Good afternoon, everyone, welcome to the Ferretti Group first quarter 2026 conference call. Thank you all for joining us. We appreciate your time and interest in Ferretti Group as we share an overview of our performance over the first quarter and discuss the outlook for the future. Before we begin, let me introduce our speakers, Mr. Stassi Anastassov, our new Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Marco Zammarchi, our Chief Financial Officer, and myself, Margherita Sacerdoti, Head of Investor Relations and Sustainability. Today's agenda will cover key highlights from Q1 2026, business dynamics, financial results, followed by a Q&A session. Throughout the audio webinar, you may submit your written question using the Q&A function in the Zoom menu. We will address as many as possible at the end of the presentation. You can also ask live question by using the Raise Your Hand feature in the Zoom platform.
With that, let me hand it over to Mr. Stassi Anastassov to get us started. Mr. Anastassov, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Margherita. Good afternoon, good morning to our investors in North America, good evening to our investors in Asia. This is the first time that I have the chance to speak to you, therefore, allow me to take a few minutes to introduce myself and to tell you about how I look at the business and what has shaped me, because I believe that's going to be an important investment for you to understand and will maybe avoid some of the questions that you may have on your minds. Through our lives and careers, we're all shaped by beliefs based on experiences we all have. I would like to share five of the beliefs that I believe are relevant in the context where we are today.
The first one is that throughout my career, I've always been fortunate to work with very strong brands, sometimes iconic brands. However, I have never been the founder. I have not invented those brands. I've always been a custodian, a caretaker of those brands. My job has always been to take a brand, take a business, and leave it to the next person and to the next group in better shape than what I took. Typically, when we want to reach higher at home, we would take a ladder and climb the ladder. In business, I believe that in reality, it is standing on the shoulders of the people that have been building the business before us and sometimes the people that have created the business that I'm in charge of currently.
I do want to mention to you that I think that I am standing on the shoulders of 5 amazing groups of people. The first one is the obvious one, Carlo Riva, who in my view created the most inspirational and still the greatest brand and the greatest yacht in the world. It's a true icon. The second one is the person that actually the company, the Ferretti Group, is named after, Norberto Ferretti, that founded this company more than half a century ago. The third one is Mr. Alberto Galassi. 12 years of turnaround and 12 years of turning a company that was small into the greatest yachting company in the world. The fourth one is Mr. Piero Ferrari. Mr. Ferrari was honorary chairman for the group for nine years.
Many of the innovations and many of the in the ideas were, of course, colored from his experiences and by his background. Thank you. Lastly, all the shareholders, small, big, medium, all the shareholders that believe in this company, that invested in this company during various stages of its development. These are the five, the four individuals, and the fifth one is a group of people that have shaped what Ferretti is today. Ferretti today would not be what it is, the greatest company in yachting, without your help. Thank you very much. This is a legacy inherit. By the way, I'm not taking lightly on naming these people because I am very keen and I've already met several of these people that I mentioned.
Unfortunately, Carlo Riva is not among us, but already met and discussed with his daughter, Lia, most recently only an hour ago. I am very much looking forward to taking, learning, because these people are going to be my teachers and are going to be very important for me, not only in understanding what has been built and the history, but also shaping the future of the company. My second belief is about accountability and clarity of roles. I am a great believer that the clearer the accountability, the clearer the understanding of who does what in a company, the better the results. Great companies have clear accountabilities, and great companies have consistency in what they've been doing.
For example, I have already met, the past 48 hours that I've been on board, the majority or many, many employees at different level, suppliers, partners. I typically ask three simple questions: "What is your title? What is it that you are actually doing?" Most importantly, "What do you believe you're solely accountable for?" Typically, that is maybe the most important question and the most important answer that I then judge whether there is any clarity and no overlaps and no confusion. Clarity and accountability is also something that is very important to me when it comes to governance. When I was doing my due diligence for this role, I was very encouraged by the fact that we've had a governance structure for the past 14 years, largely unchanged, with supportive shareholder groups.
We've had a CEO for 12 years that has been carefully guiding the company towards where it is. Stepping into a company where the governance has been clear and stable for 14 years, the leadership has been clear and stable for 12 years, that's very reassuring to me because it gives me a great base to build upon, and I believe it should be very reassuring for all the shareholders today and all the stakeholders. My third belief is based on brands and iconic brands. Those are brands that need to be fed. If they are not fed properly with strategies, with actions. Nobody cares a brand that was great several years ago. Nobody cares about a Kodak. I don't want to get into other brands that were not probably perfectly managed.
When I say that I need to understand the brands, I'm only doing that because I want to be able to expand them, strengthen them, make them stronger than ever. Many of you will be questioning and maybe asking yourselves, "What can a person that has been managing Pampers diapers, Duracell batteries, Head & Shoulders shampoos, what does this person know about yachts?" Well, I know how to manage brands, and our brands are iconic, and those brands must be fed with innovation, innovation because we need to make sure that people buy a Riva yacht or a Ferretti yacht, not because it was great a few years ago, but it's because it's going to be great tomorrow, the next three years, and the next 10 years. This is where the difference is between great iconic brands growing and brands that have been great, full stop.
I want to believe that the brands we have in the Ferretti Group are the brands that are going to be even more successful in the future. However, a brand is a tip of the iceberg. For example, people talk about Ferretti being a luxury company. Yes, Ferretti is magic. The brands are magic. The brands are iconic. However, Ferretti is not a handbag. It needs to be a very sophisticated, durable machine and a vessel where people can entrust their families, their friends, storms, saltwater, hard winds. You do not expose your beautiful watch collection or your beautiful handbag collection to this. Ferretti Yachts are some of the most complicated industrial processes, and this is where quality, endurance, materials, connectivity of all technology needs to hang together.
That's where we need to continue delighting and delighting and delighting our very, very discerning group of people that would like, that want to invest into our yachts. I'll be very keen, and I'll be focusing a great deal of my time on how to drive the business forward, and this is going to be with great innovation to make our brands greater. Every time somebody says, "I want to buy X brand," or Riva or Ferretti or Itama or Wally, there needs to be something that comes more than just the brand, something that is a superior quality, superior performance, superior materials, durability, and the classical features of what most brands are today. However, a brand cannot be great if it's not profitable. Profits comes from everything that I call below the iceberg.
The brand, the image, the quality, the shine of the teak is above the surface. The engineering process, every moment, every element in our factory from purchasing materials to the connectivity, to durability, after-sale service, all that needs to be perfect, but it doesn't need to be perfect just for quality, but it needs to be perfect also for costs. Because even if I want to be able to drive the top line of this business, I need to find the invisible costs to be able to fund our investment. Because I do have a commitment of profitable growth, and there is nothing that I would ever give up in order to gain cheap volume or to give up growth because of cost-cutting. Great businesses have to do and must be able to do top-line growth and bottom-line growth.
This is what I will be focusing on, and this is what I'll be doing with a team because we do have a great team around me. I do want to share a personal story that will tell you why and how I approach in most businesses. My parents left Bulgaria 1965. I was four years old. They left with nothing other than their talent. My father was a concert violinist, my mom was an opera singer. They did have a secret weapon, and that weapon was the ability and willingness to work hard. I've inherited, hopefully, and I have inherited that secret weapon, and I'm not going to leave one stone unturned until I've been able to find the levers that are going to unlock top-line growth and bottom-line growth. This is why I'm meeting everybody I can.
This is why when I receive a phone call about one of our clients potentially not being sure about an order, my answer to Giordano in sales was, "Except for Tuesday when I'm busy, give me one time and we're going to take the flight," and it's an overseas flight, "and meet the customer to turn that order into actual down payment and confirmation." There is nothing more important that, than to work hard to delight our customers, our employees, and our shareholders. Last but not least, you'll be asking, "Okay, all these are great It's great talk, great strategies, but what actually are we going to do?" I already told you we want to focus on innovation. I will be focusing on better design because design is something that actually doesn't always travel. In the U.S., people have some different expectations compared to Europe.
We need to evolve our offering to also meet those expectations. U.S. is going to be a major priority for me. Technology, we're living in the decade of technology that obsoletes itself very rapidly. We don't want to have what's best today. We want to have what's best tomorrow in everything we do with our yachts. Performance is important, but performance is not anymore raw performance in horsepower. It's performance that also is sustainable, lower emission, and lower impact to the world. That's what we need to look at, and that's what our new consumers are looking for. Materials. Materials innovation is one of the most exciting areas to look into. Durability that comes from material innovation, et cetera, et cetera. There are not going to be any shortcuts because shortcuts are what makes great brand, great brands fail.
To make a long story short, you have my commitment to work very hard to make sure that our brands will be healthier than ever and that I'll be able to leave those brands one day much stronger, better, bigger, more profitable, and more known across the world than what they are today. Our shareholders, my ambition to you is that we will be focusing on everything from comp data versus competitors, but it is not going to be our target. I've never had a target to be as good as a competitor. I've never had anything else than being better than all competitors. Thank you very much. I leave it to Marco.
Good afternoon. We start presentation of sharing the financial data of last quarter. First of all, going to the key highlights. The order intake in the quarter was lower year-on-year, reflecting a softer quarter and timing in signing, particularly on larger contract, larger boats. At the same time, as we highlight in this slide, negotiation remain at elevated levels with ongoing discussion amounting at approximately to EUR 630 million. 75% better than prior year. That confirm, in our opinion, that underlying demand remain present despite longer conversion time. Order backlog stable at EUR 1 . 718 billion, confirming the solid foundation of the business and supporting revenues visibility for the year.
Against this backdrop, revenues in Q1 were modestly below prior year levels, declining to around EUR 302 million, compared to EUR 329 million last year. Profitability, nevertheless, remain resilient, with adjusted EBITDA margin broadly stable at around 16.1%, up to by 10 basis points year-on-year, reflecting two things, two factor quite important for our company: supportive mix and discipline cost management. Now before to go in, deep diving, this figure offering you, several aspects of prior quarter, I leave the floor to Margherita to introduce the business dynamic, that are currently in place.
Thank you, Marco. Starting from the boat show, the European boat show season is about to start. We already attended the two major boat show in the U.S., Miami in February and Palm Beach in March. We couldn't attend the Dubai boat show in April because that was postponed due to the war to November. Moving to the newly splashed product in the first quarter, we can see the wallypower50, the outboard version of the wallypower50 inboard, where we sold 14 units already. This is a very promising model for the upcoming months. You can see the model in the video. We also announced some new models in different brands.
For the range update, the restyle that we do every four or five years to the most successful models, you have the new Ferretti Yachts 720. We already sold three units, but the previous version had been very successful, and we sold 48 units. You can also see the latest model of the Pershing GTX series. Just to remind you, the GTX is what we call the SUV for yachts. We had the GTX 116, the 80, and now the 90 is out. Moving to Riva, we have another restyle, is the Rivale 56' Super that is taking the place of the old Rivale 56'. Again, in the 56', the previous version, we sold 60 units. Again, it has been a very, very successful model.
We decided to restyle the design. The last model that we presented is a range expansion, is the Itama 70, where we already sold one unit. It's a new model after the Itama 54 that we already presented last year. Having said that, I'll move back to Marco for the financial results.
Thank you, Margherita. Let's start analyzing the Q1 order intake and negotiation. Q1 order intake was mainly affected by delays in contract conversion rather than by weaker underlying demand. This delay were concentrated, and we'll see later, in a larger contract, particularly in Superyacht and Made-To-Measure, where negotiation and decision cycle are typically longer and more complex compared with the Composite one. On top of that, geopolitical uncertainty in the MEA region contributed to slower final signature in the quarter. This is reflecting the rolling book-to-bill ratio that temporarily remain below one at around 0.8% for Made-To-Measure and Superyacht and around 0.9% including Composite.
At the same time, this is the point that we wanted to remark, negotiation remain well above last year level, confirming solid underlying demand across all geographical areas despite longer conversion time. The backlog remains solid and broadly stable versus prior year, and reflecting the sound order collecting in 2024 and 2025 in Made-To-Measure and Superyacht. order backlog, as I said before, stood at approximately EUR 1.7 billion at the end of March in line with December. Instead, net backlog provide clear visibility for a year, for the current year, with around EUR 470 million allocated to 2026 deliveries. In addition, a minimum power of the revenue is already secure for the current year, for 2026, amounting to approximately EUR 772 million.
If compare this number with the same situation of prior year, we have a 5% more than 2025. The backlog profile continue to support revenues coverage and planning visibility for the year, granting so the visibility and the cash generation of the company. In terms of order intake by segment, the softer order intake that we mentioned before was not uniform across the portfolio. Composite show resilience will grow year-over-year, supported by seasonal demand in Europe at the summer season. On the other hand, the Made-To-Measure instead was to be compared, was affected by two factors.
