Welcome to the earnings call of CEWE Group following the publication of the annual press and analysts conference. I would like to welcome the CEO, Thomas Mehls, and CFO, Sirka Hintze, who will guide you through the presentation and the figures shortly, followed by a Q&A session via chat. Having said this, Mr. Mehls, the stage is yours.
Thank you very, very much, Mrs. Benner, and a very warm welcome from us here from the somewhat cold and sunny Oldenburg. It's not yet springtime, I believe. It's a little bit April's weather, right, Sirka?
Correct, Mehls.
A very warm welcome to all of you. This is our annual press and analysts conference in a bit of an unusual setting. For the first time, we do this fully virtual. This allows more people to participate, and, well, as usual, we will look back at the figures of 2025, which we just published, but we will also give you a little bit more of behind-the-scenes information, so a little bit like what did we do to achieve these results. Stay with us, and at the end, as said, you will have the chance to ask questions via the chat. Also, in German, we will have a moderator who will translate and transcribe that into the English language. Let's start. Yeah, well, that's us.
Welcome also from me. Good morning.
That's us, yeah. Warm welcome again. As said, I don't want to go through all the agenda here, the results, a little bit the development. We will do an outlook as well, right, and then a Q&A session. How did we do in the past year? Well, I would say quite strongly. Our turnover and our EBIT increased. We achieved all the targets. The group turnover of CEWE increased by 3.8%, or by EUR 31.7 million to EUR 864.5 million, and this actually is at the very upper end of our own expected target range, so we are very much not only within our range, but at the very upper end there. The group EBIT also increased by EUR 2.1 million or 2.4%. This is also very well within our target range, so all our targets have been clearly met.
However, we can see that with the EBIT development, we are not at the upper end of our own target range. We know that. We can comment a little bit on that one. If we had achieved our targets in the commercial online print segment, we missed them by about EUR 3 million in EBIT, then we would've been at the upper end for the overall results as well. Overall, quite a strong year for the CEWE Group in total. I don't want to read all of this to you, but there are a couple of comments I would like to make here. You know that we lay out our targets also by product, by a couple of volume indicators, and also the financial targets.
Something which makes us really proud is that we increased our volumes, and you can see that here in the photos. You know, the photos is not a product only by itself. Of course, we do sell printed photos, but it is also something which is within our product, so the CEWE PHOTOBOOK , for example, does also contain photos. We over-exceeded our own targets. We over-exceeded our targets in the volumes by the CEWE PHOTOBOOK , and this is really a strong development. Our growth in photofinishing was driven by volume. This is something which we really want to acknowledge here, and on all the other figures, we will comment a little bit later, Sirka, right? As all of you know, we have three key business segments. We have the commercial online print.
We did EUR 89.6 million of turnover there. The most sizable business obviously is the photofinishing, and you can see that here, and we will comment a little bit on also the fact that we're active in the segment with five brands. You see them here, our CEWE brand, the home turf, so to speak, WhiteWall, Pixum, DeinDesign, and CEWE. This is the core of what we are doing, and obviously, the majority of this call will be around photofinishing. We also have retail. If you like, our most traditional segment, actually where the company comes from. We still operate around 100 retail stores in Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe, and actually one in Oldenburg, by the way.
This segment is really non-strategic in itself, but it is strategic in the role of supporting the photofinishing business, and you can see that here. The brands are clearly moving towards the CEWE brand, and if you walk into these stores, you will see a lot of CEWE, and actually, we will have a couple of pictures of one of the stores, and it really looks like a CEWE store. I think this is really important, this company is on a good track. It's on a good growth track, but it's also strategically on a good track. We are continuing our growth in digital photofinishing. You can see that here. You can see it has been a record year in turnover.
It has been a record year as well in EBIT. It has been a record year, and our transformation path of this company clearly continues and did continue. Well, it does continue in 2026. We'll come to that in a little bit. It did continue also in the year 2025. The same is true for EBIT. It is also a record year in EBIT. As I said, well within our target range. Quite nicely. We had been...
We would've been at the upper end, as said, if we had been delivered also in the commercial online printing area. As announced, yes, we will now focus on the photo finishing business, on what drives us there, but we will give you a lot of insights about the last year and how did we do that? How did we achieve these results? Actually, what did the teams do? Because it's not only the two of us-
Right
or the rest of us on the board. We have a lot of team members who work every day very hard to make that happen. Our strategic principles have not changed, and to be quite honest, they will not change. We're a customer-focused company, and this is very important. I mean, all the others or probably every company will say that. For us it's crucial, because we cannot sell a single product without the involvement of our customers. Because they have to bring their personal memories, they have to bring their photos. Only with their personal memories we can create and actually then print maybe a CEWE PHOTOBOOK or a mug or a canvas and deliver it to them.
Their involvement is crucial, and it's really at the core of what we're doing, so we do need to focus on what our consumers bring with them to create really meaningful products out of their memories. Innovation, brands, efficiency, and sustainability. These are four topics you will learn a little bit. Well, maybe not learning, because you know us quite well. But we wanna reiterate a little bit on that one. Everything is bound together by one team, with this, which is driven by one cultural mindset. We will go through some of these aspects now. As said, customer focus, that's something which drove us, and we wanna make customers happy. You know, we're in a very special business.
You look at this picture and you will say, "Well, these are people which just smile," but we're in a smiling business, right? I mean, if you walk into the photo lab downstairs here, you see a lot of pictures, and on the pictures, people smile. If you look maybe on your camera roll, mostly you see smiling people. If you convert these pictures into a CEWE PHOTOBOOK , you will see even more smiling people, 'cause you will delete all the pictures where you don't smile. We're really in a happy business, and that drives us every day to make our consumers happy. We have one big success story that's really important. We have a very important brand and a very important product in our portfolio.
This is the CEWE PHOTOBOOK , and we are so proud that in the past fourth quarter actually, we did deliver the 100 millionth, difficult to pronounce, the 100 millionth CEWE PHOTOBOOK to one of our consumers. We are going to celebrate that. We're going to announce that in Q4. We actually focused on Q4, not on the celebration. We are very proud that in the past actually 20 years, we delivered 100 million CEWE PHOTOBOOK , and actually we delivered a lot of smiles, a lot of proudness, a lot of sharing. I mean, we really create memories throughout whole Europe, because this product, this brand, is the most successful photobook brand in whole Europe, and we are very proud about this one. 100 million is really a success story.
