Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Esprinet Group FY 25 results presentation. I'm Giulia Perfetti, Investor Relations and Sustainability Manager of Esprinet. Here with me is Alessandro Cattani, CEO of the group, who today, together with Giovanni Testa.
Lico.
Our Chief Operating Officer will comment on the results. Today's call is being recorded, and the podcast will be posted on the Esprinet website in our investor section together with the presentation. Your lines have been placed on mute, but after the speaker remarks, there will be a Q&A session. Please note again that this presentation contains forward-looking statements, so I would like to draw your attention to the regulatory note on page two regarding the information contained within this document. I will now pass the call over to Alessandro to begin presenting and commenting with you on the FY 25 results. Alessandro, over to you.
Thank you, and welcome everybody. It's quite an important moment for me and to a certain extent for the company and definitely for Giovanni Testa as well. For me, as you know, it's the last investor call as I will be stepping down from my position effective April 2023. Giulia, if you could please move to the slides over to the first slide. We will dig into, let's say, the reasons of this change, and we will have Giovanni introduce himself more in a couple of slides.
Let me first give you a highlight on the industry insight what happened in 2025 as well as what we did in 2025. As you well know, the global economy despite an initial scenario which had a lot of tensions performed better than expected last year. There's been quite a lot of investments, even too much, I would say, in the artificial intelligence segment, and we'll come to this in a moment. And this was reflected in a very robust ICT spending in the EMEA region.
Again, the ICT spending exceeded the GDP and in the regions, in the countries where we operate, Southern Europe, now we have an exposure also to Netherlands and to Ireland. But the bulk of our business is performed in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. We have witnessed an ICT spending in these regions with a growth of 6%. This has confirmed once more the important role of technology within the changes in the overall performance of the economy as a whole.
The huge investments in artificial intelligence, this activity, coupled with the refresh of the devices, which happened last year and is still going on in this moment, and is the result to a large extent of the huge investments made during the COVID period, which happened five years before. This, coupled with the growing use of cloud on one side and the growing threats linked to cyber attacks, and therefore, a huge investment in cybersecurity gave and are giving a really healthy outlook to our sector. We're coupling this with the energy transition, which probably the latest geopolitical events in the Gulf will, we expect, accelerate furthermore the transition itself.
Hence, we're really excited about our move through Zeliatech into this energy business. The overall ICT market grew 6%. We had the distribution channel where we operate performing again in a very good shape. Much stronger the performance in Spain and Portugal than the one in Italy, but Giovanni will dig into the numbers in a second. What's important is that the go-to-market represented by distributors and Esprinet is one of them grew once more, and it's now the weight of this go-to-market is now around 48%, so healthy performance in this sense. Now, moving to the next slide, we're going into the highlights of what we did last year.
First, the sales have been pretty solid. We had a 5% year-over-year gross sales growth up to EUR 4.6 billion. I recall that the numbers that we report are net of the IFRS 15 principal-agent accounting principle. There's more than EUR 300 million of gross sales that are not reported as sales and just as gross profit. Gross sales were up by 5%, and we had an extremely brilliant performance in the Iberian Peninsula, and Italy was substantially flat in line with the performance of the market.
We have been focused, as you well know, in the higher added value markets of V-Valley, so digital solutions on one side and services, and Zeliatech, so green transition, and we have outperformed the market at a large extent. Pretty happy that our focus on these areas has delivered as expected, and frankly speaking, a little bit more than what we expected. We had a very positive performance on PCs as well. The remaining products, mostly consumer electronics, as well as printers and accessories, recorded once more some decline, most of it linked to our decisions to progressively shed those kind of businesses that we deem as not profitable enough or not providing return on capital employed good enough for us.
In terms of profitability, we had a range of Adjusted EBITDA, and we delivered on the upper range of our guidance. We had a good Q4 but slightly less than expected, mostly linked to a less than expected performance in additional rebates in the Zeliatech business, but we'll dig into it in a moment. Gross profit margin is now solidly above 5.5%, and despite a very challenging start of the year in terms of operating costs, we then during the year had a very controlled performance. You will see in a moment, during the quarter, G&A were up just 1% compared to previous year. Really solid performance in this.
