Good evening, everybody, and thank you for joining our call today on Geox first half 2024 results. This is Luca Amadini speaking. Let me introduce you to today's call speakers, the Geox Group CEO, Mr. Enrico Mistron, and the CFO, Mr. Andrea Maldi. Mr. Mistron will start by providing you a brief overview of our first half performance, and then Andrea will delve deeper into financial results. Following that, Enrico and Andrea will be happy to take your questions. I need to remind you that this presentation may contain certain statements that are neither reported financial results nor other historical information. Any forward-looking statements are based on the group's current expectations and projections about the future events.
By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to risk, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause results to differ even materially from those expressed in or implied in these statements, many of which are beyond the ability of the group to control or estimate. Let me now hand over to our CEO, Mr. Enrico Mistron.
Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us in this first half 2024 results. Just a few comments from my side. The first half of 2024, consistent with what we have seen in the first month of the year, has proven extremely challenging due to the persistence of complex market conditions. Sales for the first six months of 2024 show a contraction of 9.4% compared to the first half of the previous year. These results have been impacted primarily by the wholesale Spring-Summer 2024 sale campaign that had been sold last year and invoiced this year, partially offset by, I would say, three elements that are good news, in my opinion. Number one, a good level of reorders in line with the previous years. That means that the sell-through product in our wholesale stores has been good, and customers reordered at the same level last year as the reorders.
It's a positive thing. Number two, the direct digital e-commerce channel in the second quarter has been positive. Number three, there's a slight improvement in the second quarter of the direct brick-and-mortar channels, our direct operating stores. Despite three months of the second quarter that overall have been very challenging for any operators in these sectors. Additionally, sales were also impacted by the still negative perimeter factor, primarily related to the closure of certain direct operating stores and franchise stores that were not profitable. No worries about that. This is a process that started a few years ago, and we have to say that the actual footprint is the right one. And most of them, I would say 99% of them, are nowadays profitable. And we are ready for thinking about the future, how to and where to grow the network of our direct operating stores.
During the first month of the six months of the year, we implemented also specific actions aiming to reduce the cost base and adapt it to a new context, a new level of revenues. These actions help us to maintain certain levels of profitability that are quite evident, especially in the second quarters of this year. Thanks to the adoption of this measure, which also is crucial in perspective, the overall performance of the period, in fact, at the EBIT level was contained and amounted to EUR 5.5 million. Last but not least, as previously announced in the last conference call, all the management is working on the preparation of the new strategic plan for the 2025-2027 period. That will be presented to you and to the financial community, for sure, by the end of this year, probably during the month of October. The plan is mostly finished.
We have to fine-tune certain numbers and certain actions. Conceptually, it's a plan of 2 + 3 years. The first 2 years are the 2 years in which we have to be resilient and rebuild the machine and be ready for a new 3 years of growth, but more than growth of profitability and cash. So we are excited to come back to you during the months of October and November. Let's give the time to finalize it, but we will come to you. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Thank you, Enrico. Good afternoon, everybody. Andrea Maldi speaking on behalf of the group with your CFO. And, picking up the words of our CEO, I would like to give you a deeper dive into the financials. I suggest to run through the presentation that we have shared. We can start from page 7, where we have an outlook of the sales. The breakdown of the sales, as you know, is saying that we met our target in our results in the first six months of 2024 at EUR 320 million, and this EUR 320 million is down EUR 33 million compared to last year. There is clearly an important effect coming from the perimeter, which is in the range of EUR 11 million.
And this is due, as we already seen, discussed today, a still reduction in fine-tuning on the number of the profitable shops that are keen to pursue the strategy in the future years. And to an FX effect, given we've been penalized this year in the first 6 months of the exchange of the ruble versus euro compared to last year. So this is impacting for almost EUR 5.3 million.
If we sterilize these two, let's say, aside and one-off effect, and we discuss about performance, clearly, as we already mentioned, we have the wholesale business, which is down EUR 27 million, and we are instead happy about the like-for-like performance of both of the direct-to-consumer channel, physical with the brick-and-mortar at EUR 3.7 million up than last year, and digital, which is mainly driven by the marketplace together with the DOS digital site, our website, which is driving together EUR 7.1 million of increase compared to the same period of 2023. If we move for a while in page 8, this is a quick snapshot of our distribution network. As we can see, when we talk about the perimeter effect, we need to give support on that kind of statement. We are in the range in the first half of 2024 of 630 operating shops.
