LPP SA

WSE:LPP

Earnings Call Analysis

LPP reports strong revenue growth and ambitious expansion plans for 2025.

In Q3, LPP achieved PLN 5.2 billion in revenue, marking a 25% year-on-year increase. The company opened 135 new stores, focusing on its Sinsay brand, which now totals 1,230 locations. For 2025, LPP aims to open over 1,500 stores, investing PLN 3.5 billion in capital expenditures. The guidance anticipates a revenue of PLN 26 billion and maintaining a gross profit margin between 50% to 53%. Between November and mid-December, sales surged by 22% year-on-year, showcasing strong holiday demand. The firm’s solid financial standing supports its aggressive growth strategy.

Strong Revenue Growth Surfaces

In the third quarter of 2024, LPP reported remarkable revenue growth, achieving PLN 5.2 billion, marking over a 25% increase year-on-year in constant currency. This upward trajectory was supported not just by new store openings but also by strong like-for-like sales, particularly among major brands like Sinsay, which occupied a significant market share, bolstered by a responsive collection appealing to customers.

Strategic Store Expansion

The company accelerated its expansion strategy significantly, opening 135 new stores during the quarter, 105 of which were under the Sinsay brand, leading to a total of 1,230 Sinsay stores. This rapid growth is indicative of LPP's aggressive stance in the market, with plans for 1,500 store openings in 2025 alone. The company remains optimistic about potential in both existing and new markets, particularly in Southern Europe, with expectations of strong performance from smaller store formats.

Investment and CapEx Focus

In line with its growth plans, LPP is set to invest a record PLN 3.5 billion in capital expenditures for 2025, with PLN 2.3 billion earmarked for new store openings. This investment surge demonstrates confidence in the brand's ability to generate returns, with a targeted investment payback period of 24 months per store. The financial stability of LPP enables it to pursue aggressive expansion without compromising fiscal health.

Profitability Metrics and Margin Guidance

Despite strong revenue growth, LPP's gross profit margin slightly declined, expected to stabilize between 50% to 53% due to the dilution effects of the expanding Sinsay brand. For the third quarter, the reported EBITDA was PLN 731 million, showcasing a healthy increase of 21% compared to the previous year. The company has reiterated its commitment to operate at an OpEx to revenue ratio of around 40%, maintaining efficiency even amidst rise in operational costs.

Future Guidance and Market Dynamics

LPP anticipates achieving approximately PLN 26 billion in group revenue for 2025, propelled by robust omnichannel sales growth, targeting double-digit percentage increase year-on-year. The company also emphasizes a commitment to sustainable sales practices, acknowledging staffing costs due to rising minimum wages, but maintains that overall cost control remains effective. Moreover, LPP is focusing on technology upgrades and the development of mobile applications to enhance customer engagement and sales performance.

Market Expansion and Product Offering Enhancement

The company plans to increase its operational footprint in Central and Eastern Europe and Southern Europe. Upcoming market entries into Albania and Kosovo signify strategic expansion. Moreover, LPP plans to enhance product offerings by maintaining responsive collections tailored to regional markets, aiming to deepen customer loyalty and brand recognition.

Operational Efficiency and Future Prospects

LPP has successfully managed inventory levels and turnover, with inventory days standing around 150, ensuring effective cash flow management. The company's ability to keep operational costs relatively stable while undertaking extensive expansion projects positions it well for upcoming fiscal years. As operational efficiencies improve, LPP’s strategic initiatives are expected to drive sustained growth in a competitive landscape.

Earnings Call Transcript 2025-Q3

[Operator]

Good morning. [Foreign Language] Let me welcome you to the last result presentation this year of the LPP Group for Q3 of the current year. Our meeting today is going to be moderated by Marcin Bojko, Vice President of the Board LPP; and Magdalena Kopaczewska, Director for Investor Relations.

[Magdalena Kopaczewska, executive]

Good morning. Ladies and gentlemen, our today's meeting as usual shall open with us telling you about our operations in Q3 this year, and year to date for the 9 months of the current year. Let me remind you that this year and the calender year do not really match. There is a one month shift, so whenever today we talk about Q3, we will mean August, September and October. During our transmission, we will also remind you of the most important events of this period, but also of the last weeks. We know that this period particularly Black Week, Black Friday is particularly important and interesting to you, so we are going to tell you about that as well during today's conference.

