Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ferrari Group PLC Half Year 2025 Results Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session. I will now hand over to Paola Mantovani, Head of Investor Relations, to begin the meeting. Paola, please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our first half 2025 financial results presentation. With me today are Marco Degl’Innocenti, our CEO, and Alessandro Ugo, our CFO. They will take you through the operational and financial performance during the period. After the presentation, we will open the floor to questions. Please note that our results material is available for download on our IR website under the Results and Presentations section. With that, I will now hand over to Marco to begin the presentation.
Thank you, Paola, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased to report a robust performance in the first half of the year with revenue growth across our service portfolio. We believe that this reflects the resilience of our business model in a challenging market environment and the effectiveness of our disciplined growth strategy. In terms of external developments, we have seen considerable volatility across our footprint. The most important external factor affecting our performance was the continued weakness in China, which we will elaborate on shortly. Our net profit in the first half was affected by increased provisions linked to the previously disclosed investigation by Italian Customs. Our decision to voluntarily settle was made after careful considerations, and in the best interest of the group and its stakeholders, also taking into account a pipeline opportunity, we were able to accelerate to offset the impact.
In this context, we expect no effect on full year net profit. Despite the earnings, we continued to execute our growth strategy, generating a healthy pipeline of new branch openings and progressing our warehouse expansion. In the coming months, we will be starting direct operations in Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and New Zealand. Our new offices in Saudi Arabia will be fully operational by the fourth quarter of this year, when we will also be opening a new warehouse in Thailand dedicated to a watch manufacturer. At the same time, I am pleased to report that our new warehouse in London is now fully operational, while the development of a warehouse in Paris is also underway. To facilitate this growth and further strengthen our leadership team, we are continuing to invest in people and adapt our governance model to empower regional teams to build on our success.
I will now hand over to Alessandro for a more detailed analysis of our financial performance before we give you an opportunity to ask questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Marco, and good morning, everyone. Moving to slide five, as you can see, we have made progress across our top line profitability and net financial position, which I will be diving deeper into on the coming slides. Our revenues increased by close to 4% to about €180 million. In addition to the positive effects of continued network expansion, the value of goods we shipped during the first half increased year on year. We also took steps to optimize our routes, which supported top line growth. Despite the ongoing expansion, our strong focus on profitability ensured continued improvement in adjusted EBITDA and further uplifted our margin to 26.6%. Thanks to sustained momentum in cash generation, our net cash position improved to over €100 million. As Marco touched on earlier, we believe this shows the resilience of our business model compared to other operators.
As shown on the chart on slide six, the continued improvement in our top line was primarily due to organic growth. During this period, we had a marginal negative currency effect on our results, which reflects mainly the decline in the U.S. dollar. Moving on to slide seven, which highlights the rate of revenue growth across our service lines. International services, which represent two-thirds of our revenues, grew by just over 3% year on year. As mentioned earlier, we saw an increase in the value of goods transported across existing and new routes among both our long-standing and new clients. Domestic services, which represent about 16% of our revenues, recorded a revenue increase of 6.7% year on year, with positive momentum in France, Germany, Dubai, and the U.S. in particular.
Warehouse and logistics services grew about €11 million, mainly driven by rising demand from secure storage facilities and the increased provision of warehouses and security vaults. Despite being our smallest service line, this division is of strategic importance to the group. The special and other services generated a revenue growth of 5% year on year, driven by positive momentum in private events and other special services, especially in Switzerland. Moving on to our revenue by geography on slide eight, you can see that Europe remains our key growth engine. Thanks to our six-year history in the region, we have a solid foothold across the continent and continue to leverage opportunities across this market. Our revenue growth in the first half was mainly driven by positive momentum in France and Germany, where recent expansion has started to deliver tangible results.
In addition, the growing special services in Switzerland, which we referred to earlier, also supports this achievement. While the weakness in China affected our performance in Asia during the first half, we were encouraged by the positive momentum in Korea, Japan, and Thailand. These are markets with significant longer-term growth potential, and our growing presence across them will position us well to capitalize on future opportunities going forward. Steady growth in North America and Brazil was supported by the higher volume of services, while the further strong improvement in the rest of the world was driven by growing volume of services sold to global customers and robust demand from local customers in Australia, Botswana, and Dubai. The line outlines our consistently high profitability with continued improvement in our margin despite investment for growth.