Cash conversion cycle closed at 26 days. We're still short of the, let's say, ambition of running at 20-21 days, which means for us being cash neutral. Net financial position, including EUR 16.4 million- EUR 3.8 million, way positive if we look at the bank position. Return on capital employed was down at 6.1%, negatively affected by the EBIT performance, which was affected by the fact that we have a higher weight now of depreciation linked to the investments we made in Italy a couple of years ago on a new warehouse.
Luckily, we are working hard on reaping the results of having worked on improvement in the levels of working capital, and therefore, we are expecting to be able to close one smaller warehouse during the course of this year in Italy, hence bringing an improvement in this area as well. We had a higher than expected tax rate due to a number of phenomena, and one, namely, a write-off of deferred tax assets on our Portuguese business, not lost, simply from a cautious standpoint, we decided to write off deferred tax assets. As long as we're seeing a very nice turnaround in our Portuguese business, we expect to recover part of them in the future years.
That impacted our net result because of the tax rate, while the pre-tax numbers were significantly growing. We have proposed once more a very healthy dividend of roughly EUR 0.35 per share, which brings the total amount paid since going public to more than EUR 220 million out of north of EUR 520 million of net profit generated in this 25 years being listed. Pretty solid performance here. In terms of our value strategy, well, we kept executing on our three strategies. V-Valley, our key player in digital transformation, cloud, cybersecurity, and we outgrew the market, and we consolidated our presence in different segments.
The green transition with Zeliatech, phenomenal growth, and we are experiencing even higher growth in this moment. We're really positive about the future outlook of this business. We have Vamat in Benelux, which we acquired a very long process. We consolidated it in the last quarter of last year. We expect a lot of potential contribution out of Vamat. Giovanni might dig a little bit more into this. Lastly, in Esprinet we had positive results, especially driven by the PC replacement cycle, and we kept experiencing a good demand from businesses and consumers. Okay. Giulia, if we move to the following slide, I would hand over to Giovanni.
Giovanni Testa, we will have more on this. Giovanni Testa has been serving in the company since 2001, when he joined the company. Since 2016, has been in the management team of the group, and since 2020, has worked as Chief Operating Officer. We have shared the strategy planning and the execution, and so more and more we are in a position to have the man really in the driving seat of day-to-day operations today with us as he did in November to explain us what happened last year, and then we will discuss again on the outlook for the future. Giovanni Testa, over to you.
Thank you, Alessandro, and good morning to everybody. Here we show you the group performance in Q4 and in the full- year 2025 from the point of view of the country or the product category and the cluster of customers. As you can see, for the full- year results, for Italy, we are flat for the growth of the sales and also in line with the market, because the market show a performance of zero growth.
In Spain, in Q4 and also in full- year 2025, we grow a lot, with more than 10% in the full- year and more 12% in line with the global market, as Alessandro Cattani said a few minutes ago. The Iberian Peninsula had a very good performance in 2025.
In Portugal, we are growing a lot more than the market, both in Q4 and also the full- year, where the turnover is increasing a lot. Also the turnaround that we started in 2024, also with the changes of some management with the appointment of a new country manager, is giving us a very good result, and we are doubling the growth of the market in Q4 and for the growth of the full- year 2024. If we see the product categories, what Alessandro explained again a few minutes ago is well represented in these slides.
Our strategy to have the maximum focus on solution services and the green tech spaces is giving the right success in what was expected in our mind, and that you can see also in the figures. The devices are losing sales in this moment as related more or less everything to consumer products, TV overall, over the other product categories.
Screens, we see a very good performance for that product category, fully aligned with the growth of the market, 6% in Q4, 5%, full- year, and is connected to the change of the release of Windows from Windows 10 to Windows 11, and is a good effect that we're seeing also in the first month of 2026. I would like to underline more that in solution services we show you a growth of 12% in Q4.
For the green tech 43% that are combined more than the growth of the market that was 13% for the Q4, and also for the full- year we can say that the big results, because for our point of view is a big result of the solution services in the green tech show you a performance over the market. We are overperformed in the market. About customers, you probably know perfectly that overall in Italy, the retailers market is not so wonderful. The market in Q4 was flat, and in the full- year was 4% growth.
We are in the full- year flat. As Alex said, also because we decided not to compete in some business that under our point of view are destroying value and we decided not to follow the turnover, but to follow the EBIT and the control of the working capital. We prefer to sacrifice some turnover. On the contrary, for the IT reseller for Q4 we have a growth of 8%, more or less the same, 7% for the full- year, aligned to the market growth that was 8%.
In the next slide, we see the revenues and the EBIT at absolute value and the EBIT in percentage of Q4 and of the full- year 2025. What we can underline in this slide, the very good performance, as we said, the solution services, the EBIT margin of the Esprinet total screen plus devices grew in EUR 3.5 million of 21%. The EBIT margin percentage passed from 1.65% to 1.9%, is mainly related to the performance of the screen. About solution and services, the growth of the EBIT in Q4 is in percentage. Sorry.
In absolute value, we are decreasing, as we said before, is connected to an extra contribution that we before is in our hope will be the same in the future because it's connected with the M&A deal that we did in October 2024-2025. We did an M&A of Vamat, the acquisition of Vamat that was in the Zeliatech space, the company that is working in Benelux and Ireland. Vamat has specific skills that we want to transfer to the Zeliatech space in Italy.
These specific skills can guarantee from our main vendors overall our main vendor that is Huawei FusionSolar a stable extra contribution that in 2025 was not. One of our target of the one of our reason main reason of the deal the M&A deal is that. About the full- year 2025 versus the full- year 2024 we see in the total of growth of 4% of the sales EUR 150 million with a stable EBITDA margin around EUR 69 million 69.7 against 67.5.
We are pleased to underline that it is fully aligned with the guidance that we announced in May 2025, we confirmed in September, in November 2025. We were consistent with what we said.
If only we had this extra contribution.
Only.
We would have.
Yes. We also without extra contribution. On the contrary, we could have an extra performance also about EBITDA. In the next slide, we show the Q4 and the full- year 2025 profit and loss summary. A lot is already said in comments to the slide before. If we see the Q4, the growth of the sales was 3%, the gross profit percentage was flat in absolute value.
You will see a growth of the SG&A of only 1% as against the, a gain, if you remind the performance of Q1, in which we had a rise of EUR 1 million of cost with a percentage very high after that, also because was inserted some cost related to M&A acquisition of Vamat. After that, our philosophy, our strategy of cost under control will apply very well more at the end of quarter four. Before was a decrease of SG&A was only 1%. That is less than the inflation rate.
About EBITDA, as we said, is flat in the full- year and in the Q4, the decrease is another time connected to the extra contribution of Zeliatech that we said before. About the net financial expenses in the full- year, you see a flat result, EUR 10.8 million of other financial expenses against, again, versus EUR 10.7 million of 2024. The result of Q4 is related to a higher average working capital that we see next slide that the financial expenses little increase from EUR 2.6 million- EUR 2.7 million.
About the net income, Alex already displayed that the difference is related to the write-off of the deferred taxes in Portugal, and I think we cannot add more of what Alex said. About the balance sheet summary of 2025. Here we wanted to underline two main effects. Despite the increase of the sales of 4%, our operating net working capital is flat versus the year-end 2024. You can see that the inventory, trade receivable and trade payable are showing us exactly a flat net operating capital of EUR 4 million. Moreover, the total of the amount is a very low number.
Under the point of view of the net financial debt, we increase the financial debt from 36 to 44, around 44. EUR 8 million more, despite the results of 2024 year-end. I think that it's slightly higher than year closing and is fully under control in this moment. Here we show you the four-quarter average of the working capital. As we see, we are continuing decreasing in 2025, 29, 28, 26 days. The decrease from September to December is due to a decrease of one day of the inventory.
Nothing changed about the DSO, and one day of the purchase, the part related to the payment of the vendors. The year-end result is fully flat at the end of 2025 to compare the end of 2024. Four days of working capital, cash cycle. Due to everything that we said before, the ROCE, the return on capital employed evolution, is before the IFRS 16, 66.1% and post IFRS 16, 4.9%, slightly reducing from the quarter before. Please, Giulia, the stage for you.
Okay. Thank you, Giovanni, and good morning again to the audience. It's a pleasure for me to be here with you the 2025 results of our sustainability path. Actually, it's a journey that for sure requires determination and consistency. In the challenge of climate change, last year, CDP again awarded us a B rating for both climate change and water security. This recognition confirms, let me say, the quality of our environmental policies and the solidity of. We reduced our scope 1 and 2 emissions, moving closer to the 2027 target of a 12.6% reduction compared to the baseline.
