Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Lovisa Holdings Limited FY2024 Full Year Results Briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Victor Herrero, CEO. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to dial in. On the call today, you have our CFO, Chris Lodder, and myself, Victor Herrero, CEO. As you are aware, this morning we published our full year results to the ASX, and we would like to talk you through them. I will now do a page turn through the highlights of the presentation, and we are happy to take any questions at the end. If we turn to page four, we will talk through some of the highlights of the year. I am pleased today to present another solid result for the financial year 2024, which is again evidence of the strength of the team, the product, and the potential of the business. Our store rollout continued through the year. We opened 128 new stores in the period, taking the store network to 900 stores at the year-end. This allow us to deliver a strong growth in total sales of 17.1%, which was achieved despite comparable store sales being down 2% on last year. Pleasantly, we were able to open a further 7 new markets during the year, including the significant growth opportunity markets of Mainland China, Vietnam, and Ireland. Gross margin was strong, and total cost of doing business was stable, while making significant investment into growing the business. As a result, we delivered an EBIT of AUD 128.2 million dollars, up 21.2%, an NPAT of AUD 82.4 million dollars, up 20.9%, which has allowed the board to announce a final dividend of AUD 0.37 to be paid in October. If we turn to page 6, you can see the sales performance for the period that shows the benefit of our continued store network expansion. Looking to our regions, growth was particularly strong in the European and Americas market, with those regions providing the majority of the new store growth. The Australian regions continue--Australasian region, regions continue to be the most challenging market and opportunity for improvement. I will now hand over to Chris Lauder, our CFO, to talk through the, our financials. Thanks, Victor. Morning, all. If we talk, turn to page seven, gross profit was AUD 565.8 million at an 81% gross margin, up on last year by 110 basis points and delivered from tight management of pricing and promotion, and a focus on keeping our inventory healthy. This outcome was achieved on top of the 100 basis points of gross margin expansion delivered in FY 2023 and built on the 40 basis point improvement we saw in the first half of FY 2024. We've continued to focus on the efficiency of our inventory position and are very pleased that we've been able to close the financial year in a good state. Turning to page eight, we'll talk to our profit. As you can see, we've again been able to deliver growth in both EBIT and NPAT, despite the impact of negative comps and inflationary pressures on our cost base, as well as ongoing investment into service and management structures to operate our constantly growing business. This outcome was assisted by the reduction in the CEO LTI expense from 27 million last year to 12 million in the current year. NPAT for the year includes higher interest expense on our debt, with increased gross borrowings on the balance sheet throughout the year and higher interest rates having an impact. We've made a deliberate effort to continue to reinvest in rollout of new stores in existing markets, as well as the opening of new markets and structures to manage the growing scale of the business. We'll continue to do so to ensure that we are able to continue to deliver operational excellence for our customers. Turning to page 9, you will see that the cash generated by the business has again been strong, with cash from operations before interest and tax of AUD 240 million for the year, reflecting tight management of our working capital. Cash capital expenditure for the period was AUD 23 million, predominantly for new store fit-outs, which represents a decrease on the prior period as the store rollout in the year was slower than that delivered in FY 2023, with 128 new company-owned stores built for the year versus 210 for last year. It was also impacted by the receipt of landlord fit-out contributions in the current year related to stores built in prior years. Cash interest payments were significantly higher than in FY 2023, primarily due to the larger store network, resulting in an increase in lease payments classified as interest, but also from the deliberate strategy to introduce additional debt into the capital structure of the business, combined with higher interest rates resulting in higher interest payments on debt. Turning to page 10, you'll see that the balance sheet remains strong, with a clean inventory position and significant liquidity available to fund growth, with net debt at the end of the year of AUD 23.5 million, down 10 million on June 2023, and total cash debt facilities of AUD 120 million. The solid profit result for the period and continued strong cash flow and balance sheet position has allowed the board to announce an unfranked final dividend of AUD 0.37 per share, taking full year dividends to AUD 0.87, a 26% increase on FY 2023. As we've said previously, the board will continue to assess dividend levels each period end, and determine the appropriate level of dividend based on profitability, cash flows, and future growth CapEx requirements in the context of prevailing economic conditions. The board does not currently have a specific dividend payout ratio, and will continue to base dividends on the cash flow needs of the company and the structure of the balance sheet. I'll now hand back to Victor. Thanks, Chris. If we turn to page 11, a quick update on store numbers. The key driver of future growth for Lovisa continues to be in our global store rollout. We finished the period with 900 trading stores in 46 markets, with 128 new stores open for the financial year. Although the pace of the rollout was slower than prior year, we remain focused on continuing to grow the store network globally. Pleasantly, we are able to deliver our first new stores in a strategically important Asian market of Mainland China, Vietnam and, both of which provide us with significant growth opportunities in the region, as well as our first stores in Ireland. With the strong base we built in our European market, it allowed that market to deliver the largest share of new stores growth for the year and provide us with a very strong base to continue to expand, expand from. We were also able to open a number of new franchise stores in the year to continue our growth in the South American and African markets, with new franchise market open in Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Senegal and Gabon. Turning to page 14, we continue to focus on our execution of e-commerce and our journey towards being an omni-channel retailer, with ongoing investment in consumer experience and support systems, including a new product information management system. We also now have a presence on a number of e-commerce marketplaces globally, including Zalando in Europe, ASOS in the U.K., and THE ICONIC in Australia. And importantly, we are now live on key Chinese