I would like to extend a warm welcome to everybody watching via live stream. We are in the showroom of our Zara store in Calle Serrano in the center of Madrid. This space is used to hold both internal and external meetings with the aim of presenting our new fashion proposals, both from Zara and Zara Home. This showroom is located above the Zara store on Serrano Street. The renovation of this store was one of the major projects in our store network in 2025. Of course, it was not the only one. We have undertaken more than 400 projects, including 190 new store openings in 41 markets and more than 200 renovations, nearly half of which involved expanding the retail space. These actions have allowed us to improve our commercial presence in cities like Copenhagen, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Shanghai.
We have carried out projects in order to improve the quality of our commercial presence with larger stores and the top technology at the service of our customers. In a strategy that is going to keep being the axis of our activity and which explains the satisfactory results that we are presenting today. All of you have had the opportunity to see our figures and hear the explanations we have been giving since early this morning. I assume that many of you were also able to connect to the conference call we held with analysts at 9:00 A.M. Before we open the floor for questions, I would like to share with you some of the main milestones of the 2025 financial year and what our plans are for 2026. 2025 was a year marked by uncertainty.
Thanks to the commitment and effort of our teams and the strength of our business model, we were able to maintain a positive upward trend quarter after quarter, both in terms of sales and profits. The key was the capacity of all our formats and all our brands to offer our customers the product and the experiences that they asked us to provide. Our sales in 2025 amounted to EUR 39.8 billion, a growth of more than 3.2%. This growth was more than 7% at constant exchange rates, with a very positive performance across all our different formats, in all geographical areas and in both physical stores and online. Gross margin stood at EUR 23.2 billion, representing 58.3% of our total sales. This represents a growth of 42 basis points compared to fiscal year 2024, reaching very high levels.
We have maintained discipline in managing our operating expenses, which increased by 2.8% below sales growth. Consequently, the positive performance of sales and gross margin, together with the discipline we have exercised in managing operating expenses, has enabled us to achieve increases of between 5%-6% in our EBITDA, EBIT and pre-tax profit. Also, our net profit grew by 6% to EUR 6.22 billion. I've said it on other occasions too. The strength of our financial position and our positive results are the best guarantee that we will continue allocating the necessary resources to ensure the growth of our group. For 2026, we anticipate very strong investments, trying to improve the quality of our commercial presence, both in our physical stores and in our online channels.
It is also the solidity of our financial position that allows us to maintain the commitments we have made with our shareholders. For 2026, we estimate we are going to provide a dividend of EUR 1.75 per share. In 2026, we will of course continue growing in spite of an environment that is marked by uncertainty and the year started positively. Our sales in the period between the first of February and the eighth of March grew by 9% with respect to the sales reached in the equivalent period of the previous year. I am going to dedicate the next few minutes to share with you some of the main projects and initiatives of this year, whose goal is to keep strengthening some of the key elements of our business model, such as innovation, diversification and flexibility.
In terms of innovation, in order to move forward with the transformation of our group, it is essential to be innovative. Almost half of the fibers used in 2025 came from recycled materials, which shows very significant advances in terms of achieving our public commitments in the area of sustainability. Also, innovation is extremely important to keep using the latest technologies, including artificial intelligence, which in Inditex is applied in a cross-cutting way to a series of projects which are allowing us to keep improving the experience of our professionals and our customers. An example of this is a try on function available in Zara.com since halfway through December. It is present in over 40 markets already and has registered millions of sessions.
Thanks to the use of AI, our customers can create virtual avatars that make it possible for them to try the available products on all our platforms. The use of the latest technologies is not just limited to online platforms. We're also innovating to improve the experience in our brick-and-mortar stores. An example of this is assisted checkouts, whose implementation is giving rise to very significant advancements in the payment processes and their use is being enhanced by the new alarm systems, which in the spring and summer of 2026 will be available in over 90% of our products across all our formats.
We're also going to keep finding new ways of interacting with our customers. In 2026, we will keep exploring exclusive spaces for male fashion in Zara Man stores, which we opened in cities like Osaka and Zurich in 2025. Our other formats will still display high levels of innovation, identifying new lines of products, such as the capsules for gardening and travel or creating communities through the Oysho running class or combining leisure and fashion thanks to Bershka Nails. Now let me talk about diversification. You know that for Inditex, diversification affects our formats through our eight brands. It also has to do with our origins, our sourcing model and our two fully integrated channels, physical and online, as well as the markets where we are present.
In 2026, we will open our first stores in the group's 99th market, Curaçao and some of our formats will open their first physical stores in markets where Inditex is already present but through other brands. For example, Bershka, which will open its first stores in Brazil and the United States. Massimo Dutti will do so in Denmark and Norway and Lefties will open its first stores in France and the United Kingdom. Of course, our efforts to continue strengthening diversification of the group are not going to be limited to just exploring new markets. Our goal remains to further improve our presence in the markets where we are already present through a series of projects to improve the quality of our commercial presence.
In 2026, we will have new flagship stores, such as the Zara stores that we will open this year in Huaihai Road in Shanghai or in Na Příkopě in Prague and a new Stradivarius store in Paris Rue de Rivoli, also in Massimo Dutti store in Aventura Mall in Soho, New York. In 2026, we are going to keep executing comprehensive refurbishments of many of our flagship stores. For example, refurbishing projects in the Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York, in Bond Street and in Brompton Road in London or in Via del Corso in Rome. In the next few months, we will also carry out a comprehensive refurbishment in our Massimo Dutti store here in Madrid, in Serrano Street, very close to where we stand today. Let me finally mention the flexibility of our model.
For us, flexibility is one of the main strengths of our business model and I think that it is a huge competitive advantage in such a changing world as the present world. Our model is based on flexibility thanks to the work of our designers who are capable of very quickly reacting vis-à-vis any new trend. In 2026, we will keep collaborating with global figures of the world of design, culture and art. Also, flexibility is possible thanks to the flexibility of our supply chain and our long-term relationship with our suppliers, which allows us to react to any change happening in the world of fashion, even within a campaign.
The flexibility is also possible thanks to our wonderful logistics and distribution system, which allows us to be more and more accurate when making available to our customers whatever they may need at any place in the world. In 2026, after celebrating our 50th anniversary, our continuous focus will be to continue to feel younger and stronger than ever, thanks to the effort and commitment of our teams. We want to keep being a young company that excites people and that surprises our customers. Customers every day. The more we advance, the more ambitious our projects are and the more complex our challenges are, the broader our horizon becomes and the bigger the opportunities ahead of us. Thank you very much for your attention and now I will give the floor to your questions.
Good morning. As on other occasions, we're going to be sharing the microphone. Please, at the beginning of your address, if you would kindly remind us of your name and the medium you are representing. Thank you.
Good morning. Elena Iglesias from Europa Press. I have a question. Two questions, actually. The first question is, in view of the geopolitical uncertainty that we find ourselves immersed in, what is the impact of the Middle East upon the group, the supply chain? That's question one. Secondly, what impact do you think it will have on prices? We're talking about consumers here. Another question: What are your forecasts for Spain for 2026, your forecast with regard to sales? Well, the plan you have to grow in Spain. Thank you.
My answer, Elena, is first, thank you. I made a reference in my address to the fact that we continue to live in an uncertain environment. We talked with analysts this morning and we said that, of course, we are tracking very closely the conflict. We are trying to do our utmost to guarantee our customers' safety, our collaborators' safety and security. The impact so far on sales has been limited. Please do remember that in those markets we run our franchises and on some days, as at the beginning of the conflict, some of the stores have had to close. For the most part now, our network of stores is open. We do not believe that this will have an impact on prices because ever since a long time ago, our pricing policy is stable.
We try to guarantee our clients quality and design at affordable prices. Now, with regard to Spain, you saw this morning the numbers. The evolution is very positive in all of our markets. More specifically, in Spain, we've grown by 9% in 2025. This is the result of hard work, which we continue to carry out every day, trying to offer our customers the best shopping experience possible, online and in real life. In the case of real-life stores, bricks and mortar, I talked about Serrano. In 2025, we overhauled it. This year we have also carried out important activities, so Diagonal in Barcelona by Vincent Van Duysen or the reform of our Zara Home in San Sebastián. Our strategy is going to be the same for 2026.
We're going to identify new opportunities in order to guarantee an improved quality in our commercial presence. Over the months of this year, we will tackle the overhaul of our Plaça de Catalunya Zara or our Massimo Dutti in Palma de Mallorca. We're optimistic and we believe that our business is going to do very nicely in 2026 and thank you for that question.
Good morning. Javier García Ropero, Cinco Días and El País. Two questions, please. First question has to do with the United States of America. You said this morning that you're continuing to place your bets there. My question has more to do with the current setting, the environment in the U.S. I'm talking here about the tariffs, the Supreme Court decision and we don't know exactly how everything is going to fall into place in legal terms. Does the U.S. offer you and in general, legal certainty to tackle the kind of investments that you are used to carrying out? And then if we talk about Spain, w hat do you think Spain's good performance is due to this year's excellent performance, last year's good performance? Is it the economic environment or would you say it's the company's activities in and of themselves?
Thank you for those questions, Javier. Let me take the Spain question first. It's our main market. It's a market that we believe is a very solid one because we can offer our customers a fashion proposal. We can offer them the experience that they seek. We have an extraordinary talented team in Spain. We have over 50,000 professionals in stores, 30,000 professionals. You know, at the end of the day, the result of that ongoing fantastic customer experience and the team that is truly engaged, I think that this is what explains our growth path, our very good growth path in a market which is, as I say, as important as Spain is for the house and of which we're very proud. The United States of America.
When we talked with analysts before and I did make a reference to this in my address to you a couple of minutes ago, we continue to keep our project in the States alive. 2026 is going to be an interesting year. We're going to be seeing new openings, three Zaras, the arrival of Bershka after very good online performance, thanks to the two first stores in Miami. Massimo Dutti also around Miami since 2024. We'll be opening two new stores in New York, Soho, New York. Apart from that, we're also going to tackle projects that look at improving the stores where we already have a presence. Fifth Avenue, we will relocate our 34th Street, both in Manhattan. We will be refurbishing Lincoln Road. We continue to be ambitious with regards growth.
P roject by project, we're going to be very selective in that market and we do believe that we are going to continue to be able to take advantage of new opportunities in a market which is as important as the US is. The combination of that hard work and our ongoing physical presence, because we have stores there and excellent performance also in everything that has to do with our online platforms. Thank you for those questions.
Good morning. David Latona from Reuters. I would like to ask about something Andrés talked about before, the temporary closure of stores in the Middle East. Could you be a little bit more specific? Could you say what countries and how many stores were involved? And I would also like to ask about potential plans underway for possible evacuations in the region, should that be necessary of your staff in that part of the world.
Thank you for those questions. The situation evolves and we are responsible for monitoring on a daily basis. Some days, ever since the beginning of the conflict, some parts of some markets, in fact, were closed. Actually, throughout the day, we've seen instructions that vary. This is what we receive from the authorities. What we do is we adapt to the situation. We monitor with our local collaborators. What we have is a network of franchises and what we do is take the decisions that will try to guarantee the safety and security of our collaborators and of our customers as well. I have to say that so far to date, many of the stores we have in that part of the world is actually open. Thank you for the question.
Good morning. Víctor Osorio from Expansión. About the U.S. now, I'd like to ask or rather, what is the impact on the group's numbers of the tariffs? And are these new openings that have been made public today, is this a part of a strategy? Are you thinking of growing with more stores? Because so far we've seen growth but it's been contained growth and definitely very much depending on online business. And then I have a couple more questions. One has to do with the weight of the different markets in revenues. In recent years, we've seen that the group does grow, especially in Europe and that includes Spain, of course and you're losing weight in other markets.
I'd like to know whether this is by happenstance or whether this is part of your strategy to really focus on the European market. I have another question about Zara. Zara was the flagship, if you will, that has least grown in the past year. Zara is the company that has or the format that has least grown.
