Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Douglas Group Q4 Full Year 2024-2025 Earnings Results Conference Call. I'm Lorenzo, the Chorus Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Sander van der Laan, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes, thank you very much, and good morning to all of you. In the week prior to the key week of the year for Douglas, the week which is basically the Christmas week, Marco and I are happy to share with you on behalf of our company our results for the fourth quarter, for the full year, and also we want to come back on guidance for this year and outlook for basically the midterm, so let me move to the first, to the next slide, so I will start with a brief intro, hand over to Marco, who will talk about the financials, and then I will come back with a strategy business highlight update, and then we will offer an opportunity for Q&A, as you are used to do with us, so let me first reflect on the last quarter.
So our Q4 ended on the 30th of September, and we are happy to report that after a year, I would say, with a number of important changes into the market landscape, we can report a solid growth for our final quarter four. In the challenging market, we have been able to, let's say, to deliver growth. In the store channel, we have grown 0.6%, which is a combination of new store openings, refurbishments, and our like-for-like stores. And on the e-com side, in the e-com channel, we grew with 7.3% on a like-for-like basis. As you know, we have divested Disapo, our online pharmacy, last year in the fourth quarter. So actually, the last two months of the quarter, we were already fully like-for-like, but in the first month, we were still cycling, let's say, the ownership of Disapo.
So on a like-for-like basis, e-com has grown 7.3%, stores have grown 0.6%, and that means that our omnichannel growth, which is the most relevant component, has grown 2.6% to a sales number of EUR 981.9 million. Our Adjusted EBITDA has gone down with 11.4%, which is largely driven by the pressure which we encounter on the gross profit line, because in this tough market, we need to fight hard to bring sales in and to defend our competitive position. And that means that pricing and promotional activity, let's say, is causing pressure on the gross margin. I would say that our cost development for the quarter and also the full year, we had it well under control.
That means that we can conclude on 2024, and we are happy to share with you that we did achieve the guidance, which is, to be transparent, the revised guidance which we put out into the market, that we finished well, I would say, in line with the guidance. We have a solid growth. We have more than doubled our net income. So total growth for the full year, 3.5%, excluding Disapo. In the store channel, 2.5%. In e-com, 5.6%. We delivered an EBITDA margin of 16.8%. A net income of EUR 175.4 million, which is a growth of almost 109%. And clearly, our new, let's say, financing structure, which we put in place post-IPO, has significantly helped us to improve net income.
Net leverage ended by the end of the quarter, by the end of the year, at a leverage of a number of 2.9, which is basically you could say stable, one notch up versus the year prior. However, if you break down our leverage in our financial debt and leases, then the leverage on our financial debt came down from 2.3 to 2.1. The fact that the total leverage is basically stable is the result of the expansion of our store network and some other incidental elements, which Marco will refer to. And then the third message is we are also setting the guidance for the current financial year, 2025-2026. We are already almost at the end of Q1, but the most important week of the quarter and week of the year is basically starting today.
So let's say that is an important, let's say, remaining two weeks, which is going to have an impact on this quarter as well. Our guidance for the current financial year is that we expect that our sales will land somewhere between EUR 4.65 million and EUR 4.8 million. If you would translate it in percentages, the midpoint of this range would indicate a sales growth of 3.3%. Our Adjusted EBITDA, we expect an Adjusted EBITDA of around 16.5. And we do expect that our leverage will end by the end of the financial year in the range somewhere between 2.5 and 3.0. And Marco will come back on the guidance and also the midterm expectations a little bit later. Let me give you a brief update about the market development. So post-COVID, we are aware that the global economy went through a, I would say, an acceleration phase.
Retail was opening up, consumers were spending again. And basically, you could say in the first three years post-COVID, the premium beauty market globally, but also in Europe, has shown a significant growth. 8%, 9%, 10%, 11%, 12% were kind of the growth rates we were experiencing in most of our countries. That has changed significantly in the course of our financial year 2024-2025. So in the financial year 2024-2025, in continental Europe, we operate in 22 countries in continental Europe. We believe that the market has grown around 3%. The positive part is we still talk about growth, and many consumer markets can't talk about growth. So we talk about growth. It's around 3%. The negative part is it is a significant slowdown versus the, let's say, the years before.
And if you would break down its growth into the different geographies, the different geographies are developing quite different. Our most important markets are Germany and France. The German market has been flattish in 2024-2025, and the French market has been in decline in 2024-2025. For the years ahead of us, we expect that the premium beauty market in continental Europe will grow somewhere between 3%-4%. We expect that for the current financial year, that will more likely be closer to the 3, although a bandwidth of only 1% is not so much. It could be that the dynamics of the market are changing in the course of this year, but basically, we're working with the hypothesis that the beauty markets, premium beauty markets, will grow 3%.
We believe that within that premium beauty market, that e-com will grow faster and stores will grow a little bit less. But we also believe that in that premium beauty market, that omnichannel is the winning model for the Douglas Group going forward. Still, almost a third of all the premium beauty sales is being done in stores. A little bit more than almost 33% is being done in e-com, and we are operating in both channels. From a market share perspective, in France, we have been able to grow our market share in the last financial year. In the declining market, Nocibé has made a step up, and the market share of Nocibé has grown. As part of our current trading, we can also state that the French beauty market has started to grow a little bit in October and November.
And in the first two months of this year, Nocibé has also been able to grow its market share a little bit in this now slightly growing market. In Germany, we have to admit that we have made a mistake in our press release, which I now want to correct, because in the financial year 2024-2025, where the German market was flattish, our market share was also flattish. Our store share has grown, and our e-com share has declined a little bit. But the combination of that, our omnichannel share has been flattish in 2024-2025. That was incorrectly stated in the press release this morning. We apologize. People make mistakes. We have made a mistake, and we are correcting it now. In the current financial year, which started on the 1st of October, the German premium beauty market has shown a slight growth.
In that slightly growing premium beauty market, the Douglas Group has increased its share in the first two months of the current financial year. I'm not in the position to quantify that. We will come back in the middle of January with a trading update, and then we will release our sales numbers for clearly the group and also the relevant segments. To wrap up, around 3% growth in the market last year, 3%-4% in the years ahead of us. This year, more likely around 3%-ish. In the German and French market, we do see a little change because those markets started to become a little bit more positive versus the recent trends, which is very helpful for us because that is our number one and two country.
With that, I move into basically the next slide, but I have already actually said a few things about it. We have made a solid start into, let's say, the new financial year. Solid start is alluding to basically October, November, and the first two weeks of December. I just remind you that the most important week is ahead of us. And also, from a profitability perspective, the month of December is very, very, let's say, disproportionately big in terms of contribution to both the quarter. So hence, we need to be a bit to talk with caution about the current developments. On the 19th of January, we will release a trading statement on Q1, which, by the way, is not talking about EBITDA. It's talking about sales. And in the middle of February, we will come back on our Q1 numbers.
