Good afternoon, this is the Chorus Call Conference Operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Fila first half 2024 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, let me signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Massimo Candela, Chief Executive Officer of Fila. Please go ahead, sir.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us on this call to present Fila first half results 2024. As you could appreciate in the press release, we do confirm that we are satisfied with Fila Group performance, especially with what is concerned to profitability and cash flow generation. In particularly, this last one has become a priority since in late 2019 we acquired Pacon, and we reached, I remember, EUR 570 million bank debt. We clearly gave a full priority to the cash flow generation. I think we can clearly say that we are happy with the results that we are reaching.
Would like to talk also for a moment about DOMS, our asset, Indian asset that continue to have a spectacular performance, both in economic and financial parameter, but also in the Indian stock exchange. I will dedicate two minutes later before leave the word to Luca Pelosin. I have a couple of notes. Based on these results, we are happy to confirm the guidance we have given for 2024. And I think this is important, considering how unstable is the macroeconomic situation. I would like to remember, we do expect a single-digit growth for EBITDA and a cash generation, free cash flow generation between EUR 40 million and EUR 50 million.
So another good year of strong cash generation. I would like also to take the opportunity to announce that the next 12 November we are going to host a Capital Markets Day, and with our third quarter results. So of course, details details will follow. Before, again, I leave the word to Luca Pelosin and Cristian Nicoletti, I would like to give you some more informations about Doms. And starting from this half or from this second quarter, we're going to report on a regular basis, not only the value of Doms as an asset in terms of value of the share, but also in terms of market performance and potential M&A strategy.
So we have gone public, if you recall, during Christmas 2023, at the price of INR 790. I remember the first day, the value of the share jumped almost 100%. Currently trading today is around 2,400. So from the day of the IPO, it's 3 times, almost 3 times. We have invested originally EUR 41 million, which means at today's price, we have made almost 13 times our investment. Today, the value of our asset, which is 30 point...
We hold 30.6% of the company, so we are the largest single shareholder is worth between EUR 470 million-EUR 500 million, which is really an extremely important value. So, the sales, the company has ended 2024. They closed the year in March with INR 10 billion, with an EBITDA of INR 2.7 billion and a net income of INR 1.5 billion. For next year, the consensus see the company to grow more than 20% to INR 19 billion, EBITDA to grow to INR 3.2 billion, and net income a touch below two billion, two billion rupees.
This is extremely important because, as I have mentioned it several times, Fila, owning 30.6%, will consolidate the net income, which will have a substantial impact. We have, in the first half, we have consolidated the first quarter results, the first quarter net income of DOMS, so until 31 March 2024. Then for some more details, Mr. Nicoletti is available to give you all the explanation. So I thank you for your attention. I leave you to Luca Pelosin, the responsibility to talk about the following points, and thanks.
Thank you. Thanks, Massimo. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's now move to the slide number 3, which contains the first semester highlights. So overall, we are quite satisfied with the results, as Massimo just explained. Note the strong sales improvement in the second quarter, which posted a strong recovery versus the first quarter. If you remember, the first quarter was in fact impacted by the one-off introduction of the tool, SAP EWM in North America, and, as announced, it was a one-off event. Second quarter was still slightly negative due to the latest delivery delays from the Dixon warehouses. These delays have been almost completely recovered with the month of July, during which the business turnover grew by approximately $4 million compared to the same month of 2023.
As well as because of the reorganization of our offer towards business with better margin. Good news in Europe, with accelerated sales growth pattern, and also Mexico is performing well. Although Central and South America is still impacted by the devaluation of the Argentine pesos. EBITDA is the real good news for the second quarter. We have been saying for a while that we are focusing on industrial and commercial efficiencies through product mix, and as you can see now, the EBITDA margin continues to improve. On an IFRS basis, EBITDA grew by 5.6% in the first semester, with a strong acceleration to 11.5% in the second quarter alone, and this is by far the most interesting result in this presentation.
