Good evening. this is the Coruscant conference operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the JL First Class 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may speak to an operator by pressing star and zero on the telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Luca Amaldi, Investor Relations Manager Geox Group, Please go ahead, sir. Good evening, everybody, and thank you for joining our call today. This is Luca Amadini speaking. I'd like to introduce you to today's Co-speakers; the CEO of the SEO Group, Mr. Francesco Di Giovanni, and the CFO, Mr. Andrea Masi. Mr. Di Giovanni will start by providing you a brief introduction, then Andrea will dive deeper into the financial results, and I will offer some suggestions and advice. Following that, Mr. Di Giovanni and Mr. Masi will be happy to take your questions. I would like to remind you that this presentation may contain statements that do not reflect reported financial results or other historical information. and all relevant statements are based on the group's current assumptions and projections expectations concerning future events. Let me also remind you that even the natural opportunity of participants in their emergencies can be impractical, and therefore cannot be taken for granted. Let me now hand over to our co-speaker, Mr. Francesco Di Giovanni. Let me now hand over to our CEO, Mr. Francesco Di Giovanni. Hello, My name is Francesco Di Giovanni. As you may know, I've been appointed just recently. about ten weeks ago. That by itself might trigger some curiosity, and I'll be happy to answer any question that you may have at the end of the conversation, Just a few words as an introduction. I've been around the CHEOPS offices for the last six months now. I was involved immediately after ERA started, which was marked by several impotant events, including the agreements we reached with the Spencer. At the time, my goal was to have a proper set of synchronization and guidelines on the likelihood of the performance of the business and of the performance of the business plan that had been concluded. R ecently, there has been a lot of discussion about the speed and focus required to deliver the business plan results, which eventually led to the decision by the Board of Directors and the shareholders to appoint me to improve the chances of driving the accelerated actions that are needed in order to meet the quite challenging market conditions under which the company, as much as all its competitors, are actually facing at the moment. I guess I can anticipate that I’ll turn the floor over to Andrea Amaldi in a second, but I can tell you that the result of the proceedings will not disappoint you. There are a number of important initiatives that have been taken by the company over the last few months, which are already bearing fruit. We expect several other actions that have been discussed over the last few months to be implemented in the coming weeks. I will not speculate on what that translates into in terms of numbers or figures, but I guess we will have an opportunity in the future to discuss further what the company’s expectations are for what lies ahead. With that in mind, I now leave the floor to Andrea Amaldi. I’ll be happy to take any questions at the end. Thank you, Francesco, and good afternoon, everybody. I will try to keep in line with you on the new trials of the first half of the Panacea Real 2025 plan, and try to give you the main highlights of this period. Starting with sales, it’s worth noting that we have reached a value of €305 million as of June 2025, which, compared to the same period last year where we reached €320 million, shows a gap of €15 million. It’s worth noting that this €15 million gap is mainly explained by the shutdown of our operations in China, which were closed as of September 2024. The comparison shows that we have just a slight decrease in sales compared to the same period last year, around €5 million in the region. [-pAnd it is also worth noting that the result of the chat Alpha sharing groupings is quite close to our budgeted groupings, as we are thankful to be here at €312 million. Despite the drop in the GDP base overall between June and March of this year compared to the same period last year, we have been able, thanks to a series of cost-control actions and tax support measures, particularly from the central repository at the time, as it was not in the country, to provide an improvement in our prospects and recover a large portion of costs compared to the same period last year. And this is also true compared to June 2024. That said, it means that we are able to close our semester with maybe to adjust in the positive path of about €600,000 sales, let's say €1 million, just to run the number, compared to the loss that we have incurred in the same period of last year, which was set in the region of minus €5 million. I would say a dramatically significant improvement in terms of profitability of the company over the first six months. Significantly better than our expectation for the same period, that's running based on the assumption that we are noted in our budget, which, as you might remember, it was typically aligned to the first year of the financial and industrial business plan that has been presented to the stock exchange and to the market in March. If we look at the next results, clearly, we are positively benefiting of this recovery of profitability. At the same time, we are having a favorable exchange rate with the Russian ruble that is taking us to register a loss for the first half of 2025 in the region of the €5 million compared to the €15 million negative that we have incurred last year in the same period. That's the main highlights on the financial. Therefore, I would like to again press the point of, let's say, the overall alignment. We're speaking about -4.7%, and this includes the perimeter aspects of the U.S. and China. We're taking the number down to 1.9% compared to the period of last year. We are benefiting of a good profitability in terms of recoverability of profitability, which is mainly coming from cost control. If we move down a little bit more into the