First of all, last year, same quarter, we had the best quarter ever for MEA last region, per MEA region and slower contract conversion in the current quarter due to the regional tension. I'd like also to remind that our business is made of collecting more or less 250 orders every year. With the logic of the cutoff, a couple of units signed in April make the difference. Superyacht instead, the negotiation remain at good level. Out of the EUR 630 million that I mentioned before, nearly EUR 300 million are related to Superyacht.
Order intake is also affected by the scarcity of available production slot, as the waiting list now extended to the end of 2029, in some cases for the larger yacht, 2020, 2030, confirming the strategic relevance of capacity management in this segment. Analyzing the order intake by geography, Europe remained the most supportive area in the quarter, with a sound order mix and more resilient commercial activity. MEA instead was clearly impacted by local geopolitical tension with delay contract finalization. AMAS instead reflected, is a point that always recurring, a more conscious customer stance with the longer decision-making and signing timelines. In other words, what we analyze about the Americas is it happened the same during the election year.
When there is some uncertainty, the market continue to discuss, but the closing time, conversion time of negotiation is longer and longer. We had this experience last year at Q4 2024 with a good result in the following quarter when the election was completed. We expect something similar in this year. In term of revenues by segment, we see that the revenues were supported by the existing backlog. As a result, the year-on-year decline in revenues was much more limited compared to the reduction in quarterly order intake. In Superyacht revenues delivered double-digit growth of around 20%, reflecting the solid backlog, the support of the backlog.
At the same time, the overall revenue decline was around 8% year-on-year, showing the cushion effect of the backlog on quarterly deliveries. Moving our focus on profitability, adjusted EBITDA, as I mentioned before, remain resilient, with margins slightly improving year-on-year, supported by an improved backlog mix and continued cost discipline. The same trend has been seen on net profit, reflecting the lower volume environment. Talking about CapEx in the quarter remain quite selective and strategically focused at around EUR 13 million, with roughly 2/3 allocated to new product development. We strongly believe in the power of renewing, keeping up to date, keeping at the state of the art our product portfolio because it has been paid off in the last year.
This is confirm this fact is the investment of just EUR 13 million, the group disciplined approach to capital allocation and with maintenance CapEx and cash conversion remain under control. What do we expect? As we mentioned several time before. That this is reflect the completion of the main capacity expansion cycle carried out in prior year. You see 2023, 2024, and partially 2025. With CapEx now moving into a normalization phase and expecting to remain below 6% of the revenues in 2026, and most likely in the following year without taking into consideration any M&A. About cash flow and net financial position, you know, Q1 usually is typically characterized by seasonal cash absorption related Composite build-up ahead of the European summer season.
In Q1, as I mentioned before, we also saw some delays in order collection, resulting in a lower level of down payment and stage payment. In addition, we had also some delivery postponement linked to geopolitical tension in Middle East region. In other words, some customer belonging to this area ask us to postpone the delivery in this area, we fully understand their desire, and this is a situation that now is solving step by step. All this element together drove temporary cash absorption in quarter. We are expecting an improvement in Q2, which you will see also last year we had. This is usually the second quarter is a quarter where this company generate cash, supported by the start of the delivery season.
Despite this temporary absorption, the net financial position remained positive at around EUR 18 million. Final remarks of this call, before to provide the final remarks, as every year after the Q1, we provide the annual guidance. The guidance set out expected net revenues in the range of approximately EUR 1.25 billion-EUR 1.265 billion, and adjusted EBITDA in the range approximately EUR 203 million-EUR 210 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin between 16.2%-16.6%. CapEx is expected in the range of approximately EUR 70 million-EUR 75 million, but is currently under revision. The guidance is framed around our current backlog and expected delivery schedule, while acknowledging that timing dynamics can influencing phasing through the year. We are confident to provide this guidance.
Final remarks before to step down and leave the floor to Stassi. The negotiation in place, just to summarize our point, the negotiation in place is at record level. The demand is there, and now we have to be focused in converting the negotiation into order. Europe remain a key growth driver, and we'll see the next effect with the Venice Boat Show that will start in few days. Other point regarding financial communication is important to remark that with appointment of the new board of directors, the company is entering a new phase of strategic development. The management is already working with the board to define a new business plan that will set the priorities and grow ambition for the next phase.
An updated strategy will be formally presented to the market through a Capital Markets Day by the end of 2026. Thank you so much. Stassi, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Marco. It's clear that Q1 was softer than what we would have wanted. It is equally clear that we are all confident that this is something that we're going to be catching up over the next coming quarters. Confidence, however, should not be confused with complacency. We're within now putting actions in place, following up with customers, reviewing our invisible costs, and we are going to work very hard together to develop both the short-term, mid-term, and long-term plans to make sure that we deliver against our commitments. Thank you very much.
Thank you for listening to our first quarter 2026 result presentation. We are now ready to start the Q&A session. We will start by live question and later move to the written question. The first question is from Emanuele Gallazzi from Equita. Emanuele, unmute yourself and go ahead.
Can you hear me?
Can you-
Can you hear me now?
Can you speak louder? Yes.
Okay, perfect. Hi, everybody. Thank you for taking my question. I actually have three questions. The first one is for Mr. Anastassov, if I may. First of all, thank you for your presentation. I know it's very early, but can you share with us your, let's say, initial thoughts on the yachting industry momentum, and let's say the very first strategic aspect that you would like to start working on? I don't know, it's distribution, new model, brand development, or cost control. The second one is on the order intake. Clearly, in the first quarter, the order intake was weak. You mentioned a high level of negotiation.
Can you just give us a sense on how the order intake has evolved in April and early May, and how confident you are on converting the current negotiation in actual orders in this environment? The last one is for Marco. The net working capital was over 20% of sales in the first quarter. How do you see it evolving through the year? Thank you.
Thank you. Well, on the first question, a business is a business. Ultimately, people buy a combination of a brand and a technological performance. That in itself is not very different from many other businesses. There we really need to make sure that there are some short-term actions and obviously some longer-term actions. The shorter-term actions are delivery, timing, how do we make sure that we reassure some of our customers about the stability of the company to turn this backlog into numbers that are going to be visible in our next presentation. Clearly, my short-term focus is on converting all these discussions and negotiations into actual orders. It also is driven by the season, as you can see, that we do have the next coming two, three months that are dictating my agenda and my travel plan.
In parallel, I will be looking at what goes below the so-called iceberg, meaning the cost structure, platform thinking between the brands. Have we really exhausted those opportunities? What are the decisions we need to make today that will be impacting our product and range in the next coming 24- 48 months cycle? I hope that that answers that priority. On the second priority, on the second question was, I think Marco should take that as well.
Yeah. Order intake. Emanuele, order intake, what is our guess for for next quarter? I can tell you that April was not bad if compared with prior year, with April last year. Currently, May, we have a significant number of negotiation currently under discussion and hopefully in conversion already in May. Again, with Stassi on board, it's our priority to go and meet personally many of this negotiation in place, especially for mid and bigger-size boat in order to speed up this process. Last point about net working capital. Yes, net working capital, you know, net working capital is being affected. Okay, I explained to you before the seasonality first. On top of that, the seasonality was affected by two points. One is what we don't want to hide the elephant in the room. Lower order intake.
Lower order intake means lower down payment. Down payment, you know, I explained several time that we consider order at least not only contract sign, but must be secured by a non-refundable deposit of at least 10%. You can close also this gap with it. On top of that, the postponement requested by some Middle East customer that for sure we wanted to make them happy. Now step by step, we resolve it. Again, it's something unexpected due to the slowdown of the order intake, but we are confident to bring this figure again ranging between 12% and 16% across the year, but in very short term.
Very clear. Thank you all.
The next question is from Adrien Duverger from Goldman Sachs. Adrien, go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, Mr. Anastassov, Mr. Zammarchi, and Margherita. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Adrien Duverger from Goldman Sachs. My first question would be for you, Mr. Anastassov. What has surprised you the most since joining the business? Obviously, I know it's still very early days, but hopefully you had the opportunity to start getting a better understanding, what do you currently see as your top priority? Is it the U.S. market, and what actions can you take to improve the order intake? My second question would be on the EBITDA margin guidance that you provided today. What are the different building blocks, and what can we expect in the outer years? Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Well, it's very interesting that the most surprising thing to me was not in the actual product or category, but in the customer base. We're talking about a couple of 100 products that are being sold per year compared to the couple of 100 million products that are in the FMCG industry. The whole commercial process is the one that is at the heart of this company. How to delight, how do we convert a high-net-worth individual that is aspiring to have one of our beautiful products, not only to an initial purchaser, but to a repeat purchaser that stays with our franchise and evolves with us over time, and ideally buys even more than one vessel.
