Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Amplifon first quarter 2021 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Francesca Rambaud i, Investor Relations Director of Amplifon. Please go ahead, madam. Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to Amplifon's conference call for first quarter 2021 results. Before we start, two logistic comments. This morning, we issued a press release related to our results, and this presentation is posted on our website in the investors section. The call can be accessed also via webcast and dial-in details, which are always on Amplifon's website, as well as on the press release. I have to bring your attention to the disclaimer on slide two, as some of the statements made during this call may be considered a forward-looking statement. Please also let me drive your attention to the fact that from this quarter, we are also reporting 2019 income statement data for greater comparability purpose, given the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on 2020. The commentary will be therefore also based on this figure. With that, I am now pleased to turn the call over to our CEO, Enrico Vita. Thank you, Francesca. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for attending our conference call on our Q1 results. We are at the beginning of what I believe is going to be an important year for our industry. In fact, we are at the beginning of a year that I'm pretty sure we'll see some players emerge stronger from the pandemic and some other get weaker. We feel we are very well positioned. We are well positioned thanks to all the work done last year by our organization, by our team to become even more efficient and effective. Also thanks to our confirmed commitment to the pillars of our strategy, keeping investing significantly on our people, on our brands, on our Amplifon Product Experience, and also on our M&A strategy. We started off the year in a very strong way. We are very happy. In a very strong way and even stronger than expected just at the beginning of this year. All the three regions reported a strong growth despite some markets were affected and are still today affected by some sort of restrictive measures. I refer, for example, to markets like Germany or Italy even. We estimate we have once again grown share in all the main markets. Let's now go to see our numbers for Q1 in the next chart. Since the performance of Q1 2020 was already affected by the pandemic, I will comment with you our results primarily in comparison with Q1 2019, which I believe is a more meaningful base. As you can see, total revenues were up 12.5% at constant ForEx, and we reported a very strong organic growth, which was over 8%. Very positive is that, as said before, all the three regions contributed significantly to these results. Meaningful was also the contribution from acquisitions around 6%, mainly related to the acquisition of PJC Hearing in the U.S., Attune in Australia, the bolt-on acquisitions in EMEA. With regards to the integration of PJC Hearing in the U.S., I'm also very happy to share that everything is going well so far. The team there is doing a very good job, I'm very confident that this business will be a great addition to our business in the U.S. The currency effect was negative by 1.6%. At the same time, we have been able to increase our EBITDA margin by 180 basis points from 20.1 to 2 1.9, even after significant increase in our marketing investment of about 15% in the period. The material contribution to these results came from Spain, thanks to the synergies related to the integration of GAES. The cash flow generation was excellent as well. Our operating cash flow increased double-digit versus Q1 2020 and almost doubled versus Q1 2019. All in all, I believe today we are presenting a very strong set of results, and we are very pleased about these results. I now hand over to Gabriele to give you more colors about our performance in numbers. Thanks, Enrico. Good afternoon, everybody. Moving to chart number five, we have a look at the EMEA outstanding financial performance. As Enrico mentioned, since the performance of Q1 2020 was already affected by COVID-19 outbreak, especially with regards to EMEA and APAC, I will comment our results primarily in comparison to Q1 2019, representing a much more meaningful comparable base. In Q1, revenue growth was 9.5% at constant ForEx, with a well above market organic growth at 6.8%, despite restrictive measures still in place in several markets. M&A contribution was 2.7% for bolt-on, primarily in France and Germany. Very strong organic growth was reported in France, also driven by the recent regulatory change, Italy and Spain. Weaker performance was instead recorded in Germany and U.K. due to the more severe restrictive measures still in place. EBITDA amounted to EUR 82.8 million, up around 34% versus Q1 2019, with margin at 26.6%, up 480 basis points versus Q1 2019, thanks to improved efficiency and productivity, as well as to the outstanding performance of Spain following the synergies stemming from the GAES integration. Moving to slide number six, we have a look at America's excellent performance. In the quarter, revenue growth was around 34% at constant ForEx versus Q1 2019, with an organic growth at 17%, thanks to an excellent and a well above market performance in the U.S., driven by the very strong performance of Miracle-Ear. Double-digit organic performance was also reported both in Canada and