We can only do that if we really make our customers happy, and we measure customer satisfaction by the Net Promoter Score, by the NPS. You're used to that. We are very proud, and probably we would have not been able to deliver that volume growth which we did deliver. We are very proud that we did increase our Net Promoter Score again on a very high level to 66.7. I don't wanna go into the details of how this Net Promoter Score, but it's nothing we invented actually. It's a metrics a lot of companies use. We are very happy that our consumers are happy. This happy is not only product quality, of course, but it is also their satisfaction with our ordering channels.
How easy is the software, the app, or the website, for example? How fluid is that? It has also a lot to do with how well do we deliver in the fourth quarter. 'Cause, you know, to have our products underneath the Christmas tree on time is really crucial. The past year was really exceptional in that one, so consumers are happy with the, with the product quality. Consumers are happy with our ordering channels, but they were also very, very happy with our delivery confidence, which we gave to them. I would say most products, out of millions and millions of product, it was just a couple of hundred which did not make it in time underneath the Christmas tree, and this is also reflected in this number. What drives us is innovation.
Yes, we did deliver the 100 millionth CEWE PHOTOBOOK , and you will say, "Okay, where's the innovation in that? Is it. It has been the same product." No, it's not the same product. It's like, you know, if you look at toothpaste, it's not the same toothpaste which is sold now compared to 20 years ago. There's a lot of innovation that in there if you compare the story of the CEWE PHOTOBOOK throughout the last 20 years. There's huge difference in the way these CEWE PHOTOBOOK s are created now, ordering channels. It's a huge difference in the product variety, so the width and the depth of our product portfolio has changed greatly, and there's a lot of innovation in there.
This innovation can only be done if a lot of people y ou see here a picture of the Innovation Days of the year 2025, and we will show you also a video of this year's Innovation Days in a couple of seconds. This can only be delivered if a lot of people from a lot of sites stick their head together and think about how to innovate products, how to innovate ordering channels, how to innovate this company. This really drives us forward, so we will give you a little bit of a feeling what made us proud in terms of innovation in the past year.
The Memento Pocket and photographic paper segment, this is really something where we all said, "Okay, that's nice." Some consumers say, "It would be nice if I had a pocket in my, in my CEWE PHOTOBOOK to just include, I don't know, boarding passes or entry tickets or something like this." We said, "Okay, why not do that for a little extra on there?" We were really surprised by the success of that because it's, you know, simple, but it just shows how important it is for the people to collect their memories. Photos are important, but there's more, especially when you travel, there's more in your memories and you have, I don't know, maybe a menu card or whatever it might be, which you store with your CEWE PHOTOBOOK.
Small product, big impact. We were quite happy by that one. Designs is important. Premium is not only a qualification, like you would say, "Okay, is that a nice design or not?" It's not a qualification, but there's a business model behind it. We really moved all of our design portfolio into a freemium model, so you can order free designs which enhance conversion. You know, a good design helps you to really, at the end of the day, finish your product. But we also have premium designs for which we charge, and this also helps the bottom line. We are quite happy that we enlarged this portfolio to many of our products, also to the covers. Sustainability is very important. This is the kitchen calendar with detachable photos, so you don't throw the calendar away with the photos.
Some people even cut their photos off the calendar I was told. We did invent a method of how to keep your photos by having them detached. Also, the calendar is very important for the Q4. The XXL Personalized Wall Calendar, it looks quite small here. It's huge. It's really huge. It replaces a canvas or a large wall art on your wall. It's almost A1 format, so it's a really huge calendar. Very nice, especially for, let's say, ambitious photographers. Designs, I told you is important. It's important to drive conversion, it's important to drive also the bottom line, but you do need the right products for that, right? You're the avocado to my toast if that's the design.
This looks a lot better if you have a colorful, inside color, interior color in your mug, for example. It just makes the product better. We have a couple of limited edition launched quite successfully. They were all sold out, by the way, so quite nicely. And pets, I mean, it's a photo treasure. Some people put cookies in there for themselves, some people put cookies for their pets in there. Pets in itself was a nice driver, so we did focus a bit more on the pets business. We have landing pages for, you know, people. Pets for some people are the replacement of their children, right? They also like to have the photos of their pets, maybe on a blanket, on a pillow.
We saw all kinds of pets on the different photo products, and we wanna support that. I told you that story. This is just one example of one of the designs we introduced. Design is important topic because, you know, you can say this is a poster, but no, this is not a poster. This is a product, right? If you have an anniversary collage, this is a real product. Our designs help us to create, at the end of the day, real products. We say, you know, sometimes a design is a product in itself, and you will find a couple of these products.
Photo street map poster is a good example, which is at the end physically just a poster, but design-wise, it is actually a new product which we created. We have a couple of these, so designs really drive our business. You know that our target group, especially for the CEWE brand, and I will come a little bit to the target group and to the difference of the brands in a minute, they like to be very creative. Yes, we help them to unlock their creativity with our photo products, but the creativity doesn't stop only with the photo products, of course.
You know, some people say, "Okay, it's nice that I can order an advent calendar with you guys which has chocolate in, and I just put my picture on there." Others say, "Yeah, pictures are very important for my advent calendar, but I wanna fill this advent calendar myself. I wanna buy some perfume, some sweets, some whatever treats by myself. I wanna, you know, do a little bit by myself." We created this photo advent calendar boxes. Actually, quite successful. Was quite nice. It actually addresses the target group of people who really want to put more creativity into their advent calendar. Well, digital greeting cards. Greeting cards is a changing business.
It's not our most important product category, but probably if you look yourself onto your shelf at Christmas, how many Christmas cards you receive in business, maybe how many Christmas cards you received as a private person, maybe how many Christmas cards you actually wrote as a private person. This business is changing. It's not only because of in the Christmas card business, it's also in invitation. We created digital greeting cards. You would say, "Why that? You can just, you know, send something via WhatsApp." Yeah, but the point is, you actually wanna design a nice card if you wanna send out Christmas greetings, if you wanna invite. This is the example here for his 60th birthday.
If you wanna invite somebody to your 60th birthday and what we found quite successful as a last-minute Christmas card, that was quite surprising to us. It wasn't something which was really felt in our business in the run-up of Christmas, like the calendar business or the CEWE PHOTOBOOK business. On the 23rd and even the 24th of December, people used a lot these, not this one because it's an invitation, but a Christmas card designed to send out a digital Christmas card. Quite interesting how the landscape, I would say, is changing. I think it's good that we are all convinced that we do great stuff. It's always good, right? If you're convinced yourself. Actually we do have some external people who also believe that we do great stuff.
You know, the TIPA Awards from the past conferences we did here, it's a jury of journalists, expert journalists. It's international, that's very important to us, so it's actually worldwide. When they look at the innovation in the photo industry as a whole, they also look at cameras and lenses and so on. They also look at the photo printing, as they call it, industry. They awarded many TIPA Awards last year to us. For the panoramic page, again, it's you know, if we do it like this.
It's nearly a meter.
It's exactly. We do it like this, right? Really big. It's an impressive product they thought themselves. It's actually not only impressive in physical terms, but also how easily it can be created, how flexible it is. It's not in a specific point in your CEWE PHOTOBOOK . You can put it wherever you want to put it, and so on. It's actually a patent. They were also quite happy with our CEWE Passport Photo App, which creates a biometric photo and don't be fooled. Yes, the German market in terms of passport photos has changed.
We were aware of that because you actually need to have a certified, I don't know, walk into the mayor's building to have your pictures taken. This is different in a lot of other European countries. Also, people still need pictures for their, I don't know, public transport card and so on, and this app helps you so quite nicely. We did reinvent the calendar, by the way. This is the Fineline Wall Calendar, and you see there's no spiral binding here. You don't turn the pages. You actually take it off and have a very neat design-oriented hanging and changing system. This was very well received by the TIPA jury. You see that here. It was a Red Dot winner.
Just very recently, actually, I know we talk about 2025 here, but we spoil a bit for 2026. It did also receive the iF DESIGN AWARD. Quite outstanding we believe, because usually that's not the award photo products are awarded with. It shows that we also have an impact by designing great products. Well, ordering channels are important. Apps are important. There's a CEWE Smart Layout concept, which is not only in the mobile app but also in the desktop app. You will see that in a video also in a minute. You know, apps are not only in the CEWE branded world, they're also in the Pixum world, and this is why Pixum also has been awarded a TIPA award for their app.
Actually, it's the best photo book app. We'll show you a video also of Pixum showing how they address as a brand their target group in a minute, actually. WhiteWall, best photo frame. Looks nice. Also, you know, we have that in oak. I ordered it in oak. Very nice. I can just recommend it to you. We're exceptionally proud, I would say, not only about that we did receive all these TIPA awards, but then those winners of these awards, so also from other industry players, you know, I told you this is a journalist jury which does these TIPA awards. They have websites, they have blogs, they have magazines. They put out these awards and let professional photographers vote for their favorite products. Guess what? We won also the Photographers' Choice Awards.
Again, it's not only that we convinced the jury, but we also convinced the photographers that we did great. The CEWE PHOTOBOOK with Panorama page was very well received by those photographers. We're quite proud actually. This brings us to the question of will that go on? Well, I don't know, I have to tell you, because we are in the phase of defining the roadmap and laying out all the product ideas, but we wanna create the environment in which all of our employees can really give an innovative input to the company. This is why we do the Innovation Days every year. We do that in Oldenburg. Well, that's our home turf. This year we had about 1,300 people here in Oldenburg. This is quite astonishing.
It's about a third of our workforce which came to you know look at ideas, present ideas themselves, exchange on ideas. The video will give you a little bit just a feeling on what we do and how people collaborate, I think.
If you wanna dance, take my hand, take my hand. Cancel all your plans, take a chance, take a chance. Ain't got forever. We only got today. If you got a night to feel alive then, baby, say.
Innovation Days in three words.
Team.
Passion.
Innovation.
This summer night's getting cooler.
Inspirations.
Future.
Relationships.
Inspiring.
People.
Together.
Dreaming about running wild in the city. Inspiring
Creative
social
Fun
joy.
Oh, if you wanna dance, take my hand, take my hand. Cancel all your plans, take a chance, take a chance. Ain't got forever, we only got today. If you got a night to feel alive, then baby, stay. If you wanna dance, take my hand, take my hand. Cancel all your plans, take a chance, take a chance. Ain't got forever, we only got today. If you got a night to feel alive, then baby, stay.
Yeah, excuse the quality of the video. It's actually a good video. It's just the Zoom platform, which doesn't transmit that very well, so sorry for that one. The idea is really to give you a little bit sense of the spirit we all had. It was your first time, right, Sirka?
Yes.
You enjoyed it as well?
Yes, it was really great.
Yeah, good spirit, and the important thing is that everybody can bring some things, can bring an idea, exhibit it there, and go into discussion with all the others from the company, receive feedback, develop the idea further, and then hopefully at some point in time it will become a product. This is actually the way the panoramic page was invented for the CEWE PHOTOBOOK , just as one of the many examples. Our brands is also important. We are one of the very few, if not the only one, but we can debate that in a little bit, photo finishing companies which is operating with different brands, and we do that on purpose.
We believe there are different target groups out there which need to be addressed differently, and we wanna give you a little bit of a feeling of what we do with different brands and how we address our target group and what were some action which were brand-driven. Of course, we start with CEWE. You saw a lot about CEWE already. I wanna start with the CEWE photo contest, and we are very proud that we were able to deliver again the CEWE Photo Award, which has been the greatest, largest photo competition in the world. We're very proud about this one. I mean, again, it's not us who delivers the content. We deliver the platform.
It's the photographers, and this is the praying mantis here in a so-called dancing. It's actually defensive move in a dancing move, the winning picture. This is just one of many pictures. We got 656,000 pictures, I believe, which were uploaded to our platform. By far, it's really by far the largest photo competition we did, with very nice results, and we got them from all over the world. This is a picture from Indonesia, for example, and 153 countries, so a lot more countries which handed in their photos than we are active in. Quite proud. This is one of my favorite winner photos, I have to tell you, because it's from a football match.
I'm a little bit of a football fan, but just a little bit. This is actually a French supporter looking at, well, I would say probably a missed chance. This is my interpretation. I don't know really. A missed chance of the French national team against Argentina in the World Cup a couple of years ago. CEWE Photo Award is one thing, addressing photographers. You know that, our behavior and how we consume media is changing a lot. We are on very different social media channels, maybe Instagram or Facebook or Pinterest and so on. Also, we ask constantly ourself the question of how to present our brand, our products on these channels.
TikTok, well, is a different channel, so we need to be there in a different way, but still addressing our target group, still addressing our need, and this is just one of the examples of how the CEWE brand does that on the TikTok channels.
Why doesn't anyone make photo albums anymore? Do you know that feeling when you see old photos of your parents or grandparents and you ask yourself, "How did they actually live as teenagers or young adults?" To show my future kids someday what a cool mom they actually have, every year I save my personal year's highlights in a CEWE PHOTOBOOK like this. There are no perfectly staged photos in here, just a lot of snapshots. At least nothing is lost in my phone gallery and I can just let the year review with all emotions. Here we were at a lake. It was really cute. We also had a really nice girls' day. Now there are also these lovely designs here. That reminds me of a coffee table book. Now is definitely the best time to get creative. Save the idea to copy for yourself.
Yeah. This is... Sorry for the German video. We actually selected the videos mostly from Germany 'cause we know most of you are actually from Germany. If you're not, you can look at your local TikTok channels and find similar videos on there. But again, we have different brands addressing different needs, so we will show you here a big screen, as we call it. It's for the bigger screens, maybe YouTube, maybe TV, maybe CTV, like Netflix or whatever advertising. On the big screen, something from Pixum, which clearly addresses a different need.
CEWE PHOTOBOOK in five minutes is really easy with the Pixum app. Create personal photo books from your most beautiful pictures. This turns every photo into a gift in the blink of an eye. So fast, so easy, so Pixum. Your online photo service.
So quick, so simple. It really addresses the mobile target group. It clearly goes on the app, so very important. It's an important ordering channel for us, the app. Most of our consumers actually also visit our websites via their smartphones. Not only the picture's taken by the smartphone, it's also visiting our channels via the smartphone, and this is why we have apps. We have apps at CEWE as well. Pixum, in their communication, focus totally on the app, so very different need, very different target group. You know, just the last example, we could show you a lot more, is a video from WhiteWall, and you know the target group from WhiteWall is very different. This is probably, not probably, this is why this video also is very different again. Yeah.
It was too early, right? There were still some music playing there. Excuse us again for the video quality. Again, it's driven by this Zoom platform here. Usually, you know, the video quality is as good as our photo quality at WhiteWall. They're addressing clearly a different target group. They're addressing rather professional, very enthusiastic photographers. You, you've seen a couple of them. They're cooperating with the so-called WhiteWall ambassadors, and that's what also they address in their brand activity. It should just give you not only a sense of what we do, but also why we have different brands. That's important. There's this clear strategic vision behind it, that there are different target groups out there in the photo finishing segment which need to be addressed by different brands.
Coming to something totally different, but still clearly very important to us. I say that in an environment where people have the feeling, and we got actually the question on the Innovation Days to the board, "Well, is sustainability still important to us when, you know, everywhere else people talk about not being important anymore, cutting climate goals," and so on and so on. We always said, you know, sustainability is at the heart and within our the DNA of what we're doing way before Fridays for Future. Also we believe in that also in these maybe difficult times where people do actually a sustainable sustainability bashing. We do not. We actually work towards that goal.
I wanna give you a glimpse, it's a little bit more technical slide here, of our CO2 footprint and what's there. We are really proud. We were one of the few companies, the first actually in 2017, which set climate goals, SBTi, Science Based Targets initiative, climate goals, CO2 goals based on the year 2015. In our scope one and two here, and this is basically the direct emissions and the indirect emissions by purchased energy, we overfulfilled those goals. We're very proud. I mean, we're talking about the year 2015, a clear reduction. We did a lot of initiatives. You will see most of our buildings now with photovoltaic energy, green electricity. You will see us driving electrical cars, right? Sirka.
We are replacing gas heatings. We do a lot of initiatives to bring that down quite successfully. All the targets met. We have to be honest, we did not meet all the targets in the Scope 3. This is the so-called indirect emissions outside of CEWE in our value chain. This is, for example, the material we buy, the paper we're buying, for example, the wood we're buying, the logistics, like the DHL courier we're using, for example. This is largely dependent on third parties, and we did not fulfill our own targets. We are not alone in this world. There are two main reasons for this. We can discuss about this, but two main reasons.
Number one, our setup in the year 2025 is totally different than in the year 2015. We did acquire WhiteWall, we did acquire Cheerz, and so on. We would have needed to actually recalculate our base year. Technically, we did not do that because actually it's more important to work on the things than just to calculate, and this is one reason why we didn't achieve that. The second is we overestimated actually the impact of how suppliers would work on in their own production, like our paper suppliers worked in their own production in reducing CO2 emissions. It did not work out that well. We are working with the suppliers very very hard to reduce CO2 emissions. This is, for example, why we have the CEWE Supplier Sustainability Award to award those suppliers who do really great things.
We ourselves make sure that we buy the right material. FSC is one of the things, you know, we use a lot of paper in our production, so we make sure that we use certified paper. Very important. That's one of the things. We have the clear goal of reducing our CO2 emissions further. We have the goal to work further and further on the sustainability in general, CO2 is just one of the little aspects. We have many sustainability aspects we are working on, and this is despite all of the talks which are going around us. Coming to efficiency, very important. I will address that in the photofinishing in the summary in a little bit as well.
You know that we have production site scaling is an important topic for us, so expansion of production capacity has to do with volume growth. Volume growth needs to be worked on in our production site, so we need more space. It has also a lot to do with scaling, so bringing together volumes in production site in order to be able to automate even more, so this drives a lot the efficiency, and this is something we clearly have as a target, and I will come back to that in a minute.
We are also very happy, again, coming to an external acknowledgement here that we were recognized by Deloitte, UBS, FSR, and BDI as one of Germany's best managed companies, and they clearly addressed our drive for efficiency as well. Very proud to get the stamp, this actually very renowned award here as one of the best managed companies. Which brings us to the team, because everything which I told you about right now is only possible with a great team, and this is a picture actually from the innovation day. I don't know if this is all the 1,000 current people, but you see it's a lot of people. We have great team. We have about 4,000 employees. They work really hard every single day and sometimes night.
If we talk about the Q4, you know, that we work in three shifts there. They really work hard to make our consumers happy. I can talk a lot now about what they are doing, but actually we let them talk because we put together a video and asking them, "What are you exceptionally proud of in the past year?" They handed in those scenes.
I was a ghost, I was alone. Too much in, it's okay. Given the throne, I didn't know to believe I was the queen that I'm meant to be. I lived two lives, tried to play both sides. I couldn't find my own place. Called a problem child 'cause I got too wild. Now that's how I'm getting paid. Go back to your stage. I'm done hiding, now I'm shining like I'm born to be. We dream in hard, we came so far, now I believe. We're going up, up. It's our moment. You know together we're glowing. Gonna be, gonna be golden. Oh, up, up, with our voices. Go and raise your glass so wow then. Gonna be, gonna be golden. Oh, I'm done hiding, now I'm shining like I'm born to be. Oh, our time.
No fears, no lies, that's who we're born to be. Waited so long to break these walls down. To wake up and feel like me. Put these patterns all in the past now. Finally live like the girl they all see. No more hiding, I'll be shining like I'm born to be. 'Cause we are hunters. Voices strong and I know I believe. We're going up, up, it's our moment. You know together we're glowing. Gonna be, gonna be golden. Oh, up, up with our voices. Go and raise your glass so wow then. Gonna be, gonna be golden. Oh, I'm done hiding, now I'm shining like I'm born to be. Oh, our time. No fears, no lies, that's who we're born to be. You know we're gonna be, gonna be golden. We're gonna be, gonna be. Born to be, born to be glowing.
Like every night under the. You know that it's our time. No fears, no lies, that's who we're born to be. We're going up, up, it's our moment. You know together we're glowing. Gonna be, gonna be golden. Oh, up, up with our voices. Go and raise your glass so wow then. Gonna be, gonna be golden. Oh, I'm done hiding, now I'm shining like I'm born to be. Oh, our time. No fears, no lies, that's who we're born to be. You know we're gonna be, gonna be golden. We're gonna be, gonna be. Born to be, born to be glowing. Like every night under the. You know that it's our time. No fears, no lies, that's who we're born to be.
Great team, great spirit, and we are extremely proud of them as well, and take this opportunity also to thank the whole CEWE team for what they delivered in the past year. This brings me to my final slide in this section. I just want to give you a kind of a strategic wrap-up of how we see us in the photofinishing industry. We're convinced that we are extremely well-positioned in this photofinishing industry. You see the brands we're active with in this industry. We are driven, and this is something I really wanted to bring across in this session today. We are driven by consumers, by customer satisfaction, retention or loyalty, however you want to say that. It is only possible by continuous innovation.
We don't stand still, never as a company. We don't stand still in terms of product innovation. We don't stand still in terms of ordering channel innovation. We don't stand still in innovation in our factories. Very important. If we look back, you know, the photofinishing world is not very transparent. We have a couple of figures. All of the figures we have, all of them show that we did have market share gains in the past year. All the figures we did not have, but we have a good market feeling indicate the same. This company drove market share up. This is very important. Why? Because we have great brand positions there. We're also able to deliver steady organic growth, which is largely, not totally, but largely independent from economic development.
As long as people travel, you know, this is one big driver, and as long as Christmas does exist, this business will be healthy, very clearly. We have a focus on efficiency and production administration. However, we are not yet there. I think this is something we also need to address here. We are not leveraging the group size enough. You know how important it is to have different brands. You know how important it is to be active in different countries, but do we leverage the group size enough?
We saw our EBIT increase less than our turnover, so we clearly have as one of our targets the goal to scale better, still retain our brand positioning, still retaining our local touch and feel to the markets, but we are working clearly on programs of how to scale this company better because this is something where we want to improve and need to improve. We have a good financial strength. Sirka will tell you in a minute more about this one. We have a good financial strength. It enable us for additional growth in an inorganic way, so we are looking actively for acquisitions. I mean, you know, today is not the day where we are able to send out any ad hoc messages, but be assured that we're working on them.
We select the targets we want to very carefully. We negotiate very carefully. We have them all still on the table, and as I used to say, we have deep pockets, good financial strength, but we have short hands. Whatever we do, we do very carefully, but we have clearly opportunities in front of us, and we will use them. This, dear Sirka, brings me to the hard figures, right?
Yes, I guess I will have a hard job to do here, because myself, I can say I'm still touched from the videos, so I don't know how much you are still interested in listening to my dry numbers here. Looking into the business segment, photofinishing, which is our most important segment, at least 86% of our turnover is fed by the photofinishing business. The turnover over 2025 grew by 4.4%. Thomas mentioned already a little bit by what type of products. What made our Photofinishing so successful. I guess the most important story about the turnover is here really that we are proud of volume growth instead of just increasing the prices.
It's obviously the case across all the products while the revenue per photo rose by 0.3%. Looking into the EBIT, Thomas mentioned already a little bit, which is true for the entire group, that our EBIT is not so fast-growing than our turnover. This is mainly driven by higher personnel costs, in fact EUR 12.5 million additional personnel costs. This is a mixture of wage increases, new hires, but also one-time effects because you know in 2025 we had board changes. For the top line, we needed also to spend a little bit more on our marketing budget, and EUR 7.6 million more marketing costs helped also us for supporting the top line.
With the third impact of our EBIT, we also have to notice that the IT costs are rising. I guess we are not the only one in the market who is suffering a bit from the entire development and also the strength of our IT partners. Our IT license fees rose only for the photofinishing business by EUR 1.7 million. We can conclude that photofinishing continues to grow both top line and bottom line as well. For the top line, we are happy for the volume growth. Analyzing the seasonality effect across all the quarters show us how important the last quarter is.
I mean, if you look into the numbers, turnover-wise, you can really see that we double up the turnover from the quarters in our last quarter, and that has something to do with Christmas, which is for sure, and reserved and blocked for our customer base obviously. But also we could see a continuous growth over all the quarters, which is also a very good sign for us. The targets were all the time exceeded, which is not only a good motivation for our team, but also it helps us with the numbers. Looking into the EBIT, of course you can see here again a massive seasonality effect.
These graphs show you that we make our money only in the last quarter of the year, but all throughout all the quarters we were within the expected targets, which is also something where we are happy about. Let's change a bit the perspective and looking into the number of prints and the turnover of the photofinishing. You can see here the number of total prints. It was exceeding our targets of 2%, so we have an increase of 4.1%, and then if you multiply the turnover per photo, which is also increasing, that makes our turnover of the photofinishing so, and it's increasing, of course, our revenue in total. Very proud and very good to see.
If you move now to our core product, Thomas mentioned it, and also maybe you have seen it in the video and you've got a bit the flavor, again, 3.5% increase. It's the plus of our core product, and only in the last quarter was an increase of 1.6%, and this is following the trend and also a success of our constant innovation, the power of our teams. You have seen the beautiful layouts, the premiumization, so all our customers, especially the creative ones, really like the nice designs and materials. So yeah, good story, I would say. But let's switch to our other business segment, the commercial online printing business.
We combine here viaprinto, SAXOPRINT and Laserline, and focusing on business advertising prints, flyer cards, stationery, packaging, promotional items, merchandising, business cards, et cetera. If you look here into the numbers, we must say if you only see the dry numbers here, you would say, "What's going on there?" What we must admit that, and if you observe the market, there's an unchanged and ongoing trend of digitization for our commercial online printing clients, and the entire market is undergoing significant reductions. That's why we can be satisfied with the only reduction of turnover by 0.4%. Obviously, our best price guarantee strategy is helping and supporting that still we are gaining market share.
EBIT-wise, we cut obviously our result into half, compared to last year, but we are still earning money with the business. The EBIT was mainly reduced due to the competitive pricing level in the market, but also due to our investments into the international business. We grew out a bit more to Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, and also U.K. We also spent some money into our efficiency enhancing ideas. The terms here are hybrid printing, and what does it mean? It means the combination of offset and digital printing. It's really impressive if you would be on site in our production.
Retail, also, you know, when I go to our shops in South and Central Eastern Europe, but also to Scandinavia, it's really nice to see walk through the CEWE stores. So we have more than 100 retail stores, and this segment is also about the e-commerce web shops where we sell hardware and so that's a point of sale where we get really physically also in touch with our customers.
If you look into these numbers, and honestly didn't expect this good development after years of stagnation, we can see an increase of turnover and even everything is still on a low level, but it's going into the right direction, and we have a plus of 2% in turnover, and we are even more proud also on the even development which shows us a very positive result development. Great development. A bit surprised. I was really also surprised at how much interest a lot of our customers have also in these products like frames and also all the products we sell around the photo and the photo books.
Less exciting, but for the completeness, we also have to talk about the remaining segment others, and this is mainly about the structural and corporate costs. We are generating also our EBIT out of renting out properties. This year the income was a bit higher so that we have an improved EBIT, but it's not our core business. Moving to our financials. If we look into our balance sheet, and this is a snapshot, I will come back to that snapshot information message once more later. You can see here that we have a you know, following the trend, growing our asset base.
This is in 2025, not only driven by some effects what happens over the year-end, over the date 31st of December. It is also because we built up our inventories, so we bought or restored for more than EUR 4 million photo paper for our photo finishing business, but also for the commercial online printing business we prepared as and for supporting also the prints for the elections we have across Germany. The total asset base increased also because of our build-up in the properties, the renovations we had. The asset base increased by EUR 23.7 million. If you look into the equity ratio, it's following again the increased path.
This is what Thomas, when he's talking about full pockets. We have a massive financial power also to invest with such an equity ratio of 61%, 61.2% exactly. Of course, the equity is reflecting also our solid results. Corrected by the dividends we come later also to that. A very healthy balance sheet, but also it's showing a bit we are ready. We are ready for further growth. Let's move to the free cash flow and see the operating net working capital decreases by EUR 22 million due to the reduction of trade receivables and a EUR 3 million higher tax prepayments. As I mentioned beforehand, also the increase in inventories.
These movements over the year plus the investments we had. This is mainly into our property plans. You know, where we produce, we usually own also the property also to keep our best freedom to build up our production in the way we would like to produce. This is, of course, also reflected here in the investing activities. That leads to a free cash flow as a snapshot of the end of the year of EUR 43.7 million. For the analysis purposes, we showed a bit also these single effects to normalize the cash flow to give you a bit of flavor what the overall relation is.
As I mentioned, analyzing the one-off effects, what would we anticipate if you would normalize our cash flow to see and understand a bit more where we are. You can see here the advanced debt collections by retail partners compared to last year, the tax payments, but also the higher inventory built up year on year, but also the earlier repayments of liabilities and the special investments into real estate renovation and construction, corrected also by the subsidies we got for our renovation and new build in Freiburg.
That leads to a normalized cash flow here of EUR 70.8 million if you would take out these extra and extraordinary and one-off effects. To show you a bit compared to the last year, we did the same exercise by taking out these special effects over the last years. There you can see we're following the trend, and we are within the corridor. This is nothing to be concerned about these days. Return on Capital Employed 17.6%. It's at the level of 22% and as you know this is influenced also by segments where we have not such a high profitability as the commercial online print.
We can see here the dilution, of course, of the return on capital employed. For the Group level, it's 17.6%, which is still strong, and where we can be very happy about and where we are satisfied about. Last but not least, dividends. Obviously, I would say unique story, only a very few companies at the stock exchange can tell this. For the 17th time in a row, we recommend as management board the increase of the dividend by EUR 0.15 to EUR 3, and this will be proposed to the general meeting and which will take place in June. The EUR 3 is also a bit anticipating our result situation and but also showing our strong commitment also to the investors.
That leads me to hand over to Thomas.
Thank you very much, Sirka. I believe the dividend story is really a great story, very well received by all of you, by all of our investors. I think we have a roughly a dividend ratio of 3% compared to our stock price right now, which is also quite attractive, right? Now it's time to take out the crystal ball a little bit and look into the outlook. Why the crystal ball? Well, Sirka has told you how important the fourth quarter is, so everything we do will be dependent, of course, of the fourth quarter, as usual. How do we see the year 2026? Let's first maybe look a little bit in the environment around us.
We see inflation has come down a lot, which is nice. Consumer confidence, this depends now a little bit also of the global situation probably, but consumer confidence is not really under pressure. We have stable labor market conditions and people travel. This is important also, you know, we look at the travel companies, we follow them quite closely. How are they doing in terms of travel? What is it TUI, for example, doing? Do people travel? They also confirmed their strong position. They had a strong first quarter. We are quite confident that we can grow the business again. We lay down a range between EUR 870 million and EUR 900 million for the turnover, again, driven obviously by photo finishing here.
Everything will depend, as usual, on the fourth quarter. With this expected range we laid down here, we will continue our growth path. We have this long-term growth path, and we are constantly on this growth path. We watch that very closely, and we see it develop very well. The same is true for our EBIT. You know, we're always a bit cautious there. The EBIT range, almost at the lower end being roughly at where we were in last year, but we also see a goal of 93% here at the upper range, maybe. Yeah. Thank you very much. A little bit more to the details here.
