Good evening and welcome to the Safilo Group's Full Year 2024 Financial Results. This call may contain forward-looking statements related to future events and operating, economic, and financial results for the Safilo Group. Such forecasts, due to their nature, imply a component of risk and uncertainty due to the fact that they depend on the occurrence of certain future events and developments. The actual result may therefore vary even significantly to those announced in relation to a multitude of factors. Today's participants are Mr. Angelo Trocchia, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Michele Melotti, Chief Financial Officer; and Ms. Barbara F errante, Director of Investor Relations. I will now pass the call over to Mr. Angelo T rocchia, Chief Executive Officer. Mr. T rocchia, you may begin, sir.
Thanks. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss S afilo's full year 2024 performance. As we all know, 2024 was a year shaped by economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and shifting consumer behaviors. The eyewear sector was not immune to these challenges, as market conditions weighed on demand across different regions. Despite this, we proved our resilience and flexibility, successfully navigating market headwinds and consolidating our competitive edge. We achieved this by leveraging dynamic brand portfolio management, making targeted investments, and maintaining a steadfast dedication to the quality of services both for our customers and consumers. Today, I will walk you through our key business highlights, followed by an update on our sustainability progress, then leaving Michele to guide you through the details on our sales, economic, and financial performance for the full year. Turning now to the highlights for 2024, let's start with our top-line performance.
Our total sales declined by 2.3% at constant exchange rate, a result that reflects the combination of still unfavorable market dynamics in North America and the impact of concluding the Jimmy Choo license, two headwinds which were mitigated by the continued positive performance of Europe. If we exclude the effect of the license phase-out, our sales trend was slightly positive, thanks to the combination of our key growth drivers, in particular, Carrera, David Beckham, Tommy Hilfiger, and Carolina H errera. Now, while the revenue environment remained challenging, we saw clear progress on our profitability metrics, driven by the improvement of the gross margin, which reached nearly 60% of sales, reflecting the increased efficiency of our industrial footprint and an effective pricing strategy. From a financial perspective, we also demonstrated solid cash generation with the cash flow from operating activities which exceeded EUR 70 million.
This allowed us to support key investments, namely the acquisition of the perpetual license for the eyewear by David Beckham, a strategic move that significantly strengthens our home brand portfolio, which, as a result, now represents approximately 50% of the total revenue. Last year, we also substantially completed the long-term stabilization of our license portfolio. This involved the early renewal of Boss & Hugo and Marc Jacobs, alongside the continuation of our important partnership with Moschino, Missoni, and Levi . Building on this momentum, at the beginning of this year, we successfully renewed Under Armour and D Squared2. As a result of all this work, we have now secured roughly 80% of our license portfolio through 2030 and 2031.
Building on these business highlights, I'd now like to focus on the performance of our key home brands, which continue to be a central pillar of our strategy, demonstrating both resilience and growth potential despite a market environment that remained challenging. On one hand, we saw strong tailwinds driven by successful distribution expansion, solid consumer demand for optical frames, and brand equity reinforcement in key markets. On the other, we faced headwinds from weather-related impacts on sunglasses, a soft sport business environment, and more cautious wholesale purchasing trends. Let's talk about Carrera. Carrera was a standout. We saw double-digit growth in both Europe and North America, and it's exciting to say that the U.S. is now Carrera's number one market, a testament to its growing global appeal. What's really resonating is the Carrera women's collection.
It's been incredibly successful, and we have seen strong performance across both optical and sun categories. Of course, I want to highlight the Carrera Ducati collection. It has continued to perform very well. We have seen strong interest from the sport enthusiasts and fashion-forward consumers. The quality of the collection and the brand recognition has been a winning combination, demonstrating the brand's versatility and strength in diverse market segments. If we move to Polaroid, Polaroid faced a bit of a challenge with the sun season in Europe delayed by adverse weather conditions in May and June, which impacted early summer sales. Despite the challenges, Polaroid managed to close the year with only a marginal slowdown, thanks to a strong recovery in the fourth quarter. This rebound was mainly driven by the optical business, but sunglasses were also moderately positive, signaling improving momentum heading into the new year.