footprint, in terms of shops, our number is set for June 2025 in the range of 590 shops, including diverse operators and stores and the franchisees, which is lower than the same period of last year where the number was 630. The decline is mainly in the franchisee department and not in the direct operating shop. The other good news is on the like-for-like performance of our web shop, which is basically doing a positive, slightly positive 0.3% compared to last year. I would say it's less positive. We are also benefiting of the strong results of our website, the direct operated website, which is performing 8.6% better than 2024. At the same time, we are instead incurring a significant decrease of performance on the line of the marketplace, which is down 17% compared to the perimeter of 2024. The other, I think, interesting note for the market is that our financial position for the first semester, the so-called CFR on the bank, bank debt is set at €100 million, which is lower compared to the period of 2024, where we registered a CFR debt of about €112 million. Basically, it's worth to notice that we're benefiting in our first six months of the capital increase, which has been concluded in the range of €30 million, just a few weeks ago before the end of June. I think that if we look at the sales in terms of five channels, and we try to drill down the evolution of the different channels, and we compare the two results of the first six months, we are basically having an all-sales and brick-and-mortar, which is down €5 million, which is quite a good result. We have a retail business and e-commerce, which are basically fleshed in terms of results compared to the same period of last year. I think that these are the main financial highlights. I think that we can have a quick look also at the networking capital. We know that we are having a June net working capital of about €140 million, which is a little bit higher than the one of €126 million of June 2024 and higher than the one at the end of 2024 where we registered €105 million. I think basically most of the increase is coming from the stable side where we have improved our payment terms condition. At the same time, we have also reduced our base cost. The two effects combined are clearly increasing the net working capital. A good story on the inventory, which is instead stating the value in the range of €245 million with an improvement on the certification and of the season included in the inventory. I think that having said that, the results of the first semester are quite big and partly in line with our expectations. At the same time, we are looking forward to what's going on for the rest of the year. We are still foreseeing some significant important issues that might come in terms of sales. Therefore, we want to remain prudent. We know that we have taken the right path in terms of profitability. At the same time, we can conclude that looking at the results that we confirmed to the market, we are expecting a slight decrease in the range of the mid-segment digit compared to our last communication while we are confirming fully the profitability expected in terms of third margin. I'm happy to take questions specific, if any. Thank you. This is the Coruscant Conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. I kindly ask you to use handsets when asking questions. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Oriana Cardani of Intesa Sanpaolo. Please go ahead. Yes, good evening. Thank you for taking my question also. The first one we are seeing for Mr. Di Giovanni. Can you tell us what areas would be your focus immediately and what potential deviations from the current plan may be introduced? Just a confirmation, is the 2025-2029 business plan still valid? My second question is on the pre-collection for 2026. How was the feedback received in May? What are your expectations regarding the order intake? A flat or a low single-digit decline compared to last year may be a realistic scenario. The third question is on the weakness in the online wholesale in the second quarter. Can you elaborate on the reasons and whether there were temporary factors that contributed to the decline or are there difficulties expected to persist in the coming months? Finally, can you give us the expectation of net debt by year-end? Thank you very much. Thank you for your questions. I will address the first one, and then I will leave all the others to Andrea, but I'd be very happy to complement what Andrea might most give them. I guess the point is the following. The company is certainly recognized in the market as a significant player in the industry. Unfortunately, the financial performance of the company and the economic performance of the company has not been up to expectations for quite a long while. The analysis that I had the opportunity to run for a couple of months at the beginning of my involvement as an advisor confirmed what I guess the financials, the historical financials of the company, showed quite clearly, i.e., a declining business, which is probably attributable to a not combination of product offering and market demand across, I would say, all the areas where the company is present. Even more, it shows a cost structure, which is not adequate to change the business environment in the business the company plays its role. I want to be, I don't want to be too diplomatic, but I guess that the lack of it is probably the major issue that we will need to address over the coming few months to see whether we can indeed achieve a more balanced financial performance, most probably, I would say, not earlier than next year. As you probably imagine, although a number of projects have been already implemented, and some of the benefits of that are indeed included already in the first six months, although they were not started in January 2025. Some of them, yes, some of them were implemented. The implementation started during the first six months. The net effect of all of that is approximately €14 million, €14.7 million. If I go by heart, that is the number, which shows that it can be done. You can indeed take actions and take decisions that, if properly implemented, lead