Good afternoon, this is the Carusco conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Fiera Milano results as of the 30th of December 2024 conference call. As a reminder, all participants are on 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 zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Vincenzo Cecere, Head of Investor Relations c . Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Fiera Milano's full year 2024 results conference call. This is Vincenzo Cecere speaking, Head of Investor Relations and Sustainability, and I'm here with Francesco Conci, CEO, and Massimo De Tullio, CFO of Fiera Milano. The presentation of today will be structured in four sections. During the first section, Mr. Francesco Conci will give you an overview of the business and an update on the progress of the strategic plan, main financial highlights, and 2025 outlook. Mr. Massimo De Tullio will go through the divisional results and financial figures in greater detail. On a Fiera note, an update on sustainability will also be provided. At the end of the call, you will be invited for a Q&A session with management available for your questions. At this point, I leave the floor to Francesco Conci for the key messages on full year 2024 results.
Please, Francesco, go ahead.
Hey, Vincenzo. Good evening, everyone. It's a pleasure to welcome you to Fiera Milano's full year 2024 results conference call. Today, I will present to you our performance for the year, highlighting key achievements, financial results, and our outlook for the future. Let's begin with a level overview of our financial performance. If I may start with a general comment on the year, 2024 has been a year of strong execution and exceeding expectations. As you know, even years usually bring a less favorable calendar effect for our business. This is mainly due to the absence of key biennial events, including our flagship exhibition, HostMilano, as well as the multi-year IPACK-IMA. Despite the structural factor, our 2024 performance has been outstanding, demonstrating the strength of our business model. Revenue reached EUR 273.2 million compared to EUR 283.8 million in 2023.
The EUR 10.7 million decrease versus 2023 was due to two opposing effects. First of all, a performance effect of EUR 52 million. This reflects the strong like-for-like growth of our business: 13% increase in sold exhibition space, 35% rise in services, 30% growth in the congress business. Second point, a calendar effect of EUR 62.9 million. As expected, 2024 was impacted by the absence of key biennial and multi-year events I mentioned earlier. This was partially offset by the presence of biennial exhibitions such as Mostra Convegno Expocomfort and Transpotec Logistica. This confirmed that our business is strong and continues to grow despite biennial cycles. EBITDA reached EUR 83.6 million compared to EUR 97.1 million in 2023. The EUR 15.6 million decrease was mainly due to the calendar effect, but it was largely offset by strong performance, lower energy costs, and optimized personnel expenses.
Net cash stood at EUR 77.8 million compared to EUR 80.9 million in 2023. The result of the year also confirmed that we have fully surpassed pre-COVID levels even in even years. Even when looking at 2018 EBITDA, including the IFRS 16 effect, we see that we have exceeded pre-pandemic financial performance. Now, let's take a closer look at our performance against expectations in 2024. This is a key message today. We did not just meet expectations; we exceeded them across all key financial metrics. Revenue reached EUR 273 million, exceeding our initial guidance of EUR 255-265 million. EBITDA closed at EUR 84 million, surpassing the upper range of our EUR 75-80 million guidance. Net cash stood at EUR 78 million, significantly above our EUR 65-70 million target.
On the basis of this strong result and our solid financial position, we are proposing to increase the dividend per share from EUR 0.14- EUR 0.20, an increase of nearly 14% compared to our initial proposal, reaffirming our commitment to delivering value to our shareholders. The strong results we have achieved in 2024 are the strength of our strategic vision and our ability to move fast. The execution of our 2024-2027 strategic plan is well underway, and in several areas, we are progressing ahead of schedule. In line with this, we have accelerated several key initiatives. We launched two new exhibitions in the Fiera Milano in Rho ahead of schedule, reinforcing our leadership in the IPO sector. At the same time, we have expanded our global reach, introducing new events in Brazil and forming a joint venture to bring OST to Saudi Arabia.