The next message we want to bring across is that Douglas is considering a new step from a geographic expansion perspective. We currently operate in 22 markets, and we operate in 22 continental European markets, which are basically the main countries on this slide. Two and a half years ago, we announced the ambition that within those 22 markets, we want to expand with roughly 200 new stores, net new store openings, and we want to refurbish roughly 400 stores in a three-year time frame. Next year is the third year, or the current year is actually the third year of that three-year time frame, and we're well on track. We do see that post-2026, we are starting to reach a position in a number of countries where it will be more difficult to open a significant number of new stores.
In France, in Germany, in Italy, we do believe that we have a very, I would say, mature market position. There are still optimization opportunities to open a few stores, to close a few stores, net-net. Certainly, Italy and in France, we see some opportunities to maybe add a few more stores. We are still opening significant numbers of stores in CEE, but also in Belgium. But the speed of that will start to slow down. And therefore, we already started with basically an exercise where we have been studying a number of countries, first and foremost, a number of adjacent countries to the current Douglas geographic footprint. But we've also looked, let's say, into the Middle East. And when I say the Middle East, I quite specifically mean the GCC, the Gulf countries. So these are six countries, t he common language is Arabic, t he dominant religion is Muslim.
However, in some of those countries, there are very big groups, certainly in Dubai, of, let's say, international people. There are 65 million people living in this region. The population is rapidly growing, not only organically, but also by immigration, and wealth per capita is growing disproportionately fast, and this part of the world is very, very into beauty. We are not the first one who discovered that. On the contrary, all the beauty brands are represented there, and a number of the beauty retailers are represented there. We believe that this is an opportunity for Douglas, and therefore, we've decided to install a dedicated project team under the leadership of Agnieszka. Agnieszka is currently responsible for the CEE. That is our most expanding kind of territory. Agnieszka brings 25 years of Douglas experience.
Under her leadership, the team is going to look at the possibilities for an entry into the Middle East, specifically into the GCC countries. We have nothing decided yet. There is not an approved plan yet, but the firm intention is, let's say, to conclude on this in the course of 2026. You should not expect store openings or e-com openings in 2026. That will be too soon. We are an ambitious company. After 2026, that is another year. Hopefully, that could be the year that we can start. Again, we first need to agree on an approved plan. Our guidance does not include potential investments and also not potential upsides, let's say, into this market. Once we have agreed on a plan, clearly, we will look at the implications on our financials.
And if required, we will come back in terms of the outlook for the midterm. But for the guidance of the current financial year, which we are releasing now, this has no implications at all. With that, I want to hand over to Marco, who will give you a deeper update on the Q4 numbers and the full year financials before I will come back. Marco, please.
Thank you, Sander. Dear analysts and investors, also welcome from my side. Before diving into our full year results, let me start with some insights on our Q4 performance. Starting with the sales, in Q4, we achieved EUR 982 million, representing a growth of 2.3% year-on-year, or 2.6% when we exclude Disapo. On a like-for-like basis, sales increased 1.2%. This growth was driven primarily by a strong performance in e-com, up 7.3% ex-Disapo, supported by store sales, which grew 0.6%.
Turning on profitability, adjusted EBITDA came in at EUR 134 million, an 11.4% decrease compared to last year. Reported EBITDA declined by 15% to EUR 130 million. The margin declines reflect the ongoing promotional environment. This weighed on our gross profit margin. In addition, slightly higher operating costs, including continued investments in the business, could not be fully offset by the sales growth we delivered. Finally, in the last quarter of the previous financial year, we had a larger impact of year-end closing entries and provision releases that impacted the quarterly year-on-year comparison, particularly in DACH and CEE, as we shall see shortly. In summary, while the quarter showed solid top-line momentum, particularly in e-com, the competitive environment continued to impact margins. On the next slide, you can find the Q4 sales performance of our five segments, as well as their adjusted EBITDA margin trend.
And by the way, we thought to streamline this section, given the many subjects that we can talk about today, to focus more on the broader picture. All of our segments achieved positive sales growth in the fourth quarter, with the highest growth from Central and Eastern Europe and Parfumdreams & Niche Beauty . France delivered a 0.6% sales growth, which, in the context of a slightly declining market in the quarter and year-to-date, as Sander was mentioning, represented again a market share increase. Similarly, in Germany, as we just commented, the market dynamic shows signs of improvement for an overall flat year-to-date share of Douglas. Adjusted EBITDA margins declined across all segments, with the highest margin geographies seeing the largest drops due to strong parallel comparison.
And the decline mainly reflects a more promotional market, as we have just commented, as well as lower supplier bonuses caused by limited volume growth. Central and Eastern Europe was additionally impacted by the ramp-up of the new warehouse, as we've just opened in Poland. Regarding supplier income, weaker trading compared to initial targets results in lower than expected volumes, reducing the bonuses that typically lower our cost of goods sold. By the way, the reverse also applies. The moment trends improve, stronger volumes should support better supplier terms and gross profit margin. My next slide summarizes our quarterly sales and margin trend in this past year. Now, reflecting on the full year performance, we can see how volatility has impacted our results, with sales trends ranging from plus 6.5% in Q1 to even slightly negative in Q2.
This also implies that we are now, in this current quarter, comparing against the strong sales growth performance we had in Q1 last year. Since then, we've been able to achieve a solid sales growth trend as we have adjusted to changed market dynamics. However, this has impacted our margins throughout the year. As we adapted to a changing consumer environment with a greater focus on price and promotion, we invested in our gross profit margin in order to sustain sales growth, as G&A's percentage of sales were only slightly above the prior year. On the next slide, I will walk you through our full year performance and achievements. With reported full year sales of EUR 4.58 billion and an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 768 million, or 16.8% of sales, we delivered on the guidance that we updated in March this year.
In a tough market environment, we were able to achieve 3.5% sales growth ex-Disapo, and thanks to a sharp focus on costs, we were able to limit the impact of a lower gross profit margin, resulting in a decline of Adjusted EBITDA of only -5%. One relatively small but important cost component is represented by our IT costs that increased strongly as we continue to invest in our Beauty Card, logistics setup, and technology stack in general. On another note, I'm pleased to show that we reported a 3.6% higher reported EBITDA, benefiting from a strong reduction in cost adjustments. Although non-recurring in nature, I believe it's still important to prove that the deep phase-out in our first year, full year after the IPO. My next slide is about our store and e-com sales trend.
During financial year 2024-2025, e-com continued to outpace the stores in terms of sales growth, delivering a 5.6% increase. The e-com channel now accounts for 32.8% of the Douglas Group sales, up 20 basis points from the previous year. Store sales were primarily driven by new store openings, while the channel's like-for-like performance was flat. However, please bear in mind that in our definition of store like-for-like, the majority of refurbishments are excluded as the stores remain closed for works likely for more than two weeks. If we include refurbishments and relocation in the same store growth definition, this becomes + 0.9%. Furthermore, as part of our Let It Bloom strategy, we want to offer the most customer-friendly omnichannel journey by further improving the seamless experience across our physical and digital channels. To achieve this, we are actively modernizing and expanding our store network and investing in our digital capabilities.
With that in mind, it's important to flag that we are experiencing a high growth of our omnichannel services, such as Click and Collect, Click and Collect Express, and In-Store Order. As we report our sales figures, omnichannel sales are included in the e-com channel. But if they were reported in the stores channel instead, our like-for-like sales growth would be approximately 1% further higher than reported. Let's now go to the next slide with our full year P&L. Now, let me briefly summarize the P&L, starting from the solid sales growth of 2.8% to EUR 4.58 billion, as we have just commented, and an overall stable gross profit of just over EUR 2 billion.
Thanks to a sharp focus on costs, we were able to minimize the impact from a lower gross profit margin, higher IT spending, and temporary higher logistics costs due to the commissioning of two OWAC, with EUR 768 million in Adjusted EBITDA increased to EUR 12 million in the last 12 months from EUR 78 million in our IPO year, and this year's value is now a more normalized level also for the next year, while we are still in the process of consolidating legacy systems and processes, as well as rolling out new warehouses and tech stack. D&A charges were up 11.9% as a result of higher depreciation related to the rights of use of our growing store network and new logistics facilities, investment in our existing store and warehouse fixed assets, and IT. Furthermore, intangible assets impairment were EUR 4 million higher than last year.
In 2024-25, total D&A were equal to 8.5% of sales, and we expect the total D&A to remain stable as a percentage of sales also in 2025-2026. The financial result improved significantly thanks to the financing structure that is in place since April 2024, and that was further optimized by the repayment of the bridge facility in March of this year. With the reported figure of EUR 133 million, we have approximately EUR 61 million of IFRS 16 lease liabilities financial expenses. For 2025-2026, we expect to benefit from a lower net financial debt and slightly lower interest rates compared to 2024-2025. Moving on to taxes, the effective tax rate that you can calculate on this page is around 25.5% and benefited from a positive effect after applying the corporate income tax reduction legislation in Germany to certain deferred tax items.
For the new financial year and onwards, we would expect to return to a normalized tax rate of approximately 30%. For your information, this change in corporate income tax rate is applicable for the income taxes from 2028 - 2032 in a progressive manner. That's why an actual implication on the current year taxes will be visible only since then. Lastly, our net income more than doubled to EUR 175 million, or EUR 1.63 per share. Let's now go to the next slide about the net working capital and CapEx. Our average net working capital decreased by EUR 34 million to an amount of EUR 200 million, equaling 4.4% of this year's group sales. The average amount of inventory was higher compared to a year ago due to mainly the opening of new stores as well as higher purchase prices. However, days of inventory outstanding remained stable at 122.
Since the second quarter of the current fiscal year, we rolled out a new supply chain financing program to support and optimize our working capital position. This program helps to further reduce the level of our average net working capital as a percentage of sales by extending days payable. At the end of September 2025, for your information, supply chain financing was utilized for about EUR 145 million. And in the calculation of the average LTM net working capital, an average of EUR 75 million was utilized. And therefore, the full benefit will be included in the average net working capital calculation KPI next financial year.
On the right, in light of our growth strategy, our CapEx for the full year was higher compared to a year ago as we increased the number of owned store openings to 90 compared to 52 in the previous year, with 42. Central and Eastern Europe had the most store openings. Let's now go to the next slide about the free cash flow. I already elaborated on most of the drivers that you can see on this chart. I would like to point out the others column that is actually including primarily changes in provisions. But more importantly, I would like to make a remark about property rents. We are sometimes asked how our free cash flow looks like after rental costs. And therefore, we added on the right a detail.
In financial year 2024-2025, the sum of payments for leases, including the interest component, totaled EUR 315 million, of which EUR 253 million are payments for lease liabilities and EUR 61 million are payments of the finance component that sits within the finance expenses in the P&L, as we have commented earlier. The next slide is about our available liquidity and net debt. We continue to have a solid financial structure with EUR 300 million in available liquidity as of the end of September. Please note that the year-on-year comparison is still affected by the utilization of cash on the balance sheet to repay the bridge facility in March 2025. In the middle chart, you can see the net debt structure showing a significant reduction in net financial debt from EUR 1.18 billion to EUR 958 million.
The net financial debt reduction was partially offset by an increase in lease liabilities by EUR 200 million versus the prior year. This increase is mainly due to the opening of new warehouses, 90 new stores across, as we said, in the last 12 months, and contract renewals for existing stores. If we look at our leverage ratio, we see an increase from 2.8 - 2.9 times, again as a result of the net debt that we have just described and also the 5% reduction in Adjusted EBITDA that we commented earlier. On a pre-IFRS 16 basis, our leverage would amount to 2.1 times, an improvement from 2.3 in the previous year. And this is also the first time we are disclosing this picture to enhance the transparency of our capital structure. Let's now turn to my last two pages with our full year outlook and our midterm expectations.
Thanks to the growth initiatives in our Let It Bloom strategy, we expect net sales to increase to a range between EUR 4.65 billion and EUR 4.8 billion. This implies a growth rate between 1.6% and 4.9%, with a midpoint at 3.3%. The relatively broad range reflects the volatility in the market that we have been commenting so far. In a dynamic market landscape, we expect an Adjusted EBITDA margin of around 16.5%, reflecting also our ongoing investments and strategic initiatives to drive long-term growth. We expect a net leverage ratio of between 2.5 and 3 times, with an average net working capital as a percentage of sales to decrease below 4% and CapEx of around EUR 150 million. Please note that this leverage indication, as of the end of next September, is, of course, as reported, therefore including lease liabilities.
We do expect the difference between the net leverage pre and post-IFRS 16 to be in line with this year's value. Our investments will be focused again on the store network and the upgrade of our IT systems. This year, we delivered a record number of 90 openings, up from 52 in the previous year. We expect 2026 to be in between these two values, so higher than financial year 24 but lower than financial year 25, as also Sander was alluding to within our three-year target earlier. We had 90 openings, less 16 closings this year for a net growth of 74 directly operated stores. In terms of closings, we foresee similar numbers in the future, essentially in connection with a normal network maintenance, especially in more mature markets. On the next slide, you find our midterm expectations covering the next three-year time horizon.
Our strategic priorities remain anchored in the Let It Bloom omnichannel strategy, with the key initiatives that we have been developing and our plan for the future. However, we had to reflect the changed market conditions that now point in our estimate to a midterm market growth rate of approximately 3%-4% per annum. In this context, we expect our sales to similarly grow in the low to mid single-digit range on the basis of the current geographical footprint. So to be clear, no further geographical expansion, such as the considered potential Middle East entry, is included in these targets. We expect e-commerce to grow at a faster rate in stores towards the mid to high single digit, while the stores channel is expected to grow at a low mid single digit rate.
We expect to maintain a stable profitability at Adjusted EBITDA level, with an increasing focus on our operating model aimed at counterbalancing potential pressures from market competition. Finally, talking about capital allocation, we will continue investing with ROI discipline, with a CapEx percentage on sales that will slightly reduce over time, and we strongly target to become a dividend-paying company in this medium-term outlook, feeling comfortable with the leverage in the range between 2 and 2.5 times, including leases. This concludes my section of today's presentation. Thank you very much for your attention, and I will hand the call back over to you, Sander.
Yes. Yes. Thank you very much, Marco, so I just wanted to give you an update on our kind of strategic initiatives, and we will do that first by an overall update, and then I will zoom into a few of the initiatives.
Until the last, let's say, quarterly results release, we have presented to you kind of the strategic framework as you see it on this slide, which is based on what we call four pillars and one foundation. We made a small, you could say, optically small adjustment, let's say, in our strategic framework because we are basically bringing pillar four, let's say, to the bottom of the slide, which is being explained on the next page. Why are we doing this? We want to make a distinction between kind of the customer-facing part, pillar one, to be the number one beauty destination in all our markets. Secondly, our shopper proposition to offer the most relevant and distinctive range of brands. Thirdly, we want to deliver the most customer-friendly omnichannel experience. This is all visible for our customers.
But let's say behind the scenes, we are building a stronger foundation where we want to combine the power and the drive of our people. We have almost 20,000 motivated people who want to make life more beautiful with passion, appreciation, and ownership. These are our, let's say, company values. And we also want to build a stronger and efficient operating model. And this operating model, Marco was already alluding to it, that is first and foremost about harmonizing and standardizing processes because historically, we have been a very decentralized company where every country had created its own processes, and we are in the process of harmonizing and aligning those.
By doing that, that gives us the opportunity to implement a more standardized, efficient, and effective tech application landscape because we currently are using too many local-for-local IT applications, and we want to replace them by, you could say, state-of-the-art group standards. And thirdly, we are implementing a new, let's say, omnichannel supply chain model. The combination of these processes, systems, and, let's say, supply chain changes should lead to a much more efficient operating model. But that is all technical stuff. And we want to make clear also towards our own people that we need our people to do that. And that's why we thought it would be better, let's say, to bring these values and HR elements and the technical stuff together in the ambition to build a stronger foundation going forward.
What I would like to do now, behind, let's say, those three pillars and this foundation, there are roughly 20 initiatives, and we had the habit so far to give you an update every quarter about a few, let's say, new developments or relevant things to know. Today, I want to talk about brand communication. I want to give you some insight in our category brand initiatives. I want to give an update on store network developments, and we want to give an update on our OWAC rollouts. Firstly, we have made an important step in the current quarter in Q1 2025-2026 with the launch of a new Douglas campaign, which we call Welcome to Beautiful.
This is a campaign where we have developed, first of all, a TV format, TV advertising, and where we have launched the campaign with four new commercials starting in October and ending with the fourth commercial in December. We want to continue to build the, let's say, the Douglas brand as a premium destination. We, as a brand, but also as a retail format, want to offer beauty categories with inspiring brands. And we want to bring the inspiration of our brand image and the stories which we have to sell across by means of a new campaign, which is not only developed for the TV format, but it's also translated into social media, and it's also translated into other, let's say, company-owned and operated communication assets. So since we are a marketing-driven company, we thought it would be nice to at least show our opening commercial.
And at the end of the presentation, I will also give you the opportunity to watch our Christmas commercial. But let me now move to the operator or to our colleagues and see if we can show that.
Welcome to Douglas, to lips that speak louder than words, to, of course, I did not wake up like this. Welcome to colors that dare, to skincare too good to share, to fragrance that owns the air. Welcome to every shade you feel today, to a world where beauty plays by your rules. Douglas. Welcome to Beautiful. Find your favorite beauty products in store and online.
Thank you. I hope you felt the inspiration of the Douglas message and certainly moving into the peak season because this was our opening in October, and I will just close a little bit later with the message for Christmas.
Moving to the second initiatives, we want to talk about geographic expansion. We have opened in the current financial year 19 new stores. We closed 16, so our net opening number has been 74, and we refurbished 139 of our existing stores. In some cases, we also relocated those refurbished stores. That means that in total, we have now 213 stores on a network of roughly 1,950, so almost one of every nine stores which we currently operate is a new store. That means that's a good percentage, let's say, for a premium retailer because that means that our network got younger. We do not have a lot of legacy investments to do, and it also is important when we talk about CapEx requirements kind of going forwards. Great progress, and we opened some really iconic stores.
Most recently, we closed our old store in the High Street of Cologne, and we opened a fantastic new flagship store, which is actually the picture on the left and in the middle. It sits on a corner. It's two floors with 1,300 net sq m sales area, doing really, really well and basically attracting people from Cologne and beyond. But we also opened new flagship stores, let's say, in Belgium, in the Netherlands, in the Czech Republic, in Poland, etc. And specifically in the last quarter, we opened 35 new stores and refurbished 36. So you can see that we have been very, very active. By the way, those 74 net new stores, they have between 5 and 25 employees on the payroll. So we do not only make CapEx investments. We are also making an OpEx, let's say, commitment.
Clearly, we do that because we believe that the business case of those stores will be earned back. But for the short term, it is an incremental, let's say, investment. That's the second initiative. Thirdly, we want to expand our offering and the range of brands we sell. We are a selective beauty retailer. That means that most of our brands cannot be found, let's say, in, for instance, a drugstore because the stores, the Douglas stores have to be authorized by Chanel, Dior, L'Oréal, Lux, Shiseido, Estée Lauder, etc. to get the right to sell those brands. And we are, for them, the number one go-to client in continental Europe because we are by far the biggest. However, with a lot of those brands, we do compete with other premium beauty retailers.
And since the brand is the same, that creates price competition, and that puts pressure on the margin. And therefore, we believe it's of instrumental importance to grow the range of brands which are unique to Douglas. First and foremost, the Douglas collection and the three brands which we exclusively own, Jardin Bohème, one.two.free!, and Susanne von Schmiedeberg. But the second leg is we want to grow our portion of exclusive brands. So these brands are not owned by us. They're owned by a brand provider, but we sign an agreement with the brand owner that we are exclusively selling those brands. That makes our proposition more unique, and it takes away the price comparison point. Hence, it creates more protection of the gross margin.
So the bigger the portion of Douglas brand, the bigger the portion of exclusive brands, the more differentiated we are and the better protected we are from a gross profit perspective. Hence, I'm very happy to share with you that we've launched five new group exclusive brands. The term group exclusive brand means that those five brands, Thybea, Nest, Drybar, Khloé Kardashian, have been launched in almost all our countries, let's say, in the Douglas universe. And these brands have just started but are already starting to contribute to a growth of our share of exclusive brands. And there is a lot more, let's say, to come in the pipeline. First of all, we want to grow the brands which we already have, but we also are accelerating in bringing new inspiration, let's say, towards our customers.
And then the fourth initiative I wanted to give a quick update on is on our OWAC strategy. So we have historically developed a very local supply chain where basically almost every country at Douglas had its own supply chain operation. And once e-commerce started to develop in many countries, we duplicated our supply chain operation by creating a separate e-com only supply chain as well. That infrastructure we are replacing by a network of seven OWACs, one warehouse all channel. We carry the stock in one warehouse, and we supply all the stores and all, let's say, our e-com customers in a certain geography from one warehouse. And in most cases, those warehouses are going to be multi-country warehouses. So we opened our warehouse in Hamm three years ago, which supplies currently Germany, Austria, and Switzerland for both Douglas and Parfumdreams.
We have now opened our new and also first OWAC in Poland, which started in the summer and has now successfully started to supply all our stores in Poland and all our e-com customers in Poland. In 2026-2027, we're going to extend the reach of this warehouse because this warehouse is also going to supply Czech, Slovak, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Over the next two years, that should basically be rolled out. That warehouse is then replacing at least five different supply chain facilities, which we are all closing down. In Poland, we have already closed two facilities, but we will close more facilities, which should lead to a significant saving in the stock being kept in these warehouses.
In Italy, we already had an OWAC, but that OWAC was sitting in an old building with a less efficient footprint, and we have relocated that warehouse to a new facility with a new partner. Unfortunately, the partner and we in the beginning had some starter problems, so we have been facing availability problems towards both stores and e-com clients. That has started to improve more recently, but has certainly negatively impacted our sales development, let's say, in the past few months, with recently more improvements, and we do expect that we need a few more months to get it under control. However, ultimately, it will lead to a more efficient and effective operation where we believe that the logistical cost in Italy will come down versus what they historically have been.
Then last but not least, in Benelux, Belgium, the Netherlands, we currently have an online warehouse and a cross-docking facility for Belgium and the Netherlands. We're going to replace those two facilities by a new OWAC. That OWAC is going to be opened in the summer of 2026. We've signed an agreement with Bleckmann, which is already operating our current infrastructure. So basically, they will continue to support us, but they will run the new warehouse. And that also means that they have a responsibility to move from the old world to the new world. And that warehouse is going to help us to significantly improve availability and speed towards our Benelux operation as well. That means that in 2026, we bring our sixth OWAC in place, one to go. Number seven is planned to be opened in the Balkan region, quite likely in Romania.
That is not going to happen in 2026. It's either 2027 or 2028. We have not completely decided on that, but we are in preparation for that one as well. So that's the update I wanted to give to you regarding our footprint. In summary, so to wrap up, we are operating in the European premium beauty market, which is transitioning from a very, let's say, highly dynamic post-pandemic growth period to a, you could say, a more muted growth of around 3% in last financial year and 3%-4% for the years ahead of us, where we expect that the growth in the current financial year of the market will be closer to 3% rather than to 4%. Germany and France are our most important countries. They had a more significant slowdown, certainly in France, because the French market was negative, moving into positive territory this year.
And also in Germany, we see a small step up, let's say, in the market environment. Secondly, our Let It Bloom strategy continues to be the strategy, the omnichannel strategy for the future. However, in the light of those market dynamics, we have made some sharpening up, and we continue to work on efficiency. We continue to make targeted investments in growth initiatives like e-com, OWAC, and also our supply chain. Thirdly, we have finally concluded on 2024-2025. We have solid overall growth and results which are in line with expectations and also in line with our updated guidance from earlier last year. Yes, our profitability has been impacted by customer behavior. We have to work hard and fight hard to remain price competitive. And we can also see that customers are looking for a deal. Hence, promotional pressure, let's say, is clearly a point of attention.
But we do believe that we have been able to mitigate this with good focus on cost control, and that has led to the results of last year. The Douglas Group is well positioned to further grow as an omnichannel proposition, and we continue to believe that that's the winning model of the future. Still, 67% of our sales is stores. 33% is e-com. The e-com channel will grow a bit more than the store channel, but we do expect that we can grow our position in both channels. And last but not least, we have had a solid start into the new financial year in the months of October and November. For the month of December, the jury is still out because the next seven days are the most important days of the year.
And to conclude, we are releasing our guidance for the current financial year, where we believe that our sales will land in a range between 4.65 and 4.8. The midpoint of that in percentages is a growth of 3.3%. We expect our adjusted EBITDA to be around 16.5, and we expect that our leverage by the end of September 2026 is going to be in the range of 2.5%-3%. So before we go to move into Q&A, I already told you we have developed four commercials. We've shown you the first one. We also want to show you the Christmas one, clearly to motivate you for your hopefully upcoming Douglas or not today or Parfumdreams or Niche Beauty Christmas present purchase. So let us first have a 35-second look at this commercial, and then we will move into Q&A.
Welcome to Douglas. To dress up, to glam up, to shine on, to love, to dance, and joyful moments. Welcome to finding that, "Oh yes," gift. Douglas, welcome to beautiful. Give joy and find beautiful gifts this Christmas.
Okay. So with that, that concludes our, let's say, presentation towards you, and we would now like to give you the opportunity to move to Q&A, and I do see we have a loyal customer. That's Adam. So Adam, you are on top of the list. Why don't you start first? Hello, Adam?
Operator, can you?
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tune to confirm that you have entered in the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only the headset while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Adam Cochrane from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead, sir.
Adam, good morning. Go ahead. Operator, we do not hear anything. I don't know if the.
Adam, I think your line is on mute. Try to unmute your line. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, we have lost the line with the questioner, so we can bypass it and go to the next question. So the next question comes from the line of Jürgen Kolb from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
For the presentation, three questions, if I may. First of all, let's talk about the current business that you talked about.
I was wondering if you could give us maybe a few more details on your retail media activities, how they developed during the last fiscal year, what you expect in the future. Moreover, on the supplier bonuses, how have they developed and what was the impact on the gross profit margin side? Then on your rather midterm outlook and your idea and project to go towards the Middle East, obviously, several questions here. Would that potentially also include a joint venture or a franchise operation, how you want to go in there? Obviously, which countries do you target first? And one general underlying question, the history of Douglas in the past, many moons back, has very often been M&A acquisitions here in their country or within the group, within the competition.
Is that an opportunity maybe also rather going to the Middle East rather than staying in Europe and making maybe an acquisition to get rid of this quite aggressive price competition that we're facing here? So these are the three areas. Thank you.
Okay, Marco, I propose that I will take question one and three, and you will take question two. So on retail media with, let's say, our retail media business has developed very positively in the last financial year 2024-2025. What does it mean? That means that the sales growth of retail media has contributed significantly more than, let's say, the 3.5% which we've reported as a group. And also the EBITDA contribution of retail media has significantly grown. I am not in the position to quantify those numbers. Clearly, I know the numbers, but we are not disclosing them.
We do expect a continuation of the disproportionate faster growth of retail media. We are not doing retail media in all our countries. Our biggest country by far is currently Germany, but we make a significant step up, let's say, in France, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, but we also have countries where we haven't even started yet, so that means there is still a lot of potential, let's say, going forward. Since I'm talking, let me also take the third question, Marco, so first of all, just to repeat that in our midterm outlook, we have not included yet any plans, investments, and upsides coming out of, let's say, our Middle East intention. We have spent already quite some time on the ground, including myself, by the way.
There are many, many well-known retail brands who operate into the Middle East, but almost all of them are doing that together with a partner, with either a franchise partner or a joint venture partner. We most likely also want to do this with a partner. I say most likely because we have not officially decided it yet, but it's very unlikely that we will do this just by ourselves. We have not decided what model it will be, whether it will be master franchise or joint venture. We have also not yet chosen a partner, but we are talking to potential partners. When we talk about the GCC, we are talking about six countries. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia.
We have not decided in which order we want to enter, but we are targeting the six countries together because other than Saudi Arabia, the countries independent would be too small to do one country only, and it is very normal, since the language is the same, that brands and retailers are operating across those six countries. It is very unlikely that we will open stores or businesses at the same point in time, so there needs to be an order, but that is not yet decided what the order will be. When you talk about M&A, I have also made that statement, let's say, before. Yes, historically, Douglas has been quite active in the M&A domain, and I would say with mixed results.
So we have made a number of acquisitions which have really created value for the company, like our acquisition of Nocibé, the acquisition in Italy, acquisitions in Italy, the acquisitions which we've done in Bulgaria. But we also had less fortunate choices, especially in the Spanish kind of domain. So it's not that we completely rule out M&A. So if something is in the market, we are taking a look at it. But there are very, very, very few brands, retail brands, which we would be interested in. We would more likely be interested to acquire a number of stores in those markets where we believe that those stores would create a basically fill in some white spots. And currently, there are a number of retailers, certainly store-only retailers, under severe pressure. So we are keeping our eyes wide open.
But you should not expect, when we talk about CapEx of around EUR 150 million, there is not going to be a lot of that CapEx allocated in the current financial year to, let's say, real M&A. And to pick up 8 or 10 or 12 stores, I don't consider to be real M&A. So with that, I wanted to go back to Marco and to come back on basically the question regarding bonuses.
Yeah, sure, Jürgen. Thanks. So first of all, let's say on the impact on a full-year basis, our total gross profit margin is down 120 basis points. In this case, let's say the majority of the delta is attributable to a cash margin decline, which is essentially the result of the margin pressure from, well, mostly price and promo competition that we have been discussing. And let's say less than 50% due to lower supplier bonuses impact.
This is slightly bigger in Q4. Why is that? Because typically, our contract with the suppliers are on a calendar year basis, and therefore, every quarter, we, let's say, adjust our full calendar year sell-in and sell-out estimates to properly accrue for the kickbacks that we expect on a full-year basis from the suppliers. And let's say in Q4, let's say this had a slightly higher negative impact. So around half of the gross profit margin decline was due to supplier bonuses decline versus last year and half cash profit margin. Whereas on a full-year basis, slightly more around 60% was due to cash profit margin decline and less than 40% due to the supplier bonuses. I hope this addresses your question.
Absolutely. Yes. Thank you very much, guys.
Thank you, Jürgen. Operator, let's move to the next question.
The next question comes from the line of Joffrey Meller from Bank of America. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for taking my question. The first question I have is regarding the gross margin development as you head into fiscal 2026. So are you seeing any improvement or any deterioration of the promotional environment on the back of the solid start to the year that you are seeing? That would be my first question. And on the back of that, what drives your confidence on the EBITDA margin target that you have set for yourself for this year? And my second set of questions is more around the top-line components of growth. So you're mentioning a market growth of 2%-3% in the midterm, and you would be slightly above that.
Obviously, beyond the space opportunities and the like-for-like opportunities, I'd like to understand in a bit of a better manner what contribution you will see from pricing, mix, and volume within the premium beauty industry. And I'll probably stop here for now. Thank you very much.
Okay. Marco, let me take the second question, and I will start with that, and then you take the first question. So first of all, Joffrey, you were referring to a midterm growth expectation of 2% to 3% in the market. I just want to reiterate, we are expecting a growth of 3% to 4% in the midterm in the market. And for the current financial year, it's going to be more likely 3 rather than 4 or around 3 rather than around 4.
From a pricing perspective, we expect that the premium beauty brands will basically grow along with kind of the general consumer price inflation development, which has significantly normalized over the past, you could say, 1-2 years. So if that would be 1%-2%, then you could say 50% of the growth is volume-driven and 50% would be price-driven. We could also break down the growth of the market between online and offline because we expect e-com to be a bit more than 3%-4% and the store network to be a little bit less than 3%-4%. And we could also break it down into categories. So I'm quite certain that is a question as well. So in the last financial year, clearly, fragrance and haircare have been the most dynamic categories.
They have been contributing disproportionately more to the sales growth of the company, whereas skincare and color have been, let's say, on the lower end of that. We actually do expect that fragrance and haircare will continue to, let's say, be above average. With that, I wanted to go back to Marco to come back on the gross profit EBITDA question.
Yeah, sure. So thanks, Joffrey, for the question. We do not expect a material change in our gross profit margins in the future because this is a bit of a result of a, let's say, continued promotional intensity that we see on the market that we plan to counterbalance with, as explained by Sander, the focus on corporate and exclusive brands that typically carry greater loyalty with the customer and, of course, higher margin protection.
So basically, the strategy is to protect the margins via this growing sales share to remain competitive on the third-party brands. At the same time, we are still expanding the network, and it means that in a ramp-up phase, of course, stores are adding some fixed costs that are also partially responsible for the slight decline in Adjusted EBITDA margin in next year's guidance before, let's say, the full ramp-up of the sales level is reached. And this is a bit the building block. So gross profit margins that we're not seeing as a potential to expand, but a bit of a net effect between different dynamics.
Very helpful. Thank you very much, Marco and Sander. If I may, could I have a follow-up?
Of course. Go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you very much. You were mentioning the exclusive brands, and you were adding more exclusive brands. Can you give us a little bit of context on any contract duration you may have with these exclusive brands, or are they in perpetuity?
No. We have a number of. First of all, we make a distinction between what we call group exclusive brands. So these are brands where the group is basically contracting them, and we are selling those brands in almost all our countries. And we have brands where we have exclusivity often for one or two countries only. And our focus is predominantly on growing our group exclusive brands. If some of those brands we already have agreed we have been working together for multiple years. In most cases, we have basically an annual contract which we prolong. But brands in the premium beauty industry, you don't build in one or two years.
You build them over a longer time span. So when we commit to new brands like Nest or Drybar or Tybee, there is a clear intention from both sides, us and the brand, to do this for multiple years. And then there will be, let's say, different versions of contracts.
Very clear and extremely helpful. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
You're welcome. Let's move to Yashraj Rajani.
Thank you so much for taking my questions. I have three, please. So the first one is just on CapEx. So your CapEx guidance for this year seems to be a touch lower than last year. And again, obviously, excluding your GCC expansion, do you think that that's the right level of CapEx, or do you think that potentially there's some bit of underinvestment because you want to bring down the leverage potentially, right? So that's the first question.
The second question is just following up on your strategy of exclusivity. What is your current level of sales that happen on full price? And again, what are some of the efforts that you're taking to ensure that you have more and more percentage of sales that happen on full price? Appreciate there's a little bit not in your control with respect to competition, but what are you doing to focus on exclusivity and more full price? And the last question is you had fully walked us through how you're thinking about GCC and where you are in the stage of expansion. But maybe just at a big picture level, how are you balancing this decision versus potentially deleveraging and paying dividend, or do you think that both are completely mutually exclusive? Thank you.
Okay. Let me ask Marco to answer the first question, and I will handle the second and the third one.
Okay. So we do not believe that the next year's level of CapEx represents an underinvestment level. We should really bear in mind that this fiscal year we have invested significantly into the store network rollout as a big step up. 90 openings this year, becoming 74 on a net basis, is more than double than last year. And actually, in the last two, three years, we've been touching, quote-unquote, between refurbishments, relocations, and openings around 10% of our store network. So the rejuvenation is really progressing well. And we have still, despite being a lower number for next year, but we have still a large number of projects for next year. Secondly, when also we invest into our supply chain, it's typically done with third-party providers.
So it's, let's say, machinery and appliances do not necessarily sit within the CapEx that we have there, but of course, they are ultimately in our profit because they are in our margins. And equally for IT investments, it's, yes, partially under capitalization. But as you may know, the more the world is going into software as a service, the more actually there are OpEx investments. That's also why we have an increasing share of IT costs in our P&L. And therefore, we have to see a bit the fuller picture. But this is clearly our view.
Okay. Thank you, Marco. So let me move to the second question. And your question was, what percentage of our sales are we doing with full price? That's a simple question, but I don't have one number for you. But I do want to give some context.
So first of all, if a brand owner comes to us and they want to launch a new brand, our starting point is that we want to sell the brands against the RRP, the recommended retail price, because selective brands often work with recommended retail prices. And if we are exclusively selling this brand, it is very likely that we sell the majority of the volume of that brand against the RRP because there is no reason to change the price because we don't compete from an everyday perspective. And from a promotional perspective, we want to be very cautious and balanced. That would not mean that we never do a price promotion, but the level of price promotions is a very small portion of that.
If we talk about selective brands like, let's say, Chanel or Dior or Armani or Valentino or Kérastase, there are more retailers who are selling that. Hence, there is more price competition. Hence, the likelihood that we cannot sell this standard against the RRP is quite high. So depending on the market, we have a lower, let's say, shelf price, but not necessarily the same shelf price. And also depending on the market, we have a different level of competitive intensity. So you can also see our, let's say, EBITDA percentages for the different segments which we report. And part of that is being driven by differences in gross profit. And a significant portion of this difference in gross profit is, let's say, related to the different levels of promotional intensity. So in different markets, we sell different percentages of our sales against full price.
In order to mitigate that, we are working actively on growing the portion of brands which are unique to Douglas. Thirdly, on the GCC, today we are announcing that we are, let's say, considering an entry into the Middle East. We are also announcing that because we want to be careful that we are not creating any, let's say, insider stuff, etc. We want to give our people the opportunity to freely talk with suppliers, with landlords, and also with potential partners. But I just repeat, there is no approved plan yet. So therefore, I cannot give a 100% clear answer to your question, what would be the implication of this plan on CapEx and what would be the implication of this plan on leverage and maybe on the ability to pay our dividends.
However, I did say earlier that the expansion rate of new store openings in our existing 22 markets is going to slow down. As a result of that, we are already taking a little bit of a step back on CapEx investment for the current financial year, but we do expect a significantly smaller number of new store openings in the outer years, and that would clearly create some space, let's say, from a CapEx perspective, but that hasn't been quantified yet, but hopefully, that gives you a little bit of an indication on it, and once there is an approved plan, clearly, we have a responsibility to communicate the potential implications on, let's say, the midterm outlook which we are providing. Yashra, is that okay for now?
Yeah, that's super helpful. Thank you so much.
Okay. Yes, please. Vandita.
Thank you very much. I'll keep my comments brief. First of all, I just wondered if you considered any markets with the view of the selective beauty retailing, not beauty, just selective retailing legislation that you benefit from in Europe. Do you think not having that will make any difference as you think about new markets? Secondly, I don't know if you can answer this, but what level of sales growth do you need to start seeing a reversal in the trend of supplier bonuses? So for example, at the midpoint of your 2026 sales, around 3%, is that positive for gross margin year-on-year?
Okay. So those were your questions, Vandita. Two questions, right?
Yes. Thank you.
Okay. So let me take the first question. So first of all, in Europe, we have the very specific situation that there is the opportunity to have selective distribution agreements, and that is also backed up by, you could say, European legislation. And that clearly allows us and allows the brands, but also it helps us to be selective and to remain selective. If that legislation would disappear, that does not mean that you can buy Chanel or Dior at every corner of the street. If I walk into a drugstore in the United States where they don't have selective distribution agreements in the way we have that in, let's say, in Europe, I do not see Chanel or Dior or Acqua di Parma in the U.S. drugstores.
I was in the Middle East last week in a number of stores, and I was missing a lot of the, let's say, the premium brands, let's say, in more mass market type of environments. Hence, the brands are also able to create selectiveness, let's say, but not backed up by a legal framework, but basically backed up by a commercial framework. Because the brands we are focusing on are brands which are basically built on exclusivity. They want to create, you could say, a certain level of scarcity, and it would not be in the interest of those brands to see a massive growth of, let's say, distribution. So hence, we are happy to have this legislation in Europe. There is also not an expectation that this legislation will change shortly.
But if it would change in the mid or longer term, I don't think that it will fundamentally change, let's say, the dynamics of our category. With that, I want to ask Marco to take the second question.
Yes. Hi, Vandita. So on bonuses, first of all, I would need to clarify that, of course, the contracts and the relationship with the suppliers are more, let's say, complex than the single line of the bonuses because we also perform co-marketing activities together. And of course, it's also an agreement on the first line margin, the first cash margin. And also, there's quite a difference between winners and losers and different brands. So to your question on the growth that we could expect for the next years, yes, it could very well mean a return to a growth in the bonuses. However, it really depends on the mix, okay?
The mix, both of the nature of the brands and the contractual agreements. Overall, therefore, we see it as a balancing element towards the, let's say, the overall broader market pressure. Also, very often, when we have exclusivity brands, etc., they typically work with a higher cash margin and maybe lower kickbacks and bonuses. And therefore, it might also create a small change into this dynamic, if you see what I mean.
Very clear. Thank you.
Sure.
Okay.
With that, we would like to give Adam another opportunity. I can try.
Right. Hopefully, I've managed to turn my microphone on. Can you hear me now?
Yes. Loud and clear. Good morning, Adam.
All right. Good afternoon, Adam.
Brilliant. Well, with all that time, I've managed to get four questions, you'll be pleased to hear. On the first one, you talked about the market growth of 3%-4%. In the midterm, your low to mid-single-digit sales growth, obviously, there's a range in there. If we assume that your sales growth is somewhere within that market sales growth of 3%-4%, why are you not expecting an outperformance of the market growth over that next, let's say, three years? Is it because of the geographic mix within that 3%-4% where some markets where your penetration is lower are growing faster?
And Germany, let's say, might be a bit slower. Or is it the online versus offline? It's just a description of why you're not expecting to grow faster than the market. Secondly, a bit more specific. On your average net working capital, is the reduction being completely driven by the change in supplier funding? Or are you making operational improvements above and beyond just the change in funding?
Thirdly, has there been a performance differential between your sort of premium luxury and your more prestige offering within your stores? And is this something you can do to change the mix in your product portfolio between higher-end and lower-end if there is a difference that would be worth addressing? And fourth, very short term, last year, you saw some quite big moving parts in the way that trading changed in December and into January. Can you just remind us of when the step changes in consumer behavior started last year? I think it was from the sort of middle of December onwards. But if you just remind us exactly what happened in, I suppose, your Q1 last year. Thanks.
Yeah. I would propose or let me take question one, three, and four. And Marco can take question on net working capital. I will first take the three questions and then hand over to Marco. On the first question, let me keep it brief. We expect the market to grow between 3% and 4% over the next few years. We expect that it will be closer to 3 rather than, let's say, to 4. The midpoint of our guidance for the current financial year is 3.3%. You could say that it's basically in line with the market. It is correct, Adam, that it also implicitly is the consequence of our disproportional big portion of sales in Germany and France. Southern Europe, so Italy, Spain, but also the Adriatic countries are doing more than, let's say, 3%-4%. But other than in Italy, we have a relatively small position.
So the share of Germany and France makes us, you could say, a bit more cautious to a certain extent. That is one. Secondly, when you talk about premium and prestige, I'm very aware that many retailers are reporting downtrading of customers and acceleration of low-priced brands and acceleration of, let's say, private label sales within their mix. Within our business, that is a bit different. So first of all, the sales share of our private label is relatively small if you compare it to a drugstore or a supermarket, let's say, out there. So just the relevance of brands is a lot higher. When you look, for instance, to fragrance, it's not the case that the lower-priced fragrances are growing faster than the higher-priced fragrances. Actually, on the contrary, the higher the price in terms of positioning, they are doing disproportionately better.
So for instance, niche fragrances, which is still a relatively small segment, are growing disproportionately faster. What we do see is that people are sometimes trading to a smaller bottle. So instead of the 100 ml, they buy the 50 ml, but that would still be in the same brand. And then thirdly, if you look to the prestige brands, so we have, let's say, prestige, you could say, are brands which would sit between EUR 10 and EUR 40 - EUR 50. So a brand like Rituals is doing really well and is growing a lot faster than our total sales. But a brand like The Ordinary, which is also a prestige brand with a low price point, which was really a hype, is under pressure everywhere, not only with Douglas, but also, let's say, outside Douglas.
So there is a mixed picture, but there is no downtrading from premium to prestige within the categories in the portfolio and the brands. There are different developments. And then last year, we reported 6.4% growth for the quarter. Do I say that correct? 6.5%. So last year, we reported 6.5% for the full quarter, which was retrospectively for the full year, actually a very good, I would say, number and significantly higher than in the second, the third, and the fourth quarter. And it is correct that October and November, let's say, contributed positively to the 6.5% and that December contributed negatively to the 6.5% in two ways, by the way. First of all, the growth in December was lower than 6.5%. And secondly, the weight of December is significantly higher than the weight of the other two individual months.
So in October and November, we have cycled our strongest, let's say, months of the past year. And basically, as of now, more or less as of this week, we are starting to cycle a slowdown in last year's number. Hence, the comparison base is softening if you compare, let's say, last year with the current year. And then still, it remains a fact that our most important week, that's because the last seven days before Christmas are the most important seven days. And the last seven days of today, we've started with day seven. So there is still a lot what needs to be sold ahead of us. Is that okay? No, that's not addressing all your questions. That's hopefully addressing three of the four questions. And the fourth one comes from Marco.
Yeah. Okay. So working capital, Adam. So first of all, it's all driven by inventory, of course, our working capital, because then the relationship with the suppliers includes receivables and payables. Receivables towards customers is marginal because, I mean, essentially, our sales are 100% or so paid on time, let's say, paid at the cash. Inventory is slightly above last year in absolute number, but in terms of a growing business, it's actually in line in rotation. So we look at the days of inventory, and it's one day of improvement. So let's call it a stable. And remember, we always measure the average really to avoid, let's say, to focus on a single month potential seasonality effect or deviation.
We make efforts on fastening our accounts receivable collection, which is essentially bonuses from the suppliers or co-op and marketing income from the same, which is proving extremely successful in France, for example, and stable in the rest of the group. And then when we look at the accounts payable as a whole, yes, the answer is yes. I mean, the significant majority of the improvement in the, let's say, liability side came from the extension of the supply chain financing, which by reminding, it's essentially a payment service that we extend by 60 days of payment, the payments to, let's say, a selected share of our business that drives basically the longer payment terms that we have.
I must say also, in light of, of course, the store network development as well as the opening of warehouses, please always bear in mind that we have a front-loading effect on the working capital from inventory primarily because as we operate two parallel supply chains for a few months, of course, we need to build up the inventory on the new warehouse. As well, when we open the store, you are essentially purchasing immediately the inventory, but not yet having the sales or the COGS to benchmark it against in the KPIs.
Okay. Just to clear, so you extend the payment days by 60 days, but don't you just owe that money to a financial institution instead of a supplier?
Well, it's a service. It's a payment service that we have from a service provider, which is, by the way, why it's essentially an operating payable. It goes up and down, let's say, with the cycle of payments. So it's really an operating measure.
Okay. Fine. Thank you.
With that reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no more questions at this time. So I would now like to turn the conference back over to Sander van der Laan for any closing remarks.
Yes. Thank you, operator. So let me briefly wrap up. We want to thank you all for your attendance. We've concluded a dynamic year 2024-2025. The Douglas Group is well positioned for the future. The market environment has changed, but we are, let's say, adjusting for that. Christmas is around the corner. Our purpose is to make life more beautiful. Don't forget to think about your beloved ones and your family.
Our stores and our online stores remain to be open to service you with your Christmas purchase, and Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and hopefully see and talk to you in the new year. Hereby, I close the call.
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