For Scope 3 emission, we continue to carefully monitor our suppliers actively involved in the SBTi goals, because we are convinced that the fight against climate change requires a shared responsibility along the entire value chain. 2025, as mentioned earlier by Giovanni and Alessandro, was also a year of strong growth for Zeliatech, and with the acquisition of Vamat, our group consolidated the role as enabler of the green transition. At the same time, we took another concrete step toward an increasingly sustainable economy model by launching a certified service for collection and disposal of technology and office waste, designed to support our supplier and our customer in the responsible management of product end of life.
For us, as you know, sustainability also means, and above all means people. In December last year, we obtained a national certification for gender equality according to the UNI/PdR 125. That is a milestone that demonstrates our daily commitment to building a fair, inclusive and respectful work environment. We also renewed our Great Place to Work certification in all the countries where we operate. This award confirm once again our desire to continue improving by listening to all of us colleague. We also worked to make the entire value chain more sustainable, defining a policy for a sustainable value chain management that fixes principle requirements and processes for assessing ESG issues for our strategic partners.
On the governance side, 2025 marked another crucial step, that is the publication of our first fully CSRD-compliant report that pushed us further towards greater transparency and to integrate even more sustainability into our business model. In the second year of reporting, we have intensified the dialogue with external stakeholders, and we have set our financial materiality in line with the enterprise risk management system. A further source of pride, let me say, is our positioning among the top five small caps in LEAD index, which measures the governance excellence of companies listed on the Italian stock exchange, confirming the solidity and the credibility of our approach.
With these results, our group shows not only that is consistently advancing its sustainability journey, but also that we intend to continue improving with responsibility and ambition. That's all on my side. Now I'll turn the call over to Alessandro for the final remarks.
Okay. Thank you. What to expect in terms of technology and the landscape, what comments on the geopolitical scenario, let's say that is for everybody probably difficult to understand what the impacts on the economy as a whole will stem out of this major conflict in the Middle East. What we could say is that we are not directly affected. Our industry is not directly affected by the conflict, meaning that the supply chain is not passing by the Strait of Hormuz. It's not challenged. We might suffer indirectly or profit indirectly if and when, as we hope, the crisis will be over of the overall performance of the economy clearly.
If the GDP or the interest rates will change for the worse, at least short term, that might change the attitude of household and companies, and that might have some impact. We are not experiencing it so far, but still it's what we can say so far of the geopolitical scenario impact. What we see on the other side is that the structural fundamentals of the company and of the industry are very solid. There's a lot of momentum in innovation and modernization, and companies more and more are in need strong need of improve and strengthen their competitiveness, their resilience, and they do it through a lot of digitalization. That is driving a major growth in AI investments.
This is a big opportunity, albeit sort of indirect opportunity for us, meaning that we're not directly providing products to the large hyperscalers, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and the others. On the other side, companies that are implementing AI projects are accelerating their digitalization processes and journey. Indirectly, they will require more and more products. We're seeing it, we're witnessing it through our extremely brilliant performance in the V-Valley, so the digital solution space. Now if you look at the role of distribution and channel opportunities, there's been a further consolidation during 2025. On the other side, the vendors, we mentioned it before, distribution grew up to 48% of the overall route to market of vendors.
Distributors are more and more central in vendors go-to-market strategies. We are extremely well-positioned to turn what is on a worldwide basis shortages linked mostly to the enormous investments of the hyperscalers in GenAI data center. We are turning it in an opportunity for us. This consumption is driving product prices up, especially on PCs, smartphones and servers. Across the board, I would say, but especially on PCs, smartphones and other devices, and especially servers, as I said, because of the higher RAM prices. For us is an opportunity because we see our inventory getting more and more valuable day after day. We are now having, on a routine basis, price increases every couple of weeks.
There are vendors that are even pushing for once-a-week increase. After decades living in a deflationary industry, we're now profiting from an inflationary industry. That is something unexpected, and it's good for Giovanni and the rest of the team. It could turn into a nice tailwind. As long as IT partners and users need to manage cost volatility, relying on the capabilities proven on ground in decades of distributors and Esprinet, more specifically, it's particularly important. There are opportunities here. Last but not least, consider that most of our variable costs are linked to quantities moved, not the price of the objects moved.
The fact that PCs and smartphones are having unit prices that keep on growing turns into an opportunity for us because percentage-wise, the costs are on a higher amount of revenues. Another opportunity. Overall, the analysts expect mid-single digit growth for the distribution market in Europe in 2026, and we're seeing it in the first couple of months. The market is performing pretty well.
Also we are happy of our performance in the last two month.
Yes, exactly. The market in Italy was flattish, pretty much as last year. The Spanish and Portuguese market was running double digit, and we are happy.
We are happy.
We are happy in what we are doing. With this, I close my presentation, and then I hand over for what to come to Giovanni. Some comments on the succession process. First and foremost, Giovanni, I already said it before, Mr. Testa joined our group back in 2001, in the back office department. Control-
Group controlling.
Group controlling. In 2016 meanwhile took a bold challenge that I put on his desk and said, "Why don't you turn a salesperson, in a sense, a commercial manager?" He took responsibility, joined the management team, the leadership team, and as business operation manager, ran five commercial departments. He showed an expertise in sales and marketing, which you normally don't see in people that come from back office. The Chief Operating Officer back in July 2020, and together we have shaped and driven this last five years of strategy and implementation. Giovanni is a serious and committed person, and he has the energy. Now I come to my position.
I will step down effective April 23 during the AGM, which will appoint Giovanni as a board member and in the subsequent board meeting, he will be given the powers as a CEO. I will step down from all my roles in the company effective April 30, and I will stay as a shareholder of Axopa. Now, why am I leaving? Well, of course, it's always a little bit difficult to say this. This is a sort of my third baby, Esprinet, but I'm turning 63, and I'm turning down for personal reasons.
You need a special degree of energy to do this business, and for a number of reasons, I realized that I no longer had the right energy to do it. Unfortunate as it is, I had to take this decision. I decided to step down earlier than expected. I would have probably continued for some time. We have managed to smooth the transition as much as possible, and we have a very solid management team. There's a lot of continuity as you see in the people and that are running the business, and in the strategy itself. Giovanni Testa will comment in a second his expectations from now on.
As a shareholder, I joined our chairman, Maurizio Rota, contributing our shares back in 2022 Axopa investment vehicle. We then bought further shares, and we have now close to 7 million shares, so around 14%, slightly more than 14%. I also have less than 100,000 shares on my personal account out of past stock option plans. I speak in the name of Maurizio as well. We are strong believers in the industry, especially now we see tons of opportunities and in the company itself. If only, as always, life sometimes takes you to other journeys.
We believe in it in the company, in the industry, and so we are together. The company is a single entity, and we invested always with unity, which is the rule of bylaws of Axopa. Count also on a stable shareholdership from Axopa in the foreseeable future. That's it basically. Let me now turn the stage for the future to Giovanni, who will be your host in the future. Let me thank everybody before the Q&A session for the trust and support you gave us in the time.
I'm proud of leaving a strong company with a sound balance sheet, an excellent management team, incredibly good prospects. I hope as a shareholder to keep on reaping the rewards of what we have built in time, and I'm pretty sure Giovanni and the rest of the management team will keep on nurturing in the future. Thank you, everybody. Giovanni, up to you for the looking forward.
Yes. Few words before to speak about the 2026, because it's also a special moment for me, and I would like to say thanks to Alex for all he was able to transfer to me in 25 years of working together. It was a pleasure to work with him, and I hope to be a good guy for Alex also in the next years. As Alex said, the group strategy will not change in this moment.
We are since 2024, the moment in which we divided the group in three brands and three different go-to-market, Esprinet, V-Valley, and Zeliatech, the result that we have reached in 2024 and 2025 demonstrate a good strategy, a good vision that we had, and we wanted to continue to back to strategy. For sure, we'll continue to invest and to add all the energies and also the resources that we had in the V-Valley and Zeliatech space because we think that solution services and green technology are the right markets in which we have to move and we have to grow. For sure we will try not to lose every opportunities that investment space the market will offer us.
We want to continue to invest in people, in culture, and to grow with an organic growth, but also through M&A because our history, our DNA, is a history of also M&A operation, M&A deals which we have created in 25 years of the Esprinet Group that we are today. We will manage everything connected to the service model because also about services, we want to add another speed with respect to what we did till today.
We have some ideas and probably in the next month we will announce something, and we will want to be the right partner for our vendors and our customers, managing the digital transformation and also managing all will be related to AI overall have a generative artificial intelligence because we think that is another aspect, another opportunity that the market is giving us, and we want to be a main actor and not the background actor in this aspect. We hope to have a very well 2026, and we will announce the guidance for next year in May 13, if I remember well, when we will announce also the Q1 result. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Giovanni, and thank you, Alessandro. We can start with a Q&A session. The first question comes from Nicolò Storer. Nicolò Storer, please go ahead. Reminder to unmute your microphone please.
We're not-
Yeah. Nicolò Storer?
Yes. Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah. Very well.
Okay. Thanks. I have two questions. The first one is about 2025 gross margin, which was flattish year-on-year. You had some benefit from lower, let's say, factory cost, and I would have expected probably some improvement in light of the mix, which apparently was supportive. If you can elaborate a bit on that? Second question is about 2026 OpEx. Is it fair to say that in 2026 the OpEx increase should be nowhere near what we saw in 2025? That's pretty much it. Alessandro, what can I say? Good luck with your new life then.
Well, thanks. Thanks, Nicolò. I take the 2025 question, and I leave the 2026 to Giovanni. On gross margin, Giovanni to a certain extent implicitly answered. Yes, we had a good performance in terms of product mix. But especially in Q4, we had in 2024 the solar business that benefited from a particularly high level of rebates. These are linked to the level of value add that you provide to vendors. This year, we were not able to reach the same level of contribution.
We sort of expected it to a certain extent and not to that extent, and it's part of the strategic rationale behind the acquisition of Vamat, which I think we mentioned in the past calls. Vamat is a sort of a value-add distributor. They have a capability of providing certain certifications. One of the investment rationale behind Vamat is the capability of bringing that capabilities to Italy, and that would sort of structurally give us the access to higher rebates. Aside from having an additional source of revenues, margins, and profitability out of the different new geographical regions where we are operating by means of being in Vamat. That was the concept. Essentially that was the main issue.
The second one, to a lesser extent, was a little bit of overperformance in the retail space that we had against our expectations, mostly because the PC refresh cycle was particularly strong and some of the additional sales came out of that area. You have seen it in the mix of screens that were growing particularly well, and that was the second effect, I would say. For the OpEx, I turn it to Giovanni, and I want to thank you, Nicolò, for the kind words. I hope my future will be good and long. Thank you.
Okay, about topics, as we mentioned before, the DNA of the group is to have always under control the SG&A cost, and we will continue to do that. We have some plans also for reducing some cost related to the logistics rents. In fact, using also the value and the volume of the inventories that we have, we can anticipate that we are working on the possibility, and we will to reach the target to close the warehouse for the end of half one. In order to reduce the cost related to logistics point of view.
For sure we'll have a very hard control of the cost, and we are trying to maintain the level of cost that we had in 2025, having a growth of all the other figures in our profit and loss balance sheet.
Next question is from Gabriele Berti. Gabriele Berti, I give you the floor, please.
Remember to unmute.
Berti, please remember to unmute your microphone.
Yes.
Okay.
Sorry.
Okay.
I had now the possibility to unmute because it was not clickable, sorry. Hi
Sorry.
Alessandro, and hi, Giovanni. Thank you for taking my question. I have few. First one or about memory shortage. Could you give us an idea on how much PC prices are increasing due to this matter? Always on this topic, but demand-wise, I was wondering what are your expectations in terms of impact? I mean, do you see any reduction in volumes due to these price increases? Or you are seeing signs of customers anticipating purchases or changing ordering because potential concern about future products availability or price increases? Lastly, I was wondering for how long do you see PC refresh cycles supportive for the market?
Over to you.
I will try to answer both, Alessandro and myself. About the last question, probably the need, the amount, the number or amount that we will see in the market to close the refresh cycle of PC and notebooks are around six to eight months, no more. About the idea that we have on shortage and on the increase of the price of the RAMs, we see in the market that in this moment there is no very shortage moment because the availability of the products for about all the vendors that we managed is close to zero.
For sure we are selling a number of items less than last year, but the increase of the price is more and more in percentage higher than the reducing of the number of PCs that we have sold. In the end, we see an opportunity in order to manage less inventory with a higher average price, and not changing a lot the percentage of the margin. For sure the absolute value of the margin will be good news for our profit and loss.
about the increase of the prices we see in this moment, as Alessandro Cattani said, a change of the list price in more or less every 14 days from the vendors, from the main vendors. The increase, the percentage increase is double-digit, and for some few items also triple-digit, comparing the price that was present in the price list in September, October 2025.
Yeah, if you wanna buy a PC, don't wait.
Okay.
Buy it now because it's. We're seeing something absolutely unprecedented. It's something vendors are appalled by what's happening in the market. It will last for many, many months.
Thank you very much.
Good luck to you.
A special thanks to you, Alessandro. See you.
Thanks, Gabriele. See you.
Another question from Mathias Paladino. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I have just one last question because everything has already been answered. It's on the factoring side. We saw that your off balance sheet factoring increased. Can you help us maybe understand whether this reflect deliberate choice in the balance sheet management or whether it's partially linked to the evolution of your working capital dynamics? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks. Well, it's pretty simple. It's sort of seasonal effect. By having an overall strategy of progressive reduction of our exposure to the consumer market, consumer in the sense of retailers, because of the PC cycle replacement, we had a spike in sales, and that happened mostly in Q4, and some of it went through retailers more than expected, and that was the main driver of factoring increase, meaning that we normally sell retailers receivables to factoring. In time, as the sales to this market segment declines, you might expect a decline on the factoring amounts. If they spike, you might expect a growth in that area. That's mostly a technical issue.
There's no specific decision of managing the balance sheet by means of factoring. We have some framework agreements with factoring companies as well as with retailers, and whenever we sell to them, we sell the receivables. Full stop. Nothing, nothing more. There's little room for playing with more or less sales of receivables there. It's linked to the typology of customers.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Another question from Constantinos Kontos. Please go ahead.
Hi, Alessandro, congratulations for this new stage, and Giovanni, congratulations for this opportunity. Just one comment on Spain. Can you explain a bit the performance relative to the market? How that is explained? Is it something that should worry us? Is it linked to devices, screens? Why Spain underperform the market basically in Spain?
No, in Spain. Hi, Constantinos. Thanks. No, it's a deliberate performance over there. Spain is on fire as a market, really growing, and we're firing on all cylinders. But our strategy, you might remember what we did in Portugal a few years ago, is to walk away from unprofitable or excessively working capital demanding portions of the business, and that's mostly what happened in Spain. We outgrew the market in the solution segment. We did really well, and we pulled on the brakes on certain PC and consumer-related consumer products related sales to retailers for this reason, so we lost a portion of market share.
Mostly it's linked to smartphones, where we walked away from certain Chinese smartphone brands which were driving ridiculous amounts of working capital and they are performing well in the market, so from a market share, that's what's happening. Spain, if you look at the segment information in our press release, you will see that we have had a phenomenal year.
Got it. Thank you very much.
Thanks to you.
Next question from Mr. Nargi. I give you the floor. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. Thanks for the presentation. Just two quick question on the device segment. The first one is on the device segment. We have seen a decreasing trend over the year and also in the Q4. You explained it is mainly due to your choice to avoid the less profitable revenues and with a lower return on capital employed. I was wondering if going forward, so in 2026, this trend may continue, or we may assume a similar weight on sales compared to what we have seen in 2025. The second question is on the tax rate. We have seen this increase in tax rate mainly due to the write-off of the deferred tax asset. Going forward, might we expect a tax rate to come back.
To go back to, let's say, reasonable rate? Finally, thanks to Alessandro for all. Thanks for sharing your expertise on the industry and have a nice second life. Thank you again.
Thank you. Thank you, Pietro. Giovanni is as experienced as me. Even more so now because he's so much more in day- to- day. I leave. As long as it's mostly 2026.
Okay
It's up to you.
From the first question about the devices, we can see that in this moment we don't see any difference between 2025 and 2026 way to approach that type of market from our group. We also don't see any difference in the go-to-market or the vendors that are managing that product categories. Nothing changed. Nothing we will change in our approach. If the working capital is not good from our point of view and if also the gross margin, gross profit are not in line with what we are expecting, we will decide not to manage some deals.
About the tax rate, we think that, with the exception of the spike that we had in 2025 due to the Portuguese write-off that we mentioned before, we will come back to the average percentage of taxes that we had in the last 3-4 years.
Yeah. Unless the law changes, of course.
For sure. Unless the law changes. On the contrary, we will have to be subjugated to the new rules.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay. There are no more questions, so I think we can end the call. Thanks to Giovanni. A special thanks to Alessandro. Thank you for participating, and we remain at your disposal. I'll see you next time.
Thanks everybody.
Bye.
In the next lives.