During the exhibition, we continue to secure top-tier international events. Achille Maelstrom was the director of GASTEC in Milan, confirming our venue as a global hub for industry leaders. We have also included an expanding mission of Fiera Milano through the strengthening of one of the most recognized exhibitions in the industry. Our service exhibition is growing rapidly, while we are also expanding our presence in large-scale entertainment by expanding the concept of small-scale events, ensuring a broader and more visible framework. Looking ahead to the endemic of FINA 2026 Winter Olympics, we represent a unique opportunity to elevate FIA's global standing. Our venues will host the skating and ice hockey. One team could be the official media lab for international broadcasters. This strategy is set to extend our influence beyond the exhibition sector, reinforcing our ability to host world-class events.
Looking ahead to 2025, it presents itself as a year of further growth, supported by a strong exhibition calendar and a favorable seasonality effect typical of all years. By the return of major biennial exhibitions such as OST, Sicurezza, and NADE, we anticipate a significant boost in activity. Despite the outgoing macroeconomic uncertainties, the strength of our business model allows us to confirm the 2025 target outlined in our strategic plan. For 2025, we expect revenues in the range of EUR 320 million-EUR 340 million and EBITDA between EUR 110 million-EUR 120 million. With a rich calendar, strategic expansion, and continued diversification, we are confident that 2025 will be a year of acceleration and value creation for Fiera Milano. Sustainability remains at the heart of our strategy and is becoming an increasingly important source of competitive advantage.
One key indicator of our progress is the +37% improvement in our ESG rating since 2021, issued by Sustainalytics, a testament to our ongoing commitment to responsible growth. At the same time, all our key environment, social, and governance metrics, ESG metrics, are showing positive trends. These improvements, along with our broader sustainability initiatives, will be detailed later in the presentation by Vincenzo. At this point, I will leave the floor to Massimo for the business and financial review.
Good evening, everybody. Thank you, Francesco. Before we get into the details of the performance effects and calendar effects at the consolidated level, which will help you to understand the dynamics of this Fiera Milano result, let's first take a brief overview of our divisional performance. We will briefly cover the Italian and foreign exhibition business, as well as the congresses, providing what we call the divisional legal entity view at slide number 10.
Starting from the Italian exhibition business, as anticipated, the Italian exhibition business was, let's say, affected by the less favorable calendar typical of the given year, which means that we didn't have, basically, in our calendar, the impact of the positive impact of HostMilano, the most important organized event by Fiera Milano, and we couldn't also leverage on the presence of MADE and the MIBA alliance, as well as we didn't leverage on the presence of HostMilano events, important HostMilano events like Tuttofood, EIMA Moto Plus. Despite this, the division remained resilient, supported by the strong performance in annual exhibition and key biennial events that did take place. Revenue declined by 10.3%, primarily due to the negative calendar effect. However, the segment benefited from the strong performance of Mostra Convegno Expocomfort, Transpotec, and IPACK-IMA, which helped mitigate the impact.
EBITDA declined by 25%, reflecting the expected revenue drop, but was partially offset by lower energy costs and reduced personnel expenses. While this year was impacted by the biennial cycle, the fundamentals remained solid, and we expect a strong rebound in 2025. Regarding then the foreign exhibition business, our foreign market, especially Brazil, delivered very remarkable results, reinforcing the success of our international expansion strategy. Revenue grew significantly by more than 100%, driven by the strong performance of the biennial exhibition FISP, which, on the contrary of the Italian exhibition division, let's say Brazil can leverage on a more favorable calendar in the even year. In 2024, we had FISP, a biennial exhibition, which grew by more than 20,000 sq m compared to last edition. EXPOTEC grew by 10% in occupied spaces, solidifying its position as a leading event in the security industry.
We had also the successful launch of a new exhibition, Freight Attraction, which was launched in cooperation with IFEMA Madrid. In South Africa, the Cape Town Art Fair saw a +6% increase in occupied space, further strengthening our footprint in the region. A very positive result from our foreign exhibition business. This was also the case for our congress business. The congress segment continued to deliver outstanding results. Revenue grew this year by almost EUR 14 million, which means a 29% almost increase, driven by a mix of recurring and international events. The key contributors to this growth were San Andreas Partners, Salesforce, AVS Summit, which continued to grow in attendance and revenues. We had also the positive impact of the new international congresses, such as IAC, International Thematic Congress, and with Europe and the EASL, the EUMOC Capability.