Again, in the photos, you know, we're at 2.6 billion photos. We see a growth path here of up to 3%. The same is true for the CEWE PHOTOBOOK. We want to invest a little bit more. This has a lot to do with, say, some movements which some investment we didn't do in 2025 to 2026. The most important thing is our turnover growth between 1% and 4% and an EBIT between -1% and +6%. At the end of the day, the goal is to become more profitable. I think that's the bottom line what you should take with you. This concludes us, and it concludes this presentation, not the session, because as said, we will have a Q&A session with you.
Please feel free to post your question in the chat. We will take them together, transcribe them. If you put them in English, you know, please do so. If you only do that in German, no problem, we will translate them and answer that over the air. If you go home from that session, you should take one thing with you. Everything we do here is to make customers happy. That really drives us. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Mr. Mehls and Ms. Hintze for your insightful presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, let me shortly stop the recording at this point. With that, the recording is stopped. This is a live session only now, and we are among ourselves. Ladies and gentlemen, as already happened, you may now post your questions in our chat, and the team will read it out for you.
Yes, we do have a first question from the audience, and the question comes from Nicholas. I can only see his first name here. Nicholas asks, "The upper end of your guidance assumes no significant negative impact on consumer sentiment. Considering the geopolitical situation and the recent escalations, do you already view this as a potential headwind that could decrease consumer spending in general? Or, for example, in terms of traveling and generating a photo book out of this, or is this already factored into your 2026 outlook?
Thank you very much, Nicholas, for your question. That's a difficult one, definitely because I said before, right, if people travel, we are very confident on our outlook and what we see right now is that people do travel. The travel companies are quite happy. We do see that they do change their travel plans to different destinations. That's very clear, so if you follow these travel companies. Right now, we do not assume that travel will be hindered. Looking at consumer spend, in the past years, we have been quite independent from this consumer sentiment. Of course, now taking into account all the ifs, if this really deteriorates in a significant way, this is hard for us to foresee. But as of now, we're quite confident with our outlook.
The second question is about the effective tax rate.
Yes, I guess that is something I can answer. We have one-off effects, and so these one-off effects are mainly due to the legally required revaluation of deferred tax assets, especially related to our pension provisions, and one-off income tax effects from prior years. These one-off effects sum up to nearly EUR 2 million, so that's why the tax ratio is over 34%. If we take these one-off effects out, we have a normalized tax ratio of 31.2%, which is in line with what we have seen over the last years and also what we expect for the next year.
Right. You already answered the second part of the question. What would be the effective tax rate going forward? I think that question is answered. The third question is about the plans for commercial online printing.
Okay. Is there any specifics in there? Generally speaking, what are the plans for commercial online printing? Actually, I think we were quite open about that one. We were not entirely satisfied with what commercial online printing did deliver. As Sirka said rightly, turnover-wise, actually a good job. With the same turnover, we did reduce our EBIT, and we know the reasons why we did so. We did prepare for 2026. Actually, the outlook is more positive in 2026. Whatever we see, whatever was done in 2025 has a nice effect in 2026. We can see that already. However, the strategic question behind is what do we do with commercial online print in the future?
That remains. We will answer that the same way like we answered that in the past analyst calls here. All options are on the table. We're working on all options. Important is in that respect, our focus is photo finishing. Let's say the willingness to invest in commercial online print into the future is, compared to photo finishing, quite limited. I think that's fair to say. We expect to deliver results there, but we also consider strategic options in, let's say, many variations here.
The next question comes from our visitors from the media, from Lisa Schröder, from Weser-Kurier. She's wondering, will product prices go up? What about photo books?
Yeah. Very good question indeed, and well, as you mentioned, Sirka, our costs are rising, and the same is true for everyone right now. I mean, we're looking at the gas prices right now. They're rising as well. We always reconsider our product prices. We did increase them in the past years. We don't exclude price increases in this time, but there's no major increase. I think that's fair to say there's no major increase planned. You know, we have to work constantly looking at our own cost base, looking at what our suppliers charge to us. We constantly look at the actual pressure also on us to increase our prices. You might see a couple of things, but not major.
Okay. The next question is a little longer. I'll try to summarize. It addresses the current situation in Iran and how it impacts our business, specifically, what is your exposure to energy costs and higher oil prices? What margin compressions to EBITDA would you see?
It's a little bit linked to the question before. I think I answered the top line thing. Number one, we are not immediately affected by the Iran crisis in terms of supply chain. Let's start with that one. You know, do we have anything stuck. I mean, as long as the Suez Canal is open, for example, this is something where we would have an effect on containers being delivered from China and so on. You might remember the situation where a ship was kind of stuck in the Suez Canal, so we felt that for a couple of weeks that our containers were not delivered. No direct effect there. The probably most immediate effect we would have exactly is the oil price increase, and where would we see that?
Mainly in logistics, and this is something where we also, you know, constantly adjust our logistics prices. You know, as an e-commerce company, we need to deliver via mail order to our consumers and we very early in very early days always charge for delivery. This is a habit all our consumers are used to. Sometimes it's unusual to other e-commerce companies which, I don't know, have free delivery in general or free delivery at orders over EUR 20, EUR 30, EUR 40 or EUR 50. We don't do that, and we actually pass on these increases we will get mostly by DHL in Germany and other suppliers in other countries. This is something, I. Well, I'm not saying we're bulletproof in that sense, but we have no direct effect on that.
It's rather an indirect effect. Why don't we have direct effects? Because we have long-term energy contracts in terms of energy like electricity and all of these other effects. We don't see any short-term effects on that one. Could there be a long-term effect over the coming years? Yes, probably, but that's a question of how long this crisis will go on.
The next question addresses the increase in CapEx expectations for 2026. What are the key investments broken down by business segment?
What I can share with you here is that our level of operating investments will be for 2026 around EUR 47 million out of the EUR 77 million which are planned. EUR 30 million will be allocated to our property and plant investments. We invest into our WhiteWall production facility in Frechen. On the other hand also we are just built or bought a facility for our business in the U.K. This is it.
The next question again goes into the geopolitical. Fuel prices are expected to increase given that airlines are not fully hedged for 2026, so it is reasonable to believe that ticket prices for flights will go up at the end of the year. Why are you so confident that travel will continue to be strong?
It's a very good question. We see that travel is the last, and this is based on our experiences from the last year. Travel is the last bit of consumer spend where people are really safe, that travel is so important. I mean, you know that we have a big footprint in the German market. The Germans are considered to be the travel champions. I think that's the word there. Based on our experience, looking back in similar crisis, travel was not dramatically affected. When was travel dramatically affected? That was in the COVID crisis where travel was not possible, and this was something which we really felt. You see that in our long-term revenue development there.
