Welcome, everybody. Ooh, that's loud. We're gonna get started here shortly, so if everybody could just take their seats. Be careful with the water glasses. They make me nervous. All right. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for braving this polar vortex to be here with us today. I know it was not an easy journey for many of you, including most of our management team. So, we had some miracles in transit, appreciate that. So we're very excited to have you here at this beautiful venue, and welcome to those of you that are joining us online. For those of you I haven't met, I'm Megan Kulick. I'm the Director of Investor Relations for Birkenstock Holding, and I look forward to speaking with all of yous at some point during the course of today. Before we get started... Where's my clicker? Here we go. Sorry. The legal stuff. So don't worry, I'm gonna summarize it. Today, we'll be making forward-looking statements subject to the safe harbor provisions of the financial securities law, or federal securities laws. These statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties and assumptions, which could differ materially, which could cause our results to differ materially from these statements. These risks, uncertainties, and assumptions are detailed here and also in our filings with the SEC, and you can find those on our website at birkenstock-holding.com. We undertake no obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements or information, except as required by law. We will reference certain non-IFRS financial measures, as we believe they represent the operational performance and underlying results of our business more accurately. The presentation of non-IFRS financial measures is not intended to be considered by itself or as a substitute for financial measures presented in accordance with IFRS. Reconciliations of IFRS to non-IFRS measures can be found in our SEC filings. As a reminder, presentation today, including the Q&A, is being recorded, and it will be available for replay on our website. So today, we have leaders from all over the world, global leaders, the global leadership team. They've all joined us to really bring you deep into the world of Birkenstock. They'll walk you through key areas of our unique and dynamic business model, and share with you our vision for growth over the next three years. We encourage you, during the coffee and lunch breaks, to walk the room and see all the beautiful displays that we have set up, which walk you through the history, materials, and most importantly, beautiful collection, current collection. And we encourage you also to go back in the back and visit our foot scanning station so that you know exactly what the right size footbed is for you. We'll provide plenty of time for Q&A at the end, and so, but we do ask that during the Q&A, that you wait for a microphone so that everybody can hear you in the room and online, and that you clearly state your name and company prior to asking your questions. So with that, we will get started, and I will hand the stage over to Oliver Reichert, our CEO. Thank you, Megan. Hello, everybody. Yeah, most of you already heard the story about Birkenstock. For some of you, maybe fresh to the brand, I just want to give you a quick introduction. What are we talking about? First of all, I think it is important to understand that the core mission of this brand is... And that's a conversation I had in 2009 when I came to the company with Karl Birkenstock himself. Now he's nearly 100 years old. So, when he made the decision with his sons to give the business into my hands, I was the first manager outside of the family. So it was heavy on my chest, you know, to take this order from him, and his, his order was quite simple. He said: "Look, our mission is to give every human being access to the footbed," because this is not a footwear brand, this is not a shoe brand. This is the inventor of the footbed, so an orthopedic medical asset. So quickly look at the growth rates since IPO. I think that's a touch point. We can start the story here. It's like: Okay, what happened two years ago? Since IPO, we delivered 72 million pairs of footbeds into the world. Since I'm with the company, we delivered roughly 360 million footbed to the company. So, so far, we could be very proud about ourselves, about the team, about all the efforts around the globe, because this mission that was given to me in 2009 from Karl, I think we did a pretty good job on it. On the next slide, you see... You know, that was the day when we probably first met. You know, you saw this bulky, bullish CEO, not really good-looking, Marius, you know. And he told you about this ugly footwear brand, and your reaction was, to be super honest: "Oh, my God! Not another boring footwear brand."... we tried very hard to convince you that this is not another boring footwear brand, because it's definitely something else. And, you know, all the arguments we had at the beginning, I remember conversations with Randy, with Barbara, you know, to really convince the people to say, "Look, this is not a one-trick pony. This is not-- We're not having a Barbie moment, or a fashion cycle moment, or a summer breeze because we are a sandal brand." Everybody was questioning our strength of implementing closed-toe shoe. It was like, "Okay, no, you may earn the sandal business because you own it, but brown shoe, I don't think you will play any role in this." We defined a few white space opportunities. Altogether, the performance of the first two years being public is a revenue growth of 41% and EBITDA growth of 38%, and deleverage of 55%, by investing EUR 275 million into the production and the companies, and buyback shares in the volume of $200 million. So I would say that's a pretty impressive track record since IPO. You may ask yourself: What about the share price? I think it's at minus 16, 17-ish, so the reward is still out there. We came up, when we tried to explain the uniqueness of this business, with three comps, and that was the second moment when all of you shook your heads and said, "Okay, they are crazy. They're completely crazy. Holy shit!" But look at this, and I'm still with it. We have a purpose-rooted or a purpose-driven brand, at least at the beginning with Nike. We talked about Lululemon as a comparison with a huge fan base, huge global following, where you say, "Okay, a relatively small amount of people are creating a relatively big amount of revenue every year because of the fans and the lifestyle behind it." And last but not least, that was the killer, I'm fully aware of this, was Hermès. You know, ugly sandals from Germany and Hermès, the top-notch luxury brand in the world. But yes, we, from inside, believe that this is a good comp for us because the scarcity, the fully controlled distribution strategy, and the very high double-digit margins are super comparable with us. So white space opportunities. We learned very quickly, you give us nothing for our past, like 10 years of 20% CAGR, 60% gross profit margin, 30%+ EBITDA margin. So what was the outlook? The outlook was like, "Okay, we have three white spaces." The first white space was APAC, from a geography standpoint. We doubled the business in the APAC region. Okay? I would call this delivered. Second white space was own retail slash DTC. Okay? We doubled our own retail fleet since the IPO. Check. Third, last but not least, the biggest issue for most of you were the closed-toe shoe business. It's impossible to gain any relevant share here, but if you look at the details and the facts, and you will get a guidance here later on by the rest of the team, we are now at 38% share of business. If you look at the seasonality, you see it's a pretty balanced business already, more or less. That's a very, very strong message, and I would say within this, we and the team, we're very proud what we achieved the last two years. I think it's a, it's another small or maybe a bigger proof of concept for all of you to start trusting us. If we tell something to you, listen. Coming back to our comps and the environment, you're all aware what happens out there. You know, this is just like full year 2023 to full year 2025, the revenue CAGR and the EBITs of the last two years. You see, like, outliers like On in growth, but weak margins. You see, like, LV already had problems. Nike, relatively big, but very slow in, in, in growth. You see the, you know, Hermès on top of it, and now you see where we are, here. Whatever critics you may bring to the table, this is a truth. We are one of the absolute outliers in growth and margin perspective. And as you know, even if you say: "Okay, this is like the growth we delivered, the first two years of the IPO," even if you now put it slightly into the left side, we're still an outlier. Nobody is on the right above us, okay? And this is simply a fact I think we all have to align on now, and, yeah, and look into the future with this knowledge. This is another very, very, very important chart because, it is somehow... And it was, you know, hard to get all the data and everything, but I think it's important for you, from today on, how big is the runway? It's just another, you know, explanation of, okay, where do you grow in the future? Why should I invest into your company now? It's relatively cheap.... It's a huge runway ahead. And even if you look at our key country penetrations, you know, like, look at the US, you know, this column is roughly 45,000-50,000 pairs. So 45,000-50,000 pairs per million. That's the penetration we are having in the US at the moment. And then you can see all the other regions, and that's really a very important thing, that even in this, let's call them, well-established market, we have very huge growth potential. So it's not, you know, "Oh, they're growing in Asia, they're growing somewhere." We grow in Americas heavily. Look at Europe, look at territories like U.K., France, Belgium, Spain, you know, like, sum them all together and compare it with other brands you know, and there you see that there is a huge growth potential within Europe. And as you know, the margins from a currency standpoint, no tariff, you know? All this is playing into our direction here. Look at Asia. The, you know, the focus region we promised to you at the IPO. There's such a big runway. Japan, South Korea, look at the size of these markets. Of course, this will be a huge, huge growth opportunity for us. And by the way, we have pretty good margins in Asia. We have pretty good ASPs in Asia. So it's not a margin-declining region, it's incremental, and that's really something that is. I would say this is the drop-the-mic chart, you know? Because this is really like, if you look at the growth rates in the segments, you know, like, cluster A, cluster B, cluster C and D, everything is double digit. So it's the opposite of a one-trick pony. In every region, in every channel, and in every category, we are growing. If you go back to the other chart, I don't know how to go back, but I try it. This one. Here you see impacts of less resilient companies having issues. Look at Nike, you know about LV, they released the numbers, you know? So there is a lot of impacts coming in, and if you look at the global situation the last two years, you've seen a lot of pain around us, but there's barely any impact on us and our business model. So, there's one topic that is really important for me to discuss with you or to let you know how I think about this, because it's about how do we manage the channels properly? Because yes, in online, we have a, I would say, a weaker moment in time at the moment. It's not only with us, to be super honest, because we see a lot of things going on. We're in the middle of re-platforming our online business globally. So we're working on this, but we have to be crystal clear, and you know, the analysts know the game. We talked about DTC, but on the other hand, you all should be aware that we only operate 100 stores globally. And yes, there is a huge potential in open up more stores and balancing out the online business more or better in the future. And of course, we will work heavily, and David and Nico will follow up on this topic, definitely, you know, and explain you what kind of actions and measures do we take to pull all levers to move forward in the online business. And we will continue to grow 10% in pairs. Of course, on a much higher base in the future, but Jakob will explain later on how we manage this unit growth. But look at the headline. We don't compromise our channel health. We never go from pull to push. This is a promise. We never do this, and you may question yourself, "Yeah, but look at the growth rates in this territory, in wholesale or in that territory." Wait till the end of this presentation, and you will see the ultimate truth of, are we in a push world, or do we execute as promised? So now I hand over to Ivica, and probably some of you already make notes asking me questions after this presentation. Bring them on. Maybe we talk, maybe we fight. We'll see. Enjoy the day, and see you later. Thank you very much. Thank you, Oliver. Just before we move further on fighting later, just the latest numbers on Q1 2026 with the preliminary results. Before we go into that, warm welcome also from my side, and also to those who are joining us today over webcast. It's great to have you here and to discuss our story in a bit more detail with you today. So let's just jump right in the Q1 preliminary results, which are out this morning. We delivered another strong quarter. Q1 2026 came in with EUR 402 million. This is the number you already know because we pre-announced it already ahead of our participation at ICR, two weeks ago. This is 18% in constant currency growth and 11% in reported growth, and basically, it's the continuation of the strong demand that we have seen in back to school, and this strong demand extended also into holiday season, and we see that continuing momentum persisting. But I will leave it to my sales colleagues to discuss that in more detail with you later on. As expected, FX caused a 670 basis points headwind to our growth in top line. This is basically and mainly driven by the weaker U.S. dollar. So this quarter, the average was around 1.16. A year ago, we have been at 1.07. But it's not only the U.S. dollar, it's also some APAC currencies that are pegged to the U.S. dollar that have depreciated significantly over time, and this is where the differential in reported and constant currency does come from. Besides FX, we saw margin pressure from additional U.S. tariffs, and if you look at the adjusted gross margin, which came in at 57.4, this is down 290 basis points, but it includes 350 basis points of both FX and tariff pressures as compared to last year. Excluding these effects, we would see a gross margin being up 60 basis points. Pretty much same picture on the adjusted EBITDA margin, which came in at 26.5, down 170 basis points year over year. Without the adverse FX and tariff impacts, we would've been up 190 basis points, and I will walk you through the respective bridges in a second. EPS was up 50% year over year to $0.27, so this is driven basically by three factors. The one is lower tax rate, second is improved financial results. It's lower interest expense, but it's also valuation effects from the embedded derivative. And third, and last but not least, Oliver talked about the share buyback. It's the reduced number of outstanding shares that have contributed to that increase in adjusted EPS. So looking at channels and segments, we saw strong growth in every segment in constant currency. Americas was up 14%, EMEA was up 17%, and APAC was up even 37% in constant currency. On channel, similar picture as you have seen in Q4 2025. The fastest growing channel is B2B. B2B is leading the growth and grew 24% in constant currency, and DTC continues to grow double digit and up 12%. So looking at the margin bridge, starting with gross margin and what's driving gross margin. So first, like-for-like price over inflation contributed 110 basis points. So as you know, after implementation of additional tariffs in U.S. following Liberation Day, we have increased our pricing in U.S. in last July through price increases, and we are continuing to increase prices via targeted price increases. This is what we have always done season by season, style by style. You know, we own our supply chain. We are fully vertically integrated. We do a bottom-up pricing, and this is what we're continuing to do, and we are benefiting from that in Q1 with 110 basis points. In line with expectation, we improved our absorption, especially with regards to Pasewalk. This contributed 50 basis points, and we are well underway to be fully absorbed in Pasewalk by Q3 2026, in line with our expectations. As already mentioned, as B2B is leading the growth, and is outpacing D2C, this impacted gross margin by 80 basis points in Q1. 