EBITDA in this segment grew by close to EUR 5 million, so EUR 4.7 million, which means that EBITDA grew by 35.3%, fueled by revenue expansion and cost efficiencies. The strong performance of our congress business confirms that Fiera Milano role as a premier international distinguishment for large-scale events. Now, looking at consolidated level, I think it would be useful to move to chart number 11 in order to better understand the calendar effect and the like-for-like growth of both the OST organized and service division.
Moving from a legal entity view to a business line perspective, we can see that despite we had this EUR 10.7 million reduction in revenues, if we consider a negative calendar impact of almost EUR 63 million due to the absence of the most important exhibition present in the whole year, basically, if we consider this EUR 63 million negative calendar impact, we close with a performance effect, so an increase compared to the last edition of the exhibition or the last result of the division, we close with a performance effect of plus EUR 52 million. Now, if we look into detail, we see that, for instance, the organized business line scored a minus EUR 39 million, but if we take out the calendar impact, this means that the business line grew by more than 25%.
If we look at the OST business line, OST event business line, here the calendar effect was very, let's say, neutral, and we scored a plus 9% in terms of like-for-like growth, which amounted to a positive EUR 5.6 million variance. When looking at the services, despite it looks like physical and digital services grew in absolute value, not in a significant way, they grew by EUR 1.1 million, the reality is that if we take out the calendar impact, we scored a plus 35% like-for-like growth. Again, another very significant increase compared to the last edition. The foreign business, as I was mentioning before, EUR 4.7 million, was fueled by the very impressive performance of FISP, the biennial exhibition. We had the increase of almost 30% of the congress business line, so we see here a close to EUR 13 million increase just in this division.
Finally, we have also the positive impact driven by the new launched division, entertainment division. This is just the result generated by the initial concerts that we hosted during the summer. As you know, in our strategic plan, we forecasted a continuous growth of this division in the coming year that will accelerate this growth starting from 2026, when we will leverage also on the new pavilion 1315. As usual, we can provide just to give you an idea of what was, let's say, causing that, what was impacting, what was creating this plus 25% increase on the organized event or plus 9% increase on the OST event. We can mention some of the most performing events.
Moving to chart 12, we can see that basically looking at the organized events, we had significant growth in terms of square meters from Cartoons, so Games Week and Cartoons Milano Fashion and Jewel that grew by 12%, Milano Plastic and More that grew by almost 70% compared to 2023, the BIT, the Borsa Italiana del Turismo that grew by 7% compared to last edition, and the biennial event, Next Mobility Exhibition, that grew by 10%. We can see that also the OST division scored positively in terms of increase compared to the last edition. You see that EIMA Moto reached almost 130,000 square meters occupied. This means that this event is one of the largest events that now we are hosting in our venue.
You see that also the Mostra Convegno Expocomfort, a biennial event, grew by 11% compared to the last edition that was hosted in 2022. A significantly very impressive and significant increase from Milano Unica that increased year on year by 26% in terms of square meters. For sure also Artigiani Fiera with an increase of 7%, and NIDO, the exhibition on the aisle, that increased by 21%. Now, I will move to the next chart to provide you with an in-depth overview of our economic and financial performance, presenting slides 14 and 15. In 2024, as you already seen, revenues reached EUR 273.2 million compared to EUR 283.8 million in 2023. This reflects the decrease of EUR 10.7 million. However, as I was mentioning before, this decline was entirely expected and driven by two opposing factors. A positive performance effect that accounts for plus EUR 52.2 million.