We've decreased compared to December last year of 2023 of about 665. And if you compare the same rationalization perimeter in June 2023, we're talking about 678 doors or shops, which means a significant decrease when we look at the first six months. If we look more deeply into page nine and we look at the split of the sales by channel, as we already discussed, we have the wholesale business. This is down 16% year-on-year. And it's worth to say that most of these decreases are coming from the first quarter, while the second quarter has been pretty stable and pretty aligned to the results of the same period of the last year, which means that the wholesale is basically aligned to the backlog of the orders of the Spring-Summer 2024 that has been recorded in the previous year during the sales campaign period.
The franchise is still suffering and is mainly affected by the negative perimeter, and while together also with the like-for-like in the performance, which is in the range of -3.3%. If you look at it, we already discussed those digital and those brick-and-mortar. Those brick-and-mortar register sales at the level of EUR 110 million, EUR 7 million lower than the same period of the six months of 2023, while those digital, which include our website plus marketplace, set the level at EUR 31 million, registering a growth of 29.9% compared to the same period, which is clearly good news in terms of our direct-to-consumer channel.
I think that it's quite interesting on page 11, just worth to note that basically, if we look at the product split, the product range, most of the drop is coming from the footwear, where we moved from EUR 325 million to EUR 292 million, while the apparel is pretty stable compared to the same period, EUR 29 million flat, which is clearly an indication of where the drop is coming from during the first six months of the year. An overview of the financial details on page 13, I think nothing new compared to what we already discussed, just the profit side with EUR 164 million. We are registering an increase of 0.2 basis points, which is clearly good for the direction that we have made as a statement at the year-end of profit growth.
Overall, the cost went down, basically in the range of EUR 9 million, 169 compared to 176 net of some extraordinary costs that we have registered in the range of EUR 2 million into the first six months of 2024. Clearly, the percentage we have been able to decrease the cost, but lower than proportionally compared to the drop of the sales in 2024. The EBIT is negative for EUR 5.5 million compared to the positive as a result, clearly, of the EUR 33 million decrease in sales. At the same time, as we already commented, at the same time, sorry, we had in the financial expenses a beneficial effect in 2024 driven by the opposite of the exchange rate of the ruble in terms of the balance evaluation of payment and cash collection. The impact is about EUR 6 million, which is clearly positively impacting our P&L.
I think that if we look at page 15, quite a nice shot on the net financial position, we have a negative financial position of about EUR 112 million with a positive effect on the fair value of the derivatives, which is in the range of EUR 3.7 million positive. At the same time, as we already mentioned, it's worth to note that the net debt as of June 2024 amounts to EUR 112 million, increasing by EUR 23 million compared to December 2023. I think that from my side, this is it. As we just want to state, when we look at our forecast at year-end, we are already confirming what we already stated in the previous call.
Basically, we are thinking to have a margin increase in the range of the 50 basis points, and we are still working around a sales forecast in the target of the mid-single digit decrease compared to 2023. Thank you, and I open to guest questions.
Excuse me, this is the conference call operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touch-tone telephone. To remove your question, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Once again, that's star and one for questions. The first question is from Oriana Cardani from Intesa Sanpaolo. Please go ahead.
Yes, good evening. Thank you for taking my two questions. The first one is on the expected evolution of the operating cost for this year. Is there any room for savings in the second part of this year? And the second question is on the wholesale channel for next year. Can you provide us the trend that you see considering the orders that you are collecting? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. I tried to give you my answer. We are really keen and focused on cost reduction in the second part of the year, as we already did in the range of EUR 9 million in the first semester. However, we are forecasting a second part of the year pretty flat in terms of cost, but with a different mix because we are reducing our structural cost. At the same time, we have an increase of operational cost, which is coming from the two business lines, which are deeply strongly growing, mainly our digital channel. When I think to the marketplace and when I think to our website, this kind of profitable business, which are replacing a portion of our wholesale traditional business, are clearly giving us a better margin, but at the same time, are carrying together an increase of operational cost.
