Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Ferretti Group Nine Months 2026 Results Conference Call. Thank you for joining us today and for continued interest in Ferretti Group. My name is Elisabetta Cugnasca, and I am Head of Investor Relations and Sustainability at Ferretti Group. Let me introduce today's speaker, Mr. Stassi Anastassov, our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Marco Zammarchi, our Chief Financial Officer. Today's presentation will cover the key business highlights and financial results and will be followed by a Q&A session. Throughout the presentation, you may submit your written question using the Q&A function on Zoom. We will address as many questions as possible at the end of the presentation. You may also ask a question live by using the raise hand function.
Before handing over to our speaker, I would like to remind you two points. As usual, you must draw your attention to the disclaimer slide inserted in the annex part of the presentation that I hope you were able to download from our website. Second, we kindly ask members of the press to join today's conference call in listen-only mode. With that, we can begin today's presentation.
I will now hand over to our Chief Executive Officer, Stassi Anastassov.
Good morning, everyone. We're in beautiful Fort Lauderdale. If my voice breaks up, it's because I'm just coming out of a little flu session, but I had a doctor told me I'll be totally perfect today at 6:55 A.M., and it's 7:01 here in the U.S. So let's see how it goes. The most important message from our nine-month results. You have a few points on the screen, but let me give you my take on those. Ferretti is regaining momentum. I saw that firsthand, having attended every single boat show over the past three months and now Fort Lauderdale. Our brands are demonstrating their strength, our commercial recovery is progressing, and we have a clear plan to translate that momentum into stronger and more profitable growth. Our third quarter results demonstrate what Ferretti is capable of delivering.
Order intake grew by 6.6%, and revenue increased by 13.6%, even against a strong third quarter last year. This is after a 5.6% revenue decline in the first half. We have recovered broadly, to the same revenue level as last year after the first nine months. This, of course, allows us and gives us confidence to confirm our full year revenue guidance. This is meaningful progress in context, in context of what everybody was talking about economy, customers, issues, disputes, et cetera. I want to recognize the commitment of our people across the group who are making it happen. At the same time, we have further work to do on profitability. I'm not shying away from the profit numbers.
Going down from 16%- 14.7% compared to last year is not what I wanted, not what none of us feel good about, and clearly not something that we wanted, which is to revise our full year guidance to EUR 174 million- EUR 185 million. We got some bad surprises. Bad news is we were surprised, good news is I see them much more as one-offs than something structurally wrong with the business. We have a clear understanding of the drivers, and our priority is to turn the recovery in growth into recovery in profitability. We are really taking action on pricing, product mix, efficiency of our operations, and the way we execute. Looking across our businesses, there are several encouraging signs. The composite orders increased by 28%. This reflects the strength of our product portfolio, brands, and recent launches.
In Europe, the region where I feel we've been the least affected with any economics, order intake grew by 23% on a like-for-like basis. This is really a powerful demonstration of our brands. People love our brands. Next time, let's please have a meeting at one of our boat shows. Our organization commercially is firing on all cylinders to deliver these boat shows, and the results proved it, and we're looking forward to also great boat shows here in Fort Lauderdale. We want, of course, to replicate that success across all the markets. As I mentioned, we're in Fort Lauderdale, and Americas and Middle East are real opportunities that we must fix. Order intake is down approximately 40%. The challenges are different. They're two very different regions. Some of them, like in the Middle East, are geopolitical uncertainty, and this delays and affects consumer decisions.
In the Americas, frankly, we have a lot of self-cooked problems there that we're in the process of fixing in terms of our strength of commercial organization, execution, and overall reach of the growing number of billionaires that this country is delivering every week. We're addressing the Americas forcefully with new programs. We're addressing the Americas with discussions and ways to increase our footprint in this country, and we're going to see the results coming later on because a recovery doesn't happen overnight, and none of us is going to come with promises for something that we're not confident about. In Super Yacht, we have not had an order, and this is one of the big disappointments of the first nine months.