Last year, Blenders had a very challenging quarter. Moderately positive, signaling improving momentum heading into the new year. Last year, Blenders had a very challenging quarter four, largely due to a tough comparison with the same period of 2023, which had been boosted by the success of its first collection in collaboration with Coach. On the other hand, in 2024, Blenders continued to expand its wholesale network as we kept progressing with the brand's omnichannel strategy. Recently, we have observed intensified price competition in Blenders' market segment, prompting us to react more swiftly. Let's talk about Smith. Smith also experienced its specific headwinds, impacted by lower winter pre-order and the soft summer bike business, reflecting broader challenges in the sport and the outdoor sector. However, its direct-to-consumer channel remained robust, and we saw a strong Q4 rebound driven by a positive start of the 2025 ski season.
Also, in Smith's case, we had a moderate overall slowdown due to this market fluctuation, but the brand continued to reinforce its strong competitive position. To finish, let's talk about David Beckham. David Beckham, which had another phenomenal year. We achieved high double-digit growth across Europe, North America, and the Middle East, driven by strategic distribution expansion. It's been great to see the brand benefit from a real well-balanced product mix with both optical and sun collections, contributing significantly to its success. Before handing over to M ichele, I would like to brief you also on our sustainability journey, as 2024 was a year of significant progress on this front. One of our biggest achievements was further reducing our environmental impact. By the end of the year, 95% of our electricity consumption was covered by renewable sources, up from 90% in 2023.
This milestone helped us achieve a 19% reduction compared to 2023 in Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. At the same time, we made important advancements in sustainable products. Last year, the share of new collections made by recycled or bio-based materials increased to 23%, up from 17% in 2023. For some of our brands, this percentage was even higher, over 90% for Polaroid and more than 40% for Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, and Levi Strauss & Co. These results, together with upstream value chain improvement initiatives, helped reduce Scope 3 emissions by 5% compared to 2023. Behind environmental impact, w e remain strongly committed to social responsibility. We marked 20 years of partnership with Special Olympics, a collaboration that we have now extended through 2027, reaffirming our commitment and dedication to inclusion, accessibility, and eye health.
Polaroid's participation in the Global Love Your Eyes campaign, promoted by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, is another example of our role in advancing vision care and accessibility. We know there is still more to do, and as we move forward, we will continue embedding sustainability into everything we do. I would like to hand it over to Michele.
Thank you, Angelo, and good evening to all of you. Let's take a closer look at our sales performance for 2024. We closed the year with a total net sales of EUR 993.2 million, down 3.1% at current exchange rate and 2.3% at constant exchange rate compared to 2023. In Q4, sales performance improved compared to the previous quarter of the year, recording a contraction of 1.6% at current exchange rate and 1.1% at constant exchange rate. As highlighted by Angelo, our full-year revenue performance was slightly positive, excluding Jimmy Choo, while it was positive by almost 2% in Q4. Our underlying sales performance reflects a mix of dynamics across different markets and product categories. Europe remains our strongest performing region, with independent opticians and chains proving to be our most resilient sales channel.
Within our product portfolio, prescription frames continue to outperform sunglasses, r eflecting steady positive consumer demand for optical products across all regions. Our online business remains solid at around 16% of sales, driven by two diverging trends. On one side, we saw particularly strong performance from Smith direct-to-consumer channel, while Blenders faced a softer year due to the tough comp, as just discussed. Looking at our European performance, we closed the year with sales up 1.6% at constant exchange rate after recording a flat performance in Q4. Excluding the impact of the Jimmy Choo phase-out, full-year sales in Europe grew mid-single digit, with Q4 up around 3%. France was one of our best-performing markets, supported by an expanding commercial network and strong demand for prescription frames. The Italian market was moderately positive, while the Eastern European market posted strong results, in particular, Poland and Turkey.
