CCC SA

WSE:CCC

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q1

[Marcin Czyczerski, executive]

Good afternoon. My name is Marcin Czyczerski. I have the pleasure of being the CEO of CCC S.A. I'm going to have the pleasure of running today's presentation with [ Christian Belenchik ]. I'd like to welcome him. He has joined us at the beginning of February. Previously, for many, many years, he was in a variety of managerial functions in retail companies, Tasco in Poland, in the U.K. Recently, he was in PEPCO. He was also working as a senior manager in retail in P&C. And so he's joined us in the management team, and he's going to be the CFO in our company's being responsible for finance and accounting.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the Q&A panel, which is available at this time for you to post questions. And this will enable us to be able to discuss at greater length with you in terms of the type of information that's crucial importance to you. We're meeting up after a short break. Recently, quite a bit has happened. We've got a lot of good information to convey to you. And we'll convey even more to you in the upcoming days, weeks and quarters. I think we have perhaps the most intensive quarter in our history behind us, at least that's my feeling over the last 5 years I've worked here, and we'd like to draw your attention to several things in the course of a short summary.

So we've had a very good successful quarter. You saw that in terms of the preview. And so we have very good strong growth. So in eobuwie, we had very profitable growth. The profitability of eobuwie was very high. One of the key projects has, in fact, gotten started successfully, and you can see the due store, the HalfPrice concept store. According to our promise, we're working very intensively on securing financing, long-term financing. We've made a lot of progress here, and we'll gradually inform you about this as things continue to progress by the proper procedure. We're also completing the restructuring process. In Western Europe, we've completed the process in Germany. We think in Switzerland in the near future, we're going to be able to finalize that project. And we have a clear concept in terms of what we're going to do in Austria. And so we'll advise you of this in the near future. And we'll dwell on each one of these topics during the course of the presentation. And so we'll start with what's very important to us as retailers. So the phenomenal sales growth we've had, compared to Q1 2020. But also with respect to Q1 2019, where we had growth of nearly 1/4, and we have an additional PLN 300 million in revenue. What has happened? What are we pleased by? All of our channels -- revenue channels have contributed all of the geographies, all of the logos brands. And also e-commerce and CCC, Modivo, eobuwie, triple-digit growth, what we're very pleased with is this graph shows how effective the company is in its operations by having several strong engines. They're all healthy. And they have a lot of potential, upward potential. And so we can look at retail so getting ahead of some of your questions. So of course, there's growth with respect to 2020, but you might say there's no major achievement because last year's stores were being closed. So we've brought everything down -- all things down into the numbers. We're looking at the base where we have opened only new stores. So we wanted to take a look in terms of the supply, the number of working days in stores as opposed to 2020, as you can see on this graph that accessibility in terms of the number of days of supply is up some 25%. But revenue in retail has jumped up by 85%. So we can say that, that performance was shot up much more than the additional accessibility of our stores. So under our strategy GO.22, we have a wonderful product, great communication with our customers, and we've got our store fronts. And so we can see this in conversion. We can see our conversion is improving year-on-year and also with respect to our ambitions set out in GO.22 strategy. And we can see how this -- how warmly the products are being received. And so our share of the basket. We talked about this in 2019. It's growing. So the strength of our voice back then was not resounding sufficiently. And that was one of the reasons why the revenue wasn't so satisfactory, not as satisfactory as they are now. So if you look at the e-commerce segment, well, a lot is happening here, too. And we can say that this is an area of our interest of your interest. And so we can say that today and in the future, this will not change we're maintaining a very fast pace of growth. We're ensuring that we always have fuel to grow organically, and we're also thinking about strategic growth as we are present in e-commerce. We have 85 platforms in terms of brands, geographies and the various solutions that we have. We continue to develop it. So that geographic and business range is something that we'll continue to expand. We're going to be more and more present in marketplaces. And you can see that in the group, we have a large number of marketplaces. We're going to continue driving up -- ramping up our logistics capabilities. They have grown quite a bit in the last quarter. We have warehouse K3 that's expanded in Zielona Góra. We also have eobuwie and CCC in Romania opened up. We're also working up to make sure that our stores are going to be able to be connected to CCC. In terms of the organic growth and taking advantage of what we already have in place, we continue to work on our interfaces with customers. In terms of the user experience, and it's the sum of minor changes, which enable us and e-commerce to perform better than we have in the past, we've got wonderful e-commerce conversion. We have the new Klub 2.0. And this has turned out to