It would've been easy to have a couple of hundred million of Super Yacht orders to be in our balance sheet, but what is good is that we have many very interesting and advanced discussions in that segment. Overall, we currently have about EUR 680 million of active negotiations in our group. These, of course, represent opportunities, not yet orders, but they demonstrate the potential ahead of us. Our priority is clear: convert this potential into profitable business. This brings me to the bigger picture. We're not simply working to improve one quarter or one year. This would be wrong for me, for us, and the wrong message to really deliver, put all stops in, and try to avoid something that we know we want to fix in a more structural way.
We are transforming Ferretti, strengthening our products, our design, our portfolio, bringing more ownable innovation in-house, not outsourced, quality being fixed, manufacturing being made more efficient, and a significant improvement of our owner experience and organization. As I've said before, the best way to deliver new sales is to delight our current customers, our current owners, and we have significant work that is in progress in those areas. Our ambition is to create a company whose operational and financial performance consistently matches the great quality of its brand and the outstanding quality of its people.
My message is we're confident, we have a great company, we're confident we have great plans ahead across all vectors of performance. We're determined, we're acting, and we're not complacent. Our revenue recovery is progressing. Our opportunities are now to make sure that our profits progress the same way. We know what we need to improve, and we're building on our strengths and fixing our challenges to create the foundation of a much stronger Ferretti, much happier organization, happier shareholders, and also happier analysts.
Marco, can you build on this, please?
Good morning. Morning, everyone. We'll move on to the financial result. Let me start with an overall picture of the company, and let me repeat a couple of concepts already expressed by Stassi, but I believe they are quite important to understand the current environment where the company operates. The first one is regarding the order intake of the last quarter because the third quarter marked a clear improvement in commercial momentum. Order intake returned to growth, increasing by 6.6%, and also revenue grew by 13.6%. This recovery also translated into greater visibility. Net backlog stabilized during the quarter. 2026 revenue coverage is now above 85%, and approximately EUR 400 million of secure revenues extend beyond 2026. Taken together, these elements support our decision to confirm full-year revenue guidance.
Let us now look at what drove this improvement, starting with performances by segment. As you can appreciate from this slide, the recovery was primarily driven by composite, where order intake increased by 28% over the first nine months, supported by the strong reception of both new and existing models. Itama is a clear example of the potential created by a successful brand relaunch, with the new Itama 70 and Itama 80 contributing to renewed commercial momentum. Made-to-measure and Super Yacht remain weaker, reflecting longer and more complex negotiation cycle in the current environment. By the way, at the end of September, we had approximately EUR 680 million of negotiation underway, with the majority concentrated in a higher end segment.
Among them, we have a non-refundable LOI that are in progress to be finalized in the current quarter. While these negotiations are not reflected in the order intake, they provide a meaningful indication of the underlying commercial activity and the future order generation potential. Let us now look at what this recovery developed across our key geography. One of the strengths of our business is its geographic diversification, which helps us balance different market dynamics across the region. For example, Europe returned to growth, supported by the strong performance of the composite during the summer and the boat show season. Given its scale within the group, Europe was the largest contributor to the improvement in order intake during the quarter.
Asia-Pacific continued its consistent growth path and now represents approximately 8% of the group order intake, returning to a level broadly in line with where it was around three years ago. MEA, as we mentioned before, remains affected by geopolitical uncertainty and longer negotiation processes. Instead, in the Americas, we are approaching the beginning of the U.S. boating season, traditionally the most important commercial period for the region. This renewed commercial momentum is also beginning to translate into a more positive backlog trend. Net backlog increased slightly during the quarter, but the most important message is the change that we are seeing beneath the total number. If you look carefully at the breakdown, you see different messages.
Composite backlog returned to strong growth in absolute terms, reaching levels we have not seen for approximately 10 quarters and marking a clear change in trend after almost two years of contraction. At the same time, made-to-measure and Super Yacht division continue to provide significant medium and long-term visibility. As discussed earlier, the majority of our ongoing negotiations are concentrated in this segment, and once converted into order, they typically remain in backlog for a much longer period. Taken together, these elements give us increasing confidence that the recent stabilization of the net backlog can develop into a more positive trend. The improvement in commercial momentum is already reflected, as we mentioned before, in our revenue performances.