This basically corresponds to a like-for-like growth of 24%, demonstrating the strong organic momentum of our business. This growth was driven by, as I was mentioning before, a 13% increase in exhibition space, particularly in Mostra Convegno Expocomfort, San Andreas Mobile, NIDO, Quick and More, and BIT. A 35% increase in physical and digital service revenues, confirming a reliability to expand beyond traditional exhibition offering, and a 30% growth in the congress sector, reinforcing NIDO's position as a global destination for major events. On the opposite side, again, this positive performance effect of EUR 52.2 million accounted for the negative calendar effect of almost EUR 63 million. As expected, the absence of the key biennial and multi-year events, including OST, the group powered by GBUS, EIMA Moto, had a temporary impact on revenue.
This was partially offset by the strong performance of events that were hosted in 2024, like Mostra Convegno, Transpotec, TPN Chai, which helped to balance the calendar impact. EBITDA came in at EUR 83.6 million compared to the EUR 97.1 million in 2023, making a decrease of EUR 13.6 million. However, this was, as already mentioned, entirely driven by the biennial calendar effect and was also already the result of a very impressive performance effect. The calendar impact affected not only our exhibition business, but also our joint venture with Deutsche Messe due to the absence of PTC Asia and CEMAT. Additionally, Fiera Milano, for instance, was impacted by the absence of the biennial Tuttofood and plus multi-annual Cibus Tec. Despite these calendar-related challenges, EBITDA was partially offset by strong performance in other areas, as well as lower energy costs and personnel expenses.
On the financial management side, we saw a positive impact of plus EUR 1.4 million, mainly due to a decrease in interest expenses. This resulted from a lower average debt position across both short and medium to long-term materials. Net profit from continued operations stood at EUR 19.1 million, down EUR 9.8 million from EUR 29 million in 2023, and this was primarily due to the aforementioned calendar effect and revenue impact. The total net result for 2024 decreased by EUR 23.26 million compared to 2023. However, it was mentioned that the 2023 result included EUR 16.5 million related to the discontinued operations, specifically the capital gain from the Tout au Food contract. Moving now to the balance sheet and cash flow, it was mentioned that our net working capital had decreased from EUR 98.2 million at the end of 2022 and 2023 to EUR 85.9 million by the end of 2024.
This change of EUR 22.2 million is primarily due to increasing trade and other receivables. Specifically, we have seen a rise in unexpired receivables related to events that took place in the later part of 2024, alongside increasing balances for future events. However, this impact was partially offset by an increase in payments to suppliers. Moving to our net financial debt, we noticed a shift from a net cash availability of EUR 18.9 million at the end of 2023 to almost EUR 78 million at the end of 2024.
A key aspect to highlight is that the decrease of EUR 3.1 million is mainly linked to a cash rejuvenation coming from the year result, which then was offset by a change in the rent permanent in the rent payment terms, the distribution of the dividends that we did in 2024 by approximately EUR 10 million, and then the purchase of shares for our employees' share plan, approximately EUR 31.2 million. Now, looking at the guidance for 2025, as Francesco has already anticipated, 2025 is set to be a year of further growth for Fiera Milano, driven by a strong exhibition calendar and a favorable obvious seasonality effect, thanks to the major biennial events like OST, Sicurezza, and MAN.
This year will also benefit from an expanded event portfolio, including the new launch in NetZero in Italy, Transport, a new exhibition that will take place in Brazil, and OST Arabia that will take place in Saudi Arabia, along with the return of high-profile events such as GASTEC that will come back in Milan after the last edition that took place in 2022. We will also host the new launch exhibition Artigiani in Fiera Primavera. The congress sector, as well, is expected to remain stable compared to the very good performance of 2024, supported by the opportunities linked to the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics. Meanwhile, the development of services and entertainment offerings will continue with an extended outdoor event season from May to September.
In a nutshell, despite the macroeconomic uncertainties, the group confirms its strategy and its 2025 targets, aligned with the 2024-2027 strategic plan, reinforcing the rotations of its business model. By the end of 2025, we expect revenue confirmed in the range of EUR 320 million-EUR 340 million and EBITDA in the range of EUR 110 million-EUR 120 million. I will now leave the floor to Vincenzo for a brief note on SuperMobile. We can also note just a very quick note on SuperMobile. The final order, the main financial indicator showed a positive SuperMobile. Here, for example, our key premise showed a decrease of 40%, or for example, the increase in renewable sources taking from 38% to 66%, and also the incidence of women in non-dual position is increasing a lot from 46% to 49%.
