Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Maria, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome. Thank you for joining the IDEAL Holdings conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the full year 2025 financial results. All participants will be in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to the management of IDEAL Holdings. Mr. Damianos Papakonstantinou, you may now proceed.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. 2025 was a transformational year for IDEAL Holdings, a year in which we delivered strong operational performance, executed a major acquisition, and further strengthened our capital structure. A key milestone in 2025 was the acquisition of 100% of Barba Stathis for EUR 130 million, one of the most well-known companies in the food sector, and a leader in the frozen vegetables and ready-to-cook meals in Greece. This transaction significantly enhances our exposure to the food sector and adds a resilient, cash-generative business to our portfolio. Across our existing operations, performance was very strong, delivering robust growth. Comparable EBITDA increased to EUR 58 million, EUR 0.7 million, while net profit reached EUR 26.1 million, marking strong year-on-year improvement and demonstrating the scalability of our investment model.
Importantly, we continue to deliver on shareholder returns, distributing EUR 0.40 per share for 2025, which is equal to EUR 21.6 million in total, equal to a dividend yield of approximately 6.6%, based on the average price over the year. In parallel, we further strengthened our capital base. Oak Hill Advisors invested EUR 102.5 million indirectly, acquiring 25% of our investments, while we tapped the equity capital markets for the first time, completing a EUR 48 million share capital increase that was oversubscribed 2.6 x, further enhancing our shareholder base. These milestones confirm both the strength of our portfolio and the confidence of institutional investors in our strategy.
Building on this strong performance, I'd now like to focus on how this performance has translated into sustained value creation for our shareholders over time. Let me now focus more specifically on shareholder value creation. Over the past 5 years, total shareholder reward, including capital returns and share buybacks, represent approximately 23% of our current market capitalization. In absolute terms, we have distributed EUR 54.2 million to shareholders, equivalent to EUR 1.13 per share over the last 4 years. This correspond to approximately 16.5% of our current market capitalization. Importantly, this has not come at the expense of growth. During the same period, we have executed transformative acquisitions, expanded materially our EBITDA, and significantly increased the scale of our group.
In 2025 alone, we continued executing our share buyback program, deploying approximately EUR 12 million as part of our disciplined capital allocation framework. Our philosophy is straightforward: We aim to maximize total shareholder return through a balanced approach, reinvesting capital into high return opportunities, while systematically returning excess capital when appropriate. As the market capitalization chart illustrates, since 2021, IDEAL has delivered substantial value appreciation, supported by both operational performance and consistent capital returns. This balance between growth and distribution is a core pillar of our investment model, and it remains unchanged. I will now pass the stage to Mr. Boumis, who is the CEO of attica, for the presentation of attica Department Stores.
Hello. In 2025, we celebrated the 20-year anniversary in the Greek market. We achieved record high numbers in this year, both in revenue and profitability. Specifically, the revenues grew by 5%, and reached at EUR 244.2 million. EBITDA grew by 11% and arrived at EUR 30.4 million, whereas the EBITDA margin jumped to 12.4%. Static EBITDA with IFRS 16 went to EUR 46.4 million. Earnings after tax grew by 18%, whereas the net cash on position grew from EUR 21.6 million in 2024, end of 2024, to EUR 40.7 million, end of 2025.
We grew our customer visits by 1% to 6.9 million, whereas we increased the productivity, the sales we have per square meter, by 4%, arriving at EUR 7,500 thousand per square meter. We have two main categories, beauty represented the 21%, whereas fashion, the 76% of our business. A business overview, the tax-free sales grew by 5%, following the overall trend of the business, whereas the e-commerce increased by 39%. We have to mention here that the market trend was negative, we increased our market share.
The footfall slightly higher, 1%, the transaction increased by 4%, which means that we had higher conversion rate in 2025 versus 2024. In 2025, we continued our elevation strategy, our elevation process, we continued adding in the brand mix, contemporary designer brands and exclusivities in order to differentiate on the rest of the market. For example, we introduced COS at the City Link. We expected annual turnover, more than EUR 1 million, we introduced communication pocket concept, which is only one out of five department stores in Europe, attica, which has this concept. We added two niche fragrance brands, exclusive in Greece, were exclusive to City Link in Greece, Maison Crivelli and Matiere Premiere.