be a great hit, which enables us to drive up the acquisition by customers through the e-commerce channel. We're pleased by the applications reception. We have some 5 million downloads. So it's one of the top 5 applications in our industry in terms of apparel and footwear. So we have the best application in that category. So when we talk about the things that we're doing, the things we're doing in sales. So what's the newest thing, one of the things that's very clear and something we can extol here, and it's a way in which we're delivering to our customers, what we promised. And so basically, on schedule. We have the new concept, which is called HalfPrice. What we're pleased by. This is one of the things we're doing it because the consumers are pleased with or elated with this. So some 85% of the customers have scored us on a 10-point scale at 8, 9 or 10, with 10s being the majority of the scores. So there's a wide range of products, the organization of the stores, the aisles, the fact that it's very -- there's a lot of room in the stores. All of these things have been seen in the early months of operations. So we'll continue to tweak this. So we have a store in [indiscernible] that's been opened. We now have 11 stores in total. By the end of July, we should have somewhere between 20 and 25 in 3 large urban areas. And [indiscernible] street in the former star CCC in [indiscernible]. We'll be opening up stores in the near future. So the first 3 will be opened in the upcoming days. So the network expansion rollout is something that will proceed at a fast clip. What have we learned from the operations of these stores in their first days and weeks of operations. Well, above all, they have satisfied our business expectations in terms of the original business model that we analyzed in terms of the business concept. We looked at it with the team that we brought on board and with the appreciation of clients in order to do this successfully. So if we look at sales density, so revenue per square meter rotating, so these are earlier months, and we're ahead of our schedule. And so we're going to need some time to draw final conclusions, but we can say that we had -- of course, we had some assumptions put in place for the earlier months, and the performance has outpaced our original expectations. The next thing that we're pleased by is the fact that the overall model, what we call the modus operandi in terms of the transformation is that we're converting large CCC stores, and we have more than 105 stores. Some of these stores are too large. And so we're giving -- changing the stores into HalfPrice stores. And so -- and if we come to the conclusion in these shopping galleries, if the saturation has not exceeded the point, then we can have smaller CCC stores, 500 to 800 square meters. This is the basic size or format that we've defined in our GO.22 strategy. And so these 2 formats are performing much better than they did last year in 2019. So we can say performance is 2, 3x better compared to those years. Of course, the stocking is much smaller. So we have much better performance. So -- and we have 2 concepts now where we have a lot of good rotation. Things are not overstocked. And so we're going to continue to track that performance, and we'll share our thoughts with you, but until now things look very good. As we're talking about the key projects, I think we should say a few words about the biggest and the most difficult in terms of the long-term financing structure. Even though we've had the lockdown we want to have financial soundness stability based on long-term financing. We have a good level of progress. We have negotiated. We'll have the term sheet with the banks on the 14th of May, that's been agreed on the 17th of May. We approved that with our bondholders to do another issuance for another 5 years. We want to have a long-term financing horizon to make sure that the maturities would be between 2 and 5 years to have a very clear and stable outlook with a strong platform for the new CCC where we have a strong e-commerce engine. We have a transformed CCC on board, and we have the new and very promising concept of HalfPrice stores. Of course, we'll advise you of ongoing progress in this field, and this will happen in the near future. If we look at other elements of our financial stability, we're going to use the axe to cut away those things that aren't strategic as Germany, Switzerland, Austria, cycling and other elements. So we're informing of this upfront. So Germany is now history for us. Also sponsoring professional cycling is also a matter of history. In Switzerland, we've got a lot of progress that we've made. In terms of Austria, we're working with our partner to ensure that in the upcoming months, we're going to be able to complete this project. We don't see any significant risks. Everything is proceeding according to plan. And we can go on to the results. I don't know you've seen our bureau in worse. I want to make sure that you've seen it. This bureau shows what the new CCC looks like. It communicates in a very creative way. It's out-of-the-box thinking. It's something that customers love. This is how CCC is treating this business, it's acting in a sustainable fashion. It notices that urbs trends and it's consistent with trends. We'll say more about that, but I'll give the floor now to [ Christian ], who will say a few words about the results in Q1 of this year.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you very much, Marcin. I'd like to thank you very much for the introduction and for warmly welcoming to this organization to help me run the role, fill the role of CFO. Marcin talked about sales and the various distribution channels where sales are generated. Now I'd like to talk about margins, gross margin, more, in greater detail.