LATAM. M&A contribution was around 17% versus Q1 2019, primarily reflecting the recent PJC Hearing acquisition. As anticipated by Enrico, this amount entirely reported in the M&A line reflects both the consolidation impact of PJC since January 2021, as well as the very strong organic performance of PJC in the quarter. Total ForEx was negative for 11.5% due to the EUR appreciation versus US dollar and LATAM currencies. EBITDA amounted to EUR 16.3 million, with margin at 21.2%, up 100 basis points versus Q1 2019, also after continued reinvestment in the business, thanks to greater efficiency and productivity. Moving to chart number seven, we have a look at APAC, which showed an outstanding performance across all markets. In Q1, revenues were up 18% at constant ForEx, driven by a strong organic growth of over 8%, also despite localized and temporary lockdowns, both in Australia and in New Zealand at the end of February, early March. M&A contribution is related to Attune and accounted for 10% versus Q1 2019. ForEx was slightly positive. In the quarter, New Zealand and China posted double-digit growth not only versus Q1 2020 but also versus Q1 2019. Australia also reported a positive performance versus Q1 2019, with a significant acceleration throughout the quarter. EBITDA amounted to EUR 16 million with a 14% increase versus Q1 2019. EBITDA margin came to 30.2%, down 130 basis points versus Q1 2019 due to the very challenging comparison base. Moving to slide number eight, we can appreciate the profit and loss evolution. Total revenues increased by 12.5% to EUR 441 million, with an excellent 8.4% organic growth versus 2019. The structural efficiencies and the productivity enhancement derived by the decisive measures implemented last year led EBITDA margin at 21.9%, with an improvement of 180 basis points versus Q1 2019. Total recurring EBITDA increased by 22.3%, around EUR 18 million to EUR 97 million. Reported figures include a EUR 2.4 million cost related to GAES integration and to the redefinition of the corporate structure of Amplifon S.p.A. Following the strong investment plan during the past quarters. D&A increased by around EUR 8 million, leading the recurring EBIT to around EUR 44 million, with a growth of 27% or EUR 12 million versus Q1 2019. Net financial expenses accounting for around EUR 8 million led profit before tax to EUR 36 million from around EUR 28 million in Q1 2019, posting a 31% increase. Tax rate, as usual, slightly higher in the first quarter versus following quarters due to seasonality, posted a 130 basis point reduction versus 2019, from 32.2%-30.9%, leaving recurring net profit at EUR 25 million, with an increase of 33% versus 2019. Moving to chart nine, we can appreciate the cash flow evolution. Operating cash flow after lease liabilities was in the period equal to EUR 68 million versus EUR 61 million last year, which already reflected the action implemented in March last year to mitigate the COVID-19 impact, posting an improvement of EUR 7 million or 12%. The comparison versus Q1 2019 shows an outstanding improvement of EUR 33 million with operating cash flow almost doubling versus 2019. Net CapEx decreased by around EUR 1.5 million to around EUR 15 million, leaving free cash flow at EUR 53 million versus EUR 44 million last year. Posting a growth of EUR 9 million, around 20% versus last year. Versus Q1 2019, the improvement of free cash flow is over three times. Net cash out for M&A was EUR 32 million, driven by bolt-on acquisition in EMEA versus EUR 42 million in 2020, primarily related to Attune acquisition last year. The share buyback program executed in the quarter absorbed over EUR 30 million, leaving net cash flow for the period to over EUR 7 million positive versus EUR -2.5 million in Q1 2020, leaving NFP at EUR 625 million, with an improvement of around EUR 165 million versus Q1 2020. Further improving despite seasonality versus EUR 634 million at the end of 2020. Moving to chart 10, we have a look at the debt profile trend and key financial ratios. As mentioned in the previous chart, the net financial debt closed at EUR 625 million, with the liquidity accounting for EUR +558 million, shorter debt accounting for around EUR 121 million, and medium long-term debt accounting for around EUR 1.06 billion. This confirms the very strong financial profile of the group, with over EUR 800 million financial headroom, including undrawn revolving credit facilities after the continuous improvement of the NFP and the completion of the financing program executed last year. Following the IFRS 16 application, lease liabilities amounted to EUR 428 million, leaving the sum of NFP and lease liabilities to EUR 1.05 billion. Equity ended up at EUR 831 million, with an increase of around EUR 30 million versus December last year. Looking at financial ratios, net debt over EBITDA ended at 1.44, with a further reduction versus December 2020 by around 20 basis points, representing the best result after the completion of the successful GAES acquisition. Net debt over equity ended up at 0.75, posting a reduction versus 0.80 at the end of 2020. I would now hand over to Enrico for 2021 outlook. Thank you, Gabriele. As usual, we are at the end of our presentation for today. Looking ahead, even if some degree of uncertainty still persists, I now believe that the visibility on the next month is improving day after day. April trading is going well. We expect our market to continue to normalize during the year as