Last year, Germany was also an important positive driver for us, benefiting from the growth of the Internet Pure Player clients. The market decelerated in Q4 as the business environment became more uncertain. A key driver of our success in Europe was the continued expansion of our You&Safilo B2B platform, which has now been adopted by more than 28,000 clients, helping us to improve efficiency and strengthen relationships with our partners. Among our brands, Carrera and David Beckham delivered the strongest growth, while among our licensed brands, Carolina Herrera and DSQUARED2 led the way, along with the successful launch of Etro Eyewear collections. Turning to North America, sales were down 5.2% at constant exchange rate, with a similar trend in Q4, contracting by 4.6%. Excluding Jimmy Choo, North America remained slightly negative, penalized by an election year and the climate of uncertainty that affected business and consumer confidence.
We already commented on how, throughout most of the year, we faced an unfavorable sport business environment, which impacted Smith's performance. As you may remember, last year, we had a delayed start to the 2024 ski season, which limited restocking. The spring-summer season saw the bike segment still somehow overstocked at retail level. On the other front, sunglass sales remained largely weak due to cautious purchase behavior from the wholesale channel, while prescription frames continued to show solid growth, supporting the brand with greater exposure to this category. As a matter of fact, Carrera, David Beckham, Tommy Hilfiger, and Marc Jacobs performed well, supported by a strong collection, a favorable product mix, and expanded distribution. Q4 was mainly affected by the drop in sales of Blenders and by the still subdued sunglass business in the wholesale channel, which nevertheless showed signs of improvement toward the end of the year.
As said, on a positive note, Smith continued to progress in its B2C channel and saw a recovery in physical stores, supported by a strong start to the 2025 ski season and a favorable comparison base. In the Asia-Pacific region, full-year sales declined by 2.1% at constant exchange rate, recovering most of the drop accumulated during the first nine months, thanks to a strong rebound of +12.9% recorded in Q4. China was a standout performer, continuing to gain traction as one of our key growth markets. The strong reception of our collection at major optical fairs in Shanghai and Beijing helped to stimulate demand and reinforce our brand positioning. In China, Polaroid, Tommy Hilfiger, and Porsche Design were the brands driving our growth in the region. By contrast, in Southeast Asia, distributor sales contracted over the first nine months of the year, affecting the overall performance.
Finally, Q4 rebound was driven by China, which regained speed after its temporary slowdown in Q3 and by a nice recovery of Southeast distributor. In the Rest of the World region, the year closed with a decline of 5.9% at constant exchange rate, showing a mixed trend across markets and regions. In Latin America, private retail was a weak spot, affecting overall sales. However, Brazil showed signs of recovery in Q4, helped by more stable domestic demand. Last year, sales in the Middle East grew, driven by the positive progress by Carrera, Tommy Hilfiger, and David Beckham, while India saw some deceleration after a period of strong growth in 2023.
Q4 saw some recovery, with sales up 2.4% at constant exchange rate, while the currency environment was particularly unfavorable, with a significant weakening of the Mexican peso and the Brazilian real, which affected the overall Latin America performance at current exchange rate. Turning to our economic performance, in 2024, we made another significant progress in improving our gross margin. For the full year, gross margin reached 59.7% of sales, an improvement of 250 basis points compared to the reported gross margin in 2023, a year impacted by the restructuring of the Italian footprint, while the improvement stood at 100 basis points compared to the 2023 margin adjusted for related restructuring costs. Throughout the year, the key driver of our gross margin improvement was the increased efficiency of the supply chain following the restructuring of the Italian footprint we completed in Q4 2023, along with a positive pricing effect.