But first and foremost, for the first time we will tell you about our outlook for 2025 and a lot is going to happen. Our today's meeting will close with a Q&A session, as usual, but there is going to be a minor change. When we had a meeting concern in Q2 of this year, we got so many questions from you. There were 60 questions or so. So we had to prolong our meeting. That's why this time, we decided to introduce a change, and we decided to set a limit to our meeting. We are planning to close it around noon, which practically may mean that the Q&A session will get shortened, but do not worry, we will provide answers to all your questions. Those that are not answered live today will be answered too. After the closure of this conference, we will provide you with answers via e-mail, and we will send you the answers to those e-mail addresses that you used to log into today's transmission.

Of course, if on completion of today's meeting, you still have some questions, issues to clarify as usual, we are here for you. Representatives of a particular press and entities, please use our e-mail address to address your questions. Representatives of the capital markets should get in touch with [e-mail], the investing department. So much as of the introduction, let us move on to the summary of 3Q '24.

Good morning, once again, welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I'm happy that I can speak to you in this new capacity and discuss the results of the third quarter. We have a lot to talk about. Today's conference will concern 1,500, 1,500-plus. You will hear the number very often. But before we move on to that, let's address the other issues concerning Q3. That was a successful quarter for LPP. We've reached over PLN 5.2 billion revenue in the third quarter in constant currency, that means an increase by over 25% year-on-year. How did we achieve this result?

First of all, we've a very good collections that found a very good response among our female and male customers. And also, we implemented consistently our strategy speeding up with every quarter. So we had ever more openings of stores. And in the third quarter this year, we delivered 135 new stores, including 105 dedicated to the Sinsay brand. The third quarter and October, in particular, also, witnessed a nice and positive date, namely we paid the second tranche of the dividend. Just to remind you, annually, this was PLN 610 per share, and it was higher by 40% compared to the previous year.

And maybe leaping forward till today, let me tell you about the sales as of now. We can see that starting from the 1st of November to the 10th of December, the dynamics of sales reached over 22% year-on-year in constant currencies. And this is a very good result. Ahead, we still have the Christmas season, the sales in January. But for now, we are satisfied with these dynamics. As for the third quarter and our offline stores, we closed that period with over 2,570 stores. Where did we develop?

Let's look at the map top down. First of all, in Poland, Central and Eastern Europe and also in Southern Europe, where we had 595 stores beforehand already, and we added further ones. These are the regions in which we are going to develop strategically in the long run, and this is where our focus is. As for Sinsay, our biggest brand now, the third quarter closed with 1,230 stores. And the increase in this brand over the 9 months was as over the entire previous year. So we can see the dynamic here and the constant acceleration of the opening of stores because opening so many stores in 9 months as in the 12 months of the previous year is pretty impressive. And as I said at the beginning, we are only about to accelerate ever more.

In terms of sales, although the reported dynamics is nearly 20% year-on-year, the growth in our basic business that is omnichannel in constant currencies was 27%. And here, both the channels, both traditional offline sales and online sales delivered very good results, very high dynamics in offline. The increase in revenue was fostered not only by new openings, but also positive like-for-likes. We saw very good indicators into biggest brands of ours. So both in Sinsay and Reserved in the online channel. What positively contributed is mostly the breadth of the offer, but also the development of applications that you will hear more about in a moment. But we keep on developing also this component of our business, and we are really very satisfied with the value it brings.

In the third quarter, our floor space grew by over 17%. And here, following the market trend that we see not only in Poland, but also in the region, we grew mostly in retail parks in smaller locations. And when we are looking at the market focus looking ahead, these are also the places where we are going to add a new floor space, the smaller locations. So we can see that our development fits in what is going on in the market generally.

Looking at the table presented in this slide, what we are also happy about is the dynamics of sales in relation to the increase in floor space. Both in Poland and abroad, the omnichannel sales grew faster than the floor space grew so that also shows that we have a nice increase in sales per square meter. And the potential for the development as we saw that on the previously shown map is something that we are focusing on in the Central Eastern Europe, but also in Southern Europe, and that is reflected in our shares.

