Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the FILA First Quarter 2024 Results Conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the Conference Call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Luca Pelosin, Chief Operating Officer of FILA. Please go ahead, sir.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on this call. Unfortunately, Massimo Candela cannot attend the call, so I will have the honor to present FILA's First Quarter 2024 results. Let me focus on a few highly strategic aspects. This is the first quarter following the IPO of DOMS. The rationale of the IPO is fully confirmed. On one hand, we confirm that FILA x DOMS is a Cash Cow, as you'll see from the Q1 results. On the other hand, we confirm that DOMS is a nice tiger. Share price is more than 2 times versus the IPO price. If you remember, we paid EUR 41.4 million to get a 51% share of DOMS. From the IPO, we received EUR 69 million cash net of tax and fees, and the current 30.6% stake is valued at EUR 370 million, so not a bad deal.
Let me focus more on the new FILA without DOMS. Our business is very stable. We are back to high-quality brands in defensive markets that are linked to long-term trends in demographics. We have very resilient financials with stable and growing revenues and EBITDA since 2019. Highly cash-generative business. We generated EUR 250 million free cash flow to equity in the last three years, so on average EUR 50 million a year. Much lower leverage. Net bank debt now is just above EUR 303 million versus more than EUR 400 million a year ago. Financial asset with DOMS stake worth EUR 370 million, in addition to massive strategic value in terms of industrial and commercial opportunities. And we have also many potential upside from optimization of efficiency and production footprint. We have to discuss also about the extended wealth management implementation in Dixon Ticonderoga, U.S. I need to clarify one aspect.
This is a one-off and temporary impact. We went live beginning of March, and we had a much longer fine-tuning learning curve than expected, but we will talk about EWM later. In terms of guidance for this year, these EWM issues are unfortunate, but our business is solid and the markets are good. We prefer to be realistic on 2024 based on this implementation, so 2024 revenues are expected to be flat. We are, however, benefiting from improved margins, and we are confident in confirming guidance on EBITDA last year. By the same token, we are confident in confirming guidance on free cash flow to equity in a range between EUR 14 million and EUR 50 million. In terms of Q1 results, we consider Q1 excellent. Unfortunately, EWM implementation brought some disruption in the numbers, which are clearly, as I said, one-off and temporary. North America was 4.7% over last year in February.
Europe is back to growth, and as we expected, margins are up thanks to better margin mix and efficiency. Cash flow is very strong in Q1. DOMS absorbed a lot of cash, especially for CapEx, as we informed already in the previous calls. As I said, the financials have been negatively impacted by some disruption from the introduction of the SAP Extended Warehouse Management. This tool will certainly make our U.S. distribution centers more efficient and more profitable, improving the quality of the deliveries to U.S. customers, which is key for having a solid growth also in the future. The rollout was supposed to be an enabling. We never had an issue in the past. I do remember SAP already announced WM will be not anymore supported after December 2025.
We have VM implemented in many production and distribution entities, so the roadmap for the EWM implementation is a must for this reason. However, we did have some issues that emerged suddenly on the go-live, as I said, so many orders were partially blocked in the second half of March. I can tell you the situation is now much better, and in April, we are back to the normal operations in our distribution center. Just for your information, EWM was also implemented not only in the two distribution centers but also in the two production plants where no issues were coming from this implementation. Another important information for you: we have appointed a new US Chief Operating Officer for Dixon Ticonderoga, U.S. This person is named Stephen Boyer, that was already part of the company for some years. So summing it all up, Q1 figures show a distorted situation.
Revenues in North America are well below our expectations. We never thought of -20%. Thus, as I said, it is one-off and temporary. Europe is back to growth, and this is very positive news after 2023 with lots of distorting. Mexico is also growing double-digit. I thought Central South America is suffering from the Argentine pesos, and the negative impact will be continuing in all of 2024. We are showing a much better story with a solid strengthening of margins in North America and Europe, a lot of efficiencies, and mixed effort. Free cash flow is excellent. We are up EUR 15 million compared to last year. This is a massive difference. You can now appreciate that DOMS had a cash flow significant absorption, but this is natural considering how much it was growing.
Net profit is five times last year, and we are not even including DOMS profit in Q1 as they have not yet been published. Now I leave to Cristian for more details in financials.
