CCC SA

WSE:CCC

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q2

[Marcin Czyczerski, executive]

I'd like to welcome you all very cordially. We would like to apologize for these small technical problems. In just a second, we'll have translation into English. Because of your time allotment, I'm going to allow myself to go ahead and begin. So I understand that the translation is live now. So we can go onto the presentation.

We'd like to present to you 3 time perspectives. So we have a large number of challenges. We had the lockdown, negotiations with the banks. And then in second quarter, we started to rebuild our sales and then we are looking for the prospects for Q4 and for the entire 2020 and 2021. So we can say the material is hot off the presses. So I would like to ask you to take a look at our disclaimer when you have a little bit of time.

And so we have 2 scopes of data. So we have the interim financial statements which we will speak to a little bit more. It was rather complicated because of the large number of changes in the lease contracts and the utilization of IFRS 16. We also wanted to show you the ongoing results of Q3, and that's how today's agenda is set up.

On top of that, we're going to look at what's happening in eobuwie. And we have selected speakers who will participate both during the presentation stage as well as during the Q&A stage in order to enable -- to allow you to understand where we are at CCC.

So let me go ahead and look at the key factors that influenced Q2, Q3. When we talk about our [ narration ] over the 6 months that have passed, so looking at the beginning of the period, we have the pandemic, the lockdown. But you've already heard about this from us many -- multiple times as well as from other players, so I assume that you're asking yourselves the questions, how is CCC getting out of the situation?

And this is something that we're going to want to tell you about in the upcoming slides in a composite fashion, as succinctly as possible, so in terms of how are we dealing with the situation, how are we coping with it and what CCC is becoming, what does this foretell in the future. And so we want to talk about some of the key issues and address them directly related to results, some of the achievements that we've been able to achieve in Q2 and Q3.

So first, one thing that we said from the very first day of the crisis, we've said it to you as well, but we're planning to convert this profound crisis for the company, the economy and the nation -- I mean the economy and the nation. We want to utilize this to the greatest extent possible. And thanks to this approach that we've adopted, we've been able to improve the rate of growth of e-commerce. We've been able to improve what we've been doing up until now. We've been able to turn these challenges into opportunities. It's not just, well, COVID, of course, has affected of course our e-commerce, but as a result of good decisions made in this environment where we are that have enabled us to attack correctly through this phase.

So the next issue is the rapid rebuilding of sales after the lockdown. So the rate of growth of e-commerce, combined with working on conversion in our stores, stemming primarily from the fact that we've been able to improve our products but also the service we give to our customers, the technical solutions. And so the conversion that we've been able to achieve means that we've been able to rebuild quickly post-lockdown. And we've reachieved levels of sales that we wanted to have.

And so this rapid growth of e-commerce, coupled with the rigorous cost discipline and being effective in terms of our procurement means that we've been able to improve our profitability in e-commerce during the period that we have now put behind us. The next thing is focusing on the most important things. This is something that we have stated in our strategy, in Central and Eastern Europe online, our client-centric organization with product being the main focal point.

And this is something that's happening. It's transpiring. We want to show that to you today. The effect, the outcome is that we've said goodbye to the past. So we closed unprofitable and nonstrategic operations like the daughter company in Switzerland or what was happening in Germany as well as sponsoring. So we're looking at -- look at the future. And so we've removed that from our balance sheet. And so you are certainly asking yourselves the question, how does this turn into numbers? What the figures look like and what do those figures really mean? What do we want to show your -- draw your attention to?

The fact is that CCC is an online channel model. It has a strong e-commerce demand. So 82% of the growth was in revenues, on online; and 50% share of e-commerce. So as you can see, 64 sales platforms in e-commerce where we have different geographies, different signs. And so this is something that's unprecedented in our industry. We have those large number of interactions with our customers. And this shows very strongly how we are moving in the omnichannel approach.

What do Q2 financial results look like having in mind the other factors that took place? So one of the challenges we faced in this presentation of the interim financial statements for us and CCC as well as the chartered accountant, the statutory auditor, was to show the continued and discontinued operations, having in mind, [indiscernible] and then looking at the provisions as a result of taking out of the operations of the company, the nonstrategic operations.

So as you look at our financial statements, you should have in mind 4 different approaches. So Q2 has been reported in the financial statements. So we have minus PLN 283 million EBIT in terms of the discontinued operations. But if we think about the future periods and how we're going to -- without any provisions, we won't have any new provisions because we've set up all the provisions that we need to do and wanted to. And so in Q2, we had a PLN 41 million EBIT in Q2. And this really shows what the base of the company is for the upcoming quarters in the future.

So the decision about Vögele, so you've been involved in our decision from the very beginning. In 2018, we entered Switzerland and we had a very simple assumption that we're changing the procurement. Hence, we want to achieve the first margin -- gross margin, and then we would convert this company that was unprofitable, generating a loss of CHF 7 million, and so we would restructure it, in terms of centralizing processes and reducing costs.

So the second aspect did more for -- we did better there but we had unexpected challenges. COVID is an additional factor in 2020. And so in line with the strategy that we are doing, a review of our strategic options, and so we made the decision that we're going to begin the process to sell that asset and reclassify Vögele in Switzerland. We are going to consider this part of discontinued operations. And that's the result. That's why we have this result in the financial statements.

So as a management team, what are we going to think about and focus on in the upcoming quarters? This is the message we would like to convey to you during today's presentation. During the subsequent portion of the presentation, we're going to talk about our business, net of -- or having Vögele removed from that.

So if you look at the results, we only had an additional 6,000 added square meters. So quite modest compared to what we had said in the strategy and having in mind the post-COVID world. And so above all, if we look at our hybrid stores, eobuwie, which have performed very well, and we also have MODIVO which is a fashion store. And so this is something that is worthwhile to pay attention to in Q2.

So the fact that we haven't grown the space selling area for Russia, that means above all from today, we're working on and focusing on performance, conversion, footfall. So the traffic, upgrading our products constantly to make sure that we can utilize the base we have today as best as possible. And so one of the elements that will enable us to offset the lockdown or lower traffic -- and this is something that was taking place in Q2, this is e-commerce. I'm going to speak to you more -- quite a bit more about e-commerce today.

But if we look at the graph that you see on the left side, so the closures of stores, over 5 weeks and 10 weeks for the maximum case with traffic down by 60% to 80% meant that there wasn't much that could be done in terms of sales. Nevertheless, we've been able to do quite well because we planned a path to follow post-lockdown. And that means that our growth rate was higher than the rest of the market, but e-commerce growth of 82% in Q2 really lifted us up.

And so I would like to say, and I've been talking about this since Q2 2019, this was the first time I said to you about this in September. If you look above the green color, you can see the new channels of sales, Internet channels, the ones that we launched then after months of implementation work. And now this now represents some 25% of our e-commerce top line of revenue. This is a very important part of our group. So today, CCC of course has eobuwie in terms of e-commerce. This is the flagship brand. And we want to -- we're betting on our e-commerce engines, but Karol Poltorak will talk about that a little bit later.

And so if we look at the results of eobuwie as the main driver of the engine here, so the growth rate is impressive compared to the competitors from Western Europe or in any of the markets we could speak to. We have a high gross margin as a result of being able to procure products very effectively with a good set of margins.

This is how we see this as the mother company. We've got wonderful cost discipline, and so this is with respect to marketing. And we have very good decisions and performance of the management team there at eobuwie in terms of logistics and growth. And all this taken together means that the share of costs in the percentage of costs or cost as a percentage of revenue are falling. And so the EBITDA is growing.

You asked us whether or not eobuwie is going to improve its profitability, and so we can come back with an affirmative response on that. With respect to that question, if we look at the results of the group, starting with gross margin -- so we've already talked about eobuwie. If we look at the retail margin, it was down by roughly 5 percentage points. And this is a result of the sales of the collection assets, which was only happening through around half of the period, half of the quarter, so spring and summer. And so we had very low traffic.

And perhaps you remember the pictures from the beginning of May, when there were lines in front of our stores. We were able to achieve that result. But we had to consume a bigger portion of our gross margin to encourage people to visit our stores. But then for subsequent seasons, we have more room in the shelves for spring and summer 2021. So the company is going to have better and better products month-on-month, quarter-on-quarter. So in total, that gross margin is down quarter-on-quarter but the delta is in line with our preliminary expectations for Q2, if we look at this below the gross margin, if we look at operating expenses.

So we had said to you, perhaps you remember, that the company is going to use an axe to slash costs at every level of the cost accounts. And this is what we did. And we said that we were going to deliver PLN 100 million in savings. We've done a little bit more than that. At the very level of our P&L, we have specific achievements in terms of lease expenses, payroll, others. We talked with our partners at the same time. We took pains to make sure that the company would be able to navigate these waters with as dry a leg as possible.

And so you're probably asking the question, well, as you look at this -- so something might be wrong because we've got red for e-commerce. And this has been the case for some 12 quarters. We have to remember that these costs are nearly variable -- 100% variable, totally driven by top line. Sub costs grew by 47%, whereas, the top line grew by 82%. So you can say that we've improved greatly our operating leverage.

So a very interesting observation can be drawn from what's happening with our costs, if you measure them against square meters. So if you measure it on a square meter basis, they've fallen by some 34%, and the cost of store functioning fell by 45%. Very hard to imagine that we could maintain a cost level of PLN 98 per square meter, but I can't imagine that we're going to go back to PLN 174 per square meter as the cost of our store functioning.

So if we try to take a look at this at the P&L statement, which brings everything together. And so you can look at this in a variety of fashions. So you can look at the history and think about what's happening with the provisions, which basically addresses the fact that we're saying goodbye to some of our past decisions.

You can look at our operating results after you adjust it for the provisions, how the company looks like operationally. And as I said, in Q2, we have an operating result EBIT of PLN 41 million. And so if we look at this and compare this to comparable entities, our peers, they also look at the results cleansed of the past events. And so the provisions we talked about were priority pertains to discontinued operations in Switzerland and Germany as well as the write-downs of possibly unprofitable stores. And then looking at the income from sponsoring and so all of these provisions have been prepared and described in great detail, I think, on -- in the backup section, I think it's Slide 98.

And so if you look at, first, the response to some of your questions, what sort of stock will you retain? What are you going to do with your stock? Well, we've been able to do quite well, let me say. And this next slide really speaks to that. Despite the lockdown, despite the fall in footfall, because of the change in approach to management of inventories. And thanks to the fact that we were able to act very quickly, sometimes aggressively, we made some strategic decisions and we conducted ourselves in line with our strategy. So now we're able to rotate our inventory much better.

So lockdown and COVID, to some extent, choked us in terms of sales, but we were able to optimize inventory to -- square meters were down to around PLN 2,000. e-commerce is in the Internet, and it's not measured against, of course, selling space in stores. So the e-commerce shows some potential. Of course, the inventory is rising, but again, we have the 82% increase in top line. And so we can say the economics of that business are improving. And so having in mind how quickly we're able to sell and the challenges we had, so you can say that we've been able to sell quite a bit. And we're waiting for even better collections in our shelves, in our e-commerce stores. So we've been able to improve the turnover of inventory.

So if we look at liabilities or payables, it's a little worse because of the post-COVID extinguishing of payables, maintaining relations with suppliers and vendors for them to be able to deliver subsequent collections. So we can say the loss in Poland, which makes it difficult for us to finance ourselves with trade credit. So we can say we don't have the same effect that we had in the past about working on working capital, but we can assure you that as conditions normalize, we'll continue to work on that.

Some of the other areas are impacted by COVID, and we've listed some of these CapEx items a little bit later not just because of COVID. But a lot has been done in the past quarters prior to COVID, and we're starting to implement that.

So if we look at the debt of the company, so our net debt is a little over PLN 1 billion, at PLN 1.083 billion. So we have a stable position in terms of factoring lines, lines of credit, cash. We've been able to do very well. We have some pretty good days now. So the situation looks pretty well.

So we want to continue working on conversion, and we want to sell more of our stock. And so we believe that subsequent quarters will continue to improve. We have talked with PFR, National Development Fund (sic) [ Polish Development Fund ], as well as the banks. We want to prepare ourselves for a variety of scenarios. And we want to treat this basically as a type of safety cushion for us.

So we should say, bid adieu to the past, the distant past because we're thinking about what's happening in April and May. And these months are committed to our memory. And it was an unprecedented period so it will be in our minds for many, many periods to come. And not only in the industry, but -- not only in this country, but globally. But I would propose to look at the past, that's not so far back, which is basically the third quarter.

So basically, we've been able to sustain the high rate of growth in online. We have another 2 sales platforms in our online portion of our business. The group is in the black. In Q3, we were fighting quite strongly to be at least at breakeven. We've been able to -- we're back in the black. And so as you can see, July, August and September show you a very positive trend as we emerge from the crisis, measuring sales versus last year.

One of the leading players at the global level showed a similar graph, they had 89% in July. And in August, they were enthusiastic that they've been able to regain their revenues even though they were below [ 1% ]. We're quite a bit better. And we know that it could be even better. There are certain things that we could have done even better, and we're starting to do them better now and we'll do them better in upcoming months.

I think we should take a look at the breakdown, the composition of the mix of our revenue. The delta in off-line is smaller and smaller. So that means that online continues to show a very high rate of growth. And this means that the overall group is able to build its -- rebuild its sales year-on-year. So there's a big difference between e-commerce and retail. You can see how much the retail business, walk-in business has lost, has shrunk, while e-commerce has grown quite strongly.

So we can see there's an additional wind that's blowing the sales of e-commerce. If we look at detail -- retail business, we still have traffic that's down by a number in the teens. Of course, the footfall, the traffic is improving. And we can see the most recent days and weeks have been very good for us. But the delta for the overall group in terms of gross margin, this delta is gradually narrowing. And so the contribution made by e-commerce is not only eobuwie, but we have other brand names: MODIVO, Gino Rossi, DeeZee, CCC.

So if we look at the top line and we look at the other elements in the P&L statement. You can see that we had roughly PLN 1.5 billion in revenue in Q3, a little bit better. And so we can say that gross margin is pretty much flat, which is not something that was obvious, having in mind the pandemic. We had thought that there would be a bigger delta here. And so the operating result is where it is. And so we don't have any provisions in Q3.

And so this is more or less the results picture in terms of costs. And if we look at something that's growing the fastest, so e-commerce. And so Karol Poltorak will say a few words about that. And so Karol is responsible in the group for e-commerce development and our omnichannel model of growth and development.

So Karol, go ahead, I'll give you the floor.

[Karol Póltorak, executive]

Thank you very much. Marcin has talked to us about the results of e-commerce. Let's try and take a look from the inside, what we're focusing on as a group when we think about CCC and DeeZee. And then Marcin Czyczerski will say a few words about eobuwie.

So you can see on this slide, we're only showing a small bit of what's happened in the first half of the year. And in fact, in Q3 as well. The most important message we want to convey, I think, is as follows: we are coming closer and closer to that point in time that we will be able to say more than half of our sales will be generated through e-commerce. This is something that's going to be a fixed attribute, this is something that's a strategic objective. And this is something that we're going to be guided by in the future.

So if we come to CCC. And from the point of view as a sales network and our clients, we focus above all on building an omnichannel approach and a good experience, user experience for our clients. We received some distinctions from a chamber which shows that we've been able to achieve quite a bit in the last 12 to 18 months when the omnichannel world and CCC was born.

So in Q2, we were busy to react to the unplanned situation. And we were able to handle the spike in demand and make those deliveries to customers. So nobody was well-prepared amongst the e-commerce retailers to handle all of that, but we did pretty well. Now we're in Q3 and Q4. And the most important thing, of course, is what's happening right now. So in Q3 and Q4 we're going to implement more and more digital into our stores.

So Internet, kiosks, sometimes we call them esize.me kiosks. And so in some stores, they account for 10% of the sales. So that's a very big chunk of the business. There are stores that are very well aware, and they're tapping into these tools. And we want to -- as we benchmark our stores, we want to pull up our lower-performing stores into that for them to embrace these channels and these tools. So we have -- so we want to go abroad as soon as possible. So we have some 200 of our stores that are already following this approach. We want to generate pretty big margins and convert traffic, really give our staff the ability to provide telephone-based support and it is something that we'll roll out in the near future.

And so our customers can order products with assistance of our staff members and to order that delivered directly to home. And by the end of the year, we'd like to complete the pilot. So there's quite a bit of digital work in here, even more digital. But it's not just a gadget, but something that actually does its job and generates sales.

So through our mobile application, we're actually accelerating downloads and the number of users who have our app on their phones. So we had some 600,000 downloads. We've launched the app last year. So we had 600,000 in the first half of the year. And during the 3 months of Q3, we had another 600,000 downloads, so that suggests acceleration. Of course, there are some new countries here as well, but the distribution of our app to our client base is accelerating and not decelerating. So we'll soon bypass the 3 million mark and look at 4 million as the watermark. So it's generally younger clients, the more demanding clients, and this is something that we're quite pleased with because strategically, we are counting on them.

So we would like this to be a tool for our customers to do at least half of their transactions in terms of our digital sales, e-commerce sales. Right now, we're probably around 20%, 25%. That's something we'd like to double. That's our plan. And we'd like for our app to give broader interactions with our customers, more profound interactions with our customers. And that means we'll be able to have more frequent contact. Not necessarily every contact has to turn into a transaction, but having that more frequent contact, it doesn't cost us anything. That's something that's going to be quite important.

And so we're adding social media in some of the content. So basically, we're distributing content to put in front of the eyes of our clients. In terms of e-commerce in the most recent quarter, we can see that Poland is more developed. This is where we focused to the greatest extent.

In September, we're -- it's nearly 20% of the sales in stores. Prior to COVID, we had stated an objective. We wanted to get to 22%. And the future is now. And so we want to focus on this more strongly to ensure that we're going to be able to achieve those levels elsewhere, the ones that we have here in Poland.

So if you remember our strategy prior to COVID, we do observe, and this trend has continued, that the e-commerce with a multichannel customer is generating 50% more revenue for us than a customer we're able to serve only through our store. So this is a challenge. And so we have 5 million people in our CCC Club who haven't bought a single time through our e-commerce.

Of course, we're not going to be able to convert everybody, but most of us believe that over time, that people are going to start doing that -- doing their shopping through their phone or their computer. It doesn't really matter there, but we want to pull them into the digital world with the deliveries to the home with an easy path to make returns in the stores, customers love that. And so we'd like to be able to see that we're earning an additional 50% step-up in terms of our top line.

What else might be important here? If we think about our customers, we're preparing some really nice things for them in Q4 and Q1 of next year. We're going to change basically, our sort of front -- web front. So it will be much nicer.

We will have even more refined elements of esize.me. We would like for people to be able to play with that, share that image and to be able to buy, do shopping for others, buy people's shops because the scan of shoe size is something that could be shared amongst customers. And we'd like to have more availability of various sizes for customers from the stores to the customers. And same day of deliveries, and this is something that we'd like to show to customers as an added benefit, greater selection, product selection, greater than we have right now in e-commerce.

Gift cards, there are a large number of things that we want to do, and we want to exceed that 23 -- 20% threshold and break through it in the omnichannel approach. So we're not dividing this into e-commerce and other things. We can say it's at the omnichannel. That's the most important thing.

And so we can see that quite a bit of e-commerce is happening in the space of the stores themselves. We're also working on the customer base. We want to have another club or new rules for the club. We want to use a smaller discount. We want to give other values to customers for this to be even more attractive. It should be an attractive proposal for customers, but something that should be much less expensive to CCC. That's what I wanted to say about CCC.

If we look at DeeZee, we should mention that this is an incredible platform to develop the DeeZee brand. Right now, it's growing. It's doubling top line year-on-year. We have apparel there. And we want to convert it and develop it, cultivate it into a mature brand with the full range of clothing, something that would be -- that would appeal to customers in Poland as well as abroad. And so it will take on additional mass, something like a snowball as it gathers momentum.

And so I would go ahead and give the floor now maybe to Marcin Czyczerski, who will say a few more words about eobuwie, the main e-commerce arm within the group.

So perhaps I'll fill in some space between the 2 periods. So if we look at Q3, we can continue to see very rapid growth, 51% and wonderful cost discipline. And we have the progress in terms of procurement value generated. We see the potential here.

So Marcin will say some more about that because nobody knows this business better than he does.

[Marcin Czyczerski, executive]

So I'd like to welcome all of you, ladies and gentlemen. So we've been building size and profitable growth for years. So we've become the leader in the CEE area. And we have selectively emphasized our footprint in various countries of Europe. And through our procurement, we want to improve the customer experience, inspire our customers, make sure that we have the right marketplace. We want to augment our content, the filters we use on our websites and to make sure that it's even easier to have good contact with our brands. So omnichannel applications, personalization, communication. We want to loyalize our customers to an even greater extent.

So as a leader here in eobuwie, we want to increase our presence in the premium segment through MODIVO. So consistently and unwaveringly, we've been building our magnitude, business size since 2006 when we launched operations. So then in 2012, 2013, we saw some competition coming out of the market without improving the scale very quickly, looking at Zalando.

So we decided to go and enter foreign markets. That's something we saw in 2012. So we entered Czech Republic in 2013. Then the 2016 was when we received the support from CCC because it took over a 75% equity stake. That year, we were able to exceed 1 million orders a year. Then in subsequent years, we penetrated new markets. We penetrated them.

The next milestone was 2018, when we launched our first hybrid stores. And then we also launched the esize.me service, which was a revolutionary service and a breakthrough moment, and then we started to enter subsequent Western European markets. And then in 2019, we had a major investment, the biggest in the history of the company for a new logistics center, and it's very important for the growth of the business.

And so in 2020, we had to store some of the products. And so then we opened up a new segment for us, which is MODIVO. This is apparel and we were able to increase substantially the size of the market where we're operating. And so in 2020, we opened up MODIVO hybrid stores. And we started to utilize our new logistics center, which, at the turn of Q1 and Q2 of 2020, started to do distributions.

Then we entered the corporate period. We had a large number of constraints, safety. We had to change a lot of things. We had to have a new store, technological solutions were out and deployed. And as Karol mentioned, there were a lot of impediments we had to overcome. And as a result, there were some delays in the deliveries. But now after a few months, we're delivering all of our consignments more quickly than we did prior to having the essential warehouse. And so had -- we now have these impediments, the results would have been even better.

So this year, we're very pleased and proud of being able to launch the esize.me app on smartphones. We're no longer dependent solely on physical infrastructure. We're able to deliver the scan through a smartphone.

So over the last 7 years, we've been able to increase revenue some 60x. We've been growing very dynamically, very rapidly. And so this rapid growth is taking place in line with the profitability of the company, which is something that's totally extraordinary across the globe.

So eobuwie has not had to raise any additional capital. So we've grown basically, organically through this period. So we started in Poland where we're the top player, but we've grown in other markets. So Poland accounts for 39% of sales even though we've grown by some 50% nearly from 2016 to 2019.

In CEE, which is a key market to us, we are the leader there. We want to continue strengthening our footprint here. So the growth has been quite strong here, some 76%. In Western Europe, it represents 18% of our sales, but the growth here from 2016 to 2019 is nearly 230%. The Greek market is a very good example. We started our expansion in Greece in 2017. And in 2019 we are the leader there on the distributed market, and we have a market share of some 17%. So we've selectively chosen markets in Western Europe where we want to strengthen our position. We see enormous potential to continue growing our business.

The success of eobuwie is linked to the fact that the customer experience and during the purchasing process and generally, satisfaction are quite important to us. So we have new initiatives, new projects and new solutions that we're working on.

One of the good examples are hybrid stores. We have some 25 stores. So we want to focus on utilizing the capacities, the capabilities these stores give us to deliver products to customers within 3 hours. And we want to open ourselves up to new solutions.

And so we have the first MODIVO store. And what we're proud of is the MODIVO project where we've been able to look at premium apparel. We're pleased with the project. We're growing there quite rapidly, and we have some 560 brands. So 200 brands with apparel. And then we have a large number of our own brands. So we're very pleased with our logistics system and the modern logistics we can offer.

We're able to deliver 95% of our consignments this very same day. And with respect to 14 countries, we're able to deliver packages within 48 hours. The new logistics center makes that possible. We're utilizing the most advanced, sophisticated technical solutions there, another important service that's quite important to us, and it enables us to give good recommendations to our customers.

We have the esize.me app, you know that, I'm pretty sure. As a result, we have some 300 scanners, 3D scanners in our stores. That means, along with CCC, we were able to amass a database of some 1.3 million customers. So that increases the value of a customer because the sales conversion is more than double. And so most of the products are available on eobuwie.pl and are available to our customers.

We're investing in our app. And so we have nearly 1 million people who've downloaded the app. A large number of those people are utilizing mobile devices over the course of the last year. Our website has been visited. We had 590 million visits with [indiscernible] by 1 million active customers up until June of this year. So a little bit more than 9 million orders. The average value of the orders of MODIVO and eobuwie is around PLN 290 (sic) [ PLN 349 ].

And here, you can see a picture of our modern logistics center. As I mentioned, it's the largest investment in the history of eobuwie, more than PLN 200 million that we've invested in this logistics center. Most of the costs have already been incurred because we built all the infrastructure. We purchased orders. We had all the technology that was key to us for dispatching consignments. So we can expand the center, the warehouse by another bit. It's going to be much less expensive.

So in these expenditures, we purchased land as well for subsequent expansion if it proves to be necessary. So this investment makes it possible to look into the future with a great amount of optimism, and we'll be able to scale up our operations as we respond to market needs.

We're growing rapidly. So our CAGR from 2017 to 2019 is more than 50% in the first half of the year, we're up some 58%. If you look at the first half, so it was up the previous years, so we've been able to improve our gross margin. In 2019, it was 49%. So 42 -- now it's 43%. So even though there's been a rough period, rough patch in the first half of the year with COVID, we've been able to improve our gross margin.

If you look at our EBITDA, so in 2019, it was 7%. We've been able to increase it by some 11%. Our CAGR has improved by 11% from 76 to 94. And so there's quite a bit of costs in MODIVO, but we were able to grow this business anyway. We've invested quite a bit in technology, in new applications, and I'll say a few words about this in just a moment, as a result of what happened on the marketplace. So the emergence of the pandemic, we have noticed, of course, negative impacts primarily in March.

It was a tough period branches for our shoe industry, but from many industries, we're able to achieve some 70% growth. And then we saw in April growth growing by leaps and bounds in shoes and that we were able to catch up in subsequent months for what happened in March. So we see much greater interest amongst customers in online shoes but also looking at apparel. And this means it's going to be possible for us to maximize our position on the market. As I've mentioned, COVID means that the penetration of online versus off-line has increased quite strongly.

2020 is an exceptional year, so we're not going to show our analysis here because many stores were closed or they had substantial reductions in footfall. So we believe that many people who made their first purchases online will stick with us. And the penetration we've seen in 2020 will increase by at least 5 percentage points. So we assume that they'll be able to work with us for the next couple of years, in fact. So this gives us an -- to estimate future opportunities. And so we'll be able to surpass our top line growth sales as well as our profitability objectives for 2020.

Basically, I'd like to triple the size of our business compared to 2019. And so next year, we'd like to have an EBITDA of PLN 230 million, PLN 250 million, having achieved additional financing.

So we have MODIVO, we have the hybrid stores. These are the things that we've done in the past, now we want to monetize all of these investments. One of the key initiatives to bring us closer to attaining the objectives I've mentioned, this is accelerating the e-commerce market growth as a result of COVID. And so we want to continue developing MODIVO in the premium segment to enable us to operate in a much broader market. We want to develop the overall marketplace. As I indicated, we -- the large number of suppliers we would like to work with us is through this marketplace and this would make it possible for us to expand our product offering without having to commit working capital to that.

And then we have personalization, not just communication. We'd like to loyalize our customers to an even greater extent and improve retention. As a result of having MODIVO on board, we've been able to increase retention. We want to continue developing mobile solutions as well as our apps. And then the effectiveness of our logistics because we have this investment made in our logistics. And so we're able to send out orders to customers even more quickly. And so the unit costs of these type of operations has fallen substantially. We're making investments in new systems, which means that we're going to be able to operate more effectively.

Then we have our own solution, which we're utilizing in 9 markets for MODIVO. And we intend to roll out this system in the Polish market. We're very pleased with how this new system is operating. So next year, we also intend to roll out this technology for eobuwie.pl, which would enable us to achieve many other initiatives and projects where we would be able to step up the acceleration of their onboarding.

And so on top of everything I've mentioned, we need to have the proper capital base. We'd like to attract some PLN 400 million to achieve all of these objectives. And so along with the shareholders, we're analyzing all of the possible scenarios. And when the decisions are made, then of course, we'll advise you -- for CCC to be able to announce what the directions we intend to follow are.

So thank you very much for your attention.

[Unknown Executive]

Okay. Thank you very much, Marcin. So I think this is a big chunk of information, interesting information, to sum up the performance of eobuwie. Perhaps, this might sound a little bit odd in your ears. Things could have been even better with the growth rate and the profitability, even though things were very good.

So if you look back at March and April, eobuwie was starting its biggest investment, it was automating things. And all of this was happening during -- while being in the storm's eye as suppliers weren't able to come here. And it all had to be integrated. So a big portion of the year had to be canceled. And so it had to be -- I mean, the things that were supposed to be done this way were done manually. So we had additional costs as a result. So these are things that you will see in the future.

So Marcin, I'd like to thank you for this portion of the business. We [indiscernible] a very dynamic quarter behind us. In Q2 and Q3, we're very pleased with the progress in this channel. We're also pleased with how we're dealing with the rebuilding of revenue after the lockdown during the pandemic.

The gray shows our budgetary -- revised budgetary assumptions incorporating the COVID reality. You said that our results were too optimistic and they should have been more pessimistic. Well, perhaps we were aided by fortune. We were also prepared. There's a large number of good, solid decisions.

So the orange bars show that we're doing better than the optimistic scenario that we had embraced at that time. And this gives us a good foothold for the upcoming 3 months. And Q4 is the most important period. And so the company is entering Q4, very well prepared in terms of its products, in terms of its process and in terms of the equity it holds.

We're convinced that the work we've done during COVID, the work that we talked about in our strategy, addressing the commerce, the product assortment, the customer approach, the awareness of how customers are changing - all this would generate value into the future. We can see this based on our own research, but also based on third-party research that COVID has strengthened the trends that we talked about in our strategy.

So it's a truism to talk about e-commerce becoming stronger. It's a big part of our strategy. So I'm pleased to hear what Karol and Marcin are saying, that we continue to deliver and what we promised in previous quarters, and now we're monetizing those projects, and we'll do that in the future. So then we have the improved popularity of sneakers. We're also investing in our own brand here. There were some difficulties that we encountered here. So as a group -- so Q3 could have been even better.

And so we have more price sensitivity and the quality to price ratio is very important. So 93% of our customers -- 93% believe that it's an attractive price. And so we see consumers are more and more aware of CSR. We're proud that we're the top entity. We have an A rating in the ESG ratings of MSCI.

So I think we're -- so if we go to the recap, where we are today, and what are the connotations for our future? So let me begin with the end. Let me emphasize, this is the most important thing. Our collection has been very well received. So this first capsule sold out in the first 2 weeks. We've got very good relations with our customers. We have very high NPS scores. And so we can say that we have a lot of achievements in e-commerce. COVID is blowing at our sales, but this is something that was a result of the hard work that we did and the smart business decisions made in previous quarters and years.

If you look at e-commerce plus our product plus the work on conversion means that we've been able to rebuild our top line much more quickly than we had originally posited and much more quickly than many of our peers. So this means that the e-commerce channel is very profitable. And the -- we can say that the brick-and-mortar section has an opportunity to rebuild some of its profitability, and we're focusing on sales density, so sales per square meter.

So these are things that we communicated to you previously. We don't want to focus on nonstrategic, nonprofitable areas of our business. That's why we made the decision to wrap up operations there, set up provisions, forget about sponsoring activity, our operations in Germany, in Switzerland, and think about our product and our customers and product communication because these are things that are changing. We're becoming much more precise and much more consistent. And so we're building our world of brands.

So we're trying to communicate what these brands are clearly and expressively like Lasocki which is a family and traditional brand that's all about environmentally friendliness and long-term durability. And so then we have brands with different -- and aspirational brands for people who are moving forward strongly. We're communicating this very strongly in Q3, and we're going to talk about this quite a bit. And you're going to hear a lot about Deichmann and Jenny Fairy. It's not just [Foreign Language], it's not just about something that's Italian. It's a cosmopolitan approach. It's classics and minimalism. It's compact. It's a clear message that we're delivering as a wonderful product and that's planned. That's something that we've had around for a long time. So it's quite popular in the '90s. It started to sell very well.

As of June, we have some interesting ideas. So consistent communication, things that we want to maintain. Then DeeZee, glamor, always on time. A timely brand for people, for women who are bold. And so we're working with some writers, top model. And so DeeZee has entered the world of fashion. Then we have sneakers' personalization. So this is where the retail business is going, and we're building a community where we want to be effective in the 21st century at the next collection. It is becoming part of the fashion world with the strong utilization of our showroom. And so basically, we really are now a part of the fashion world. We feel that we're a good part of that, and CCC feels very good here and the fashion world feels good with us at CCC.

Then we have the capsules. We want to have some of the unique aspects of our products of fashion and fashion trends. We want to emphasize them, and we want to show to customers some of the unique things in time and giving customers very specific feelings and experiences.

This is how CCC is changing. And it's becoming -- it's improving its reception amongst customers, its customer perception. And so you'll see that in subsequent quarters and the results from this quarter.

Now I'd like to give the floor, traditionally, to the Chairman of our Supervisory Board, who is best at summing up past quarters. And he says the kind of words that we remember, commit to memory best. Thank you very much.

[Dariusz Milek, executive]

So perhaps, I would only add what Marcin talked about. Our CCC Group is a different company than a few quarters ago. We have more competent people at every stage of projects and management. We've made some pretty important changes in e-commerce and retail business. Basically, we have to change or die, we all know about that. We have much more product-aware approach in the marketing that we're doing there is -- I can tell you, this is just the beginning of the change.

Every quarter, these changes are going to be more clear in terms of what we're thinking about in the spring, what we're thinking about in the fall. A lot of changes have taken place in our procurement section. And I think these results are going to be a pretty clear monetization of these projects.

So we have made a large number of investments. So e-commerce, CCC, MODIVO, the app, the warehouse, the purchase of the DeeZee brand, the Gino Rossi brand purchase or acquisition, the esize.me platform to measure foot size. This is very interesting. It didn't make money initially, but these were investments.

So all these projects have started to monetize to a lesser or greater extent -- actually, to a greater extent. And we see that the potential is enormous. And these are the type of effects that we should expect from these projects.

What's the most important thing to us? So focusing on e-commerce sales. We're all aware of how strongly this is moving forward. We want to improve our sales density per square meter. So Q2, Q3 of next year, we'll see great improvement here. We have ideas on how to achieve that, and we'll focus on product and product marketing. And so I think all of this is moving in a good direction in our company.

So thank you for your attention. So I'd like also to thank you for this summary and recap. So now ladies and gentlemen, we'll have the Q&A session. So we would like to ask for the questions to be read aloud, the questions that are posted on the chat, and then we'll try to respond to them as best as we can. So let's begin.

[Unknown Executive]

Is the company ready for a potentially warm October?

[Unknown Executive]

More than ever. We're much more a fashionable company than a company that's responding to specific needs. We're much more weather resistant. That was the idea we had for many quarters. We can't be so susceptible to weather changes, we're much more fashionable. Well, maybe that doesn't sound so nice, but we're trying to generate more emotions related to ourselves as opposed to just being weather-driven. Well, we also have good weather. The weather seems to be pretty good. If we look in terms of October, the last couple of Octobers were very warm. This year, perhaps we're going to have a little bit more fortune in terms of the weather in October. Thank you.

[Unknown Executive]

Now we have a question about eobuwie. What about the IPO for the eobuwie? Because it's always been the pearl and your crown and I've thought about that.

[Unknown Executive]

So as I mentioned previously, we're analyzing a number of scenarios. The key thing for us is to source additional capital because we have additional opportunities. Thanks to COVID, we want to tap into those opportunities in the various markets where we're present. And to do that, we need to have the right equity base or capital base, and so we're analyzing a variety of scenarios. And so we'll advise you once those -- the decision is made.

[Unknown Executive]

Let's stick with eobuwie. Can you give us a little bit more information about market place? What is planned here?

[Unknown Executive]

It seems to me that it's a little premature to analyze specific details because the e-commerce market itself is evolving very rapidly. So many competitors are doing types of promotional efforts in the marketplace. We've done some analysis. It should enable us to expand, enlarge the product range without investing capital. We want to continue the investments in eobuwie and top of mind, in CEE, but also in other markets where we're operating in West Europe such as Greece. And in this direction, the marketplace project is going to be one of the core elements for the development here. So it's planned to launch in the latter half of next year. We see a lot of interest amongst our potential partners who are thinking about and very interested in cooperating with our marketplace approach.

[Unknown Executive]

Another question about pandemic. More and more people are talking about a second wave of the pandemic.

[Unknown Executive]

While traffic is affected especially in the South below Poland, we haven't seen that in the top line of the company in recent weeks. Well, traffic is proper for everybody. It's just for everybody. We focus on conversion.

[Unknown Executive]

Have the stores in Switzerland already been shut down? So the model of leaving Switzerland is little bit different. We intend to sell that company. We've started the preparation process. So we're restructuring the network there. We think at the time of sale, it will have around 100 stores. Perhaps Karol can say a couple of words about this.

[Karol Póltorak, executive]

I would confirm that. So we want to build the value of that for the buyer. So this asset, the way it is, is ready for sale, but we continue the operations that were launched previously, but the asset's ready for sale.

[Unknown Executive]

Can you talk about the provisions? Which provisions relate to which lines of the P&L?

[Unknown Executive]

I think the current report addresses that in detail. I think the simplest thing is to take a look at the current report on the subject. And it's number 58, where we've given a breakdown, information about which provisions on costs, some of the operational. There's a large number of financial things. We mentioned which line items, which things we're writing down loans and things like that in Germany, Switzerland, already done, in some places this year.

[Unknown Executive]

What do you think the costs of running your stores will be per square meter in the upcoming period?

[Unknown Executive]

We can say that they're going to be higher than 98 and lower than 174. But the post-COVID base will be built in the upcoming quarters. We see cost discipline not just during COVID. The work was started prior to that. So I think our lease team along with the management team and the Chairman, we've been able to negotiate very good terms. Well, a lot has changed, things have changed. We have to accept that and embrace it. And so we've been able to find that understanding elsewhere. So the staff numbers are quite tight, and we're focusing on good customer service. So we'd be pleased if things stay the way they are. So we're doing many things on our own, better than in the past. We've given them to partners. So I think right now, we're trying to make sure that no single zloty is spent irresponsibly in the group.

[Unknown Executive]

What was your level of inventory in payables? And what was your cash flow in Q3?

[Unknown Executive]

Unfortunately, we can't give a response to that. So we have to look at FX gains and losses. So we're not able to give that kind of data today. I can mention that with respect to inventory, the business decisions from last year, we had more intake in the winter months as opposed to the summer months to make sure that we're ready for the individual collections. At the same time, we don't bring in 2 collections all at once. So we're trying to synchronize things much better.

[Unknown Executive]

What sort of competencies does eobuwie find missing?

[Unknown Executive]

As we -- as I mentioned, we're looking at a number of strategic options, and so a partner with a lot of experience in scaling up things also in e-commerce. And so we're thinking about people who have experience on other e-commerce markets.

[Unknown Executive]

If we look at MODIVO, what can distinguish this project from others? What's your approach here?

[Unknown Executive]

In terms of MODIVO, we want to create an international brand that will be capable of competing with the premium apparel from abroad. So at eobuwie, we want to be top of mind for our customers who are thinking about online. So with our locality, being local is something that's a great advantage. So customers have said that eobuwie, translated into local languages, is local store. It's very important, a big advantage, a major competitive advantage that we have. eobuwie is top of mind because it's in the local language. And so we want to focus on that. MODIVO is more of a global brand. And so then we want to focus on the premium apparel category to a greater extent.

[Unknown Executive]

To what extent would you be able to achieve your strategic objectives without raising capital?

[Unknown Executive]

So all of the objectives that we've mentioned to you in the GO.22 strategy are currently in progress. But as a result of COVID, as a result of the potential to grow even faster, we'd like to utilize that opportunity. And so additional capital could be used for a number of objectives. So technology, marketing, stock. It's no sense in mentioning any specific goals right now, but we could get even more market share, especially in CEE, which is quite critical to us. But as we look at selected Western European markets, we see a lot of potential there.

[Unknown Executive]

Now we have a question about slashing cost with an axe. What's the outlook for upcoming quarters?

[Unknown Executive]

All scenarios are in play. We want to create a business that's capable of earning money. So we're a profitable business here in eobuwie. We have Q4 which is the most important quarter. And it has the biggest impact and we're well-prepared for that regardless of the weather. So I can say that all of the expenditures that the group has incurred took place in 2019, which put us in a clamp, liquidity clamp during COVID. And so we're ready now to earn money. And so we're looking for a partner for eobuwie.

Financially, that would enable us to enter Western Europe. And we're thinking about building the value of the company. We believe that this building is able to triple in size with a recurring beat at a specific size. And so we're all focused on that.

So the number of stores doesn't encourage us to go out and develop as retail brands. And so the sales will be developed through e-commerce, new technology, new logistics - all those things that can increase the values. Perhaps, there are certain things that we're not able -- we're not quite yet able to do -- capable in. So that's why we're thinking about people get ads, and this is one of the most important assets that we have. So I'm not sure if I've given you a full response to the question, but this is the goal, the objective we had.

[Unknown Executive]

What about the changes in consumer behavior after COVID?

[Unknown Executive]

Could you repeat the question?

[Unknown Executive]

What are the changes in consumer behavior online after COVID?

[Unknown Executive]

We've noted a large trend, but the differences aren't major. It depends on the market, of course. What's changed is the penetration of persons making purchases online and the interest there amongst people who are looking for purchasing opportunities. In some months, we've seen greater retention, but this is caused by a number of initiatives and measures that we're taking.

Do we have a large number of questions yet? So let's try to accelerate things.

[Unknown Executive]

Do you still believe in brick-and-mortar sales this time around?

[Unknown Executive]

Ladies and gentlemen, we believe we're changing the face of our stores. And I think Karol Poltorak responded to that question. What is the store looking like right now? It's going to be -- our stores in 2021 is going to be digitalized, wonderful communication. So it's probably going to be, on average, a little bit smaller than the current stores we have, but these stores will perform well.

Well, even eobuwie that has its own stores, it has very large growth in sales even though traffic is down. And so they had positive EBITDA even in the softer summer months. We're not going to close our stores because somebody is going to think up that the market is going to change in the future, in 5 years. We're going to be participating in this market. And sometimes we have too many stores, our stores are too big. And so we'll continue to participate in this market in a natural manner. What I've told you at the outset is that you will see changes in Q3, in Q4, and we'll see better sales per square meter. And this is something that will happen and maybe later, I'll talk about how, but we do have some solutions in place to do that.

The other questions are recurring, so we'll respond to them after the conference in writing. So we'd like to thank you for your attendance, and I'd like to thank the presenters.

So today, we're starting the fourth quarter, the most important quarter. We're convinced and confident that when we present its results, that we're going to be able to talk about our performance and the ongoing transformation of the CCC Group as well as eobuwie. Thank you very much, and goodbye.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]