In the third quarter, foreign markets were responsible for quite high number in the revenue of our group. The third quarter was quite a successful period for the offline sales in the third quarter 42% is what we noted, that's the growth in online revenues in Poland. Both Poland and abroad actually grew year-on-year for over 30%. Now when we are talking about online sales, what's also important for the third quarter was that two relatively smallest brands of ours, Cropp and House also got their applications. So now we have an entire family of LPP brands that can boast having their own applications.

And moving forward, we are also going to roll on applications for further foreign markets. In other brands, a lot has been happening as well. Sinsay got an application in the German and Greek markets, whilst Reserved got it and we launched an application in Croatia. So holistically, the e-commerce sale quarter closed at the level of 27%. So that's the share of online sales in our general sales figures.

The third quarter in terms of profit and gross profit margin was good. We generated nearly 55% of gross profit margin. We are looking at this result -- looking at the two aspects. First of all, the high base in 3Q '23 post-COVID. Luckily this period is over, we saw a high boom in sales in terms of retail sales. And this result -- so the 55.8% of the margin from the last year was to just give it the right perspective was the best result ever since the pandemic hit. So that shows the scale that we acted against. So we definitely knew that the margin now would be slightly lower than the one we compare it to, but we want to communicate it together with the growth of Sinsay brand. Brand is now in the value for money. It has somewhat lower gross profit margin compared to other brands. So that means that there is this natural diluting of the gross profit margin.

When you put those two things together, we still are satisfied with the result, and we can see that starting from Q4 of the last year, the level of the gross profit margin has been stabilized at predictable levels. And we certainly hope that this will continue to be the case in this area. So I'm certainly hoping for the stabilization to set in and stay. As for our biggest business segment that is our Sales and Stores that are responsible for nearly 70% of our business. Here, the costs grew mostly owing to the increases in minimum wages and remuneration reviews. In Poland, the minimum wage grew by nearly 20%. If to this we had increases in other markets plus obligatory pay rises, then this increase quarter-to-quarter lower than 4% is under control, and we are again satisfied with this result. But looking at the chart and the components concerning other costs bottom up, the brand cost per square meter was somewhat lower than in 2023. And as in gross profit margin, also here, we can see the diluting effect of the Sinsay brand.

In terms of cost, there is an increasing share of this brand in our business. And again, it dilutes not just -- it also dilutes the cost. Anyhow, what supported us here was PLN strengthening against euro because many of the lease agreements are expressed in this currency. Now in terms of the other costs, we have two areas, the groups, that I would like to comment on. First of all, we have the base of costs that are repetitive, operational ones that range from, say, very down to earth ones like, for example, maintenance and cleaning or the cost of energy. We really try to manage those very, very simply that boils down to, for example, making sure that we do not light the facades or that we switch off the light in the stores right after closure of a given working day.

The other area is the cost of the openings. With the scale of ours when this development keeps on accelerating with every quarter and soon we will want to reach the level of 1,500 openings a year, so we are talking here about pretty impressive scale. So with any opening of a new store, go the so-called one-off costs. These are the costs [indiscernible], the launching costs for such a location, but also the cost of marketing with the so-called balloon arch or a promotional event.

So in the first quarter, when we are opening a given store, a new store, these costs are higher, the revenue is somewhat below the target average. But in the second quarter of the operation of such locations, we can see them performing really well and the margin results get back to the average level. With the scale of the openings that we have, we observed this one-off cost result. Anyhow with the cost pressure as observed in the market, the increase below 4% is still a very solid result.

Right from the beginning of our meeting through all the cases I have been talking about development and growth and the scale of it and the scale of our investments is reflected in the general costs. Now here, when we are looking at the SG&A costs, let's move on through particular components that had an impact on the results. During our previous meeting, we joyfully informed you about opening of 2 new locations of warehouses namely the one in Romania and the other one in Bydgoszcz, Poland.

In the third quarter, the one that we are discussing today, these operations in both warehouses gained momentum. What mattered was the location in Bydgoszcz, in particular, because again when we talked about the profit margin, same covers logistics. I would like to mention the scale of the challenge that we are facing. So far Pruszcz Gdanski has been the biggest warehouse, 100,000 square meters and the Bydgoszcz that we opened in Q2, and we brought it to its full capacity during the previous quarter adds again 100,000 square meters that were commissioned over a very short time, high level of employment there. And when we talked here internally with the logistics team, then the colleagues from logistics were really highly impressed with the scale of growth and the pace of these operations. Certainly, that is something that is reflected in the cost results for Q3.