Sales mix was, instead, an end in the year, affected by the diluted impact of results business, while in Q4, we had an unfavorable channel mix due to the lower contribution of Blenders B2C channel and higher contribution of sports shop. For this reason, our Q4 gross margin at 59.5%, stable compared to Q4 2023 adjusted margin, was a very solid result. At the operating level, our Adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 93 million, up 1% compared to the Adjusted EBITDA in 2023, while the margin improved by 40 basis points to 9.4%, reflecting our disciplined approach to cost management, with partially countered sales pressure on the operating leverage and some persistent cost inflation. A key factor behind this was the normalization of IT investment, following elevated spending in 2022 and 2023, to accelerate our digital transformation.
On the other hand, last year, we continued to strongly support market investment, which remained high and heavily digital-oriented. In Q4, our Adjusted EBITDA margin also saw an uplift at 7.5% of sales, marking the strongest progress versus the previous year, with a 60 basis point improvement, driven by disciplined spending on selling expenses and improved operating leverage. Moving to our adjusted net result, we closed the year with EUR 34.2 million from EUR 14 million in 2023. Excluding the effect of the valuation of the option liability on minority interest, our adjusted net performance improved by approximately 17%, also supported by the 15% decline of net financial charges, which reflected lower interest rates and a reduction in gross debt. Finally, looking at our cash flow and at that position, 2024 confirmed our financial solidity and ability to generate cash.
In Q4, free cash flow reached EUR 18.9 million versus EUR 13.3 million in Q4 2023, bringing the free cash flow for the year to EUR 16.7 million. T his was characterized on the one end by the significant improvement in cash flow from operating activities, which totaled EUR 76.2 million, reflecting our good economic result and an efficient network in capital management, primarily driven by the reduction of inventories. On the other hand, cash flow for investment grew to EUR 48.9 million from EUR 8.6 million, mainly due to the investment to acquire the perpetual license for our by David Beckham. Last year, despite the acquisition of the perpetual license and the completion of our share buyback program for EUR 11.8 million, we managed to maintain our net debt stable at EUR 82.7 million, while declining by around EUR 3 million, pre-IFRS 16.
Our financial leverage remained healthy at 0.48 times, ensuring we had the flexibility to continue investing in our growth priorities. With that, I'll hand back to Angelo.
Thanks, Michele. As we look ahead, the complexities of the macroeconomic and geopolitical landscape marked by escalating challenges will continue to influence markets, shaping how we do business and making it particularly difficult to predict how trends will evolve in the coming months. As noted earlier, toward the end of last year and into January, we began seeing signs of recovery in North America's wholesale channels, while February benefited from a strong winter season for Smith. March, as our most significant month in Q1, will provide valuable insights into market sentiment and consumer confidence. In this context, we remain focused on strengthening our partnership, staying agile, and maintaining operational flexibility with the goal of sizing opportunities to drive a return to revenue growth.
Our commitment to continuous margin improvement and consistent cash generation remains steadfast, ensuring the efficient allocation of resources and making strategic investments that drive long-term value creation. It is precisely with this objective in mind that at the end of last year, we also decided to conclude three minor license agreements, which together accounted for approximately 1% of the total sales. Our focus on our home brands has never been sharper, and we are particularly excited about the major brand initiatives and campaigns already in motion for this year. On Carrera, following last year's highly successful launch, Carrera Women will be a major priority also in 2025, further expanding the brand's reach and capitalizing on the strong momentum within this segment. 2025 sees the launch of the new Carrera Sport collection, which reaffirms the brand's bold, authentic identity in the world of sport.
This collection extends the brand's iconicity to a broader audience, the fashionable in sports, whose active lifestyle does not mean compromising on style. Additionally, we continue to build on Carrera's strong momentum by focusing on key geographies, with a particular emphasis on North America, where the brand had an amazing 2024. We are also proud to share an exciting milestone for Polaroid, our recent announcement as the official eyewear partner for ATP Tour for the next three years. This is a huge opportunity to bring the brand to a truly global stage, helping us connect with new customers and grow our presence worldwide. As part of this partnership, Polaroid will be front and center in some of the biggest tournaments, namely the Mutua Madrid Open, the Internazionali BNL d'Italia, and the Swedish Open.