In fact, the nine-month revenues reached EUR 889 million, broadly in line with the prior year, and the stronger summer performances allowed us to substantially close the gap accumulated during the first half. Europe and Asia-Pacific were the main contributor to growth, while MEA remained affected by the factors already discussed. Overall, the revenue outlook remains solid and supported the decision to confirm the full-year revenue guidance. Let me now turn to the evolution of the adjusted EBITDA. In this slide, we decided to provide the full visibility of what's happened during the first nine months of this year, because we believe it's good for everyone to understand what is the rationale behind, most of them are temporary ones, and so on. Let me illustrate a little bit what's happened.
As we said, the adjusted EBITDA declined from EUR 141.7 million- EUR 130.6 million, with the margin decrease from 16% to 14.7%. This deterioration reflects a combination of factors. First, a less favorable sales mix, reflecting the temporary lower contribution from the made-to-measure segment during this period. Second, some of our vertically integrated activities were affected by some temporary operational issues during this period, resulting in additional costs and delays. Third, increased competitiveness pressure across the industry, which resulted in a more challenging pricing and discounting environment. Fourth, we highlighted the short-term economic impact of a long-term initiative designed to strengthen our competitive position and customer experience. Finally, higher revenues during the summer improved fixed cost absorption and partially reduced the pressure experienced during the first half, although not enough to offset them completely.
While profitability remains our main area of focus, the group continues to maintain a disciplined approach to investment and a solid financial profile. During the first nine months, CapEx declined by about 30% compared with the prior year. This reflects the benefit of the significant production capacity investments completed in recent years. The group now is benefiting from a production platform operating at close to 80% utilization, excluding the Super Yacht division. This is explaining the lower level of expansion CapEx compared with the prior year. We continue to invest in a selective way in product development and innovation, with the R&D remaining the main focus of investment. In fact, you see that more than 60% of our CapEx are in this area.
A specific highlight on the Super Yacht division, because as is already operating at a significantly higher utilization level, and we think that we may require additional investment to support future growth, in line we have already communicated in yesterday press release. This disciplined approach to investment is also reflecting our financial position and net working capital evolution. The group closed September with a solid net financial position of approximately EUR 42 million, despite the normal seasonal increase in net working capital. The higher net working capital absorption mainly reflect two factor. In one hand, the normal seasonality ahead of the U.S. boating season, and on the other hand, the lower contractual advances from made-to-measure and Super Yacht project.
In other words, the company, and in general the industry, receive a lot of boost in term of cash generation when they get the order, because many of the orders are, according our production approach, we is not starting producing until the order is arrived. That means that when we get an order, we have a big impact on our net financial position. It's something linked to this current slowdown in the order intake in this two segment. The second one, and we wanted to highlight this point, is that the value of a finished yacht and the unit under construction on speculation decreased compared with prior year. That means that we are managing in a quite efficient way the inventories. So the increase in net working capital mainly driven by this business mix and the different profile of customer advance, rather than higher inventory.
Overall, our financial position remains solid and provide the group with significant financial flexibility. With all this background, let me now turn on to our updated 2026 guidance. Based on the performance of the first nine month and the improvement in commercial activity during the third quarter, we confirm our full-year revenue guidance. At the same time, we are revising our profitability guidance to reflect the margin performance seen year to date. The revised range provide a more realistic view of the expected full-year outcome, and more importantly, the factor behind the margin deterioration that we share with the financial community are clearly identified and action are already underway.
Our focus is on the areas that we can directly influence, so pricing discipline, product competitiveness, performance of our vertical integrated activities, strategic partnership with the supplier, product development, and operational execution. Our objective is straightforward: stop the deterioration and progressively rebuild profitability, while preserving, at the same moment, the commercial momentum achieved in this very good third quarter.
With that, let me hand over to Stassi for some additional consideration. We will discuss the strategic priority and the opportunity for the group.
