech stack to the ERP systems in each industry. So if we started with the shoe industry, 14 years ago, and when we started with that, they had 6 local ERP systems. We connected all of them but that was just the starting point. Today, we work in 28 different industries. And this is until today, a big challenge, to be honest, to connect these local ERP systems because they are not always cooperative. They are sometimes from the 90s. So it's not technical up-to-date. Sometimes a big project to connect these systems and to build up these interfaces. And in this segment, we have 55 software engineers to do that.

Here you can see our segments. So our segments are already 5. So last year or at the beginning of the year, we had 4 segments. So the fifth segment came up by end of June or by July where we announced that we entered into the optics and hearing industry. So for Germans, we look for the Aussichten and Optikgeschäft and I think this was quite a good acquisition because we had a hybrid approach, a hybrid approach means we have an online platform where we sell products online. And we bought local stores. Currently, we have 30 local stores to cover at least the most important places here in Germany and to offer our customers a direct experience for correction lenses. Because to be honest, correction lenses is still 80% off-line business and I think it will not change very soon. So also in 5 years, most people will go to the local optician to get the correction lenses. If you buy just sunglasses then it's easier to make it online.

And also, we announced today that we acquired 3 companies in the pharmaceutical sector. So we bought these 3 platforms, and we announced it today. And that is the reason why we changed the name of this one segment. So first, we announced that it was Service & Retail Goods. We had this title for more than 4 years now. And now we will change it slightly to pharma and service goods because pharma is getting a bigger segment here. And so we try to give this importance also into the name of the segment.

What else has happened in this year? You have realized that when we started with fashionette 2.5 years ago, we invested into the luxury industry. The luxury industry is quite interesting because it has a big crisis. So when you see big companies like Burberry, like Kering Group and so on. Though their stock prices went down and there is a crisis in the luxury industry, and this is very attractive for us because when everything is a hype, we would never invest into a hype industry where everybody wants high prices. So we think this is the right time to invest here.

And that's what we did in the last 12 months. So we acquired fashionette 9 months ago. This is one of the biggest players, platforms for luxury watches like Rolex and so on. We acquired Winkelstraat last year. Winkelstraat is the biggest luxury platform in the Netherlands. They are very successful and have a very good and young team there. And also, we acquired this year Joli Closet. So for the men, it's not so interesting. But for women, they are one of the biggest players for vintage luxury products. So for example, Louis Vuitton, as you can see here. So these bags maybe are 2, 3, 4 years old but you can buy them for quite affordable price.

How is our growth model? Our growth model is always that we want to increase the number of partners. That means if we get more partners like local retailers, we can increase the number of products. And if we have more products, we can directly get more customers because customers go on Google, they look and search for a product. And when they find a product in the Google search field, they click on our page. And this is a backbone how we have our growth cycle and why we can also grow in stagnating markets. And it worked pretty well in the last 14 years, and we also want to continue with that.

On the right side, you also see our growth rate. So for example, in the first this year, in 2025, we have almost 60% organic growth rate and 41% of nonorganic growth rate because of acquisitions. The backbone is our IT system but Christoph will come back later on this system, and we'll give you much more details on that. The best thing on our software is that we can enter with the software into different industries. That's what we want to show you here because you see that we started with shoes 40 years ago, and now we can enter luxury fashion, furniture, car parts, dental supplies, heavy machines. We can really use the software to enter into new industries in a very fast and very efficient way. It's not always easy, and we invested to be honest, a lot of money into the software in the last 10 years. But at the end, it really pays out for us. And we have, I think, a very good competitive advantage. This is software.

From our M&A perspective, in our half year call, we announced that we will make some more acquisitions. So I think we can already say, yes, we did it. The 3 pharma platforms. We all signed these pharma platforms. The one I'll come later on that was just signed right now. You see that we also acquired one niche furniture platform. So this is based in Berlin. And the thing -- what is still ongoing but we are not sure if it's working or not is a B2B platform for the bike industry, and we are still negotiating that but we are not sure if we will get it or not. So it's still an open item on our road map.

So now we changed to the financial perspective. So first, you can see our stock. When we entered in December 2022, we started with EUR 4.5. Now we are around EUR 9, sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less. But compared to the German stock index tax and other indices I think we can be quite happy about this development. But maybe more important than the stock development is the average trading value. This is pretty much increasing. So you can see the numbers here. Starting with September 2024, we had, on average, 500,000 shares in the month. So now we came up to 2 million per month. So this is quite a big increase in the daily and also in the monthly share volume. And also, this reflects that the stock is getting more important slightly but it's getting more traction from investors.

So now we come to the financial figures. First, we start with the half year report, and I hand over to Bjoern. Thank you.

Dominik, thank you. So welcome from my side, and I would like to start with a short recap regarding our H1 figures. And I'll keep the chart because we have presented them already but just to give you a short recap what happened in the first half year. So as you see, things went quite well. We were able to develop our GMV as well as our net revenue, up by about 50%. So we have a net revenue now of EUR 343 million in the first half year. And you see we could also increase our gross margin, which went up by 5.6 percentage points and now is 34.1%.

If you look at the white lines, the white lines is regarding the cost. Of course, it is always very important. If you grow that you always keep an eye on the cost. So here, you can see we did that. We did it quite well. We were able to reduce our relative cost in the area of marketing because it's all centralized, and we could manage to do the same thing with the HR cost. And at least -- and believe me, that's already difficult enough, we managed to keep our logistics cost stable.

So that all boils down for an H1 result EBITDA of EUR 43.7 million reported and we have a very conservative balance sheet politics, so we always deduct our purchase price allocations. And this is why our reported EBITDA, in our case, is lower than -- sorry, our adjusted EBITDA is lower than the reported one, and it's EUR 33.3 million.

We can move on to the next slide, please. Two things you are always interested in is, first of all, yes, we see you have a net revenue that's nice but how much is minorities. And as you can see, minorities do not really play a major role. It's about EUR 1.6 million in the first half year. And the second thing you always ask about is what are the earnings per share. And as you see, they also took very nice development in up to EUR 1.55 now.

You can move on. So what I'd like to show you here is 3 things basically. First of all, we already discussed this. We have a tremendous increase in our revenues. This goes along with also a very pleasant increase in the EBITDA and the EBITDA is growing for 2 reasons. Number one, obviously, because the revenues have increased. But as you can see here in the boxes, we, at the same time, managed to increase our EBITDA margin, and this accounts for 9% -- 9.7% now.

So in a nutshell, this year, we already had 10 successful acquisitions. I just showed you the cost side. This is how we managed to increase our profitability. We still see excellent conditions on the M&A market if you look into 2026. So we believe that about at the same pace, we will continue to acquire new companies and to extend our platforms. We, of course, do our homework and constantly work on our software, so we can onboard new partners even faster, so we can keep up with the acquisition pace. And Dominik already told you about the growth of the segments, and we will go into that later.

I just also would like to give you a short recap of the balance sheet. So first of all, balance sheet is about EUR 350 million. What you see is that we had a small increase in the current assets, and the reason is stock. The reason is not though that we bought more stock because we are a platform company. What we did is we acquired companies and they came with stock. And like always, when we transform it, transform it into your platform model, then we will sell this stock off again.

If you look at the passive side, first of all, you see quite healthy as I believe we have an equity rate of about 50%. And what you also can see that we managed to reduce our payables. So, I think that's fine for this one. If you look at the debt situation and debt view now still is end of June. Here you can see that at that time, we had a net debt of EUR 100 million. As you all know, we have been tabbing our bond. So if you look at it now, the bond wouldn't be EUR 50 million, it would be EUR 70 million by now. But regarding the end of June figures, it was EUR 100 million net debt. And if you look at our 12-month EBITDA, then you will see that we have a leverage of roughly around 2, and that's a region where we would like to keep it as well.

And now you see the magic number at the end. So this was for a long time, our goal. And next year, we will be reaching it. This is the EUR 1 billion in revenue. So you see we have been constantly working ourselves up the ladder. And with the new acquisitions, we will get or we will cross -- we will either get very close to or we will even cross the EUR 1 billion mark.

And the same in relation, of course, is then valid for our EBITDA. And our -- we are able -- we do not have to, we are able to increase our guidance and the guidance will now be somewhere in between EUR 70 million and EUR 80 million for next year. I guess this is a number you guys are most interested in.

So then I hand it back to Dominik.

Right. Thank you, Bjoern, for this update on the financials. When we continue with the focus on the pharma sector, I have to give you a short recap on how we started there. Because we started with a company, which is called ApoNow, nobody will know it here because ApoNow is not something for the end customer, not for private customers. It's just the B2B platform. We acquired this company in 2021 and this small company grew every year. And 2 years ago, we increased our share in the company, and we decided that we want to expand in the pharma sector.

But to be honest, it's very difficult because when you buy an online pharmacy, for example, like DocMorris or whatever, they have maybe big revenues but no profit. And our intention was not to buy something with no profit. We always want to buy companies with profit. So we decided that we want to expand in the pharma industry, and that's what we did.

So just to tell you what Aponow is doing and why we think this is so attractive. So ApoNow goes to the pharma company like ratiopharm, like Novartis and so on. They go to these companies and say, "Well, you have a public page where you show all your products and in Google, you are ranked #1 because you are the manufacturer, you are the brand owner. And why don't you want to sell the product there?" And the pharma company says, "No, we are not allowed to sell pharma products, medicaments there." It's not allowed. Because in Germany, only the pharmacy can sell products, not the manufacturer. So ratiopharm is not allowed to sell a product to the customer.

So this company has a solution for this legal problem. And they made a very simple thing. They call this pharma company like Ratiopharma said, you know what, we integrate our software on your page when an order is coming in, we will distribute it to a local pharmacy, and we are connected to almost all local pharmacies in Germany, in Austria and Italy. And when they receive this order, they bring it to the customer. So a very simple system that all the pharma products can be ordered online but will be delivered with local pharmacies.

And this success model is quite interesting because more than 41,000 pharmacies work with that. In Germany, it's a complete B2B model. So we don't want any private customers. And we have 300 pharma manufacturers there who work with this company. So that is about basic and background why we started in this industry and why we think this is quite attractive when you find good niche.

And when we thought about how we can add some more niche segments here in the pharmaceutical industry, we had 3 different targets. And these 3 different targets, we acquired them in the last days. So before I show you what we acquired, I'll show you more the strategic picture behind that. So when you see the manufacturer here like Ratiopharm and when you see the sourcing platforms like the wholesale companies and you see the pharmacies, then you see the customer. Right now, we only cover 1 thing. So we have an online platform from the manufacturer, and this online platform brings orders to the customers but will be delivered by the local pharmacy. Good model, basic model and profitable model.

The next thing was that we want to acquire a sourcing platform because all the pharmacies, they do not get their products directly from the manufacturer. They get it from wholesale partners, from B2B wholesale partners. And we decided that we want to acquire a company here. And this is the first target, what we acquired. It is called Pharmosan. I will come on to that in the next slide. And also, we bought 1 educational platform. I'll also show you why. And the third thing is that we also want to find a good niche online pharmacy which is working together with local pharmacies because right now, when you go to DocMorris, it's not the intention of DocMorris that you want to work with local pharmacies. But we want to be the partner of a local pharmacy. And everything in our mindset is this year.

So we always look to local pharmacies and how can we help them, how can we help them to survive and how can we provide some more additional revenue that they can survive in their local city.

So the first one, what we acquired is a very old family business. Actually, it's more than 60 years old. And it's a family-owned company. It's Pharmosan Group. Pharmosan Group is located in Austria, in Vienna, and the founder, he's pretty old already, he's not active anymore but his son, Thomas and his other son is also active in the company as the managing directors. And what they do is very simple. So they have huge warehouses where they all offer their products to the local pharmacies focusing in Austria and they make the daily deliveries 2 times per day. And they are the best partners in Austria for the local pharmacies. So we have basically now a very good backbone how we can deliver all the products to the local pharmacies.

And when you go back on the slide, when you get all the orders from our online platform to the customer, they can directly source the product again because it's empty now in the local warehouse of the pharmacy, and they can directly connect all the customer orders with the sourcing platform, and that was one thing, which was really attractive for us.

The next target that we acquired is also a very special niche. It's an educational platform. Four years ago, we already acquired an educational platform. It is called Teech and located in Germany. And we said, well, when we want to be a really good partner for our pharmacies, we also want to educate and teach all the employees there.

So that was the next platform that we acquired. It is called apothekia. It is located in Cologne in Germany and they are the market leader for all educational programs for pharmacies. They have no end customers, so it's only a B2B business. And they are paid by more than, I think, more than 400 manufacturers and they offer the service for free to the pharmacies. So that is our business model. And yes, they have thousands -- tens thousands of different customers all over Germany and Austria to provide them with educational stuff.

And the third one is a niche platform. This niche platform is located in the Czech Republic, and it's called Vamida and they are focusing on niche drugs and these niche product -- niche drugs, they are delivered by local pharmacies but there is a strong relation between their products, their supply, and they are selling to the local customers. They are only operating in Eastern Europe and Austria. So in Germany, they are not really active. So that was an update from the pharmaceutical perspective and why we think that this is an attractive market. And after this presentation, we are open for your questions.

And we also want to give you an update about our Optics & Hearing business because this is a very important part of our company since July this year. And as you have maybe realized that we acquired companies here and we started an own platform. So this year, 3 months ago, we initiated MyGlasses.de. This is a platform where you can buy your correction lenses, glasses or your sunglasses, whatever. And this platform has 2 strategic goals. First, they want to sell glasses online, very simple. And second, they went to make the connection to local opticians. Because local opticians, it's 80% off-line business this industry and the customers to the local stores, this is a big advantage, and you can ramp up your local revenue with that.

So what the people, the customers do is pretty simple. They decide for glasses. It doesn't matter if it's correction glasses or sunglasses, and they can directly go to the eye testing in the local store, and we connect the local partners directly to the customers. So when you say, I want this kind of glass, you decide it online, and then you can pick it up in the local store and make your eye testing there. So that was our initial starting point by July this year. And our focus and our strategy was very clear that we make a hybrid model with that. So local stores and online opportunities. And our focus is only on Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

What we also say that this is such a relevant segment in terms of revenue and in terms of profitability that we make an own segment for that. So next year, we expect between EUR 55 million and EUR 60 million revenue, and this will be the highest profitability segment in our company. So we have an EBITDA margin of 25% on average. And we think that this is a very good number. Fielmann is around 24%, 23% right now. And -- but Fielmann is more at a discount level but they make a pretty good job, and we have more luxury segment in this industry.

To give you a better understanding on what we do there. So for example, we acquired Freudenhaus, maybe it's a little bit strange name but this is one of the market leaders in Munich. So this is a store, for example, the store is located in the Odeonsplatz in Munich and so you can see it's not a typical store. It's really a luxury position and the stores were famous all over Munich and also in Bavaria region. And so this is the kind of positioning we prefer because, as you know, we also have luxury watches. We have luxury glasses and fashion. And now we also want to focus on luxury glasses and luxury eyewear.

And the average order value, I think it's 2x higher than cheap competitors like Mister Spex or whatever. So we really focus on a very high customer base here. So that is our focus on why we want to ramp up the strategy and why we think that this is such an attractive industry that we establish it as an own segment in our group.

What else can we do there? We just told you that we have an online platform. We showed you that we have now 30 stores, and we showed you that we want to go to this high segment to this luxury segment in the eyewear. But there is one puzzle piece missing. And this puzzle piece is the ear sector. So the margins in the eye sector is 25% but the margins in the ear sector, it's even higher. So in Germany, Hörgeräte is maybe a very old word but it doesn't matter because we have a growing old population here in Germany and all Western countries. And there's a larger demand and an increasing demand for hearing solutions.

And our goal this the next 12 months is that we want to acquire a company and maybe also an online platform, which are covering the ear sector. and which will provide us a huge additional profit on that segment. And we also have some negotiations right now with 2 companies in this field, in the hearing field. And we think that we will have a progress in the next 4 to 5 months on this topic. So this was also a very important point where we would like to inform you here that we want to grow in the segment that we want to establish new fields like hearing. And I think this is quite a good and profitable decision.

So now we move on to the strategic projects. But before we do that, we showed you our financials, we showed you our increased guidance, and we also showed you our perspective on the Pharma segment and the Optical segment. Before we start, we would like to open this round for some questions. And I think we also have a microphone to let open questions here before we start with our strategic projects.

So who would like to start with questions?

Well, then we have first questions from the chat, if nobody else? No? Good. So first question is from [indiscernible]. Do you intend to increase the number of shares offered to the public as this would, among other advantages lead to an increase in the company's stock market value, which could be beneficial for current shareholders?

Okay. Thank you for the question. And the answer is, currently, we have 20.5 million shares in the market, and 70% is owned by the Benner Holdings, so my family. And currently, we have no perspective that we want to increase it by a huge amount. But what we do is sometimes we increase it by very small amounts because, for example, the seller of Pharmosan Group, the family Mittelbach. They receive, for example, EUR 2 million in shares, and the rest in cash. So the majority is in cash but EUR 2 million are in shares. And so there's always a slight capital increase for these acquisitions. But when you divided EUR 2 million, it's less, less than 1% of the group. So these are really small amounts of capital increases.

We have further questions from chat. Next one is from Christian Salis, Cantor Fitzgerald. On Optics & Hearing, could you elaborate on the capital intensity in this segment? Are you going to acquire brick-and-mortar stores? Or is this going to be online platform model only?

Second, please provide a revenue split in this second. Is the majority of sales coming from multifocal lenses or sunglasses and contact lenses?

Well, Christian, thank you for this question. A very detailed question. Maybe Bjoern, I think this is a good idea that we split the revenues into the detail and the different products, yes. Why not? I mean, in general, we have a segment reporting and it's always GMV, revenue and EBITDA. But I think this is quite a good idea from Christian Salis that we also integrate that, maybe not in the standard reporting, but on some extra slides. And I think it's -- yes, it's a good idea.

Can you repeat the first question, please?

Will you Buy more stores.

Yes. So what we said here is that we want to expand next year. So this year, we already have 30 stores acquired, and it was a very good successful acquisition. And next year, we think that we will acquire, as you can see here, another 25 to 35 stores in the total number next year. And then we are covered completely with the big cities or relevant cities. But our strategy is not to expand this national store front anymore. Our intention is, after this, we connect local partners. Because we have so many smaller cities, we have midsized cities where we would never buy a local optician but it's the best way to connect them to our platform. And that is our strategic idea. Cover the national stores with, I think, 60 to 70 stores and the rest is connected to our online platform, and we can work with them locally also.

We have 2 more questions from Christian. One is for Bjoern. So before that, maybe I ask you. Yes. So for Bjoern question is, which are the focus areas you are going to tackle in the near term?

Regarding M&A, that is?

Not specified. Christian, maybe you can specify that?

So maybe while Christian is specifying, there's another question on the sales growth guidance, what does the new midterm guidance imply in terms of organic growth per year?

We intend to keep up the split we currently have. And currently, we grow 60% organically and about 40% is by acquisitions. So what does it mean for the future? The question is quite right. So far, you already see this year in order to reach this split, we have been acquiring 10 companies. And that's pretty much the maximum you can actually integrate in a year. So for the future, if you want to grow un-organically at the same rate, that means that the targets need to become slightly bigger. It could be more. But then again, you have the complexity from integrating them all. And so I would prefer to buy targets that are slightly bigger than they used to be in the past.

Thank you. Christian hasn't specified his question yet. So maybe we get back to that later. We have a few more questions. Next is from Martin Pelle. Will you consider adding more visibility to per-platform figures in your financial reports?

What kind of figures?

Financial figures only. It says.

I think we are open if you have some specific ideas, what kind of figures you prefer. If you could tell us what kind of figures we can say, yes, no, maybe but without any mentioning what kind of figures, it's a little bit difficult right now.

Maybe that's a good point to follow. And his next question is, why don't you give visibility into the M&A details per acquisition such as historical P&L and price details paid cash and equity?

Yes. So basically, what we do is that in our annual report, you see how much we have on goodwill or badwill for each of the acquisitions. But what we not do is to provide you historical information about these companies because actually, usually, we buy family businesses. So they are private-owned businesses, and they don't want that and they write it in the contract. So we always have a confidentiality agreement with them. And I think it's not in their intention. But of course, some data are also public in the [indiscernible] or in other national registers. So it's possible. But in general, we do not provide that.

We have 2 more questions from Nathan. The next one is how come the noncontrolling interest part of the net income is so low if most companies acquired are not fully owned 50.1%?

Can you repeat it?

Yes, of course. How come the noncontrolling interest part of the net income is so low if most companies acquired are not fully owned?

Yes. It's true that the most companies, we start with 50% or 51% but it's, I think, a very risk-averse strategy because we got to know these companies in the next 2 or 3 years, and if they perform in a good way, we increase our share. So we increased it by 30%, 40%, 50% up to 100%. So usually, after 3 or 4 years, we have, in the most cases, 100% of the company. And when we go to the financials, to answer your question regarding the minority earnings. If you can see the minority earnings in the first half year was EUR 1.6 million. In the total year, we have no real forecast on that but maybe you should expect around let's say, EUR 4 million to EUR 5 million in the total year perspective regarding the minorities. And if you take into consideration when we have EUR 50 million to EUR 60 million net profit, I think EUR 4 million to EUR 5 million is quite not such a high number, and it's not so significant in our group.

Next question also from Nathan. Do you strategically target only luxury niches? Is it supposed to add synergies that cross sectors?

Well, actually, we always look on niche. And when we look on niche sectors, we think that luxury is such a niche sector. Because we don't want to compete with Amazon. We don't want to compete with Temu or Shein from China. This is a market where you could not win anything. So we really try to avoid these commodity markets. Also food. I mean everybody is buying food every week to eat and whatever. But we said, well, we don't want to enter the food market because everybody is losing money there. So why should we do that? If everybody in the e-commerce sector for food is losing money, we will not step in.

And so we have some clear perspective on different industries. And yes, we are looking for niche and in the fashion segment and shoe segment, for example, we really want to focus on the luxury segment because this is with better margins. You have better partners, a very selective partners. And we are very happy that we focus on such a niche segment and not on the commodity side for EUR 40, for example.

Next question is from Nohan Feickert. Regarding the pharma platform upon now, can you clarify the exact business model there? Who is the paying customer who makes the initial purchase in the producers' website like Novartis? Who pays for the product, initiates the purchase and to whom is it distributed?

Yes. Very good question. Okay. Maybe next time I invite our Managing Director, Thomas Engel, he's very used to explain this model because it's really a niche model. Nobody is doing that. So I think here, you can see a pretty good customer journey. So when you are on a manufacturer page, like ratiopharm or Grippostad, this is one product which everybody is knowing, Grippostad you have some cold, you get the stuff. So here on the manufacturer page and when the customer wants to buy this product, he clicks on the [indiscernible]. And at this moment, he's not making a contract with the manufacturer because the manufacturer is not allowed in Germany to do that. So the customer is making a contract usually with a local pharmacy. And the local pharmacy is a contract partner of the customer.

So what is going to happen? There's a contract. The contract is delivering in an order. The order is integrated into the system of the local pharmacy. And the local pharmacy says, okay, right now, we have time. We bring it to the local customer or if the customer wants, he can also pick it up at the local pharmacy. So that is a business model.

And who's paying the money? The pharmacy is paying nothing. So it's for free. So pharmacies do not have to pay anything to us. We completely get the money and the revenue from the pharmaceutical manufacturers. And as you know, they have good margins. And it's a good partnering model for them because they say we are not allowed to sell anything. Legally, it's not allowed. And when we sell now something with this ApoNow system, the local pharmacy gets the order, and they are always now a partner to the local pharmacies and not an enemy. So I think this is a good attractive way, how to combine the local pharmacy with the manufacturer in the e-commerce. And I think it's the only possible way how to do that.

Follow-up question from Nohan. Also, could you explain on the technical aspect of the integration? Is it using Shopify, proprietary tech? Does it use TPG PAY?

Yes. Very simple. All the manufacturers have own front-end solutions. So the manufacturers like ratiopharm and so on, they do not use Shopify or Shopware or Magento over anything like that, they have usually their own web pages and they are not an online shop. Though they have their own solutions. What we do here, we have our own technical solution, our own software. And this software is connected to the front end of the manufacturer. And with this software integration, the order comes from the pharmaceutical company to the local pharmacy. That is a software approach, and it's coded. It's delivered by ourselves.

Before we continue with the questions from the chat, any questions here in the audience right now? No.

Then next question from Alexander Rihane. Thank you for the presentation. How were the pharma acquisitions financed?

Yes. Good questions. So let's have a look on the pharma acquisitions. So we have 3 companies. It's Pharmosan Group, it's apothekia and it's Vamida. And the most important thing is cash. So the most amount of these 3 acquisitions is just cash payment. And we also have a small number of shares. I think in total, these 3 acquisitions, it's about more or less EUR 3 million in shares. So it's quite a small amount and the rest is cash. And as you know, we tapped the bond, and so we can use this part of the tap to invest it into these companies.

Next question is from...

And also to add this, the closing of the 3 acquisitions, it will be by November or December because we have 2 things. So first, we have to get all the legal approvals, [indiscernible], they have to approve it. And secondly, we have some definitions in the contract about the closing conditions. So we expect them to close it by December. That means that we also do not have to change our forecast for this year because they only belong for 1 month into our consolidation. So it's not a huge amount. Sorry for interrupting.

No problem. Saga wants to know 2026 revenue target. Could you please shed some light on what portion of the expected increase is related to M&A effect. So from the EUR 140 million increase in the guidance, how much is related to M&A?

Bjoern already mentioned this answer. So in general, what Bjoern said is that we have this balanced growth rate this year, and we expect the same organic growth and nonorganic growth and also by next year. So 60% should be organical. And this acquisition, I think it is mentioned in the press release, it has a total volume of EUR 130 million. So when you take EUR 130 million for the revenue forecast for next year of these 3 pharmaceutical companies, you can realize how much the additional amount was.

So the old guidance was EUR 860 million. You can now add the EUR 130 million. This is how you get close to the EUR 1 billion. And then I get the precise answer is in the guidance we give you, the M&A part is 0 because we just give you the growth we already know. So the EUR 860 million, this is organic growth and anything else, which we do acquire by M&A is not reflected in the guidance numbers. This will come on top.

I have one follow-up question from [indiscernible]. Adjusted versus reported EBITDA. Could you please also quantify your expectations for the reported EBITDA based on already completed M&A?

No. Because we give no guidance on reported M&A. So we only have adjusted M&A as part of our guidance, and we do not provide any guidance on that. But maybe when you calculate it -- to the question here, when you calculate it, I think it's not such a big topic because basically, what kind of adjustments do we have? We have EUR 1 million or EUR 2 million for cost or onetime effects. So it's not much, and the rest is PPA. In the first half year, we had EUR 9 million or EUR 10 million PPAs...

Close to EUR 10 million...

Close to EUR 1 million. And also in the second half year, maybe we can expect the same number, I don't know. It's not finished the half year. So we do not know that but maybe this could be a good estimation to make the calculation between EBITDA reported and EBITDA adjusted.

My name is Andrew Teller from [ AMF Capital. ] I think I'm addressing the elephant in the room. You haven't mentioned anything regarding artificial intelligence thus far. I'm assuming that's the next step. My question is regarding the 2 aspects of lowering the costs in HR and online marketing. I'm assuming that's due to artificial intelligence to a certain extent. And can you give us a little bit of an outlook here? What is the platform Group doing? I know that CEOs are careful in making statements. I think we've learned from Duolingo. But if you can give us a little bit of insight how you guys are making use of AI.

This is the right question because this is coming to our next part in 10 or 5 minutes, I don't know. And we will directly talk about the AI question there. And to be honest, I laugh this elephant because this brings us a lot of great advantages. It could bring us a lot of cost efficiencies. And also we can increase our automations for marketing, for accounting, whatever. So it's really a great advantage. And to be honest, I mean, I also make mistakes. And last year, my perspective was AI is nice. ChatGPT, I'm using it but I don't think that the impact is so much. That was my opinion last year.

And we traveled with our 50 managing directors to the United States to Palo Alto in the Silicon Valley by the spring, so by May or April this year. And we have seen how small companies, how midsized companies and how Google and Amazon are using AI in their daily business and how they integrate AI to really local and in the hierarchy of a company, the lowest people. And that was very impressive for me. So this was, for me, eye-opening, and I think also for our leaders here. And we said, well, we have to change something.

We -- I have to get away from my former perspective on AI, and we have to implement it into our company. And we did it, I think, in a very hard and fast way. So -- but we will come to that later. But again, I love the I was wrong with my position. I thought this is just a hype and it's going away, but we changed this mind.

Next question from [ Imran M. ] What is the expected EBITDA margin in the pharma sector companies? Are all companies profitable?

Yes. In our press release, we announced that it will be in the range of TBG margin. So it will be around 7%, 8% -- so this is the answer.

Norbert Schmidt wants to know, can you please elaborate on the amount and the timing of liabilities from outstanding put options for the minority shares?

Well, actually, this value changes every month. So we have no clear number on that. All we can do is that we make for a specific date like end of December. We always make a cut and our auditor is consolidating what kind of put options are open and what amount we have to pay at this time moment. But in general, there is no general number where we say it's EUR 20 million to EUR 30 million. This is not existing because if the company is performing well, this is going higher. If the company is performing bad, this number is decreasing by a lot. This also happened last year where we had this changing of numbers. But in general, this is not such a high number. We do not talk about EUR 40 million or EUR 30 million. It's much below. So it's really something. I don't have a specific number but I would it something between EUR 10 million and EUR 20 million for the next 4 years. So it's affordable for us.

Yes. One addition would be, of course, if we negotiate an M&A contract, we always make sure we have our call option. But of course, we try to avoid to put in a put option. So not all contracts do have a put option.

We have another follow-up question from [indiscernible] about average margin. Looking at your figures, the margins across the business have been notably strong. For example, profitability in the pharma sector is shown to be above typical levels in the sector. Optical margins are reported as strongly positive compared to many peers and overall group margins are presented as higher than broader industry benchmarks. Could you provide some perspective on the economic or structural factors that might be supporting these exceptional strong margins?

I think it's the question of the perspective. If you talk with somebody in the pharmaceutical industry, he is laughing about us and they come on you with your 8% margins, that's bull**. If you talk with somebody from, I don't know, Zalando, they maybe would say, well, it's a good margin. This is what you do there. So it's really a question of the perspective. Yes, you are right. Compared to our peers, we have better margins. But you will always find an exception. For example, there is a company, which is called Allegro. Allegro is an Eastern European marketplace. It's stock listed, and they have wonderful margins. And they make a really good job but nobody is knowing them here in Germany. It's not popular or anything known here, and they have margins above 20%.

So it's really a question on how you do your business, on how you make your capital structure and how you have your costs managed. And I think we are a very low-cost focused company. We do not have too much headcount in our headquarter, and we always try to save costs. This is our DNA, and I think it's a good DNA to save costs and not to spend too much time and money into any adventure something or to our headquarter because we think every person who is not directly operational, we have to keep this number very low. I think it's part of our DNA.

Would you say something else? I don't know.

You explained it actually when we were talking about the optics sector, and we try always like with fashionette for the higher end because the partner has to be able to earn our take rate. So this is why we always aim for the high-margin business, and we don't do the low-margin business. This should explain.

Yes. So for example, in the furniture sector, Bjorn mentioned it in his slides. In the furniture sector, a company, which is called MobelFirst. The average price each order, it's EUR 4,500, EUR 4,500. The average person in Frankfurt is not spending so much money on the so far. So we see this is a very high segment where you only have wealthy people, architects, doctors, entrepreneurs, whatever. And when you have such high order values, you can get better margins. So we don't want to compete in the low sector.

We have a follow-up question from Nohan. He asks if you could elaborate on possible allegations of financial engineering around the company's results. What stands behind them? How does the company intend to prove them false and unlock shareholder value?

I don't understand. Can you repeat the first half?

Yes, of course. He says, could you address the concerns regarding possible allegations of financial engineering around the company's results? What stands behind them? And how does the company intend to prove them false and unlock shareholder value?

To be honest, I don't understand. We have no allegations on that. So...

Then he provides more clarity on his previous questions regarding insight regarding -- no, that's the wrong one. From Martin, he provided more insights into his previous question, regarding the previous question about per platform financial figures. Could you provide revenue and operational profit to increase visibility of post-acquisition results?

Yes, this is a very good idea. What we do is that every year, we make one Capital Markets Day and we always provide you some case studies in this Capital Markets Day. So at the last Capital Markets Day, we had every time two or three case studies where we show you how was revenue, how was the profit before the acquisition and how it was developing after the acquisition. Well, that is what we're also going to do here, that we will provide you case studies where you can see directly what was the success or maybe not success. And what was going good, what was going wrong. And I think that's the best way.

In the segment report, I think it's not possible because each segment has a lot of companies included and it's not possible to say, okay, this was before and after acquisition because mathematically, it's not working, yes? But on the case study basis, absolutely, I think it's a very good idea.

There's another question from Nohan. I believe it's regarding the structural change from AG to SE. He asked, if could you provide some more insight what the intention was behind it and what the benefits are and how minority shareholders could be affected?

Yes. So actually, we had some Q&A calls on that. So I don't want to repeat everything here again. And if the question is being answered in the best way, maybe you go on our page, we have some explanations about this change in the legal structure. And maybe you -- I just want to recommend to read that and if you want a direct call on that because it's a big topic, we could talk about that for 1 or 2 hours. Maybe it's too big topics for today, but we had two Q&A questions -- sessions with the people on that and we also had our AGM on that topic already.

Thank you, Dominik. So right now, no further questions from the chat. Any other questions here in the audience?

[ Thomas Stevens ] from [indiscernible]. Could you -- do you have a lot of affiliations, you service them, service from the holding. Can you explain the financial model, how you support those companies?

Yes. Let's go back to -- So in our group, we have 113 people currently in the operating divisions and 26 people in our central divisions. Usually, we have 1 slide, which is explaining in much more detail on what these people do. But basically, in the central division, we have the HR department and the payroll department, we have our people from finance there, accounting and also our legal and lawyers team who are working for our subsidiaries. On the left side, on the operation divisions, we have software, we have marketing, we have business intelligence, we have AI team and we also have our video and public affairs team, and they are working for all our subsidiaries.

When you look a little bit more on this slide here, you see the most two important things are marketing and software. So the most people in the operational division make the marketing for all our portfolio companies. And the second big thing is the software. So they deliver new software releases for our subsidiaries, and they make sure that they have a progress in the development, in the front end, in the back end and that they can work with that.

This is quite important for the companies. And when we enter a company, we usually say, "We don't need your external provider for software, we don't need your internal accountant, we don't need your one person for HR. It's not necessary anymore." So we can realize these cost effects. So we run down the cost for these things because we already have it in our central holding. And this is one of the biggest cost effects, which we can provide when we come into a company and change the P&L to more profitability.

Yes, of course. In Germany, you have to charge some amounts to the holding because otherwise, the financial authorities would have a problem with you. But I -- maybe you come from the question like other finance holdings do that. They charge a lot of management fees and so on, and they get millions into the P&L. In our company, it's not working like that. Our average portfolio company pays EUR 7,000 per month. So they pay -- on average. We have some bigger companies with EUR 20,000, for example, and small companies with EUR 2,000, for example. And so this is a range where usually the portfolio companies pay their intercompany payments to our holding.

And we do not make profits with that. So it's not the intention to get money from them and to get huge balance accounts in our holding, no. What's really the intention, we give a good service for them. We run down their costs, and we cover the most of their value chain with our people here, and this is the intention. And we only do it because of the German finance, that they are not having a problem with us in this case, yes.

So if you look at it and if you see that, for example, the marketing costs are less than 6%, and you probably know that this is a very good value for the industry. So usually, what -- expect to see numbers somewhere between 10% and 15% marketing spend. There's other e-commerce companies that might still use a print catalog. If you do that, you're probably above 20%. So the 6% we have, there you can see it's centralized, and it works very effectively and very efficient at the same time.

You can make the same assumption for the IT cost. I'll just give you another example. We acquire a company and often we use Shopify shops, and we have Frederic, how many do we have?

Some.

So some at least or a lot, the other way around. And they just have one and then it's just one call with Shopify. We ask -- say, please add the shop of this company to our frame agreement and then we pay a fraction for it, what the single company used to pay before. And this is valid for many other softwares we use as well.

But the question -- it's a question of your management style. Our management style was always to keep costs down. And when you say I want to keep costs down, you cannot double your revenue. It's not working, yes? So I don't want to mention any company in Berlin, but they had always the other approach. They said, "Oh, we want to achieve EUR 1 billion," for example. And when we want to achieve EUR 1 billion, we have to just spend 20% or 30% of marketing, and then it will work. We make a lot of TV commercials and so on. And when we spend 30%, we will directly go to EUR 1 billion. This is just mathematical, yes? Logical, yes?

But we had this different opinion. We said no. We are a family business. We only can spend what we earn, not otherwise. We do not have investors. We never had an IPO, cash out or something like that. So we always have to work with the money which we earn. And this is a consequence of that.

So we said we want to invest the lowest amount for marketing, which is possible. And let's see how much revenue we can get with that. That is our approach. So very basic, very ground approach, not this idea of just want to get big and let's see how it works, yes? So it's a kind of management style.

Thank you, Dominik. No further questions.

Okay. So I would hand over to you. So before we start with that, I was asked by one of the persons here to explain a little bit on how much we spend for M&A currently. So in our cash flow statement, you know how much we spend, and Bjoern also presented it to you. But right now, the valuations are still with 3 to 5x EBITDA. So it did not change also not in the second half year because we also get a lot of questions about the M&A activities, how much you pay, what is the valuation basis and so on. So also, for the 3 pharma acquisitions, it was on that level. So there was no change, and we also worked with these numbers.

Yes. So we directly come to your presentation before we make the outlook. But I don't know where your presentation is.

It's a good question.

Here we go. Perfect.

Welcome from my side as well. With me on the stage today is [ Christian ] [indiscernible], he is our leader or Director for the payment part. We hired him. He's an absolute industry expert, some of you might know them already. And he supports us here with TPG PAY and all the stuff that is going on with the payment stuff.

So before we go to TPG PAY, I'll just make a little wrap up from our last Capital Markets Day, where we already pronounced or informed you that we will invest a lot in our internal TPG One solution. And one amazing part of it is the TPG Connector and also AI enrichment and the TPG ONE Cloud. So part of this has already been finished. So the most important stuff is the TPG ONE Connector. What is meant by this? So the connector is for our retailers, a very innovative solution where they just can connect with very, very less amount to our systems.

So for example, when the customer or the retailer has a Shopware shop or a Shopify shop, they can just enter the ID of the shop and the rest is our system doing. So they directly know this kind of information, what is coming from the shops, the feeds, the kind of products, the categories and they can directly automatically map these kind of products for them. So this saves them a lot of time for onboarding to our solutions and to get onboarded to Platform Group.

One big part is AI in the moment. So -- not in the moment, more in the future. So what Dominik said already at the beginning, we were a little skeptical but we have now our own AI team. At the same time, through this meeting at the moment, our teams are getting trained to AI and different kind of AI solutions. So it's very refined moment because it's really happening at the same time.

So all the employees of the Platform Group get trainings every Friday, not bank holidays or other Tuesday -- Thursday today, but they get trainings on different kind of topics they might need to solve in the daily business or, for example, for marketing, how to enrich images, for example, or how to automate processes like standard process with customer service, how we can speed up their work. And we have trainings every Friday to different kind of topics, for example, n88 -- n8n, sorry, as one of the automation processes or how you can use AI for testing, for example, for software testing and stuff.

And we also integrate AI in our AI category mapping. This means when we map the data from our customers, so they have, for example, specific categories or they have what kind of categories we don't have or we might have. So we directly recognize this can be this category. So we have a matching of these categories, for example, by 99%. So we know this is very, very sure this correct category, what is going to our category tree. But when -- then after this kind of mapping, you have an outcome of 1% or 2%, what you manually need to map. But in the past, all the categories need to map to our categories, what is a long process until the customer, or the retailer could sell on our processes.

And also for product data, we sometimes just get a fraction of data, just a title or an image or EAN, and our tools will enrich this kind of data. Out of an image, our tools can see, hey, is this a pullover, is this wool, is this synthetic or whatever kind of fabric this might be. And whenever the AI is not 100% sure, they mark it, say, hey, double check it or when they issue they're sure, they just releasing it, yes?

The last thing is TPG ONE Cloud, and the TPG ONE Cloud is a high-performance cloud, what is built for the future already so that any kind of products we will receive from our [ craft ] group. So we have more -- many, many million products in our group. And we have a centralized PIM system, where we can enrich and work with all these data. Normally, you have millions of different kind of PIM systems, what is making a lot of work, but we now have a centralized system where we can all enrich these and work with these data.

On top, we have a pricing layer with a Re-Pricer that we can check the pricing on the market, what is the best price here. we can define rules, say, for example, always go 5% lower as the best retail price in the market or status-wise, so we can define this per product or per specific category, yes?

This a small recap from our TPG One development part at this moment. Now we come to TPG PAY. So last time we promoted TPG PAY to you, this is our own buy now, pay later solution. And at the moment, we are -- we have the internal release, and we are waiting for an approval for Shopify as we said we want to go this typical way first. So Shopify is the trickiest company to get an own payment app in. So it's -- Shopify doesn't like to have other payment providers on their own now. So it's very hard to get the payment application in.

So at the moment, we are already in our internal shops, so we could use it already internally. We're just waiting for the final approval. It's in the last steps of the approval process. Everything was fine so far. Some parts of the AI needs to be updated after the approval. So we added the approval process with a very basic AI. So don't be surprised what you see in a minute. As soon as approval is there, we can update the -- either the visual, what you design, what you can see. And then it can go to the Shopify official marketplace and can be used as beginning in our shops and in the future in other shop.

We will show you now a live video from [indiscernible], where Shopify app of TPG PAY is already integrated for our own shops. So you can just directly buy a product, you select a size, add it to the cart. And as soon as you enter the checkout, you can select -- just a normal payment procedure, you can enter and select here your topical payment -- sorry, TPG PAY, then enter your data. As you can see it's a very fast one checkout here. You have entered the TPG payment app, and then you go to review the order and to the payment page.

So what you see happening? We show you in a minute. Now you can select on invoice or on installment. And with just 1 click and no paperwork, you are finished and ready to go. And that's it, now you have done the sale with Shopify and TGP PAY.

And now we come to the time line, what we have done already. So we have through the analyze phase, we have built our TPG payment cloud. In this payment cloud, all the risk checks run, all the communications with the front-end, back-end, say, API calls run. We have a very innovative also AI-driven risk solution we will show you in a minute. We have finished our Shopify payment app. We are waiting for the final approval. And what is coming next is we can integrate in this payment cloud, more payment solutions, for example. So we are now open to -- and to integrate other payment solutions, we can also integrate credit card or other payment solutions we want to have. So we made it very, very flexible, so that we are super flexible for any other thing, what is coming.

And what is also up for next year or for the next years is our own TPG PAY accounts. So this means that customers have a central account where they can see, hey, I bought something on OEGE or something on fashionette or Avocadostore, they can see all their orders in 1 account and that they can also use it as an overview, but also to pay their invoices.

Now we come to the risk check part, I will hand over to [ Christian. ]

Yes. Thank you, Christoph. Yes. So when we speak about payment, we always have to speak about risk because it's most important, especially when it comes to buy now, pay later. And generally speaking, when we talk about risk, we need two different things to prevent fraud, to manage the risk, also the non -- the payment default risk, of course with buy now, pay later. And there are two things. One is technology and the other one is data. So -- and technology means the core central part managing risk is typically a rule-based engine where we also then apply, of course, AI, not the generic AI but machine learning because you always need to improve rules because fraud patterns, risk patterns change over time.