As a conclusion, we would like to mark our importance increased in our EU business of roughly 7% compared to 2021. I believe we conclude this presentation, and we are available for your questions. Thank you.
Thank you. This is the closed 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 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. The first question is from Emanuele Gallazzi of Equita. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple of questions, actually three. The first one is on the Italian exhibition business.
If you can just comment on the performance so far of the events held in the first quarter and maybe some, let's say, early comment on the booking level for your events like OST. The second question is on the Winter Olympics game. When do you expect to have visibility on the potential servicing contract of the Winter Olympics? The third one is on the guidance. First of all, if I'm not wrong, in the business plan target for 2025 revenues in EBITDA, you included a small contribution from M&A that did not materialize basically so far. Is it correct that by confirming the guidance, you are assuming a slightly better organic performance for 2025? Still on the guidance, if you can just provide guidance or an indication on the net cash position by the end of 2025. Thank you.
Thank you, Emanuele, for your question.
Coming to your first point, in terms of current trade, in Q1, we see a positive performance from the annual events that took place in the first months. This is the case both for organized events and also events where we see, in terms of square meters and revenues, approximately around 5% increase compared to the last edition. Clearly, we have some events that are scoring better than what we expected, some others that are scoring a little bit in a lower way or with lower results. This is the case, for instance, of some events in the fashion industry that are scoring a little bit better, a little bit suffering, the impact of what is happening in the macroeconomic scenario and also in the sector itself. This impact is compensated by other sectors that are scoring better.
I would say that anyway, when projecting and forecasting our results during our plan, as you can remember, we are taking into account this potential slowdown in some industries. We are fully aligned in this moment with our projection for 2025. Second question was, if I remember well, on the Winter Olympics or. Important, yeah. Oh, no, sorry. I was probably related to the sales rate on our major events like OST. Correct. Correct. I would say that so far we are at 80% of our target, our target for 2025. This is consistent with what happened in the last edition. Again, we are fully in line with our 2025 target. Regarding Olympics, clearly, we were expecting no news to come earlier. We have been notified that basically we will not know if we won or not the number until the end of March.
Basically, end of March will be the period in which the SuperMilano-Cortina winners will be looking for the tender, or at least the tender will be participated. We have to wait. The second question, the additional question, was about net cash. In terms of net cash, we can anticipate basically a guidance of EUR 110 million. This is the range that in a very safe way we see in this moment for 2025 OST events, and without M&A, and without any kind of M&A impact. Further question was about the M&A and the impact of the M&A in our 2025 projection. In terms of EBITDA, we are right in our strategic plan. We included an impact on the EBITDA coming from a potential M&A deal.
In this moment, we are confirming our guidance without leveraging on this, which means that basically we see an increase of our performances compared to what we anticipated in our plan. This is consistent with the better results that we scored in 2024.
That is clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Simonetta Chiriotti of Mediobanca.
Thank you. Good afternoon. A couple of questions from my side. The first is on M&A. If you can give us an update on what is happening on this front, if there is still the possibility of some deals to be closed by year-end. Second question on CapEx. You have confirmed a CapEx plan of EUR 53 million over the period of the plan. In 2024, you spent EUR 5 million. Apparently, there should be a pickup in the coming years.
If you could give us a bit more color on how these resources will be spent. Finally, on what is happening in terms of macro and geopolitical turmoil, can you comment if you expect impact from what is happening? In particular, if these are strong divides, could be expected in a lower number, and in general, can you comment on what is happening on this front? Thank you.
Thank you, Simonetta. Regarding the CapEx, we anticipate a plan in which basically we plan 70% CapEx per year, operating CapEx, and a possible CapEx impact in terms of M&A of EUR 8 million. I would say that for the coming year, we can confirm the EUR 7 million CapEx per year. We will for sure go to innovation and innovation application and software, which is something that we do on a regular basis.
We include the two levels of CapEx for stem fitting compounds. The CapEx were a little bit lower because we did not spend as much as we planned in terms of software, basically. This does not mean that we will probably recover what we did not spend this year. I confirm for the next year, EUR 7 million per year average spending. This can be considered a reasonable assumption for the moment. In terms of impact on the geopolitical situation in our business, I mean, as I was anticipating, there are some sectors which probably will suffer a little bit more due to the uncertainty and instability or due to the increase in prices due to the strategies announced by Trump and the transfers made to us taken by Europe. Anyway, I mean, we see this business quite resilient. Anyway, we have a very diversified business.
We do not leverage only on some areas like the U.S. in terms of exhibitors and visitors. We can leverage on other regions that will probably be less affected by this kind of impact. At the same time, normally, middle-small companies like our exhibitors and exhibitors of our main exhibitions will never shut down investment to participate in trade exhibitions because the participation to trade exhibitions is the way they communicate and do deals and collect orders in a very efficient way compared to other communication or marketing investments. We remain quite positive in this moment, also because we have seen also in the previous year this kind of dynamics. To be honest, we did not suffer in a very important way. I do not know if you have additional questions, Simonetta, or
the next question is from Andrea Bonfà , Banca Akros.
Hello. Good evening to everybody. I mean, some of my questions have already been answered, but I got a couple of ones remaining. First of all, if it's possible, I'm looking at your slide in page eight. If it's possible to have an idea of the seasonality of the EBITDA for this year. I can see that, I mean, of course, July and August are very big months, but you got Gastex in September, OST in October. An idea of how the EBITDA will evolve throughout the quarter if it's possible. The second one is, I mean, it's quite impressive your like-for-like sales performance, plus 24%. Is it possible to have the same calculation at the EBITDA level? Or in your end, if it's possible, you can share with us. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your question.
In terms of 2025 expected seasonality, I could anticipate probably that we will probably benefit from, I would probably say, EUR 30 million impact just on the organized events. This is what I can anticipate due to the presence of OST, MADE, and other biennial events. We cannot provide you further calculation at the EBITDA level in this moment. The percentage increase that you were asking.
Okay. Thank you very much.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question is a follow-up from Simonetta Chiriotti of Mediobanca. Ms. Chiriotti, your audio is open.
Hello. Yeah. Hi. Yes, a couple of additional questions. The first is on M&A. If we can expect deals in the year, if the market is liquid, if there are potential targets for you.
The second question on the Congress business that was so strong this year. What can we expect for 2025? Thank you.
Hello. Thank you. I'm sorry, Simonetta, I forgot to reply to your question about the M&A. We are still working on M&A. We anticipated this during the previous quarter, and it's still the case. Our target is to close at least one M&A deal during 2025, but we have a clear commitment to go further than the plan. There are some targets on which we are working now, but we are still scouting for additional opportunities. The commitment is to clearly allocate part of our cash flow and net cash availability for this kind of development and growth.
Regarding Congresses, we expect basically to maintain the same performances of 2024, but we have to consider that anyway, we will progressively release our Allianz MICO pavilions to the Olympic Foundation because, as you already know, we closed the venue agreement to OST basically in our Allianz MICO premises with the casting and MICO Center. This means that we cannot achieve with the solely business Congress what we achieved last year, but we will probably achieve the same kind of EBITDA or result leveraging on the Congress business and on the revenues and margin coming from the venue agreement with the Olympic Committee. The expectation is to stay at the same profitability level, let's say.
Thank you.
Which is an outstanding result because I would just remember that we reached in 2024 a performance that we were probably projecting and forecasting for 2027.
Confirming in 2025 what we achieved in 2024, it's already, let's say, a better result compared to what we were forecasting in our plan.
For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one. Mr. Cecere, gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Thank you, everybody, for joining the conference call. Should you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at investor relations email. Thank you.
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