Thank you, Marco. I want to take this slide myself because having been there every day with our salespeople, with brokers, with agents, with owners. Remember, this was my first boat show season. I am blown away by the power of our brands. You should have been there, and I hope that we can arrange a conference next time, next year. You will be very welcome, because the stands were full. The interest for our business, for our brands, all our seven brands, actually, because I am also, obviously, with my background, looking at do we have too many brands, too few brands, et cetera. I was frustrated I did not see any huge opportunities because the interest was as big for Itama, that had a wonderful sale season, as it was for Riva, that has always been our most prestigious brand.
When you look at these levels of growth, on one hand, I am happy about the 23% growth and the revenue driving nicely towards delivering our forecast. The one number I am not happy about is 58% share of group orders, because this leads me to the other slide, the Americas. I have never been in a company where the U.S. has not been at least 40% of the global business, and I am struggling to understand why the Americas should not be much stronger, much bigger. This is why we are here, and the minute we finish our call, we have very important meetings with external partners, really focusing on what we can do in terms of driving our brands, making them stronger here, increasing our footprint. Do not think that it is only about sales. There are areas that we internally need to do better.
We cannot sell Italian brands and force them onto American habits. We need to sell amazing Italian brands that are perfect for the way Americans want to use their yachts and their specific ways of enjoying time with their families. There is some work to be done also internally to make our great brands even more attractive and better for this region. Super Yacht division. You will be surprised when I tell you that this is one of my most positive impressions. I have been personally with a team involved in multiple discussions, some very early, some more advanced, even some where we were expecting to potentially announce something earlier than we can. But the number of zero is grossly misleading relative to what I believe we can achieve and what we will achieve.
You will be surprised if I tell you that, here again, the brands are the power, to some extent, to the Super Yacht division. People come to me and ask me, "Hey, can you do something like Riva? Can you do one of these 80 m?" Or 88 even, somebody asked. So the brands we have. Or Wally. Somebody come in and say, "Well, this is amazing, but why don't you have a 50, 60 m Wally?" We should talk that next time, and I would love to have the opportunity to host you in Ancona, where we can present to you what we are doing on Super Yachts.
There is a reason why, if you move to the next slide, we are looking at securing not only being able to move to 100 m from our current limitations, but also we are in pretty advanced negotiations to increase our overall capacity of Super Yachts. The zero is today. The ambition is much, much bigger than that. Now, lastly, when I said that we are rebuilding Ferretti, it is not because Ferretti is a bad business. It is because Ferretti is a good business, but it is not yet the best business in yachting. It probably never will be, because no company is ever the best. That is why many of you may have read in academia the book that is called "Good to Great," and that is what we always will have with every company, with every business. But the important is not to come with slogans.
It is really to sharpen the saw on every area that can actually affect our current business and the returning customers. We are moving into much more brand-focused operation, where we will have people that live and die with the success of each brand. We are expanding and refining our dealer operations across the world, now focusing on the U.S. We are expanding great relationships with brokers, and I have to admit, we have been less broker-focused than many of our competitors. We will have dedicated programs with leadership reporting straight into me on each region, and each region will have its own specific agenda and will have its own specific organization to deliver the results. We actually completed our board meeting that we held here in Fort Lauderdale, and a big part of the agenda was our Americas general manager presenting to the team.
These are the type of things we are going to do much more often, putting people on the spot, showing what they are doing, showing what the opportunities are, and importantly, coming forward with what they need to make their regions grow faster. I did exactly the same thing last week in Hong Kong with our APAC leader that also did not do that before, but will now report straight into me. We are reworking our supply network design. We are looking at efficiencies. I mentioned to you one of the disappointments around profits. There was a very bad surprise with one of our internal suppliers, and we discovered things we could not flow down into the profits, and we are fixing that decisively. Lastly, no business is better than its organization.
We are putting in place great talent development programs to enhance further the performance. This goes down all the way to the artisans building and polishing our boats. We are even working with the authorities to support and strengthen artisans in Italy because we want to have the best artisans working for us and not for anybody else. We need to invest and make sure that we can develop these people. There will be much more to come because we are not talking about improving the company, we are actually doing it. We are addressing each of these elements one by one to make sure we have the best brands, best technologies, and happiest owners. I am very convinced that we are on the right path. Thank you.
Thanks to you, Mr. Anastassov. Thanks also to you for listening to our nine-month 2026 results conference presentation. We are now ready for the Q&A session. We will start with live question and later move on to the written question. The first question came from Emanuele Gallazzi from Equita.
Can you hear me?
Yes, please go ahead.
Okay, perfect. Thank you for taking my question. I actually have two questions. I will focus on the commercial strategy, which seems to me, let's say, a material change versus your previous approach, and in particular, starting from the pricing. Can you quantify the average discount rate currently offered to your customers, I presume, in the composite segment versus perhaps last year or versus the level assumed in your initial budget for 2026? Still on the commercial strategy on the extension of the warranty period by one additional year, can you quantify the expected incremental cash cost or the impact on EBITDA on a full year basis from these commercial initiatives?
The last one is on the guidance. Can you help us understanding the moving parts as there is just one quarter left, and there is still a difference between the lower and upper part of the guidance, just to understand the moving parts there and if you can, an indication on the net working capital of sales expectation for the end of the year.
Okay. Many questions. Remind me if I miss one, okay? Commercial strategy. Please, let's not read too much in the tea leaves. We're talking about EUR 2 million against a EUR 324 million order intake, and we're not talking about changing commercial structure, increasing discounts, et cetera. That's why I said that the impact on the margin that you see is much more of a one-off nature and much easier to fix than you would expect. It's about EUR 2 million. There were some opportunistic opportunities that we did not want to give up, and that's the impact. But the answer is there is no change in commercial strategy, nor is there any plan to go and start giving discounts to take every order and to meet competitive pricing.
As a matter of fact, yesterday said no to a deal based on a very, I would say, modest need to go down in price, and we said, "No, we're not going to do that on our brand because that's not the game want to be in." On the impact of the one-year Ferretti Quality Promise, I have to say, Marco and I had a long discussion, actually, several discussions, Marco, correct? Going back and forth. So this slide has had that impact in, and we have the same variation of the slide without that impact because this is a bit of a funny money. Nothing has really happened.
It's an accounting principle of a potential increase based on a three-year promise because it's going from one year. No, from two years to three years, and what potentially do we need to, from an accounting correct standpoint, put into our profits already today. This is something that has not actually happened, but it's also something that we're totally committed to eliminate because we're working on further improvements of quality. When I say further improvements of the quality, I'm actually talking about the suppliers, because the majority of the warranty actually affects the supplier base we have that are delivering to us. We're working very diligently with all our suppliers, and the majority are jumping on the boat with us on increasing their warranties.
I don't believe that you're going to see any impact of this long term. What was the third question?
The guidance. The gap between the lower and the upper part of the guidance, and if possible, indication on what net working capital on sales by the end of the year.
Okay. Can we move to the test? Okay. Someone can help me. Okay, the guidance, first of all, the rationale behind the third quarter result is taking into consideration some factor that we already taken into account for the full year estimation. In other words, some operational issue that we describe has been already factorized in our number. We believe that if we simply maintain the path that we have had in the first nine months, which we are quite confident to stay in this range between 14.5 and 14.9. It's just the reflection of what we experience now. We don't see any reason to modify the impact of discounting. Sales mix, as we mentioned before, it was the temporary absence of made-to-measure, and given the significant number of negotiation in place, we believe that can be restored.
Taking into consideration all this factor, we bring the confidence to stay in this range. In term of net working capital, you know that the fourth quarter is a quarter where usually we generate cash. This industry generate cash. According to our estimation, we should be in a range of EUR 60 million-EUR 65 million, and the impact on the net working capital will be more or less of the same magnitude. Because, as I mentioned before, what we miss in our net working capital is the contribution from the contractual advances. The management of the stock has improved versus prior year, and I believe that will continue to be under control.
I don't know, Emanuele, if everything is clear or?