So -- but this is not sufficient. And the biggest risk in buy now, pay later is not the creditworthiness of the buyer. This is typically manageable. The most risky part is fraud. So you need to identify the fraudulent behavior and the fraudsters, which try to, of course, use the solution without the intent, of course, to pay. So meaning what we do is we use a lot of data. So we have device identification. Then you take all the data of the customer, the purchase history, the order data, what is the customer buying because it's a huge difference. And then you add and aggregate more data from external sources.

So for example, if you look at the device, you typically check with other databases, publicly available or special service providers, if this device has already been used in other fraudulent activities, or if it's, I don't know, popped up in a certain time frame in various different e-commerce stores. So meaning you use all the data you can get, run this through the rule engine to finally in the end decide if you approve the customer, the purchase or you reject the purchase. What looks easy and is done in milliseconds, requires a lot of hard work in the background. And this is probably one of the most fascinating things within payments. It always looks easy for the buyer, but the complexity is always in the background.

So this, of course, was a little bit of deep dive into the machine room. But when we go up into the, let's say, more in the bird's eye view, what are we doing this TPG Pay? What is the reason behind developing this? So meaning we have seen, we have various different shops and payment processes running. So what in the end, of course, makes sense to have a scalable central platform, which we leverage for the payment processing. So offer some form of a standard process, and this is the basis.

As Christoph already mentioned, most interesting, of course, is the TPG account. So meaning getting consumers across all the different shops, all the different stores, offering them an account where they can see more or less everything with their purchase regardless of what store they have purchased at. Which also means that we centralize the data, which is very important and again, for the risk management part. So -- but of course, also offers further services for the consumers and the buyers.

So this is where we can achieve the customer network effect. Of course, marketing people love this as well, but I'm not -- I'm a payment guy, not a marketing person. But clearly, if we have the central account, you can play, of course, with the users. So what is then up to the marketing department.

So -- and last but not least, of course, if we have this data, consolidate the payment processes, build up the solution, of course, we have a clear intent to leverage our capabilities then, of course, to third parties. So meaning, adding additional payment methods on the one side, but more important, providing this capability mid- to long term also to other shops that are in the market, not only within the TPG Group.

So what do we expect from this? Clearly, different benefits out of this. So clearly, one of the or the important topic when it comes to e-commerce is always conversion. And this is what payment people typically get told every single day from e-commerce shops. Conversion is key. So this is also one of the reasons why buy now, pay later is so important in the German market because it's in different industries, the most popular payment method. It gives users a lot of convenience. You can order a lot of products, try them before you pay. So -- and clearly, you have seen a lot of companies in the market in the payment industry, growing with this model very strongly in the last 10 years. So this is what we expect or hope to achieve.

Clearly, also reduce operational costs by centralizing payment processing via one central platform, central contracts you achieve, of course, economies of scale, as simple as it is. And it's like when we integrate companies, we save on licenses, on software licenses and other things, the same here, of course, holds true. We save money on payment processing.

And this is the more the operational view on that. But of course, from a strategic perspective for us, it's also important that we keep the data in our ecosystem. So if we provide the data and all the consumers always to third parties, we are sometimes a little bit like a cheap acquisition channel for those partners. So they leverage the user data, we are the acquisition channel to give them buyers. That's not what we want. Of course, we want to serve our customers directly. And this is where having an own buy now, pay later and having an own TPG account becomes very important from a strategic perspective.

And last but not least, you can imagine, like what Christoph mentioned with TPG One and the connectors, if we get new shops within the TPG Group, we want to be ready and give them the solution right away so that they can, of course, immediately benefit from the advantages, higher conversion and of course, lower operational costs.

So I hope that explains a little bit why we do this, what we do. And thank you.

Thanks. Thanks a lot. I will now hand over to Frederic for the M&A part.

Thanks a lot. I would also like to catch up real quick with the AI part, as Christoph mentioned, because AI is not only buzzwords. And we say no to this because anywhere, if we're jumping into any presentation or if we take a look at other companies, they're using AI so much more especially in presentations. And we would like to say, okay, we would like to use AI hands-on in our company and how we can use it, and we don't want to like present it to anywhere. But as we just saw it, we need to also present it because we just need to take a look at it, how we are able to set it up.

And as Dominik, first of all, mentioned, we had a little trip to USA. And we try to understand, okay, how we can use AI in our internal processes, how we can enrich processes. And also, we can decrease the manual workloads in our teams because, first of all, before we start any new project, especially for AI, there are many things, many visions about it. And I think we just need to take a look in the daily work, where we can decrease the workloads. And the main part was on our side, as also Christoph mentioned, mappings. We start to map categories. We need to map colors. And also, we need to decide, okay, is the picture what we are receiving from the partner, even a bag or maybe a bike. And this is something what we take a look at it and said, "Okay, this is the first way and the first steps we need to take on and take a look at it."

So this is the reason why we started with product data and catalog management. Right now, we also implemented here ChatGPT and multiple other AIs directly via API, just to make sure that the manual workload is getting decreased because also, if we are integrating new partners, but also new subsidiaries into the group, we need to be more efficient. And this is the way how we are doing this.

So I would like to share afterwards some examples how this could look like. And if we're just jumping also to the customer service, especially the first-level support tickets, where is my package, where is my refund, when I will receive also the package or I'm not home today, maybe we can postpone it once a week or whatever. Those are some tickets what is taking so much time and effort in the manual day. And we would like to decrease it, and this was the first step where we also take a look at it.

But not only in customer service, not only at catalog and product management, logistics and returns is the same way because if we have the data of the customer, and we understand how they are buying and also take a look at our products, maybe if you compare it also to Zalando, often customer buying multiple sizes just to decide which size fits the best. And this is something what we also can make sure if we're analyzing the data, then we can also say, "Okay, maybe this shoe is Italian size, it should be maybe a bit smaller than German size." And those are preferations, what we are able to also show everybody in the product detail pages, and make a little preferred buy-in, just to make a decision, okay? Which size should I buy and then I don't buy like three sizes, return two of them and decide for just one.

The same on pricing and promotions. On our end, we just have analytics between all the different countries, which sizes we have for which articles. It starts from shoes, ends up towards watches at Chronext. So we are analyzing, okay, how is watch market going? Is it decreasing or increasing? Maybe there are also different key points where we need to take a look at it. Is maybe someone like selling their boutique or whatever? And those are some topics, what we need to take a look at it because this depends also on the pricing, what we're setting up for articles. If we would like to sell in the U.S., we need to double the price, just to make sure that we cover our customs but also to be competitive, we need to analyze the market. And this takes a lot of effort, as you maybe know, on manual work, and this is something where we just have as a support also AI.

Always, we're using AI in a hybrid model. So we don't rely on AI. We also have every time a human and a hybrid model just to make sure that also the quality stays the same, what we'd like to expect. But just to jump into one topic for AI photo creation. We need to have a direct photo of the products, but then we can do whatever we want basically.

As you maybe know, Nano Banana is someone may be key for this. They just launched multiple topics that you are able to take the article, you can just place it anywhere. If you would like to switch to summer season, all right, we just set up the scenery, maybe a beautiful, yes, margarita, whatever, and then you can just place the bag next by, and then you can just start -- also start the marketing for this. But as I just mentioned also here, AI is a part of it, but also, we need the human work. So we still have the photo creation team, photography, because we just need to have perfect photos of the product. Otherwise, we aren't able to market correctly.

But then also next step, AI tagging. This is the part what I mentioned before because sometimes we have retailers, they are sending us, yes, sometimes c*** content. So we have like a category that stands maybe, all right, this a bag, all right, a bag could be any one. It could be [ weekender, ] it could be a clutch bag, whatever. So there are multiple decisions and also attributes we need to the -- to list it on multiple marketplaces.

And then AI tagging comes in, what does AI tagging? Takes a look at the product picture and it analyzes everything. So it starts from shoes, pants, jacket, it ends up to the car in the background, but also the palms of the beach. And this is something we need to structurize. And then the human part comes in and we need to structurize also develop the structure and requests. This is called what we are doing here.

So if we connect an AI, we need to structurize the request because we don't want to analyze the background. We want to analyze the product, what stands before and also decide on how much detail we want to analyze it because, first of all, as you can just see it here, we have so much information in this photo, and the AI doesn't know what we would like to see and also receive in our product data feed. And then we start the focus. All right. We would like to have a shoe, but what is this shoe? Is this a sneaker? Is it maybe [indiscernible] or whatever. And there are some topics where we already integrated in our end because of a customer or especially on our end, the partners joining us, boutique retailer, they are exporting us the article data. And then we just need to analyze it. We need to make sure, okay, is it a bag and what is the bag because otherwise, we're not able to list it on our internal marketplaces, but also, we are not able to list it on external marketplace.

If we come in to the next topic for AI. What we are right now in the second phase. First of all, I would just give a little ramp up, what the different phases are. In the first phase, we would like or what we already have here, we already decreased the workload. The second phase is how we can also be more autonomous. And then the third phase is visionary. So what we can maybe replace in total in the next 2 years.

Site and search navigation. What does it mean? I as a customer, if I'm joining a website, I'm looking for -- maybe at fashionette, I'm looking for a different article. But what article I'm looking for? Maybe I would like to join a wedding, all right. Wedding, and I'm a man, I would like to take a look maybe at the shoes or I may need shoes, or I need next time a cool watch, just to make sure that I'm also a pretty good looking not only on my body, but also maybe on my wrist for the wedding. And this is something the search requests on websites, they will be more normally speaking. So I was not looking for watch, maybe I look for, as I just mentioned for wedding, but also maybe in sizes. So I would just take a look at the sizes, I would like to have, okay double XL, I need. And then I could just receive everything I need for the sizes, starting from suit, ends up with a shirt or whatever.

So this will be the first part. So the recommendations, especially what I'm looking for are getting better, and I'm analyzing the customer who is looking for which article in our website. Cross-sell and recommendations, especially on product detail pages, there's a bit hard to also make sure, okay, how we can increase the basket of the end customer? So if you already buy the product, maybe shoe, how I can make sure that you also buy socks, how maybe I can maybe sure that he buys a duffle bag for this again just to make sure that he is also carrying the shoes. We are able to also here take AI directly into the integration and make sure that we are doing the right recommendations to the end customer, and also to increase the basket value, but also the amount of articles what he's buying.

Next part, CRM and e-mail marketing. Also here, a different topic. But at the end, the same, content creation is supporting us in any way. AI is taking over also to analyze the customer but also to prevent what the customer is looking for and especially here, which content needs to be emotional attractive. Because everybody knows in marketing, you need to have an emotion for the article and you need to understand, okay, if I'm buying this article, my emotions are maybe a warm feeling or a happy feeling or I'm feeling more luxurious. And those are the topics that we try to prevent -- not to prevent, we will try to predict just to make sure what the customer is feeling for those products.

And in this case, we need to generate also the content for this. And the AI is supporting us here quite well that we are making sure that we have the emotional attraction also for the end customer that he's also here buying the product in total.

But then last but not least here for landing page and campaign creation. Our total team in the shared service center of TPG and also for the support of subsidiaries, is already quite big, but especially here in a dynamic way, how we are buying companies, we need to make sure to have the same quality for each of those subsidiaries. And one big part is also here quite important. The subsidiaries are in a different size. They come from small and goes to big. And it depends on, sometimes there are like maybe 8 coworkers and ends up maybe a few hundreds. And the more detail we need to jump in with the marketing team, the more support we need. And this is also here, as I just mentioned, at first place that we need to decrease the manual workloads.

So here, landing pages, campaign creation is also supported by us internally in multiple ways to also make sure that we are setting up even faster the campaigns and making sure that every subsidiary of our site receives the support what we love to provide.

So what is the main goal from our side? We would like to go away from the everyday manual decision-making and go to anonymous data-driven commerce infrastructure. That's the main idea and the main goal, what we are looking for and driving for every day. And as also Christoph Wilhelmy mentioned, also today, we have our AI learning session for every coworker, and we tried not to improve it also on the management level, we try to improve it directly from the button up because especially here, every coworker in our company is supporting us in any way. So we just need to make sure to have knowledge transfer, not only in a very small circle, in the biggest circle we can maybe think about all over our company.

But I already mentioned, not only AI, but also the coworker behind, so the human is creating in TPG a shared service center. And this shared service center, it needs to be a performance engine. And this performance engine needs to accelerate the business on the one hand but also increase every quality aspect what we are thinking about. Starts from maybe logistic contracts, ends up to product content, maybe shop redesign because it's not so fresh looking anymore and the modern design, needs to be definitely redesigned.

And this is something where we started to like set up different shared service center dedicated teams just to make sure to also develop those parts because it takes time. Every time we have another company incoming, we need to decide, okay, what projects we would like to set up? Is it the marketplace project because the marketplace project is not right now implemented in this company. So we need to collect our B2B portal, our ERP system, whatever. Is the marketing not good enough, so we need to increase especially here, marketing traffic, whatever. Do we spend too much marketing, whatever. And those are the different topics that we need to decide for each of our subsidiary.

And our idea was, okay, we need to structure this because in the last few years, we increased our amount of buying, especially here in M&A, quite a lot, and TPG is getting bigger and bigger. And we need to structurize also here our internal departments to make, okay, we have once marketing, legal lawyer, we have especially here marketplace developments, but also on a different level to scale it up with the data intelligence shared across all the brands because the internal HR department on our end, just to make sure to have also a knowledge transfer. So that only in the operational way, we would like to increase the amount of revenue we're doing, but also to share the knowledge what we have in our company with everybody in our subsidiaries.

If we -- okay, I'm just making it a bit faster. This is my last slide over here. Technology development, I already mentioned, 60 developers across back end and the front end, what is supporting us, especially for TPG Connector and cross-listing across all our subsidiaries. But if I'm jumping to the last point, commercial and procurement. This is something we started 2 years ago. So we requested multiple carriers. We collected every data of our subsidiaries and making sure that we have also a TPG on a group level contracts and that we are collecting also here every data to decrease the cost starting from carrier costs and ends up to also licenses and PSPs or whatever.

All right. Just a very short ending as just expected. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much. And now we are open for questions. Maybe you also come up on the stage and to answer the questions regarding AI, regarding TPG payment and our software development. We will start with the digital questions, [ Sven. ]

I think we had a lot of questions from chat before, so maybe we give the audience a chance. Any questions in the audience? No? Then first question from the chat is from [ Christian Salis. ] No, that was the previous one. Regarding TPG PAY and cross-selling, how many of your total customers are using TPG PAY and how many buy at least 2 TPG platforms?

Well, we just started now. We developed this TPG payment, and we started by this winter internally for our platforms and next year for external partners. And I don't know if we have an estimation on that, but what would you say?

It's tricky to say. We first need to start really and then we can make up for the first, I would say, 3 months, we can give figures there.