Okay. Thanks so much, Luca. And of course, it will be a pleasure to be with Steve Boyer as COO of Dixon USA. He's very important in this moment. Before I start with the presentation, I'd like to take a few minutes to illustrate some material changes in how we will be communicating going forward. The consolidation of DOMS. Following the IPO, FILA is no longer consolidating DOMS. We now account for the 30.6% participation under the equity method. Income is in the line financial income. Consequently, all of our revenue, EBITDA, balance sheet, cash flow are now shown without DOMS. We have, however, made an effort to provide all 2022 and 2023 revenue and EBITDA figures with and without DOMS so that you can understand how the FILA business has performed. All the quarterly data are available in the appendices.
Also note that given that DOMS has not yet approved in its Q1 results, FILA's 30.6% share of its net profit is not included in Q1 results. We will have a catch-up in Q2 and later in the year. In June, we will include profit for Q1. In September, we will include the profit for each one, and in December, we will include the profit for full year. The main reason is because the fiscal year for DOMS is March. Consequently, we have 60 days, and the board will approve DOMS's results at the end of June. Regarding the IFRS 16, you will also see that we are focusing on the IFRS 16 results in line with our quarterly and annual reports.
We are going to simplify the reporting to align it with common market practice and also to ensure that the analyst and investor are able to conduct a clear evaluation of which EBITDA and which net debt to consider to be in line right for right with or without IFRS 16. In any event, our data is provided both with and without IFRS 16 in order to provide continuity on the results. In particular, quarterly data on EBITDA is provided with and without IFRS and with and without DOMs for the last two years. All this information is available in the appendices in the presentation provided. The new format of quarterly presentation. Given both changes, we are also changing the content and the format of our quarterly presentation.
As you will see, we have many more details in our reporting performance, and in particular, revenue and EBITDA, also with currency adjustments for each geographic area. Clearly, we are happy to take suggestions for further improvements, but meanwhile, we think we have made a huge effort. At the last bottom of the list, as already announced via email a few days ago, going forward, FILA will be assisted by Arwin & Partners who are expected to matters. The person in charge are Pietro Masera and Daniele Ridolfi, whom many of you know from the prior roles. They can be reached via email or personally. You have all contact because we have provided a few days ago. Let's now move to the presentation, to slide page three with the highlights on Q1 2024.
Let's say that all these highlights have been discussed by Luca, and we don't need to enter into details. Of course, if you need some information, we are fully available to answer you. Let's now move to slide four, snapshot of 2024 results. This is a new slide, and that's to focus on the key financial metrics for the quarter. Clearly, each of the variables will be discussed in much more details in the following slides. The decline in revenue is basically entirely due to North America for the reason we discussed, but Europe is back to growth on comparable FX, also the rest of Americas with Mexico continuing to grow with double-digit. Adjusted EBITDA with IFRS 16 shows a margin expansion from 51.1%-60%, and this is due to improved efficiency coupled with a positive mix effect of our six.
As you see, the improved margin is consistent in North America and in Europe. The net profit surges 5% from EUR 1.3 million to EUR 6.5 million even before taking our share of DOMS' net profit, as said a few minutes before. The net bank debt has declined by EUR 103.5 million versus a year ago. Of course, thanks to the IPO of DOMS coupled with strong cash flow, and despite the more or less EUR 30 million ordinary dividends we paid in January 2024. We are part of the approach of this cash generation. Let's now move to slide five. This is also a new slide which highlights the results of FILA business ex DOMS over the long term, and which is extremely useful in demonstrating our reliability and the consistency of our cash flow generation. As you can see, revenue and EBITDA have consistently grown through the years.
We have EBITDA growing at a slightly higher pace, and also we are providing information with IFRS 16 impact. Most of the important is focus on the right side of the slide which shows our free cash flow to equity generation in the last five years. In total, it is an average of EUR 50 million per year, and note that also includes DOMS until 2023. However, as we have discussed in the past, DOMS had a negative impact in our cash flow, clearly had invested significantly in CapEx and the working capital to sustain its growth. So that's why we are quite confident in affirming our target of EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million for free cash flow to equity in 2024. Let's now turn to slide seven with all details on core businesses.
This is our new slide on Sales with all details by geographic in Europe and also in comparable FAEs basis. A lot of information here, but happy to present in a way which helps you quickly understand how we performed. Let me provide a quick commentary on the key trends in the quarter, and which are summarized on the right part of the slide, the group. Overall, a net decline of 11.2%, which, however, improved to -7.8% on a comparable FAEs, which is now detailed by region. North America, we already discussed it, is not relevant in currency effect. Europe, as you can see, the good news is that in a comparable currency basis, the growth was +0.4%, and this thanks to a number of factors.
In particular, the restocking in 2024, as announced at the end of 2023, which followed the restocking in 2023 together with efficiency and a mixed effect. However, the results suffer from devaluation of Turkish lira, although the impact is not so material. Central South America, the currency effect is much stronger, and the negative effect from Argentina is quite strong. As you can see in the worth of about EUR 3.6 million, and this is due to the devaluation of the pesos at the end of 2023. Please refer to the end of the presentation. We have all the details of currency, and you will see that the Argentina peso traded an average of 202 euros in Q1 last year. The average was now the average is 900, more or less. So unfortunately, this will impact our Q1 2024.
At the other end, Mexico is doing very well with double-digit growth in local currency plus an affordable currency effect when translated into euro. Asia and the rest of the world, this geographic area is very marginal, so I won't enter into the details. Turning to the next slide, EBITDA. This slide follows a similar logic of the previous one with a lot of detail for geographies plus the margin. Note that all figures are on IFRS 16 basis. However, in the appendix, we have the same slide with EBITDA and without IFRS side by side. Now we can comment mainly the trend. On the group basis, the decline was only 6.2% compared to the 11.2% revenue. And note that on comparable FXs, the decline will be only 1.4%. This clearly is an improvement in the margin, which increased from 50.1% to 60.0% in 2024.
As discussed earlier, the improvement in the margin is occurring through the business and is extremely positive. So the North America improved from 40.3% to 16.1%, and Europe from 30.9% to 14.4% despite Russia being basically not operational. The only region which margin decline is Central South America, in part to the Argentine peso, and in part to the operation in the Dominican Republic, which was basically not operational. The following slides are much more detailed in terms of financials, so we comment can be much more briefly. Slide 10 is a detailed review of the income statement. I'd like to focus on a couple of aspects below EBITDA. Firstly, note that we have not restated the full P&L without DOMS, but we have provided Q1 last year including DOMS and a separate column with only DOMS so that you can understand its contribution. A few takeaways here.
Financial expenses have declined considerably, and it's due to lower indebtedness, improved margin ratchet, and repayment of Mexican pesos. The group net profit increased to EUR 6.5 million compared to EUR 1.3 million the last year, in both cases excluding DOMS. As mentioned earlier, note that Q1 2024 results had zero contribution from DOMS, but not because it's the results, but I like that again, but because the results have not yet been made public and approved by the company. The shareholder of DOMS will approve the results at the end of May. For Q2, Q3, and Q4, however, we shall never disapprove as FILA results take place after DOMS results. Let's now look at slide 11. This slide has the details in cash flow statement consistent with the presentation in the past.
Only difference is that we start from adjusted IFRS 16 EBITDA, and calculation reached the same result on free cash flow to equity. You can see Q1 2023 with DOMS, and Q1 2024 without DOMS. The differences are fairly evident, and we have highlighted that in commentary on this slide. The most important factor is that free cash flow to equity is much higher than the last year. It's improved by more or less EUR 40 million on adjusted basis. Quite important to take place despite a lower EBITDA, this is mainly due to the fact that DOMS absorbed a lot of operating cash flow to support the growth. I remind you that in the first quarter of 2023, DOMS purchased land to increase the production for more or less EUR 8 million. In effect, the outflow for both net working capital and CapEx is much lower in this year.
In 2023, there was a very large investment, as you said. The CapEx for FILA will still be lower due to the consolidation of DOMS, and we confirm our expectation for 2024. By the same token, we have lower rent payment, lower taxes, lower interest expenses, and these are all elements positive for FILA cash flow generation. Last but not the least, note that IFRS 16 rent payment declined for EUR 1.2 million, and you'll see that the next page leads to a lower amount of your existing debts. Let's now look at slide 12, just three comments on net bank debt and net financial position. Note the change from Q1 2024 versus Q1 2023. The net debt declined by EUR 103.5 million. The non-organic part is the inflow from DOMS IPO and the dividend that we pay out in January 2024.
But the organic part is our cash flow generation, which was exceptional for EUR 7.9 million. As mentioned earlier, the EFRS debt declined by EUR 10 million to EUR 65 million to the lower rents, in particular in USA and Central South America, considering also the consolidation of the DOMS. And finally, the leverage ratio is only 2.8%, and the Q1 as particular high working capital needs and consequent indebtedness considers our seasonality period. We are progressing quite well in terms of the leverage, conforming our expectation at the end of 2024 for EUR 40 million and EUR 50 million of free cash flow to generation. The last page 30 shows our balance sheet in March 2023 with DOMS and in March 2024 without DOMS. Not much to see here.
The difference between the two is mainly due to the consolidation of DOMS, some impact of SAP EWM , as Luca mentioned before, which leads to higher inventory, considering also that for us, net working capital is proven by seasonality. Clearly, this value reflects this seasonality, and we stock up in inventory to end the forthcoming back-to-school period that will come next month. Let's now turn to the next and the last slide, 15. Also, this slide is new and quite relevant given the very material evaluation of our 30.6% stake in DOMS. Clearly, we cannot comment on DOMS financial performance, in particular its forecast. However, it is all public information, which you can also access from its website and from other sources as Bloomberg or FactSet. We can also provide some information which will help you to assess the value of this stake and how it compared with underlying results.
Consequently, we have provided the following data from FactSet: the consensus estimate for sales, EBITDA, EBIT, and the net profit for 2024-2026, and the other line for EPS. DOMS, it's clearly growing at a very strong pace, and you can get an idea how much profit we can include in our results coming from the next quarter. I repeat again that we have a different timetable for the quarter. In June, we have only one quarter. The consensus target price and the recommendation, which indicate five local brokers, which an average start price, which is roughly in line with the current share price. And note that all have buy recommendation. And finally, a reconciliation of the value of FILA participation in euros, which is around EUR 370 million instead of EUR 160 million, considering that we have not evaluation marked to market.
I have now finalized the presentation, the comment, and also note the material appendix, which I mentioned before. Now we are ready to take our questions for the Q&A session. Thanks so much.
Thank you. 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 touch-tone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking your questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Nicolò Storer of Kepler. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a few. The first one is on your guidance. If you can tell us which assumptions you made for what concerns affects contribution given the big negative impact you have had in Q1? The second question is on working capital evolution. If you can tell us how much the EWM rollout has impacted working capital in Q1? The third question is on net financial charges. I see that compared to previous year, you have had an improvement of more than EUR 6 million, and I was wondering if this is entirely due to pure cash financial charges or if in the line you also have some non-cash effects contribution or derivatives or whatever? That's it for now. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Nicolo. Thanks so much for your question. Related to the guidance, I confirm that in our budget, we have considered the Argentina pesos devaluation, and at the moment, we are roughly the same exchange rate that we have considered at the end of 2024. I think the last question related to interest, let me see that the impact, as you said properly, are two different impacts: interest, lower interest, and FAEX impact. The lower interest, more or less, are EUR 3 million, more or less, are mainly in Mexico and the USA. The main reason for this decline is, if you remember that at the end of 2023, we have used the proceeds by DOMS, obtained by the sales of DOMS, to repay part of the lower USA, more or less, for EUR 20 million.
On the other hand, we have closed the external credit line expenses, external credit line in Mexico, that the percentage is 50%. We are in line with our budget with this decline, hoping that the next quarter, of course, we have further benefits from the decline of the interest rate for SOFR and Euribor. The 2024 will benefit also the lower margin ratchet, more or less 0.5% that we obtained at the end of June, and the other one, 0.5% at the end of 2023 for the concession. You remember the 1.8% or 1.8, sorry, leverage. Of course, these benefits will be full in the second quarter.
Yes. We expect the additional inventories at the end of March index in the US to be absorbed during the BTS. You know very well the first quarter is very low in sales, while April, August is very strong due to the BTS. So we expect to realign the stock as we budget for 2024.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Alessandro Cecchini from Equita. Please go ahead.
Hello, everybody. I have some questions. The first one, actually, it's on the impact due to the SOFR implementation. If you could elaborate a little bit more, how much was the sales that you lost in March, and in your opinion, how much you are recovering already in April? My second question, that you basically modified the guidance for the year. You were expecting low single-digit growth. Now it's stable. But this is due to, I mean, Forex or entirely due to the US? Because if it's a one-off that, I mean, can be recovered through the year, at the end, we should not have a negative impact for the year. So just if you clarify this. My third question is, you are working well in Europe. Europe is slightly up.
So I would like to have your view for the current quarter or for back-to-school Europe in terms of turnover. And you worked very well on margins. So just if you can elaborate a little bit more about the drivers behind these. And my last question is, if you can elaborate a little bit more on the shareholder agreements that FILA and DOMS between FILA and DOMS, if you can provide us more color. Thank you.
With regards to the impact of EWM, we have lost, as we have seen, 21% sales in March. We partially recover some of these records. Additional recovery is expected to happen in the next weeks. There will be part of these sales lost that will be permanent. At the moment, it's difficult to estimate, but clearly, we gave priorities to customers who have needed our goods to supply their customers. I'm more precise. Our business is made for education by two different types of customers: the historical education customers who are working as historically, I mean, building inventories and using buffers to supply the consumer, and the retailers who are more in line with sales. I mean, they don't have a lot of stock to manage their sales. So we gave priority to these types of customers, and we made the historical education customers suffering more for replenishment.
The good news is the order portfolio for the BTS to be very positive in this moment. And if I can, if I may, I will reply also to your third question about Europe. There is a lot of positiveness in our customers about the BTS. As you know, all customers distock a lot during 2023 and didn't rebuild a lot of their stock also during the first quarter of this year. But the order portfolio, the customer expectation for BTS, is very positive. So for the U.S. market, there is a more scientific base in how customers are predicting sales for BTS. In Europe, it's more a sentiment of our customers. But as I said, the view is positive. And returning to your second question, with this order portfolio and with the distribution center working as expected, some sales will be lost.
It will be one-off for 2024, but not all we didn't supply during the month of March.
Okay. Thanks, Luca. Just to reiterate, Luca said in USA, we have also another preview about Europe, and we confirm the positive trend and the preview of the sales at the end of April. This is important information that we can provide because after the last year, we have negative impact. We have worked period by period to improve the total sales in Europe. We can confirm the continued growth in Central America, in particular, in Mexico. Related to preview at the end of 2024, we confirm stable because we are prudent about the information provided about the USA. Consequently, the expected growth will partially offset what is initially expectation for 2024.
But we can confirm, underline it, that we confirm the results on EBITDA expected for 2024, the better margin, and in particular, the consistent savings interest, the growth of net results, considering that today, again, we have no results for DOMS, and a strong cash generation, our expectation. About the margin, the first quarter, as you mentioned, we have a good margin. The good margin in all areas of the world, thanks to the better organization, reorganization that we have provided USA and part of Europe, and the better mix, and in particular, USA, because if you remember, the last year, we have applied the price increase more or less at the end of March. In 2024, we have the full impact of this price increase and at the same time, a beginning value of the inventory lower than that we have at the end of 2022.
Because if you remember, in 2022, we have a very strong increase of energy at the other end that we reduce, of course, for the next year, the margin, what happened in 2024.
To reply to your last question, we are working with the other DOMS promoter on the shareholder agreement. One of the main targets is clearly to strengthen our industrial and commercial cooperation. At the moment, discussion is very positive, but are not finalized. So we return to the market as soon as the shareholder agreement will be signed by both.
Okay. So just for clarification. So if I understood correctly, in the U.S., you lost year-over-year at the same Forex, roughly $15.6 million. This was more or less the impact of the SOFR. And then the second, if I understood correctly, you expect a positive organic growth in Europe for the second quarter. So just if you could check these statements.
Sales, I confirm the number. As I said, we are confident to recover part of this loss. For Europe, yes, we confirm what Cristian said.
I confirm that at the April, the information is positive to grow.
Okay. And then maybe on the Nicolò question, maybe on the Forex, on the financial charges, EUR -3.9 million probably was Nicolò was asking the split between pure financial expenses and Forex or hedging, something not, I will say, recurrent, if you can provide it.
Okay. The details, let me give you the details in one second. About this, the pure financial interest impact, you can see on the page of the cash flow that if we analyze the net financial expenses, more or less, it's about EUR 2.5 million lower interest. It's the U.S.A., Mexico, and FILA for the reorganization. Let me see this worth about the debt at the end of 2023. The other part is related to the FX conversion. The other one is related to mark-to-market and amortized cost that are not dependent on the business cycle.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Welcome.
Thank you. Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us during this call. We are available for further questions if you have it. Otherwise, next call.
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