20 basis points came from some smaller effects, including higher D&A due to capacity expansion, and also smaller effects from logistics. And then you see, if you compare it like for like, this is the 60 basis points expansion in gross margin before external effects kick in, and basically, these external effects are currency translation and tariffs. And finally, the reversal of the distributor margin. This relates to the acquisition of our former Australian distributor. Their landed cost, that is the book value of their inventories, is higher versus the group standard cost, and this is what we have adjusted to have a like-for-like comparison. So if these higher acquisition costs are flowing through the P&L over Q1, naturally the COGS impact is higher, and this is the reason why we have adjusted this the same way we've also adjusted the bargain purchase in the EBITDA. So moving further to the EBITDA bridge, and pretty much you see the same picture and the same effects with regards to sales price adjustments, with regards to absorption. There are some smaller benefits also that we are benefiting from, including benefits from logistics and so on. So if you compare like for like, we came in above 30% compared to 28.2% last year. Again, you see the same effects in EBITDA on currency translation and tariffs. So we discussed over the last couple of weeks, and also attending ICR channels, and I just want to remind you again that B2B is a great business for us and not a sickness at all. So we see a shift in consumer behavior, especially the younger cohort, which are new to the brand, are choosing intentionally to purchase in-store in multi-brand environments. In general, this is a great thing for us because Birkenstock is a touch-and-feel product, a very haptic product. We are a sit-and-fit brand. People want to experience the quality of the product, and every single physical touchpoint with the brand does matter for us. We have globally 19,000 points of contacts for the brand with a customer and run only 100 stores by ourselves. So if you just compare these numbers, you can't capture that physical demand with just 100 stores. We will speak a lot about accelerating our own D2C and retail fleet, but just comparing these numbers and where the demand goes, it's impossible to capture that demand, and this is why we love B2B, why we love the B2B channel. And for us, B2B is also a most efficient way to acquire new consumers, as the retail partners are doing marketing on our behalf, and we are able to harvest the lifetime value in our own channels. And also, the financial metrics of B2B are very attractive. So the gross profit is lower by 25 percentage points. However, the EBITDA margin is higher, and the EBITDA margin differential between the channels is around 400-500 basis points. However, B2B requires approximately 2.4 times more pairs for the same revenue. If you just look at the ASP comparison, in B2B, we're roughly at EUR 40, in D2C, we are at EUR 95. And of course, this has supply chain implications, which we will touch later on in Jakob's part. And most importantly, in my role as CFO, we have the forward-looking visibility of the order book within 5-9 months ahead. And naturally, this de-risks our planning. This gives us greater opportunity to plan ahead, to be more efficient, and we know what is coming in our vertically integrated supply chain. So we were leaning in in both channel. However, we will never compromise on our relative scarcity model and full price realization. We are in a very fortunate position to have these complementary, complementary channels, which makes the business even more resilient and even more plannable. So now to the outlook for the next three years. We have provided our fiscal 2026 guidance already in December, and we are reiterating our fiscal 2026 guidance today. For the three-year period ending fiscal 2028, we will continue with that growth algorithm. We see revenue growth of 13%-15% in constant currency, steady margins, and EPS growth around 200 basis points above revenue growth. That means EPS growth of around 15%-17% in constant currencies. On top line, we see huge runway and penetration, and penetration, as Oliver has mentioned, and the only limiting factor is capacity. On margin, we are committed to deliver 30%+ EBITDA, even in the post-Liberation Day world, which is a new world for us, with increased tariffs and adverse FX impacts. This assumes, of course, no further tariffs. You never know what will come out the other morning of D.C., so we've not factored in additional tariffs. And FX, which is stable, so the same FX that we have guided with, which is 1.17. And this also includes share repurchases in the volume of EUR 200 million. It's $200 million per year. Oliver said we are one of a kind, and that is, that is true because we have the unique opportunity, or our business provides the unique opportunity, combining top-line growth, high margin, and strong cash flow, cash flow yield. We've reduced the leverage since IPO from 3.3 times to 1.5 times and generated, over the last 2 fiscal years, operating free cash flow in an amount of EUR 813 million. Our capital allocation priorities remain the same and unchanged. We invest in the business, which is the first priority. We'll discuss a lot about capacity build-up in our manufacturing, but also retail expansion will be a core part of that, and this will be our, our number one in priorities. We'll also be continuing to further repay debt, basically, what we have done very successfully also in the past. Finally, we will also be continuing to buy back shares over time in a volume of $200 million per year. The good thing is, it's not one or the other. It's not either/or. We can do everything at the same time. So looking back at last year, we have invested more than EUR 80 million in CapEx to grow our manufacturing footprint. We have early repaid $50 million on our U. S. dollar term loan, and we have bought back shares for $200 million. So we are, will be on track to continuing on that path going forward. So what does that 13-15 growth algorithm means for us? So at the midpoint of our guidance, and provided the U.S. dollar will stay on the average over the last couple of months and also on the rate that we have guided, which is 1.17, this implies EUR 1 billion of incremental revenue in fiscal 2028 as compared to fiscal 2025. In simple words, it took us 250 years to come to EUR 2 billion. It will take us three years for an additional EUR 1 billion. What does that mean by region? Americas and EMEA, we see both region growing double digits, and APAC will continue to grow at double the pace of the other regions. That means APAC will double its revenues over a three years period. David, Nico, and Klaus will talk about that later in detail, but after now, an exhausting session with Oliver and myself, I think everyone is keen to get a coffee. So I invite you, everyone, for a coffee break, and we'll be continuing in 30 minutes or out. Or less, we're running late. Or less. We are running late, so we're running ahead. Ah, we're running ahead, so it will be even less. So thank you very much, and we'll be continuing after the coffee break. Man and a lady. Covered in all white lace. You're the baddest in the place. So good, shorty. Somebody's gonna fall in love tonight. Let's lose ourselves in this second line tonight. God created you and the heavens just for me, just for me. Been waiting so long for a woman like you to make me feel so right. God created you and the heavens just for me, just for me. Been waiting so long for a woman like you to make me feel so right. Baby, got me high like a kite. Got me high and don't need no green. Just two lovers dancing in the night, while the horns blasting the street. Baby, got me high like a kite. Got me high and don't need no green. Just two lovers dancing in the night, while the horns blasting the street. Baby, got me high like a kite. Got me high and don't need no green. Just two lovers dancing in the night, while the horns blasting the street. Baby, got me high like a kite. Got me high and don't need no green. Just two lovers dancing in the night, while the horns blasting the street. Baby, got me high like a kite. Got me high and don't need no green. Just two lovers dancing in the night, while the horns blasting the street. Baby, got me high like a- Yes! Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. This is the couple. Yes. This is the couple. Yes. This is the couple. Yes. This is the couple. Yes. This is the couple. Yes. This is the couple. Yes. This is the couple. ... Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Hello. Yes, this is a favor. Please listen, as my menu options have changed. If you'd like to say hello, press one. Hello, hello. Press two. Oh, wow. If you'd like to know if I'm all right- Press three say, "You all right? This is the third call. Yes. Yes. This is the third call. Yes. This is the third call. Yes. This is the third call. When we're out in the moonlight, looking up at the stars above. Feels so good when I'm near you, holding hands and making love. Ooh, baby. You're so baby. Oh, so baby. You're so baby. Sandy beaches and rain, love. As it goes in our lives. Feels so good walking side by side. Wanna be with you all my life. Oh, baby. Baby. You're so baby. Baby. You're so baby. Baby. You're so baby. Baby. Thinking you all the time. Feels so good, I wanna get that right. Just can't wait till tomorrow. Come on, baby, let's shake it. Oh, baby. You're so baby. You're so baby. You're so baby. When we're out in the moonlight. Shoo-ba, shoo-bop. Looking up at the stars above. Shoo-ba, shoo-bop. Feels so good when I'm near you. Shoo-ba, shoo-bop. Holding hands and making love. Ooh, baby. Baby. You're so baby. Baby. You're so baby. Baby. You're so baby. Baby. Baby. You're so baby. Shoo-ba, shoo-bop. You're so baby. ... You're so bad, ooh, baby, you're so bad, ooh. You're so bad, ooh, ooh, baby, you're so bad, ooh, ooh! You're so bad. You're so bad, baby. Baby. Hey, everyone! Good news is we are running ahead of schedule, so we're gonna have you guys out of here a little bit early, I think, today, which is good. Please take your seats, and we're gonna get started with the rest of the presentations. We're gonna have all of the segment leaders come up and walk through each of their segments, and then we have a really great product section with Marcus, and he will kind of walk you through all of the beautiful things that are coming for Birkenstock. So everybody grab their seat, and I will welcome David Kahan, President of the Americas, to the stage to take us through the largest segment of our business. Put on my glasses so I can see everyone while they're sitting. So good morning. I'm David Kahan. I am responsible for the brand management, distribution, and all things related to the commercial side of the business here in the Americas. When we talk about the Americas, we're talking about the U.S., we're talking about Canada. Yes, we do like our friends in Canada. Mexico, we also like our friends in Mexico, and Latin America, we also like our friends in Latin America. I've been here 13 years, so when I heard Oliver talk, even though we're talking about the next three, I just wanna kinda ground ourselves and just go back in time. Because I go back to the days when we like to say, the only people who wore Birkenstock were people who only wore Birkenstock, so this was a real finite universe. And even though over the years we've cracked open the value, and we've shared tens of thousands and millions of pairs of footbeds, and we find ourselves in a room like this, that 13 years ago we would've never expected to be in, what's really unique to think about is, the seed of the business back then hasn't changed one bit from what it is today. It's still about sharing the footbed with as many people as we possibly can. So we stay grounded in that as we look forward. We treat the brand, 250-year-old brand, as if we're brand stewards. Clicker? Mm. There you go. We have developed... We've scaled the business. This is the largest region in the globe. We do two dot-com sites between the U.S. and Canada. We have 14 retail stores as of the end of 2025. Just to put that into perspective, 14 of our own retail stores compare to a little bit over approximately 10,000 points of distribution in the Americas. 10,000, and it runs the gamut from better department stores, full-line sporting goods stores, athletic specialty chains, youth chains, family footwear. And I wanna say, we also stay true to our longtime sit-and-fit independent retailers. Many of them have been with us back when we were that tiny brand in the mid-1970s. We will contribute over 10% growth over the next 3 years. That's the headline. Fact of the matter is, mathematically and statistically, just based on the scale of the business, we will continue to grow B2B faster than D2C. Having said that, at this point in time, we are leaning into our DTC business to develop it, and it's gonna be led by new store expansion. The fastest growing segment for Birkenstock is this emerging youth consumer. I don't like to put labels on them. I don't like to say Gen Z, Gen Zed, Gen Y, Gen Alpha. The way I describe it is, we use this term, emerging youth. Maybe it's 14 to mid-20s. They're your typical American suburban kids, and they're coming to the brand right now with the greatest momentum. If you look at the DTC results of our partners, anyone who focuses more on the youth business, on this demographic, whereas everybody's growing, they have the fastest rate of growth. What's most important about this consumer is, we like to say, "This brand is sticky," right? We like to say... I think our data, we're able to say, the average Birkenstock consumer owns 3.6 pairs in their closet. For most of these emerging youth, they're new to the brand, so they might be on pair number 1, so they have a lot of catching up to do. Also, just because of their shopping patterns, by and large, they're coming to our brand by our retail partners. They're our de facto marketing proxies, so to say. They've shared the brand. So if you think about a DTC native brand that might need to do customer acquisition as a cost of sales, our customer acquisition isn't a cost, we make a lot of profit on it. So they've come to our brand, and now over the next 3 years, it's inherent upon us to figure out how we crack open the stickiness and the lifetime value with them. This is – we're gonna start talking about B2B. This may be the most important slide that I put up here, because Oliver, in his opening, talked about the term that some analysts use, we don't use it, but most analysts do, this idea of push versus pull model. This slide is the definition of a pull model. This is the defining slide that tells you what your results are. This is our report card. It's not valuation, it's not stock price, it's not anything other than: what are our results at retail? This is just some indicative examples, but it just shows that there are 30, 50, dozens of retailers with these kind of results. So I'll just start. We don't want to name the retailers, 'cause it's proprietary information to them, but let's just take, as an example, the leading youth chain in the market, 700+ locations. This past year, 98% full price realization with our brand. The leading full-line sporting goods... Oh, I'm sorry, go back. The leading full-line sporting goods chain, these guys sell everything from golf clubs, to baseball bats, to Nike Vomero, to whatever, 97% full price realization. And then, when you get to a full-line department store, where they play a little bit more of an expanded fashion business, where you would expect a little bit more of a markdown variation, we still run close to 90%, 86% in full price realization. This is why, as a brand, we carry the highest gross margin return on investment for any retailer. That's why the demand of the retailers continues to outpace the amount that we put into them. That's how we manage this idea of Relative Scarcity. We have a team that carries out, the term you hear is Engineered Distribution. It's brand management, it's Vendor-managed Inventory. Every single retailer, from a mom-and-pop store on Main Street, somewhere in America, to the chains with 700 stores, every single door, every single style is managed from a stock level, from a planned sell-through level, 'cause results like this don't happen by chance. We're not involved in a lot of the promotional activity that they have. And for those of you that have been at some of the meetings where you've heard my little Brown Banana speech, this is the report card on having no Brown Bananas. So we're very proud of this. This is the basis of our B2B business, and why our B2B business is different than most others, 'cause we don't drop 20 points from go-in margin to maintain margin. It's just a different business. We didn't really invent it, but I think we kinda, like, perfected it between the luxury model and the well-managed athletic models that used to exist for many years. There's not many people in the market who do this. In B2B, over the next three years, this is our plan of attack. First off, I wanna start by saying 90%, probably a little bit over 90%, will come from existing doors. By and large, we don't open new retailers. Existing doors means we go a little bit heavier into an inventory position when we feel that we want to, or timing on the calendar means that it's worthwhile to do it, or an assortment level. We will open some very specific doors. These are largely doors that are focused on apres sport, where Birkenstock is being found by athletes in different sports. We are now distributed in the best running specialty retailers across the U.S. and Canada, the Road Runner Sports, the Naperville Running Company of the world. These are places where you really have athletes, could be high school cross country teams going in and buying their running shoes. What does a runner want more than a personal record in a 5K? They just want to keep running. They don't want to get injured. So we say, "Run, Birkenstock, repeat." We're also distributing... I just got back from Orlando. I was at the PGA Golf Show. Like, what is Birkenstock doing at the PGA Golf Show with, like, Callaway and Titleist? Anybody, do you know if you walk 18 holes, an average golf course, does anybody know how far you walk? Any guesses? I was gonna give out a pair of Birkenstocks, if you knew. 4.1 miles. And if you play like me, and you spray the ball all over the place, it's probably 7 miles. But 4.1 miles, that would probably tell you that if you put a Birkenstock footbed in your FootJoy... you might have a better round of golf. It also tells you that after walking 4.1 miles, you might wanna put on a pair of Birkenstocks to recover. We've just been doing this business for the last, I don't know, maybe 12 months. We're now carried in places like Pebble Beach Golf Shop, Bandon Dunes. These are the top golf resort locations, very high-income customers. It's really connecting us with the end user, and the sell-throughs in the initial tests in these markets have been absolutely phenomenal. So we're gonna open retail with a very laser beam approach, but more than anything, it's growing in existing doors. That's our B2B business. Own retail. When you looked at that opening chart, and you look at, let's say, the United States, 50 states, 300 and, I don't know, 30 million people, and we have 14 stores. We don't need to be the Gapification of Birkenstock and expand left and right, but we should have more than 14 stores. I think now we have 15, 'cause we just opened another one last week. Every one of our stores is proving to be very successful. I'll tell you, we're very disciplined when we open our retail stores, 'cause people would say: "Why don't you just open them as fast as you can?" My team that does retail stores is sitting in the back of the room. We have a term we use. It's called the bulletproof retail model, and when we meet with a landlord or a developer, we always say to them: "Hey, we'd love this space, but it has to match our bulletproof business model." And the bulletproof business model has certain metrics and parameters that we don't compromise on. It has to do with foot traffic, it has to do with revenue, it has to do with we need to return cash in 12-18 months, it has to have a break-even of 60% in year two, and this is proving to be our winning formula. One thing I wanna say about our retail stores, and Oliver said about it in his opening, buying Birkenstock is a very tactile experience. There's something really special about sitting down and experiencing Birkenstock, and for anyone who's been in any of our stores, it's an experiential retail. Like I said, this isn't the Gapification of the brand. I live in Marin County in California. Luckily, we opened a store that's about 10 minutes from my house. Because I have so many hobbies and I'm so busy, some Saturday afternoons, I'll go there and literally work in the store and be there for an hour. You usually have three types of people who come in. Three types. Number one is the person who's, like, a Birkenstock, like, crazy fan. They're like Taylor Swift fans, right? They walk in, and they're like: "Ah!" It's like nirvana. They think they're in their Birkenstock Disneyland, and those are the people that they'll leave five or six pairs. Then you have the people who come in, some of them are these newer consumers, where they own the brand, and they're wearing it. They're wearing it in the store, but they're wearing an Arizona, they might be wearing a Boston, and what do you hear from them? "Oh, my God! I didn't know you had..." Fill in the blank. Sneakers, boots, all these other things, and you see them adding a different pair. The third is my favorite, 'cause my third is the people who walk in, who are kinda like a little bit confused, and they're like: "Oh, my God, a Birkenstock store. Like, I've heard of you guys. I'm hearing everybody talking about it." But they haven't really gotten it yet, and the beauty of that physical, live experience is they get a full-on brand missionary who's fitting them, who's sharing the brand with them. By the time they leave that store, I will guarantee you, they know where the shoes are made, they know the quality, they understand cork and all this stuff, and they leave with a pair of shoes. And that starts them on this lifetime experience. So we will be doubling down on opening 30 more stores. There's no shortage of retail locations. The challenge is finding the right locations with the right peer group that we're gonna be sitting next to and associated with, and fitting our bulletproof business model. So I saved the best for last, our digital business, because this keeps coming up for us. I'm kind of on that forefront of hearing DTC, B2B, DTC, B2B, right? We hear it all the time. By the way, the only people who don't use the terms DTC, B2B are the consumers, 'cause they're just shopping where they're shopping. They shop very fluidly. That's the way they live their lives. That's the way you shop. You're not a B2B or a DTC shopper. Having said that, we understand that it's an important metric. So the way I look at this is, we're talking about three years, and if I look at my 13 years, over the course of brand management, over the course of the years that we've been here and we're gonna be here, there are different points in time when you need to lean in to different aspects of the business. We started this business... I was here on day one when we launched the website. We've only been in the dot-com business for 10 years. Before that, our office used to get phone calls in California, "Hey, can I buy direct from you guys?" And we'd say: "No, we don't have a website."... So I've been here from day one. We built a business that does $hundreds of millions in the Americas. This is a substantial business. We have muscle in our D2C digital business, but here's the way I look at it. This is my, like, visual. We've been doing squats, we've been doing bench presses, we've been doing deadlifts. Like, we have the foundational muscle in digital. Now, we got to get ripped for the beach, like, we got to get six packs. You know, it's time to like, now we got to do P90X. We got to do six-pack abs. It's just once you have the foundation, now you got to lean into the detail, and that's what we're going to do right now. So there are a couple of focuses. First off, we know that this emerging youth consumer is digesting content in many places. We're just going to be a little bit more visible there. We're not going to change anything in the way we treat the business. We're not going to become a marketing machine. That's not what we do. We are very true to our DNA, but we need to share the brand in a commercial way, where it drives it to D2C. For example, I like to say, if there's a 19-year-old kid in suburban America, and they're fortunate enough to come to our brand by way of a B2B partner, that's great. But how do I make sure that that consumer will come to us and stay with us over their lifetime? And of course, the most important thing is nobody has, nobody can have, the breadth of assortment and the depth of assortment that we have. So we're going to be a bit more visible and lean in there. Secondly, is membership, and loyalty, and events. We have a very robust membership in the Americas. We have over 6 million people that are our members, and it's growing at almost 20% a year. That's good. We need to do a little bit more when it comes to their loyalty. The reason is, as you all know, as consumers, the B2B people have very significant loyalty programs. So not only do they have credit cards, so the average American family, you know, it's not really as much a part of the European business model, but the average American family spreads their debt around, and they buy with department store credit cards, and they have loyalty programs. We're going to lean in a little bit more here. We're not going to do anything that changes any of the sanctity of the brand, but we are going to lean in a bit more to make sure that our membership is more sticky. Members spend on our website 13% more on an average order value, so the ROI on any spend and effort that we have against our members should come back to us significantly. And then events. This is something Oliver has talked about this forever, this idea that this brand has such tactile, such an experience. We showed up at the New York Marathon Expo. This is the first time we ever did this. But if you've ever ran a marathon, like, the few days beforehand, you go to pick up your number, and all of the major brands are there, and all the things like, you know, Shoe Goo, and this and that. We showed up there, and it was a mind-blowing experience. We showed up at the U.S. Open Tennis. We're going to start to do this. We're going to lean into it, because that, to us, is customer acquisition, where people are engaging with the brand. We're going to start to do that, and that will all tie to DTC business. Next is just own brand, commerce, and communication. This is the nuts and bolts of the product, how we launch product, how we segment product, how we make sure we have exclusive products for our own website. And then last is, you need to not only have the plumbing, which Oliver mentioned, we just did our re-platforming. That's basically the plumbing, to make sure that the site is functional, to do the things that we need the site to do. You don't want to have any... The term we use is tech debt. You don't want to have any tech debt. We have no tech debt right now. We're ready to add on as tools become available, and this is where DTC is always, digital is a transformative business. It's always going to be changing. You're always going to be in flux. What you think of the tools today may not be the tools of tomorrow. In the Americas, we have a very good CDP program, so we can do a lot of segmenting from email, from SMS. We can do this. We couldn't do this two years ago. These are all new things, but what will they be within the next two to three years? I can't tell you specifically, but you need to be leaning in where there are tools that could be AI-enabled or AI-enhancing. So these are the things that we're going to do. We're going to act as a DTC brand. We're going to keep driving demand in the market. We're never going to compromise the DNA of what we've done, the engineered distribution, the relative scarcity. To summarize, this is the largest market. The business is pretty well scaled here, and sometimes when you think, "Oh, my God, I'm walking down the street, and I see three out of five people wearing Birkenstock," then when you look at that chart, and you look at the population, and you look at the opportunities, we believe they're still very significant. And my job is to put as much pressure on this organization to keep making as many shoes, keep developing new shoes, and keep bringing things to the market, 'cause we think we have a consumer here that continue to do this, not just the next three years, but beyond that. So thank you. That's it for the Americas. I'm going to pass it off to my colleague, Nico, for EMEA. ...Thank you, David. For the Americas part, we are moving on to Europe, Middle East, and Africa, the second-largest of our 3 segments. You know that we are founded in the heart of Europe. We are founded in Germany, and now, 250 years later, after our foundation, we still proudly design, source, and manufacture our product in Europe. So the region of Europe has always been very close to our hearts and has always played a very important role. In the last 5 years, we've transformed the business, specifically in Europe, radically towards higher quality and higher profitability. We recently joined forces with Middle East and Africa, and now the EMEA region, and today, we offer the best margin profile across the three regions. We operate our business in 61+ countries. It's a really culturally very diverse business, a very complex business, but we do make sure that we are at the forefront of our consumers. In all major countries, we have local offices and local people on the ground, servicing the consumers, servicing our partners. Our dot-com business is operating in 27 countries. I'm gonna touch on that, as, as David did, in some further slides down the presentation, and we have a fast-growing membership as in Americas, plus 30% year-over-year. Today, in retail, we operate 42 stores, and something that has been, not very often shared is that we already now have a mono-brand footprint across retail and partner stores of 100 in our region. So the total mono-brand footprint in EMEA is already 150 stores. And then in B2B, we service 9,000 doors, where growth is really coming from 90% from within. So since IPO, in B2B, but also in the entire business, our growth has come in from existing distribution, and that's why we are so confident about the future. We see 3 growth opportunities, growth opportunities ahead, and we continue to deliver double-digit growth top line, and we engineer the growth towards highest profitability. Oliver shared the slide on penetration. You saw a lot of European countries that are... where we drive penetration, where our penetration gets higher, but that are still fairly under-penetrated: France, U.K., Spain. For other companies, really highly saturated markets. For us, these are really growth markets, and we do expect all countries in our EMEA region to deliver against a double-digit growth. Plus, as Americas, we do believe we have great opportunity in young male consumers, specifically emerging youth, as David calls them, specifically male young consumers we are just about to unlock, through clogs, through Boston, through the Naples. For EMEA, we are confident that DTC further accelerates, and we will further drive penetration of our DTC channel. It's important for us. We are maxed out with capacity. You know that we are building capacity, so it's important for us to also maximize EBITDA prepare, and that's done with DTC, further DTC penetration. Then the third area is our closed-toe business. We see closed-toe continue to outpace our sandals business, while sandals is growing substantially. So not one is going at the expense of the other, and it's also worth mentioning that in closed-toe, non-Boston styles will grow at the same pace or higher as our Boston styles, so really further diversifying our portfolio in closed-toe. We continue to keep supply below demand. As David said, that's really important for us. So you're not gonna see us making any weird moves, any stupid things in the distribution. We're gonna keep our relative scarcity, and the ultimate truth for us is full price realization, as David mentioned, and we will deliver superior full price realization in the future. So now allow me to go, a bit deeper on specific channels and, show you where growth in EMEA is coming within each of the channels. I intentionally start with B2B, as this channel has been subject to discussion, and I do wanna share, when we go back into Europe, specifically Germany, in 2022 and 2023, we terminated 1,000 partners. That equals... Excuse me, more than 1,000 partners. That equals probably 2,500-3,000 doors. So we terminated these partners 'cause we believe their quality was not good, profitability was not high enough. So after that, we don't speak a lot about this, we introduced a selective distribution system in B2B. It's a closed distribution where we authorize partners to distribute our product, but they have to adhere to quality criteria to be authorized. That's something that not many brands are doing, but that's something we believe we have to do, so we keeping our B2B house in order. We are keeping our B2B house clean, and at the same time, we are not penetrated, not distributed at all in the segments of sport, in the segment of family, and fairly under-distributed in the segment of youth. So going forward, the majority of growth in B2B will come from our existing partners, simply by widening and deepening the assortment, by becoming a 365 brand. 80% of that growth will be, coming from our existing partners. But we will also carefully, with discipline, expand into these new distribution segments of sport and outdoor, youth, and family. Our door footprint by 2028 will be lower than our door footprint was in 2021, but we have better quality and have better profitability, and that's gonna be complemented by 80 stores, partner stores, so we also increasing the monobrand footprint, the partner store footprint, wherever we don't wanna open our own store. In countries that are too risky, too complex to manage, or in cities that are not tier-one cities, these are the stores that we open. That brings me to the second area, own retail. That's gonna be the fastest-growing channel as we look into the future. Now, we operate 42 stores. We're gonna double the fleet over the course of the next 3 years, and we're gonna accelerate our expansion from 12 stores a year, to 15 stores a year, to 17 stores a year. So basically, we're gonna open every three weeks a new store in 2028. We continue to execute against our proven store formula, where the new stores are delivering higher ASP, higher UPT, and that results in a higher square meter productivity. We'll be very disciplined and very careful with this expansion. And the bigger the fleet gets, the more important for us is like-for-like optimization. Already now, we see through better replenishment, better operations, investing in staff, investing in infrastructure, we can drive growth within the existing fleet, and we believe that's gonna continue to mid-single digit and more. What we do in retail will also have an impact on our online business, because what we see is wherever we open a store, in the surrounding neighborhood, in the surrounding geography, we see traffic uplifts of up to +65%. So we are quite confident that what we do here will have a positive impact on our online business. And that's gonna bring me to this chart, which will be a bit more busy, so allow me to take you through one by one. And allow me to also share, as David shared, we believe our online business is strong. It has grown organically over the last 10 years. Our first shop that we opened was in Germany, and then we successively opened more countries and more countries, now 27. Now, after 10 years of strong growth, we realize that we need to think differently about the future and how we unlock growth in the future, and how do we drive and convert demand in online. As I just said, there will be a halo effect, a significant halo effect from our store footprint, from our monobrand store footprint, positive impact on traffic, and we have identified four main areas for us to focus on. The first one is distinctive offering. Everything starts with a product for us. Everything starts with making the footbed available in all of its different forms and shapes. And we have to give our consumers, our brand friends, a reason to come to us and not to any other partner. Already now, we offer 100+ DTC exclusive styles in our online, and we're gonna continue to invest in that. And already now, we see a higher velocity of sell-through of those styles. We'll be more declarative around these styles, and we launch them better through a launch calendar and orchestrated launches. We complement that with exclusive services that you're just able to get in DTC and online, like repair service, just brought back, and customization services. The second area: elevated storytelling. Our consumers demand more engaging, more engagement on our site when it comes to storytelling and content, and they deserve it. So we just re-platformed with our site globally, and we now have the capabilities and the capacities to really become more engaging with our storytelling on site. Already now, we moved significant, significant amount of our budget into a social-first approach. So already now, we are where they are, and we are becoming more content-led and storytelling in our communication. We are extending our content creator program in social. Currently, we're working with 60 content creators, and spring/summer 2026 will be the first season where we let them explain and describe what they think about our product and how they believe it's making the best out of our footbed. And as David just said, we're gonna continue to invest in community events. As you see here, Atelier Birkenstock was a 2-month event series in Paris that has a transcending element into social, into digital. Personalization is important. We want to be more personalized in driving retention with our existing membership, and as we grow this membership, we know more about them to service them better, and that's gonna be complemented with a better customer service. Currently, it sits with a third party in EMEA, so we want to become better in customer service and ultimately also use customer service as direct cross- and upselling opportunity. Last but not least, we are exploring different business models. We are currently exploring third-party platforms, where the third-party platform is operating at the front end, and we fulfill at the back end, which is driving DTC revenue recognition. It's an exploration phase, so we can't share any names at the moment, but this is something that we are currently very much looking into. The second area of new business models is, we have built the capabilities for specific areas of the business where we cut out the intermediate, where business models were traditionally led by a B2B business, servicing an intermediate that sort of sold our product further, by cutting out that intermediate and bringing these business models to us with a direct business model. So these are the promises that we give you, for the next three years, from EMEA. We're gonna expand our high-quality distribution, our high-quality business, and we'll make sure we'll deliver best-in-class profitability. There's material growth opportunities that we see: geographies, demographics, distribution segments, and usage occasions for the footwear, for the footbed. That is something that is really important to us, and we explore all of them. And we're gonna do it with a high degree of discipline. We're gonna stay very focused in what we do, so no major... no, no, no, no weird moves in our, in our distribution, no stupid things, and we will continue to deliver the best margin profile across the region. That was my part from EMEA. I'm gonna hand over now to Klaus, who's bring us-- who's gonna bring us home with APAC. Thank you. ... Last but not least, the fastest growing area. So, many of you, we have talked in the last sessions that APAC has a big potential, but it was always invisible. Where are the people? Today, I'm proud to say that I have the whole APAC team here. Maybe you stand up and say hello. So that you know, we are fully aligned now and fully in throttle with APAC. So when we started in APAC, and I'm listening to David and also to Nico, the markets in Asia is a bit different. I mean, we're talking much more about a mono-brand store market than a classical wholesale market. That's why we also have to set up the teams, and we have to look different into the marketplaces generally. Actually, that's why we position the brand very premium in a, in a kind of a premium luxury segment. Actually, right now, we are running eight stores.com. We have 245 monobrand stores. Out of these, 41 are belonging to us. The rest is partner stores, and we have approximately 2,200 wholesale stores, which are mainly coming from Japan and from Australia, a market that we just took over. The APAC region will double the business in the next three years. So there will be two important elements. That's the D2C-driven growth, which will outpace the B2B, and also a good balanced shoe and clogs allocation. We are, at this moment, already around at 50/50, so APAC has a different approach as we stepped in, not as a... in a different moment of the brand, and we had already shoes and everything, which we could put into the stores. The allocation in the stores helps us a lot also to diversify the product. So our playbook looks like this: We will run own retail, partner store retail, and digital in a kind of a mono store, mono-brand environment. We will, for sure, keep our own retail, the priority on the best locations and malls which we are going to open. Our product allocation, we will accelerate shoes and clogs, and we will fill it up with 1774 and SMUs, as we are touching higher price points in some of the new stores. What does it mean? For example, in Taikoo Li, in Taikoo Li, in Chengdu, we are reaching average price points of around EUR 150-EUR 170 on good weekends. This is outstanding. And then we will connect through events, what we have already done, where we are engaging with our consumers, and we're doing live events, which are also connecting to our footbed. Okay, here I want to show you how our store formats look like. On the left side, you see the Australian store in Melbourne. This store is opened 2013, and it has a workshop inside where customers can go and get repair packages. And this is engaging very much and is very well perceived by the consumers. The other store is just recently opened in Sentosa Island in Singapore. This store has all the categories you can have in Birkenstock. So we have a test walk area where people can check between... Where they can have footbed treatments, and they have a spa where you can get bookings for treatments, and also you have a foot scanner, like here in the back, where you can get your ideal foot size on the footbed. What we are going to do is we will open 70 stores in the next three years. We will go with a double-digit like-for-like growth, and we will add another 100 partner stores in the region. All will be a content-led strategy. We will create demand through useful stories, which with purpose and engaging with the customers. We will keep exclusivity on our channel segmentation, and we will fill stores with 1774 and SMUs. And at the same time, we will grow our membership, and we have last year already put almost 1 million members on top of our member club. That is from my side, and hand over to Marcus. So sorry. Marcus. Hello, hello. So it's my great pleasure to give you now also a bit of an insight and overview how we will support- ... the further healthy growth, profitable growth of the, of the company from, from a product perspective. My big advantage is, compared to my sales colleagues and so, or later, Jakob from production, that I can bring things to show. They cannot bring distribution channels here, they cannot bring factories. So, I will try to also give you some insight, not just about the tactics and the strategies that we have at play, but also show some real-life examples that should also make you confident that, there is a lot and big runway of profitable growth, for this company. So let me, in the very beginning, connect, to an important point from Oliver's presentation. We are one of a kind, so we are not just one of a kind in the way that we deal, in the way that we perform. We are one of a kind in the essence, what this company is built on, and I feel very privileged that I can manage product in this company because this company was actually born out of a product idea, out of purpose, and that's very important for everybody to understand, who are these guys? A shoes company, sandals company, and I come to Arizona and Boston in a minute. The most important thing, it's all derived and built on a purpose. It's product with purpose. We empower people to walk as nature intended. That is very important to understand with dealing with us. Whenever you see me, and quite a lot of these faces I've seen, you've been hearing me talk about it, and that, for sure, is something that was was invented or set out some hundred and more years ago, and that will be here to stay into the future, and we will really make sure we take well care of the brand. So the purpose is written in stone. The invention, the functional vehicle via which we are preparing or we are, we are transporting the purpose to product, is the footbed. We are not in the sandals business, we are not in the footwear business, we are in the footbed business, and the footbed is realizing these consumers the nature intended walking. This is extremely important to understand. The last one, the vision piece, is always sometimes a bit like, every Homo sapiens and a lot of people. I will show you in a bit, for us, making sure that every human being can have access to the product, to the footbed, is something that drives the way that we are building the ranges and collections, and I hope you will see and be confident there's so much runway for us because we are not limiting ourselves and our growth. I will talk in a bit about Arizona to make you understand how we are managing, in detail, our growth and the penetration. That is very important, what you saw earlier. We have so much runway and penetration. Even in bigger, well-established markets, we don't see any limits for further penetrating via product and all the distribution topics that we have been seeing. This approach has given us an amazing treasure, which is our archive. We are based on a super rich archive. You all know this. We have more than 700 silhouettes in our archive, and the big five you see here, and these silhouettes are creating across all executions, north of 75% of our revenue. I wanna be very clear about that, because archive can also sound a little bit like dust catching and museum-like. I know that there might be some concern. For us, it is important we are celebrating the archive, and we're keeping it relevant, and we are making it more and more relevant to more people, and I show you some examples. While at the same time, we are constantly building the archive, but we show a lot of respect to the archive. We are not in the fashion business. We don't wanna be too fast, too quick. We wanna give a lot of respect to these wonderful, iconic products. So having said that, I deliberately, today, wanna touch a little deeper with Arizona, 'cause I hear that a lot, "And the Arizona, and yeah, it's there, and it's big, and they are dependent on that." And I, I wanna give you an idea how much work we are spending with our local market teams on further developing the Arizona franchise. And what you see here is just a small selection of different executions of Arizona. Starting in the lower-left corner, I was using here EUR RRPs for reference. From the EVA Arizona on EUR 55, Birko-Flor 90, suede leather. Then comes a section which people who have been with us now for a longer time or follow us, which we have been successfully building over the past years. So the brand was very much active in this segment. That's our home turf. This is basically where, you know, where most of us know Birkenstock from. But we have been building the scale with injected rivets, with shearlings, with big buckle, and all the way, you're seeing here the Romanticismo execution of the Arizona, 1774, which will only be launching in April. So we have been moving the ceiling up. We have not been waiting or chasing for something. This is what we have been building together with our market teams and the relevance of the brand. That's the thing, it's not just price, pricing and being high in HP, it's in the first place to be more relevant to more people in different regions, in different channels. That is what we're doing here, and by that, we are improving the penetration of the brand with consumers. That is the magic that we're doing. So we have been building this, and I wanna give you just a few examples how that really works. We are not just building the brand further, higher price point and luxury. We spend a lot of effort there, but we're doing it with everybody. We are an inclusive, universal brand. That is the positioning that we wanna bring to life out there. And I brought some examples, and I just take the EVA, 'cause, I want to really highlight the EVA Big Buckle. John, hello. Let me say hello to my wife quickly. So Big Buckle EVA, we launched this last year. So you see that that's just EUR 10 more about the standard EVA, but it gives us an amazing opportunity also in these price points to further differentiate the product. And I can say, out of the gate, last year, almost 1 million pairs that we were selling with no history to that in the first season, an absolutely massive number, which we are making happen here. So on top of that, I wanna the suede leather is one of our key items, and, you know, we are working here with full exquisite. That's also nice execution, where we are wrapping the entire footbed in leather, not just in Piumato, how we know it from the luxury piece, but we're doing it also in suedes, and we're building price point from EUR 120 then to EUR 180 euros. So I just take one more, because last year we had a very significant success with our injected rivets, and what we are doing next year, we are also... Oh, it's launching this year. Sorry, I'm still in the 2025 thinking. We are launching new execution on rivets, and I wanna say that here as one example. We do this all in-house. So what you're seeing here, all the rivets and the placements, we're doing with own machines in our own production, and all the full exquisite wrapping that you see of the footbed, we do in-house. So having said that, that's great. We are reaching more consumers, better price architecture. We have to be very responsible with our resources, and you will be later hearing, my fellow colleague, Jakob, talking about that, how we are building our skills and our possibilities across all these different price points, and we are very responsible. And last comment on that, we have a very close eye on managing the efficiency of the collection, that we are really making sure we're not creating, too much complexity that we cannot deliver. But that is the formula that I want you all to understand. Although this is Arizona, and Arizona is so established, we see no end of that journey. Yeah, we are working really deep and with a lot of effort to further differentiate and to further penetrate Arizona out there in the market, and you can a lot... You can expect a lot in the years to come. Deliberately, you might have expected me to start with closed-toe, 'cause that's obviously something, and Oliver was saying it, we can be very proud of. But I deliberately didn't do it, because it's not just now. People said it was, some years ago, just the Arizona. Now, I'm hearing every now and then, "Oh, it's just the Boston." And you see us being completely relaxed about it, because, as I was saying earlier, Arizona keeps growing nicely, very stable, very solid, at a double-digit growth, and of course, all the rest comes off top of that. So closed-toe has been an absolute major driver of the success with very robust growth potential for us. But at the same time, I want to point out, and we had the point earlier in Oliver's presentation, the closed-toe also contributes to our revenue profile across the quarters. What you see here is the revenue share by quarter from 2019. So you're seeing our quarter one, October until December, was some 15% of the business, and then the next quarter, to Q2, was, like, really a massive quarter. It still is, but what you're seeing here is the profile from last fiscal year, and you're seeing that the spread of the quarters is really coming much closer together. So firstly, quarter one is historically small, but it's also growing faster in the first place, because also the closed-toe segment is growing very nicely, and it gives us a much better weight in how we balance the revenues, but also how we can manage the operations behind that. 'Cause you can imagine, the more quarters we have to get the product out, the easier and better for revenue capturing. This is an absolute important statement for us. We own the sandals category. We are very proud of this. I would even dare to say we've created this segment, we are leading it, and we are not, like... We don't even use these terms, "Oh, Arizona is still growing." It's growing. We make it grow, and we work on that. There's way more silhouettes, which you can also see here on the left, which we are, we are promoting from the archive, which we are bringing to the front, we are giving oxygen to, but at the same time, we are also launching news in the sandal segment. I have to say, a lot has been invented already in that segment by the generations before us. Now, we can very proudly say that we are also owning the clogs category. This was invented also by this company, and we have the category-defining product, and we are extremely proud of that. You will be seeing... I'm not talking too much about Arizona - about Boston here today. You will be seeing the exact same mechanism that I was explaining earlier about Arizona there at play here. I would dare to say, as David said earlier, we did not maybe invent this game, but I think we brought it close to perfection, how we are celebrating, differentiating, our archive, and how we are, by that, enabling our markets, my fellow colleagues who were just talking, to penetrate their consumer and countries in a better way. Now think of this, the next click, happy birthday, Boston. This year, 2026, we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Boston. We had the 50th anniversary of Arizona 2 years ago. Think of that, one of the absolute hottest item in the industry, however we wanna define the industry, and already 50 years old. For us, still, relatively speaking in our portfolio, pretty small. Lots of runway that we're seeing and lots of activities behind that. No one should be concerned. Everybody should be super excited what we are holding in our hand, and that we can further accelerate the success story. Of course, and that is what I said earlier, you have to be careful that archive is not becoming a museum thing and that, dust-catching exercise. In the meantime, and we were deliberately just putting here, new launches that we have been bringing to market since the IPO year 2023. So all the items, and it's just a selection that you see here on this, in this presentation, have been launched 2023 and later. And I think we can also proudly say that in the meantime, so where's my friend John? In the meantime, we have, created some other very dynamic successes, not out of the archive, but basically from scratch. And I just wanna mention, briefly the Naples, the Naples Wrap. The footbed is completely wrapped with leather, and the penny loafer optics that we are using here, and we were launching it in 2023. I have to say, from the new launches, this is right now the most dynamic and fastest-growing silhouette that we have. You saw on the slide before some very, very interesting growth rates, which are further accelerating in Q1 of this new fiscal year. We are extremely happy with that. And you see also there, the Lutry, but I also wanna point out the Utti, and I saw it also on some people's feet already. Utti is then fully built on a shoes footbed, so really the Deep Blue Footbed, so not on the sandals footbed, Deep Blue Footbed. A very nice, flexible construction, classical lace-up shoe, all-season shoe, also just three years old, but a lot of fun and a lot of dynamics going on. So we are making sure that we are... You can maybe go back to the slide. We are making sure that we are not just celebrating what we have, but we are continuously adding. And I wanna point you to one number. Just what you see here with these new adds is 4% of the revenue now. And now some people might say, "Ah, shouldn't it be 20? Shouldn't it be 30?" I say, "No, must not." That's a question of the discipline we talked earlier about. We are growing archive styles at extremely high pace, while at the same time, we are really making sure that new introductions are also taking significant part of the business. And who knows what's gonna happen to them in the future? But we are very confident that we are, and looking at the numbers that we see at play, that there will be very big dynamics, and you will be seeing and hearing a lot of them in the years to come. So no worry, well-balanced between celebrating our archive, Boston, Mayari, Arizona, while at the same time building the archive. And this is also how we were setting up the room, and you will see a lot of executions. Everything which is displayed here is either just about to launch or is launching within this year. So you see a lot of newness also coming and making a good balance to give ammunition for market penetration. Now, you might ask yourself: "Okay, but how do they innovate into the future? How do they create newness?" And I wanna just give you an idea here, what we are really working on in depth, and there's three pillars we are centering our innovation and newness efforts around. Number one is pure function. We were born in orthopedics and professionals. These are the segments where the company was born, where our founding generations were spending a lot of effort, and they actually established an industry. So here, the innovation effort takes a lot of time. It's very technical. There's a lot of certification work to be done, a lot of preparation work and production, all the way to entire new equipment. So this is something we do to authenticate our DNA. There is a big lever, which is the seasonal newness, and I think Oliver was making the point in the beginning. We work very decentralized. We have a very, very high velocity of interaction with our markets, and we are receiving a lot of inputs for the markets, and we are trying to make the footprint relevant for the local needs. There is a lot of things which are pretty consistent, so we work now a lot with our team from APAC. So the big streams are pretty consistent, but in the nuances of material execution, of color, and sometimes different executions on the uppers, we are quite reactive to that 'cause we wanna make the brand relevant locally, and we don't wanna be a brand that is dictating. We don't even speak about creative direction or this, how you know it from other businesses. We are not doing that here. So this is a lever which is very, very important for us. And last but not least, is the cultural relevance. Of course, with 1774, we've created something the past years which is really looked at, which catches a lot of attention, and which is further building, further building cultural relevance and pinnacle appeal and aspiration of the brand. Few examples, I could now talk for hours 'cause you can imagine I'm quite excited about this, 'cause I work on these products with the teams intensively. One example from the professional and the pure performance is the Melbourne Pro shoe. I wanna show this quickly to you because this is a fully certified anti-slip and a lot of different technical features, which we've just—which we are also just launching. But I wanna mention here that this is the first shoe, fully PU dark injected, which we are doing in Pasewalk, in the new factory. This is something which, from a technology point of view, brings the brand to a completely different level and is preparing the future for different type of product, which we're, at that level, not able to do in-house some years ago. Strategically, we are also preparing for a lot of runway, of, growth in terms of technical capability in our production. At the same time, we are already bringing the Melbourne every day, if you wanna call it. This is not a certified version, but we are right away taking these ingredients that we're seeing in the professional segments and let it flow into an everyday product, making sure that we can bring the footbed to the people again and bringing a lot of breadth into the brand here. So the closed-toe lace-up shoes, we are really bringing a very functional proposition here with already some lifestyle relevance, so I think we are well prepared here for the future. This is very important from that seasonal pillar, where we work closely with the markets. So what's next? So there's the Boston, there's the Naples, there's the Lutry. We are not standing still. What you're seeing here is the Amsterdam wrapped. So we are basically taking the Amsterdam, which is an archive style, a home slipper, that has been in the collection now also for decades, and we are executing it in the same technology like we did with Naples. And I hope you can see already on the picture, a pretty sleek silhouette. So now overall, silhouettes out in the market are becoming a little bit low profile, more, more reduced optics, and we think we have something really, really authentic here that will be a lot of fun for us. And last but not least, Maria. Maria is an archive style and this is sometimes frustrating for product people in here, 'cause there's a lot of things that have already been invented many years ago. But some of you who are in the footwear space know that with flats, ballerinas, Mary Janes, something is ongoing, and I think we have a, we have a point of view here from Birkenstock, which is also right now developing quite nicely for us and will be a lot of fun. These are the things, these examples we discuss really extremely closely with our local market team from Europe, from the Americas, and from APAC, and then we are really seeing how do we bring it to life? How do we launch it? Very important that all the newness we are doing, I want to underline that, we need visibility. And the wholesale channel, if managed in a quality way, is giving us a lot of visibility and oxygen for these new styles, and we definitely need that. And with the own stores that we have, and even in the digital space, it's quite difficult to create such a visibility quickly. So we are also using, quite actively, wholesale to make sure that this newness and innovation is becoming reachable out there in the market and faster than in the past. Okay, I wanna end it with something that is, yeah, absolute, the top-notch, and I have to say, we are just launching today, and the announcement just went out, as Klaus is over there, that with Danielle Frankel, located here out of New York City, so an absolutely leading, a leading house in wedding attire. We have created in my point of view, I mean, I'm married already, but if I would marry my wife again, we might want to consider that, 'cause I think here, everything comes together very nicely. What we're also trying to do in the collaboration space, we always say one plus one must equal three, and I think we have that here. Not only that we have a super authentic partner, they are really working around craftsmanship, nostalgia, and really setting the tone of the wedding occasion. And we are not just giving a white Birkenstock. We have really worked in detail with executions on the upper. The uppers are made in Italy, and we have leveled up our game in our final assembly to create such shoes at the highest level. And when you later... Over there, don't touch them or wear gloves, 'cause they get dirty quite quickly. But we've created something which is now relevant, and we spoke earlier about the occasion, use occasion for footbed, and then we talk about professional and outdoor. That's a use occasion, and who would have thought that you can be wearing a Birkenstock in a very tasteful, high-end way at a wedding? And if the proof was still missing, here it is, and I have a little movie here, which should show you also how this is leveling up our game in production. So all of that finally assembled for us in-house in our Saxonian factories. So, and this is not staged, this is not a movie, this is how we're doing it, production, everybody wearing white gloves, and we've really leveled up the game here. I was just there a few weeks ago to be there while we were producing, and I have to say, this is something we are super excited about. And again, here we are, we are lifting the ceiling of aspiration and cultural relevance of the brand. I want to finish it with one initiative, 'cause 1774 is more and more becoming about not so much collaboration. I mean, we're doing exciting things there, but we more and more wanna evolve and develop also our own brand and our own presence there, and that's why we are now seeking to bring in some creative energy, but also featuring it under our own collection, 1774 Ensemble. And you saw already featured on Oliver's feet that we are also going in terms of shoes and closed-toe. Also here, we're creating own silhouettes. Yeah, in 1774 now, for the first time, and more and more with Klaus and the team, we are not just taking archive styles, 'cause all the partners wanted always are the Arizona, now more and more the Boston. We are creating silhouettes from scratch, and I want to finish it with a wonderful model, which is called the Ötztal. Ötztal is a location of one of our factories, and the point I wanna make here about silhouette. Now, you can ask yourself, "What is this? Is this a lace-up shoe? Is this a clog? Is that a slip-on?" Honestly speaking... we don't care. We don't think in these dimensions. We want to create own spaces, and we call it internally, David and I came up with a bit of a joking around at the shlog category. So something which is an own point of view, and we are creating it. We don't think like: Oh, there is a space out there, and we chase it. We want to build it. This is what I want you to take away as the final thought, in particular, the ones who have not been working with us so far. This company is not about chasing trends and trying to capture space, which is already somewhere out there. We walk and travel on our own path. We are developing our own segments that we want to own. And for me personally, as a product person, now ask yourself how these margins are possible. That is exactly why these margins are possible. If you're running to spaces where all the others are already sitting and occupying it, don't go there. It's not fun from a financial profile point of view. So having said that, I think now it's lunch break. Now it's time for you to also move around a little bit, or no? No, we're gonna, we're gonna change things up a little. We're gonna change things up? You want me to improvise now? You can dance. No, you don't want to see that. That's... Sorry. But I can leave the stage. I can leave the stage. So I thank you for your attention. We and some other guys from the teams are around, so please also talk to us. Look at the product. We can explain some more details and also the strategies behind and the implication into financial modeling. So we hope we can assist you there a little bit. So great to see you here. Thank you for your attention, and I hand it over to Megan. Thank you. Okay, so we're gonna just keep going because I know you guys are very anxious to get to Q&A. So what we're gonna do is just keep going with the presentations, and then we will have lunch at the end, after the Q&A session. So I know it's also very cold in here, and you guys are anxious to kind of get things wrapped up. So that's what we're gonna do. We have a short video for you, and then we're gonna welcome Jakob up to the stage to go through the supply. And then at the end, we'll bring everybody up for Q&A, and you guys can ask all of your questions. Okay? Birkenstock is a universal, purpose-driven brand that feels at home in every culture and across every generation. From the buzzing streets of Asia to the waterfront of Sydney, from the parks of New York to the cafes of Europe, our total addressable market is limited only by the global population, and our growth is only constrained by our production capacity and our commitment to maintain scarcity. Unlike much of the footwear industry, which has relied on outsourcing and offshoring for decades, we chose a different path. At Birkenstock, we have built what we consider the largest vertically integrated supply chain in the industry. We are made in Germany. More than 95% of our products are assembled in our own German factories, and all of them are developed and produced within the European Union. The integrated supply chain is the focal point of our business model. This gives us control over quality, efficiency, and cost of goods. It also enables us to respond immediately to shifts in demand and customer preferences and changes in the macroeconomics. Our integrated supply chain enables us to source our raw materials responsibly. We work directly with most of our raw material suppliers. More than 200 European partners provide cork, leather, or buckles, while less than 10% of our material value comes from outside Europe. The European footprint reduces our exposure to systemic risks in global supply chains and protects us against disruptions in the global trade architecture. Our skilled manufacturing team of about 5,000 employees forms the backbone of our supply chain and embodies our culture of quality and craftsmanship. Their know-how enables us to deliver consistent quality at scale, combining tradition, knowledge, and innovation. We invest heavily in training, passing down best practices refined over 250 years of manufacturing tradition. Our growth was never limited by appetite. We steer our growth to maintain scarcity. Since we are capacity constrained by design, it is in our DNA to delve into our business and to steer our allocation responsibly, optimizing both top line and bottom line. At the same time, we have invested a three-digit million EUR amount within the last 5 years to create additional capacity, all together allowing us to better cater to the growing demand, not only in our mature markets, the Americas and the EMEA region, but also in the APAC region, our largest white space. Over the next three years, we will continue to expand our production capacity with a clear focus on cork latex sandals and clogs, allowing us to increase our unit growth by approximately 10% per year. Görlitz, our largest site and the heart of our supply chain, delivers consistently 100,000 footbeds every day, the universal platform for all our cork latex products. As part of our initiative to focus this site on cork latex, we are filling every square meter with new footbed and final assembly machines. This, together with the ongoing modernization and automation, has been a game changer for Görlitz, taking the site to the next level. Our Pasewalk site, opened in 2023, represents the largest single investment in our history at EUR 110 million. Here, our focus on EVA and PU technologies has enabled us to increase our EVA and PU capacity by 50% within 2 years, allowing us to meet the growing demand for EVA with a growing share of elevated executions. At the same time, we're ready to support future growth of our new generation of PU clogs and the insourcing of certain closed-toe executions. We're already exploring a further expansion of the facility. In Arouca, Portugal, our site has grown by a factor of 8 from 100 employees in 2023 to almost 800 today, with further expansion already underway. Arouca demonstrates how quickly our supply chain can adapt, evolving from small beginnings into a major center of craftsmanship in just a few years. Here, the focus is on uppers and more complex executions, like fine stitching and shearling, where skill and craftsmanship matter most, and processes consume more production minutes. With our newly acquired facility in Wittichenau, near Dresden, we will increase our baking capacity for cork latex footbeds and final assembly, providing us with the additional bandwidth we need to meet the growing demand. The 78,000 square meter brownfield space will allow us to significantly scale up our clogs and sandals capacity. We have finished the acquisition process and are in the preparation phase for refurbishing and equipping. The new factory will be operational in 2027. Many of the machines we use are custom-made, developed in-house, and unique to Birkenstock. Our engineers continually seek ways to optimize production, and we see even more opportunities in automation and efficiency that can further reduce costs and improve margins without compromising on the craftsmanship that defines our brand. While footbeds are standardized and produced at scale, uppers retain the individual care of handwork, especially in our 1774 line and high-quality collaborations. On top, our margins can be improved by a higher scale of our production, all while maintaining full control of our product quality. We control our quality end to end, from thorough inspection of raw materials to final testing. Operating the largest central laboratory in the industry, we are testing every incoming batch of materials and meet the highest standards of quality and durability. Supported by premium materials like 3-millimeter leather that exceeds industry standards, our long-lasting quality allows some consumers to wear their pairs for more than 3 decades with proper care and repair. This is our vision of sustainability, products that are built to endure. Our strength is mirrored in the loyalty of our customers around the world. When I try them on, I feel like I was in heaven. Just like barefoot. My feet feel, like, connected to the earth. Different. ... That, that's a feeling. I do absolutely remember the first pair. Easy, no-brainer. Your legs are happy, you are happy. It just feels natural. Feel when you put your foot in, it's all, everything's supported. It's like a custom shoe. That's what I like about it. It just feels so custom. I wear them every single day. I've been wearing them every day for the past five years. It feels like a warm hug. I get very annoyed by luxury brands pretending to make shoes. They make clothes, they don't make shoes. You guys make shoes. I promise that I won't hold you that long because I have a very simple message here. The message is that our supply chain will be ready. Our supply chain will be ready for... I don't know if the clicker is working. Will be ready for the unit growth of 10% per annum, which we will require to feed our growth algorithm. It will be also ready to deliver even a higher growth of our production hours as we shift to a more premium product, to more leather executions, to more closed-toe executions, which require higher production times. It won't be a walk in the park, but we're not really nervous about the growth of our supply chain, because it's something that we're doing already, something which we have been doing since the IPO, and we have a clear plan on how we will deliver with factory expansions that were already mentioned in the video. I will talk you through that plan, but before I do so, allow me to do a swift refresh on what our supply chain really is, and why do we do something that no one else does? Why are we, again, unique in this? And that is being vertically integrated. The supply chain or the vertically integrated supply chain is part of who we are. We are a resilient footwear company. We are a resilient footbed producer. We own and operate 7 factories in Germany and in Portugal. We're gonna be adding an 8th one with it now next fiscal year. In those factories, we make 100% of our footbeds. In those factories, we also assemble 95% of our products, with the final assembly step 95% happens in our factories in Germany. This is really unique. If we would go back to Oliver's slide with all of our peers on the map, the far second would be Hermès with 55%. So there's a clear question which probably a lot of you have on your mind, and that is: Why do we wanna be different here again? Surely, having an integrated supply chain comes with some difficulties. You might think, or you might rightly sort of argue that we have a higher CapEx spend than our peers. You might rightly argue that it's more difficult to scale our supply chain. You might rightly argue that our fixed cost base is higher than for our peers. And those are all valid points, but know that on a CapEx spend, we have an average payback of two and a half years. That means if we invest EUR 1 this year, we're gonna get EUR 40 back still this year and pay it back in two and a half years. On the fixed cost base, yes, the production comes with a certain level of a fixed cost base. However, a lot of those production costs are still scalable. You can try to do the math from the absorption that Ivica has presented. But one fact to put to it is that 20%-30% of our labor, our blue-collar labor is temp labor, so we can scale down labor, we can obviously scale down materials, we can scale down most of our production cost. And the final argument, can we scale fast enough, right? This is why I'm actually standing here in front of you to explain to you that we can scale fast enough to deliver on our engineered distribution model. So the benefits of our integrated supply chain, we believe, truly outweigh any negatives that there might be. Laid it out on this page. You saw the attention to quality that we have from our labs to the final step of the assembly. We're very close to the product, so that transpires into the quality. That also transpires to the fact that we protect the IP of a product, which is different than our competitors have. We are also resilient. We are resilient to supply chain risks and shocks. We are resilient to also changes in customer demands. Just three anecdotal data here on this one. This year will increase our output of rivets. So those are the small, tiny things you can see on some of the products around here, by more than 100%. We're also gonna increase our output of EVA big buckles, so the EVA shoes with a big buckle by over 50%, and those are already quite considerably sizable categories. It's not a small category which we're talking on, which is easy to scale, but those are already sizable chunks in our volume. We can also react to changes in customer demand within a given quarter. We can adjust 5%-10% of our production plan based on the customer needs, based on our market needs, to deliver the product in time. And last but not least, on the benefits we've discussed about our margin profile, the integrated supply chain obviously helps with that by cutting out the middleman. Ivica has spoken already before on the positives of the B2B model on our production setup. I want to maybe build up on that a little bit. What B2B brings to us as production is higher visibility, higher planability, and lower complexity for both our production, but also for our logistics. In the logistics case, I think it's fairly simple, so maybe I start with that one, although this is the lowest point on the chart. Simply, if you ship a big bulk to a B2B customer, it's much easier than to do a single pick into an e-com customer. So that's faster, that's obviously less expensive in logistics. More than 70% of our units are contracted with a 5- 9-month visibility. So that's the share of all of our units. So for more than 70% of our units that we produce, before we purchase the raw material, unless we purchase it to a safety stock, before we purchase it, our raw material, we already know that we're gonna sell that shoe. If you combine it with the number here on the top right, which is telling us that we have a large carryover share, so what we produce this year, we're also gonna be selling next year. We can perfectly plan the production way ahead and balance it across the full season. And this is extremely efficient for us in the production. It really lowers down the cost, and it's much easier to scale up and scale down a production facility. So your biggest question, however, is if we can deliver the 10% growth and if we can deliver the 15% production hour growth, which is accompanied with that. And as I've mentioned, this is something which is not new to us. Since IPO, we've added 25% of units. Since IPO, we have added 50% of production hours. We've also been able to cater to the changing demands of our customers, and doubled the output of Clogs. While we were doing that, we were able to reduce our like-for-like costs. The growth was driven by three expansion projects. Arouca, where after the acquisition, we had 100 employees, now we have 800. Pasewalk, where we produce our PU and EVA shoes and sandals. And as we moved the PU and EVA from Görlitz to Pasewalk, we're also able to fill in the halls of Görlitz with more cork, latex footbeds and with more leather final assembly. So going forward, the 10% growth, the 10% per annum growth has to be fed by new factories or factory expansions. What we want to focus on in the next phase are extensions of existing factories and brownfield acquisition. Why is that? This is much faster for us to scale. That's the first point, although it's the third point on the page, but should be really the first point. In Wittichenau, we're gonna be able to start the production within a year of the transaction. For a greenfield, it might take 2, 3, 4 years, so it really speeds up the scaling. Similarly, for the extensions of existing facilities, it's much easier to ramp up an existing facility, have the colleagues who are already experienced in our processes, have the management team there, which then also transpires into a better business case on both of those types of expansions. So brownfields generally are lower price. For our Wittichenau example, we're gonna be probably at half of the price of Pasewalk, if you would compare the same sort of output. But also what we'll do with extensions and brownfields is we're gonna go more continuously, and this will be better for the absorption. The absorption will not take that long to sort of fully materialize, as we'll be adding lines to holes that already exist in Pasewalk that we can also scale our employees, and we can scale our growth. What we'll focus on in the next few years is leather and cork latex, where we see our biggest bottlenecks right now. But we will design all of our new facilities with flexibility, or rather, the full network with flexibility, to change what we produce in each of the factories so that we can cater to changing demands in the market. So three expansion projects are already on the way. I've already mentioned Görlitz, where we continue to fill in the halls. In FY 2027, our capacity will be 1.8 of the one that we had originally before Pasewalk and before the move-out. So that's 2023, 1.8 in terms of cork latex, 1.8 also in terms of final assembly. Wittichenau, I wanted to show how huge the facility is, and that's why I have not so nice picture, but it's 80,000 sq ft or 78,000 sq ft. Most of it is production. The aim here is to start really within one year of transaction. We already have a team build of people from Görlitz and Bernstadt who are helping with the ramp-up. Because it's just one hour away, it's much easier for us to ramp up this facility than it would be a facility which would be in a different region. And in Arouca, we'll continue to focus on leather components and articles that have higher minute and labor costs, as the labor costs in Portugal are meaningfully lower than in Germany. We're talking about roughly a half of the wage price in Arouca. We're looking to almost triple the production space within the next two years. And we won't stop there because in production, we also need to look beyond the three-year horizon and what will come. So as mentioned, we will continue to look for brownfield opportunities. There is a lot of insolvencies happening in the German market, so we're on the watch for production facilities that might come to us opportunistically. As mentioned in the video, we're also exploring an expansion of Pasewalk, where we can go to up to twice the size. There's no decision on that one yet, but we'll assess that going forward. That's for our production. We'll also need to adapt the other parts of the supply chain, and that comes mainly to logistics, which will have to deliver more units. It will also. Also, the profile of these units will change as we shift into different channels. And what is important on the last point here, APAC is growing, and we need to support the growth of APAC with different capabilities. So the biggest step for our logistics is to consolidate our warehouse footprint in Europe into less bigger warehouses. What will help with that is also shipping directly from our factories into the regions, into Americas, which we're already doing, but we want to scale up. What we also want to do is ship directly to APAC. And then what we want to do in APAC is, or what we're doing in APAC is looking for a regional hub, which will help with the replenishment of the new stores, which Klaus is mentioning. We need to be with a safety stock in the region, so we can fastly replenish stores and cater to customer demands in the region. Final point here is on the upstream logistics. We are also reassessing how we look at the upstream, specifically on leather, where we want to start bringing leather all to one place, inspecting leather, all in one place. So I've promised that my message is simple, and I'll be quick. I think I delivered on both of those. I just want to repeat, we will be ready with the supply chain. We'll be ready in terms of our production capacities. We'll also be ready in terms of our logistics. Now, we're also almost ready for the Q&A. If you can just keep seated for 2-3 minutes while we put here the chairs, and we'll be ready to go. So these mics are not coming. Where are they? I see David. David. Calling David. There he is. Yeah, you get a mic over there, David. Okay. Yeah. So we've got questions. We're gonna start... Let's start over here, because you were here first. Please just wait for a microphone, and again, remember to state your name. Your microphone. Oh, we're finished. Thank you. Almost. ... Thank you. Hi, guys. Simeon, like, thank you for all this. So just while we're thinking through that initial penetration slide that you guys made in the beginning, Do you know if I'm- Yeah. Just, does that think about the regions that are already sort of at the top of that penetration list? How do you think about the opportunity there? I don't know if this is follow-up or, but just curious, how do you think about now- Can you put on the volume a bit? Yeah. Because I can barely understand you. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's the reason of having a microphone. I can talk louder. Much better, Simeon. Go ahead. Within the penetration- That's close. I got the first part of the question. Okay. Second part... There you go. Okay. Oh. Just thinking about blue versus cork footbed. So how do you think about... How do you choose where to go? Is there a manufacturing discrepancy, a product, a supply discrepancy we should think about? And has the customer told you they prefer one or the other? Thank you. ... Thank you for your question, Simeon. I think the penetration chart shows very clearly that we have growth opportunity everywhere. And to your second part, of course, the instruments to conquer or unlock parts or new target groups for market might be different. Probably marketing spending is not part of the whole thing, because in the original game plan, you know, look at our marketing spendings, they are pretty low comparable to the growth overall. And we definitely don't plan to change this, because the truth is, we don't see any, you know, real effects behind it. We just received a study yesterday, and we may share it. Stefan Schieder received it yesterday night, or tonight, sorry. That the Gen Z is the fastest accelerating awareness group in this, in this, company. So, the awareness we're creating in this very interesting target group globally is tremendous. And, if you, if you ask me, "How much did you spend on it?" I have to show you the middle of the donut, as you know. So, it is what David also described, you know, in this vivid cooperation with a very strong, very socially, very strong communicating wholesale door. If they're doing the job for us, and they implementing the, the bri- the, the brand on a, on a, on a very high qualitatively level, it's a free ride for us, you know. They deliver the story, they deliver all this lifestyle momentum around the brand and the purpose around the brand, and of course, we help them with our own online and our own retail fleets. But, you know, you talk about the sizes of the doors compared to our own doors, so there's a big opportunity that you won't find a Birkenstock store and find a wholesale door. So it is the magic combination of long-term partnerships presenting on a very qualitatively level, the brand, and that creates an awareness level in all social demographic. And this is the game plan also for the now under-penetrated areas, how we unlock these territories. But, you know, there are several other instruments and, you know, maybe Nico can answer the question, you know, like, what is going on in France? How do you wanna, you know, speed up the situation in Spain or in Benelux? So all this will be probably slightly different from the growth algorithm, from the power to move forward. It's unbreakable. Yeah. So just to add to this one, Simeon, the fairly under-penetrated markets are also those markets that we took over later from a distributor. So as you know, we've been around in Germany and the German-speaking region for ages. And France, we took over the market was 2020, 2021, so it's just five years ago. So by nature, these markets are in... with regards to brand awareness and consideration, under-penetrated, and not all distributors, quite frankly, did a good job in really representing the brand in the right way. So, what we do is we follow the same game plan across all countries. But yes, we're gonna put a bigger focus with regards to retail expansion, with regards to teams on the ground, with regards to B2B partnerships in those countries. So that will help accelerate those countries further and help grow those countries much faster than the more traditional markets. Okay, we've got a lot of questions w ith Sam, go ahead. Sam Poser with Williams Trading. What? No, that's, that's- The book is full. Look at it. I have one very long question. Number one, in Europe, with Zalando, is that something you're gonna take over and run as a marketplace? Because the distribution, you have 383 style colorways in Estonia, among other things, and so I'm wondering what you're thinking there. Yeah. And also, what is the growth plan for EMEA? 'Cause you gave the growth plan for the other two regions, but did not have it up on the slide for, for EMEA. And then secondly, what is the bridge between the 10% production growth and the 13%-15% revenue growth, and, you know, over the next three years? And I have more, but I'll just... So before you go with more, let me just take the EMEA part of that. So the growth algorithm for EMEA we shared is gonna continue to be double digit, and we're gonna engineer this growth towards highest profitability. That's our promise. And that's how we look at EMEA in the next three years. On the Zalando part, for sure, you read your report. It's a good question. And if you look at Zalando, currently, Zalando is also operating. They do their own buy, but they also operate as a marketplace. If you deduct all the marketplace offering, which is not owned by Zalando, which is partly an old offering from ex partners that we worked with, but they still sit on product, like broken size on everything. If you deduct that, it's 50% lower. And currently, what Zalando offers compared to our side, is less than 50% of SKU count. So that is something that is to be considered. If we look at Zalando as a third-party marketplace opportunity, we're exploring that. We can't talk about Zalando as a name, but we are exploring diverse marketplace opportunity to gain better control over what's happening on marketplaces from our side. ... The consumer doesn't know that that's what's going on. That's true. Why not just get in there, take back all the stuff, get that place looking like Nordstrom here in the States, which has 120 style colorways on their website? 'Cause I assume that Nordstrom here in the States probably does more revenue than Zalando does in Estonia, among other countries. Yeah. You don't need 800 and some odd style colorways in Germany or Italy or France either, so- Yeah. These styles are gonna naturally fade away. It's really broken size runs, so they're gonna sell out, and at some point they're not gonna be there anymore. It's old product, and we're exploring that opportunity with Zalando as a third-party marketplace to get a better control. That's where we are currently, but it's early conversations we're having with them. Sam, maybe coming back to your second question, effectively your third already. So if you're disaggregating the growth, so where it is coming from, basically, and we heard already from Jakob, supply chain is underwriting the 10% growth algorithm when it comes to unit. Then you go further and drill down in the ASP and what's driving ASP, basically, the question around your 3-5, where this is coming from. The biggest contributor in the past to ASP, of course, has been channel, and we talked about that. David spoke about it, and Nico has spoke about it already. Over the past 10 years, when starting D2C, when starting online, we grew the penetration already to 38% in the mix overall. And this has been a large contributor also to ASP, basically. And now what we see is that B2B growth is outpacing D2C, and effectively, this is a negative to ASP, mathematically. And what are the positives then? It's like-for-like pricing, basically, and you've seen the charts on the margin bridge. This is positively contributing, net of inflation. Clearly a driver. It's closed-toe penetration. So over fiscal 2025, closed-toe penetration has been up 500 basis points. This is also positive to ASP. And then it's also, region, basically. So if you look at the APAC region, the need of the customer and the desire for the customer to choose even more elevated styles, elevated execution, naturally driving price points higher. And these three things, naturally, are the positive contributors to that. And basically, this is how the 3-5 are made up over the next three years. Go ahead, Matt. Matt. Matthew Boss, JP Morgan. So, Oliver, maybe to that point, could you speak to your level of confidence on at least delivering on today's 13%-15% revenue growth plan? I think really the question is, other than channel mix, which is tied to the new customer acquisition and the associated supply chain capacity constraints, has anything at all actually changed with the business? Has anything actually changed with underlying demand relative to the mid- to high-teens top-line algorithm that you laid out at the IPO? Thank you for the question, Matt. We see unbroken demand out there, okay? So we all see that, you know, there is a kind of a slowdown in our own online, which is, you know, you see this all over the places, not us, only with us. David brought it up, Nico brought it up. We, of course, work against this, and re-platforming is just one of the actions we take. But the growth algorithm you see today and the one... the 13-15 is not coming from slowdown in demand or capacity constraints. It's coming from having a globally clean markets, you know? So we're definitely not shift or, you know, unbalance the two channels from wholesale to D2C. You know, we need to keep everything balanced. If you look at the resilience of this brand since IPO, and you know what, what's going on, you know, it was like from war in Ukraine to energy crisis in Europe, currency, tariff, all this craziness out there. We are a resilient brand because we balance it out. And could we grow faster in wholesale? Yes, we can, but what would be the result of this, okay? You talk about ASP, you talk about, you know, revenue generation and this and this, and, different segments. We have the full piano, okay? We can decide in which area of the world do we get the best profitability out of this pair, and this is what we will execute in the future. And this is why you see, for the next three years, a decline in growth algorithm compared to the one we picked when we filed for the IPO. That's the only thing, that's the only difference. It's not the demand, it's not brand heat, you know. This is not the issue. We need to come back to the point where we say, "Hey, we want to have top clean markets, we want to have the best-in-class distribution, and we keep everything, every channel should be balanced." Same, same truth for the APAC region, same for EMEA, you know? And of course, if you put all, all perspectives together, there is a- there's an impact on the US business, which is 55% of our existing business at the moment, yeah? Of course, one would expect that we need to shift in the other areas as well, because you see the growth in APAC, and it's a very attractive ASP market. It's a very attractive margin market. Same with within Europe. Okay? So the margin profile all over Europe, and you've seen the under-penetration we just talked about, Simeon. I mean, all this under-penetrated market in Europe are creating a big runway with a very-- and, you know, maybe Nico was too quiet on this, but the margins in this area are super, super strong. So I know, you know, online is synonymous for brand heat. Could be. But look at us, we have, we're hot as hell, and we can sell shoes everywhere, but we keep it balanced. We're steering. What you see is a steered growth algorithm. It's not, you know, go to the maximum, whatever. That's not how we operate this business. That's why I started with the mission Karl Birkenstock gave to me. It's not about quick and dirty. It's about long way, and it will be longer than my life and longer than your life. You have to accept this. Christina, and then we'll move back over here. Thank you. We'll get to everybody's questions, I promise. Thank you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Michael, no. Flip it down. It's good. Thank you for all the color. Krisztina Katai from Deutsche Bank. Oliver, you talked about the success of obviously the closed-toe business. It's now close to 40% of the mix. It's been a nice contributor to ASPs. How do you see the closed-toe performance within your 13%-15% growth target? And how do you think about the need to invest more in brand building? Obviously, you talked about storytelling, more content creator partnerships, but do you think you need to invest more to increase the consumer awareness? There's a lot of people that we talk to that doesn't even know that Birkenstock sells lace-up shoes or, or, or boots. Can you talk about how you, how you view that potential need for investment there? Thank you for your question. This brand is hot for 250 years. It's burning constantly. Could we create a bigger fire? Yes, we can. Do we waste a lot of wood? Yes. So it's a perspective, okay? And that's why it's so important to do the, you know, broader view on, okay, what is going on in the rest of the world? Honestly, what would we get for bigger growth rates? The awareness is there. It's already bigger than our capacity, so there's no sense in putting more petrol to the fire and make it bigger, you know? For us, it's a balanced approach. If you think about the third chart I presented with the positioning of Birkenstock, of this, 13%-15% growth and 30%+ margin, there's nobody out there, nobody, delivering the same combination. Nobody. So what should we do? Should we go faster grow? And then you would change around and say, "Hey, what's about your margin?" You know? So this is—for us, this is the pace, and that's what we deliver. And look back, last two years, 41% growth in revenue, 38% EBITDA, 30+ margin, all good. Buy back shares, investing EUR 275 million in the business. That's a pretty solid thing. So now you, Mike. Okay, let's go with Laurent, then Michael, then we'll come back over here, and then we're gonna move back. Promise. Thank you very much. Laurent Vasilescu from BNP Paribas. I've got a two-part question here. You're guiding for a 57%-58% gross margin. You know, over the last few years with Pasewalk, it was a-- there was that factory absorption. As we consider the three expansions, or one of them obviously is a new factory, but could we see an impact there on the gross margin over the next couple of years? Or is it a different situation? And then the second part of the question here is, I know you guide to EBITDA, but tax rate's pretty high in the high 20s. Is there an opportunity for the tax rate to go down and potentially pay, even pay down the, the TRA, which I think is an EPS drag to your business? Thank you. That was more than one question, Laurent. It's bad neighborhood, bad neighborhood. Bad neighbor- Being next to Sam, that's... So on gross margin. So right, Laurent, it's 57%-58%. This is what we'll be guiding in the three years plan, up to and including 2028. The reality is tariffs and FX are hitting us, and this is what we also mentioned when we spoke mid-December on our guidance. So if you add back the impacts of tariffs and FX to gross margin, we are perfectly in line with a previous long-term goal of being in the 60% range. And this is sometimes what people forget, that this is hurting us, and this is outside of our control. And if you look at the bridges, basically today, you see that we are getting operationally better in terms of absorption, in terms of the pricing, how we do pricing, in terms of all the efficiencies Jakob spoke about in production. But at the same time, we will be continuing to invest also in our business, be it retail, be it the ramp-up of the factories. So yes, over time, there is this drag, which is outside of our control, but over time, we will also be operationally better while investing and continuously investing in our business. And this is coming directly back to how gross, gross margin will develop over time. And then remind me, Laurent, the second part of your question was? Tax rate and TRA. Yeah, tax rate and the TRA point. So the tax rate has come down, and we see immediate benefit of the tax rate. It started already in Q4 2025. As you know, the lion's share of the group's tax expense is bound to Germany. Germany has a higher tax rate as compared to other countries in the group and worldwide. The tax rate in Germany will come down starting effectively 2028 over a five-years period. So the corporate income tax rate will come down from 15 to 10. We are immediately benefiting from that in the deferred taxes, and the actual taxes will kick then in 2028, basically. So this is why we have guided in the corridor of 26%-28% as the effective tax rate, and this is considerably lower as compared to the time when we guided at the IPO, which then was 30%. So the benefit of tax is already in. There will be further benefit, but then 28% and going forward. And the last part on the TRA, yes, we will be paying down the TRA. So you will see, and this is what we've also in our cash flow is baked in, in the cash flow plan for 2026. So we expect TRA payouts of around EUR 60 million, and the repayment of the TRA will also start with fiscal 2026. Michael? Thanks. Michael Binetti with Evercore. Thanks for all the detail today, guys. Just a simple one. When we come back in a few years and look at the long-range plan, what that you laid out here today, do you hope the most you'll have outperformed the targets by? And I guess, maybe just help us talk about what a point of upside looks like to the 13%-15% revenue growth. As one of the only manufacturers, a lot of the analysts in here cover, you guys have a lot of fixed costs, a little different cost structure. I'm curious what a point of upside would look like on EBITDA, and then a similar question, you know, obviously, footwear businesses go through cycles. What does a point of downside look like during a period of revenue headwind as you are building manufacturing capacity, adding fixed costs to the P&L? Michael, happy to take the first part, of the question, with regards to, oh, is there any upside to 30%+? I mean, 30%+, and this is what you need to keep in mind, we're guiding 30%+ in an environment which is much more challenging than it was at the point in time when we've been at the IPO. So this 30%+ is based on the U.S. dollar at 1.17, basically, so it includes that drag. I mean, you're all following the news. We've been at 1.19, 1.20 over the last three days, but we've baked in the 1.17. And also, we have baked in the additional drag from tariff. And this is something that you, that you keep in mind, so apples for apples. Also, we've mentioned in the earnings call in December, if you add back these adverse effects, hey, we are operationally better. This is very much important if you think about that. What is the drivers again behind margin, if you think about gross margin and further flowing through to EBITDA? Yes, we are a manufacturing company. We are looking into every process, every step of our manufacturing through the entire value chain, from sourcing raw materials on Marcus' end, up to logistics to Jakob. So managing raw material prices, managing labor prices, managing all processes. We'll never be a 100% automated production company. This is not what is going to happen, but we will increase semi-automation, so all the production steps helping us gaining efficiency. This is what we'll be constantly doing and what we've also done in the past, basically. Also, one point that is important, at that growth pace, 13%-15%, yes, this requires investment. We will be ramping up our production. We will bring online new capacity, but also, we will be investing in our retail footprint, basically. This is something that needs to come together and needs to be balanced over time. This is something that if you take all that together, we feel very comfortable, and we are committing to 30%+. If there's any upside on the way, they will take it. Also, keep in mind, it comes with investment over time. Na- Natasha? I think- Wait. Oh, I'm sorry. You had a second question about what, what- One point of upside. One point of upside. Yeah, I can take it. You know, Michael, it's the way how we see the business is a balanced perspective. So we don't do this all-in things, okay? That's how we grow our business from a sales perspective, but it's also how we grow the business from a production perspective. So just to give you, it's a multilayer planning thing. So you have a machine operated by eight people. You can do this in one shift, in two shift, or in three shift, okay? So you breathe in and out in your shifts, one per one layer. Second layer is these eight persons, are they all fully employed, or do we have part-time workers here in between? And the part-time workers could be up to, like, 30, 40%, you know? So you can breathe in, in this segment as well, okay? We prepared it always like this, but the history teaches us so far, we never breathe out. It was never the case. So it was never enough, and we're always running full speed. But globally, this is the approach, how we develop our production and the factory sides by having a relevant share in part-time workers, having the full flexibility in operating at one, two, or three shifts. And, you know, that's always coming back to you because you, you were part of this journey from the first day. You know, when you ask: "How much shoes can you produce from this factory?" It's a number that goes from two or up two. So it's really like, okay, how, how, how often do you play the piano, and do you play it 24/7? It's a different outcome than playing it one shift a week, you know? So. Okay, Natasha? Over here. Hi. Hello. So this is Natasha Bonnet from Morgan Stanley, and thank you very much for having us today for all these amazing presentations. So obviously, you've been successful at being a pull model, and one debate which you boarded obviously was, you know, the debate of moving to a push model given the share of wholesale. You've explained that obviously you have the luck that you can choose where you grow going forward. Can you share maybe the average level of demand you fulfill at wholesale, you know, at wholesale partners? That would be helpful. And how you manage allocation and assortment to B2B versus D2C. And maybe just also a follow-up on the previous point on gross margins. In the video you showed, you mentioned the possibility of improving margins further from automation. Now, you said semi-automation, but is that something we could see in the next three years, or is this probably a bit more forward-looking? Thank you very much. Happy to come back, Natasha, on the question with regards to gross margin. I mean, we are a manufacturing company at the heart, basically, so we are constantly improving all the processes everywhere, in every process, in every factory. So there is no need for us to wait for the next three years. It's constantly happening. And scale naturally does help, but scale comes also on the other side with investment and ramp up. So this is naturally. So for us, it's not unnatural, basically, as we do it, have ever done it, and we'll be continuing to do it. So no need to wait. It's happening already. And maybe I add something here, Natasha, because the investment in Pasewalk was quite unique. Just as a reminder, the awful war in Ukraine collapsed completely when we start the construction site. So we had phone calls, people calling us saying, "Hey, the construction steel is coming from Mariupol in Ukraine. It's under bombardment, so there's no chance to get anything out of it. The good news is, you have to pay triple the price for it." So, the situation around the building costs of Pasewalk were quite unique. As another reminder, it was done before the IPO, so it was already priced in. Okay? And Pasewalk is a bit unique also from the perspective of, okay, what is coming out of Pasewalk? You know, if you listen to the video, you may learn that, okay, they're producing the EVA in Pasewalk, they're producing the PU in Pasewalk. And for us, it was important, once we further unlocked the APAC region, to be ready with the PU production. Because Marcus showed you some, you know, direct injected versions of closed-toe shoes with a very rigid outsole, you know, fully certified. But for this region, like tropical humidity, you know, water readiness is definitely an asset. So it was important for us from a portfolio standpoint to have this muscle on board, which is dedicated to EVA and PU. So that's why the absorption of this factory was mainly coming from two different styles, the EVA and the PU. Everything else you see today in terms of investment is based on a very huge range of articles. Okay? So if we, as an example, increase our cork latex footbed production, every single pair will help digesting the OpEx in... You know, it, it's, it's just like, comes natural, you know, to digest these one-off costs and, and scale them up quicker, you know? So don't take Pasewalk as a role model to simulate in your models the, okay, you know, per EUR 100 million, they need to have 2.X years, okay? Jakob shared some of his views. I think you said 2.4 years, right? Yeah, 2.5. On average. But it's really... You know, it's a different animal. Because, you know, if you look at the pre-production facility in Portugal, right now, they have an output of 5 million pairs, you know? So it is a very fast-growing thing, and this is relevant from the beginning. Okay? And then we grow accordingly. So it's not. It's incremental in terms of output, which is urgently needed for us. And then we have to decide from a sales perspective between Nico, Klaus, and David, where do we put the pairs? Where's the best revenue sitting on it, you know? And that's the game. Just, You, yeah. Your first question was on the percentage of unmet demand. Yeah, you had a question- Yep ... on supply and demand and also pull versus push. For us, as we laid out, the ultimate metric is full price realization. And with our full price realization, I think we can clearly say we are very far from a push model. It's still a very, very strong pull, pull model, and we do everything possible to preserve that pull model. And Marcus showed a beautiful slide of many, many different Arizonas across different price points. If we just had one of those models, our demand would be a fraction of what it is right now, because we build demand. We invest in this model from all the different price points. So by nature, the demand grows as we further invest in specific silhouettes. Don't, please don't see demand as something static that we deliver against, and then there's a certain threshold, and then the thing collapses. It's not the case. The further we invest in specific silhouettes, in specific usage occasions, the more the demand grows. And that's something that's also quite unique for us. Just to give you a number, because you need to write it down in your Excel sheet, I know. We believe that in these penetrated markets, we have a headroom of, let's say, 20% demand on top of the existing one, or maybe 30%. But this is really not the measurement. The measurement is, if you balance this out in the upcoming markets, how much of this demand do we need to develop the other regions to bring them on the next level? And then also, which is the other layer, is, okay, in which channel, in which geography, and what is the margin? Because, you know, globally, everything is somehow in motion, and this is the beauty of the resilience of this brand, that we have the freedom to choose where do we put the product. With an underdeveloped demand, because demand is always higher than our supply, we have a big freedom and a big leg space to execute. And then in some regions, the unfulfilled demand will grow and getting smaller somewhere else. So, but again, what is the guideline for us? Keep it balanced. Keep it balanced and mindful and not doing quick, quick stuff. It's like step by step, organically. People need to digest what's going on inside and outside. So- Okay, let's go right here to Lorraine. Hi. Thank you. Lorraine Hutchinson from Bank of America. I had a question on APAC. How is developing the e-commerce business differed versus other regions? And how are you managing your own D2C demand online versus third-party sites? It's loud. The digital business is quite new in APAC. I mean, we opened four outlets since the IPO, so we're in a very early stage. And at this time, we are scaling up and doing a lot of direct events with people and bringing them online. And, and China is for sure one of the most developed digital markets, where we are learning a lot and taking them as example also for using new technologies and so to go faster and come closer to our customers. And second question was against how we... Our own DTC versus third-party market. Our own DTC versus third-party markets? Good question. Growing your own DTC with the retail part, I think that's the most important to create the awareness. I think that's what we focus on right now. Okay, let's see. Jay? Then we'll come back over here. Promise. Hi, thank you so much. Jay Sole, UBS. Oliver, the company's done a great job. You can see from the slides, just the, there's growth, the margins, the returns, everything. You know, you've done everything you said you would do at the time of the IPO. You know, my question is, you know, today, the stock's at $37.70, and at the time of the IPO it priced at $46. The question is: What can you do to make sure the company gets credit from the market for the growth that you're delivering and for everything that you're, you know, you're doing, that you said that you would do? That's a good question, Jay. I think we, as a team, we can only deliver what we promise. We stay on our track. You know, we, we do our work. Honestly, I think it's, it's, it's quite helpful for the, for the operational teams to not look at the share price too often. Because if you have this kind of disconnection between your, your growth and, you know, the, the level of excellence, how you deliver quarter by quarter, and then see this reflected in the share price, you know, this is a clear disconnect. So, what we can do, what we can deliver is very simple. We have to fulfill our mission, and our mission is to deliver what we promise. It's the same game. Doesn't matter if we're family-owned, if we are belonging to a conglomerate of different companies, financial investors, or if you're publicly listed. It's just, okay, you tell the story about the brand, you do the business, you're responsible for this, and then the market will follow. That's what we see, and that's what we execute. Don't expect us to do, you know, whatever, you know. We cannot trigger this, you know? We do all we can, and, I mean, the whole team shows confidence moving forward. I think we're one of the rare companies showing up in such a bandwidth, because I do believe that having a smart CFO and a whatever CEO is not very helpful at all. Because, the truth is, everybody rows the boat, and this is a team effort, and it's not just a one-trick pony, not even from a presentation standpoint, okay? That's why we're here. That's why we want you to, to see, and it's also important from insight from our team, to listen to you guys. What is your perspective? What can we improve in communication, in, in storytelling? Because this is more than a brand for us. It's a love. It's an emotional connection to the brand, and, it's, it's different for all of us, of course, but, we are all connected to this brand, and that connects us, and this is what we, what we bring out to the world, and this is how we create the business. We are very proud, especially I'm super proud about the team and the efforts and the heavy lifting they're doing, especially in this environment. If they're not getting rewarded by the share price, okay, that's it. You know? The only thing I can do is say, "Just do your thing," and that's what we're doing, whatever the share price delivers. Okay, I think we'll come back over here, Janine, and then flip with Paul. Oh, and then we're back there. I see you, Dana. Okay. Hi, Janine Stichter at BTIG. Just want to follow up on the allocation process. As you allocate with your B2B partners, how much of the assortment or the mix is dictated by them versus you? Is that changing at all? And then maybe one for David, can you speak a bit to segmentation, just your overall thought process there, and what kind of product overlap there is between the different B2B channels? Thank you. Yeah, first off, on allocation, and the word gets overused because a lot of people say allocate, and it really means what the retailer gives you an order, that's the allocation. We do the complete opposite. It's completely vendor-managed. It's a little bit of an art, and it's a little bit of a science, and this has been going on since really Ralph Lauren invented it 40 or 50 years ago. I think we've taken it to a higher level because we do it by door, we do it by channel, and you also have to do it by calendar because there are windows in time when your stock levels need to be higher and need to be lower. I mean, during back-to-school, you want to make sure that if somebody is making the trip to the mall, and they're coming to get your product, you don't want them disappointed. Two months later, you might run the inventory down a little bit. So again, it's a little bit of an art and a little bit of a science. How much is mandated by the retailer? I don't want to sound too abrupt in saying this, but zero. Our allocation means we create the assortments that you see out at retail. The retailer is basically just the conduit to bring it to the consumer. If you walk, you know, 10 blocks from here, and you go to 57th Street, and you look at what we look like in a major retail department store, every single shoe, the quantity that's in the back room, is planned by our team. That's what we do. We're a sell-through organization, not a sell-in organization. And the result of it is your report card, your gross margin return on investment, and that means that the retailer has more of an appetite season after season, and you little by little grow the business, depending on where you think you're segmenting and where you're reaching that customer. The term segmentation also, it's something that's maybe a little bit passé in the industry right now. We don't really strictly segment as much as people used to, at least here in the Americas. There is crossover 'cause consumers shop in different channels. It's the same consumer. We try to give them a different experience based on where they're shopping. We try to allocate differently, but the way I would liken it to you, it's like a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle that we try to make the brand picture, and we just take the pieces and create them, and there's a lot of people who are just experts in the channel and experts in the business. I would sum it up by saying, our person who handles any retail account is more of an expert in that account than the retailer's own buyer, and that's the way we treat this brand. Okay, Paul? Hey, thanks. Paul Lejuez, Citi. David, maybe sticking with you for a bit on the Americas. Curious on new store growth in the, in the Americas. Can you talk about what you see when you open a store? What do you see in the e-com business? What do you see in the nearby wholesale B2B accounts? Also would love to know what sort of new store productivity you plan. And then also on the B2B side, you talked about several hundred new doors. Curious if you could talk about which segments, which of your partners do you see those opportunities? Thanks. Yeah, most of the new doors won't come from current partners. There might be a little bit of rounding out of portfolios, but when I listed those 600 doors, they are by and large very small specialty locations. For example, like the pro shop at Pebble Beach or a very high-end running store in, like, Weston, Connecticut, or something like that. They're very, very laser specific. As far as when we open a new store, we do see an uptick in our D2C business from, like, let's say, I don't know, a 100-mile radius, it doesn't happen immediately. I think we've seen initially we get a little bit of a pop, then it really spikes, and then it kind of goes down to a bit of a more normal level that's below that spike, but it's still higher than it was beforehand. So certainly, the stores do act as a little bit of a, a lightning rod in an area, as they should be, and they also act as points for membership. Remember, you can become a member in the store. We do buy online, pickup in-store. And by the way, 7% of our store business is what we call endless aisle. It's somebody that we fulfilled something online, but the store gets the sale, so it becomes one channel. Productivity? I don't know if I'd put a number to the productivity, but if you're looking for, like, a dollar per sq ft or something, but from a, Way. I would just say everything is running ahead of our initial expectations in every location that we've opened so far, and I think that's where that discipline is. I mean, to tell you the truth, I'm more terrified of opening a bad location than I am of finding a good location. You know, there could be construction on a street. There could be a restaurant that you think is great that goes out of business. There's a million and one things that happen in retail that could impact your best-laid plans. That's why you have to kind of be super disciplined with it. Okay, let's go to the back there. Dana? Thank you. Hi, it's Dana Telsey from Telsey. When with the IPO, one of the things you talked about with product, and product is obviously key driver, where the top line and everything else comes from, is opportunities to expand in different occupational areas, whether it was restaurants, healthcare. How do you see the product development in the different regions, and where are you in that occupational opportunity? Thank you. I'll take the first part of the question because I think it's for us, it's a clear task, you know, to bring footbed to the people. That's why I started with this mission, because that's the core of whatever we do. So, the truth is, this was the origin of this brand, being in this professional environment. Every dentist, every doctor, every nurse, they brought the brand to daylight, you know, because they're wearing the brand in different environments, or the chefs wear the brand. So it's like it is, somehow coming back home for these people. Now, talking about the business perspective of this is, and it's a global thing, by the way, so there's no difference, you know, because all the major chefs are international. All the... You know, being a doctor is an international job. You know, you can work wherever. So, it's pretty much in line, but the beauty of this business is that these people, once they are with a brand, they stay with us, and what we can arrange here is a pretty interesting business model that's coming from our, it's part of our D2C brand because they can simply order their styles, their executions with us directly, no middleman in between. And this is the ultimate goal we see in this professional segment and also, by the way, in the orthopedic segment. So insoles, pimp up your running shoes with insoles, golf shoes. David talked about this. So there is part of, you know, what is a professional environment. Could be a golf shop, could be a golf club, could be, you know, an orthopedic environment, but ultimately, they should come to us directly online. Once you know your shoe size, you can pick, you can replenish, you can fill all your different apartments, houses, wherever you are, and keep these things available wherever you need them. So that's the beauty of this business, and the core of these people, they know exactly why they buy it. It's coming more from the purpose perspective of the brand and less of, okay, what kind of color execution, what kind of fanciness is this and that? So that's why we go very wide in the segmentation here, and the business model itself, it's very, very interesting from margin, gross profit margin, EBITDA margin, from every angle. Marcus, you can, you can add some more. Yeah, I thought the second part was more about distribution, so I'd love to talk about product, but I think it's interesting if you guys give some examples of how we are addressing- Yeah, so I can give you a bit of context on EMEA. EMEA is the largest business in professional across the regions, and we were, for the second time, at the largest trade fair, A+A, in Düsseldorf, and we got huge response. So this whole professional piece has been forgotten a bit, I'd say, because we are so, so, so successful with the fashion part of our business. But through a direct approach on a trade fair with these intermediaries, with these large associations like hospitals, like industry, like workwear associations, we have now a much more direct access to them through that trade fair. And we can definitely see this business over-indexing total growth in EMEA, and that is driven by new innovation. And, Marcus, you can, I think, for sure, talk about the innovation that we are bringing. It's certified innovation. I think that's the point of differentiation. It's not just innovation, for the sake of being innovative. It's really certified for the specific usage occasion. That's something that will probably take a bit longer, but it's much more sustainable as a business to unlock because it's not seasonal, it's not cyclical, it's a steady business, and we are quite pleased with the progress we make in EMEA. … Just a quick one from a product. I mean, we went now through a complete workover of the line for professionals in the past 2, 3 years, after basically some products have been in the range for 20, 30 years, sometimes. So the rework has been done, but I think the big work now lies in distribution and building up the models and penetrating the market, and also there building awareness again. That is a bit of a sad story- Yep 'Cause we invented it. Honestly speaking, we were really very early mover in that market, and as you rightly said, there was maybe a bit of insufficient attention, but there's a lot of effort now going on in the markets individually. Also, in APAC and in the U.S., we have activities everywhere. It's not too much now from innovation to be done. It's more penetration, bringing it out there and landing it. Okay, Anna? Anna Andreeva from Piper Sandler, and thank you guys so much for all the color. We had a question on digital and to David. It was really interesting to hear Nico's presentation about the efforts digitally in EMEA when it comes to personalization some of the specific to digital styles, you know, et cetera. Can you talk about where are you with some of those initiatives in the U.S.? Especially considering that the younger consumer that you target is so digitally native. I think you mentioned re-platforming the site. When can we expect that? And I'm not sure if you have a app for Birk currently. I don't think you do. Maybe some of the plans, you know, for that. Just as a follow-up, can you guys talk about some of the learnings from APAC to other geographies? APAC obviously is very digitally native. So curious of any learnings from that. Thank you. So I start with the APAC learning curve because I'm heavily involved here in this. You know, what you can see or what, what you learn from APAC, especially, you know, like, Southeast Asia, and, and China, is that, okay, there is this platform business, more or less like marketplaces. That's one part of the business, and then, most of this is event-driven, okay? So doing, shopping events, creating this, buzz around the brand. Normally, to be super honest, in China, it's all price-driven, okay? So discount, discount, discount. Tiffany is sitting here in the, in the second row. You belong to the first row, but you know that. And you know, she, she man- she's managing this, this kind of business, but she's not attracting people by price reductions. She's going into the full price direction, and that's a different game, but it's also somehow event-driven. So the ingredients and the tool set is the same, but the reason why is completely different. Because normally, big brands, they go for, I don't know, you know, the Black Fridays. They have several Black Fridays constantly changing names, so probably don't need to remember them, but it's all coming through pricing, okay? 20% off, 30% off, 70% off. The platforms try to push you in this corner as well and say: "Okay, you have to do this if you want to take a part of it." And we manage it very, very strictly, you know. And that's why the D2C muscle in China, and that Klaus tried to explain it to you earlier in the question, is like, okay, D2C is definitely own retail driven in, especially in Asia. We hired a very experienced guy in this region to execute this rollout in own retail, and you see how quickly, you know, the own and partner retail is increasing in this area. So this will be a very strong muscle in a very short time. And it's... But the focus on this is not price and reduction. It's about full price, it's about luxury, it's about the, you know, very high level. I don't know if it was part of the presentation, but I think you, we mentioned it, that in some of our stores, we already have 30 or 40%, 17 74. So the bandwidth in terms of pricing in China, it's the opposite, that what you can hear from if LV is reporting their numbers from China or other regions. It's- There is no price sensitivity in this area when it comes to this brand because it's also this magic mix of scarcity, brand heat, and then purpose-driven mentality. It's a very Asian mentality to say: "Okay, this is a tactical, haptical product. I go, I listen. I have this huge history behind it, 177 4, over 250 years." And all this together is very encouraging in the whole APAC region if it comes to own retail, and that's why you should expect a very strong growth in this part of the D2C business. As you know, the online part of this business is, in some areas, very restricted, and you have to go a lot over marketplaces, which is not that attractive. So that's why we decided to go more into own retail, and the online business is a vivid part of it, but not really the one we're focusing on. We're focusing on own retail, we're focusing on strong, very selected wholesale partnerships, and that's how we move forward. David, do you want to take the first question on digital? Yeah, Anna, it's interesting because the dynamics in digital are... It's kind of unique. Your website needs to be all things to all people that are searching for Birkenstock, right? And we say, who's our targeted consumer? ... you know, every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth. So your website needs to be very broad, tell a very broad story about the brand, and satisfy everyone. What's the interesting dynamic is when I talked about the emerging youth as our fastest velocity, the more a retail chain caters to that consumer, the smaller their dot-com business is. So the leading youth retailer in the United States, let's say they do only 10% of their business online, and their CEO will tell you it'll probably never go over 20, whereas a department store might be 30%-40%. So we have to do certain things for certain demographics in different ways. We know that this emerging youth consumer is consuming content in different ways than the traditional consumer is. It's less how do we beat them over the head, or, you know, are we a cowboy, and how do we go and steer them and grab them and lasso them? It's more, how do we make sure in their fluid decision-making, how do we make sure we're telling our story, giving them content, but in a commercial way that could drive it and give them that opportunity from our own website? And then when we do, what are those advantages from a level of exclusivity, from a level of assortment, and eventually, possibly things like personalization? I think we have time for one more, so let's do this last question, and then we will get something to eat. Hi, thanks. Peter McGoldrick from Stifel. I've got a question on the distribution model, or the supply model, actually. So historically, we've thought about the engineered distribution model, and now, with capacity constraints, there's an opportunity to perceive this as an engineered supply model, too. So if we think of tying that to the product development, thinking to the Arizona slide, where we have the different price levels, can we think about how that ties to the rest of the portfolio? What's the right mix of core versus elevated executions and higher price points, and how might that flow through the P&L? I think a very good question. Thank you very much. I think it's like, you know, think about the chart I presented with the penetration. I think in the higher penetrated markets, it is a very balanced approach. In the less developed market, I just had an example of China, you know. This high-price model have a big halo effect, and it's somehow placing or benchmarking the brand in the awareness of the people. It could be absolutely diverse if you go in different social demographics or in different age groups, you know. And that's just an example from Raoul in Japan, you know. We're in Japan since 60 years. So old people know the brand, but they know the brown leather Arizona. They know the brown Bostons and all this, so very basic elements of the brand. But the youth is catching up, and they prefer more embellishments, you know, shearling executions and more expensive ones. So we have both sitting in the same boat, okay? Both models, you know, the old school ones and the new ones, and newness, higher price points. But then you all of a sudden see, look at the Boston in the U.S., the youth consumer that sits with David, you know? That's a style that's in the market for 60 years. We never, we say exactly the same execution, same leather, same quality, same thing. Okay, Gen Z came by, and they said, "That's the one." They grab it, everybody have to have it, and that's it, you know? So the magic is in between. The message for you guys should be, we can play wherever, from a price point, from a social demographic, from an attractive access to the brand, from a storytelling standpoint, you know. Nobody should ever question the power of this brand in terms of communication. There are a lot of brands out there creating, you know, social media noise around nothing, okay? This is a 200-year-old brand. I think we can tell a tons of story about every single pair we're producing, because everything is real. Nothing is pretended and, you know, designed in. It's all with us. We own the supply chain. We own the whole story, and not since two summers, since 250 years. So really, that's a big, big, big foundation from a product standpoint, from a storytelling standpoint, from a distribution standpoint. Big thing. Okay, so we are going to wrap it up there. I know we're out early, which is great. So I just wanna remind everybody, we have lunch. Help yourself. Please make sure that you've been able to see all of the displays, and we have the rest of the team here for, you know, Q&A, if you have specific questions on certain regions. And then also just make sure that you go back and get your foot measured and grab a footbed before you go. Okay? Thank you all for joining us. Appreciate it. Sorry, it was so cold in here. But it's warmer than it is outside. Oh, great.