So let's talk about it in 3 or 4 months.

So I think this also tackled the follow-up question, which was about the indication on what the adjusted EBITDA impact from TPG PAY would be for this year?

Nothing.

Nothing. So no further questions from the chat right now.

Actually, in the last Capital Markets Day, this year, we mentioned and explained in -- I think, in a good -- [Foreign Language] presentation, our time line for TPG PAY. And we already announced at this moment that we will be live by winter this year, October, November, we will be live for our internal shops. And next year, we will open it for external partners, so for external online shops. So I think we are quite in our time line, and it will have an impact next year, definitely. We have no estimation on the amount. We have no estimation on the revenue, but it will have an impact. And -- but we can be quite optimistic that it will be a good impact.

Thank you. We have no further questions in the chat. Any questions here in the audience?

[indiscernible], Edison Group. A question on your international expansion. Do we have certain markets or industry in mind already? And how will you expand is this? Is 100% acquisitions?

Yes. So thank you for this. Our market, which we think is the most attractive one for e-commerce and software are the United States. We are not there so far. So it's a long journey from not being there to cover this market someday. So internally, we prepared some steps and measures how to enter this market and M&A will be one of these steps.

Next year, I think we can announce some activities in the United States, but on a small number and on a very small level because we don't want to risk money there. We have to make sure that we do enter a market without losing money, and this is not so easy sometimes. And so we are preparing this strategy. And next year, we will execute it.

The next question was, is M&A relevant regarding on this international expansion? Yes, it is relevant and it's the best way how to enter it. And your next question was about the industry, which industry is the most relevant one? I think there are three industries attractive for this. The first one is machine trade. As you know, we have already the market leader for machine transaction. It's called GINDUMAC, and they are already active in the United States, but also active on a lot of other countries in the world. And this is the best industry for that for international expansion.

The second industry is luxury because the customers in the United States and also in other Asian countries, they also buy Armani, Gucci and so on, though they have very similar favorite there. And the third industry, and I think this is also attractive for us, it's pharmaceutical business. The problem is a little bit the regulation because when we have this regulation in each country, it's different. So for pharmaceutical goods. And it's not easy to cover that. So we do not have an estimation on that, but we think this is a certain industry where we would expand in international way. Next question.

Next question is from chat, [ Norbert Schmidt ], as TPG One looks like the central node for future success? Did you do any tech due diligence for ensuring scalability of the platform? What was the outcome?

Yes, of course, we make analysis and researches how to scale it. And we are here also in contact especially with colleagues from the IVS, the AWS solutions teams who are directly consulting here. So we have really industry experts who are experienced with scaling -- or are backbones to very high standards.

But [ Christian ], maybe you explain a little bit more about your background, for what kind of companies you worked for, and why you decided to support us with this project?

Yes, happy to do so. Thank you, Dominik. So in fact, I'm working in the online payment industry since probably 25 years. When the first e-commerce shop started, I built the first payment solution. After that, I joined various different companies. So my last fixed-term employment was as a Managing Director for PayDirect [indiscernible]. So I think quite some experience in developing, let's say, payment solutions and build them up and scaling them.

And clearly, if we look at scaling, as Christoph already mentioned, so we choose the right software stack to make sure that what we develop can scale, making sure we are flexible in the architecture because payment is always a network business. So you connect with a lot of various different entities. And like I explained with risk management, you integrate various different credit scoring agencies, other technical providers, so many. It's all about connecting.

And this is most important when you look at architectures that you have this flexibility and be able to collect every -- connect everything, which is more or less around. That doesn't mean you do this, but you should be able to do this in a very fast manner. And just speaking, payment -- integration of a payment option in the past when I started was about 6 months technical work. And nowadays, it's typically 2 to 3 weeks. Unfortunately, the contract negotiations still take 6 months. So the technology has developed very fast. So we are much more speedy today than we have been, I don't know, 20 years ago.

Any further questions? All right. So thank you very much for your attendance. Thank you very much for your good questions. I hope you get a better understanding on our strategy and on our strategic goals for next year. Next year, it will be a good year. That's the reason why we increased our guidance for next year. So we are quite optimistic internally. And I think we have some good decisions made in the last 12 months. So we are on a good track.

Now we would like to invite you to our lunch. Our lunch is prepared directly in front of the room. And yes, we are open for questions on the lunch time. Thank you very much.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to those who joined the previous earnings call today, and welcome everyone else to today's Q&A call of the Platform Group. The CEO, Dr. Dominik Benner, will give a brief introduction and an update on the business model and recent developments. Following this, the floor will be opened for all upcoming questions via our chat box. And please note that in today's call, we will only provide the chat to take your questions. And having said this, Mr. Benner, please, the stage is yours.

So thank you very much for this, and it was part of our more transparent strategy to explain you more regarding the platform group, how we work and how we make our business. And the idea was you know that we always make 1x or 2x per year at Capital Markets Day. The Capital Markets Day is always in Frankfurt, and we have a hybrid version that you can also have an online look on that. But we want to make sure that you also can ask us in the month of August about maybe upcoming question, maybe open questions.

And as you know, we have our meeting by next week on Monday in Dusseldorf. And maybe you also have some questions which you would like to get answered before that or if you have some further questions, which you might not get an answer in our reports, we can also answer you it in this call. Bjorn, do you want to add anything from your side?

Just a warm welcome.

All right. So saying that, I think we can already start with the chat. So feel free to chat your questions. And Bjorn and me, we can directly answer your questions. We already got 25 questions in the call right now, which we had at 10:00, and these 25 questions always covered the first half year report. So it was about the EBITDA, the [indiscernible] , the revenue development, the segments. So I think we had a quite good overview on that. So if there's somebody here in the room which would like to ask some more specific things about the H1 results. You can also give us direct feedback on that or just ask us some questions regarding this report.

So I can see that we get the first questions here. So the first question, what you asked us is about the access to new partners and new platforms. So this is a very interesting question because when we go back to this wheel here, you see that we always focus on getting new partners and with the partners, we get more products. This is very important because otherwise, we cannot grow, and we have no successful development because they are the backbone of our growth.

So let's make some examples. So maybe we just show you a web page here from Mobelfirst. This is a company which we acquired 4 years ago, and they are very successful with their business because they sell luxury furnitures.

Before we go into details, Dominik. I would say, basically, we have 3 ways to gain new partners. We're #1, that's the easiest one, they call us, right? They say we've heard the Platform Group, can you help us? Way #2, we call them. Of course, we try to contact potential partners, which we find are interesting and also offer them our services. And thirdly, by acquisition.

Yes, definitely. So maybe we just take one example here. So when you go on these pages like this platform here, you see it typical sofa. But when you go a little bit further, you see the background, it is a typical furniture store. And we go to furniture stores, make all the pictures and all the data. And each day, we make 100 products with the content, so with the pictures and so on, and then we go to the next door. And this is the business model. So we take more and more partners, the people come to us and say, okay, how can we get more revenue because the stagnating revenue in the offline sector, it is relevant for everybody. And so we are one of the solution providers who gives them a chance to get more revenues, and we do it in the e-commerce.

And so as Bjorn already said, 80% call us or send us a message and say, okay, we want to be part of that. And what is also important is that we go to classical fairs, each industry has fairs like EFA and so on. And so we go to these fairs and have a representation there and the people come and show up and ask, hey, how can I sell products here? How can we make e-commerce with you? And this kind of business, it is available for B2B sector. As you can see here, we have a lot of partners who have machines all over the world, and we sell their machines in more than 100 countries and make sure that they have a good logistic. We make sure that they have a good quality, and that they work when we install this machine at the buyer's place. So these are just 2 examples between furniture and machines, which are quite a good example how we get our partners. Next question.

And another lever is to grow with existing partners, of course.

Yes. So next question is about the H1 results. I want to understand the cyclicity of the H1 and if we can show the GMV being down in Q2.

So I think the best way if you want to have the Q1 and Q2 numbers, you go to our page, you see the quarterly report. And in the quarterly report, you see the financial numbers showing you here. So you can just subtract the numbers between the full half year and the Q1 results. I think that is the easiest way if you want to calculate all the numbers.

So next question. There have been persistent questions on the media about the company's accounts. Would TPG consider using a second bigger reputable auditor to end that discussion?

Yes. Thank you very much for this question. And Bjorn and me, we always also think about that to be honest. So in our history, TPG had 2 big auditors. And in 2019, for example, we worked with KPMG. KPMG, and we had a very good relationship. And after KPMG, we used Ernst & Young. So 2020, 2021, 2022, always Ernst & Young made the audit reports. For example, when you go to the concern and sections here and you open it, you can see that it is audited by Ernst & Young. So let's just scroll down here. You see the report.

I usually always add and we are discussing this. I started working a couple of years ago with one of the big 4 firms. And what Dominik always says, unfortunately, is very right. Usually, you get very young teams, and that's why after all, it's quite expenses because you have a higher half a bus of consultants because they are all very junior, and if you have a senior guide, then you can really replace like 5 to 6 years and still do a better job. So you can look from in both ways. Of course, you do have the brand. But if you look at the quality of the results, you might be much better off with the smaller consultancy, which is familiar with your industry.

And coming back to the question, I think, yes, we changed our auditor because we are growing and the auditor is, I think, a good middle way between a big company and a small one and which we have chosen Air Group. They are operating in 3 different locations all over Germany. And [ Carsten Rusme ] is the auditor here. He worked for more than 30 years for PricewaterhouseCoopers. He was a partner there. And with 60, he started his own business, and we think that he's a very good partner. He has 40 different people working for him, and we think that this is a pretty good way and also a financial acceptable way for us how we can work together.

All right. Next question. If I recall currently the revenue model in Aponow was different in that service fee Will this be different with a potential acquisition. So the question is about the revenue model from Aponow. And the question is, will pharmacy become its own segment? Or will it become part of the service and retail segment? Very good question because if you see the numbers, which we've shown in our announcement. Here, you can see that these pharmaceutical companies, they have a 3-digit million number revenue. So you are right with this question. We think about establishing a new segment or integrated into the service and retail segment but have the majority of this pharmaceutical goods there.

So it depends when we close it, when we sign it. So it's not certain that we signed it, but we expect 99% probability to do that. And if we do it, and if you have a closing, yes, we think about the segment question.

Your next question was about the revenue model, very important because, as you have mentioned in the correct way, Aponow, is the middleware between the 350 pharma manufacturers like Ratiopharm and so on and the pharmacies. So if a customer orders something at RatiopharmDE or another manufacturer, the order is completely delivered and taken care of by Aponow. And this is the way how they earn money and they are a great profitable company and each order goes through Aponow to the local pharmacy and the local pharmacy brings it to the customer. That is the business model, and they do it for more than 41,000 pharmacies. And in their business model, they get this is around 10% provision from the pharmaceutical company from the manufacturer.

And this is the way how they make their business. And it's very successful. And that is the reason why we of things for more than 1 year, how we can expand it and how we can increase the value chain, not just delivering orders from pharmaceutical manufacturer to the pharmacy also to offer new additional services. And I think with our M&A targets, we have a very good idea how we can do that. Next question, given the complex onboarding process, how much does this affect the EBITDA along 12 months?

So I would say we've been acquiring 7 companies this year so far, which is Lyra Pet, fintus, Herbertz and Joli Closet that have already been consolidated. And then we have 3 new ones, which will be consolidated in the second half of the year. And these are our 3 optics and hearing acquisitions, Karrasch & Nolte, Freudenhaus and Beste Aussichten. And I hope this answers your question. So of 7 acquisitions, which we have done right now, 4 already included, 3 will come. And of course, we're trying to acquire new ones. So it will be more than 3 by the end of the year.

All right. Organic growth. Could you please provide more detail on the reported organic growth at segment level and comment on the plausibility of double-digit rates in structurally weaker sectors such as furniture or automotive supply?

Yes, absolutely. You are completely right that sectors like automotive or furniture, for example, they have a bad development in the last 2 years. They are declining or stagnating. But this is important to understand that our growth is not depending on the industry. So our growth rate is determined by partners and products. And this is what we really always want to, again and again repeat because the majority of the people do not understand our business model. That is a real problem for us because when we get more partners, for example, furniture partners, what we've shown you with [ Rolfben ] sofas, we get more customers because they like half spend so far.

And with these more customers, we get more revenue. And we can grow in a market which is not growing. But if we get no more partners, we have no additional product, and we do not grow anymore. So it's really no dependency between the industry and our business model. There could be also a negative correlation. For example, I can show you one example with the industry of bike. Bike-Angebot, the company which we acquired in 2020 before the COVID pandemic. And just, for example, in COVID times, the revenue was very strong, increasing in this segment. But in our case, it was a nightmare. So we had declining revenues. We had losses. We were not happy about that. because at the end, the retail partners, our partners said, no, we will not offer you any product because we are sold out. We have nothing to sell anymore. We have good numbers, but you don't get any product from us. And that was our nightmare.

And this is very important to understand, we do not rely on the industry development. It is not really relevant for us. We rely on products and partners. This is the only key driver in our business case.

So next question. Sorry, I wasn't clear. The Q1 GMV was EUR 356 million, and the Q2 was EUR 296 million. I wanted to understand how do you think about this being lower? And how to think about GMV going on forward? Is it seasonal? If so, which quarters are generally higher?

Yes, thank you for the question. You are right. We have seasonality in our yearly perspective and then also in our quarterly perspective. The highest revenue what we have and the highest GMV is always November and December. And in these 2 months, we have, of course, the highest revenues, but not the highest margins. So as you might know, we have the seasonal effects like discounts, like Black Week and so on. So all these consumer goods segments, which we have with more than 50%, they are affected by discounts. And in these 2 months, we have great GMV numbers, but low margin numbers. So this is important to understand. And yes, you are right. We do have the GMV much higher there, but not with high earnings. Can you give a...

If you look at the interest rates like currently, you see Bike-Angebot, that's something you sell more in the summertime anyways. If you look at our machinery, that's nothing you get as a Christmas present. So these do not really increase. And if you look at Lyra Pet, and they are more into goods that you actually use. So it's more like pet food and cat pet care, sorry. So that's also something which you regularly use during the year. So this does not really positively affect your sales. So generally, we do have more sales, but at a lower margin, but also not all segments contribute to Q4 sales.

All right. Next question, can you give us some insights about the economics of the framework, get order, does your partner, the product to the customer or delivery? Okay, it's a question about our business process when we get an order and how is it delivered?

So very simple, let's take this example here. So if somebody is buying this Cube mountain bike for EUR 2,000, we get the order and when we have the order, we decide which retail partner gets this order. The next thing is we call our logistic partner or our own forces and pick up the bike. We adjust everything at the back that people can use it. The customer can use it. You have to make some adjustments with the bicycle. And then we deliver it to the customer. And we also received the money. So we see all the amounts from the purchase, and we also make the marketing and the customer care.

Though the full value chain of e-commerce is always on our side. and the partner, the retail partner, in this case, a bicycle partner, they are just offering their stock, and we make the content and we make all the other thing. So the delivery to the customer is always from our partner, from our logistic partner or by ourselves.

How has the transformation to a platform business developed at Lyra Pet, for example? How many partners that Lyra Pet had and so far, what is the potential sales to partners and what to own inventory?

So this is a question regarding a new company. We acquired this company some months ago and basically, currently, the majority of the revenue is still on their own inventory. So the majority is about the food for the pet and so on. and about hardware equipment for pets. And our strategic focus is always platform. So we have a road map together with them. And within the next 2 months, we implement our software. So in the next 2 months, they use our software to make all the platform connections. And after that, they can connect partners, manufacturers, retail partners, and then they can increase the number of products more and more.

But to give you an example of how it works, when we acquired fashionette 2 years ago, they only had bags and shoes, nothing else. But the biggest industry or part of the industry is fashion. It's not shoes. It's not bags, it's fashion. So what we did here is the same thing. You can see that 37,000 products are listed in fashion. And before we acquired it, it was 0. And now it is contributing the majority of the revenue this year. So you see how fast the change between -- we have inventory and we are a pure player to we are a platform and make for a lot of retailers, a lot of partners, the revenue, how fast this can go. So we always expect around 5 months to 1 year to implement our software, to change to the platform model and to increase the number of partner products.

Next question is the new KGaA structure will be in place? Do you plan to increase the free float on the shares, Dominik? What would be willing to reduce your ownership stake to increase the liquidity in the shares?

Yes. Good question. We showed you the planned change of the legal structure. We have our AGM next week. And to answer your question, I don't want to sell shares, to be honest. It's not my intention. If we see a good target, we can make a capital increase if it's necessary. Of course, we can do that, but we always want to become with Benner Holding, a long-term shareholder and make sure that the shareholder is aligned with TPG and stays there for forever or for a lot of years. And this is really our focus. So there's no intention of selling shares. But of course, you see that the liquidity of the share is increasing since 2 years.

So when we bought fashionette, there was a daily trade volume of around per day, EUR 50,000. Now we already have EUR 300,000 to EUR 800,000 per day. So it's really a good progress. The average around is EUR 400,000 per day this month and we expect a further increase. And we think that EUR 1 million daily trade volume is not unrealistic. So I think we are on a good way. And we think we are in a good way that we also have more volatility here and have more trade volume.

Next question, can you please explain the strong increase in receivables against affiliate companies in the [ Hagberport ] 2024.

Yes, very simple answer on that. I can maybe show you another picture which might be more adequate to answer. So when you see the structure here, you see -- we showed it in the last call that we have our AG structure on top. And below that, we have 3 holdings the Platform Group AG, Fashionette GmbH and [indiscernible] . These are 2 Netherlands companies. And below all that, we have the operational portfolio companies. And the important thing to understand is that we always have relation between the Platform Group AG on the top level and the portfolio companies below. And that is the reason why we do not have much cash on top. We always have it in the operational companies or in the holdings below.

And so it's very simple to understand that if we take a bond with EUR 50 million, for example, last year, we put it into acquisitions. And we put it into the company below that we acquired and then they have, of course, accounts receivables on the top holding. And that is the reason why this increased to EUR 100 million. There's one other thing which you should understand. The company Platform Group AG, you cannot compare it with 2023. Because in 2023, it was a Fashion AG. And the fashion AG that I gave was not a holding structure, it was not comparable on what we do here. So it really changed in 2024. So the similarity or the comparability is not given in this case. In retrospect, are 3 pharma distributors operating in a niche. Do they only distribute specific products? Okay, let's go back to the question regarding the pharmaceutical companies, the platforms.

So I mean, we are still in a confident procedure, so we cannot give you specific details on that. But you can be sure, and we can announce that we do not only buy a company which is distributing products. We are looking for platform companies, which are really operating a niche. And one of these new segments can be, for example, specific drugs or specific relations to other pharmacies and also some e-commerce activities on that. So it's really a new segment where we operate in and what we want to buy. Sorry for that, it's still confident. So it's not closed. It's not -- so please understand that.

Hello, thank you again for your time. What do you say is your main motivation for the legal change, please? Also, I was hoping to see the ROCE for H1 and that is an important KPI.

Yes. So to answer that, actually and the return on equity. The problem with that is that you cannot calculate it for the half year because you see the balance sheet number, that is clear, but you need a full year perspective on the profit. And that is the reason why we did not calculate it for the half year because if we would do that, we have to make an estimation on these figures. And then everybody will blame us and say, okay, you make an estimation on full year. This is not realistic. This is not calculability, this is not acceptable. And that is the reason why we did not make this calculation.

Here, you can see our return on equity and return on capital employed by last year. And we are pretty sure that we will have the same numbers this year. So it will be around 18% to 28% as a range where we operate in, and it will be very similar. If you have a good idea, to be honest, how we can solve that, how other companies do it with the half year report and calculate it for the full year, let us know, we are open for that. We did not really find...

So if you want, you can contact me any time. And if it's reasonable, of course, we will try to factor it in.

Yes. All right. The next question is about the auditor. The question is, can you explain what Air Group company is doing? And why we believe that Mr. Uslar is qualified to audit and so on. So to answer this question, Mr. [indiscernible] is our former auditor for last year. And for this year, it will not be Mr. [indiscernible] And so we have chosen a new company, which is qualified for our growing activity. So that is a background for that.

Can you please explain your cash management within the group and the holding? Is the balance sheet of the group by end of 2024, cash of only EUR 400,000?

So yes, we already answered that. I'm sorry to give you the short answer. We already answered you this question because when you see on this structure here, which we already presented in a public way. You see that we have no need for big cash reserves on the holding because below that, we have our sub holdings and our operational companies, and we can always have access to the cash because the majority of them, 90% or more have contract with us for liquidity and cash pooling. So we can work with that.

So next question, what was behind the EUR 32 million decrease in ability [indiscernible] in H1 last year. So I don't know if you really rely on last year. But the answer is very simple. Last year, we sold a lot of cars in the Kuno company. And with the sale of the cars, we reduced the [indiscernible] in that amount. So that was the background. And that is the reason why the H1 last year was a little bit a one-off effect in some financial numbers. A lot of analysts ask us about that question last year, and we -- I think we already have published it in our annual report that there was a onetime effect of acquiring this company and selling all of these cars.

Do you own an online pharmacy. Yes, we have a niche pharmacy. It is called Doc.Green and this new pharmacy, we have product online in the drug sector and sell it but it is not so relevant because we focus really on B2B. Our focus is B2B business. So when you look on ARPU now, they have 99% with B2B revenues, we are not such a big fan of B2C business because it's very competitive there. There's a lot of advertisement competition. And we think that is a good way to lose money and not to earn money. So we are quite conservative on that. Next question.

More comment on the cash topic we just had -- so it's very important to point out that we do not have cash transfer agreements in place, but we do have cash pooling contracts in place with all our subsidiaries.

Yes. So next question. Can you please provide an update on TPG Pay? How high is the turnover rate among partners? Are there fixed contract term for partners?

Yes. So we have fixed partner terms or contracts. Usually, they are for 2 years and they extend after these 2 years for another year. How high is the turnover rate? I'm not sure what it means turnover rates. Bjorn, do you know what turnover rate means?

No.

Okay. So maybe -- maybe you can specify what you mean is turnover rate. And the update on TPG, very good question from you. We've shown you that in our Capital Markets Day.

Probably the churn rate, which he's referring to. So how many exchanging per year?

Okay. Got it. So it's about 3% to 4% per year, which we lose because they have no successor, or they close or they are whatever insolvent or I don't know. So that is the reason for that why we have 3% or 4%.

So you asked us about an update on TPG Pay. We presented to you our TPG pay system in a better version at our Capital Markets Day. And we got a lot of feedback, which we really appreciated. And we also gave you a time line on our project pipeline here. And you can see that we want to release CBA in the first version by end of August or beginning of September. So we are right now on track with that. And we will go on the next version and release it in our shops by end of November or beginning of December. So this is our pipeline and our time schedule for that, and we are, I think, pretty good on track.

Next question, the answer was not clear for me. Are the EUR 12.7 million payments for investments entirely attributable to the further development of the software platform? If not, can you provide a breakdown?

Yes. Thank you very much for the question. Maybe we should give you a more detailed perspective on that because when you go on this breakdown here, let's go on the H1 report. You see that there's an increase in the cash flow here, let's go on that. And I think you're talking about that here, the EUR 12.6 million for investments. And maybe it's a good idea to provide you with further information because right now, we do not have it here. But of course, we can provide you in the next call for a detailed number on that. And I think if I'm right, we also gave some more information here in the Lager bridge. So maybe you should also have a look on that. Yes. But anyway, we give you more feedback on that.

Could you give us a quick refresher on expected sales and adjusted EBITDA for full year 2025 and consolidated contribution is strong recent M&A. If the full year 2026 guidance for Glasses business, integrating further M&A? Or is it 100% organic?

By both MyGlass is growing organically and the local stores, you have to acquire M&A in order to grow the number of parts.

Yes. Absolutely. Could you also give us a quick refresher on current and normative return levels in key segments. Yes, very good question. Okay. This is a figure what we actually did not publish so often because nobody is asking us for that. Our average return rate is about 25% to 28%. And when you go to the segments in our report, we have no return reporting because actually, the most people do not care about that. But we can give you more or less the specific numbers.

So in the segment of consumer goods, there's a variety between, I would say, 11%, 12% for bags, up to 45%, 50% for specific shoes, especially women shoes. Well, this is the range. And I think the average will be around 30%, 35% in the segment. The freight goods segment, it is below 5%. So there are almost no returns or very low numbers. And the industrial goods segment, it is below 3%. So it's not existing. And segment service and retail goods, it is also below 5%, so really no numbers. So when you calculate all these together, you can understand that we always talk between 25% and 28% return rate, and this is predominantly coming from the segment of consumer goods.

Okay. How much of your transportation costs are actually related to returns? Yes. these are bad news. When you have 25% return rate, for example, you cannot say that 25% of the distribution costs are because of returns. Because there's one negative thing in this industry, the returns are more expensive. So much more. That means the Deutsche Post or UPS also on the charge you more for the returns automatically per parcel. And additionally, we have higher internal costs for returns. So when you say you have 25% return, right and ask us how much will it be in the distribution costs here in this line? You can estimate about 34%, 35% of these costs are coming from returns. So it's not proportional. It's more than proportional.

Yes. So we get a great feedback. Thank you for that.

Chronext was acquired at the end of last year, yes, December. What is the product strategy here, particularly in terms of increasing the range of available products? Yes, good question. So it is the same strategy what we always do. We acquired Chronext and they had no replatform strategy. And what we do now is the same as we ever do in all our companies. We get partners connected to our software and increase the number of products. This is our strategy. We do it for Europe, for fashionette, for Chronext and so on. And I think they already have 20% or 30% revenue from partners already, so from external partners, which in this amount, they do not have before. And we expect a further increase up to more than 50% by end of this year. So the growth driver is clearly the partner model and the platform model. It will be no longer only focused on inventory by themselves.

Does the automotive business still exist? And how are the developments here? We have a lot of automotive or automotive supply business. So 1 is a lot, for example. This is a company which we acquired 3 years before, and they are working in the automotive car part segment. It is very successful. They have good growth rates. And they also started 2 years ago with the platform model. Now that means if you buy anything like a break or something here, it is in the majority from a partner and the seller for the partner. So this is how they earn their money and they make it in a very profitable way. And we also have our activity with X Mobility. This is a company where you can make contracts for monthly contracts for cars.

So Volkswagen here, EUR 600. It depends on how many kilometers, and you can make the contract for each month individually and cancel it each month. And yes, we are still active in that 2 years before we acquired 2 different companies and kind of a third company with an asset deal, and we decided to consolidate everything into one new brand, cut off all the former brands sold the legal entities and consolidated everything into one company. Critics for that, to be honest, a lot of analysts asked why did you do that? Why did you split off the old companies and put them away. And we said, yes, we want to have one new company with one brand because we had 3 different customers. Every of this customer has a different brand on this paper on his invoice, and we said, no, we make one new company, and this is called X Mobility.

So next one is going to have definitely a big impact 2 months ago, the entire managing team of TPG made a field trip into the valley in order to get acquainted with the latest developments of artificial intelligence. And we brought that all back, and we wouldn't meet TPG. So what we did is we hired the people in order to establish an AI Academy and all employees have a course once a week. And of course, we have specific takeaways, and this is going to revolutionize everything that starts with content generation, the way you make the content for your articles, it's photos.

So right now, we have a large photo studio in order to make pictures and mood pictures, especially of all our articles with certain tools you are able to automize this fully. So basically, you just take a clear shot of the article and then you tell the AI, what the background in this setting should be and then it's generating this and it's doing it by now in quality that probably most of us could not differentiate from a real photo, at least is really doing the business for us. And you can expand this into how you do your entire planning. This is how you do the invoice control, so it's going to have an impact of pretty much every single area in the company.

Yes. So absolutely right, what Bjorn says. And it was really an eye-opener when we visited Silicon Valley with all our executive members. And we decided, yes, we have to implement an own team. But AI does not work if only some key people know how it works. We have to implement it at the basis. And now every employee, [indiscernible] gets an education, one hour per week on AI, everybody. And that was a clear strategy, how we have to implement AI on the bottom of the organization and not only on the top. And maybe you can see it here, right now, we are still making physical autos. We are making physical videos, and we need a model and a photograph and so on.

Next year, there will be no model, and there will be no photographer for this anymore. So we completely eliminate this and can significantly decrease the cost structure on that, but it will have a huge impact.

Next question. I assume your answer was lost, but could you please remind us on your main rationale for changing the company legal structure? Yes. So we already made an update call on that. by first of August, maybe you remember that we mentioned our reasons for that and why we did it. And basically, we had 3 reasons. The one reason was, first, we want to have a safe anchor shareholder, with Benner Holding and even if they would dilute the shares if we have more capital increase, we always stay on board and be a valid and long-term partner.

The second is we want to make more international acquisitions. So we think that when we make international acquisitions, people are used to have shares Class A shares, Class B and Class C. And it's not with a negative connotation like it is in Germany. So basically, we think that we make any activity and buy companies, we have no problem in foreign countries to work with that and also to give the sellers on shares if we acquired this company. And the third reason, we are more flexible with that. Maybe you know some German specific on that, and we have more and quick decisions when we choose this new structure to -- just to mention that.

And next question is about, can you please explain how your incentive your different managers and executives -- do you have a very...