Additionally, the acceleration of growth is something that marked our activities, and we wanted to do our utmost to reach the maximum of our capacity so that we can open up 500 stores in the Sinsay brand also next year. That meant that we had to invest in key personnel. And I mean here, investment teams first and foremost that supervise and design new locations.

We also talked about the leasing managers team. We have leasing managers team present in every country. These are people who operate in the field and look for good locations. In these locations, we then open our stores. So with this scale of acceleration, that we focused on, and we believe in, these teams are crucial for our activity and the increase in the number of stores. These are not only the people on the first line, but such a high sale involves back office and increase in personnel like the accounting or logistics.

So when we add all these elements together plus the scale of our business that is growing at all times, growing volumes translated into larger costs in transportation and marketing -- online marketing. When we compare it year-over-year, in '24, we focused on the increase of sales. This also affects e-sales. So combining all these costs together, the OpEx results compared to -- the result is 40%. So this is a good outcome. We would like to focus on that, so be around 40%, closer to 40%.

When we look at our P&L, the reported EBITDA amounted to PLN 731 million. The reported EBITDA was minus 8.9%. But when we think about the higher base in '23, so the EBIT margin was over 18%. So I would like to repeat so the profitability level was not reported since '21 and then increased levels and intensive development in this year. So this result is really good, and the EBITDA in the third quarter comparable in terms of the levels. With this scale, it was really a good result. The appetite was much greater, but we look at these results through the dynamic of our development.

A novelty here that we present from this quarter, these are 2 lines, omnichannel sales. This is the second line and also underlying EBIT. And here in '24, this is the last year when we have the sales to trade agents in the transition period, resulted from the transition from the Eastern market. And these inform how we operate in omnichannel sales in the 9-month period, these were very good results. So the sales to trade items grew by 19% and the underlying EBIT was even higher, increased by 21 -- over 21%, which translated into 15% increase in net profit and the EBITDA after 9 months period is almost PLN 3 billion.

As for the balance, here, the indicators are on a stable level. The inventory per square meter is 1,827. This is also growing. With the scale of business, we provided stocking in Bydgoszcz and in Romania in our 2 e-commerce warehouses, we are prepared for the accumulation as for the opening of new stores in the third quarter. We would like to open over 300 new locations. And this indicator is proving that. We also monitor the turnover in inventories, around 150 days. So this is comparable year-over-year. So the management in this respect is really good.

Good management in inventories and good turnover is also seen in the working capital. So I would like to remind you here that the negative results in this respect, net is good for us. So it means we managed the inventory well. We have the cash levels on a good level. And when we look at receivables and liabilities, we can see they are comparable or even better than last year. These good indicators translate into safe debt level. The financial standing of LPP was really good. 1 and 2 -- 1.2 as for the net debt. So it's improving in terms of tendency, when we talk about net debt 4.6. So here, the increase is natural and is related to the scale of our development. As for the leverage, that will sustain today, we have PLN 300 million in our bonds in '24. We will complete without this entry in the balance sheet.

Summarizing it, we present our debt level based on accounting standards 16. So if we add funds that are not included in the cash entry, so then LPP standing in cash is very good. Thanks to this positive financial standing of the company, we can follow our ambitious investment plan. Investments for CapEx amounted to PLN 519 million, which is definitely better year-over-year. Expenditure on stores is natural here, but what you understood from our comments, we can see other expenditure that is clear. This is this yellow bar, PLN 222 million 10x bigger year-over-year. This area involved development in Brzesc Kujawski. This is ongoing and will be ongoing next year, D.C. in Romania, and the equipment of our FC in Bydgoszcz. This is the last slide as for our results.

So concluding, we can -- well, just concluding our financial results, so the third quarter was a very good period. We've achieved good results, thanks to good collections and the development of our apps. And this means 27% increase in the sales in constant currencies. Our development is growing in terms of stores. Again, I would like to reiterate about it. In 9 months, we've opened the number of stores that we opened last year. In the third quarter, we will open more. So that will be 1,500-plus, but these are not on the CapEx expenditure, if we talk about new stores but on to investments in logistics and key personnel.

We are very happy that it is all happening in a very dynamic way, and we can do that with very stable financial standing of the company. And now we will move on to events from the last quarter. We will begin with the event that the clients and we are all waiting for. So Black Week or Black Friday. This is these discounts start earlier and they last until Monday. So it was this year from the 28th of November to the 2nd of December. And here, you can see the data from this period.

So what was the Black Week or Black Friday for us this year? In omnichannel, we had increased omnichannel by 16% year-over-year. What was interesting is that it was more popular in online than offline. So our Internet stores recorded 28% growth in revenues, traditional 7%. But here, we need to remember that last year, Black Week was in offline very strong. So it was a different situation. These good results in e-commerce result from the tendencies in our clients that went back to online.

And on the second hand, this is the result of our work regarding the apps. The apps support our online sale. We will talk about the apps Sinsay and Mohito and how they were perceived by the clients, but we also launched new other brands, Cropp and House. We want our clients, clients of these brands, shop in a very facilitated way through these apps. For us, these are tools that bring good results for clients and for the companies. Clients have more better customer experience. They receive notifications about different discounts, recommendations regarding the products or they can track their history regarding the orders.

On the other hand, companies and brands, thanks to the apps, can develop their recognition on the market for app. Apps are also an alternative in terms of our cost. Going back to the apps that we started in the third quarter for Cropp and House, they are available on the Polish market for now, but we also plan to roll out in Czechia and Romania.

Another event that we would like to tell you about today is the extension of our distribution center in Romania. Some might remember that in January, we informed you about the launch of our first foreign distribution center precisely in Romania, but regarding our plans for developing Sinsay and opening over 1,500 stores, particularly in Southern Europe, we decided that we will extend the center, adding another 42,000 square meters. After completing of this extension, the center is 91,000 square meters in capacity and it can send to 6 million of assortment units per week.

It is a logistic hub because it actually provides our stores -- our offline stores with the stocks, but also from it, goods go to fulfillment centers. So those centers that are dedicated to online stores. The extension of this distribution center constitutes part of our development strategy, also concerning our logistic space that we want to increase to over 700,000 square meters by the end of 2025.

The announced group development plan also means that it is necessary to keep on developing the team, something that has already been mentioned today. Every store has at least 10 employees. So when we have 1,500 new stores by Sinsay, that means quite a scale of people that we need to employ. So we need to reach the candidates somehow. That is why part of the late to the network development plans, in the third quarter, we started implementing the new employee branding strategy.

It is supposed to encourage new employees to enter into cooperation with us. And the goal of this strategy is also to disseminate an opinion of us as an attractive employer. We want to be regarded in retail as the brand of the first choice in the labor market. In the last quarter, as announced before, we also held a few corporate events. There were changes in the management board, dividend payment. And today, the repayment of the bonds that were issued 5 years ago.

So much for the events. And now let us move on to the outlook. Marcin?

[Marcin Bojko, executive]

Yes. So now, leaping through to the current period and the prospects concerning the fourth quarter and our expectations. What we can see is a clearly positive outlook for the reception of our winter collections, including the Christmas collection from the point of view of [ guidance ] with Christmas or is more autumn like really than winter like. The more so 22% of year-on-year growth in the group's revenue from the 1st of November to the day before yesterday is something that we find really satisfying. In terms of sales for now, we are satisfied.

The fourth quarter is going to be the period where we'll be able to say with relief as well because we are planning the opening of 1,290 new stores of all brands in 4Q only. These openings have been going on ever since November. That means opening 4 stores a day. So the scale of the challenge is extremely high. We certainly raised the bar high, but we can already say that we are delivering it.

Now in terms of the Christmas collection and New Years Eve collection, I will give the floor back to Magda.

[Magdalena Kopaczewska, executive]

Yes, the first quarter traditionally for us means Christmas and Carnival correction across all the brands. But today, we wanted to tell you a few words on the brand and on the collection by Reserved. This is the second highest scoring brand after Sinsay in terms of revenues. We are happy that it is back on the right trajectory in the autumn/winter season. And we can see that in the Christmas collection, the Christmas Carnival collection by reserve today is bigger. It is based on well-proven forms that are loved by our clients. The models have been enriched with elements such as feathers or flowers, for example. We also broadened the offer of artificial furs. And in the Christmas collection, it is black that dominates, but also there is another color of the season that is bordeaux, but we also are listening to what our clients expect us to deliver.

So the claret color is the top one this season. Yes, the entire LPP and the Board is particularly proud of our Sinsay store network and its development. That shows our efficiency of our operations, and that shows how good we are in delivering our plans. At the beginning of the year, we set the goal of opening around 600 Sinsay stores more or less. And we can already see and can say that by the end of the year, it will be 560 Sinsay store openings, a great result. We are very happy with every new quarter. We have sped up and in the fourth quarter, this is the white box on the right-hand side, we will open 275 new locations in the Sinsay brand, so you can see that is more or less as much as we managed to cover in the first 9 months of this year and more than in the previous year in total.

So that shows how great a pace we are operating in and the whole year should restart with a number of 650 new stores being opened in 2024. Our guidance remains the same in terms of our targets, so around PLN 20 billion in group revenue, plus we are expecting to generate in this period the gross profit margin of 50% to 53%. So we are probably -- it has to be said that we are -- our goal is to hit the 53%. We'll continue developing, as mentioned, so revenue should be maximum of 40%. And we should, of course, enjoy the increase of floor space by 23% year-on-year and positive like-for-likes.

And Cropp and House, we can see very positive, very good positive like-for-likes. In terms of the revenues, well, the bar has been raised after the third Q, very high record growth of over 42% in constant currencies. So this area is of particular importance and pride to us and the area that we had to revise compared to our last meeting is our investment expenditure around PLN 1.9 billion, out of which PLN 1.4 billion will go for stores. But this amount, PLN 1.9 billion is actually an outcome of our acceleration and investing in logistics traditionally, but it is always worthwhile mentioning our entire development is carried out at the safe debt level.

It's the end of the year. In some 2 weeks, we will be welcoming the new year 2025. So we also wanted to offer a certain guidance outlook for the coming period. Starting from this smaller part of our business, that is e-commerce and sales, we keep on planning to develop further very intensely. And in October this year, House and Cropp were equipped with new applications. In 2025, two biggest foreign markets of ours that is Czechia and Romania will also see the applications launched for those two brands.

In terms of Reserved and Sinsay, here, we are expecting further development of applications in our foreign markets. And the Reserved brand is going to be Bulgaria and Lithuania, as the first market and in Sinsay we will add our interesting markets within which we keep on developing that is Italy and Lithuania. The development keeps on going, but probably owing to the size, the scale is somewhat smaller.

Talking about applications, it is worthwhile reminding you that this percentage keeps on growing with every quarter. Sinsay application was responsible for around 40% of e-commerce last year in this brand after the third quarter, it's grown to over 70%. Last quarter, it was slightly over 60%. But in Reserved, that is the second biggest brand, again, last year, it was around 40%. Now in the scale of the whole group, it is around 55%.

Now looking at the entire 2025, a clear acceleration is planned concerning the development of offline store chain. And here, when we look at this network in the last 2, 3 years, that means opening of new Sinsay stores. And I guess that's the most exciting slide of all because I will not exaggerate when I say that if LPP has been running fast now, we are really jumping over to Formula 1 because opening of 1,500 stores over the period of 1 year is something unheard of before, probably not only in our industry, but I guess in other industries, too. And certainly, it's a new thing in our region that shows the scale of our ambitions. And what goes with it, we can see our omnichannel model working and being well recognized by our customers, be it in Finland, Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia. Every new store opening generates a very good feedback, good revenues and very good financial indicators.

During this year, we've analyzed those indices from every possible angle and we see that this model works. So that is the right moment to accelerate even further. And what happened, particularly in Q3, so this investment acceleration shows us that well, it is necessary for us to invest in. We've been investing in logistics and strong teams so that in 2025, we can open up 1,500, 1,500-plus stores. We're ready to do that. And maybe just to visualize the scale of the challenge, 1,500 stores, it's 6 stores a day. So maybe not taking off too many hours from the day when we have 24 hours a day. That would mean that we open a store every 4 hours. So the challenge is considerable. But as LPP, for the last quarters, we've been getting ready to face it. We are ready. We have financial resources to do that. That is why we are so excited when looking forward, and we keep on speeding up.

In order for this ambition to be translated into the financial targets, of course, the numbers are an important part of our ambition. So what we would like to achieve in this respect. The group revenue expected for the next year is around PLN 26 billion. Gross profit margin, before the acceleration, we would probably be talking of higher numbers. But as mentioned, there is a diluting effect of Sinsay and the biggest scale of openings keeps us to the good, stable level of the margin that we've been observing between 50% to 53%.

Now OpEx to revenue, we want to stick to 40% levels. That's our long-term goal, and we sustain it. As for the traditional channel sales or offline sales, here, the expected floor space increase is between 35% and 40% year-on-year, but also we want to observe positive like-for-likes. On the online sales, we expect a double-digit year-on-year growth. The bar was risen this year in this respect, but we see that what goes along with broadening of the offer and including the new applications, we can see that this channel keeps on developing and delivering new revenue that is why we are going to keep on betting on it. And the biggest change apart from the scale of the openings of new stores is the one that we can see in investments in order for this snowball effect that keeps on accelerating in order for it to keep growing even faster, we want to spend a record amount of PLN 3.5 billion of CapEx, out of which PLN 2.3 billion will go for stores.

And here, traditionally, our strong, sound financial standing that we are witnessing is something that we want to build on. We are in a very good place still to maybe stick to the comparison to Formula 1. We are in pole position, and we are only focusing on the target ahead. That's going to be a very exciting year. I guess that sums it up. That's how we want to close the summary of the results and the outlook. And I guess that brings us to the Q&A session.

[Magdalena Kopaczewska, executive]

I believe that this confirms what you said. I can see the number of questions. Your are very excited about these plans. Those who are not with us from the very beginning, I would like to remind you that because of the number of questions that we have, I can see that over 50 of these, we won't have time to answer all of them during this broadcast, so we will limit our meeting to 12 o'clock. So we have 15 minutes for Q&A session, but we will answer all of your questions after our online meeting. We will send you the answers to the email addresses that you used to log in.

So the first question, please explain stagnation on net profit. So what is planned for next year in terms of stagnation? You referred to stagnation in third quarter. So this third quarter involved a significant development. And we still refer to very high margin, very high base that we had from last year, the highest from the boom -- post-pandemic boom. This increase in net revenue is 15%. The EBITDA is growing by 21%, so much higher than the revenue. So in the year, this pace is really significant. We are giving you the guidance as we present, so you can assess what to expect in terms of net profit.

The cost of stores and distribution and the general cost in the third quarter by PLN 500 million. This is a 31% increase. Was that resulting from the costs related to logistics and Sinsay stores in this period?

The increased cost, yes, 31%. When we refer to 9 months period when we have 25% increase, but we need to remember the base. So the '23, so that was good profitability acquired with very low cost. So with this market pressure on the costs right now that we can observe, this result cannot be repeated, especially with the acceleration that we want to increase more and more. So these costs need to increase naturally. I will not give you the exact division in terms of these costs, but investment in logistics and our investments in personnel, back office and general costs, this was the majority here.

At the last turnover, you were planning to open 800, 850 stores of Sinsay, so that at the end of '26, we will have 3,200. So it will almost be done in '25. So how much space do we have for further expansion of the company?

In '24, we've been observing how these new stores were being opened. So during that time, we could see that we developed really, really fast, but we can still see the potential in the market. As I mentioned before, the financial standing of the company is very good, Sinsay model really works in every location geographically speaking, in our region, basically. We have resources for that, so we can use them. Therefore, the acceleration. So this is not a wishful thinking. These are -- this is based on analysis, hard data. So for the next 2 or 3 years, we have plans for development in the region. And I don't know if we have such a question, but for the next 2, 3 years, we -- there is no cannibalization effect.

With 1,500 new Sinsay stores with a similar -- will they have similar sales in terms of volumes or less turnover or sales per square meter would be comparable indication here?

A very good question. Here, when we look further and develop and focus on our development abroad, especially in Southern Europe, what we can observe the available space is smaller. This will refer to lower size of Sinsay. Last year, the average store was 970 square meters around this number, I believe. Now we can see that the new stores that are being opened, this is 800 to 850 square meters. Next year, around 700 square meters. So this is how we see that the effect of lowering the size. Like in Croatia or in Serbia, we need to operate based on the lower size model. What we can also observe this year is that even those smaller stores, they deliver good profitability. The revenue is not much different than the average level. So this model is really working well. So adding new stores improves our results, and we do not have this diluting effect.

The company exceeded PLN 630 million as the sales to trade agents. So has this sale been completed, so we will not have this entry in the reporting? We will have it in the fourth quarter. It is phasing out at the moment. So we have like the final support till mid-January. But as we said at the very beginning, at the end of our financial year, we will complete this transition period. We closed this chapter. So from February, this is just a primary business.

In which countries do you plan to open Sinsay stores in the next financial year?

Our goal is very ambitious. We have significant numbers, but the market is really competitive. So we will not share some business secrets, but we are not going into the West. We develop more in the regions where we are present. So Poland, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, so we can see the potential here in these regions. But we should remind you that from February, we begin with the sales on 2 new markets, Albania and Kosovo. So positive results from these markets as well.

The next two questions refer to the same issue. So I will combine them. How many Sinsay stores do you plan to open further on? This high CapEx in '25. This is just one-off experience? Or do you plan to open new stores and CapEx on the same level?

So well, this one-off situation is really something that is in bracket, I would say. Our plans are very well justified. As for the opening of new stores in '26, we are accelerating. So we do not slow down. This is not in our nature, so we will like to maintain this level. What is important for us, we, of course, focus on the development. We are opening new stores, but we are doing it in a very precise manner. There are many areas involved, and we monitor our profitability. So the goal is really ambitious. But our priority is to deliver that in a profitable manner so that the net profit is good and the return of investment for stakeholders on a good level.

Have you completed negotiations regarding the freight costs for the next year? And how this will affect the profitability in next year?

Yes, I can see that you monitor our situation. Yes, we completed at the end of November. Freight rates increased just slightly year-over-year. On other markets, we might have some increase, but we are satisfied with the process. 3, 4 months ago when the freight on spot markets were not really favorable, we were just assessing that from 0.4 to 0.7, but this will be closer to this lower or maybe lower than 0.4. With the scale of our sales, we managed to secure our situation. We added new shipowners. So this is a really good result from this process. So it's very satisfactory.

What were like-for-like indicators after the third quarter and growing from the beginning of the year year-to-date?

Sinsay and House continued very good results from the first half of the year. So one digit positive like-for-likes. What we are satisfied about. This is Reserved. In the first half of the year, we could see that the dynamic was not that we -- what we've planned, so more bold collection, bold designs. LPP is strong in Central, Eastern, Southern Europe. Our collection was more directed to Western Europe. And this reflected in the results of Reserved in the first half of the year. From August, we can see good increase. Our design teams went back, learned a lesson. So we have similar, very good like-for-likes, so very good indications.

What is the guidance for '25 as for the influence on EBIT and the opening of stores? What are the plans? And what is the guidance?

As for our key parameters in terms of investments, we do not change anything. What we focus on, we want with our every new store to return on investment within 24 months. Of course, these values vary in the regions, but the average level should be 24 months.

What would be the increase of CapEx with the dividend? Can you -- do you think about lowering the payout ratio?

This is rather early. We need to think where we start. So very favorable financial standing. The model pays -- the Sinsay model as for opening new store pays off. So we have cash reserves. We want to maintain our dividend policy, but let's wait for the closure of '24. We still have January, so this discount period, so the sales. So we will see what it looks like, and then we will make decisions. As the available instruments and options are many. So we will try to maintain our policy.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's 12 o'clock. So with the information I said at the very beginning, we are out of time. Of course, these are not all the questions that you have asked, we will answer all of them. This is the final meeting this year. So we would like to wish you a good happy and joyful Christmas time. In a moment, after that, there is a New Year's Eve and the New Year. So we wish you this new year to be satisfactory to bring a lot of joy to you, not only in your personal life, but also in your professional lives.

[Marcin Bojko, executive]

I would like to also add myself and Magda, yes, all the best healthy Christmas time, a lot of relaxation. And let's meet again when we talk about the annual results. We would like to be live in Warsaw in spring. And we will talk about details and the time and the team, we will give you information in the nearest weeks. So it will be around March, April. We would like to meet in Warsaw and present the annual results and comment on our plans, our very ambitious plans for '25. So one more time, best of -- all the best for you, and thank you for today.

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