As we said before, gross and EBITDA margins improved. Despite the fact that we had pressures in the payroll, also we advertised the 20-year anniversary, so we increased our marketing as well. Now, the outlook for 2026, we expect again, an upward trend, despite market volatility. We expect also further increase in turnover, which is coming from our purchases, from our wholesale business versus consignment. We will continue, and we have already agreed to introduce cool, contemporary, trendy, premium brands like Carhartt, which will start in March in City Link. And in parallel, we're working on our infrastructure.
As we speak, we are in the middle of a conversion from a legacy pro front-end cashier system to a new modern one, which will allow us to enhance personalization and improve the customer experience. It's expected to be finalized by April. After that, we will continue with the introduction of the CRM and the loyalty scheme. In parallel, we are using artificial intelligence technology tools in order to boost our e-commerce. We fix, we made a note it, during the end of the last year, we try to fix user experience navigation in our site. Another project that we will launch this year is the attica beauty store in Athens Mall that we will create a small selective chain in beauty.
While in parallel, in order to be ready in the first semester of 2027, we are working on the opening of three new stores in the Riviera Galleria, the, which is the coastal front of Ellinikon project in the southern part of Athens.
Vassiliadis, CEO of, BYTE Group for the presentation.
Thank you, Damianos. Good evening, everybody. 2025 for, BYTE Group of companies, was a year where we took the strategic decision to shift, our revenue mix towards higher value services. As a result, revenues declined by EUR 10 million, representing a 9% decrease compared to 2024, while EBITDA increased by 30%, reaching EUR 15.2 million. EBITDA margin increased to 14.3%, and ending after tax grew by nearly 20%, approaching EUR 10 million. Net cash increased significant, more than double than in 2024, driven by strong profitability and cash flow generation. All these outcomes underscore the improved profitability and earnings quality achieved through our structural transformation. Our revenue distribution by line segment.
Last year was 61% for the private sector and 39% for the public sector, which is an important factor that maintains our resilience towards the post RRF period. In terms of service line contribution, business services was 34%, integration represent 23% of our revenues, cloud migration 11%, and trust accounted for the remaining 6%. I think we spoke about 2025 performance, which was very good for all the companies of the BYTE group of companies. Towards 2026, it's important to say that we started the year with a very strong contractual backlog of EUR 23 million. We expect that the growth will continue within this year, based on our strong pipeline and the strong backlog.
EBITDA upward trend is expected to continue, further been by our ongoing strategic focus on shifting towards higher value-added services. Additionally, we plan to enhance even further intercompany's collaboration and fully leverage economy of scale, and make further targeted investment in AI technology, as well as in stabilization of processes in order to reduce the dependency from expensive overheads, as you know, so something very difficult to find in the IT sector currently, and of course, supporting this way, the sustainability, profitability improvements. The most important initiative and projects for 2026 is, first of all, the enhancement of cross-selling opportunity and strengthen synergies across all IT subsidiaries, following the completion of the IT organization within BYTE group of companies. The SOC transformation to a risk operation center, which will.
the security that we are offering to our clients from alerts and incidents to business risks and value protection. This is something that we expect that will boost sales, margin, and increase customer lifetime value and retention. The company will further strengthen its presence in Middle East, as it was extended the contract until 2028, and has now, in addition, some new project in the pipeline. Damianos?
Thank you, Panos. Next, Mr. Chamalemis, the CEO of Barba Stathis, will present the company's financial and outlook.
Thank you, Mr. Papakonstantinou. Good afternoon to everyone. 2025 was another very strong year for Barba Stathis. We posted a revenue growth of 7% ahead of the market. We closed the year a bit shy of EUR 130 million, which is very strong performance. What I would like to underline is that 80% of the growth is coming from volume increase, which we know how important it is in our sector. EBITDA was another solid year with 5% growth, close to EUR 15 million. Earnings after share, a very, very strong 19% growth, as a result of our gross profitability increase and also lower financial expenses, with a reduction of debt and also lower interest rates. Our cash position continues the improvement that we have been having in the past few years.
It is now at EUR 34.3 million, with a ratio of net debt to EBITDA to 2.3. From a revenue perspective, if we see a top-line view, I would like to call out the diversification of our portfolio. We have now half of our business on our flagship core business, which is the frozen vegetables, but now we are developing very fast, what we call the chilled and the ambient part of the portfolio, which grew high double digit this year, and now it is almost 30% of our portfolio. Another year of very solid financial performance for Barba Stathis. If we move to the next slide. In terms of performance, I have called out the key metrics.
The one I would like maybe to put some emphasis is that we're seeing very high shares. In most of the categories, we have the highest that we have ever seen or very close to that. As I said before, one of the core strategies for our business is to grow the category, which is something that we have achieved in 25, and we have very solid plans also to continue the category growth focus in 26. Moving to the next year, we expect the sales to continue growing to mid to high single digits, and continue, as I said, accelerating our disproportionate positive contribution to category growth, which is the way for sustainable value creation. In 2025, we have done some very deep consumer work.
We have identified insights, habits on how to accelerate the consumption of the category, drive superiority, and all this consumer plan will unfold as of next month. Combined with the 360 relaunch, we're gonna have new packaging, new visual identity, new communication, new TV copy. We are banking a lot on a very strong consumer investment and improved communication, as well as always, putting a lot of focus and emphasis on our in-store presence together with our retail partners and with key emphasis on distribution expansion and the acceleration of our value adds, as I call them, which is the accretive categories within our mix. EBITDA is expected to continue growing in 2026.
We have a target of low double digits, as a combination of the top line acceleration and also the yields of CapEx investments that we have done, that as of 2026, they're gonna start contributing to our EBITDA. The two biggest that I would like to call out, the two biggest investments that we have done, is the new distribution and storage center that we have in Thessaloniki, which is gonna help us a lot in terms of our storage capacity and have less dependency on third-party storage, which we currently have, and it has fairly high costs.
Similarly, we are working and we are putting focus on rolling out fast also a new distribution center in Athens, a milestone product that is gonna help us a lot in terms of improving and optimizing our logistics, serving the south part of Greece much more efficiently versus today, and also minimizing our third-party costs linked with storage. All in all, a very strong position and a very positive outlook and optimism as we get into 2026. Thank you.
Thank you, Michali. Moving on to our strategy for the following three years, it remains clear and disciplined. Since May 2021, we have delivered average returns of approximately 2.1 x on invested capital. This track record defines our investment DNA. Looking forward, we will continue targeting at least 15% IRR or 2 x cash-on-cash returns on future exits. At the same time, we'll pursue new acquisitions at fair valuations aligned with these return thresholds. The partnership with Oak Hill Advisors and the recent share capital increase have significantly strengthened our capital firepower, enabling us to act decisively when attractive opportunities arise. Within our existing portfolio, by group, we focus on margin expansion and value-added service. In food, we will pursue selective M&A and targeted CapEx to further enhance profitability and improve cost structure.
In attica, we will continue our organic expansion through new square meters and brand elevation rather than acquisitions.
Finally, we remain committed to a stable dividend policy on distributing 40%-50% of net earnings over the next 3 years, while also considering additional capital returns upon successful exits. In summary, our focus remains unchanged. Discipline investments, operational excellence, strong cash generation, and sustainable shareholder returns. Thank you, and we look forward to your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone in the audio conference who wishes to ask a question may press star, followed by 1 on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and 1 at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from the line of Natalia Svyriadi with Eurobank Equities. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Very nice results. I was wondering if you could give us any indication on the net debt at the group level. I can see net cash, actually, from the two divisions and the lower debt in Barba Stathis, but I was wondering what about the group level, if you can give us this. I also have a per division, one question per division. Maybe I should, you know, take it later, so we can take it one by one.