to better results. That is the path that we intend to follow. I guess when I say we, it's because this has been shared with a significant portion of the management and with the board of directors and with the shareholders to the benefit of all shareholders as a matter of fact. There are projects that are already ongoing. There are projects that need to be implemented, although they've been decided. There are additional projects we are working on that will further support a cost reduction, but also a very significant simplification of the processes that have a bearing on the top line of the company. The idea is to get into a safer area as far as the cost structure is concerned without neglecting at any point in time the possibility to pursue improvements very soon. Even now, as we are speaking, we are working to promote some of our products that have not been particularly focused upon in the past few months. Therefore, foster as much as possible the top line as well. Very happy to be more detailed if anyone needs more. Basically, what is a very quick summary of the program we have? As far as the solidity of the current business plan, so to speak, going forward. The plan that was concocted in 2024 already had a certain number of suggestions in terms of the turnaround of the, say, the top line. It was not addressing, in my opinion, that I believe that I have good reasons to say that. It was not addressing the issue of timing more than anything else. That is where we are, we need to dedicate our resources and efforts, is to accelerate the programs more than making a revolution. This is a stressor for the very short term. In the next 6 to 12 months, we need to focus specifically on accelerating sales, so to speak, and as much as possible supporting the products that we currently have in our pipeline so that to push as much as possible to move. That does not mean that during the coming few months, because of the projects that we are working on, as I said, to simplify processes rather than to give more solidity to the turnaround of the company in terms of market positioning and so on, there might not be the need to reconsider some of the assumptions of the old plan and therefore come forward to you all with some sort of fine-tuning of the plan. I will not speculate on that at the moment because I think it would be, we will not be proper. Thank you, Francesco. It's Andrea speaking. Oriana, I would try to address the other questions that you made. If you might need to remember if I missed some of them. The first one, I think that was related to what's the status of the Spring Summer Campaign 2026, if I'm not wrong. I would say that, as you know, the campaign started at the beginning of May and is supposed to close by the end of September. We are deeply now working and we are really in the middle of the campaign. So far, as we have noted also in our press release, there has been quite a good interest on the new product development that we made and for which we worked out in the past. Despite the fact that, as you know, it's not meshing with an interesting and nice market momentum. Despite the market momentum with the new product and also with our traditional, let's say, the backwash of some key products like the vaccine and whatever, we are strongly developing on the market in terms of orders. We might expect to be at least in the region of slightly positive results compared to the season of the previous year. The other question, I think, that was related to the weaknesses of what you called the wholesale web. Just to better specify, I think that when we look at the year-end results, we are mainly focused, we were thinking to be mainly impacted by a slight decline on sales, mainly into two lines. One is the one that you just mentioned, which is the wholesale platform. We are thinking to have specific countries like Alaska, where the market is becoming quite difficult. We push hard on the market to these key customers in the past. Now we are clearly taking a moment of relief of what we did in the past. We are facing some issues in maintaining the same level of order expectation in the kind of countries with some specific customers. The other one, which is quite interesting, but that needs to be taken into consideration, just to expand on your point, is on the marketplace, where we are expecting to have a slight decline compared to last year. Further, I would say that we are taking on our side a decision to decrease the fees of these new opening of new platforms, given the fact that it's a very difficult market. The platforms are very difficult now to make them really profitable. You move a lot of sales, but then it's difficult to make profitability. We need to focus, as Francesco said, on recovering profitability. We are identifying a series of actions to make them more profitable. Clearly, as a company, we prefer to fix what we have rather than expand on a market business model which is struggling to be successful. If I'm not wrong, the last question was around our expectation on the net debt by year-end. I think that we are happy to confirm that despite our indication of a low mid-single-digit declining sales by year-end, we are still confirming to be in the range of the net debt expected and indicated by the market in the region of €105 million. Let's say from €100 million to €110 million would be quite a good result for us because this is going to be a step that is in line with the financial plan evolution and is keeping our cash consumption in line with our expectation and basically without absorbing cash by 2024 to 2025. I think that I should have answered all your questions. If I'm missing something? Yes, yes, thank you so much. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Mr. Amadini, there are no more questions for this exercise. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for participating in this call and for staying with us this evening. Let me just give you a quick reminder of the next call on the 2025 nine-month results that will be held on November 13th. Thank you again, and good evening to all of you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones. Thank you.