Yeah. Very clear. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you for good questions.
Appreciate.
The next question came from Adrien Duverger of Goldman Sachs. Duverger?
Hi. Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes. Yes, we do.
Thank you very much for taking my questions. Good afternoon, Mr. Anastassov, Mr. Zammarchi, and Elisabetta. My first question would be on the performance by production type. If you could please help us in understanding the performance of each of the different ones. What has supported the return to growth of the composite segment? Conversely, what could explain the made-to-measure slowdown? Is it mainly the regional split, as in the U.S. and the Middle East are slowing down?
Finally, for Super Yacht, do I understand correctly that the clients are a bit less prompt to act because of the waiting times on manufacturing them? My second question would be on your EBITDA guidance. I understood the different moving parts, with the product mix and the additional warranty as well as the operational efficiencies, but if you could please expand on the impact of discounting in the market and how you are thinking about incentives for clients.
Okay. The performances. First of all, the performance amongst the various segment. What we would like to highlight, we have not to blame the composite segment. We are quite happy of what has happened in the composite segment, and because it was really an exceptional quarter for the order intake this area. You know that the conversion of the order of the composite into revenues is quite quick. We see immediate effect. What we are really missing in our order intake is, it was the made-to-measure that is the most profitable segment in the industry. We believe that this is the rationale behind the 40 basis point that we highlight as one of the cause behind the guidance revision.
I f I may, while the negative is the relative, the so-called the hit because of the profitability, just read this. We went from EUR 118 million- EUR 187 million, and this is where you read in the power of the brands, because these are branded superior products. People come to buy Riva, Wally, Pershing, Itama. And I don't have the competitive figures, but I really do not think that anybody can boast to have had, in that segment, such a growth. It could have been an even greater quarter by having been able to book one of our discussions we have on the larger yachts. But let's not miss what really happened here. We really crushed it on our ability to drive forward our brands and to drive the demand for what Ferretti stands for.
Now we need to make sure we can move that love for those brands and showing that we can even translate those strengths into made-to-measure and even Super Yachts, as I mentioned to you in my opening, behind our brands. That is a significant, in my view, competitive edge that we have that very few people can boast with. Please continue, Marco.
Adrien, the second part of your question is to both about the Super Yacht division order intake. Yes, it's correct. The waiting time is still affecting, it was affecting the order intake because, for example, a few days ago, one 80 m left the shed, but from next week, this shed will be occupied again by another Super Yacht that was under construction. So that means that we are at full capacity. So on top of the construction time that is over 24 months for the branded Super Yacht, till five years for the full custom one, we have to add something. But we are also working on increasing the production capacity. And we have a lot of negotiation that we hope to finalize by the year-end, also because a couple of them are under a non-refundable LOI.
And in term of guidance, if I'm not wrong, you were asking about discounting. I believe Stassi has answered before, about discounting. So for clarity, we prefer to provide the full picture of the variances amongst last year and this year. But a 20 basis point in term of competitive dynamics is about EUR 2 million, roughly, something slight less. And so if in our business to provide EUR 20 million to get the good achievement of order intake in the last quarter is something that we can live with. For sure, we are not ready to sell the boat at whatever this price because we believe in the power of our brands. It's something that we wanted to highlight because the market in this moment is quite aggressive, and we have to react in order to maintain our market shares. Was this okay?
Yes. Thank you very much for answering the questions.
Do we have any follow-ups? Thanks. Thanks again.
Next question came from Chiara Tomesani of UBS.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Yes. Thank you.
Beautifully.
Thank you for taking my question. I would like to ask three clarifications. The first one, it is on the Ancona expansion, and I would like to better understand what would be the potential CapEx impact and also the timing of CapEx there. My second question, it is on leadership changes, and I was wondering whether you have seen any senior leaders departing the company in recent times, and also whether you are planning any leadership changes, especially on the sales side going forward, just to further support the commercial strategy. Lastly, I would like to ask whether you have any visibility on the CMD and the possibility of presenting to the market a structured commercial plan with the KPIs that we can track. Thank you so much.
Okay. I take the first one, and I believe the second one, and it is up to Stassi. Okay. The CapEx. Now we are talking about a shipyard that, in total, contributes to generate more of 40% of the total revenues of the group between made-to-measure provided by Custom Line and Super Yacht division. The utilization of this site is over 90%. So within the boundaries of the 80,000 sq m of the Ancona shipyard, we are trying to find additional room in order to fulfill the customer demand. That is the reason why we expanded the shed. We are talking about not a big amount of money. We are talking about a few million euro. That is just the technical cost of expanding the shed.
On top of that, we know that is one of the point that we had to take care of it. We are evaluating some solution. We are not thinking that we are quite impacting from a cash point of view because we are looking something in collaboration with the government. We cannot elaborate at the moment something more. Maybe in the next couple of weeks, we could be more clear on it. Again, we are not talking about big money.
Okay. Very good question on the organization. If you allow me, let me start by, how shall I say, Chiara, giving you my organization philosophy. That hopefully, in a way, may give away some of what I plan to do that I cannot necessarily talk about in detail. The first question that is simple, nobody at senior level has left Ferretti to date that wanted to leave the company voluntarily. Point number one. People actually are very motivated and want to have a great career here. The second one, if you look at our publicly published organization charts on websites and so on, you will see that there is, in some areas, a concentration of power. This is not the way I typically like to run businesses. That's where we come into philosophy.
I have, throughout my career, always wanted to be much closer to the business. That in itself, has led to many more direct reports into me, because that gives me visibility, that gives me ability to influence, and that gives me ability to react very quickly versus multiple layers, getting up to a few people having access to me, and by the time any news or any vision or any bad thing happening has been worked and reworked, and people have been running around trying to fix things before I can get involved. Clearly, I am moving Ferretti to a flatter organization where I can have personal involvement, as I mentioned to you, also directly with the regions versus regional needs being filtered through corporate needs.
I have always one message to the team: do not filter. I'm an adult. I've been running businesses for 40 years. I know what's important, I know what's less important, and I know usually what is the best way forward corporately versus just being scared that, "Oh, if he hears this too early, he may want to impose a decision," and so on. That's not the way I work. I am democratic up to a point, and then I make decisions once I've heard all point of views. Importantly, I want to hear all point of views. The only way to hear more point of views and to be faster, more agile, and stronger is to have a flatter organization with more direct reports into me of absolute top talent.
We're looking at this. I'm working with a great team of people, and this is something that you will see over the next coming months. About the last question about CMD, we expect that the new business plan to be approved by the board in connection with the approval of 2026 financial result. Once approved, we expect to be in a position to share it with the financial community and our investors. The current business plan remain a solid foundation, and we expect many of its strategic priorities to continue into the new plan. Some will be confirmed, while others may evolve. It's just a matter of time. We are working on it.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
You are welcome.
Okay. Next question, please, from Anna Frontani of Berenberg.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, Anna, go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the presentation and thanks for taking my question. Just one on my side. Thank you very much for the profitability bridge, which is very helpful. I was keen to understand, given that you rebased the guidance in July and basically now, three months later, the EBITDA range has come down again. Which of those effect was the main one that you hadn't anticipated in July? And more importantly, how confident are you that the new range now fully reflects it?
Can I take this, Marco? Look, Anna, you are asking the question I hate. How do you think it feels to sit here and take down the guidance again? That is exactly what I was telling Marco. Marco promised me we will not have to take the guidance. I am not blaming anybody, but I would have done the same because we did not have visibility for the internal subsidiary that revealed things we didn't know. I hate myself for that, but I do not know really what I or Marco could have done, and that is the single biggest issue. I can tell you, had that not happened, we could have swung it. We could have taken away the three-year potential impact of the warranty.
We could have maybe pushed harder on something like that and assumed more things in quarter four. That was the killer news that came in. So that tilted the balance.
Okay.
Am I too direct, Marco?
It's clear.
That was very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much. There are no other questions. Therefore, we are thanking you again for your interest in our group, and we hope that you will going on follow us with the same passion that we're working on our company. Thank you. Bye.