online marketplaces, Tmall, Douyin, Little Red Book, WeChat, and JD.com, as a part of our strategy to build our presence in the market. Moving on to logistics, I am very proud to say that last week we opened our new company-operated 5,000 square meters warehouse in Columbus, Ohio, to provide our growing Americas region to service our growing Americas region. Currently serviced from our Chinese 3PL warehouse. This warehouse represent an important step in the growth of our American business, currently servicing over 200 stores and provides capacities to support significant future growth across the regions. This new facility adds to our existing warehouse in Poland, Australia, and China. On page 15, you can see a recap of our, of the business strategy, which set out the keys to our success to date and our focus for the future. Our strategy is unchanged. We continue to be focused on, on the global expansion of our physical and digital store network. And as you have already heard, we have made strong progress in delivering on this strategy during the current year and have laid solid foundations for continued growth in the future. We have continued our focus on delivering an omni-channel experience to our customers, and have improved our e-commerce execution, at the same time as expanding our customer reach by adding presence on a number of new online marketplaces during the period across multiple markets. On page 16, I will talk to the trading update for Fiscal Year 2025 to date. Trading for the first eight weeks of fiscal year 2025 saw comparable store sales for this period up 2%. Total sales for this period are up 12.7% on the same period of fiscal year 2024. Since the end of the year, we have opened 10 new stores with two closures, with total store count of 908, including our first franchisee stores recently opened in Ivory Coast and Republic of Congo, adding another two new franchisee markets to the network. We continue to focus on opportunities for expanding both our physical and digital store network, and our balance sheet remains strong with available cash and debt facility supporting continued investment in growth. To summarize the financial year on slide 17, our sales performance was solid for the year, with a strong sales growth from network expansion offset by negative comp sales. Our global expansion delivered 128 new stores open in the period, finishing the year with a total network of 900 stores. Gross margins were again outstanding at 88.1%, an improvement of 110 basis points on prior year, which was achieved along with a clean inventory position and growing on the 100 basis points improvement we delivered prior year. This combined to deliver good profit growth with EBIT of AUD 128.2 million, up 21.2% on prior year. NPAT of AUD 82.4 million, up 20.9% with our strong cash flow and balance sheet position, allowing the board to announce a final dividend of AUD 0.37 per share to be paid in October. Finally, I want to thank the entire global Lovisa team for the outstanding work they are doing to deliver these results. And with that, I want to thank you for your time today, and we are happy to take any questions. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset to ask a question. The first question comes from the line of Garth Francis with MST Marquee. Please go ahead. Good morning, Victor and Chris. Thanks for taking questions. Just the gross margin performance stayed strong into the second half. You mentioned pricing and promotion. Can you just give a little bit more color on were you able to put through pricing increases, or was it just a better promotional activity management just in order to achieve that gross margin? And then also just perhaps some of the things around input costs with air and sea freight up. Yep. Yeah, thanks, Garth. Majority of it was price. Yeah, definitely we put through price increases through the second half, just as we did in the first half and in prior years. As we've said a few times now, rather than big bang reprice the whole store and the whole store network, we're a bit more targeted now, specific ranges and specific markets. It's kind of just an ongoing thing that's allowed us to deliver a bit of upside in gross margins from that, which is great. You know, we haven't seen any obvious impacts on our ability to sell through, and therefore you know, we haven't had to adjust our promotional strategies you know, to offset that. So the gross margins pretty much flow straight through, which is great. And then on the input cost side, we saved a little bit in freight costs, so from some pretty good work from the team on tendering some of those costs. And the input costs coming out of China have been relatively stable, so it's allowed us to deliver what's a pretty strong outcome. Fantastic. And then if I can, just on Australia, the stores, you opened 10 there, but sales were flat. It's obviously a challenging market. Can you just mainly give us some color around the issues that you're facing and the actions taken to correct? Yeah, I think we've opened stores in Australia, but I guess it's a pretty mature market for us, so the stores that we're opening are not necessarily gonna be your top traders. So they don't have as much of an impact on the overall, you know, total sales growth in the market. But yeah, definitely, as you can see, compared to some of the other markets, it's not trading as strongly as other parts of the world. But yeah, I mean, that's the environment we're in, and we're focused on our own execution and what we can do to offset that. So, you know, we don't tend to give too much commentary market by market. But yeah, we're doing everything we can to make sure we perform in the market. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Shaun Cousins with UBS. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Maybe just a question for Victor. I'm just sort of curious, just the decision not to stay longer as CEO, just in that you've had a tremendous impact on this and you've opened up an enormous number of stores. I'm just sort of curious why you wouldn't want to stay longer in such a business, please? I will serve. Thank you, Shaun, for your question. I will serve Lovisa for four fiscal years, with this one, the next one, and I think it's time for me to, you know, I think that, as you mentioned, I've been impactful, and I think the company is performing very well, and it's for me time to go somewhere else and but at the same time, it's still one of the major shareholders. So I think, for me, it's very important, Lovisa, and I've been working for four fiscal years here and growing the company and. I think that we are in really good hands and after my departure and therefore I think that there will be no doubt that we'll continue improving the results every year. Okay. Fantastic. Thanks so much, Victor. I agree, definitely a significant impact. Thanks. Bye. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Tom Camilleri with Wilsons Advisory. Please go ahead. Morning, Chris and Victor. Thanks for taking my questions. I think, I know you don't like to speak region by regional performance, but I think maybe just a question more strategically on China. So it looks pretty clear that you're aiming to build a brand presence over there by the online marketplaces like JD.com and WeChat. How has the progress and initial feedback on that method been to date? And I guess, what's the rationale behind not opening physical stores concurrently with the online strategy? Is there any thinking behind that as well? Thank you for your question. The main, you know, we were very consistent since the beginning when we opened the store, and in the last call, we were saying that I think it will take a time for us to learn about the Chinese market. For us, it's an important market because of the potential of the market, but I think we'll go step by step, the same as we were doing in relevant markets in the past. We are analyzing opening stores, but also I think that the e-commerce is having a presence on e-commerce in China as well is very important. It's still an important market and potential market in the agenda, and we will continue evaluating new opportunities on real estate and also new opportunities on the online platforms. I guess, just to follow up, is there anything, specific, like in the Chinese market, that's like stopping you from rolling out stores at the moment, or it's just a strategic decision? No, the good news is that we are already present in China, no? China has several peculiarities that we believe is we have to be prudent in terms of how we will do the rollout of stores and try to learn from the Chinese customer, what is the right offering for them, and all these things are. Yeah, it's a strategic decision since we opened the market. So we continue analyzing, understanding about the Chinese customer, and from there we go. Thanks, Victor. Thank you. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Alexander Mees with Morgans. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, Victor. Good morning, Chris. Just firstly, on the U.S., obviously really good growth in the Americas as a whole, but just in the U.S. specifically, only one store opened in the second half. Just wondering if you could give some color as to why that slowed and whether we can expect it to pick up the pace again? Yes. You know, at the end of the day, our store rollout, it depends a little bit on the opportunities that we are arriving at that particular moment to one particular store. As you saw, I think we grow significantly on this market, on America, and we will continue analyzing opportunities when we open in some in the U.S. Yes, we opened one store during this last six months, but we will continue analyzing and let's see if we open more or over the next few coming months. But what is important to say is that for us, it's not really a race of opening stores, and we open profitable stores and whenever we have the opportunities, and this is how. But I think the market for us is very, very strong, as you can see from our performance, and I think we are achieving with more than 200 stores. Actually, we have in the American market, in the U.S. market, 207 stores at this moment, and we are in more, I think, around 40 states. So the brand awareness is growing on a daily basis, let's put it this way, and I think we are very confident that it's a great market for the future as well for us. I think just to add to that, you know, we opened a lot of stores in the U.S. in a real hurry, and we spread them across a pretty wide geography, as Victor just said, over forty states. And that led us to, you know, just pause for a minute and just make sure we had the operational structures in place, to support that store network and operate it efficiently. And we've kind of held back a little bit on signing up too many stores for a period there. So you've just seen that flush through the second half, but we didn't really have many stores that we were really pushing hard to get deals. We were happy to sit out and hold back for the better terms for that reason. Yeah, I guess you can see that we just opened up the warehouse in the US with a pretty strong commitment to the market. Is that perspective? Thanks, Chris. And that's actually a segue to my second question. With the opening of that warehouse in Columbus, should we expect to see even greater efficiencies in the U.S., in 2025? Without any doubt. That's the reason why we are opening, and I think it's also a long or strong bet for the future of the success of the company in America. So clearly, I think it's a great news, and we are very proud that I think we opened without any type of disruptions. And I think we are very happy, and I believe that what is giving us is, or what is giving you guys is a little bit the bet for the market, and not only for the market, for Americas. And because we'll serve all the markets in America from Columbus, Ohio. So definitely is great news for the future. Thanks. If I could just sneak one last one in, just with regard to the competitive landscape. Clearly, it's been a difficult year, but do you get the sense that you've added market share over the course of 2024 on a like for like basis? Obviously, with your commitment to e-commerce, I'm wondering if you're seeing increased competition from other e-commerce providers. Thanks. Yes, there is always competition, but I think our view in terms of competition is that we need to try to be and deliver better product, better customer service, a better experience. So at the end of the day, we work really hard to be always leading the fashion in costume jewelry, and clearly, it's something that it's always in our part of our work, no? Trying to understand what competitors are doing and trying to beat them always by in product and by in customer service. Thanks, Victor. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Aryan Norozi with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead. Hi, team, happy well. First one from me, just on gross margins again. So second half 2024 was 81.3%, and typically first half, typically second half is lower than the first half. So moving into fiscal 2025, is it fair to say gross margins should be at least 81.3%? And are there any headwinds that you're facing in fiscal 2025 that will cause us to not extrapolate that sort of number moving forward, please? We're not giving any guidance on gross margin for FY 2025, Aryan. So yeah. Maybe the pluses and minuses in 20 25 Yeah In the context of what you were in the second half, please. Yeah. I think what we delivered in the second half, I guess you could argue, is, you know, from a pricing perspective, is baked in. So, that's. We don't have any plans to give that back. So I guess it's all dependent on can we continue to execute on product and deliver the same level of, you know, promotional activity as we have previously? The math about what we normally see first half, second half, and come up with what you think it should be. But yeah, we think that what we've achieved in FY 2024 is a good base for heading into FY 2025. One thing that I want to add is that we've been very consistent in terms of a margin expansion over the last three fiscal year, and we'll continue to try to do the same next year. Just to follow up on that one, the price increases. Can I just clarify? You obviously put a price increase late in the first half of 2024, and did you say you'd put another set of small incremental rounds during the