We can see a slight increase in the gross margin up to 43.3%. It's still under the influence of the lockdowns and the pandemic. So this is a particular period for the retail industry. After the holiday period, Christmas period, so then in January, we start to sell products in the first prices this period is something that we have behind us. So the margins were under pressure. We wanted to attract customers into our stores, get them out of their homes. And that's why we did a lot of promotions, and we saw a lot of activity as we offer to second product, third product for a lower price, even as little as 1/100th of Polkowice. And so we see that e-commerce represents some 60% of the revenue in the Group. And so the e-commerce margin is lower than in the brick-and-mortar channel. But we're very pleased by, is the consistent improvement in e-commerce margin, which is now up 2.5 percentage points year-on-year. And I would draw your attention in particular to the margin that we have in online CCC. So 50%. And so in DeeZee, we're even above 50%. And so if we go on to the next item, go to the next slide.

So I'll begin with a discussion of costs. So we monitor our costs of operations, both in retail and e-commerce. So our costs were under very strong control. We do regular research analysis of our costs. And how, in fact, we can improve our cost effectiveness in the business. And if we look at the incremental growth of costs, up to PLN 719 million. This was above all in e-commerce, where we saw cost growth, so it's up by PLN 110 million year-on-year. And if you can look at the breakdown, it's primarily from -- so the e-commerce revenues were up 83%, but the e-commerce costs grew by 66%. So slower growth than in the revenue. So we can see roughly a PLN 10 million decline elsewhere. So the total cost of retail were below our historical base in 2019. So this was the period prior to the pandemic. I'd like to mention about the costs of operations of stores per square meter. As you can see, we're down PLN 244 per square meter. And so this is much below the historic level that we had seen in previous years. It had been as high as PLN 180 per square meter. This is due to the reduction in rents down to PLN 74, and downsizing, where it's down to some PLN 51. And so this is in line with our strategy GO.22.

We continue to operate into the regime of the pandemic. So we're reducing costs in very specific and distinct environment. But we're quite certain that a portion of this cost reduction is something we're going to be able to retain for the long term. So if we can look at how this has affected our consolidated financials in the Group.

Let's recap what you've heard up until now. We can see there's been a lot of positive activities which had a positive knock-on impact. It contributed to major sales growth, but we also generated a much better financial results in Q1 for -- from what we saw prior to the pandemic, but we do see regular improvement. So as Marcin mentioned previously, the number of stores, the ratio that we showed you previously, it was at a higher level, but we can see that some 40% of the retail network wasn't available to the consumer. So even if sales galleries -- shopping galleries were opened, we can see year-on-year that traffic ratios are down. This is something that was happening not only in our stores, but in other stores, so we're far away from the number of visits previously paid to shopping galleries prior to the pandemic. So the operating result was improved year-on-year by nearly PLN 200 million. And our EBITDA was positive in Q1. As we've reported several weeks ago, we published the preliminaries, and you have the opportunity to see them. And they were much worse than in the preliminary, this is because of a correction in leasing and amortization because of IFRS 16. This is a result of some of the final negotiations we're conducting. If we look at the close quarter, what we have in front of us and looking at the outlook that had been presented in February, the Management Board upholds its position. That will have single-digit positive return in 2021. And so we're more and more better and better prepared for the wide opening of stores and also being able to satisfy customer needs in the e-commerce business, and we can say that eobuwie made a particularly positive contribution to the Group's results. So shift to the next slide.