Thank you for your questions. With regards to the U.S., we said our expectations were in view of the group's past experience with regards dealing with different tariff structures, diversification, flexibility of the model. This continues to be part of the strength of our business model and that's what we're continuing to do. We're looking at strengthening with the initiatives that I've discussed before. We would hope that the impact not be relevant. The fact is, the results, the earnings that we're talking about today, the numbers I think make obvious our different teams' capacity to manage business activities in evolving environments. Let me underscore, for instance, with regard to gross margin. It is an indicator, as you know, which is essential because it addresses the issue of the quality of the performance.
Well, that 42 bps all the way up to 50.3% of total sales we're talking about numbers that are truly telling. Our market strategy will continue to be what it has been so far, selective growth, identification project by project, making sure that the opportunity is there to identify new locations for our physical stores, because that does guarantee an advantage, the fact that we have that penetration of our online channels in the market. We believe that we'll have, at the end of the year, some 110 stores and we continue to identify new opportunities in order to continue to improve our presence. I remind you that in 2025, in the market, we were 26 in the U.S. with the opening of our Charlotte, North Carolina store and we continue to see opportunities for growth.
Opportunities for growth, by the way, which we see in every single one of the geographical areas, in every single one of the markets. I think it's fair to say that, the evolution of the different geographies throughout 2025, well, we really mustn't lose sight of the fact that there are other factors, such as the evolution of FX, of our currencies. Some geographical areas have been harder hit and this is, I think, what would explain also the difference between growth of sales, that's +3.2% as reported and constant exchange, 7% as reported. Of course, our currency is the euro for reporting purposes. Well, Europe doesn't suffer that currency impact. Our strategy, I repeat, in all of geographies and all of the markets, is to continue to identify opportunities.
You know that our sector is highly fragmented with market shares that are tiny. We believe that the capacity for growth is going to depend, in our case, as I say, on our continuing to build on our business model. As to Zara's evolution, we're very satisfied with our performance, every one of the different formats. In the case of Zara, not only because of a positive evolution of sales, because we've seen growth sales-wise and profits-wise over 2025. That can only be defined as satisfactory and has continued to hold the course. At the beginning of 2026, we see information that we shared this morning, that +9%. It's not just success of the collections.
I would like to underscore that we believe that the relevance is important that Zara continues to accrue in a world which I think extends beyond the limits of fashion. I think we could talk about cultural influence, which is more than it ever has been before. Also, let's keep sight of the fact that Zara, over the past four years, has seen sales that have grown by over EUR 8 billion. This is growth which is in excess of 44%. Zara is the engine, the sales engine for the group. It's also the engine for profits. It's also a source of inspiration for all of us, as it has been ever since the beginning of the group's activities, which go back to half a century ago. Thank you for the questions.
Paula Clemente from El Periódico. I'm going to address the issue of the Middle East again, the geopolitical issues. I would like to ask you, I would like for you to confirm, are the Israeli shops closed still? I'd like to ask whether all of this and I'm talking about geopolitics in general, do you think that this will flesh out into danger for the supply chain, threats with regards raw materials, so the impact on your business? If I understood you this morning, you said that you're beginning the year with 2.5% less inventory. Is this the explanation?
Thank you for your questions, Paula. The numbers that we gave this morning, minus 2%, was 31 January at the end of the fiscal year, so that is prior to before the new circumstances. We reiterate that it's quality, it's solid, it's going to allow us to continue to offer to our clients the object of their desire. Yes, stores are closed, including Israeli stores and we are closely monitoring the situation. We're keeping track of our supply chain, which in our case can be defined by the diversification of the origins, by the flexibility with regards the way we are able to have our proposals be there for our clients.
Of course, well, depending on evolution of the status quo, we, I think, will be able to react and adapt the group's operational activities to potential restrictions that may come to the surface. We've learned in recent years that new circumstances arise and we survive. Back in the day, we had to react to the pandemic. We had to react to the closure of the Suez Canal. We had to react to other limitations and restrictions. Our teams, corporate teams, operational teams, you know, we can really be defined as being able to react quickly. We spin on a dime. We identify how to best be able to execute our business model. Thank you for the question.
Good morning. Javier Romera from El Economista. I've got two questions. My first question has to do with EBITDA margins. I think you said 28.2%, if my memory doesn't fail me. That's 0.5. I'd like to ask you, is there leeway for potential improvement in coming years? What are your forecasts? Then I also would like to ask, the new tax approved in Europe as of July this year, products coming from abroad, basically Asian platforms, less than EUR 150 goods and the initiative, the government's initiative, which has announced greater customs control, these products are going to be subject to stricter controls, if you will. Do you think that. Are we talking about dumping here, these platforms or China basically selling at very, very low cost? Do you think this is a good thing?
Do you think this is going to be good for the market? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. I'm going to take your two questions and I'm going to begin with the model and how we execute. We focus on executing our model. We want to understand the trends. We want to be as flexible as possible. We want to continue to execute a model which is defined by diversification. We want to continue to improve the customer experience, continue to innovate, continue to improve matters for our professionals. This, you know, if we execute appropriately, this is going to allow us to continue to guarantee the margins which I define as healthy. It all depends on execution, the model's execution and that is what we are focusing on. This, of course, is also germane to other possible measures that may affect other companies.
What we want to achieve is a development of our business model. We want to thrive in a setting which will guarantee competition, as open competition, as healthy competition as possible, with equitable and fair conditions for all operators. We continue to focus on executing our model as best as possible. Thank you for your questions.
Good morning. Clara Hernanz , Bloomberg. I have two questions. I'd like to understand a little bit better why Zara grows a little bit more slowly than the rest of the group does. Could you explain why? Is it because it is more exposed to currency because it's bigger outside of Europe or is it because it's grouped together with Zara Home and Lefties and that has an impact on growth? Along this same line, when would it make sense to publish data specific to Lefties? My second question has to do with CapEx growth. CapEx has grown by EUR 2.3 billion but your growth forecast continues to be 5%. Could you explain that, please, where that investment is actually going to go?
Should we expect this additional expenditure to go more for stores and because we're not going to be seeing growth beyond that 5%?
Thank you for your questions, Clara. I'm going to take your second question first. We have pointed out that we continue to identify growth opportunities for the group. All of our commercial formats. There are different markets, yes and we believe that it makes perfect sense to continue to invest as we have so far to date, ensuring that we improve our presence and this via bricks-and-mortar and also online. We talked about the markets and we made a reference to the markets when we talked with analysts. We addressed our strategy, which is to optimize. This past year, this strategy has allowed us to increase the commercial space by 1.5%. That's -2% stores. Over the past three years, we've seen sales growth to the tune of 22%, +6% net growth of stores and -6 with regards number of stores.
What we want is to have a physical presence in stores with more space. We want to be able to offer all of the range of products, onboarding the most recent images, the best possible technology. Of course, this calls for investment and we'll have to think about our online platform and the series of projects. I talked about Try On. You can imagine that we're looking at many other projects as well in order to improve that CX, our customer experience, in our online platforms. That is what we're going to be seeing. That's going to be one of the lines of action. I also made a reference to the fact that we're very happy with our performance in general, all of the formats.
I need to underscore the fact that the exposure of our commercial formats to the different markets is different and Zara is our most international brand. In some markets there has been a currency impact which has been more than in others and the consequence of that has, in fact, been an impact. I repeat, the numbers have evolved nicely. We look at sales and profitability quarter after quarter. We continue to be increasingly relevant. In the case of Zara, it's more than fashion. It's a brand which really has a cultural scope. We know that millions of persons are touched by Zara every single day, so we're very, very happy. Microphone, please.
At this point, you know that we are onboarding Zara information and Lefties and at this point in time, we believe that this is what makes sense if we think about the report. Thank you.
Good morning. José Jiménez from Finanzas.com. I wanted to ask you two questions. First of all, looking at the figures you have presented in terms of the cash evolution, I wanted to ask you whether you're not considering touching up your payout policy with a buyback or some extraordinary dividend. Have you thought about that possibility? The second question has to do with the preliminary figures you have done about this current quarter. You spoke about a growth of 9% in sales, which, you know, looks a very good figure. Could you tell us, of that 9%, how much is due to a calendar or weather effect or how much is it due to a real increase in demand? Thank you.