Probably, maybe one thing to add is that people maybe choose other targets, and maybe people will not prefer sitting at the airport and going somewhere by plane, but people will still travel. We see really massive increase of bookings in south of Spain, for example, where people can go by car instead of flying. Does it change the way of taking pictures and enjoying vacation? I don't think so.
The next question has two parts. One addresses CapEx, which I think we've already addressed. The other addresses the photofinishing EBIT, which slightly declined, indicating that revenue growth was somewhat absorbed. Could you shed some light on that development?
Do you want to take that? The EBIT in photofinishing did not decline, right? Of course, special items declined slightly from
Margin in the photofinishing declined by 0.6%, and this is mainly coming out of the effects I explained already a bit. We have seen in the business segment photofinishing the increased personnel costs with the wage increases, one-time effects and new hires, higher marketing costs, and also in combination with the IT costs. That is the explanation why our EBIT margin was a bit more under pressure than in last years.
The next question addresses price inflation. How much of price inflation are you accounting for in your EBIT guidance given that the upper end of the range is lower than the upper end of the range from last year?
I didn't get that question. How much of price inflation is in there?
I'll just read it again, we have the time.
Yeah.
How much of price inflation are you accounting for in your EBIT guidance, given that the upper end of the range is lower than the upper end of the range from last year?
Yeah. Difficult question because price inflation, I think it rather refers to higher prices which occur to us by our suppliers. That's the way I read that question. Of course, it's not to be asked because we do have fixed contracts for parts of our supply chain. We have others where we do not have fixed contract, and so we are variable, I would say, on the general cost assumption and cost budgeting for the next year. We, for example, budget for higher prices due to our wage agreement, which still continues the trade union agreement here in Germany. We account for inflation, so to speak, price increases for personnel costs, for example. For others, we budget with stability because of long contracts.
Let's say a mixed picture there.
The next question asks us to comment on our ability to pass through higher energy costs onto consumers and raise prices.
Yeah. I think that's already answered. Again, higher energy cost in the year 2026, let's answer that one, would affect us mainly, and I would largely say only, mainly on the logistics side. There we have the ability to pass that on, not, I would say, unlimited obviously, but again, then we would not be the only ones in raising prices for delivery, for example. This is a good ability to pass that on, and we saw that that's well accepted by the consumers. On the general price level, that would be rather a strategic question. How much is the ability for consumers to or how much spending willingness, let's put it that way, do consumers have in general for photo products?
I would say that goes rather in line with any other product. If energy prices drive up inflation, we would be able to raise prices accordingly. We saw that during the Ukrainian crisis, for example, which is still not over. When we had the energy crisis over there, we were able to raise our price and was accepted. You saw our volume growth quite well by our consumers. However, we always would need to level that with our competitive actions. We're not the only ones out there in the market, and we have other players which work a lot with discounts. It's not an unlimited ability, I would say.
Can you comment on the length of our contracts for electricity?
Well, I could comment that as far as I know, there is not a single contract which is up for renegotiation in 2026. I can't tell you really, you know, how many are up for renegotiation in 2027 or 2028 or 2029. Different length and different geographies, actually.
You mentioned in the presentation the lack of operational leverage visible over the last two years, and also implied in the outlook for 2026. When do you think this will be re-established?
This is number one, we need to scale better. I think that's what this question is referring to, and I'm very open about this. We do have a strong operational leverage if you look at our Q4 figures, right? If you look at the past Q4, you see how big that operational leverage was, and which was actually quite strong, quite well. We're very happy about the Q4 development in general. However, looking at the general cost development we are having, taking all four quarters, looking at the volume growth we are having, we need to leverage better. This is not a short-term action, I have to tell you. This is not like a button we can push. We're developing couple of programs actually of how to collaborate better across the group.
Do we really, as Sirka was referring to IT license costs, for example, which are skyrocketing. Do we need different IT systems in different sites? This is one of the question. How can we automate even better in production? How can we scale marketing across brands better? How can we make an operational leverage? This is not a short-term leverage. Again, we're quite happy with how we leverage in Q4. This is a long-term view, and we know we have a topic there. We know we need to work on that one. We have the clear goal, and this is reflected in our budget numbers to increase profitability. But this is something I would say is probably we would need to look at in 2-3 years on a major impact there.
We are onto our last question, which addresses our business development in the various countries. Could you comment on that briefly, especially in Germany? Consumer sentiment here is tense.
Yes. Consumer sentiment is tense. We are very international as a group. We have, well, a global footprint I think is a bit exceeding. We have mainly a European footprint over many countries. As always, I mean, we're talking about 20-plus countries here. We don't comment on single ones. I can say that international business was stronger than our German business. Is that consumer sentiment? Good question. I mean, we talk also about a market which is probably a lot more saturated than Central and Eastern European markets where we have developing economies, for example. We were very happy with our international development, but however, we grew also in Germany. I wanna make that very clear.
We grew also in Germany, which is not true for many other e-commerce companies in Germany, which again shows us that we are largely independent from economic development. Are we totally independent from that one? No. Do we have countries where we grew stronger? Yes. Also we have countries where our market position is not yet as strong and where it is easier for us to snatch market share from competitors. We had many countries where we were very happy with the development. I think it's a good balance we're having with our international footprint there, and we always said we are the European market leader. We are market leader in many countries, but not yet in all European countries, so we still have some ability to grow.
If we look at the ability to grow, probably it's more international than in Germany given our very, very strong market position here in this country. No more questions.
Yes. With no further questions, we have come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much for your interest in the CEWE Group.
Absolutely.
A big thank you also to the management board for your presentation and your time. Should you have any further questions, please feel free to contact Vice President Investor Relations, Axel Weber afterwards. I wish you all a successful day, and handing over again to Mr. Mehls for some closing remarks.
Yes. Thank you very much, and Vice President Investor Relations is actually sitting with us in this room. You don't see him, but you all know Axel Weber, and you can give him a call. You can send him an email. He will be very happy to answer that. Yeah, jokes aside, thank you very much for your interest in CEWE. We are very proud of what this company delivers every single day to millions of consumers and we are happy that you continue to invest into this company, that you uphold your interest. We will deliver good results also in the year 2026, be assured. Thanks very much.
Thank you.