This is why also when Marco talks to you about the numbers, sometimes one closed deal or two would have changed totally the presentation of today. Yes, there is a sub-question in your first question, which is about the U.S. I understand and I agree that the current share of the U.S. business of the total franchise today is something that is a significant opportunity. It's way too early for me to understand exactly what is driving that lower than my expectations number. I believe it is usually a combination of slightly different taste in terms of what are the requirements from a yacht and how it's being used in the U.S. to also our ability to serve and identify also a growing number of high-net-worth individuals in the U.S.
It's both understanding what they really want and how we can adapt our portfolio to better meet their needs. As you know, maybe at Procter & Gamble, we call this consumerist boss. We need to understand what the boss wants, but also how do we actually penetrate that segment and market ourselves in that segment in the U.S. that may be different than what we've come to become comfortable with in Europe, with the Monaco, the boat shows and so on. There are different touch points that we need to understand. As you said, it's a bit too early for me to give you a definite answer. Thank you.
About the EBITDA, you know, we reported 16.1%. That is higher than 10 basis points by 10 basis points versus prior year, and we provide the guidance to be in between 16.2% and 16.6%. The rationale behind our guidance are the mix, because we expect to generate more and more revenues in the most profitable segment that are high Composite and Made-To-Measure together coupled with the Superyacht. first, we expect, thanks to the market dynamics, to get some more favorable condition in procurement, and to continue to leverage on fixed cost assumption. That is one of our winning points of the prior year.
Again, as we did the last year, and we never give up, a very focused cost discipline on SG&A. That's our rationale behind the guidance between 16.2% and 16.6%. I hope it's clear.
Yeah. Very clear. Thank you very much, both.
The next question is from Carmen Novel from Akros. Carmen, go ahead.
Hi. Hi, everyone. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Sure.
Okay. Thank you for taking my question. I just have a quick one on governance, if I may. We recently read some articles on the newspaper about some comments made by KKCG on the shareholders meeting of last week. I was wondering if you can give us some comments or color on that, if you can.
Is this directed to me?
Yeah.
Could you specify? There have been a lot of articles. What specifically is it that you are wondering? That will help me answer.
I mean a bit in general. sorry, I hear my voice in the audio.
We hear you very well, by the way.
Okay. A bit in general on the comments, about, I mean, the, the management of the shareholder meeting and the about the potential strategy that you can implement in the future years and, yeah, a bit in general, a bit on color on that if you-
Sure.
If you can.
Sure. Look, I see my role as running the company and delighting our customers and our shareholders based on the results. My role is not political in any way, but I will give it a try. If you have had a shareholder for 14 years and a leadership team and CEO for 12 years, that shows a lot of stability. The only thing that has changed is that there is a new CEO. From a governance standpoint, I think I've had now the chance to meet our board. We probably have the most the board with the largest number of independent board members. They're all great professional people. The majority shareholder has invested in the business 14 years ago when the business was not doing well and put in capital and resources in making Ferretti what it is today.
The previous management team, led by the CEO, had the chance to do this for 12 years. I do not necessarily, from my vantage point, see anything different or anything that would worry, whether that's a customer considering to buy a boat from us or anybody else. As said, that's my take from it. My job is to deliver the results and to inform you about our outlook in the most fair and honest way. The rest, I will leave it to our shareholders to sort out.
Okay, thank you very much.
The next question is from Chiara Tomesani from UBS. Chiara, go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes.
Thank you for taking my questions. I have three. The first one is on the CapEx guidance, and I wanted to ask if you could provide more color on the split between growth and maintenance CapEx. My second question is on the current pricing environment, and I'd like to ask if there has been any changes since the 2, 3 percentage point mentioned at the full year results. My third and last question is on demand dynamics, and I'd like to ask whether any orders have been canceled or postponed, or is this just the buying decision that is being delayed? Thank you very much.
About the CapEx guidance, we, as we mentioned in our guidance, we believe that this year we will spend between EUR 70 million and EUR 75 million. Most of them will be focused in R&D, as just following the trend of the first quarter. We have more than 60 model in our portfolio. We are planning to introduce, as usual, something between three and four model that have been decided three, four years ago, and now they are ready to enter into the market, and we are preparing for the next generational model. Meanwhile, we are refreshing, so we are talking about restyling, facelift, technological update of some models.
This is the backbone of the CapEx that we think it will expand in 2026. The residual 1/3 is just ordinary maintenance or small expansion of our current facility. Now, our occupancy, the utilization of our facility is about 80%, so we don't need additional CapEx on production capacity.
Maybe it's something that we have to think about Superyacht, but it's not for sure for 2026. The second one, it was about the pricing environment, right?
Yeah, correct.
What's happened is nothing has been changed from 2025. For a boat product over 30 m , I'm speaking about Made-To-Measure and Superyacht, competition is not on pricing. We are still fighting with the other three, in some cases four competitors in this segment, but usually is not on pricing. What we see in pricing is something that it's already happened in 2025 for the entry-level model, so boat below 24 m , 80 ft. There are still some competitors, especially the British one, that are continuing to be quite aggressive into the market with very, very aggressive pricing.
In our, in As we already said last year, we do prefer to slow down our production rate and not to enter in this kind of competition because it's very, very easy to provide a discount in order to sell some more unit. To recover the marginality and the prices, it takes years. We don't want to enter in this kind of competition. For, in, also in consideration that discounting policy cannot last forever. Sooner or later when they have finished their inventory, for sure they have to stop this process. On top of that, according our current strategy, we wanted to be more and more focused in the most profitable segment. The Composite, Made-To-Measure and branded Superyacht.
We wanted to skip this kind of competition.
If I may add, it's very easy to destroy a brand. The first and surest way to destroy a brand is by starting to discount it in the face of competitive pressure. We need to really be careful. We cannot be commercially ignorant, but we need to be very careful to be guided by what competition is doing, and instead find ways to delight our customers with our toolbox, which should be a superior quality and superior design so that we in reality would not have a directly competitive offering. Clearly, we would not be considering to enter the game of the discounting. That is not the right way. I'm fully aligned with the long-term management and guidance of my predecessors on this point.
Last point instead was about order cancellation, if any, right?
Yes, please.
Okay. Nothing has been changed in our business. At least in our company, we don't see any cancellation or they were very rare. We are talking about three, four per year in the last five years, and no cancellation till now. I wanted to remind that it is according our selling approach, as I mentioned before, when someone is signing an order, he has to deposit a non-refundable deposit of at least 10%, and then following some stage payment. If a customer decided to step down, he lose at least the non-refundable deposit, plus the reselling cost of selling his boat. In many cases, it could happen that the customer decided to change idea and to step down this process.
It's better to, for him to take deliveries and then to resell it by itself once delivery is done. That's the reason we are quite protected as business model from this kind of event.
Got it. Thank you so much.
Welcome.
The next question is from Niccolò Storer from Kepler. Niccolò, go ahead. Okay, he disappeared. The next question is from Michael Nizienski from Roth Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes.
Yeah. Hi, everyone. I have a question for the, for the new team. Can you please give us your thoughts on the, on the company's free cash flow generation over the years? Because if we look at the past eight years, Ferretti generated about EUR 964 million of cumulative EBITDA, so close to a billion. If we look at the free cash flow generation for those same eight years, it only comes to about EUR 100 million, which implies a very, very weak free cash flow conversion from, you know, free cash flow to EBITDA conversion, 10%. You know, we saw again, obviously Q1 quite weak, with close to EUR 100 million negative free cash flow generation, which beyond the normal seasonal weak Q1. You know, question for the new CEO, you know, have you identified that?
Is this going to be a priority for you in the future to make this not only a profitable company, you know, in EBITDA and EBIT, but also a company that actually makes cash? Because it has not been the case for the past eight years, unfortunately. You know, it has become a concern, I believe. I have a second question. You know, the management transition was obviously quite brutal. You know, some shareholders like myself worry about, you know, some of the relationships, client relationships that have, you know, that could be damaged as a result of this unusual transition. Can you give some reassurance on that? That'd be helpful. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Let me start with the second question. This, as I mentioned to you before, is the number one priority to reassure our current customer base. Let's not forget that no company is one person, and there is a very capable, brilliant team that is behind the results at Ferretti. That's a team internally, that's also a team externally. Having spent the past 72 hours, or actually it's 48 hours, with the different people, I do not see a company here in crisis or a company here with people walking the corridors worried. I see people that are incredibly motivated to, as they call it, deliver the season. All resources available to the company are being put against securing this season and reassuring.
This is why, as I mentioned maybe during my comments, I've even spoken to several of our agents and distributors thereof, Lia Riva in Monte Carlo. We are on it, and we're doing what we can with a great Ferretti team today. Marco, do you want to take the second question?
Sure. You mentioned the cash flow generation. Okay, let me recap some points. EBITDA is what you mentioned. On the other hand, CapEx cycle, it was this company needed in order to continue to grow. In 2022, the facility utilization, it was 97% fully occupied. It was not possible to continue to grow unless this company could make some CapEx in order to expand the production capacity. At that time, the company decided to expand our production capacity, thanks to the investment in Ravenna shipyard that provide us an additional 30% additional production capacity, plus some expansion in Ancona and also in La Spezia, for a total of roughly EUR 380 million in the last three year.
As I mentioned before, unless there's some M&A activity that at the moment we are taking into valuation, we don't expect from 2026 to have a huge investment. It should help a lot the cash generation. Secondly, I don't know if it's good news or bad news. In 2024, we completely offset our tax asset. Thanks to the tax losses that this company has generated before the crisis, we accumulate more than EUR 140 million of tax asset. Step by step we consume it. In 2024, 2025, and hopefully the next year, this company start paying taxes. Dividends, we are already distributing 40% of our consolidated net income. In a nutshell, these are the main rationale about the cash flow generation.
I believe that unless a new CapEx plan, this company could start to convert most of its EBITDA in cash. Last but not least, working capital. I don't want to skip this one. The starting point that you mentioned was very peculiar starting point. At that time, You know, working capital, let me explain the working capital dynamics. The working capital dynamics of every segment is quite different. For example, in Superyacht, the working capital is negative because we produce just an order. It's usually it's ranging between 0% and -10%, depend on the stage of construction.
In Made-To-Measure, in Made-To-Measure it was neutral because we in order to squeeze the production time, we produce in advance without an order hull and superstructure. The working capital is neutral. It's ranging between -5% and +5%. What is really generate the working capital, affecting the working capital, is the Composite segment that usually is ranging between 20% and 30%, because we have to produce in advance something ready to be bought by our potential customer. This is practically a normal, ideal situation of our business. Well, if we go back to 2021 and also 2022, we were living with an in my opinion, unrepeatable situation where the working capital of the Composite yacht was negative. The incredible demand that we receive for our order had the two effect.
First of all, to clean up all the inventory that usually we keep on display on the U.S. market. On top of that, we had a lot of advanced payment also for Composite yacht. This is bring, if my memory works well, the working capital of the Composite segment in a negative field. Also the Made-To-Measure was extremely negative. I believe this is was something that I don't believe we can repeat. What we have to work with is, the, to be quite careful in CapEx activity and to be more focused in generating EBITDA.
I hope it's clear.
Yeah.
But I will-
Another question.
Sorry.
Sorry. Go ahead, please, sir.
I just wanted to Because your question was, is it on my radar screen? The answer is yes. Is it important? The answer is yes. Are we going to look at different options that we have? The answer is yes. It's a very good question.
No, thank you. I mean, I'll say one thing is, you know, I appreciate there was Ravenna, and the other expansion plan which cost, you know, EUR 350 million over three years or four years. Even if we adjust for that, you know, the free cash flow generation over those past eight years, EUR 100 million-EUR 450 million versus an EBITDA of about EUR 1 billion. You know, even if we adjust for that, you know, the free cash flow conversion wasn't great. You're right, I mean, a lot of it came to working capital and the working capital dynamics. I mean, I understand there are moving parts with Composite, you know, very different dynamics than, you know, the bigger boats.
Yeah, if there could be some focus on this and just, you know, generation in general, I think that that'd be great. You said there would be a normalization of working capital after the Q1, which was quite weak. Can you perhaps give us a sense of where you would want Q2 working capital as a percentage of sales Q2 to roughly?
I believe that we usually bring in Q2 in the range between 12%-14%. Usually our company is reacting immediately to the working capital by adjusting production outflow. So is a company that usually react quite well. I believe, we should be in this range.
12%-14% end of Q2.
Yeah.
All right. Thank you.
Welcome.
We have one last question from Niccolò Storer. Niccolò, please go ahead.
Okay. Thanks for taking my question. Actually, follow up to Emanuele's question on working capital. Is it possible to quantify the amount of higher working capital which was due to the mentioned delivery postponements to Middle Eastern client? I mean, was it a big portion of the EUR 100 million?
EUR 20 million.
Right calculation build up you have had in Q1? Thank you.
Niccolò, it was about EUR 20 million, now fully collected.
Perfect. Thank you.
You're welcome.
We have no more questions, so thank you again for following our results and have a good day.
Thank you. Bye.