I have an answer to that one. I expect we do have market-oriented salaries as base pay. So they are not too low, but at the same time, they're also not I -- and of course, like in any of these positions, we do have success-oriented fees, so you can get a bonus. This is attractive but also not sky high. So again, it's market oriented and this is how we pay our people.

Yes. And we have no stock option program. So very important to say that because actually, we do not believe that a basic employee and the stock has such a strong relation. And so we always believe that making a good bonus and which is paid every year when they are successful and have a good basic salary. I think these are 2 things which are enough for us. And we can work with that. And maybe you have seen that in our adjusted figures, we never have any stock compensation programs, which you see in a lot of other balance sheets.

There are numbers of subsidiaries, of which you own 100% or less than 100. What is the plan for the minorities? And do you plan to use to buy out the maturity this year or next year? So yes, we have the option after 2 or 3 years to increase our shareholding in the company, and it depends on the development. So if we see good development, we want to increase it, but we have to pay, of course, with this higher value. And so it's a very good strategy, what we do from our perspective to reduce the risk, to keep the managers on board, and to pay when it's successfully and not -- when it's not successfully. And so this is our strategy, how we reduce risk and make sure that they have a good valuation development.

What proportion of your newly acquired partners previously had no online presence? I don't understand. Maybe the partner. So if you connect a partner on Bike-Angebot, for example, and the partner is setting a bike here, to be honest, 90% of these partners have no online presence, though they are really off-line players they maybe have a Facebook account or Google business account, but they are not having an own online shop. They are not selling products online. So in January, it's about 90%, which are not online in an active way.

And some might have some, especially like white label shops. But if you do not work on them, if you do not invest in ZIA and ZO, then, of course, the number of people, potential customers, you're able to reach is relatively low. So you might have your own shop, but still it's not a high seller. So if we connect it and if we focus the TPG performance marketing power on these new shops. Then of course, this always leads to a big jump.

Yes. So one last question, which you see here in the chart, it's about the internationalization and could you please talk more about your strategy on this front of internationalization?

Yes, good question because, as you know, we have around 75% with revenues in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and Netherlands. So it is one of our goals to expand our international footprint and to have more revenues in other countries because we are not very happy that we are so much focused here on Germany and the countries around Germany. And I think we already started that. And for example, with Winkelstraat we acquired last year, they are very successful in the Netherlands and now outside the Netherlands. So it's a good first move. Last year, we have Brandfield. They are operating also in the Netherlands. And last but not least, we just acquired Joli Closet this year. They are a good player in France. And you can be sure also with the pharmaceutical acquisition that we will expand more into Staten and Eastern Europe, and we will do it in the next month.

So we will step by step go forward, but always with a risk-averse strategy because we will never open an office with 100 people, let's see if it works. And if not, we will fire them. That's not our business. We are a family business, we are conservative, and we have to take care that the cash is not going out, and we have to take care that we make profits. And that is the reason why we always move into small steps and make sure that this will work.

The last question is about AI, AI progression and the possibility to open a web store, easier access to be players like ABS similar coming. I think, to be honest, it does not change so fast for us. So we see no real competition on that. We use AI for our own processes internally. But we think that it does not change web store or the easier access to players like ABS because ABS AWS, a server provider, we use it and other people also use it. So I don't see a real relation to our business model so far.

Okay. No, I think these are all the questions. So we see no open questions anymore. So thank you very much from our side. And I think it was a very good conversation with the chat and all the questions here.

Yes. Thank you very much for your time taking all the questions. There are no further questions. Thanks to everyone joining and your strong interest in the Platform Group. Should, however, further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. Thank you to Dr. Benner and Mr. Minnier for your update and your time to take all the questions. I wish you all a lovely weekend. And with this, I hand over again to Dr. Benner for some final remarks.

No final remarks. Happy to see you at the AGM or the next Capital Markets Day, which we plan in the next 2 months. Bye-bye.

So thank you for your very interesting and fair questions.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of The Platform Group AG following the publication of the half year figures 2025. We are delighted to welcome the CEO, Dr. Dominik Benner; and CFO, Bjoern Minnier, who will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation. Please note that there will be a short Q&A session in this call in which you will be allowed to place questions to the management concerning the H1 figures. For any other questions there will be a separate Q&A call at 11:00 today and you are welcome to join.

And having said this, we are looking forward to the presentation. Mr. Benner, please. This stage is yours.

Ingmar, thank you very much for the introduction, and happy to have you all here in our call for today. So today, we present our H1 results for 2025 and Bjoern Minnier, our CFO, and me would like to welcome you to this presentation.

So first of all, we have the highlights for the first half year. And we just want to mention that the H1 results really show a very strong position at our very high profitability in this market. So totally, we had an increase of more than 47% in the GMV and also in the revenue. And this goes in line with our profitability. That means our EBITDA increased to EUR 33 million, which is actually the highest H1 profitability, which we ever had in our history.

Additionally, we also see that our midterm margin targets are exceeded already in H1. So we reached 9.7% EBITDA margin, which is quite successful and the highest number which we achieved so far in our financial figures. Also, you see our net profit, it increased to EUR 33 million. We'll come to that later, and our EPS achieved EUR 1.55 per share, which is also more than 50% increase compared to last year. So besides that, we also have some organic growth drivers and the one is the customer growth, the partner growth and the AOV. AOV means average order value and the AOV also increased to EUR 124. And also the most important thing are our partners. That means our retail partners, which we connect to our platforms in 27 different industries.

We also had a good M&A activity in H1. So we had a closing of 4 targets, all German and French targets, and we had another additional 3 signings, which will be closed by July and August '25. We also confirm our guidance, as you have seen in our corporate news this morning, you saw that we confirmed our guidance for this year. And we also see a very strong development in the first 2 months of the second half year. And so we have a very good feeling, Bjoern and me that we will achieve our goals for the full year 2025. So saying that and gave you this executive summary, we want to give you a short update on our company.

So first of all, you see our organizational structure, our management board and C level. Our C level, which is the highest management level in our group consists of 7 persons like my person and Bjoern as the CFO. Additionally, we have a CTO, which is covering all the technical stuff. We have a CPM that means a portfolio manager for our acquired companies. We have a CHO. She's taking care of all the HR issues. The CPO, that means platform officer; and the COO, which is our operational officer. So saying that, you can see our overall overview. Right now, we have more than 15,700 partners, and this is the highest number we've ever had in our history. So this is a backbone on our growth rate. And with our more partners, we get more customers. And as you can see here in the growth cycle, this is the backbone on how we structure our company and how we ramp up our revenue and profitability.

So again, the number of partners are our most important key driver for our growth rate. And if we have more partners, we get them more products and with more products, we attract more customers on our platform and get more GMV and revenue. Here, you see the overall portfolio overview of our group. It was growing in the last 6 years every year. So every year, we acquired some specific niche companies in the e-commerce and software sector. And we did it last year that we acquired 8 companies last year. And also this year, we had a very strong M&A track. And more than important is not the acquisition, it is the implementation and the integration of these companies. And therefore, we also have a good team, which is only doing the post-merger integration and taking care of that.

So -- and to continue with that, we had an acquisition of We Connect Work, that is a B2B platform for construction. So all kind of construction business is organized on this platform. We acquired them, signed by July, so last month, and we expect the closing by next week. Additionally, we also mentioned that Joli Closet, our French luxury platform, which is a very focused platform for vintage products, for used luxury products like Hermès, Dior and Rolex. We acquired them by the first half year, and we now expand that strategy and connect all their products to our local luxury platforms fashionette like Brandfield and like Chronext. So we are very good on track with that and can show you in the next call the development of this target.

Additionally, we announced by June of this year that we enter the Optics & Hearing platform. So you saw that we made already some acquisitions. So currently, we have 30 local stores, and we have a great B2C online platform, which is called MyGlasses. And we expect in the second half year a great revenue contribution and also a 25% EBITDA margin, which is quite high. You can compare it maybe with Fielmann in this sector, but we are much more in a higher luxury price level compared to Fielmann and other competitors. And you already have seen maybe this, we opened an own fulfillment center in Gladbeck, in Germany with 12,000 square meters to make sure that our partners can use a fulfillment solution and also can use it as a return process because we get a lot of returns, of course, in our e-commerce sectors, and they can use this warehouse to manage all their return processes.

Last but not least, you see that we have our AGM next week on Monday at Dusseldorf. And therefore, we just want to mention again that we plan to implement our new structure at the SE & Co. KGaA. So for any further questions on that, we have also our Q&A call today, which you can participate. So now we move to the financials, and I hand over to Bjoern.

Yes. Dominik, thanks. And first of all, a very warm welcome to all of you. My name is Bjoern Minnier. I am to most of you, probably the still relatively new CFO of The Platform Group and I'm also heading the M&A department. In my previous role, I have been the MD of a large holding company of German PE investor consisting of 14 portfolio companies. So The Platform Group is considerably bigger, but still I feel well prepared for all the challenges to come.

Okay. Now let's go to the numbers. We managed to achieve a gross merchandise value of EUR 652 million, and at the same time, we generated net sales of EUR 343 million, and both means that we are up almost 50% compared to the half -- first half year last year. We managed to grow our gross margin by almost 20% to now 34.1%. And at the same time, we managed to reduce our costs. So if you look at the marketing cost ratio, we managed to decrease this by almost 5% to now 6.0%. We kept our distribution cost ratio stable around 7.2%, 7.8%, and we managed to reduce our HR costs by almost 13% to now 4.7% of the net sales. And I'm sure all of you are very familiar with the e-comm business. And if you have HR costs of below 5%, that indicates that you are really working on your homework.

So this all boils down to an EBITDA of EUR 33.3 million. And the net profit because this year, we do not have any discontinuing operations is, therefore, the continuing operations net profit is the same as the EBITDA, so EUR 33.3 million. This again leads to earnings per share of EUR 1.55 and whether you compare it to the continuing or the total operations last year, this is an increase of 42% or even 77%. So I believe this is some quite handsome numbers we are able to present. And I hope you share this view. Regarding maybe the last one regarding our net debt, we have a bracket in which we like to keep, and that's a bracket of 1.5 to 2.3 factor of the EBITDA.

So if you look at the profitability, then you see very easily that we have been working on increasing this by far. So we come from 7% 2 years ago. Last year, we were close to 8%. And this year, we managed to even come to almost 10%. So that shows that the business model of The Platform Group really works well. So if we look what we have been achieving in the past 6 months, then we can see -- I already indicated this, that the GMV is up by almost 50%. Same goes for the revenues, which are up 48%. The EBITDA increased by almost 90%. And if you deduct the purchase price allocations, then you still have an EBITDA reported of now EUR 43.7 million, and this is an up of 45%.

The EBITDA adjusted in between reported and adjusted, you can see that easily here. So we have certain general adjustments of about EUR 1 million, then come, as I already mentioned, the purchase price allocation of EUR 9.4 million. And then we also, like I always have some deferred tax and consolidation effects, and this is how you come from reported EUR 43.7 million to the adjusted of EUR 33.3 million EBITDA. So and if you look at our current assets, because we have been acquiring companies they slightly grew from EUR 323 million to now EUR 348 million. We could increase our equity to now EUR 168 million, almost EUR 170 million. Our noncurrent liabilities grew slightly by EUR 7 million, and the total equities now are, as I already said, almost EUR 350 million.

So debt situation, I have already indicated this. I think the most important figure on this chart is the net debt. There's EUR 100 million. And if you look at the leverage, that's 2.05. And as I said, we always like to keep within the safe bracket in between 1.5 and 2.3. And you see we are in the golden middle of our leverage target. So -- and important is you are in business because you want to earn and earn is not only EBITDA, it also is cash flow. And if you look at the cash that we have been generating, then we managed to generate EUR 20.1 million in cash. And by the end of this period, we expect this to be EUR 14.4 million.

So saying that, we come to the nonfinancial KPIs. The good numbers in our financial report has a reason. And the reason is that we have a steady growing number of partners. So we already have more than 15,781 partners connected to our system. We also have much higher numbers of orders. So we increased from 3.8 million to 5.3 million orders within the 6-month period. Additionally, our average order value increased up to EUR 124 and the number of active customers in the last 12 months, so 12-month period grew from 4.8 million to 6.2 million.

A lot of analysts always ask us, how much is organic growth and how much is nonorganic growth. So you can see on the bottom of the slide that we had a nonorganic growth of 41%, the total gain, and we had 59% organic growth in this period. So all in all, we are quite happy on this development. And our goal is always to have a good split between 50-50% more or less between organic and nonorganic growth. So saying that, you can see that we have a good development so far in 2025. So we had 7 successful acquisitions. 4 of them have been closed in the first half year. And also, we have a strong support from our post-merger management team that we want to see another 2 to 4 additional targets in the next half year.

We also see that our profitability was growing even in numbers and also in our percentage numbers. And we see a good development that after 8 quarters with the increasing distribution costs, which was not very happy for us, to be honest. We see that now we have a very stable cost ratio. This always is a very critical factor because in the e-commerce, you have a lot of logistic costs. Even for your warehouses or for your delivery to the customer, and it doesn't matter if it's B2B or B2C. And now also in the first quarter this year, we see that we have a very stable development, and we have a lot of actions which are implemented in our companies that we have a stable development.

We also see very good conditions, excellent conditions for new M&A activities in 2025, and we see no increase in the valuation so far. So we expect also a good year this year for reasonable valuations, which are not too high. And so far, the decreasing interest rates did not change the valuation of the company so far. And TPG One is our software, and we invested a lot of money in the last years into the software development. And so this leads at the end to one thing that we can enter new industries within less than 4 months and this is very important because you see that we enter into new industries every second month. And so it is quite relevant and important for us that this takes not too much time and that we can work with that in a very efficient and quick way.

And last point, you see that our 4 segments, we show you in the segment report later that our segments are growing. Each of the segment was growing. Each of the segment had positive EBITDA numbers. And you will see starting from July this year that we have a new segment, Optics & Hearing. As you know, that we entered the segment of optical companies, and we expect a high growth rate there and also 25% EBITDA margin. This, to be honest, will be our most profitable segment. And this is also one of the reasons why we don't want to integrate it into one of the existing segments and show how successful we will be there and to give you a transparent overview on that.

That is also the reason why we increased our guidance for the second time already this year. So by 31 of July, we increased our guidance for the second time. And in this call, we can confirm this already updated and increased guidance another time. So we expect a net revenue of EUR 715 million to EUR 735 million. And this will come along with the GMV of EUR 1.3 billion in the total year perspective. On the EBITDA adjusted side, we expect EUR 54 million to EUR 58 million, which is at least an EBITDA margin of more than 7%. And as you know, we are quite conservative on that.

So here, you can see the development of the different revenue and EBITDA guidance starting from January this year to July this year. And you can see that we increased it step by step because we see good organic developments, and we also see that the acquired companies, which we bought in this year have a good contribution regarding the revenue and also the profitability of the company.