Benefits include prominent brand visibility, dedicated activation space in Fan Zone, and a notable presence at kids' activities on site. We are also delighted to welcome Lorenzo Musetti, currently ranking the ATP Top 20 and an Olympian bronze medalist, as the ambassador of this partnership in the phase of the 2025 Polaroid Eyewear Global Campaign. His talent, passion, and style perfectly embody the Polaroid spirit. 2025 will be another year of strategic development also for David Beckham. Our storytelling journeys continue with this new advertising campaign set against the stunning backdrop of Morocco and featuring David once again to reinforce the brand identity. We are also expanding the brand distribution footprint, following the success last year of the Eyewear by David Beckham Selfridges pop-up store in London. The luxury department store is now scaling up with two additional pop-up store locations in Manchester and in Birmingham.
Even more exciting, we are launching for a prime customer of ours the first eyewear monobrand store by David Beckham in the heart of Mykonos Town, an exclusive destination with a global audience. These are some meaningful examples of how we want to channel resources into what truly matters, ensuring our brands remain at the forefront of the industry. Finally, as you will have read in our press release, we have today decided to proceed with a new buyback program for 15 million shares, equally approximating to 3.6% of our share capital. This plan represents a strategic step aimed at an efficient management of our financial resources while maintaining flexibility in order to cite any future investment opportunities, a matter on which we remain constantly focused and active. This concludes our presentation. Thank you for your time, and we are now ready to open the Q&A session.
Thank you, sir. Excuse me, this is the 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 your question, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. We will pause momentarily while participants join the queue. The first question is from Oriana C ardani of Intesa Sanpaolo.
Yes, good evening. Thank you for taking my three questions. The first one is on gross margin. What is your expectation for this year? Do you see room for expansion? The second question is on the evolution of marketing expenses. Do you expect them to increase as a percentage of sales this year? The third question is on the growth profile for sales this year. What is the size of price mix effect that you expect in 2025? Thank you.
I start with the first one on the margin. Of course, as you know, we do not provide specific items on this, but of course, our aim is to continue bringing to the operational level as much as possible the improvement that we will achieve at the gross margin level, plus, of course, some better support from the operating leverage, and o verall, of course, we are still aiming to continue to support and improve our profitability. On the marketing?
Yeah, on the marketing, I think, first of all, I think this year is going to be a year in which we will be managing any kind of investment and cost in a very, very tight, tight gear because the uncertainty, which is around, is pushing us to manage like that. As a principle, we are ready to catch any opportunity, mainly investing, as I was expressing before, behind our main brand.
There is a full-fledged advertising plan, quite aggressive, behind Carrera, behind Smith, behind David Beckham, behind Polaroid, somehow behind Blenders, but we are ready to retune. The fact that most of our investment is digital, we can retune in a very fast way according to what we will see is going to happen on the market. Just as a reminder, I mean, our marketing spend today is already quite high, so it's not an issue of increasing so much. It's more an issue to optimize. Very fast in reacting when we see what's going to happen behind the priority brand.
Yeah, on price mix, of course, we continue to manage actively our pricing. We do see opportunity to continue managing actively our pricing strategy.
Definitely, this year, we will see better support from mix, as we will not have, as this year, some negative contribution, brand effect on the phase-out of the Jimmy Choo closeout sales. Yeah, that's on the pricing mix.
Understood. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Niccolò Storer of Kepler.
Good afternoon. Thanks for ta king my questions. Three for me as well. The first one is on Europe. If you can comment a bit on entry speed into 2025 in Europe, considering the slowdown you have experienced in the last part of 2024. Second question is on working capital. If you can tell us if you see further room for improvements, and if yes, from where. The last question is on tariffs. What's the current situation, and how are you dealing with those? Thank you.
