Good afternoon, this is the Chorus Call Conference Operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the OVS nine-month 2024 financial 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 Mr. Stefano Beraldo, CEO of OVS. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, and good afternoon to everybody, and thank you for being here for this conference. I try to be very succinct, given that the figures are the best commentary, I think, for what is happening and what happened in the third quarter. I think it was one of the strongest quarters ever in my nowadays longer presence in the company, driven by like-for-like, driven by exciting projects in merchandising, which are delivering great results. D riven by not only OVS but also by Upim, and worth mentioning that Upim is continuing to post the highest ever during the period, from the period after we acquired this brand and this company, because the year-to-date results of Upim remain even higher than OVS as of today. Very good news for all our brands, also for Stefanel, which is strongly recovering in the second half thanks to a new style responsibility given to an internal manager, which is a talent. Super happy to confirm that the strategy of dedicating more focus, more space, more effort to the women segment is generating most of the good results of the period. Speaking about OVS, the combination of Piombo, which has been able to establish itself as the preferred brand to the millennials, together with the great success B.Angel, which is dedicated to the younger generations, and the combination of those two women brands with an extraordinary high performance in the segment of the beauty, which we, I think, invented seven, eight years ago. And after years of fine-tuning, finally we found, I think, a great match between affordable price and original introduction of a new brand called Indie Brands, house brands, are generating traffic increase and the capability to attract the most important share of customer base, which is women, not only mothers, but women which are coming in the store buying for themselves our product. I think that this will continue. There are new ideas for next year, and the women will continue to be the segment of business to which we will dedicate the utmost of our effort to continue in this trend. Regarding margin and cost, everything is basically working in the right way. So, very nice quarter, and I hand the word to Francesco for a more precise comment to the figure, and obviously I'm here for the final Q&A section. Thank you. Thank you, Stefano. I would start on page number five with Q3 income statement figures. Net sales are growing almost 13% versus last year. This was driven, as said, by the favorable weather that brought a strong footfall in our stores, but that was combined with a very high conversion rate, which is not, let me say, common. When footfall grows, generally we see a decrease in conversion rate, but this time the conversion rate was still high, and this is a strong sign of appreciation of the collections, both in all our brands. A positive mention is deserved to Stefanel that thanks to the new creative leadership in the Q3, starting, let me say, from September, from the new collection, has experienced a high double-digit growth versus last year and is providing a sign of high acceptance, high appreciation from the customers. The growth in sales then, thanks to the operating leverage, transforms into a plus EUR 11 million in terms of EBITDA and then goes down until the profit before tax, and so I'm highlighting a double-digit growth on all profitability indicators. I move to page six. The strong performance of Q3 builds up on an already growing first semester, and so bringing overall an increase of EUR 74 million in terms of sales, plus almost 7%. That again translates into a plus EUR 14 million in terms of EBITDA and EUR 12 million up to profit before tax. Making a mathematical exercise, adding up the Q4 of last year, we come to sales figures above EUR 1.6 billion, in EBITDA close to EUR 200 million, EUR 196 million, and also in EBITDA margin above 12%, so again it provides a thorough and nice picture of the full year. On page number seven, we provide some detailed views with all positive signs, the most important being the growth on franchising after first semester that was flattish because of delays in deliveries. Now that the situation has normalized over the nine months, we see even here a plus 4%. And then, as said, we see a high single-digit growth in both OVS and Upim sales thanks to the appreciation of the fall-winter collection. And EBITDA margins growing again in both OVS and Upim, with OVS close to the 13% incidence of EBITDA on total sales and Upim above 10%. I move on page number eight on the financial side, so starting with the working capital. On trade receivable, again, I refer to what we said three months ago, where we had an increase in trade receivable, and we commented that we voluntarily supported our partners with longer payment terms. Now we see that was the right choice because the trade receivables, now that also our partners experienced good sales in the Q3, completed all the payments, and we are in line with last year with decreasing DSO given the