COVID-19 vaccines are administered. In light of this situation, we now expect revenues for the full year in the region of EUR 1.93 billion. Of course, as said, this target reflects and takes into consideration some caution due to the fact that we can't say that the situation is 100% solved yet. I can confirm that in terms of profitability, we expect to continue to reap the benefits of our actions implemented since Q2 of last year. Therefore, we aim to achieve a significant margin improvement compared to 2019 in the region of 180, 200 basis points. Looking farther ahead, we remain very positive as usual on our prospects of growth as we confirm our strategy and our investments. Therefore, we confirm what is crucial for the medium and long-term development of our company. Now, let me now hand over to Francesca again. Thank you. Thanks, Enrico. Before I turn the call to the operator, please kindly limit your questions to maximum two initially, in order to give everybody the opportunity to ask questions. Now I turn the call over to the operator in order to open the Q&A session. Thank you. The first question is from Niccolò Storer with Kepler. Please go ahead. Hello, good afternoon. Good afternoon, everybody. I have two questions for you. The first one is on your revenues guidance. In Q1, you grew 8.4% organic, and if I make some calculation, your guidance implies a lower growth versus 2019 compared to the one of Q1. I was wondering why you are adopting such a cautious stance, given the fact that probably going forward, the comparison should become easier and easier versus 2019, of course. The second one is on profitability, probably also with stronger than previously expected top line. You're still guiding for the same 180, 200 basis points increase. Why is this? I mean, are you planning further expenses, offsetting the operating leverage effect that you're going to have? Related to that, on profitability in APAC, which was down compared to 2019, you spoke about the tough comparison base, but if I look at 2019 was already lower than 2016, 2017, 2018. If you can give us some color also on this drop in profitability in APAC. Thank you. Niccolò. Thank you for the questions. With regards to the first question, and therefore to the guidance on revenues, I would say a couple of things. The first one, you need also to take into consideration that the comparable base in the second half of this year versus the same second half of 2019, is going to be definitely much more challenging than in the first half. In some way, our guidance reflects this. Also I would say that, as I mentioned during the presentation, our guidance in terms of revenues reflects and takes into consideration the fact that we can't say that the situation is yet solved 100%. Therefore, in this guidance is also included some sort of caution for that. At this stage, we believe that this is quite a fair assumption for the full year. With regards instead to the profitability, we said that our target in terms of profitability was not depending so much on the level of revenues. We said this during our last conference call also because we could flex our cost according to those. In this case, I believe that a target of 180-2 00 basis points versus 19 is a real and remarkable target and very strong target. With regards then to the third part of your question, and therefore the profitability of APAC, I would say that this also is reflecting the investments that we are making in the APAC region, following from one side our switch from the local brand National Hearing Care to Amplifon, which we have mentioned now for a few times. In Australia we have rebranded all our stores to Amplifon. Amplifon is our brand in Australia. In order to support these activities in terms of rebranding, we are investing quite a lot in terms of marketing, and we are very happy to do so because from one side, we are building a much stronger brand, a global. We are present in Australia now with our global brand. From the other side, I believe that these investments, which have been quite significant in particular, will be quite significant this year, will support also our objectives in terms of growth in the private market. Finally, let me say that I'm more than fine with a region with profitability above 30% in a low seasonality quarter. I'm more than fine with that. Sure. Thank you. Can we say that, to conclude, that you're not facing any kind of price pressure in this region? No. Not at all. It's just the profitability, which again, is above 30%, is just reflecting of the fact, if you have time, you can go to YouTube and look our new advertising in Australia. We are on air. It's the biggest investment on air, in TV, I mean, it's the biggest investment ever done in Australia on TV. As I said, it's a very conscious decision that we have taken in order really to build a brand in a market, which is, of course, a core market for us, and where we see the opportunity actually to build likewise in many other markets, the number one brand of the market. Thank you very much. Very clear. The next question is from Aisyah Noor with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Oh, great. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. The first is on the U.S. market. Could you talk about your growth versus the reference market in the U.S. and what's driving the strength in Miracle-Ear, given we've seen other market players report much lower growth rates relative to you? Question number two is more of a longer term question around lead generation. In the last few quarters, we've seen a few companies come to market that are offering digital or online hearing care with a strong focus on digital lead generation. I guess my question for you is, how do you see yourself positioned versus these competitors, and do you think online lead generation is the way forward for your business? Thank you. Sure. Thank you for the questions. With regards to the first question about the U.S. market. In the U.S., the reported numbers are telling us that the U.S. market has grown in the first quarter, double digits, I think in the region of 10%, 11% or 12%. However, as far as we also understand, these are selling numbers, selling figures. As far as we understand, these numbers are also reflecting the effects of an important stock in by a manufacturer into Costco, into a major retailer. This could have distorted, in some way, the reported number. Our growth was above our market reference. In particular, this is true for Miracle-Ear. We are doing extremely well in Miracle-Ear. The kind of organic performance of Miracle-Ear was definitely very strong. Also in addition to that, we have consolidated PJC Hearing, which is also doing extremely well. As I mentioned during the presentation, the integration is going very well. PJC and also our corporate stores reported a very strong growth. Again, I think that in general terms, in the U.S., we have continued to grow share in particular with Miracle-Ear. With regards to the second question and about digital lead generation, well, for sure, digital lead generation is part of our core business, is how also we do lead generation in Amplifon. You know very well that we have invested progressively more and more on digital channels. We have grown our investments through the recent years quite significantly. It's nothing new to us. It's part of our way of making lead generation and, of course, is becoming more and more important year after year. Really nothing new. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next question is from Kit Lee with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. My first one is just on your organic growth on the monthly run rate in Q1. I'm just wondering if that organic growth has accelerated in March. If you look at the April run rate currently, how does that compare to the Q1 performance? My second question is just around pent-up demand. I think 8% organic growth versus Q1 2019, that's a pretty strong performance. I'm just wondering if you have seen any sort of pent-up demand coming through. How do you think about pent-up demand for the rest of the quarters in 2021, please? Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for the questions. With regards to our organic growth through the quarter, yes, we have seen some acceleration, although you have also to consider that in March, we, in comparison with the same period of 2019. With March 2019, we had two working days more. Yes, we have seen some sort of acceleration. I would say, as I mentioned during my presentation, that also in April, we see a very positive trend, which is in line with what we have delivered in March. With regards to pent-up demand, of course, we have seen quite a strong recovery. I think that this is also reflecting some sort of pent-up demand coming back. To estimate how much it is pent-up demand and how much it is underlying demand, etc., is not that easy. As we mentioned also in the last quarters, for sure, you know very well that our services are not discretionary services. What has been lost in 2020 because of the pandemic, we believe will come back sooner rather than later. Certainly first on returning customers, and maybe more in the medium term on new customers. Definitely we expect some effect from pent-up demand also in the coming quarters. That's great. Just to follow up on that, if you look at your sales mix today by existing customers and new customers, has that changed so far in Q1, or is that quite in line with what you have seen in the past? Well, it's coming back to the usual ratios, which is more or less 50/50. It's coming definitely back to the normal ratios. Great. That's very helpful. Thank you. The next question is from Veronika Dubajova with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. I have three, please, if that's all right. The first one is just on the full year guidance. Listen, I appreciate that there's still quite a lot of uncertainty, and this is an evolving situation. I guess, Enrico, if you were to look at the blue sky and say, okay, let's assume from here on, we have a smooth rollout of vaccinations as we go through the second quarter, and the world does get back to whatever the new normal is by the time we get into summer, and there are no big variants, what do you think you could do versus 2019? What would be a realistic kind of blue sky scenarios that you have penciled in your book that you're thinking about for the full year? That would be very helpful, if you can speak to that. That's kind of my first question. My second question is for Gabriele, just a financial one, looking at the EMEA margin. I know you called out the GAES margin improvement versus 2019. If you could just decompose that 480 basis points of margin improvement versus Q1 2019 between GAES and the underlying business, that would be much appreciated. My kind of third question is just a follow-on onto one of the earlier questions, just your desire