I answered to the question on Europe. I mean, Europe has started well. I January and February, they have the weight that they have. We need, as I was saying before, we need to really wait for March because March is a pivotal month for January and February, europe has been performing well, where France, Central Eastern Europe performing better than Germany, where Germany, we see some sign of softness. We just need to wait now March, but the beginning of the year in Europe has been so far, so good. Yeah, on working capital, our goal is to maintain firm control over the working capital. We do see additional opportunities both on the inventory side and on the DSO. This should enable us also to minimize eventually any working capital absorption also in a top-line scenario that should resume growth.
On the tariffs, we are closely monitoring the evolving stance on the U.S. administration on the incremental tariffs imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China. Our goal is to proactively manage the risk as effective as possible, ensuring that all necessary mitigation measures are in place. In the last year, we have started to diversify our supply chain also out of China, so we are better positioned compared to a few years ago. Mitigation measures are a work in progress. Negotiation with our supplier already started, and commercial action are the other important lever that need to be defined to counter tariffs. The ultimate impact will highly depend on how the topic settles, so potential exception, competitive reaction. We are closely monitoring the development to refine our projection forward. At this stage, it's really premature to provide a quantification of the overall impact for us.
Thank you.
The next question is from Cédric Lecasble of Stifel.
Yes, good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. The first one is on the U.S. demand per segment. You've had some areas of strength in prescription, some has been slower. Players today mention volatility in the market and volatile consumer. Can you maybe tell us a little more on what you've seen versus last year's trends? Is there any chance that the U.S. market turns positive this year, or is it too premature? The second one is more on the phasing, given your launches and your strategic plan. The phasing of the quarters during the year, do you expect a stronger second half, or do you expect kind of a normative growth rate along the year? How do you see the year in terms of quarters? Thank you very much.
Okay, I start from the U.S. I mean, toward the end of last year, in Q4, we observed an initial uptick in the wholesale demand in North America. Finally, somehow a potential recover in that channel. January was also a positive month, followed by a normalization of February. Q4, January and February, positive sign. Now the question is, is March where, I mean, we have some first sign of an American consumer, which with this level of uncertainty is becoming more nervous. We need to see now March, but end of last year, and January has been showing some positive sign. Now the question mark is all these discussions and this uncertainty, are they going to have a negative impact on making the American consumer more nervous? I think, to be honest, in the next two, three weeks, we will know more.
We will know more out of that with the question, I think.
H1, H2.
H1, H2. Obviously, we have been, I mean, the year has been designed to have a strong start of H1, mainly on our brand. One element on top of the uncertainty that, to be honest, no one of us can control. Here, the real one big question mark is last year, May and June, if you remember, the weather definitely was not good, and the sun has been suffering. Last year, we had a very positive optical, a negative sun. Theoretically, May and June should be the period where we may have some upside compared to last year if the season is going to be better. This is if we look to the external market.
If we look internally, and I hope really it's the last time we are referring to that, I just like to remember that in Q1, still we have some Jimmy Choo, Q1/Q2, we have some Jimmy Choo effect. This is an internal element that somehow you need to take into account. From the market, we've been starting very strong Q1, Q2, and Q2, May and June, we should have compared to last year upside on the sun, obviously, if the season will come in.
Thank you.
The next question is from Cédric Rossi of Bryan, Garnier.
Yes, good evening, everyone. I have two questions. The first one is regarding Carrera. You tried during several years to crack the female customer base and the U.S. market, and it seems that you were successful in these two segments last year. I was curious to have your view on what has changed in the strategy to be successful there. The second question is regarding David Beckham. I was surprised to learn that you will open the first store in Greece. Does it mean that we could have further store openings in the coming years, and especially in the U.S? Thank you.