When we look at the segment development, I hand over to Bjoern and yes, maybe you can share some insights on that.

Sure. I like to. So we have 4 major segments. As you see, it's consumer goods, that's all you expect to be in there. It's freight goods, that's everything from furniture to e-scooters and car, [indiscernible] subscriptions, which you can buy and we do have industrial goods, beverage machines, and we also do have services and retail, which is our latest segment, which we are planning to grow. If you look at the pie chart on the right side, you see that by far, the most important one is the consumer goods, which is more than 2/3 of our revenues. And you see that the other ones are in total about 1/3, and they are quite equivalent. If you look into the single segment reports on the coming up pages, then they tell you pretty much all the same story, and they tell you the story of the secret weapon of The Platform Group.

Most of our competitors grow by doing one thing. The thing, of course, we do too. They invest in the client. That means they buy clients by generating ads. So you can invest into people, and you can increase your sale and you can increase in all kinds of performance marketing and work on the [indiscernible] side. The secret weapon of The Platform Group is that we have another lever, which is way more effective. And actually, that's a good part, way cheaper. And that is increasing the number of partners we work with. So that's what we call the wheel of fortune. That means you add new partners and not all partners usually are displaying their entire variety of goods they have.

So each of the partners only is presenting a certain part of it. But if you add a lot of partners, then you get 1 hole. So the more partners you add, the greater and bigger and more attractive your selection becomes. The more customers, you can acquire, more customers spend more money. And since our platform cost pretty much remain about the same. This means this is our wheel of fortune how to generate profit. And this is more or less equivalent for every company we buy. So whether you look at the consumer goods or on the coming up pages, whether you look into the 3 other factors, this lever is valid for all of them. This is what we are looking to acquire, and this is where we plan to grow.

All right. So we also load up this presentation just in a few minutes after this call and report will be uploaded within the next hour. So you can also have the full transparent overview on that.

Exactly. I mean, just one more comment. The feedback we got very often is that you guys wanted us to become more transparent. And one thing you explicitly asked for is this segment report. And so we generated this in this very fine format. And I hope that this is pleasing you, at least in part and that we can live up to our promise to become more transparent.

All right. So let's go to the outlook. We have some perspectives regarding the outlook. So first, we show you our guidance. We confirmed the guidance already, which was published by end of July. So there will be no change and we feel quite comfortable with that. And the midterm guidance is also public, and we also confirmed it in this statement to this morning in our corporate news. So there was one ad hoc publication this morning, which I just show you here on this slide, we announced that we negotiate the acquisition of 3 different companies. And these 3 different companies are in the pharmaceutical sector, and they are pharma platforms operating in European countries. And why we think that this is quite attractive for us and why we think that we are in a very deep process with that, we will show you on the next page.

And we also announced that we will consider to increase our existing corporate bond by up to EUR 20 million in this year. So saying that, you can see our M&A pipeline for the third quarter 2025. So on the left side, you'll see that we negotiate 3 different B2B pharma platforms. These 3 different pharma platforms have a very strong B2B focus. So we don't want to compete so much with other companies in the sector. So we are pretty much looking on B2B platforms in this sector, and they are all located in the European countries and Western European countries. And very important to say that is that they are working in niche segments, which are profitable and which are growing. So the current status is that we have finalized the due diligence so far, and we expect the signing by September. There's not 100% certainty, but we expect more than 90% certainty that all of them will be signed by September, but maybe you never know, there could always be an interruption or something like that.

In the middle, you can see the B2C furniture platform, which we plan to acquire also by September this year. It is not such a big company, but they are focusing also on a niche segment with an AOV of more than EUR 800 per order. And on the right side, we also are negotiating a B2B bike platform -- it is a SaaS player, so a pure software company and they are focusing on B2B clients like bike stores. They have more than 700 bike stores connected as a client. And we have finished the due diligence and now start negotiating the SPA or the signing process. So still on a good track, but we are not sure if we close it or not.

So why do we think that pharma is so important for us? Maybe you have seen this company a lot of presentations from our side because we acquired ApoNow in the year 2021. So almost 5 years ago. And this company has a very strong development achieved within the last years. So when we bought them, they connected around 9,000 pharmacies in 2021. Now they have connected more than 41,000 pharmacies. And what is so important about their business model?

The reason for that is that they connected more than 350 pharma manufacturers like Hexal or like ratiopharm and so on. And they take care that all the customers, which would like to buy something on the manufacturer web shop they all connected to the local pharmacies. And this is a very successful model, and they make it now for more than 41,000 different pharmacies in 4 countries like Germany, Italy, Austria and Switzerland. And the reason why we are so happy about this development is that they are really focusing on a niche market and they have no competitor there. So that what they are doing there is absolutely without any competitor, and they can grow in this market in a very successful way.

So what is our rationale why we want to expand there? And why should we also buy another companies in the sector? First of all, we already covered the online platform for pharmacies, though they are already connected with our system. The next point is that we also want to make sure that we cover the sourcing platform, which you see on the left, on the bottom side here. And we also want to make sure that we make more B2B services for pharmacies-- because we are already a good partner with ApoNow for all these pharmacies, and we want to increase their value chain and make sure that they have more B2B revenues with the pharmacies here in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Austria. So that is the reason, and that is the strategic rationale behind that why we want to expand there and why we will invest a lot of money there in the next 1 or 2 years.

All right. So the last point is the financial calendar. You can find it also on our corporate web page, and you can also directly contact Bjoern Minnier as our CFO and Head of Investor Relations. Thank you very much.

Yes, thank you very much for the presentation.

We move on to the announced short Q&A session concerning the topics of this call. [Operator Instructions]

Mr. Benner, Mr. Minnier you can see the chatbox?

Yes. So the first question is in connection with the bond issue in 2024, you said that you were able to acquire companies below book value, and therefore, reported EBITDA, which was larger than badwill. How long do you expect the trend in the segments? Why is no one else doing it?

So first of all, thank you very much for this question. Yes, we think that we can still acquire companies with low multiples. So actually, we acquire companies right now for multiples between 3 and 5x EBITDA, and a lot of them are under book value. Not all of them, so not every of our acquisition is a badwill acquisition. So we have all the goodwill acquisitions, of course. But we always want to find companies which are not so high valuated. And there are not so many competitors who would also acquire them because, as you know, in the e-commerce segment, there are not so many buyers around there. So I hope I can answer your question in that way. And I don't know why other people are not so much investing in e-commerce that is an answer you should ask somebody else. But these 3 and 5x EBITDA level is still our current path, how we evaluate and how we pay for companies.

The next question, how can your net income be equal to adjusted EBITDA? Very simple. As Bjoern has shown the bridge between EBITDA and here, you can see EBITDA adjusted and EBITDA reported or we have the purchase price allocation effects and that is the reason why we have this difference and that is the reason why the net profit is very similar to the EBITDA adjusted. I think in our annual report, 2024, you can see exactly the same development. So it's not a new thing in our company. It is happening every year in our profit and loss calculation.

So next question.

Next one, I could possibly take. This is regarding the pace of the M&A acquisition speed. I mean, of course, you're very right. This is a concern we have but as I always say, the TPG is an auto restructuring machine. So what does that mean? If we acquire a company, then we have 2 levers how to develop the results in the EBITDA. First of all, we just connected to our sales platforms and usually buy a company that is not selling on different marketplaces yet. So once we connect it to our marketplaces, we can already boost up usually by a factor of 2, 2.5 the sales. And this is already taking a lot of pressure out of the system. And then we can offer a variety of efforts, how to reduce cost by scaling things.

This is, for example, we have a very large IT partner, so we can help from that side. We can take over certain services. Of course, when we buy software for now 40 companies, the prices we get usually are much cheaper than what a single company has. So we do not really need to change anything. We just need to add them to our company contracts. So all this helps to create a lot of ease in the business model. And then we always have a senior management, which can do a deep dive into those acquired companies. And because most of the pressure has been taken off, they can look with a stable eye and trying to adjust a small version of the business model. And this is how we can assure that even though we have a very fast acquisition pace that nothing is falling off the plate.

All right. So let's come to the next question. The next question was about the operating cash flow of EUR 23 million, which is lower than H1 2024 despite the revenue growth. Yes, very good question. I would recommend that you have a look in our balance sheet, which is published in our half year report. And there you can see that we have an increase in our inventory. So this is 1 big factor. And also, we have a change of our accounts payable, which were reduced a lot. So we had a lot of invoices in the first half year and reduce the accounts payable. And when you see all the effects regarding that, you see that we have a very strong first half year also in the cash flow, but there are some things which are changing the numbers a little bit in the comparison between the last half year report.

So next question, what drove the improvement in the gross margin in H1? So to be honest, there was not such a real development for the improvement because we already had this development in the first half year. And last half year, there were some seasonal effects and we had these car transactions in the first half year last -- and they did not happen again. So that is the reason there was a onetime effect last half year, which did not occur in this year. So -- but all in all, you see our margin development, which is quite stable also in a long-term perspective, with the 34%, 33% and you have seen that already in the Q1 report.

Next question. Today, manager magazin reporting that you want to acquire a pharma wholesaler IP. Can you confirm that? No, we cannot confirm that because we showed you on this page that we negotiate 3 different B2B platforms. And we want to acquire these 3 different platforms, but they are not our IP. And in general, of course, we acquire a lot of companies each year. We make a lot of analysis and due diligence reports on companies but our comments and our hog news today did not cover our IP.

Next question, isn't the adjusted EBITDA guidance a little conservative? If you made EUR 33 million so far, then shouldn't be EUR 58 million be a little bit too low? If not, why do we expect worse adjusted EBITDA development for the coming quarters? Yes. Thank you for that. And yes, we are always conservative in our planning. But there is one thing which you might know in all our other reports that Q4 has the lowest margin in the full year perspective. So Q4 has Black Friday, Black Week or the Christmas sales and so on. So we always have high numbers in revenue and low numbers in the profit in November and December. So this is always happening in the same way. And so the reason why we have lower planning always in the profitability for the fourth quarter is that. So we think that it is not too conservative. It is realistic. And we think that adjusted EBITDA is always lower in the fourth quarter compared to the previous quarters.

Next question is about the margin increase, gross margin increase. We already answered that. So there is no real change. That was just last year, a onetime effect in that.

Next question is the purchase price for the pharmaceutical platform still in the range of 3 to 5x EBITDA. Yes, the answer is yes.

What was the reason for the much higher H1 gross margin? We already answered that.

Why did CapEx increase from EUR 4 million to EUR 12 million in H1? Yes. Good question. We showed you only the short version of the cash flow statement here. So if you want to have a look on the more detailed version, please have a look at the half year report and as also mentioned that we increased our investments for M&A activity and also for our investments in [indiscernible] and so on. So that is the reason why we increased it. And this is also due to some of our asset yields and more active investments in our assets, which we also planned. And also, we increased our software investments in the first half year.

How do you generate the badwill and where does the mentioned book value come from? I mean, I think this call is not the right place how to explain an exact badwill calculation. But all in all, you can read it in Google, how a badwill calculation looks like. And the badwill is always the difference between the purchase price allocation and the paid amount for the company to the sellers.

Your question where does the mentioned book value come from. I'm not sure what you mean exactly. So maybe you can ask that Bjoern directly via e-mail or with a phone call.

Which companies have seen an increase in inventories? So yes, we have around 8 companies with inventory and warehouses. And maybe you have seen that in this year, we have acquired 2 companies with relevant or significant number of inventories. The one is Lyra Pet. This is a niche player in the pet business and the other one is Herbertz, you can see it here on the top. They are focusing on outdoor products, and they also have a big warehouse here in Germany. And they are relevant. And also Chronext. Chronext they are selling luxury watches. They also have their own warehouse and we acquired them by December last year.

Next question, how much money is still in the war chest for future takeovers? At what point is enough to initiate consolidation? Or is the sky is the limit? I'm not sure what I should answer on that. But I would say we are a family business since more than 143 years. We should not buy too much which we cannot integrate into our group. So I think we are still a very conservative company. Maybe it looks not like that. But we think that we are very conservative on that, that we do not pay too much and that we always act as an anticyclical player. And so when see low valuations, we think it's a good time to buy when we see high valuations we think it's a good time to exit or to stop buying. And so to answer your question, we always have to consolidate new companies into our group and organize it in a good way.

And our war chest for future takeovers, I mean these are 3 sources. So first, we have a lot of bank facilities, which are not used and which we could take. Second, we can use our bond. And third, we can take our cash flow, which is developing in a very good way. So I don't -- or Bjoern and me will not give a specific number, but you can imagine that we have high 2-digit million number on which we can invest here and which we will invest. So as you have seen in our cash flow statement, the first half year, we invested more than EUR 31 million and this half year and you can estimate that we will invest the same amount or maybe more in the next second half year.

I wouldn't engage into 2 to 3 due diligences per week, if we wasn't sure that we have the means to do the purchase afterwards.

Yes. All right. So next question was about the P&L explains the thoughts behind going into a pharma business that will dilute TPG margins and want to be above 2% a 7% margin. Do you expect to lift the margin in the acquired pharmacy companies? Yes, to answer for that, you are right. The margins will be a little bit lower than our average margin of 7%. But on the other way, we also have a segment which has 25% margin, the Optics segment. And this will contribute a lot of EBITDA and net profit to our group in the second half year and also in the next years. And so we are not worried that company is only making 4%, 5% margin. Maybe you have seen that our industrial segment, which I show you here, the industrial goods segment, they only have 4% EBITDA margin.

For 2 years, we were not very happy with the segment, as you know, because they had margins of around 2% or 3%. But now we increased it a little bit. with a lot of measures and a lot of actions. So yes we are okay with that. We are not so happy, but it is the same for the pharmaceutical business. We think that we can increase it but you will never achieve 10% margin in this business. So we should always be realistic that we want to end up with 4%, maybe we increased it to 6% or 6.5%, but not more because we like conservative planning, and that's what we also do here.

When do you expect to be subject to more normative tax rates amount of loss carryovers. Yes, we indeed have loss carryovers as well as in the holding and also in some of our subsidiaries. And when you look on our half year report, you see that our tax numbers are increasing. So we have not really refund any more in total in the consolidated perspective. And so the tax numbers are increasing this year and also will increase next year.

So these are all the questions which we've seen in the chat. All questions are answered from my perspective.

Yes. Thank you very much for answering all the questions. Dear participants, we come to the end of today's earnings call. And as mentioned before, please join the upcoming Q&A call giving you information about the business model and recent developments. To join the event taking place at 11:00 a.m., please register on the Airtime platform, as you are already familiar with. To those who are not joining. Thank you for your shown interest in The Platform Group and have a lovely weekend. To those who will be part of the upcoming call, thank you, and looking forward to seeing you at 11:00. Goodbye.