increase on the other side on turnover of the channel. On inventory, we see a plus EUR 17 million, and this is due exclusively to the longer transit time that we still experience due to the closure of the Suez Canal. Unfortunately, this does not have yet clarity on when the situation will normalize, but at the moment it has a negative impact that is absorbed in the picture as of 31st of October by the increase in trade payables, and on which we are working close to our suppliers in order to have the best management of this situation. On page number nine, we have the picture of capital expenditures, which are still slightly above last year. As said, we anticipated the expenses, the investments, mostly in the first semester, where we had nine million difference. Now the gap is closing, and by the end of the year, we should be more or less at the same level, completing the relevant investments that we made over the last three years for the automation of our distribution center in Pontenure and for the launch of a circular economy cycle on garments in Puglia. On page number ten, we have a summary of the cash flow of the nine months. The seasonality of our business is that we absorb cash all until the end of Q3, and then we have a strong generation in Q4. But this year, the overall profile was eight million better than last year. This is due, on one side, to the EBITDA improvement, EUR 14 million, and partially it's absorbed by the higher taxes that we paid in 2024 after, let me say, the end of the past year losses effect that we had until 2023. On page number 11, there is the picture of the debt, which is improving versus last year, but overall, in terms of leverage and EBITDA, we are well below the investment grade, so between 1 and 1.5%. So it's a situation of no tension despite the relevant investments that we made in terms of dividend distribution and shares buyback that took place over the last 12 months. I move to page 13 for a snapshot on the outlook. As commented by Stefano, the sales trend in November-December is in line with last year despite and building up on a robust Q3, so we do not have a reverse effect on current sales trend, and we expect to close the quarter in line with last year and overall a near growing versus 2023. Many of you saw on the news some comments on potential acquisition. We take the opportunity of this call to confirm our interest in a portion of the network of Conbipel and also, in general, in evaluating opportunities to grow, to increase the networks of our brands with proper locations that would, again, bring up an additional operating leverage to our figures. On page 15, I leave the words to the CFO, Nicola Perin, to comment on the other relevant element of this call, which is the cancellation of treasury share. Thank you, Francesco. So the board of directors resolved to convene an extraordinary shareholder meeting on 19th February 2025 to cancel 10% of share capital by canceling treasury shares and to grant a mandate to the board of directors to cancel an additional number of treasury shares up to 5.5%. The approval of the cancellation proposal will be conditional on obtaining the favorable vote of a majority of shareholders attending the shareholders' meeting, excluding TIP. In other words, with the so-called whitewash mechanism. The resolution has been, in order to maximize the shareholder returns, the company does not exclude the possibility to invest in the future cash generation expected to grow in the next years in additional share buybacks while always maintaining an adequate payout through dividend payments. And so I leave the word to Stefano. Okay. Thank you, Nicola, and we completed our presentation, so we are ready for your Q&A. Thank you. Thank you. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. We kindly ask you to use the handset when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. We will pause for a moment as participants are joining the queue. The first question is from Francesco Brilli in Intermonte. Please go ahead. Good evening. Thanks for taking my question. Can you hear me? Yeah. This is a bit noisy, but yeah, speak slowly. Okay. I'm sorry. Yeah. Three questions from my side. The first one is on investments and CapEx for the year. I was expecting something in higher run rate in the nine months. So if you can provide the full amount you think you will lend at the end of the year in terms of investments. The second one is on the working capital, also given the EUR 30 million stock in France that we saw in the presentation in the inventories. Can we consider the working capital at a normal level at the end of the year, and it will be absorbed, or it will be still in the fourth quarter this effect? And the third question is on M&A. If you can provide some additional indications on the ongoing discussions for that portion of the Conbipel network and the possibility of adding some stores of those dismissed by Benetton. If you can provide a rough number in how many stores do you think are worth to be taken into consideration, and in case, how much time do you think it will take to put them up and running once you will acquire them? I was curious also if you have already an idea on how many revenues could be made out of these stores. Thank you. Okay, so the first question regarding CapEx, I tell you that we expect for the full year an amount between EUR 90 million and EUR 95 million. And as we mentioned several times, finally, we are finalizing the three-year period of higher CapEx compared to the recurring ones, driven by the completion of the special project that has been mentioned a few minutes ago. So we believe that in the next coming year, we will stay on a level of 15-20 million less compared to this level for ordinary CapEx. Your question regarding working capital cannot have a precise answer. Basically, we are suffering this 30 days, more or less, delay generated by the prolongation of the Suez Canal crisis. We suppose that for this time of the year, things might have ended up better, but unfortunately, this is not the case. So we are still forced to order our goods with 30 days higher period. So basically, we are forced to see EUR 30 million of goods traveling across the world before they arrive in our store, more than in normal period. So when these EUR 30 million or part of these EUR 30 million, because part of these EUR 30 million is also covered by payables, but when the net amount between the EUR 30 million goods and the higher payable will transform in cash, if in January the Suez Crisis would be solved, starting from the second part of the year, we would see a benefit of about maybe EUR 15-20 million. But I cannot be more precise. Regarding M&A, we have been basically forced to comment to the newspaper because we were surrounded by several questions about the Conbipel deal, the possibility of buying Benetton stores. So we preferred to give some clarity, telling the market that it is true, like it was true years ago. And every three, four years, the Conbipel dossier comes out, and every time we confirm our interest for a lower number of stores because in the meantime, we continued our process of opening stores. In this moment, we are talking about a number of stores which is between 25 and 30, very good location, on average 800 square meters each. So we have in mind that most of this location will be transformed into Upim should we be assigned with the portion of the network that we requested, and few stores will be converted into OVS. You can assume that 25 stores, 800 square meters, might generate EUR 40 million turnover, more or less, with an appropriate profitability in line with the Upim profitability, which, as you have seen, is increasing year after year. Regarding Benetton, the situation is totally different. There is no discussion with Benetton regarding portion of their company, portion of their network. The discussions are generated by independent entrepreneur, Benetton franchisee. In some cases, they are selling different brands. They are Benetton franchisee, but also other brand franchisee, and given that some of them have been notified by Benetton about the decision to stop delivering goods and to execute the warranties that they gave to Benetton in exchange for the credit risk that Benetton undertook once they became customers, they are trying to survive. And so they are offering some of them. They are offering to us the possibility to replace the brand Benetton with the brand OVS. And we have a discussion, advanced discussion with some of them that, in my opinion, we start generating new OVS stores, Stefanel stores, Goldenpoint stores, Croff stores, in the next after the first six months of the next year. So we might start seeing an increasing of our network thanks to Benetton for the franchisee starting from the second half of next year. Maybe some new stores will be even opened in the first half of this year. And we have a couple of regions of Italy where this might happen. We don't have in this moment other material M&A activity on our radar. Thank you. That's very clear. Thank you very much. The next question is from Daniele Alibrandi, Stifel. Please go ahead. Yes. Good afternoon, Stefano and the team. Congrats for the results. I have three questions. My first question is on current trading. Can you remind us the relative importance of the months of December and January for your trading on a normalized base? Because my impression is that the flattish or slightly positive growth, which is embedded in your guidance and consensus, is a bit, I'd say, the worst-case scenario, but maybe I'm wrong. The second question regards the share cancellation and also the potential opportunity to restart the buyback later next year or in the coming years. Just wondering if maintaining a portion of the shares in your book is something that is of your interest, as you can use it as an exchange paper in a deal or not? Last question is a little bit more high level because the group has clearly changed for the better in the last few years. Basically, it has evolved from a pure vertical value-upper retailer to a multiple platform. You managed to relaunch the, say, overlooked brands. Your positioning now is more clear. You have also the leverage of the financial structure. So I was curious to hear from you, what do you expect for the company in the next two years, let's say, and 2026 from a growth point of view, expansion opportunities, and also from a leverage point of view, given the opportunities