Adjusted EBITDA in the first half increased by 4.4% year on year to €47.7 million, thanks to successful expansion across France, Germany, and Australia, which counterbalanced startup costs in the U.K. and investment into IT. The strong revenue performance allows us to deliver a 20 basis point uptick in our adjusted EBITDA margin to 26.6%. Slide ten demonstrates our disciplined cost management, reflected in the lower rate of increase in our cost of services compared to the revenue growth. In addition, our growing scale has once again allowed us to consolidate more shipments and achieve lower overall shipping costs as a percentage of revenue. We expect further opportunities to drive efficiency as we grow in our footprint. The investment in people that we touched on earlier is reflected in the slight increase in personnel costs.
We believe that our recent key hire will make a notable difference to our future success. This brings us nicely to the CapEx trend on slide 11. You will see that the capital expenditure during the first half was focused mainly on investment into tangible assets, mostly linked to new offices and warehouses, which form a key element of our footprint expansion. The investment into intangible assets is related to our digital transformation project, where implementation of the new TMS has started and we continue to make advancements in our cybersecurity. Overall, our CapEx for the period was more than 3% lower year on year, thanks to our disciplined approach to capital allocation and our asset-light approach, as well as timing of investments. We expect our overall fully held CapEx to remain in line with last year.
Moving to our cash flow generation in slide 12, you will see the 11% improvement in cash position. About €129 million was driven by EBITDA growth, achieved through positive momentum in our operating activities. Cash used in investing activities is related to investment in tangible and intangible assets. Lower cash used in financial activity mainly reflected the €6 million lease repayment and the dividend distributed in the same amount. Last but not least, our net financial position on slide 13. As you can see, we leveraged our robust performance to further reinforce our balance sheet. Our net financial position is up nearly €14 million year on year. This gives us a high degree of strategic flexibility as we continue to grow the business. With this, I will hand back to Marco to close with our expectation for the second half.
Thank you, Alessandro. Looking ahead, we expect continued positive momentum in the second half. We have set out some of our immediate expansion plans and our exciting pipeline of openings in Southeast Asia. Our margins remain healthy, even as we continue to invest in our people and digital capabilities. On this basis, we anticipate an acceleration of growth in the second half, despite the volatile market environment. We remain confident in our full-year outlook, with revenues and adjusted EBITDA expected to grow in line with 2024 performance, while ordinary CapEx remains in line with previous year levels. Thank you very much for your attention. We'd now be delighted to take your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our Q&A session. If you have a question, we ask that you please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Once your name has been announced, you can ask your question. If you want to withdraw your question, please lower your hand using the raise hand function. Thank you, and a moment for the first question, please. Our first question comes from Robert Jan Vos at ABN AMRO. Please unmute your line.
Yes, hi, good morning all. I have a couple of questions, if I may. The combined revenue from Hong Kong and China decreased by 20% in H1. What is the trend for growth in these countries so far in the second half? Related to that, in your outlook for 2025 of accelerating revenue growth in the second half, what are your assumptions for Hong Kong and China? That's my first question.
Okay. Thank you for your question. The expectation is that we remain stable, both the market on the level that we reached in the first half year, based on the fact that we consider that different conditions of the market and better results can be achieved in countries such as Japan and Korea. The expectation will remain the same. The second part of the question is confirmed that we expect that usually the second half of the year, and especially Q4, is cyclically the best part of the year for the business in our niche.
Okay, thank you. My second question is on the personnel cost. Is it maybe possible to share the average number of FTEs for H1 last year and also H1 2025? Related to this, was there any material wage cost inflation, or is it purely the increase of the number of FTEs? That's my second question. Thank you.
Yeah, the part of the inflation is merely related to some countries where, of course, we see a different effect. For instance, the U.S. would be considered a country where the labor cost is more under pressure. In terms of FTE, we can rely on later on with a precise figure.
Okay, and then two small technical questions. If I understand correctly, the IPO-related costs are in the P&L and offset in other income and cost of services. Is there a full offset for the amount of the IPO-related costs in these two line items in the P&L? The final one is the dividend payment of $5.5 million to shareholders. Can you remind me what it was? Was that the final owed dividend before the IPO? Any color there would be helpful. Thank you.
Yes, the first question is correct, is what we said, is offset. For the second question regarding the dividend, the dividend that was paid in the first half referred to 2023. The dividend of the 2023 approval as last payment was paid in the first half of 2025.
Okay, that's very clear. What was, can you remind me of the IPO-related cost? What was the order of magnitude? It was about $6 million. Okay. Related cost of the IPO, yes.
Okay, clear. That's it from my end. Thank you very much.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand feature. Once you've been invited to ask your question, please unmute and ask your question. This concludes today's Q&A section. Thank you for your participation. I will now hand back to Marco Degl’Innocenti for closing remarks. Marco, please go ahead.
Thank you for your question and for joining today's webcast. We appreciate your continued interest and support. We look forward to updating you on our progress at the next result announcement. Have a good day.