second half as well? What we say is it's just part of our ongoing business. We're constantly looking at our range, our price points, market by market, wherever there's an opportunity to do it. So it's not like we're putting through, you know, across the board price increases that give us a big whack all of a sudden. It's just consistent focus on that area. Perfect. And then the cadence of store growth. I appreciate you don't give guidance, and it's very lumpy. But I mean, historically, the way the message has been is you try to sort of replicate what you did in the prior year, or at least that. And I mean, in FY 2024, you opened about 128 stores. First eight weeks, you're obviously just opened eight, but again, it's lumpy, and you can't extrapolate. Like, how do we think about the cadence or a good run rate for your business moving forward? Is 128 stores maybe the right way of thinking about it in terms of growth openings, considering the U.S. should probably ramp back up as you exit that sort of consolidation phase? Yeah, I think, you know, naturally, we're probably disappointed. Fair to say, Victor, that we only opened 128 stores in FY 2024 compared to the 200 or so in the previous years. So, and naturally we'll be aiming for those sort of numbers in 2025. But yeah, you're right, we don't give guidance on how many we open, and it definitely is lumpy. You know, in the last quarter of FY 2024, I think we opened something like 20-plus stores in June. So the previous couple of months, we barely opened any. Same thing happened in July and August, where we didn't open many either, and then had a bit of a rush in August. It's up and down, so you can't just extrapolate that first eight weeks out and get your number. Yeah. We're trying to go faster than that, and we want to go faster than that, but we'll do it in a responsible way and make sure that we're opening profitable stores as always. Gotcha. Very last one. Just as a like to like, the first eight weeks, you said a comp store sales is around 2%. You obviously put price increases through, whatever that is, call it 1%-2%, and you're cycling much easier comps as well. How do you reconcile that with the fact that you haven't seen a volume impact from the price increases? Like, that sort of still implies your volumes are down or pretty weak on easy comps. What am I missing there, please? Yeah, that's what we said was we haven't had to do anything differently from a promotional perspective to keep a clean inventory position. Yeah. So, so we've been able to adjust price and get better gross margin outcomes and not have to pull the promotional lever because we've made mistakes. So that's probably the point I'm trying to make. There's a lot of factors that go into the comp sales, as you know, and total sales growth. And yeah, I mean, we're not going to pull it apart completely. I guess 2% in the first eight weeks, cycling -5%, whatever it was last year, you know, we're not happy with that outcome, and we, that's pretty average, in the scheme of comp sales, in a good period. Yeah, we want to do better than that, and we're focused on what we can do to deliver, you know, better numbers than that. But it is what it is. Is it a fair comment that the price increases have not driven a lot, sort of a decline in volumes? Like, the volumes haven't sort of been impacted post-raising prices in the recent round. Like, the pricing power is still there. Is that a fair comment? Yeah, I think, there's not nothing telling us that the pricing power is not there. So yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different factors that go into, you know, how much you sell. So, I'm not gonna give you a breakdown of it or anything, but, but yeah, we're still pretty happy with the. You know, when we make price adjustments to price, that it works. Great. Thanks so much, guys. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Sam Teeger with Citi. Please go ahead. Morning, Victor. Morning, Chris. Just outside of the LTI impacts, can you talk a bit more in terms of what's happening with the cost base? I would have thought a bit more leverage would have come through, given how strong your gross profit dollar expansion was in FY 2024 compared to FY 2023. Yeah. Makes sense. In inflation, obviously. So, you know, like everybody else, we've seen a lot of inflationary pressure, particularly on store wages, or wages, salaries. So that, that's, you know, one of the main reasons that we've had to adjust price to offset that, not necessarily chasing gross margin, but to make sure that we've put more gross profit dollars in the, in the bank, to offset the cost increases coming from inflation. So that, that's obviously had an impact. And then just generally, just reinvesting back into the structures of the business to be able to support the bigger store network and continue to grow. I mean, as you know, we've been saying repeatedly over and over again for years, Sam. I'm sure you're sick of hearing it from me, but you know, we're not about delivering leverage. We're about investing in the business so that we can continue to grow. And you know, as we expand, we need to put more heads in. We find new things to spend money on so that we're match fit to keep doing that. Got it. And, just on the inflation with store wages, given often there's only one employee in a store, can you talk about, besides raising prices, what other things you've been able to do to try and mitigate against the wage inflation? Yeah. I mean, it depends on the size of the store and the turnover of the store you're talking about, whether there's only one employee in the store. But yeah, we've some stores where there's not much we can do because it becomes a fixed cost, and you do have to have one person to keep the doors open. So that's made it hard to mitigate that line, which is why we've seen that increase in cost. But you know, we've spent a fair bit of energy on logistics costs, which you can see through the P&L. A lot of you know, tender processes to try and push those costs down. You know, focusing where we can on trimming costs as much as we can, but obviously, our primary focus is investing in growing rather than cutting. Sure. And I think Victor made a comment earlier on that the Australasia markets have been the most challenging. Yeah, any chance of getting a bit more color around that statement, please? It's not challenging. You know, as you know, Sam, we are a global company. We don't comment on particular markets. At the end of the day, we are growing at 17% this last year and we will continue to try to deliver good results over the next few years. The thing is that sometimes a particular region is not performing according to our standards, but instead of thinking, maybe it's much more that we need to be much more driven by operations and trying to improve the operations in that particular market or that particular region. So, also, as you saw, for example, the U.S. this year or the Americas is better, and then Europe is doing better. So it's with global companies at the same time, sometimes some regions are doing better and some regions are doing worse. But, anyways, the overall result is still very encouraging for the future, and I think, at the end of the day, instead of, it's a challenging or I was mentioning that, you know, let's say challenging, but it's at the same time an opportunity to improve over the next few months. Got it. And then lastly, just a clarification question. The slower rollout that we've seen in recent times, can you confirm that is more your own doing to improve your own processes, as opposed to landlords have become incrementally tougher when it comes to asking rents or, or sites are getting harder to find? Yeah, we've been very consistent on this, no? We open profitable stores and mainly whenever there were only 128 stores, so 27 stores this year. But at the same time, I think the future looks very encouraging as well. And also is, it's not kind of a mathematical formula, where every month we can say that we are going to open a, I don't know, 15 stores. No, it's a little bit different. As Chris was mentioning, we opened more than 20 stores in June, and we opened less stores in July, you know. So, clearly, it's our main focus, and the landlords are not really the other way around. Right now, the brand awareness of Lovisa has been increasing over the last years, and I think right now it's even easier to find good locations and finding profitable locations for us because the landlord knows us, and once you start in one market, it's very difficult because nobody knew you, know you. But later on, it's easier for us to convince landlords that we have to be in the mall and that we are the right company for their mall, no? So I think the other way around, no, the more brand awareness you have, the easier is the real estate. Got it. So then the slower rollout is more your own doing to fix your own processes if the awareness with landlords is improving? Yeah, I would have to say yes, and like this, but I think I gave you some color. Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Benjamin Jones with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just a quick one on Victor's LTI expense. I think you've mentioned in the past that we can expect a small component in FY 2025. Just give me an idea of what sort of quantum in 2025, and then anything else what to expect through the year on that front. Yeah, it's about AUD 1.5 million. You can probably work it out from the REM report, but yeah, in that sort of vicinity, and then later in the year, obviously, when John joins, there'll be some of his package coming in as well, but yeah, so maybe call it, say, you know, AUD 2 million for CEO LTI in FY25. Great. Thank you. And then just what you're seeing in terms of lease renewals, I mean, maybe give some little clarity or context in terms of how many lease renewals you've executed through the year and what you're seeing in terms of pricing across the portfolio. Yeah, I mean, it depends on the location, honestly. Obviously, the top malls are still extremely difficult and hard to negotiate with, as you'd expect, because they've got the best properties. And, you know, everything else is fair game, so we're getting some good outcomes and, you know, some less good outcomes. But, yeah, there's no one hard and fast rule across the board of what we're seeing, and, you know, it depends on the geography and all those factors. And any. Got it. Market we have A malls, B malls, and C malls, where, where we want to be, and definitely we need to be on A malls as well because of the brand awareness, because of the volumes, because. But also we need to balance as well with C malls, you know? So at the end of the day, every market, now we have 46 markets, so it's easier to try to open a balance in terms of a type of malls that where we are going to open our stores. Yep, makes sense. And just one final one, if I may. On the Middle East, looks like the number of franchisee stores coming down in that market. Can you just sort of talk to your expectations in terms of your footprint there? Is there plans to move that to an entirely owned store region? Yeah. Now in UAE, we have six stores, and they are fully owned by Lovisa. And it was a strategic decision a couple of years ago to take over and close some stores and start opening our own stores, no? So we took over from the franchisee three stores, and we just opened another three stores. One of the stores is in Dubai Mall, which I believe at this moment is one of the best shopping malls in the world. I invite you, all of you, to, if you stop over in Dubai, to go and visit our store. It's quite busy, so it's a great thing. I think it was opportunistic in terms of we think that we will operate better in the UAE from our side, and we decided to do it. At the same time, we have several markets on franchise model in the Middle East, and the potential is quite significantly high, and we will continue opening stores in those markets like Kuwait or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. Got it. That's really good color. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ed Woodgate with Jarden. Please go ahead. Oh, hi, Shane. Thanks for taking the question. So I guess, just giving a follow-up on the store rollout, given the issues you've had in rolling out at historical paces, and we just wanna, like, I think, be conservative in reflecting that in our forecast. You've talked about pulling back to the U.S. temporarily. It sounds like you wanna go back at that market again. You've also talked about getting back to 23 levels of rollout. Like, does that just to be clear, is that saying that the store rollout accelerates into 25, or should we be a bit more conservative and be benchmarking towards more the levels we're seeing, year-to-date? I would say that we are very optimistic on the future, no, on the store rollout, the same as we were last year. But I think we found out only 128 stores that were according to our standards. The year before was 200 stores. So you can see more or less where we are going to end up, no? It's kind of will be, we'll be between 100 and 200 stores, I would say. Okay. I think what we're saying is that there's no capacity constraint internally to be able to open stores. It's a matter of getting the right deals and at the right time, and I know that's not helpful for you guys 'cause you're trying to work out how many and when, but obviously, you know, I think I just said, look at the last couple of years and take an average. Yeah, sure. Okay. I think you talked to qualitatively the differences of profitability by region. So I mean, particularly in the context of your comments around the U.S. and rolling out a bit too quickly there, are there any particular regions that are more profitable or less profitable on a contribution margin basis? I imagine ANZ is probably more, more profitable just being more mature. Yeah. I mean, definitely, there are variations between markets, and, you know, we've talked about it historically, that some markets are extremely profitable because they're low cost of doing business and, you know, they're strong sales performers and, you know, mature markets. Places like, you know, South Africa, for example, kind of well known as a strong profit generator for us. And then obviously, markets that with a strong, you know, average sales per store generally tend to deliver the most profitability. But, yeah, we're not gonna go into market-by-market economics other than to say, you know, that can impact on the profitability if we're rolling out more stores in markets that are, you know, lower turnover per store or lower profit per store, then it can be a, you know, an impact, and it can go the other way as well. So, it kind of depends where we're opening the stores and where we can get the deals done. Okay. But this seems to be implicit in your comments that you think you can do a lot better in the U.S. from a profit perspective. Is that fair? Yeah, I think so. When, you know, we operationally stretched ourselves pretty thin there, so that has an impact on the ability to operate effectively, so yeah, we think we're doing better there at the moment, and you can see that in the numbers. Okay, sure. And then, I mean, I just will ask the question, and if you don't want to answer, that's fine. But can you call out the benefit of price increases in the second half? Like, I had similar questions arising in regards to trading update, but it is a little bit difficult to say, you know, pick apart what the puts and takes are to your comps. Maybe there are particular regions that perform well or poorly? Yeah. I mean, it's not just a flat, you know, performance across the board consistently in every market, so some are better than others, and depending on which month you're looking at and all that sort of stuff. But, yeah, we're not going to give you really any more detail on the topic. At the end of the day, also, it's about the product offering, you know, and clearly, whenever we have a good product offering, it doesn't matter. There is no resistance on price and on any type of a problematic that you can have, no? So we always concentrate on having the best offering for our customers and for new potential customers. That's the important thing is that we have a global product offering that is working in forty-six markets and that's very important because it's giving us flexibility that maybe one particular market for any kind of things is not working and but at the same time, other markets are performing better, you know? The overall outcome is that we grew by 17.2% last year, and I think this is something which is quite a thing to celebrate and to understand that I think everything is driven by the appealiness of the product to our customer. And then just one more on China, if I might. So I appreciate you can't talk to the rollout intentions there, but just given the online presence, can you talk to just overall sales in the country, how that's tracking, what the general receptiveness is? Is there any sort of quantitative figure you can give us to give us some color on how you're going there? Not right now. Okay. Just last question for me. Sorry, I'm taking up quite a bit of time, but just the long-term store rollout opportunity in the US. I guess the more negative clients we speak to are a bit worried about some of the leases you've been signing up there. Are you comfortable that in the long term, you see sufficient supply of A- and C-grade malls to, you know, have a... That the long-term opportunity hasn't been diminished? I appreciate you taking your time, being selective, signing up to deals now, but just is there any change to your long-term view of the market? Not really. I think we've been doing this for the last few years, actually since the beginning of the company, and we will continue trying to have the right mix between A malls, B malls, and C malls. And once we achieve, for example, I was mentioning in Dubai, we opened a great A plus mall, which is the Dubai Mall, but I think we opened a couple of malls that are B malls. So, I mean, we are trying to create a balance and but there's still plenty of A malls all over in these 46 markets and other markets that will open as well. So definitely, I think there will be always a mix of different shopping malls. As we mentioned before, whenever we need to close one store, because I think that shopping mall, for any particular reason, is not performing, we will not be shy as well on closing that particular store. So I think that we are trying to use the great balance in order to be in all the stores that we believe we can perform well. Awesome. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Mark Wade with CLSA. Please go ahead. Morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking the question. Look, Victor, you're now in nearly 50 countries. Is the one-size-fits-all model still working? Yeah, it's amazing what has been created 14 years ago. And I was lucky or I'm lucky to be the CEO of a company which is performing very well in almost 50 markets, as you just said. Actually, I hope that this year we'll celebrate the 50th market, you know, and it's a great thing. But as I mentioned before, I think it's a question of product, you know, and I think we are obsessed on having always the right product to beat competition, to have the great response from our customers worldwide. I think we are in five continents and performing in every single continent. So I think it's quite a unique company, you know. And also adding a lot of flexibility in terms of one particular market cannot perform well for a few months, but at the same time, there will be several other markets, no? And the company also has zero excuses on everything which is macro, the macroeconomic environment or the theme of every single year, you know. So we concentrate and we focus on performing well, trying to always being very operational, consistent, not that we operate the stores properly. We operate our website platforms properly as well, and trying always to improve and to always understand where is the win in every single thing that we do in the company. Yeah. Okay, that's great. And I think I know the answer, but just for the record, the rate of like-for-like sales growth, that's got no bearing whatsoever on your desired pace of rollout in either new or existing markets. In other words, you're not perturbed if there's a drag on sales per store if you go into, I don't know, Gabon or something like that. You're just full steam ahead, wherever the opportunity is. Yeah. You're right. Okay. We focus on the opportunities to open profitable stores. So y eah, that doesn't come into it. Makes sense. No, that's fine. And last one, just what I think that's always bugged me a bit was like, it's fast fashion, but, you know, COGS to inventories only, like, it's now below two turns a year, which just strikes me as extraordinarily low for fast fashion. Is it just the Ohio DC that's been the latest drag in that downward trend, or is there something more to it? I think it's still out at two. But yeah, you're right. I mean, it's not- Our stock turns are not as fast as what you would expect them to be. Exactly like you said, which is partly because of our business model, right? So it's having a really wide range for the customer, and that's what they expect. So yeah, we have a long tail, and we have to manage through that and work hard to keep our inventory fresh and efficient. But again, you're right. Thankfully, our product cost is quite low and our gross margins are high, so it allows us to get away with it. Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Victor. All the best. Thank you. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of John Campbell with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Thanks, guys. Just a couple of questions because I know we're getting near the end here. But, in terms of e-commerce and digital, what roughly is the share of sales at present? Yeah, we don't share that. We never have, and we probably never will. So. Okay. It's a growing, growing part of our business. It's growing. Yes. It's a growing% of sales, yeah, and so if y ou know, assuming obviously you're putting a lot of effort into e-commerce, and you know, assuming success and you keep growing that share, I presume that has eventually had some impact on gross margin overall, potentially negatively? Yeah. Not particularly. I mean, it's not. We don't use e-commerce as a clearance platform necessarily, so its gross margins are still pretty strong. I mean. Even though you have to pay away some margin, I presume, to some of your partners. Yeah. Not a big enough part of the... Notice the impact that we have got away with. Okay, thanks for that. And look, just two more questions. There's been a lot of talk about store rollout, but particularly on the U.S. market, are there any characteristics of the U.S. market in terms of landlord key terms, that make it sort of more difficult to commit to leases? Or is it really just a matter of you, you know, getting more logistics as you are with that warehouse and you'll continue to roll out? Like, is there anything unique, I suppose, about the U.S. market? Just when they ask for too much rent, the landlord. Yeah, and longer, longer terms? Not really. It's, at the end of the day, it's more costly. It's more costly to build a store in the U.S. than building in, I don't know, let's say, in China, for example, no? But at the same time, I think all the landlords are a little bit always a bit delusional, no, in terms of the rent that they are asking. But having said that, we work with them in order to try to have partnership. I think we are with the main landlords in the U.S. They know us, the Simons, the Macerich, the Brookfield of the world, of the U.S., and clearly, we work with them in order to try to open several stores with them, no? But at the same time, individual landlords that we work with, work with them in order to try to find a great location for us, no. But clearly, I think, the U.S., the difference between the U.S. and other markets is the cost of building stores, that is higher than other places. But also we try to cope with that. So it's not really. There is no much difference, no? Every landlord wants to charge you the highest rent possible, and we try to get the best deal possible. So that's the negotiation with the landlords. Yeah, that's very helpful. Thanks, Victor. Last question. Was the famous Taylor Swift effect material in the second half? You know, for example, Taylor Swift continued going to Europe. I think at the end of the day, the Taylor Swift in Australia was important, but also in Europe we was impactful for us. All these kind of things are always adding to the company. Being a global company, we follow a little bit the Taylor Swift effect, no? Particularly on that particular range. But definitely it was a great, great news for us, and we will continue trying to adapt to the next Taylor Swift concert or the next Taylor or a next singer that is really focused on wearing jewelry, so which was great for us. Yeah. Long that last, Victor. Thanks very much for that. That's all my questions. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Yiwen Chen with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks so much. So apologies, I'm reasonably new to the Lovisa story, and I've missed the first chunk of your global rollout. But what I do see is new markets, incremental markets in the second half and FY 2025, are largely sort of franchise markets in some pretty frontier markets. So I guess, what are the factors that drive, I guess, which markets you roll out into? And are existing markets saturated that you need to look into places like Guadeloupe, you know, which has a population of less than 400,000 people? Yes. Actually, Guadeloupe has a lot of potential, at least two or three stores, because as you may know, 200,000 people, but at the same time, plenty of French tourism there. So maybe they have around five million tourists a year, no? Which is kind of one of these Caribbean markets where the retail is quite developed, no? But anyways, that's not the important thing, because you mentioned. What is important is that I think Europe is becoming a reality as itself, no? All the Euro currency markets are becoming kind of a very important with our in our store mix and our product mix, no? And I think that's the important thing. We opened a second store in Spain, in Barcelona. We opened several stores in France, you know, almost having 90 stores in France. I think we opened 12 stores last year in France, and also Germany is becoming a relevant market for us. But overall we treat it or we tend to treat it as kind of a market, and I think it's becoming one of the main drivers of our growth. Yeah. Okay, thanks. And then just a question on, I guess, earnings versus operating leverage. So EBIT increased AUD 22 million year on year, but LTIs fell about 15. So is it correct to say that on about AUD 100 million of incremental revenue, EBIT kind of only grew mid-single digits? And if so, how do we think about operating leverage, kind of ex LTI going forward? I think that's the point I was trying to make before, that we've invested back in the business at the same time as we've had you know, inflationary impacts on wages and things like that. That's what you're seeing in those numbers. You can do the math. You know, that's baked in at the moment, so we've got to basically keep building the store network and leverage that cost base that we've got. But you know, we're always looking for new things to invest in. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Johannes Faul with Morningstar. Please go ahead. Hi, Victor. Hi, Chris. I had a question on the warehouse in the U.S. How many stores can that service? What's the capacity for that warehouse? A lot more than it's currently servicing. So it's quite a large space, and we've fitted it out to obviously support what we've currently got and then some. But yes, there's plenty of room in that warehouse to cope with growth. Okay. And on that, third-party logistics in China, are you able to scale that capacity back, or will you be running duplicate costs now without the additional warehouse in the U.S? Yeah, yeah, we can definitely scale it. That's, that's the idea. So. Okay, great. And the. The other aspect of that, though, is that as we grow the business further in market service from that warehouse, then we may not need to. Got it. Okay. And then on wages globally, the development, it's quite difficult for us to see from here. But just on average, what kind of wage inflation are you expecting over the next 12 months globally? Is it quite similar to what we're seeing in the U.S. with the minimum wages increases here? Yeah, I mean, we're subject to the minimum wage increases that everybody else is. So that's kind of the answer to your question. You've already got the answer. We're basically w here the wage inflation is running, that's what we're subject to. Oh, yeah. I was just wondering, what is it roughly your expectation globally, across all your markets on average in terms of the impact? Yeah, I mean, we're not gonna put a number out there on that. It varies by market. We'll deal with whatever that number is in each market. Okay, great. Thanks, Chris. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Chami Ratnapala, Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead. Thanks for taking my questions, Chris, and Victor. Just keen to hear how many piercing studios have you got across the store network? And, with those stores that have got them more recently or over the last two years, have you seen good comps growth? Yes, you know, the whole point is that whenever you open a store in a new market, always there is kind of a ramp up. And therefore, it takes a while to understand or to the customer to be interested on our product and all these things. But clearly, yes, we have seen a great performance or great news from several of the markets that we opened. And also, as you know, over the last two years also, we opened several stores in the U.S. But the U.S is w e treat it as a continent, so sometimes you open new states that they don't know us, and as you see, the performance of the states is quite, we are quite proud of the performance in the States. So clearly, there is driven by better comps in the States. Yes. Yeah, sorry, I meant, Victor, the piercing studio, the stores which now have the piercing studios? Yes, the piercing studio is that. Yes, we are starting to develop a new piercing studio, and we open two for the time being, one in Victoria Gardens in Melbourne, and another one in Werribee in Melbourne as well. And yes, it's going to be like a shop-in-shop experience inside the store. And yes, we are very proud of the development on the piercing studio area, and we will roll out in most of the market from now on. Thank you for asking that question because it's true that we are doing that, and I think we opened Werribee. We reopened Werribee last week, and with the piercing studio, and so far, so good, and the performance is quite good, particularly because we didn't have piercing facilities before. But anyways, it's a great shop-in-shop, and I think it's uplifting the customer experience in the piercing area. So we are very proud and happy with that. That's great. And the second question is, within the comp growth in the second half versus where you've started FY 2025, are the market mix or, you know, the market performance relatively similar, or have some markets changed in that performance? Yeah. I think the trajectory is pretty similar, to be honest, if you look at, say, the back half of FY 2024 into 2025, you know, across the board, markets are performing pretty consistently where they were. So it's not like... It hasn't shifted markedly, say, from, you know, Q4 into Q1 of FY 2024. Perfect. Thanks for that, Chris. Thanks for taking my questions, Victor and Chris. Thank you. And thank you for bringing in the piercing studio. I'm very happy because we are very proud of that. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Charles Forsstrom with private investor. Please go ahead. Hi, Victor and Chris. Thanks for taking my call. Can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. Oh, great. A couple of questions on dividend, and also, why this is still rolled out. I know you the way you are, ask these questions, but, Asian megacities with massive populations like South Korea, Thailand, where you know, the markets can be so huge, and, is there a structural reason, is there a problem with, why we're not in Japan, Korea, or Thailand? It's a great question because I actually was in Tokyo the other day, seeing trends, you know, and basically trying to be inspired by competition. As you may know, Tokyo is a great city to find good trends, you know, for custom jewelry. But anyways, you know, at the end of the day, we open- Sorry, can I do that? Okay. So I was saying that I think the priority for us, we opened, I think, over the last year, last few years, 20 markets, no? And clearly Korea, clearly Japan, clearly plenty of other markets, and Thailand as well, as you mentioned, they will have, at one point of time, our offering and our Lovisa product offering. But I think we have to prioritize. I think we open great markets like Vietnam, China, Mainland China, and Ireland this year, and also several other markets with on our franchisee model. But clearly, I think all these markets are in our list, and they will come rather sooner than later. Great. Great. That's really good to hear. That's fantastic. Just one question, probably more for Chris on the dividend. And I know the chairman, Brett, obviously, has always kept the debt very, very low. Is there a reason why we've never looked at a dividend reinvestment plan where we could, you know, retain those funds and just keep kicking debt even lower than it already is? Thank you. I guess our current strategy over the last couple of years has been to putting debt onto the balance sheet to have a more efficient capital structure. We're there now, so basically we're interested in spending our cash on growing the business and opening stores or returning it to shareholders. That's our dividend policy strategy. No plans for a dividend reinvestment plan at the moment. Okay. All right. Thanks very much. Thank you for taking my call, and well done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Aryan Norozi with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead. Very much being annoying. Just last one. Just at the expected impact from the, potential tariffs in China, on the U.S. So obviously, Trump's out there talking about a 60% tariff on China's imports into the U.S. You guys obviously import products into the, into your, into the U.S. And maybe just parallels with what happened in, I think it was 2017 last time that happened, and, and just what a 60% rise in your COGS sort of could do it to your gross margins. How should you just think about that risk or impact, please? You know, any particular tariff from any particular country, and particularly in the US, we'll try to sort it out, you know. For the time being, we cannot speculate because it's not yet established, and at the same time, it's true that I think our supply chain is based in. Some of our main suppliers are based in Asian markets. But at the same time, we will deal with that as we deal with COVID, when they closed some of the ports in China, and we went and we found alternatives. So anything that is going to be on a macro perspective basis, we will try to deal with that by trying to improve our operations and trying to be more efficient. If there is tariff in the U.S., we will try to deal with that with the less impact, cost impact for us. That makes sense. Thanks, guys. Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star one to ask a question. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Herrero for closing remarks. Okay. Thank you very much, all, for attending this call, and we will talk to you guys in six months' time in the next call. Thank you. Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.