to move, not just into digital lead generation, but into digital care provision. I know this is a question that we've debated a lot. I'm just kind of curious if your thought process on that has changed at all as we've gone through the last 12 months and you've seen your customers become more comfortable with the digital world, if not necessarily full outright remote sales, but some more hybrid models? Is that something that you're working on in the background and something that you're considering? Thanks, guys. Thank you, Veronika. Thank you for your question. I will start with the last one. I would say that the pandemic did not change at all. I want to say again, at all our view about our services, about the customer journey of our customers. I think that we mentioned many times that our vision about the customer journey is an omnichannel experience, where the physical interaction is still the core. It's a customer journey that we can enrich, adding to the physical touch points in the store, so also digital touch points. This is exactly what we are doing. This is exactly what we are working on. Also, in a way, the pandemic has changed and switched many different businesses to digital propositions, which is something that did not happen, I would say, almost at all in our business. In some ways, a confirmation of the fact that given the nature of our customers, given the nature of the hearing loss, which is quite a complex pathology, the best experience, the best results for our customers can be delivered through, let's say, an omnichannel experience made of physical interactions in the stores, as well as additional new digital touchpoints enriching the customer experience. With regards to the first question, and then I will leave to Gabriele. As I said, I think that at this stage, our guidance is a fair guidance. It reflects definitely some level of caution because as I said, and as you know, the situation is not 100% solved. If I have to imagine the rest of the year with no other issues, with no other problems, et cetera. I think that definitely there is the possibility to go even over that. I think that at this stage is a quite fair assumption. With regards to profitability of EMEA, I would leave to Gabriele. Profitability in general? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Veronika, during the conference call a couple of months ago, what we said is we do not give any guidance in terms of sales. Despite this, we can deliver 180-2 00 basis points EBITDA margin improvement. While not giving the guidance on sales, we gave a very strong communication in terms of current trading, because we say that sales were very positive during the first couple of months. Today, of course, we confirm they are very positive, a little bit higher than what we saw during the first couple of months. I understand and in your reasoning. Now your sales are probably higher than what was expected during the last conference call. Why operating leverage is not materializing, and why you are not increasing the 180 -2 00 basis points? The point is that, of course, as you can imagine, we developed a strong ability in managing cost and investments during the last year. We believe that this kind of margin expansion at this level of turnover can be achieved even after a very strong reinvestment in the group. We want to build up not only the quarterly profitability, but also a medium long term advantage versus competition. In our understanding, 180-200 basis points over 2019 means an EBITDA margin ranging from 24.5%-24.7%. With such a number, if we are able to over-invest in the business, we prefer to do so to build for the future than delivering another 10-20 basis points in the quarter. That's the reason. Apologies, Gabriele. I think my question was much more specific to Europe and just looking at the significant margin improvement you delivered versus Q1 2019. I was just trying to understand what the contribution from GAES was to that versus the underlying business. If I can just follow up to my first question, Enrico, and I don't mean to be facetious, but why not sell digital? Sorry, say it again. Why? Why not go digital and direct to consumer? I look at some of the players, you look at the financials that Eargo's delivering. It seems like they're tapping into a new consumer market that wasn't there before. They're growing the total market. It would be creating a funnel of consumers. I appreciate most of your customers are 70, but there obviously is a vast untapped market. I guess I'm just a little surprised by your, and just the general industry's reluctance to engage with that if it's creating a new incremental market opportunity that doesn't exist. Where is that reluctance coming from, I guess? Listen, Eargo doubled sales in 12 months time. It's a small number, but it's growing very healthily. I'm just trying to understand why is it that you don't want to participate in that channel, in that market? The answer is very simple to this. The answer is that because we are planning to stay in this business for a long time, and we believe that you can't deliver in particular. When I say the peculiarities of our customers, I'm not relating only to the age, but also relating to their degree of hearing loss. Our customers have moderate to severe hearing loss, which is quite a complex pathology. Since, as I said, we want to provide to our customers the best solutions, the best services, the best customer experience that in our opinion, in my opinion, can be delivered. I don't want to say only, but mainly through a customer journey, which is made of a part which is physical and a part which can be also digital. As you know very well that we are also working on this now for a while, and we will continue to work in order to enrich the customer journey of our customers with digital touch points. I think that for us to deliver the best service, the best customer experience to our customers is definitely the priority number one, which is also what has allowed us also in the past to detach, if you want, in a way, from a pure logic of price. With regards to the EMEA. Sorry if I understood about the global profitability. Regarding EMEA, as Enrico stated, there are the two contributions. GAES is a significant portion, but of course, may account for 20%-30% over the overall improvement of EMEA. The remaining part, so let's say two-third, is linked to the efficiency and productivity measures that we implemented last year. We put on our ability to deal with the cost base. You will see this improvement going out through the different quarter of the year. GAES, as Enrico stated, is really performing very strongly. Compared to the initial guidance we gave of EUR 20 million to EUR 25 million, then EUR 25 million. Today, we are in a completely different order of magnitude. In the medium term, there will be further improvement because as we said, at the end, Spain is not a so different country compared to Italy in terms of potential profitability, thanks to the very good average selling price, thanks to the lower cost base, and also thanks to the very strong market share, around 50%. There is still a potential in improving this profitability. Today, we already achieved a significant portion, leveraging on COGS reduction, the first reorganization at the end of 2018, and also in direct purchasing optimization. Today, the initial guidance is beaten. Again, Spain is just a part of the improvement. The other countries are performing very well. Some of them are reaching the critical scale on a country base. Okay. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from Julien Ouaddour with Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my question. I have two, please. The first one, speaking of profitability again. You did achieve 180 basis points margin improvement versus 2019, and it was despite very strong investment and especially in marketing, I think where your spending was 15% above 2019. Correct. Yeah. You could achieve even more without such strong investment. Just to help us to understand the outcome of this investment, especially given now your marketing is much more efficient than pre-COVID. Just what have you seen so far in terms of the impact on the business, and would you say that you could be able to generate an even higher organic growth in the future than you did pre-COVID because of that, because of this higher marketing spend? Just to finish on that, could you help us to forecast the corporate cost for the remaining quarters of the year? Should we expect around EUR 20 million spending every quarter? The second question is on your guidance. EUR 1.93 billion top line revenue for 2021. It represents approximately 24% sales growth year-on-year. Could you maybe help us to understand how much is organic and how much from M&A? Thank you very much. Very good. Thank you for the questions. I will take the number one and the number three, and then I will leave to Gabriele about corporate cost. Yeah, absolutely. The objective of our very strong marketing investments is to ensure the sustainability of our future performance in terms of organic growth in the medium and long term. Our objective is very clear. We want to have the number one brand in all the main geographies in which we are operating. This is, for example, what we are doing in Australia, as I mentioned before. In Australia now, we rebranded the National Hearing Care, which was a brand known in the market, but not so strong in the market, and therefore we rebranded to Amplifon in order to build and to leverage on our global brand. Now we are investing significantly in Australia in order to strengthen the awareness and the equity of the brand. I think that I mentioned a few times that in our sector, having strong brands, having trusted brands, is of paramount importance. This is what we will continue to do also in the future, in order to ensure the sustainability of our growth in terms from an organic viewpoint, also in the future. With regards to corporate cost, Gabriele, maybe you can give some more. Absolutely. Corporate cost is something on which, of course, according to the market condition, we can play to push more for improving our organization, transforming our organization, and something that of course, in particular quarters or periods such as last year when COVID-19 was there, you can act in order to reduce a little bit the speed of development. What we did during Q1, of course, given the positive market condition, given the positive performance. We went on full speed with big corporate projects, meaning projects for global marketing, global IT, global purchasing, in order to build up all these level of capabilities that we need in order to grow and perform better than the market. All in all, this resulted in around a EUR 20 million cost, which represents around 4% of our revenues. Moving forward, I think that this is a sound percentage when market is performing. Of course, you can see maybe the same percentage on a quarterly basis because of seasonality. Some quarter turnover is higher, especially Q2, Q4. Some percentage may be a little bit lower. Some other quarter are a little bit smaller, Q3. All in all, this is a sound level of investment when we see that the market is there. With regards to the third question about the, let's say, the split of the total growth between organic and M&A, I would say roughly you can consider about 60%, two-thirds being organic growth and the rest acquisitions. Thank you very much. The next question is from Oliver Metzger with Commerzbank. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. The first one is on the M&A opportunities. Just as you talked about PJC, which might be something extraordinary, but the normal course of acquisition, so normal stores in the chains, where are you right now? Is it already a pick-up in M&A activity? That's the first one. The second one is, you mentioned that U.K. and Germany were still impacted by restrictions in the first quarter. If you look right now on these markets, is it already a normal situation and is also your comment related to the fact that both markets showed a higher resilience in the first and second quarter of last year? Finally, also a quick question on your marketing expenses. Right now, are you already on a normal level? That's all. Thank you. Thank you so much for your questions. With regards to the first question about M&A, yes. As I also mentioned at the beginning of my presentation, I think that the pandemic will bring some changes in the market. I think that the strongest players will get stronger. Other players will get weaker. It is our intention to exploit this moment, this situation, and also in order to accelerate on our M&A activities. For sure, we will continue to invest in Germany, in France, where we still have room for increasing our network. As we mentioned a few times, we are also aiming to enlarge our footprint in China. Definitely, we envisage an acceleration in our M&A activities as well. With regards to U.K. and Germany in the first quarter, yes, both markets were affected heavily by the situation. In the recent weeks, whilst in the U.K. we have seen a significant improvement, you know that the U.K. does not represent a large part of our business. Today, the U.K. accounts for something like 2% of our total revenues. In Germany, we have not seen yet a material improvement. In Germany, still the market is not recovering as we have seen in other markets. The last question was about marketing investments. Yeah, we are now definitely restarted now since a few months to reinvest significantly in terms of marketing. Also, building on what Gabriele was saying before, given also the very positive trend that we have seen in terms of revenues, we are even accelerating our investment. I think that this is something that you should see as very positive, because we want to really build, in this moment, the best brands, the best positions in our market in order to leverage on our scale, on our possibility to invest and to overinvest sometimes in order really to create even a bigger competitive advantage to our competitors. This is exactly what we are doing and what we will continue to do. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you. I think we have time for one last question. I kindly ask the operator for a last question. Thanks. The last question is from Domenico Ghilotti with Equita. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Very few questions. The first is still on the margin, on profitability, because in Q1, you were back in line with your guidance. The mix was a bit, let's say, different from area to area. I wonder if you expect to be more balanced on a full year basis, so we should expect despite the marketing investment in APAC to have a recovery and maybe also an acceleration in North America or Americas. My second question is a follow-up on the M&A. You're running more than EUR 30 million in Q1, and your comment is very pushy. I would expect the full year to end with investment, say, north of EUR 100 million or EUR 120 million. I wonder if you can confirm this. The very last is your commitment on the Capital Markets Day. Should we expect Capital Markets Day in the next few weeks or months? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Domenico, for the questions. With regards to the margin mix, I would say that directionally, you will see the same kind of margin trend. Definitely, EMEA will be the biggest contributor. Definitely in Asia Pacific, as I mentioned, we will continue to invest strongly in terms of marketing this year, in the year of the rebranding to Amplifon. Americas will be, let me say, in the middle. More or less, you will see the same kind of shape in terms of margin development across the three regions. With regards to the second question, and therefore M&A, I think that your assumption is quite fair. Of course, you know, M&A does not depend only from us, but you rightly say that we are definitely quite keen on that, and therefore the assumption that you have made is, I think is correct. With regards to the Capital Markets Day, yes, it is our intention to hold this event for the financial community before the summer. Definitely, yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Many thanks to all for participating in our call, and I kindly ask operator to disconnect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.