Our dividend policy, as you know, consists in paying out an ordinary dividend representing 60% of the annual profit and an extraordinary dividend which the board analyzes when it formulates the financial results of every year on the basis of the company's situation. Our goal is to keep being an attractive investment for our shareholders and we believe that the dividend proposal that we're going to be submitting this year of 1.75 EUR per share responds to that goal. Now, with respect to the preliminary figures, I was mentioning that between February and the ninth of March, we had this 9% growth. We normally present this as a trading update. It is normally a brief period of time. We believe that it is indicative of the fact that our customers have appreciated the collections of our different formats.
We keep being focused on offering our customers whatever they may need at the right time.
Hello. Good morning. Barney Jopson from Financial Times. I also wanted to ask you about Lefties. In my view, it has been a kind of black sheep within the group in the last few years. It never used to appear in the results. Managers never spoke about this format and now people talk about it. You've opened stores in the U.K. and France, so what has changed? Why is it that now we are talking about Lefties? And the second question, which was asked in the conference with analysts, is about the margins of Lefties as compared with those of Zara.
Thank you very much. Well, Lefties is part of the group. It is one of our eight formats, one of our eight brands. It has been developing its own collections for 15 years. Ladies' wear, men's wear, kids' wear, exploring new opportunities. This year, a new Lefties Home collection has been developed and we're highly satisfied with the evolution of this format. In the last few years, we've undertaken a process of exploring new markets also for Lefties, because for a long time, Lefties was a brand which was basically local for Spain and to a lesser extent in Portugal and Mexico.
In the last two or three years, we have opened stores in markets such as Turkey, Italy, Romania and in 2026 as you mentioned, we are envisaging the opening of two stores in France in the outskirts of Paris and three stores in the U.K., in Liverpool, in Lakeside and Newcastle. We believe that Lefties, like, all of our other formats, has huge opportunities ahead of us to grow in a selective way as we always do, project by project, trying to identify the best opportunities with the advantage of a single channel model, exploring the appetite of our customers, not just with our brick-and-mortar stores but also with our online stores. We are sure that this format is going to evolve positively going forward.
Hello, I'm Natalia Hernández from Business Insider. I wanted to ask you two questions. You said that innovation is going to be key also in 2026 because AI has been embedded in some of the internal processes and it's also being used to help enhance the customer's experience. In what respect is the company going to harness AI in 2026? I would also like your opinion about the online figures, which the online business already represents almost 30% of your earnings. It is a significant portion of your earnings. How do you expect that online sales are going to evolve going forward?
I've said it on other occasions. It is not possible to interpret the positive evolution of our online business without thinking about our fully integrated model, because our brick-and-mortar stores are also a decisive operational support for our online sales. Our online platforms are an essential element for a positive evolution of our physical sales. Our ambition is to keep growing our online sales. We are recording very significant figures, over 7 billion visits throughout the year. We think that this is going to keep being a space which combined with physical stores is going to still have a very good and satisfactory performance. We want to keep implementing the latest technologies and within those technologies, we include AI.
The development of AI and I spoke about it in the conference with analysts, is the result of a process that has allowed us to keep strengthening our architecture, keep having the right model in terms of data, keep having a proper governance and this has allowed us to develop AI in a scalable and very safe manner. We think that there's a huge opportunity to keep improving our customers' experience. An example of this is a try-on project which facilitates the creation of virtual avatars that allow you to try on the products available on zara.com. In two and a half months, it's registered over 7 million sessions. Also the experience of our professionals across different areas.
We can see a huge opportunity and we also think that at the level of the group, we are being capable of developing AI in an environment that is extremely robust, scalable and very safe. Thank you.
Hello, good morning. I'm Belén Molleda from Agencia EFE. I wanted to ask you about the controversy between President Trump and Prime Minister Sánchez. Do you think that this controversy may perhaps harm your projects in the United States? Now to get an idea about the impact of the war in the Middle East on your business, I wanted to ask you how many stores you have in the Middle East. Because according to the results, 15% of your business comes from Asia and other markets but I'm not very clear how many stores you have in the area to, you know, get an idea of the economic impact that, you know, this conflict could have on your business.
Well, I can't really make a comment about your first question because this is not really, it's not really for me to comment on that. At any rate, this morning, I said that our view regarding the United States is to keep developing projects in the area and improving our presence in that market and 2026 is going to be a year where we're going to be directing a significant part of our investments to the U.S. market. Now, with respect to the number of stores we have in the area. You have this information in one of the annexes that we have submitted, of the document we have submitted to the CNMV. In the area, you need to consider that we operate through third parties.
We operate through franchisees and, you know, we are constantly monitoring the situation in the Middle East, trying to guarantee the safety of our personnel and our customers and guarantee the safety of our operations.
We are coming to the end of this session, so we will just have two last questions.
Hello. Congratulations on your results. I wanted to insist on Zara because this 9% is quite surprising because in the last few years you've had a very significant investment in the brand with new stores, larger stores, more sophisticated collections, more attractive collections at a higher price, higher price point. It is difficult to understand that it is only growing by 1%. I don't know whether this strategy of raising the positioning of Zara is perhaps not yielding the results you were expecting. I also wanted to ask you a question about the agreement between the government and the trade unions to increase the minimum wage. This was done without the participation of the management association. What do you think about this?
Well, with respect to your second questions, we aspire to be a role model as an employer in all the markets where we operate and Spain is a very important market for us. In Spain, there's over 50,000 professionals working for Zara. Not just the 30,000 people in our stores but also people working in our logistics platforms, the corporate teams. In the last 4 years, we have increased our payroll by 10% in Spain and we aspire to keep offering our people conditions that are attractive to them and make it possible for them to keep developing their professional careers with us. I also spoke about Zara. We are very happy about the performance of this format and we're not just happy about its performance in terms of figures.
The earnings have been very positive quarter on quarter. These positive results were confirmed in 2025 and, you know, are still good in 2026, as I mentioned. Zara is still the engine, the driving force of our growth. It is the driving force of our profits and it is still a brand that is capable of innovating, surprising and exciting our customers worldwide and being relevant worldwide. I have no doubt that it is going to keep being the driving force of our growth and it is still going to be a source of inspiration for many, many people.
Hello. Good morning. I'm Sofía Vázquez from La Voz de Galicia. I wanted to ask you about taxes. How is the company? What is the weight of taxes in the company's P&L? The increase in the price of freight, how significant was this increase? I wanted to ask you about whether the company has decided what cities they're going to be present in with the different formats depending on the number of inhabitants of those cities.
Well, with respect to the last question, we are present now in Spain, for example. We are present in over 170 locations and we are still identifying potential new locations, both in cities where we are already present, not just in Spain but also elsewhere but also potential opportunities for expansion. Some of you probably were present at the general shareholders meeting and I said at that meeting that when we started off 50 years ago, the ambition of our company was that fashion and beauty should cease to be within the reach of just a few. It should, you know, be within the reach of many, many people. At the beginning, we started with a very local presence but, you know, this year we're going to be opening a store in our 99th market.
That spirit is still the same spirit we have today. We want sustainable fashion that should be made available to as many people as possible throughout the world. This is a strategy not just for Zara but for all our other formats. In terms of our price increases, well, we keep talking about the capacity of all our teams to adapt to all circumstances. Now, in terms of the gross margin, this +42 basis points with respect to the gross margin reached in 2024, well, this really shows the resilience of our group in terms of managing different scenarios and different circumstances. Finally, our tax contribution, our global tax contribution in 2025 was almost EUR 10 billion, including own and collected taxes.
Spain accounted for almost EUR 2.6 billion, taking into account that Spain accounts for 16% of the sales of the group. Also because of the headquarters effect, well, this is, you know, quite easy to explain. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining us, today. Those of you who came from other places, I wish you a very safe return home and I hope we can see each other again in the near future. Thank you.