Excluding IFRS, the result would have been even better, given that we have terminated some lease facilities. Also, free cash flow to equity is stronger, despite the first semester is traditionally leading to a cash outflow due to customary working capital dynamics. 2024 is better than 2023. In 2024, in fact, we absorbed almost EUR 8 million less cash than in 2023, and this is the combination of a number of factors, as Cristian will show you in a few slides. The clear message is that we are increasingly comfortable with our targets for the full year.
Guidance and Capital Markets Day, as Massimo indicated, we are confirming all our guidance targets for 2024, and we'll host our Capital Markets Day in November, the 12th, in which we provide a lot more flavor of our strategy and our business, and our targets. We can now move to the following slide, number 4, with the snapshot of our first semester result. This slide provides a graphic recap of our results in the first semester. I'd like to highlight a couple of factors here. In core business sales, the impact of FX is negative by a couple of percentage points, which are mainly attributable to the devaluation of the Argentine pesos and the Turkish lira. Regarding EBITDA, please note how the margin jumped from 19.1 in last year to 21.3 this year.
2 percentage points is a great result. Adjusted net profit had an incredible performance. Even if you strip out DOMS, it increased from EUR 19.8 last year to EUR 30.5 this year, so an increase of about 50%. Cristian will explain better in the presentation. Last but not least, net debt is down by almost EUR 100 million compared to a year ago, largely due to the cash in from the IPO of DOMS, but also thanks to organic flow, and despite the ordinary and extraordinary dividends that were paid in the first semester this year. We can now go to slide number 5, where you can see consistent long-term growth for F.I.L.A. Group.
This is my last slide, and you can see how, with respect to EBITDA and free cash flow, we are well in line with our historical trends. This slide highlights our strong characteristic as a cash cow, with a resilient top line and strong cash flow generation. Clearly, this will be one of the reference points for the guidance we presented in the Capital Markets Day, and I look forward to such date. I can now leave to Cristian, and thanks for your attention.
Thanks, Luca, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I start with my section of presentation, let me take a few seconds to confirm some material changes regarding our revised financial communication. The consolidation of DOMS. Unless otherwise stated, all the numbers are ex DOMS, which is no longer in FILA consolidation perimeter. As regards to net profit, there is a one-quarter time lag, so FILA's Q1 net profit includes only DOMS Q1 results, as DOMS has not yet approved Q1 results. The financial year to 2024 for FILA results will include all 12 months of DOMS net profit. About IFRS 16, we are focusing more on the IFRS 16 results, in line with common market practice. Even as in the appendix, we reported the EBITDA without IFRS 16.
In appendix, we have provided the reconciliation for Q figures for 2022 and 2023, with and without IFRS 16, and with and without DOMS. Let's now move to slide 7 of the presentation, which details on core business sales. This is our new slide on sales, and we are providing all details for H1 and Q2. Let me provide a quick commentary on the key trends in this quarter, and I'll focus on the constant currency results for H1 and Q2. About group level, overall, a net decline of -3.5% for H1 to the introduction of SAP EWM, which however, improved to -0.4% in Q2. About North America, the improvement is substantially here.
Recall that in Q1, we declined by 21.1%, whereas in Q2, we bounced it back to -3.0%. As Luca indicated, the slight contraction is due to the latest delivery delays from Dixon Warehouse, delays that were almost completely recovered with the month of July. Also, revenue were impacted by the reorganization our offer towards businesses with the better margins. About Europe, good news here. Given that the growth improved from +0.4% in Q1 to 2.2% in Q2, and this is thanks to a number of the factors, restock in 2024, and the mixed effect. On a reported basis, we continue to have an impact from the valuation of Turkish Lira.
About Central and South America, this region continues to be driven by growth in Mexico, while there is an unfavorable impact from Argentina. Asia and the rest of the world are fairly marginal, so I won't go into details. Now, on the next slide, EBITDA. This slide follows a similar logic to the previous one, and note that the overall results are expressed on IFRS 16 basis. Now, we comment on the key trends. At group level, the improvement from Q1 to Q2 is massive, considering that Q1 EBITDA declined by 6.2%, but rebounded in Q2, growing +11.5%, bringing the overall H1 results to EBITDA +5.6%. Similar effect for the margins, which in Q1 were 16%, and we jumped to 24.5% in Q2.
So overall, if we look at the half-year results, we are improving on EBITDA margin by also 3 percentage points compared to last year. About North America is where you see the bulk of the improvement. If we just look at the half-year results, H1 2024 grew +8.3% compared to H1 2023, which is in spite of a contraction of 10.3% in sales. Consequently, in 2024, the margin improved by 4 percentage points, growing to 23.1% versus 19.1% last year. Europe also improved its margin quite substantially and is even more meaningful, given the trend in sales was similar in Q1 and Q2.
Trends for the rest of the world are less material, also because Central and South America is impacted by Argentina's pesos and euro, EUR 0.7 million losses in Dominican Republic. The following slides are much detailed in terms of financials, so my comments can be much more brief. Slide 10, related to income statement. Financial expenses have declined considerably, and this is due to lower debt, improved the margin ratchet, and the repayment of loan in Mexican pesos. The group net profit increases to EUR 32 million, compared to EUR 23.7 million. However, the contribution DOMS varies in Q1 2024, it's EUR 1.4 million for only one quarter, whereas in 2023, it's EUR 3.9 million for the full half year. In any case, as Luca mentioned, before we exclude the DOMS, the net profit grew about +50%.
Regarding non-recurring items, we have the same impact over the last year. Related to slide 11, we show the cash flow statement. The cash flow statement, the differences are fairly evident, and we have highlighted them in the commentary of the slide. Overall, we are better compared to last year by EUR 7.9 million, and this is the first more important message. All the key metrics improved, mainly CapEx and financial expenses. The only aspect we have an absorption of cash is related to working capital, considering that in each one of last year, we had a very strong result. This is mainly due to the higher than expected growth in the backlog in North America, and these goods being shipped out and invoiced. We would have higher sales and lower working capital absorption.
Last but not least, note that the IFRS 16 rent payment declined by less than EUR 1 million, or less than EUR 1 million. As you'll see in the next page, this leads to lower amount of our IFRS 16 debt. Let's now look at slide 12. Note the change of Q1 2024 versus Q1 2023, which Luca highlighted before. This is due to the cash flow from IPO, net of ordinary and extraordinary dividends we paid in Q1 2024. We also, thanks to our robust cash flow generation. As mentioned earlier, the IFRS 16 debt declined by about EUR 10 million to EUR 65 million due to lower rent, and finally, the leverage ratio is only 2.7x, so we are progressing quite well in terms of the leverage. Thanks a lot for your attention.
This is the Chorus Call conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. We will pause for a moment as participants are joining the queue. The first question is from Isacco Brambilla with Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, everybody. Three quick questions on my side. The first one is on current trading in the third quarter, if you can comment on the underlying trends that you are observing, maybe with a focus on North America, if you can. Second question is on Central and South America. Top line performance remained positive in the second quarter, even if slowing down compared to the strong print of the first quarter. Can you help us understand the outlook for the second half, if it will be just mid-single digit growth as in the second quarter, or the stronger growth we have seen at the beginning of the year? Last question is on net working capital. The change compared to the first half of 2023 was not huge.
Anyway, net working capital absorption was above last year. Could you tell us how much of the roughly EUR 90 million absorption was related to North America, and say, the temporary issues you had in the first month of 2024? Even a rough idea would be helpful. Thanks.
Thanks, Mr. Brambilla. With regards to the current trading, but as you clearly know, the second semester-
...is mainly driven by the Back to School, Back to School sales. In this moment is a little bit too early to understand how sell-out will be in the different geographical areas. As far as we can see for the moment, we can confirm our guidance for the full year. With respect to Central and South America, if you remember, we have been really focused on generating good sales with good margin, and this is also reflected in the margin of the group.
So we are not boosting sales artificially, but we are following what customers have really needed to restock or to replenish their warehouse. So I can consider what is happening in the second quarter a normal trend that could happen every year. With regards to your last question, I leave it to Cristian.
Okay. Related to next quarter absorption, first of all, we have to highlight that the comparable semester of 2023 is a very strong lease absorption. You remember that we realized a +EUR 50 million of lease absorption versus 2022. Consequently, we expect that we consider normally that we have this trend in the first quarter, in the first semester, sorry. I can confirm to you that main issue that underlies this assumption is a temporary effect of Dixon USA. Roughly, I can confirm to you that the amount that we realize in the next quarter should be EUR 6 million. The temporary effect, more or less, should be EUR 6 million.
As of today, we can confirm our expectation for end of the year, that we consider stable the net working capital respect the closing 2023. Of course, the group, considering the temporary delay for Dixon USA, take much attention of purchase and the management of the inventory for the closing of June 2024.
Okay, many thanks, both for the answers.
The next question is from Alessandro Cecchini with Equita. Please go ahead.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for taking my questions. The first one actually it's about a follow-up on trends covering trading. You stated that in July, North America was up EUR 4 million year-on-year. You could a little bit better maybe to quantify in term of year-on-year growth in North America. And if my calculations are correct to reach flattish top line for the year, you need to execute high single digit top line growth in the second half. So it's a good acceleration in the second half, and we know everybody that the third quarter is very important.
So basically, you are saying that you are very confident on the third quarter top line growth, and I remember that you declared very good impression from European Back to School. So if you can elaborate a little bit more on these two topics. My second question is instead about gross margin that improved very so massively in the second quarter. Just I know that paper prices are down, particularly in the first half, and started to decline last year end of the year. So I would like to better understand if the paper price was a big driver of this or not. And my last question is on DOMS.
Sorry, it's more technical, but in the first quarter, you had EUR 8 million, in the second quarter, you have, you had EUR 12 million. So a much important increase quarter-on-quarter. So if you could elaborate a little bit more, the one-off or what happened? Thank you very much.
Thanks for the questions, Alessandro. But for sales expected for the current year on the third quarter, better the third quarter, I can confirm that at the moment both in North America and in Europe the order portfolio is good. So we are very happy about this additional amount in with the positive trend. We have said in the last presentation that everybody was expecting a very nice Back to School increase of sales in both geographical areas.
As I said before, sell-out is good at the moment, and your point is good, but the real confirmation of the trend would only come from the lead and the replenishment POs that we hope we are going to receive in the second part of August and in September. With regards to North America, we in last conference call [said] that part of sales this year would have been temporarily lost in 2024 because of the delays that we accumulated in March. But as we said already in last conference call, we cannot measure how much the impact would be because of the BTS.
At the moment, we are positive the numbers we can see. With regards to your second question on margin, I can confirm the better margin are not at all coming from price increases, because this year we didn't increase, with the very few exceptions, our sales prices, but is more driven by the huge, I can say, activities or project we started already, I can say, post-COVID, three years ago.
We have been saying many times that our preference will have been for a better product mix and a reassessment, partial reassessment of our offer towards to products with a higher margin, and this is the result of what we have been implementing, let's say, starting mainly in 2023. In addition, we have been, as usual, performing different efficiency projects in our supply chain, and more will come in the next years to have the group performing well, also from operations, which will help the margin to stay at the highest level possible. For the third question, I leave Cristian reply.
Okay. Thanks, Alessandro. Related to the depreciation and amortization in H1 2024, the breakdown is depreciation for EUR 5.6 million of tangible assets, EUR 6.6 million related to intangible assets, and the right of use EUR 5 million. Total amount of EUR 17 million for H1 2024. Relating to first quarter 2024, depreciation for tangible assets EUR 2.8 million, intangible assets for EUR 3.1 million, and the right of use for tangible assets EUR 2.5 million. Total amount EUR 8.5 million, more or less is double that, the last that we analyzed in H1 2024.
Okay, so I was just wondering because the total D&A that I read in your press release is EUR 20 million, so close to EUR 20 million, so a very big increase in the second quarter, but maybe we can elaborate a little bit after that. I have another question on the U.S., so on your logistics hub, if now it's running at full speed. So if can add more color on the operations of the hub, so just to have your feeling about this. Thank you.
Alessandro, sorry for repeat again, your question. Take care that H1 2023 is including DOMS, and consequently to raise the result with DOMS. Without DOMS, it of course is more or less quite in line. If you're considering the contribution DOMS, H1 2023 is more or less EUR 3 million. Okay?
Okay.
Alessandro, you ask about on the hub?
Exactly. Yeah, thank you.
Well, I would like to give more detail on the SAP EWM, because this tool was implemented not just in the distribution centers, but also in production. And in fact, the reality, the disruption in the logistics happened just in one of our three distribution centers. The other two have been not really impacted by inefficiency because of the characteristics of the deliveries that are managed in these two hubs. In one hub, that is the hub who manage educational school products, we have been facing some disruptions.
We changed a little some specification of the implementation, understanding that some decisions were not the real good for this kind of logistics activities. And we also reinforce the organization of the hub, and I can confirm at the moment all the KPIs we have been implementing since the beginning are showing efficiency much better than before. The latest delays have been caused by the mix of deliveries, because, as you can understand, due to the disruption happened in March, we gave preference to full truck loads and big orders, and we have been working with priorities with customers.
So, these delays have been managed customer by customer, and the delays have been reduced in terms of number of days in delay heavily. Clearly, there are some customers who have not been impacted by these disruptions. So for just to give you a few examples, Walmart, Target, Amazon, Michaels have not at all been impacted by delays. The higher delays happened in traditional educational customers, these are the customers we classified as wholesalers in Europe. So it's just a part of the business for the company.
I can confirm, at the moment, we are real happy about the improvements that have been achieved in the last weeks.
Okay. Many, many thanks.
The next question is from Pietro Nardi with Intermonte SIM. Please go ahead.
Hello, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. I have three questions. The first one is about your full year guidance. So do you still expect revenue to remain almost stable year-on-year, while on the EBITDA side, you expect the EBITDA to increase mid-single digit? So if my calculation were correct, this would imply revenue to increase mid-high single digit in H2, while EBITDA to remain almost flat or slightly below year-on-year. So if you could give us more color on this, so your approach is quite conservative, or if there is other reason behind this. The second question is on the Indian market. So you said before about the strong performance of DOMS, at both in terms of financials, but also in terms of stock exchange.
So, to this point, if you are considering any extraordinary operation on DOMS? And, last question is on CapEx. In the first H, you invest roughly EUR 3.9 million in CapEx, so if first H could be proxy for the full year, or otherwise, what could be an estimated forecast for the full year? Thank you.
Okay, thanks for your question. Let me say that, relating to the guidance, we confirm what we wrote in our presentation. We also use the Capital Markets Day the next quarter to give some key points, considering that we have the end of Back to School. But we confirm that stable revenue mid-digits, single digit adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow between EUR 40 million and EUR 50 million at the end of the year. I take the last question regarding CapEx. We confirm that our expectation at the end of the year for EUR 18 million roughly, and we are live in the second part of the year, the residual amount with respect to the actual capital realized in 2024.
In regards to your second question, I can confirm DOMS is strategic for F.I.L.A. Group, both regards, so we have not any plan to have an extraordinary operation with this company.
Okay, thank you.
For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question is a follow-up from Isacco Brambilla with Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Hi, 2 quick follow-ups. The first one is on Europe. We have seen a steadily improving trend over the past couple of quarters. Could you elaborate a bit more on drivers? Is this, say, a broad-based improvement across countries, or maybe some sub-region or country contributing more? Second question is, if you can remind us, if there is any additional work to be done over the next 12 months, on EWM module or SAP, in other centers of Pilato? Thanks.
With regards to Europe, I can confirm that current results are comparable in all the countries where we are present, so there is any specific trend different in one country compared to the other. So we are really happy to see in a market that is not really brilliant, this result. With regards to EWM, it was not our choice to implement the announced EWM, but probably, you know, SAP announced already two years ago that the WM will be not supported anymore after the end of 2025. Before implementing the EWM in Dixon, U.S., we implemented it in France without any consequence, any disruption.
We are implementing the same also in the other plants where we don't see any potential disruption. So North America is really an exception on our plan of implementing EWM in our different plants.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Okay, if no other question, we all thank you, everyone, for attending this presentation, and we look forward to see you in the Capital Markets Day. Thanks to all. Bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.