Yes, hello, I'm Savas Asimiadis, I'm the CFO of the company, and the consolidated net debt of the company is actually positive. It's around EUR 7 million, which again, it's a very impressive number to consider.
Yes. Yes, it is. I see. I thought it was net cash because of the moving parts, but I just wanted to realize that, very good number.
Yes.
I also wanted to ask, okay, on the IT division, you improved a lot, the margin around 14%, more than 14%, I can see. I understand that this comes from change in the mix, and this will continue growing. Would we expect this to be sustainable and growing figure?
Yes.
EBITDA margin.
Yes, yes. Our goal is to even continue growing the EBITDA margin and reach 15% or even 16% in the next 2 years. We are committed in this. We are following this strategy. As also mentioned it during the presentation, towards that, besides, you know, the revenue mix, it will help also the cross-selling between the IT companies, the integration of the business and all this shift.
Okay, great. This is going to be moving higher. Nice to know. I was also wondering if you have a breakdown or maybe a percentage of how much the eShop sales in attica Department Stores are as of total revenues. It was an impressive rise, but I'm assuming it's still a small number.
Yeah, it is. Hello again. It is 5.3%.
It's 5%, okay.
It's 5.3% in 2025, versus 4% in 2024.
Yeah, the rise was impressive. Okay, great. Also one quick one on Barba Stathis. Obviously, the margin had a very, very slow decline in the EBITDA level. Is this because of higher operating expenses, one-offs or something like this? I'm trying to understand. Obviously, you're targeting higher and you have lots of, you know, things to meet going ahead, but was this something that-
Yes.
Yeah, was for the, for the beginning?
Yes, yes. Hello, it's Michalis.
Hello.
It is mostly linked by the aggressive volume growth and some higher increases that we have anticipated on raw materials and importantly, transportation costs, which now we have a plan, and next year, we are planning to increase the margin materially. That is the target for 2026 behind the pillars that we have put in place.
Okay, great. Okay, thank you. That was very clear. That was all to me. I will let any somebody else ask a question.
Thank you, Natalia.
Bye-bye.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. The next question is from the line of Vrekos George with Piraeus Securities. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Two questions from my side. First, we have seen some press reports regarding a potential listing of attica Department Stores on the Athens, the Athens Exchange. Could you please comment on this and clarify whether this is something currently under consideration? Second, could you share the total square meters of the new three stores in at Riviera Galleria, as well as the remaining CapEx required for this project in 2026?
Thank you, George. Dimosthenis, I will take the first question. Sorry.
Okay. I'll take the second one, yeah.
George, thank you for the questions.
... We as you all know, we never comment on press reports. What we can say as a management of IDEAL Holdings is that we always examine options to unlock value on our investments. Demosthenis, if you wanna.
Yeah, yeah. Regarding the Riviera Galleria, it's approximately the 3 stores, they are approximately 1,000 square meters in aggregate. The other question was, what is the CapEx for this year?
Yeah.
The overall 2026. It is about like EUR 8 million. It's IT, construction, maintenance, CapEx, altogether is around EUR 8 million.
Of this EUR 8 million, EUR 5 million are maintenance CapEx?
No, no, no, no, no. It's EUR 8 million. I told you there are some IT projects like, you know, the front end cashier system, the CRM that I mentioned, the infrastructure that we make also in our own online business. Altogether, maintenance CapEx and the infrastructure CapEx and some and my new store that we will open in mall is EUR 8.2 million.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
As a final reminder, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen-
If there are not-
There are no further audio questions. I will now hand over to management for any written questions. Thank you.
Okay. We have one written question, regarding possible acquisitions for Barba Stathis and the development, any development that there might be. As we mentioned on our conference call in October, and we always do, we keep looking for additional M&A targets, especially in the food sector, that could increase value for our investment. We never comment before having a final signing on any deal. Since we're not there yet, we will do not have any further comments to do. On regards to the question on which companies are currently under consideration, we don't have any comments on that. Thank you very much. If there are not any other questions, I would like to thank you all for participating in our conference call. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a pleasant evening.