As you can see here, we had a very strong growth rate of revenue in Q1. And so this is something that took place in Q1 as well as in the entire 2020, we see that customers who have actually partook of online shopping tend to buy again and this will contribute to the further development of eobuwie as well as the Modivo brand. If we look at our Group and eobuwie, we have the new fashion channel, Modivo, which has tripled year-on-year with respect to last year. And so the revenue there is 13% of the revenue in the eobuwie Group. So we see regular improvement there. If we look at geographies. And so we see Southern Europe has the biggest growth year-on-year. And so Greece has done wonderfully, and we have a 30% market share there. We also see significant improvement in our margins in excess of 2 percentage points. I mentioned this when I talked about eobuwie. And this is a result of dynamic pricing, better purchasing conditions and a better mix. And so improving performance is also a matter of looking for cost effectiveness, managing costs, and this improves also EBITDA. It's not just a matter of managing prices. So the operating result in Polkowice was up more than 4x over last year. So we can say that the entire management team in eobuwie did a great job. And so if we look at the -- now we can look at management of working capital. As you can see, the level of stocking in the group was flat year-on-year at PLN 2.4 billion. Of course, we have the lockdown that persisted and so the purchases of goods that we have made in previous years were, of course, prepared for higher sales rates. But as stores were closed, which we observed in Q1, well, that meant that there were some complications that emerged. This also translated into our discount policy, which I discussed previously, and we're now gradually reducing that level of stocking or inventories in our warehouses. And so after May, where stores are now open, and we're able to offer the products to our customers on a full-fledged base, not only in online but also in stores, we're gradually attracting more and more customers, and we're reducing inventory levels. So year-on-year, our inventories fell by 6% per square meter year-on-year. There's a lot to do. We're talking with the management team about the next plans, how we can better manage inventory levels. We also observe sustainable growth in the online channel, where we have upward movement of some 27%. And this is much lower growth than we see in the sales revenue growth. So this means that we've got better product range, choices being made, another element of importance to working capital management. This is cash conversion. It's quite stable year-on-year. And that means that inventories are rotating better through retail sales. But at the same time, we're able to manage, of course, our payables better. As a result, our cash flow on operating activity are gradually improving and being rebuilt, but they still are under the influence of the pandemic, one of the most important actions that we've taken in the first quarter. The company continues to think about investments, development. We talked about the first stores in the HalfPrice brands and so we spent some PLN 9 million of CapEx for that brand. And then we have logistics, which has to keep pace with the new channel, both half commerce -- or so HalfPrice as well as e-commerce. And then also the IT systems as we continue to look at payables, short-term and long term, they've been stable. But we do see a decline in net debt of PLN 100 million to PLN 1.4 billion. And this is primarily a result of the fact that we've rebuilt our cash position. We're at the last stage of refinancing the group. So in the next few weeks, the situation will be clarified, and we'll be able to advise you of those changes, that would be it in terms of the financial performance, and I'll give the floor back to Marcin at this time.

[Marcin Czyczerski, executive]

So to recap, it would be best to think about moving our attention to how we are rebuilding our revenue. We continue to communicate with you in terms of our strategy GO.22. We're rebuilding our revenue. We want to have a profitable model that generates a lot of cash. We have a wonderful product that underpins us. It's something that appeals to our customers in a variety of situations that aren't weather-dependent. And these products are being communicated. The message is communicated to customers, very good. And so this is being done through retail channels as well as e-commerce channels. And so we can see this in the product performance-based on conversion rates and internal polls surveys and external polls. And so we can show you how we've been changing these products. But what's happening with these products. And you can look at this as we look at various brands, you can tracked us a year ago, we decided that the marketing communication of the group with respect to CCC will be along the access, we're going to invite people to join us in CCC to see other channels, CCC EU, Modiva, eobuwie because our products are being presented in all of these channels, DeeZee as well. And so we have an individual identity, and we're addressing very specific needs of target groups, and we can start with Gino Rossi. This is a brand that we acquired in 2019. We decided to go back to what that brand was known for. At the beginning, this was its classic look. And we want to give it the most modern feel from the streets of Milan, as well as Paris, and so the raw aesthetics. And this is something that has been well received by our customers. So you can see the bags. This is the seasons hit and so this is something that is the essence of the brand in May. Gino Rossi doubled its sales year-on-year, and it's responsible for 9%, almost 9% of the sales revenue in CCC. So you can see how valuable this brand is. And so it's giving a bigger volume of margin. This was a successful investment, and we're pleased vis-à-vis other global brands. So we can see an eobuwie. It's looking quite good. It's high up in the ranking. So certainly, in the top 10s, we can look at this without any complexions across the world. In terms of Gino Rossi, we also have the trends line. These are classic trends. The way we see them on global streets, so the colors, the shapes, the sizes. And so this is something that has been warmly received by customers. Then we have the Jenny Fairy brand. This is a fashion brand. We had told you about this through our marketing campaigns. This is Jenny Fairy. It's a brand of many names, since it's a fashionable brand. We're actually communicating it through very nice capsules. Two of them have been very successful. So the second one, where you can see this the summer look. And so this is something. Well the the summer is a little behind, we're a little bit late on -- not we, but the summer is coming on a little late. And so if we look at -- we can look at the bags here, they're very trendy, we can look at pastel, colors are very fashionable, so the spring and summer of 2021. And so we -- the colors of this year are pastels. And of course, the shoes have a thick platform basis. And so great arrangements in terms of marketing, communication, bold style in line with young person trends. And this is something that is highly appealing to customers. Jenny Fairy is doing very well in terms of its sales figures. So our dedicated campaigns have shown as this is the best sales brand. And so in Greece, it's the top seller. And so eobuwie is doing very well there in terms of market shares. So we're in excess of 30% of market share there, and Jennifer Fairy. Jenny Fairy is contributing to that quite a bit. Another unfailing of this brand is the cocktail approach. This is something that has been communicated very nicely intriguing arrangements. And so you can see how bold it is and you have the sandal, that's on an inverted heel. That's what we call it anyway. And so you can see the bags in this capsule. And so we can say that sales of bags have shot up by more than 160%. So you can look at retails and e-commerce, we're building that growth on several important elements -- up to 20 important elements, and we're taking great pains to nourish each one of them. Then we have the sneakerization trend or the casualization trend. This is the brand Sprandi. This is -- we have above-average growth of sporting clothing apparel. So the apparel is being sold quite nicely in e-commerce. It's available on Modivo, along with the new drop approach. And this is something that has pleased us greatly. So Sprandi represents a large portion of the sales in May. It's grown by more than 150%. The reception of the high 90s has been very well received. And so the campaign of this brand is something that has generated a lot of positive feedback, above all, amongst the young customers, and we're pleased with its debut in Modivo in the extended apparel collection. And so we want to brag, as we talk to you about fees, fashionable are these fashion brands really being spot-on with respect to customer preferences in terms of trends for the upcoming season or 2 seasons from now. As we have Sprandi Kids. This is one of the examples of a harmonized color pallet, which is online. And so this is something that's going to be presented as spring and summer 2023. So this is something that people see, customers see and they're following us along these fashion choices. Another thing that we're proud about is our Go For Nature line of clothing. So this is the first pilot of environmentally responsible clothing lines. And so we have certified leather that's been recycled. So it's recycling PET. So it shouldn't be so difficult to say we're recycling but sometime it is PET and this is something that has been well received by customers. Customers are interested in investing in this brand. So Go For Nature. This is something that they find to be important. So this product line is the first step in this direction, certainly not our last step in this direction. But at the same time, it's one of the many directions we're taking in order to continue to pursue sustainable development. So we want to be the leader in this part of Europe, and we want to be the trends that are -- we want to define the path.

Going to be a trailblazer. So in terms of our social CSR activity. And so you can see this is represented by the ratings we had and our position in various rankings, the various type of scores we've received, ESG ratings. And so this is how perception is changing amongst customers, how they see brands, they develop their opinions about brands. And so this is something that will support and underpin our further growth as we move in the direction of closing up, wrapping up the presentation. We want to talk about the 5 major messages for you to take away from today's presentation. Once again, we're very consistent. We have additional quarters and months where we're showing very positive, robust sales growth. We're comparing ourselves to the available reports from the competition. We have another month in which the online sales and the in-store sales are developing very well, and in many cases, much better than in the past. So we have very dynamic growth in eobuwie. So the EBITDA is moving up very strongly. So this shows that it's possible to grow profitably. We have a wonderful start of the HalfPrice concept. Of course, we have just a handful of stores, but this transformation model has proven itself that HalfPrice model is working. We're very pleased with that. Of course, we're doing the work to ensure and procure for the group long-term financing structure with majorities that would come in between 2 and 5 years. And we want to finish up the work in terms of our presence into dark countries. So sometimes internally, we even talked about the new CCC, which is stable, profitable and scalable. We want to dedicate a little more attention to these topics. And we want to talk about this with you with the whole Management Board and Chairman of the Supervisory Board. So we're going to invite you to join us for the inside out. And during this opportunity, we're going to be able to tell you how we've gone through the last 1.5 years of combating the pandemic, the lockdown. We want to emerge from this crisis, victorious. That's what we said, and we believe that's happened. And so we want to talk about this with you. This is the inside out on the 17th of June. And we want to tell you a little bit more about how we want to transform ourselves. This is prelude to update the strategy and come back to you in the next stage until you how -- in the post pandemic environment, how we're going to benefit from the work we've done in the last 1.5 years during the pandemic and what the company is going to look like over the next 3 to 5 years, what is the level of our ambition, but this is something that we're going to be doing in the future. But we'd like to invite you to join us for that on the 17th of June. So now we can move on to the Q&A session.

[Marcin Czyczerski, executive]

I can see there's quite a few questions. I have a list of questions. We'd like to thank you for those questions. So we can go to the first question. If we look at payroll moving up by some 9% year-on-year, where you have a decline of nearly 3%. Is there some sort of pressure of payroll? Are there some one-offs linked to social security company or some sort of benefits -- salary benefits? So we see that we have a 9% increase. Let's maybe read the question once again. As I look at the cost of your commercial of your sales points, we can see that your salaries have grown by nearly 9% and where the amount of sales space you have has fallen by 2.9%. Should we understand that this is some sort of wage pressure? Are there some one-offs linked to wage subsidies?

[Unknown Executive]

So we utilized the shield program that was for last year. This year, we have maintained the level of headcount year-on-year. So that hasn't changed naturally, we're doing a review, a strategic review in terms of the sales area, some of the stores, or CCC, as Marcin mentioned, we will convert into HalfPrice stores where we'll withdraw from large-sized stores, and we'll have HalfPrice stores there. And at the same time, we're going to be moving into smaller-sized stores ranging from 600 to 700 square meters. And this means that the cost per square meter should be lower. If we look at HalfPrice, we have a new model of employment, which is much more aligned to effectiveness. So in the longer term, this is something that should enable us to maintain the cost of employment at a steady level.

[Marcin Czyczerski, executive]

If we can go onto the next question, what does sales look like in May compared to the corresponding period of 2020. Because most of these periods did have the lockdown being closed out. So May is the -- we have -- I would warn you to make an assessment of a whole quarter based on a single month. This is the first month of the second quarter. So we -- if we look at May, we have the right to be satisfied or very satisfied. We may think about performance. We can see that the conversion has been very high. We're pleased with the gross margin performance. And so our e-commerce channel hasn't slowed down. So perhaps the growth rate is slower, is lower, but it's not the case that we've now moved entirely into the brick-and-mortar network. We continue to maintain our pace of growth in e-commerce. And so we have satisfactory sales parameters. We don't report month figures because quarters consistent 3 months and this is something we should have at the back of our heads. And I think what's the most critical here is that we have a very strong e-commerce model, and this has not changed. Once the stores have reopened, we've transformed our product approach to CCC clients. Of course, opening stores means that we're able to ramp up sales. So as you can see, that we're not referencing weather so strongly as we had in the past. And then we have a third engine. In Q1, we've added another 1 million and this is going to be a figure that will be very noticeable. So there are a lot of reasons for us to be happy about results in May. We've got a lot of comfort in terms of our sales performance that we're on the right track.

When should we anticipate the close of the eobuwie transaction? So we're in the process of discussion with the banks. At the turn of June and July, we plan to complete that transaction. We're also working on the financing for mass. So the transaction with eobuwie should be neutral for us on a tax basis, we want to offset that with the loss in Switzerland. So a market that we're exiting. So these transactions will coincide in the same year, please remember. So this will be in the stand-alone financial statement, so it will be neutral at the consolidated level. Please mention what is the eobuwie market share increases of 30%. Greece is a very important market for us. When we first did the eobuwie strategy. It seems that Southern Europe, Spain, Italy increase, have a low level of market penetration. And so the growth rate is 3x faster than Northern Europe. So it's PLN 0.5 billion, having converted from euros. So eobuwie, in this market, we believe is going to have 30% market share. And so we can say that our other brands are doing very well there. And so the Greek market is growing very fast. And we're confident that we'll have a similar pace of growth in, say, Italy and Spain as well.

Can you tell us, Póltorak, what was the factoring limit utilization was in Q1?

[Karol Póltorak, executive]

It was more or less 89%, 87%. You know the specific nature of that product. So this limit is utilized between 80% to 90% and 100% because as invoices are paid, then you put in new invoices. So it's not typical for the quarter.

[Marcin Czyczerski, executive]

So what is your strategy in terms of telemarketing? Some of our multi-brands are becoming marketplaces or have become marketplaces. We're in a pilot phase, but we are operating in the marketplace as such, we're rolling out a market platform, marketplace platform. We're going to be able to scale up that business, and there's a lot of headroom for us to improve eobowie. And another of our brands have debuted successfully or will be debuting in the near future on individual marketplaces. So on top of Modivo, we have DeeZee, which will be appearing on Zalando. And we also esteem our competitors where we have less exposure. So far, our data company, it's a great opportunity for growth. Another example is very rapidly growing sales in the Russian marketplace for our products. And so we have very mutually beneficial economic parameters there. So we've got a wonderful product there for these marketplaces, and we've got great technological capacities in order to run those marketplaces. Why is it the case that your rental price grew from PLZ 72 to PLN 74? Because where you -- was Q1 of last year, prior to the negotiations of our enterprise is worth remembering what was happening last year in Q1 when the pandemic started, we started the negotiations with the landlords. At that time, stores were closed. So sales basically died from one day to next. And so we had a lot of one-offs. So a lot of impairment losses and so the base for comparison is not entirely comparable. So after the first lockdown and after the subsequent lockdowns, we continue to hold talks with landlords. And as possible, we've reduced rents per square meter and assuming that we have got a good level of cooperation. We're trying to reduce those rents. The same is true if we look at salaries, we had some subsidies from the shield. So we have a similar situation here in terms of the timing. We have another question about salaries. What is the budgeted growth of the average salary for this year? Ladies and gentlemen, we're monitoring the marketplace. In terms of our stores and the employees in our stores, in logistics, we're looking at inflation growth of salaries. So it will be in line with current inflation, but we really don't want to deviate from the market. You talked about an upcoming update to the strategy. When should this be anticipated? We're starting to work on that about the main avenues of development. We talk about what we have in mind. So you're familiar with that. So we'll talk about that at the CCC inside out.

So the update of the strategy or the new release of the strategy is something that will be done in the autumn. And then we'll communicate that to you, of course. So you can see those avenues today. We want to have a very strong e-commerce, which will have fuel to grow. We're going to talk about the qualitative transformation of CCC, the HalfPrice format, which is an idea about how to transform CCC. But we're also going to purify the group of those elements that ballast that was weighing down the group. And we're already doing a few other things that have shown up. This has to be done on a reasonable basis, and we'll have some time to talk about that with you. So we summed that up, both in June, what's going to be happening in the upcoming months as we look at the strategy, we'll be up to talk about it. If we look at Slide 12, we have the gross margin. How is that possible that the gross margin is lower than the various components?

Here on the slide, we talked about the most important channels, retail and e-commerce. But we also have wholesale, which has a substantially lower margin. And after you add the wholesale business, it affects the overall gross margin, bringing it down to 42%. We response to this question during the presentation. Why do you have the difference between the EBITDA in the preliminary, so supposed that the recourse was 59 versus 39. This is an adjustment because of IFRS 16, which is just depreciation. And this is the result of renegotiating rents in CCC.

The next question, what is the schedule for refinancing and banking? And what's the volume of loans that you want to have for eobuwie? We're working on the structure of financing, and the eobuwie development plan, what we can say. We have a low level of gearing there. So ambitions are high. And so we have a lot of opportunity to leverage that company. We're going to do this sagaciously wisely to ensure that we have fuel to grow in that key asset. We want to make sure that it has the proper amount of fuel. The debt of eobuwie, the net debt-to-EBITDA is calculated separately in financing. So the eobuwie will have a different -- well, there's a lot of overhead or a lot of room to headroom to finance this further growth.

In terms of eobuwie, why did you clean up your balance sheet even though you hadn't paid for those shares?

Well, that's very simple. We have the new contract signed in March or April, basically replaced the previous option. So that option was closed out. So -- but it was dependent on the IPO of eobuwie, which we don't assess or value or measure because we -- the expected stakeholders in [indiscernible]. We're at the company and the management where we feel obligated to approach this. There's no legal basis to maintain that option in terms of the most likely scenario.

And then the last question. In the Q&A session, you mentioned today that Germany's history for us, this could I ask you, could you tell us a little bit about the relations with the HR group, which is an associate from Germany? Well, if this is an associate or affiliate, we, of course, are fans. We want the value to grow. And we're going to be pleased if that happens. It's got a wise management team. It's got -- and so of course, the lockdown had a double jeopardy effect in terms of closing stores, not being able to sell.

Well, we've cleaned this up in our balance sheet. And so with -- under the assumption that wouldn't generate anything. But of course, it would be possible to reverse those impairment losses if things turn out better. And that's more or less the end of the quotation basically, this closes the relationship with the HR group. So we have B2B cooperation in terms of some supplies, but it's a smaller size. These are all the questions that have been posed. So we'd like to thank you for your attention, for your questions, for your attendance. We're very pleased that we've been able to spend time here with you, digitally, remotely. So we hope that this will change in the near future. We're pleased with the first quarter, with the opening of the second quarter. So e-commerce continues to drive us forward. And CCC has a good product and great relations with customers, with the marketing, customer service, communication with customers and could well-priced business. And this will all be rooted in financial stability in terms of our financing and having a good asset structure, where the assets are all performing, and we'll get rid of assets that generate value or just act as a ballast. And so basically, all of the projects that lead to this have noted substantial progress. So once again, we'd like to thank you very much. Wish you good health, and we look forward to hearing from you in the near future. Thank you very much then. Bye-bye.

[Statements in English on this transcript were

Spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]