that you highlighted before? Thanks. First of all, I start from your third question, from the beginning of your last question. What I expect from you is that you might become our investor later because you described our positioning in a great way. But unfortunately, I'm happy with Riccardo [audio distortion]. Also us. We are happy with him. Thanks. Sorry if I smile about this, but becoming serious, first of all, current trading. I hope you are not wrong, but I think you are wrong. The fourth quarter of last year was already a good quarter, so honestly, given that we still have in front of us one and a half months, it is too early for me to try to give more confidence on the possibility to increase the top line of last year in the last quarter. As of today, November has been okay, has been more or less flat, means plus 1%. December is ongoing. We are a bit late compared to last year, but only for calendar reasons. We have two days more before Christmas, Monday and Tuesday, and we know that we will recover the small gap that we are, I don't say suffering, that we have in evidence as of now. So I expect that December, which will be in line with last year, maybe plus 1, something like that. January, it will depend very much on the markdown strategy. We are inclined in this January to be aggressive in markdown because we want to clean the stock because we have a lot of new ideas for the product of next autumn-winter. So better we start with fresh ideas, and maybe we will increase a little bit the markdown, but this has to be seen even because we decide the markdown on the ongoing performance of sales. So we don't want to decide today what to do in January. Let's see what the market is asking. So I think it is appropriate for us to continue to try to help you give an indication that 196 seems a good number. Obviously, if something will be good, the 196 will be exceeded. This is what I can tell you. Share cancellation, you already gave the answer once you made the question. So basically, we decided to ask our shareholder to cancel 10% of the shares, this in order to better align the amount of shares to the real book value of the stock. It is also true that keeping on hand some shares can be useful not only in order to comply with the Performance Share Plan that are outstanding, even because those might be served by new capital increase eventually, but also maybe for some opportunity that might arise in terms of shares against equity in case of M&A. So I think this gives our board, if you will approve it, the appropriate flexibility in trying to utilize at best this maneuver. I think that as of today, the way we manage the buyback, the dividend distribution has been appropriate, and I think has been used in order to maximize the interest of our shareholders. So I think we will continue with this approach, as also Nicola, our CFO, said before. Then, when we speak about high-level strategy platform, yes, you captured all the main aspects of our present strategy. I think that we are a kind of a unique example of a multi-brand and multi-channel platform. We can play with our brand. Some of them, I think, have become real brands like Piombo. Some of them will become a brand, hopefully, B.Angel. Some of them are already brands like Les Copains, and we will start, you will start, our customers will start seeing Les Copains in OVS corner starting from next spring-summer. There is a strategy which enables us to place our brand inside and outside our store. For instance, in this moment, we have Stefanel in German department stores. We have Piombo in a French department store, and hopefully shortly, we will have also in a Spanish department store. We have a new category of product like beauty, which we tried to establish with the first opening on a standalone store in Italy, even also a standalone channel independent from OVS, and the first results are extremely encouraging. The idea is to continue with the strategy to be a multi-brand platform, more active also out of Italy. We are happy to tell that within all the positive like-for-like that we mentioned, either different brand, different channel, different product segment, men, women, and kids, in this year-to-date period, we also had a very solid like-for-like in international sales. So the idea is to continue to grow and doing it through our channels, through our new brand, without forgetting Goldenpoint, where we are working hard in order to start opening also new stores, refurbishing old stores, and hopefully incorporating the company before the, or more or less at the middle of the next year. And I stopped because otherwise I became visual. Thank you. Thank you so much. Just a follow-up. The growth we've seen in Stefanel, is it was the case also in Germany. You said it was more related to Italy. Thanks. No, no. The growth in Stefanel is like-for-like. In the first half, we suffered a negative like-for-like with all the creative directors. In the six months of the first half, the like-for-like was negative by about 10%. In four months of the second half, we already undercovered the, not undercovered, we exceeded the negative performance, and we are now, year-to-date, positive like-for-like, mid-single digit. And if we continue like today, we will end up the year with a very solid high single digit or maybe even double-digit growth in Stefanel full year. On the top of it, we are performing very well with Stefanel also in Germany and in other foreign countries. Just to mention, in this moment, we have about EUR 10 million of turnover in South Korea with the Stefanel brand, on which we collect only royalties. So it is not a turnover. You don't see this turnover in our number, but this is only to say that we believe that once we might be able to really put in place a right assortment, and we feel that we are in the right direction now with Stefano, this might be a good surprise for us. Okay. Thank you so much. Happy Christmas. Thank you, Pieter. Thank you. The next question is from Andrea Bonfà, Banca Akros. Please go ahead. Hello. Good afternoon to everybody. Most of my questions have already been answered. Stefano, if I may, I got just some curiosity in the sense that as far as the potential for growth into next year, in your ranking, how would you list the main element? Would it be the easier comparison on the first half, which is for sure the month of May, the consolidation of Goldenpoint, or the potential like-for-like growth from all your assortment initiatives? I can summarize all your efforts in your product range. Thank you very much. The first element of our expected growth for next year is for sure the relatively easy comparison in the first half. So this is the first. The second is hopefully driven by the good quality of the new projects that we are still putting on the game. First of them, most important of them, hopefully, will be Les Copains. Also the sport is starting giving us good indications. And also the progression, I don't think at the same pace of growth that we had this year of the beauty. The growth of the beauty has been approximately accounted for almost 50% of our total growth. I don't think we will continue to grow like 30% per year, but hopefully 10%-15% growth in perfumery also in 2025 will be achieved. So these are the three main elements for our growth, like-for-like. On top of it, we expect some growth from new openings, as usual, mostly Upim now, other than OVS, but still there are openings. For instance, three days ago, we opened one of the newest, one of the best, sorry, and biggest OVS store in the new shopping mall of Pompeii in Campania, which is a region where our brand performs extremely well. And the first days are generating very good sales. All the best players are located in this mall, and we are very happy with the first results. So there is an increase of perimeter of OVS and mostly Upim to generate sales. There is the consolidation of Goldenpoint, obviously, and this will account for a much higher amount because Goldenpoint turnover on a full year is about EUR 95-100 million. If we consolidate the second part of the year, we have another EUR 50 million, EUR 60 million, EUR 50 million increase. And also with the best profitability because if we start exercising our call option maybe in June, we take advantage of all the seasonality of summer, which is the most important for the company given the market share in the swimwear. Internationally, we will continue to grow because we signed several new agreements recently, not only traditional franchisee but also some big customers, which is considering OVS as one of maybe a game changer for them. It might be that next year, in the second part of the year, we have in place some new store in countries with the possibility to open dozens of corners inside big malls or big department stores. These are the main elements. Thank you very much. Stefano and Francesco, I mean, obviously, it's a Goldenpoint win. I mean, potentially, it might be a strong element of growth. In the first year, let's say in 2025, if you consolidate that asset for six months and potentially EUR 50-60 million sales, will the asset be with a positive EBITDA? Thank you very much. Yes, it will because maybe I've been not clear enough, but the best period of the year for Goldenpoint is starting from August. And if we consolidate, we will, no, sorry, starting from July when the peak of the swimwear season takes place. So if we consolidate Goldenpoint from June, July, we will take advantage of the best part of the year. And given that we expect a positive EBITDA for the full year next year, most of it will be generated in the second part. So the answer is that hopefully it will be either accretive or neutral from a profitability point of view, and it should imply like a 50-60 million turnover increase overall. Very clear. Thank you very much again. Thank you. The next question is from Domenico Ghilotti, Equita. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. I have a question on the cost base. So starting from a review of Q3 numbers or nine months, so what was the underlying trend for the personnel cost in particular and for the gross margin in Q3? And if we look into the Q4, you are suggesting flat tish sales and flat tish EBITDA. I'm wondering why the additional, so the cost inflation that we are seeing in Q3 is not translating into Q4. Is it a matter of phasing, and what should we expect also going forward 2025 in terms of intake price and labor inflation? Okay. In the third quarter, the cost increased about 6%, more or less. 50% of this amount, so like 2-3%, generated by the new labor agreement that took place in the second part of this year. And another 2-3% generated by basically the increase of store network. So compared to the 12% growth of top line, this 6% you can consider has been translated in gross margin in EBITDA thanks to the operating leverage. In the last quarter, what might happen is that even in a case of flat tish turnover, we still have the 3% labor increase, but we can reduce the number of hours that has been requested during the third quarter to sustain the high level of sales. So we have 2-3% of cost that we can kind of maneuver during from time to time, basically, in order to try to sustain labor cost as more aligned to sales as possible. Obviously, some disadvantage might be generated, but given that the mass of cost is high and we have other costs to work with, I don't expect any surprise in cost in the fourth quarter. For next year, from the cost side, we see a combination of modest but still existing effect of labor cost increase, another 3.3% next year. We have a small advantage on the dollar as of today because we covered 100%. We hedged 100% of the first half and 50% on the second half with a modest advantage on year 2024. So no problem or a small advantage from the exchange rate perspective. On the other side, and this is something on which I'm working, I consider that every company, once experiencing a period of good growth and profitability like this year, might incur in some excess of FTE maybe. So next year, I will be very, very hopefully clever in identifying eventually some inefficiencies and making some savings that still I have not planned, but I think that there will be some cost reduction in some area associated with cost increase in other areas where we have a new project that's worth to be assisted by the proper level of focusing and commitment. But all in all, long story short that we don't see anything material on the cost side. Hopefully, we will take advantage of the normalization on shipments, but still this is in the hands of the politicians other than in our hands. Okay. And if I may, on the shareholder remuneration, just to have the feeling on what is your preferred capital allocation if I look at the free cash flow generation between buybacks or resuming the buyback after the cancellation or increasing the dividend payment? So do you have any preference that you can share at the moment? I think that we will continue with the dividend policy, first of all, because this is more in line with normal practice. On the other side, I think that it will depend from many things, also the evolution of the share price. I think that our value in terms of value of the company might worth also to continue buyback in case we assist to sudden activity of a short-term investor that decides to sell short, for instance, just to react to this, to help normalize the level of the share price, or simply because we have in mind other opportunities in order to use the share for other purposes. B ut all in all, I think that we will continue with trying to have an appropriate combination of those two measures, and we believe that there is still possibility for the share price to increase. That's why we are still ready to buy shares. As of today, we bought shares at a price of. 2.17. 2.17. So I think that we made a good adoption of the power that our shareholder gave us with reference to the buyback. Okay. My last question is just a follow-up on Stefanel. So can you help me or remind me, so what is the size today of the Stefanel? So this year, let's say, of the Stefanel at the level of profitability you are starting in 2024? Today, the size of Stefanel is about EUR 25 million, and the profitability is still modestly negative, recovering the second half and hopefully becoming a positive start into next year. I have to say that we might have increased heavily the number of corners and new stores named Stefanel during 2024 because we had a strong request from our partners to offer them a new format, so you know that we have more than 100 franchisees with hundreds of stores, mostly of them kids stores. A nd some of those franchisees already have been authorized by us to open some new stores under Stefanel's brand, which for them represents a form of diversification. I have been prudent. I decided not to open, if not a few of the many requests that I received during the year because I didn't feel comfortable, I mean, seven, eight months ago about the quality of the assortment. Now I am comfortable about the quality of the assortment, and we are recruiting a lot of candidates for new openings. So I suspect that next year, Stefano will, I prefer to say should, generate a good sales increase in terms of like-for-like, but also a good sales increase because of new openings. Okay. Thank you. For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. If you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Okay. Given that no more questions are coming, we thank you, our team. Thank you. Thank you all for attending this conference, and obviously, we wish you Merry Christmas to all of you and your families. Thank you. Thank you.