Okay, I start from the second one. Just to be clear, the shop is being opened by one of our long-term strategic customers. The shop is going to be David Beckham, but it's going to be owned by this guy, not by us. We do not have plan to open own shop, own retail shop on David Beckham. Obviously, the location is in Mykonos, so it's going to be huge, attractive, and a strong contribution to the brand building of the brand itself. Just to be clear. There are no idea on expanding in retail with David Beckham. It's growing already like this enough, so it's okay for the next years. On Carrera. Look, Carrera is a journey. We started some years ago. We have repositioned the brand. I mean, the Carrera position now, I think we got to a much more clear positioning.
Before, it was a little bit of a confusion. Today, when we look to Carrera, we talk about the core of Carrera that we have repositioned in a less extreme Carrera old, bold style. This has been a repositioning of the full brand. In the light of this repositioning of the brand, the women has a lot of space because already today, 30% of the consumers of Carrera were female, but they were really happy and unhappy on the execution. The fact that thanks to the new position, which is a little bit less bold, is a little bit less extreme, is allowing women to fit more with the brand. The women's collection is an amazing collection that's been got very fantastic. It's been received fantastic last year. To be honest, the first January and February are showing that is the right choice.
The answer to your question is a combination of having repositioned the full Carrera brand, less, a little bit less boldish, a little bit more American, if you like, but with the women, which was already there, but now has the way to express themselves more. The Carrera pillar will be core, women, and sport. Looking to North America, the two main pillars will be core and women, less sport because the sport is more a fashionable sport, which fits more for Europe. You have the Ducati, which can be an opportunity next year. We are going to have three races in North America. That is opening up additional opportunity on Carrera North America.
Okay, clear. Thank you, Angelo.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from Andrea Bonfà of Banca Akros .
Hello, good evening. Some of my questions are being already answered. I would like just to expand on a few details. First one is again on potential U.S. duties. I mean, as far as 100% of your, let's say, U.S. states, how much was done in China vis-à-vis Europe if it's possible to know? The second one is related to your advertising and promotion expenses. In the light of your previous comment of the important commitment to your proprietary brand, shall we anyway still pencil in around 13% for those levels of expenses? Thank you very much.
Yeah, on tariff, as we said before, we have started to diversify our supply chain also out of China. We are currently, for the US market, sourcing 70% of the goods from China, so 70. Roughly 10% is Asia out of China, 10% is Italy, and 10% is US, as we also are producing our goggle for the Smith brand in the US. In terms of advertising, I think there is an important thing. It's due to the fact that our 60%-65% of our investment now in advertising is digital. We are very flexible. This gives us a big advantage on how we prioritize and we phase the investment. Currently, let me say, you can assume same level of investment of last year because, as I said, it's already quite a high level of investment, also if you compare with some of our competitors.
Obviously, this amount of investment will be prioritized behind our four brands and then on two of the license. We will be very flexible. We will be very tight according to what we're going to read on the market. We will act a little bit in a very, very tight and flexible way as we did last year, but you can assume a comparable level of investment on advertising for the year.
Great. Thank you very much.
The next question is from D omenico Ghilotti of Equita.
Good afternoon. I have just one question on the buyback program. How do you want to execute the buyback, and what is the time frame in which you want to execute the buyback?
The buyback will be executed through Safilo Group. Timing-wise, the AGM will approve the buyback in April. We are the AGM of Safilo Group. I mean, right after, we should be able to execute the buyback.
The rationale is, let's say, optimization in the capital allocation. Can you just elaborate on why you decided now to launch a buyback?
I mean, we believe that considering our strong result and our strong free cash flow generation, this is the best tool also in terms of flexibility given the overall context, as you said, to manage effectively our capital structure.
Okay. Thank you.
For any further questions, please press star and one on your touch-tone telephone. Gentlemen, Ms. Ferrante, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Okay, thanks very much for being with us, and enjoy the remaining evening. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Bye-bye. Thanks.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephone.