CCC SA

WSE:CCC

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q3

[Marcin Czyczerski, executive]

[Interpreter] We had some technical difficulties. Can the translator hear us? Yes. I'd like to welcome you very cordially to this results conference. As a result of the change in the timing, it's going to be in October. So it's -- I'm sorry, for the short break. So I think a lot has been happening in the company. It'll be good to utilize this time I have with you to convey to you as much as possible about what's happened in the company and its environment, how the company has entered the fourth quarter.

Today's presentation is shorter. 4 weeks ago, we already talked about some of the results. I'll show you some other financial issues [indiscernible] the third quarter. [indiscernible] tell you a little bit about how the company has started Q4. So this month -- this quarter is a key month for us. And so it's going to be quite an important quarter for us in this year, 2020. So if we think about how the company's results have [indiscernible] out. And the key aspects of our operations.

Well, this slide actually talks about the key topics. Hence, we have an increase in top line by 8%, which is very clear increase in the top line growth as of the middle of September and in October. So Q3 looks quite look. So if we look at the [indiscernible]. Gino Rossi new product categories. So the take-up has been very good amongst the customers. Hence, we'll have the pleasure of talking about this a little bit later in the presentation. And we can prefer profitable -- ongoing profitable growth of eobuwie as well as the entire e-commerce world in CCC.

And then the e-commerce solutions we have in the stores and the connection to the e-commerce and the digital world and the real world. This all has a positive impact. We also have a low but still profitable operating result, which shows us how we've been able to make our business model more and more flexible. Hence, we can say more about doing more in e-commerce, more and more digital solutions and so discuss about these 5 items, these 5 tenants during the course of our presentation in order for you to be able to develop your own picture about what we've been able to achieve and -- in this quarter and how we've wrapped up that third quarter and started the fourth quarter of 2020.

So in terms of sales, which were quite good in Q3, which was astonishing to many of you. So we had an increase of 8% year-on-year. So we've accelerated the top line growth in Q4. We've also seen increases in 2 key channels in CCC. For the bulk of this period in October, the top line was in the black and e-commerce was continuing to grow and -- continuing to accelerate. So the impact on Q4 and 2021, will be discussed in terms of what COVID has done with respect to Q4 and the second wave of Q4. So at the beginning, the impact was rather slim, you can see how our sales rebounded based on a like-for-like basis in our brick-and-mortar stores. And so our like-for-like results in the first week, the second week of October were, in the black, we saw e-commerce sales growing very strongly. In last week of October, we can see that traffic has fallen off, footfall has fallen off. So we can say that maybe up to 50% of the traffic has dwindled, but we still see quite a bit of conversion. So this gives us an opportunity to think optimistically about the evolution of sales in upcoming weeks, even though we do have the spiraling effect of the COVID pandemic. So this is taking place not only in Poland, but also in other markets. So based on what you can see, the company has started the fall and winter season very good. The take up by consumers has been splendid. We've seen very strong vibrant growth. So -- 16%, 19%.

If we look at the e-commerce growth rate, this is something that captures a lot of your attention and a lot of our attention. Especially as we look at the lockdown, we should recon -- with that happening, although we still think that it might be possible to avoid that solution. But in the case, we're preparing for everything. This is important for CCC group to do. You're very well aware that we have a wonderful set of conditions to develop our digital sales, our e-commerce sales. We've been able to utilize that to a greater extent and tap into that to a greater extent than other players. This is because of eobuwie because we've developed its sales channels, the digital sales channels. We have web channels interactions. We've moved that up from 30% to 40% in a very short period of time.

So these -- we're building our profitability. We're building our relationships with customers because some of them are up and running for less than a year. So we can say that -- logistics core. The company has built that logistics core in Zielona Gora and Polkowice for several years. You have a picture of Zielona Gora. This is not the most updated picture. It's something that's changing day by day. So the third warehouse, K3 in Zielona Gora is continuing to grow our capabilities to warehouse goods by leaps and bounds. So this involves some CapEx that the company had incurred in previous quarters with respect to K2. We're very pleased with how we're poised to continue developing our e-commerce position. Of course, we have the pickup of the pace in terms of COVID. But prior to that, the company is very well poised to seize benefits from expansion of its e-commerce position.

So what is going to be the impact on perception in the brick-and-mortar network. So it's still an important element of our business, but this is something that's undergoing even more profound change this year. Based on what we see, what we understand and what the fact is, we need less commercial space, shopping space. The model we had up until the end of last year, where we had stores of 1,000 square meters. Today, our stores are smaller. We have fewer openings.

We have quite a few closings. We had talked about that starting in Q2 that we're going to close down around 100 stores, primarily in Western Europe, who are closing [indiscernible], which was generating [ PLN 5 million ] loss, which will be something that will reduce the burden to company. So our network is going through profound restructuring. And ultimately, we want to make sure that it's going to be -- has well adapted and customized to the new reality to the greatest extent possible. So we're going to have stores of 500, 600, maybe in some cases, 800 square meters. These are things that are happening as we speak. So we're going to continue this adaptation of new stores, the new CCC to the digital world, which has become and is becoming a fact. You can see -- as you look behind me, we have the cash tools, the tablets. So we have, in 200 stores, omnichannel solutions, which are generating splendid sales results by the end of this year, at the latest by Q1 2021. We'll deploy that in another 600 stores in Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary.

So on my left side, you can see some new solutions. What's quite important here in terms of having that omnichannel world. We've launched this -- we had first the e-commerce shipments sent directly from stores. So our stores are becoming not just sale -- points-of-sale, but local e-commerce warehouses. So we can say to a greater and greater extent, our sales network will be a bigger and bigger advantage to us. Why is the network so important? Because we're going to continue underlining the fact that e-commerce and the brick-and-mortar world are more and more interrelated with one another. So some 15% of our revenue, sometimes as much as 40-some percent of our revenues, are being generated here. So our stores are selling through online and offline.

So our customers -- some 20,000 customers are downloading our app. So we now have nearly 3 million downloads. In the recent past, we talked about 2 million downloads. So this duality rate of our approach has other aspects, other facets. So 3 quarters of our returns, which go through our stores are then converting into other sales. So we can say that these 2 worlds are very much interrelated and are penetrating one another [indiscernible].

So if we look at some of the stores that we're closing. We're able to move some of those clients of these stores that have been shut down into the e-commerce world, like in [indiscernible]. Why is that so important? Because the average value of a customer -- transaction value of an omnichannel customer is at least 50% higher than somebody who's a customer in a single channel. You can see that 17% of our database of customers have purchased online. So you can see how much potential we have as we continue to build the value of our customer over time.

So we can go on to the next portion of our presentation. So to illustrate this impact on specific numbers last year -- 2 years ago, the company CCC, didn't have e-commerce or it was just at the beginning stages. We weren't able to offset negative results in our brick-and-mortar stores using e-commerce. But if you look at what's happening now in October, you can see that by combining what's happening online and offline and despite the pandemic that started to extend quite extensively -- proliferate quite extensively. In October, this is a new business model of CCC, which is no longer a prototype. It's up and running. It's delivering results. And so the company is less and less dependent on footfall through our brick-and-mortar stores. So the second channel is delivering sales.

So as we walk on to our sales results, our financial results. So the major factor has been space. This has changed now. You can see that the growth is very minimum. We're not saying no to opening new stores. There are some pearls -- good ideas for stores. There's still opportunity to open new stores, but the restructuring of our stores -- this is the red portion of the slide, compensates or offsets the growth that we see. The stores we opened in Q3 were in Romania, so like -- eobuwie. So in conjunction with our online channel growth in Central and Eastern Europe. This is something that we said we're going to do and this is something we're delivering on.

So the e-commerce prospects, the omnichannel prospects are quite attractive and we see growth in certain geographic regions where the saturation is lower. So the fact that we're not increasing the amount of selling space. That means, we'll see more and more like-for-like sales performance characteristics. So we'll improve our performance by higher conversion despite falling footfall.

So depending on how conversion moves up. This will depend -- or this will drive, in fact, the offsetting mechanism. So if you look at our P&L, in Q3, we managed through a lot of extensive work in CCC, Gino Rossi and the other brands, we were able to drive up our top line by 8%. The negative like-for-like was offset by online sales. So that means we were able to generate a positive change in top line. So it grew. So the pandemic has [indiscernible] .

We've seen traffic down by 10%, 15% because of the pandemic. So we're pleased with these results. These aren't things that we are able to achieve just by taking a walk in the park. It was a lot of tough work that we had to do. We toiled to gain this result. So despite the fact, as I showed you on the initial slides, traffic was starting to come back. Conversion was quite high, and that meant that our like-for-like results, like-for-like sales results were very good. We can see that e-commerce has strong growth rate. The new start-up solutions like MODIVO, the new markets for DeeZee, the applications that we're building for them. These are solutions -- are now building their magnitude and their profitability.

So if you look at eobuwie, we had growth rate in excess of 50%. It's not slowing down. We're well above the peers here. In Greece and Italy, we're pleased with this growth rate. Why is it so important? We can see that our model is scalable. And we're seen as an important local player in Greece and in Italy. We're seen as the top player in Greece. We see the ability to scale in these markets is enormous. And that's why we want to bolster our presence, our footprint there. So this means our growth will be profitable.

In Q3, we've improved our profitability at the EBIT level and the EBITDA level, primarily because of gross margin improvement. Here, I should tell you what will happen in terms of looking for a partner in eobuwie. So prior to the holidays, we'd like to have a final selection of the short list. In terms of investors that we're going to continue our talks with -- about the transaction and deal structure to be able to wrap that up in the beginning of next year. So January or February, I can tell you there's a lot of interest, a lot of -- a great amount of interest, a large number of reputable players, financial institutions as well as players. Strategic industry players. Are we astonished by that? No. Have in mind where we are with e-commerce, we're not at all surprised. So this is all growing at a very fast clip. And so as we can see that it's growing faster and faster and more and more profitable, that means the interest is there. So we can look at the multiples and the prices of the other e-commerce businesses, and we can see that eobuwie is an entity that deserves attention, and it's enjoying that attention from prospective investors.

So coming back to the viewpoint of the overall group. At eobuwie and DeeZee, the overall group. In Q3, we've been able to improve substantially our gross margin, maybe because of the mix, you don't see that, that well. And because of the importance of eobuwie, we have an improvement or growth of several percentage points in DeeZee and CCC. We're starting to close the gap. It's a little over 1% right now in e-commerce. So if you look at the blended margin, this is an important achievement. As we look at the fact that we do have slightly lower traffic footfall. So the gross margin improvement is something that we perceive very positively as a result or it's because of the fact that it's happened despite the lower footfall. And we can see that the first margin is growing. And we know that when the situation normalizes, stabilizes, the margin, our product deliveries is very good and will deliver exceptional profitability.

If we look at the costs in our P&L, we can see further savings because of changes in FTEs. Also as a result of lower rents, we've been able to develop with our partners very good solutions after the end of lockdown. So the PLN 74 million performance is quite good in terms of the cost of stores. So we also have IFRS 16 incorporated here.

We've got this topic very well under control and we would uphold what we said. We have further potential to lower marketing costs. We see further costs, further opportunities to lower logistics costs. We'll build space for DeeZee, e-commerce, eobuwie and CCC, we're trying to balance and offset the balance of -- or find a strike to balance there in the growth of profitability and the cost.

So if we look at these costs per square meters, you can see the performance best here. And the figures themselves respond to this question with this. So if you look at the costs of operational stores, they're down by 27% year-on-year, whereas SG&A is down by 16%. These are very good achievements. This is linked to the support given also because of COVID, the reductions in rents or a number of one-off effects and the part of the base, it's going to be higher than what you see here, but these aren't just one-offs.

As I mentioned, during the presentation for Q2, 1 month ago, it's very difficult to define unequivocally that cost base right now. So if we sum up the P&L, so revenue is up 8%, gross margin because of the very strong -- has changed the way it changed, 2.7% negative because of the strong growth. And so we were using that in order to drive up conversion. So the operating result is a slight positive. It's a little bit better than what we saw in our preliminary results, perhaps it's only PLN 1 million. But symbolic because this is Q3 result during a pandemic. And so we're pleased that we've been able to achieve a positive figure here. And then we can look at other elements of our financials, including our inventories. This is something that's a key issue for us, for you, especially when COVID started. And it wasn't really clear how the company is going to be able to handle that. We are going to look at this at spring and summer 2020, all the way through 2021 and the fall and winter. And so we've been able to liquidate some of those stocks. Sometimes at the expense of margin, you can see that CCC products are very strong and becoming even stronger. We want those products to be on the shelves. So even though we have COVID, the outcome is that we can brag about lowering our stocks per square meter. That's very important. This -- these gray bars include the e-commerce of eobuwie as well as across the group. So you can say the performance is much bigger than what it seemed to be at first glance.

So if you look at e-commerce itself, and you look at the growth in stock or inventory, you can see that the turnover is at a very good level and may continue to improve the turnover ratios in each one of those channels. And we can also say that the stock is quite young. It's new. So we've been able to reduce the aging. So we've been able to define specific sequences where those products are automatically allocated to stores. So the stocks we have are the ones that we need to have in order to sell in the stores and not as -- was the case in 2 years ago, when the problem was being pushed back from 1 quarter to another. So today, the company has the right type of stock, the type of inventory and it's a healthy inventory in terms of its aging structure. At the same time, we continue to stress that we see more opportunities to do more here.

If we look at cash flow in turn. Compared to the previous quarter, you can see that we had some changes in terms of cash. COVID exerted an impact. Of course, we want to get back to the little of conversion that we had in the past. So below [ 100 ]. So the turnover of stock will increase. We don't have any overdue payables or liabilities. We're a timely payer. We didn't have to pull the emergency break during the COVID here. So we've been able to come back to its levels of payables turnover ratio where we want it to be. And they're pretty decent results, having in mind the cash flow performance metrics we have. So if you compare things year-on-year and look at what's happened in terms of CapEx and as you read the financial statements and have in the back of it that roughly PLN 30 million of that CapEx was commitments from previous periods. So this was technological or these were things that weren't paid previously, but these were things that were paid in Q3. So roughly PLN 40 million of that CapEx plan. And only PLN 15 million of that was for stores. The rest of this was for e-commerce development or building the logistics center in Zielona Gora. And so all these technical solutions, basically running through and throughout CCC.

How does this impact or affect our debt? Our debt is at a stable level. So not sure what we had prior to the outbreak of COVID. We have some open lines of credit, we've got cash. We're well prepared and poised to handle the second wave of COVID. There are very few open issues for us to wrap up in terms of the agreements. We have to sign the term sheet, we have some individual issues with banks. We've got banks to handle it, and we're going to finish that in the near future.

If we look at operating liquidity, financial liquidity, we're doing things to improve that the entire time to make sure that the company is well poised for any type of crisis events as well as less crisis like events where we can utilize the e-commerce potential that we prepared and built. What I want to show you in just a moment is how the company is operating within COVID environment. To wrap up Q3 before moving on to what's going to happen in Q4. This tells us what CCC is, what potential it's doing here? What's its technological potential and capacity? So we have genuine risks, past risks, risks that aren't authentic. But this all will tell us a little bit about how the company is prepared to move into the future. We've talked a lot about the various scenarios that we have in Q2 that we prepared them in Q2. We defined during the first wave of COVID. We had 6 scenarios we prepared. So we had ones that looked at a much more severe crisis scenario. #6 is the scenario, is the biggest crisis scenario, full lockdown with other difficulties. Right now, we're at scenario #4. The company is prepared to follow each one of these scenarios. This is a result of the tough work we've done, wise decisions we've made since March. We've got a liquid company. We've taken efforts to ensure that what we've been working on. And the financing we got from BGK bank and 7 banks and this developed a solution where it was beneficial to the company and all the financial entities. And so all of this work took quite a bit of time, but it's very beneficial.

And now the company is well prepared to boldly step into various scenarios. In terms of our key logistics efficiency, we've got products, merchandise. We've got very good merchandise. Our sales and logistics and e-commerce processes work well, even though we're working remotely, admin processes as the company functions. All this is well-designed and streamlined. Nothing has deteriorated, I would say that we've actually improved things because of digitalizing our methods operation.

What's the most important thing here is that we're utilizing our stores to take advantage of every bit of traffic we have, even though the traffic is smaller. But we want to convert that traffic into better sales than anticipated. We're utilizing our e-commerce. We have great communication with our customers and we're starting to feel the benefits.

So at the end of Q1, we had a short map of our crisis management team, and as you can see, we've been able to implement everything we said we wanted to do. We have some backlog in terms of preparing the company to function even better, not just with respect to crisis, but just generally speaking. And so all of this has been operating very satisfactorily.

And so as the management team of the company, we would like for you to take away some of the key tenants, some of the key figures, key events. So our top line is up 8% in this COVID quarter. We continue our growth and are accelerating our growth in October, both in e-commerce and in retail offline. It's not obvious. This, above all, is a result of the decisions, wise decisions made in terms of e-commerce development, also in terms of store handling operations. But also product-related decisions. eobuwie continues to have a very high profitability on a very high growth rate. And so COVID is conducive to that and CCC is growing on that. Hence, we're deriving benefits from this entrepreneurial utilization of the digital world, the e-commerce world, and we're building a unique omnichannel model of operation, which, as I said, is up and running. And certainly, that's true in the second half of September and on into October.

We have a flexible approach to our space in brick-and-mortar stores. We have a positive operating result in the time of the pandemic, but e-commerce is utilizing the store network, the greatest extent possible. We have a wonderful and modern store network, which is not something that other e-commerce operators have. So we're using this in an integrated fashion. So the CCC product not only because of it's high-quality, it's modern. But this product is not something that's appeared accident. It's the outcome of a great team of designers. Under the guidance of the management Dariusz Milek, put this team together. We have the creative department, the procurement department, the analysis, research department, also production and making sure that it's in the warehouses, in our stores on a timely basis.

These are wonderful planning tools, which the company has up and running. And so it's not the case in Q1 where we had to operate with our hand on the break. Today, our tools, our facilities, our technology gives us a clear competitive advantage and this means our operations are streamlined. Today, we can see in our stores, how these products are performing. You can see the quality of these products. So the teams, the processes, the tools we have give us the certainty that this product in upcoming quarters will become even better. You can do a simple test and walk through our stores and compares to CCC offer with the offer of our competitors. Of course, we wish the best to our competitors. But today, CCC is the unchallenged leader in terms of products. And it's just because of the teams we have, the processes, the technologies we have and this is something that we intend to continue improving over the upcoming quarters. You see some of the examples of these products, how they're communicated, how they're perceived by the market in September and October. We've dominated the press, the trade press, for the fashion press in the clothing or the apparel sector. We're present now. We weren't there some time ago and customers appreciate this. And this is building a positive future for us, enabling us to look optimistically into the future. So perhaps this time of the COVID is not the best time to focus on.

But as you look at DeeZee, MODIVO, they're becoming part of our apparel offering. We're not talking about them, representing tens upon tens of percentage points of our sales mix, but there's going to be a number in the teens for sure. And one of the key advantages we have of CCC is the fact that our products are going to get better and better and more and more aligned to current times. It's adaptable. We have a strong team with well-designed processes incorporating really good tools. That's it from my side. Thank you for your attention.

Let me remind you that you can find us through our news later. You can talk with Tomasz and Wojciech, our IR people. We're available to you at the entire time.

Before we go to the Q&A session, because of the change in the calendar for reporting, we're going to change a few things here. We're going to have a 13-month reporting period. So after the prelims, we'll have the opportunity. So at the beginning of February, we'll meet with you and talk about the preliminary data and discuss with you how that company -- how the company has moved through that period, 5, 6 months and how it's prepared for the fall/winter of 2021. We have an optimistic view of this, and we're very well prepared, in fact.

So I'd now like -- we're ready now for any questions and answers.

[Marcin Czyczerski, executive]

[Operator Instructions] We don't have very many questions right now, but I'm sure that in a few moments, you'll become a little more active.

The first question. Will you come back to publishing monthly results? There's a lot of uncertainty. And the -- actually, the current reports published on a regular basis have more weight than declarations made. We're pretty consistent here. We want to avoid uncertainty. We're changing the commercial calendar.

We're showing the calendars during the quarters. The way they fit our collections, our product collections, that's how we want to report things. If we look at October, this is clearly the most important month, but it's only a portion of that quarter. It's a rather specific or distinct quarter. And on that basis, we can see that our products are working. We've got efficient technology. So frequently, we've had situations that some of the months distorted our view. We don't want to go back to that and repeat that. We're pleased with the sales of our fall and winter collection. Things are selling very well in September as well as in October. We'll tell you about the full fourth quarter once the quarter comes to an end. You can see the collection has been taken up quite well by consumers.

What is the gross margin in October compared to last year? The gross margin is very similar to last year's. So we had the coupons in[indiscernible] . So then the latter portion was a little higher compared to retail. In e-commerce, we can see that it's a very stable level. We see a growing share in the mix of e-commerce versus the brick-and-mortar. So the volume mix is shifting towards e-commerce, and that means it can be a little bit lower, but both channels are reporting very robust margins.

What was the gross margin in Q3 in eobuwie? What was the gross margin in MODIVO? The gross margin in the eobuwie Q3 -- what was the gross margin in the eobuwie group in Q3 by adjusting for CCC? We're going to have to calculate that. It's not the case that I have every single number in my head. It's 55% and above. And it's 6% to 10% of the sales mix and it's a very strong product. So MODIVO's below eobuwie, as at MODIVO businesses has start up that's building its market space. And so the margin is washing through a bit of the eobuwie margin. So the gross rate is growing in MODIVO. I'm sorry, I'm not able to respond to the question entirely. I don't have all of the numbers at my fingertips. Let's go on.

To anticipate that the decision will be made in Poland to shut down shopping centers? A little while ago, I would have said, no. Because the businesses that are in shopping centers are the foundation of the Polish economy. And when you fight with coronavirus, this is both an economic battle and a health battle. And lockdown is not something that aids the economy. But we can't preclude it, however, having in mind what's happening in Slovenia, Czech Republic. So we're ready for that. We think about it this way. We have a very clear model that's operating well. It's an omnichannel model. If we look at the individual days and weeks, we have scenarios. So we don't have to improvise. And we draw on what we see. We have to be responsible. Sometimes you have more difficult situations when you enter a foggy zone. But now we have lower traffic, but we don't have a lockdown. And, to a greater extent, we're shifting our attention to e-commerce and that's something we're very well prepared to do. In terms of stores, I can quote one of our directors. So even if traffic falls by 90%, still 10% of the people come into those stores, shopping centers will come to our stores. And so we'll see the dramatic shifts in the product offering because of the wonderful team that we have in-house.

Coming on to the next question. What was the limit -- the factoring limit that was utilized by the company at the end of Q3? Roughly 80%, now it's a little bit higher. That's important for eobuwie. We've launched in 1 bank, we'll have an additional line of PLN 70 million. It's been launched in 1 bank. It is being launched in the second bank. So we're extending the payment terms and factoring fits that. So we've enlarged that factoring. In fact, we're quite pleased.

How many stores do you intend to close in the first half of 2021 in total and in Poland? We don't have guidance on that sort. We look at this from the point of view of the model. We continue to hold talks with the owners so we're looking at this on a package basis. Many of the owners have 10, 15 or more of our stores. So we're thinking about converting fixed expenses into variable expenses. And we try to find a win-win solution for both parties. In some cases, we're reducing the size of stores. Sometimes they're key hubs. And sometimes they're very wonderful phenomenal stores in terms of e-commerce solutions. So we're day by day, trying to find a wise approach. So we've got a very mature model. It's a forward looking model. There are no unscrewed screws or loose screws. So we're trying to basically pursue this quite strongly.

To what extent would your liquidity be affected by a closure of shopping centers a month? Would you have to issue a stock 1 month lockdown? It's much less than we anticipate in crisis scenario #6. 6 is a distinct number here. So a 1-month lockdown will not affect the company. We're prepared for much longer lockdown. This will not require or necessitate any type of rates offering. Karol Poltorak has already discussed that in April. The situation has improved since then operationally, strategically. So the company is well prepared for a variety of scenarios. So on one hand, you said that the brick-and-mortar stores are an important link in your strategy.

Can you explain the disconnect? There's no disconnect here. They are integrated part of our overall strategy.

Why aren't you thinking about selling eobuwie through the stock exchange, having in mind the attractive multiples? As I mentioned, we're looking at the multiples. Our investors, prospective investors see those multiples as well. We know the value of eobuwie is high. We also know that this value is not incorporated in the value of CCC. We also know that the value will grow over time. And the fuel that will be delivered by CCC and the new partner, capital partner in terms of greater ideas. So this is a very strong e-commerce business.

So assuming that e-commerce share of revenue will continue to grow, should we anticipate a decline in profitability? With respect to what assuming that e-commerce will have a bigger and bigger portion of revenue. Does that mean the group's profitability will fall? No. And our brick-and-mortar business is profitable. eobuwie is very profitable. It's improving its position very strongly over time. If we look at many of our e-commerce businesses, these are business solutions that have started the sprout and are in the process of building magnitude, scale and space, and they will develop their profitability, will strongly improve the profitability of e-commerce, and that will strengthen the profitability of CCC. One thing that's been addressed, that's the profitability of our offline network so product has been improved. It generates a high margin. It's well received by customers. The quality is very high. So the product is the very most important thing. It creates the baseline between ourselves and the customers. And so as we get rid of the lease profitable areas. So we had a different set of a few points in the past. And so we've cut off the stores. We got rid of sponsoring. We got rid of Switzerland this year. We'll analyze that at the beginning of next year. We've introduced a large number of cost initiatives and so all of these things will contribute to improving profitability. We can't show everything, of course, in Q3. We can only tell you how well CCC is grappling with the crisis. And we can talk about the long-term impact, but COVID has affected us. But we can gauge in the future with a lot of optimism. We can tell you how well we've done with COVID, the fears and concerns you had during the first wave of COVID rights offering, stocks all of these things belong to the past. Those risks have been addressed and no longer exist. You're doing a large number of ad campaigns. How will this impact your ad costs and the ratio here? When we presented the strategy, we said our share of voice was low and we're changing that. We're pleased with cost discipline in marketing, how we're doing it. It's going to continue being our secret. You can see a bit of that in eobuwie. And in the group, we're doing some smart management of our marketing budget. Spending more than last year, but we're spending where it generates top line growth and we can show that to you based on numbers. If we look at CapEx in Q3, but the CapEx in Q3 was PLN 160 million as opposed to what you said to PLN 60 million, but there were changes in the interpretation that were agreed at Q2 with the auditor. In terms of the treatment of certain contracts, lease contracts, in terms of treating something as an asset or as a regular rent. So you have a reclassification in Q3, we have 100 more investments in operations or 100 less than -- 100 more in operations, 100 less in investments. So the figures you see there. In Q3, you can see during the presentation, you mentioned that in terms of our investments in Q3, only PLN 40 million of that was directly linked to an expenditure, which actually took place in Q3. The rest was payments of commitments from previous quarters.

There's a question about an earlier part of the presentation. Could you say a little bit more about cutting off Switzerland at the beginning of next year? I think we respond to that question in our current reports that we're reclassifying Switzerland to discontinued activity. So there are certain things we have to do and the auditor has to investigate. One of the conditions is that you're in the active sales process and within 12 months after taking the decision, that the transaction will be finalized within 12 months. So the 12-month period will come to an end at the end of May. By the end of May, we want to complete that transaction of selling Switzerland. This is a different entity.

We've changed our approach to that market. Strategically, we're concentrating on Central and Eastern Europe. We have a lot of value to build here. We're facing an omnichannel. We don't want to divert attention to Switzerland. But over the 2.5 years that have transpired, we've restructured that business. We've cut FTEs down to around 50. We have now 110 stores that will be in place that are profitable or several of them that might still be around 0. That will be up and running at the time of a sale. So this is going to be for the buyer who treats Switzerland as a strategic area. So I don't imagine that anybody could come in from the outside and build a business like that. So this is what we understand to cut off Switzerland. We cut out Germany last year. That was expansion we had started in 2013 -- 2015. So we finalized that cutoff of Germany this year. And the same is true in terms of our sponsoring efforts for cyclists. So there were costs of PLN 200 million or losses. So these won't be in the accounts as of 2021. To ensure that you're able to understand that, well, that's why I want to say this.

80% of the debt is short-term debt. Have you agreed on rolling over that debt that's going to mature in the next 12 months? In terms of financial debt, it's been structured under the agreement with banks in April, so 80% of it will, come to in April of 2021. So we're working with the adviser to devise a term sheet for a long-term solution. We want to discuss that earlier with the banks. We see and hear declarations from our banks. None of the bank's assumes that it's going to stop financing the group. So we'd like to restructure this financing with the long-term financing. We'd see any problems. We started to communicate to the banks what our vision is of that. So I think the banks have taken that relatively positively. And that's at least the information that's been conveyed to us.

Has the collection been put into your stores earlier this year than last year? If so, what was the shift? So it's been implementing the stores much more quickly. Because it was in our stores and our e-commerce, the fall or winter collection. Last year was not a model year. So in September, we had summer collection on sale. So this year, we were very well prepared for back-to-school already in August. Maybe now as well as I would have liked to have been and not as well as we will be in the future. What we can say that the collections were in the stores, roughly 1 month earlier in order to sell as much as possible at the first price and to ensure that the sales cuts were happening at a certain period and phased in over time. Well, we've got COVID. And sometimes well, it's very important that we've been able to fit everything within those time slots working together with our suppliers. So I understand the sponsoring of the cycling group is a matter of the past. So we can anticipate that costs will fall by some PLN 45 million of PLN 3 million per quarter.

Will we have any costs for the cycling group? So at the same time, congratulations for winning Giro d'Italia stage. Thank you very much for the congratulations. We'll convey that information to the cycling team. Our IR manager's a fan of cycling. If we look at costs, Switzerland, Germany, cycling, all future costs linked closing those operations have been provisioned in the first half of this year. That's why we had PLN 600 million in provisions. And all of the impairment losses for Switzerland, Germany for the cycling group as we accelerate the termination of the agreement and other potential risks we saw.

In Q3, we don't have any cost of cycling or nor will there be any in Q4, Q1 or Q2. So we won't see any more costs of cycling. And they're going to be lower by some $3 million since this is the cost of sponsoring. So on top of the marketing and having the logistics base in Polkowice, they're going to be much smaller. You see there are limitations on sales in Czech Republic and Slovenia and their percentage of sales is 12%. What sort of losses do you anticipate in Q4? In terms of these markets, key markets, Czech and Slovakia. Well, we have e-commerce there. On the market, we're being able to offset some of our sales losses through e-commerce. If we look at Czech Republic, Czech government has announced. That's the knowledge I have today. That it will cover the whole costs of the lockdown in terms of staff costs, in terms of rental costs. It's going to be -- we assume that this will happen. It's going to be a small single-digit number in millions. We assume that the impact will exist, but it's going to be smaller. We're very well prepared in terms of Slovenia. The impact will be bigger because we don't have the e-commerce there, but -- but in terms of Slovenia, Croatia. These are important markets where we don't have e-commerce, but we want to accelerate the e-commerce proliferation. So on those 2 markets where we have interactions with customers just as in other markets. Where e-commerce has moved forward by leaps and balance will open up to e-commerce there as is the case in Greece. So this is something that we have in the past over the upcoming months.

One more question. In the quarter report, the e-commerce revenue moved up, but profit fell. What was that the result of? I'm not sure how that calculation was made. Is this a question only about eobuwie, CCC or everything? I can respond to this more generally. Some of our e-commerce. Is a little bit like a start-up. Maybe that's an over exaggeration. So [ 40 to 70 ], points of interaction, don't have a full year of operations behind them. They're still in the process of being scaled. We're building the optimum and target logistics model. We're looking at traffic and the Internet building better offers. So it could happen that in e-commerce, especially in Q3, it's a softer quarter for e-commerce. It's one of the quarters when you have more sales offers, so reduced sales prices. We're following how all of our brands are performing and we're confident that they're going to grow.

So I think we've responded to the bulk of the questions. There are a few other questions. But the questions pertain to detailed issues of the financial statements. So please send questions to our IR department. Especially Mr. Wojciech Latocha and we'll respond to all your questions. We encourage you to contact us by e-mail. And I think we've exhausted all the questions. So once again, I'd like to convey to you. We know we see your questions. There are a number of risks in our business that no longer exist. Related to liquidity operations, strengths of conversion, our products. So you can see that we've built up again our like-for-like sales growth. And so those questions are no longer pertinent. So CCC has a very strong product. It's a mature model, omnichannel model. We've cut cost/costs with an axe. Switzerland, Germany, cycling, we're talking about millions and millions of savings, but there are many more savings initiatives. So having in mind the streamline nature of these processes. What we've done, we have a very optimistic approach and view of what's going to be achieved in the future. We see some difficult times, hard times in front of us. The lockdown is not something we would like to have. We wanted to deliver wonderful results in normal business conditions, but we see the effects of our operations, an effort that we've got a mature model that will deliver good results, if not in this quarter, but in subsequent quarters.

So thank you very much for your attention and your questions. And as Wojciech has said, will address your questions that haven't been answered here in e-mail correspondence as soon as possible. So once again, thank you very much. And I'd like to wish you a lot of good health, and we'll see you in the near future at the latest at the beginning of February. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

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