No, Elisabetta.
No?
No. I must have a closing statement, okay?
You are absolutely right. I apologize.
No, don't apologize. Okay, first of all, thanks for all the questions. It feels strange to be sitting here having this call and having somehow to have, in some areas, a negative discussion because we are taking down guidance and until a few weeks ago, we felt incredibly good about the way things were going, the demand for our composite business, for our branded business, the very advanced negotiations on Super Yacht division, then came the cold shower, the negative cold shower of having to take down our profit guidance. Let's try to keep a positive big picture here.
We have shown that we have great brands. We have a solid business. We have good visibility on being able not only to deliver 2026, but also go in 2027. We believe that quarter four will be, in our books, a way to further provide clarity on this. You, however, should not forget that we're living in an environment, in a market that has some particular characteristics. For example, the timing of a single Super Yacht contract or a handful of owners taking longer to make the decisions can really swing our company from delivering a fantastic quarter or a modest quarter, even a fantastic year.
We're talking about a couple of orders in Super Yachts, three, four orders, three, four orders in Custom Line. There is a level of volatility, including when we're recording the quarter three 2026 results. In the last minute, we had one of our buyers for a significant order not being able to get the money in, so we decided not to count it. Those are the type of things that happen. Those are the type of things that happen to all the industry, not only to us.
On the geopolitics, the issues in the Middle East are real, but the business we have in the Middle East, the demand we have in the Middle East, the inherent brand strength is very strong. Conversely, the business in the Americas is a different animal. The economy is not fantastic, but to be able to grow, we don't necessarily need a much stronger economy in the Americas, because the ways to fix the Americas are much more in our control. As I've said before, I don't like to be a CEO talking about geopolitics and talking about economy, because we need to be good in good times, and we need to be good in less good times. We cannot be surprised that Christmas Eve is on the 24th of December every year. We need to expect that there will always be turbulence.
What we can absolutely influence to secure growth is to improve our products even more, drive our specific brand design to become even more appealing, make sure that when somebody wants to buy a Riva or a Ferretti or a Pershing or an Itama or a Custom Line, that it's not a matter of a competitor offering a bigger discount. It's because they want to buy our brand. I'm sorry to take analogies, but if you want to buy a, I don't know, a Rolex, you don't go and buy a Hublot or a Panerai because it's 20% cheaper or 30% cheaper. You want to buy that brand, and that should be the same thing, and that will be the same thing when you want to buy a Riva, a Pershing, a Wally, Itama, Custom Line, a Ferretti.
We have a lot of work to do. We're reinforcing our brands. We're reinforcing our designs. We're making significant changes and improvements in the way we manage quality controls, innovation, in-house innovation, R&D. Every single element of what we're doing is being revised. Commercial organization, agents, brokers, everything. Nothing actually goes outside of that lens of making sure we go from what I call from Good to Great. We're not going to build a quarter four or even a 2027. We're building the company for the next two, three, four, five years, and this is what I'm committed to. I don't know if our results are going to be immediately recovering. What I can say is that what is within our areas of control is going to be improved.
In 2027, Ferretti's going to be an even better company, 2028, even better, and 2029, even better. Because we will focus on what makes us better and makes us more attractive to our future owners, and ultimately should deliver better profitability, better visibility, high return on capital, high shareholder return, and you will have to judge when you look at that company and assess our investment grade. The results will prove it, but to get the results, we're focusing now on getting the actions. Thank you very much and looking forward to talking to you.
Do not forget, I said I really want to see many of you in our plans. I want you to come to Ancona, where we can talk to you much more about our Super Yacht division and made-to-measure. I want you to come and visit us, and I really want you to also come in during some of the boat shows that we have. Unfortunately, my next invitation would be to Dubai, where I am going on November 24. I am not sure how many of you wants to come, but we are not letting any stone unturned to deliver great results. Thank you so much, and looking forward to speaking to you again soon.
Thank you. Bye, and have a nice afternoon.
Thank you. Bye-bye.