So despite you can see a flat position in the second part of the year, in reality, there is a strong action of cost reduction in what is structural and G&A, and we are trying to put boost on the costs, which are really keen and serve to the top line. When we look at your second question, which I think that is connected to the Spring-Summer 2025 campaign, I hand over for a while to Enrico Mistron, our CEO, which we'd like to get this portion of these questions.
Yeah. The Spring-Summer 2025 campaign, overall, I would say that is in line with 2024. We did start four weeks later than last year. So overall, year-to-date, the numbers are slightly lower than previous year, but comparable sales, like-for-like, are positive. The good things that we have seen is that in the normal accounts, we are like-for-like growing +6%. That is good. That means that the sales density, so the numbers of product within our client is growing, is increasing. That is one of the goals and the target for the next year. We are just in the middle of the same campaign. We are positive for the second half of the sales campaign. Definitely, we can be more precise during the next conference call. Crossing fingers, we'll be happy to confirm volumes in line with last year, consistent volume in line with last year.
Understood. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
The next question is from Francesco Brilli of Intermonte. Please go ahead.
Yes, good evening. Thanks for taking my couple of questions. The first one is on the digital channel and the online sales. I was wondering if you can provide with some additional color on the drivers of the positive performance of this channel and which kind of agreements you have in place currently and what you are expecting for the rest of the year. And if you can share with us if there's something in the range, so see if the profitability of this channel is in line with the group average or above or below. And the second one is just if you can share the building blocks or the drivers of this increase by 50 basis points in operating margin for the next year, which means positive trends in the second part of the year.
Thank you for the question. Digital channel is a very important asset in our portfolio, and it's a very important channel nowadays in our future. We did a lot of things during the last two months. Overall, it's performing well. Like-for-like is growing. Our geox.com is growing. And our growth is also like-for-like at the marketplaces where we operated, and this is a good thing. Number two, we are growing in terms of numbers of marketplaces and operators. And so there's a positive effect in our, I would say, perimeter, okay, because we are growing the numbers of clients and platforms with whom we are working. Number three, very important, we are doing also a cleaning in the sense that digital, there's no countries around the digital. Digital is everywhere. It's a window of Geox, and everybody sees where we are, what we do.
And so I thought that we thought that it was important to be clean in terms of pricing, discounts, contents, product we show, product we sell, and so on. So on one side, we are growing like-for-like. We are growing in terms of numbers of operators with whom we work. On the other side, we are cleaning the markets in order to keep the brands and the value of the brands stronger and stronger for the future. That's what we are doing.
Thank you.
I'll try to answer to your second question, Andrea speaking. I think that we are pretty confident in delivering a solid margin in 2024 with an increase in the range of what we already stated to the market. This is clearly mainly driven by two main elements. The most important one is the fact that it is based on the forecast of sales that we have on the direct-to-consumers sales. As you can see, and as we have been discussing so far, we are having the so-called DOS and digital marketplace and web increasing. Overall, the weight of the direct-to-consumer channel is supposed to move in the range from 40%-43.2% at the year-end, which is clearly an important upside from our point of view.
At the same time, we are getting some benefit of a better actual cost in the fall, winter compared to the standard and budget cost that we are forecasting at the very beginning. So therefore, we believe that the margin forecast that we are committing is achievable at the year-end. These are the main drivers.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Welcome.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question is a follow-up of Francesco Brilli. Please go ahead.
Yes, I forgot a question. Just following up. Can you provide us with a range or some ideas on the Net Financial Position that you are expecting for full year 2024, the year-end?
Yes. I think that our expectation is to be pretty stable in the range of a fork that can be from EUR 105 million-EUR 110 million, which is, I'm talking about the net financial position, clearly mainly the bank one. We do not expect a significant change given the course of the value of the currency, dollars versus euros. So we do not expect to have any significant impact from the fair value of the derivatives, but it's clearly a question mark. If the market remains stable as we are, we do expect to have a slightly positive effect like we had in this semester. So if we talk about the bank net debt, I'm expected to be in the range of EUR 105 million-EUR 110 million.
Okay. Thanks.
Welcome.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Mr. Amadini, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Okay. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining the call. See you next quarter.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephone.