Good day, ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to today's analyst and investor call of the Fielmann Group AG following the publication of the financial year figures of 2025 and the first quarter results of 2026. With this, I'm happy to hand over to Fielmann's CFO, Steffen Baetjer.
Sarah, thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Steffen. I'm Fielmann's CFO and joined about three years ago. I'm very happy to welcome you to our first quarterly results call where we deal with the 2025 results and Q1 2026. I'm super excited and happy to have Marc with me, our CEO and majority shareholder. Without further ado, I hand over to Marc for the intro.
Thanks very much, Steffen. I think most of you guys know already the Fielmann Group, so I'll just give a very brief summary of our family business. We are the third-largest vision care provider worldwide. We count around 30 million active customers, who are served by 24,000 fantastic colleagues of ours across the globe. We're operating in our retail markets in Europe and in the U.S., and we also operate manufacturing logistics in Asia. I think one thing that is particular about Fielmann is a very, very clear focus on customers and patients. We have a 90% customer satisfaction rate, so we do very regular surveys, and that's the number of customers that say that they are happy or very happy with us. Last year, we reported EUR 2.44 billion in annual total sales.
If you look at our market position globally, you can see in the middle, roughly the sales split by major countries. As you can see, Germany is still by far our largest market with roughly a 60% share. The remaining 40% are split in sequence by the U.S., which is our second-biggest market. Switzerland is big for us, 10%, Spain, 9%, Austria, the other European markets account for the rest. If you look to the right-hand side of this chart, you can see our market position. We are the clear and uncontested market leader in terms of unit sales all across Central Europe, we're speaking about countries like Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia. We're number 2 in Eastern Europe, where we have a very strong presence and will achieve market leadership in the long term.
We are number 2 in Spain, a market that we have just entered 5 years ago and have grown to become the number 2 in five years. We're actually pretty confident that we'll take over market leadership next year and grow a lot further there. Looking on the left-hand side of this chart, you can see our market position in the U.S., a market that we have entered roughly three years ago. As you can see, we're the market leader in terms of unit sales in the Upper Midwest, so we're talking about states like Michigan and Wisconsin. We also have a strong position in Nebraska, the Dakotas, and in Minnesota.
We're very confident that in the medium term, we'll seize market leadership in additional states of the U.S., in an area that we call the Greater Midwest. Overall, we have a presence in 17 states. Just a quick look at our manufacturing and logistics network. As you might be aware, Fielmann is not only a vision care provider and audiology provider, but we are actually a vertically integrated business. That means we have our own design, product development, and manufacturing capabilities. We generally manufacture the glasses and lenses in the markets that we are active in. We have two large facilities in the U.S. We have a big facility in Germany, one in northern Spain, another one in Poland.
We're just building up a huge logistics center in Chomutov in the Czech Republic, and we have a major joint venture in Dangyang. Dangyang being the city in the world that manufactures the most lenses in the world. That's where we run the joint venture. Having this globally diversified and integrated supply chain obviously allows us to offer very, very, very competitive prices to our customers and patients globally, and that being the value proposition that we give to our patients. Really competitive value is obviously one of our key USPs. With that, just after a quick introduction of the Fielmann Group, I would hand over to Steffen, who will provide a review of the financial year 2025.
Thank you, Marc, and it's an absolute pleasure for me to talk to you about the financial year 2025 because that was, for us as a group, a record-breaking year in terms of numbers. Real pleasure to talk about that. Let's talk about top line. Our top line grew by 7.4%. One of the most reliable ways for us to grow our top line is by increasing our store network. We moved from 1,240 to 1,262, so +22 stores. That's a net number, so openings and closings. We actually opened 37 stores across the world last year. 10 of those in Spain, which is a country where we grow a lot.
Nine in the U.S., but we also closed quite a few in the U.S. because we are, you know, in terms of our integration work, we're looking at our store network there, and we cleaned up a bit. 7.4% growth, top line is great. 3.5% of that, 3.6% is organic growth. 3.8% is M&A. The first half year full consolidation of Shopko Optical is the driver here. Looking at those numbers a bit more in detail, currency FX-related movements become a little more important for us as a group. That's why we're showing you in the middle, growth numbers at constant currency, which for us is the operational view of the world, so to say.
We obviously also show you the numbers in euros because that's our functional currency, and that's what actually ends up in the reported EUR P&L numbers. Group grew at 7.8 at constant currency, 7.4 in EUR. You know, the two big movements were the appreciation of the Swiss franc against the euro and the significant devaluation of the dollar against the euro following Q2 last year. Looking at those countries a bit more in detail, 4.1% growth in Europe, basically the GSA region at 4%-6% growth. Spain, as I said, we love it, 9% growth.
All the others, 0.6, 0.8, in constant currencies and in euros, that's Italy, that's Czech Republic, that's Poland, et cetera, et cetera. Poland alone grew 11%, that's another growth market for us. The U.S. grew at 46.7% in dollar terms, 41% in euro terms. That is obviously the first time consolidation of Shopko of the first half year. Organically, we grew around 3% in that year. In the U.S., you know that the focus in North America for us was something else than growing. It was more getting ready and building the platform. Great is also, if you look at the product categories, we not only grow across all countries, we also grow across all product categories.
contact lenses and medical service, the two things I wanna point out here, very, very strong businesses in the U.S. Medical services with all the optical doctors that work for us there, more than 300 of them, and they provide these services. But also the eye checkup in Germany that we're providing, is a fantastic, gives us fantastic growth numbers. contact lenses, the 9% in the group versus the 3% in Europe is basically driven by the first time consolidation of the U.S. numbers. If we look at profitability, well, we guided you towards 25% in Europe, 24% adjusted EBITDA in the group, and I think we delivered that at 23.8 and 24.8. Really happy with the development of the U.S. margins.
You know, the focus was on integrating and getting it to one company. The U.S. margin growing from 9.9% to just over 16% is a great achievement. Also great is obviously that our adjusted EBITDA grows by 18%, when, you know, sales only grow by 7.5%. That's a great sign of operating leverage that this business exhibits, and that's part of our business model, obviously. Also adjusted EBT and adjusted EBT margin and net results are great, growing at 30% or 33%. Net result at EUR 205 million is actually the highest that we ever recorded and further drives down our earnings per share ratio, so there might be an opportunity for you guys looking at that.
Adjusted EBT margin at 12.8% also right at where we guided it. Because this is a full year, we also take a quick look at balance sheet numbers, and we take a quick look at cash flow numbers. All these profitability numbers are exactly as we reported them when we reported preliminary numbers to you, so very happy with that, stable processes. Looking at the balance sheet, you see that our cash position improved quite significantly. That's basically a model of, you know, us selling a lot more glasses and hearing aids and medical services. The important thing is not that we generate that much cash. The important thing is that gives us the financial flexibility. It supports growth. It supports dividends. We can do both.
We're really in a very, very good position sitting on that cash and waiting for it to be deployed. Leverage went down from 1.7 to 1.2. That's a function of strong cash and EBITDA growth. This is actually including leases, not just the debt, so including leases at 1.2, and we always guided to that. You know, we're looking at maximum of 2x , so we're well underway here. Equity ratio increased a bit from 39% to 40%.
That's basically if you have a record profit that goes into equity and drives the balance sheet strength, that also drives our stability and provides you know, this capital structure really supports our growth because we have a lot of capital to deploy, and we can put debt on if we want to. We're ready for what's coming under Vision 2035, in terms of growth if we wanted to. Cash flow, on the other hand, operating cash flow up EUR 86 million . That's higher earnings. It's a continuously strong cash conversion from operating cash flow to EBITDA, almost 90%. We also pulled 16 million positive out of working capital. That's mainly inventory that we drove down, you know, really getting more and more, or leaner and leaner on that.
you know, we're still working on three, four, five-month inventory, so just to make sure. Cash flow from investing and activities is now at a normalized level, I'd say, for to provide us for capital growth, for new stores, modernizations, and infrastructure investments. Last year was significantly higher because of the M&A activities. In the financing activities, you basically see the refinancing short-term bank loan to finance the Shopko acquisition turned into a long-term short term. The lease payments increased also because we grow our business, and therefore we need to rent stores, and that happens in the financing activities. Overall, super happy with all those numbers.
Very stable balance sheet, very good cash generation, ready and set and go for growth that's coming. With that, I hand back to Marc, who is talking to you about the Vision 2025.
2025 was not only a great financial year for us with fantastic numbers that Steffen has just shown to you and elaborated a little bit on, but 2025 was obviously also the conclusion of our Vision 2025. Let's do a quick recap. Three main strategic pillars. We took what used to be a fairly traditional family business, and we transformed it into a modern family business. Now, don't get me wrong, that traditional business model took us to market leadership in Germany, and so that was a great model for us. The wishes and demands of our customers have evolved, of our people working for and with us, and obviously also of the environment, so that needs a bit different family business culture, and I think we made great headways there.
Secondly, when we started with the Vision 2025, we were mainly a German brick-and-mortar business. Believe we've done a great job in digitalizing that business. Today, we have an omni-channel platform that has around 50 million active users, and we have quadrupled our e-commerce sales in that period, still with very healthy growth in e-commerce as well, just at the level of 4% that shows you how little the overall importance of e-commerce in our business is. Yet if you look more into categories like sunglasses or contact lenses, it's highly relevant there, and we are very able to compete very, very well there. In other categories, such as prescription eyewear, e-commerce standalone pure play is not important, but omni-channel, of course, is very, very important.
We see a lot of touch points with our customers even before they enter our stores or practices. Last but not least, on the internationalization front, we took a German-speaking business, and we truly made it an international business. For four years now, all of our senior management speaks English. We have diversified our footprint globally and continue to do so. Maybe just a quick look at the numbers as well. Not only on the strategic pillars we succeeded, but we actually also reached all of our goals and in quite a few cases even exceeded them. We wanted to read the exceptionally high customer satisfaction number of 90% of happy or very happy customers. Did that. Fantastic. Great. Very proud and grateful to our teams across the globe. We aimed for a 5% CAGR over this period.
We actually nearly doubled the growth pace. Instead of the EUR 2 billion in sales that we aimed for, we got EUR 2.4 billion, nearly EUR 1 billion increase over the Vision 2025 period. We said we're gonna reach a 25% adjusted EBITDA margin. We did that in the original scope, meaning in Europe. Of course, we didn't fully take the U.S. into account that we only acquired three years ago. But I think also on a group level, a 24% EBITDA margin is a wonderful result. If you look at nominal operating profit, obviously that by far exceeded what we originally planned, and Steffen already mentioned our record net profit, highest in the history of our family business as well.
Very, very happy to conclude the Vision 2025 at and above the goals that we set ourselves despite a coronavirus pandemic, despite the Ukraine war and ensuing crisis, as a result of increased interest rates and very low consumer confidence. I think fantastic job of our people around the world. Just a quick look at guidance. Steffen showed you the numbers. Just a quick reminder, that's what we guided. We reached our guidance. I think we've done that pretty consistently over the last few years. We said we accelerate the growth first. We accelerated the growth first. We said we're gonna reach our margins. We're gonna focus on efficiency. We did that, and that's how we got to the 25% margin. Big call-out to all of our teams across the globe. We're very proud of them.
We're very grateful, and it's really them who deliver these numbers. It's really a big thank you to all of our loyal customers around the world and our great people over the globe that serve our patients and customers every day in our stores and practices. With that, we come to the Vision 2035. This is the vision that many of you are probably aware of because we presented it at our AGM last summer. I'm just gonna give a very fast recap. Our Vision 2035 for the next 10 years is, as the most trusted partner for hearing and vision, we redefine comprehensive care globally. What does that mean? Well, first of all, if you look at the lower part of this chart, we have a very solid business in our existing markets in optometry in Europe.
Big potential there, especially in Eastern Europe and in Spain, so big opportunities. Secondly, you see the optometry in the U.S. Our single biggest growth driver is optometry in the U.S., where we're growing healthily, but the potential is even significantly bigger. It's the biggest optometry market in the world, standing at around $70 billion. A third big growth pillar is the audiology in Europe. That is obviously our fast-growing audiology business, on average growing 13% over the period of Vision 2025, and we wanna accelerate that further to more than double the business in next five years. We have medical services, which is a very exciting field for us that is now firmly established in our group. Optometry and adjacent medical services are becoming more and more important for us.
All of this leads to our five-year goals. We have set ourselves the goals of reaching record high customer satisfaction of 90% again, which is quite a big challenge if you think that we acquired some businesses, especially in the U.S., with historically lower customer satisfaction rates. Big challenge there to bring those values up and to keep that consistently high level also in Europe. In terms of sales, we're aiming for about EUR 4 billion. We've given the range there. That's really what we feel is an ambitious but realistic target for the next five years. Obviously, we wanna keep our high profitability profile and reach around a 25% adjusted EBITDA margin. With that, I would hand over to Steffen for the Q1 numbers.
Thank you very much, Marc. Let's talk about Q1. We just published those numbers this morning. Obviously, difficult environment in the first quarter. Iran War, contrary to common belief, not a big issue for us at the moment because, quite frankly, our supply chain is not touched by that. When we look at the Iran War, we're basically more concerned about secondary and tertiary effects like increasing oil prices lead to inflation, lead to lower consumer sentiment. At the moment, you know, that is not helpful. Don't get me wrong. It's not, it doesn't have a direct impact on us. Weather was a big problem and strikes was a big problem.
If we look at the business performance across our three main regions in which we operate, you see Germany, lots of strikes in the first two months. Winter was really harsh in Germany, really shutting down parts of the major cities for quite an extended period. IMF forecast has been downgraded for Germany to 0.8% growth. For us on the short-term horizon, that's an unchanged red arrow downwards for the German economy. It was good that we actually embarked five years ago on internationalizing the business. Europe, slightly different, but also there, difficult weather. Spain saw torrential rain. Poland, really cold, really a lot of snow, but slightly higher growth dynamic. IMF forecast for Europe, 1.1%.
For Spain, which is a more relevant country for us in Europe, 2.1%. That gives us a kind of neutral yellow arrow to the side. Then, the U.S. and, yeah, it sounds like excuses, but really significant. The Great West or the Midwest is really known for harsh winters, but this was, even by their standards, a very harsh winter. There were times when we couldn't open dozens of our stores just because we physically couldn't open the door. Overall, but even there, spring has arrived, so that's over. Overall, a more robust growth dynamic at 2.3 for this year forecasted, so that's a yellow arrow to the side. Overall, tariff war not such a big issue, but weather and strikes was really difficult for us in January and February.
March already looked a lot better. What, you know, did we deliver? We opened, since Q1 2025, we opened 43 stores in total. Alone this year, since January 26th, we opened 20 stores, 10 in Luxembourg through an acquisition, and then five in the U.S., and then Spain, Poland, Germany. Across the globe, we basically opened stores, that's our, you know, increased growth dynamic that we're embarking on this year. We're adding a lot more to our network. Revenue grew at 2.3% at constant currency to a reported EUR 613 million. Let's look at the individual countries. Again, constant currency in the middle, reported figures on the right-hand side. You see the difference of 1 percentage point, that's basically the US dollar devaluation.
Numbers a little smaller than what we saw last year, still, you know, positive across the board. GSA in the 2%, 3% range. Austria really hit by bad weather. Also we took the downtime because, you know, as you know, December is, you know, a low season month for us. We take those months to basically refurbish a few stores, and that reached into the January, February period as well. 1%-3% in GSA. Spain, torrential rain, still 5% growth. Others, 9%. That's the Luxembourg acquisition. Then in the U.S., 2.2% in USD terms, 8.1%- in EUR terms, and that's the dollar devaluation against that started in Q2 last year. Not a lot we can do about that.
On the contrary, profitability really intact. 2024, we had a very good, those who have been with us for much longer, we had a really good Q1 last year. We actually matching those numbers on the profitability level. EUR 100 slight increase in total adjusted EBITDA. Margins basically on the same level as last year at 24.3% and 25.7%. U.S. at 13.8%, just a touch below Q1 2025 numbers. Obviously, we wanted to improve that profitability, you know, the lower demand or the inability of our customers to reach our stores because of snow, part with us really improving and increasing doctor coverage in most of our stores, led to this effect, that is basically setting us up for more growth in the month to come.
As I said, March already looked a lot better, so let's hope this continues into the year. Adjusted EBT and net results also in line with last year's results. Given circumstances, very happy with the results. You know, total consolidated sales a little on the low side. Profitability definitely where we want it to be. With that, we come to the outlook for 2026 and, you know, share with you our Guidance for this year. Because Craig is such a good friend and, we put some one slide in there just to answer his question. You know, he basically said, "Hey, you know, if you only grow by 2% but you wanna guide us to 5%-7%, how do you wanna do that?" There are three levers to that.
Number one, we are expanding exam availability, mainly in the U.S. Having ODs in the U.S. is the first gatekeeper. If you can't get an eye exam, you're not going to buy a pair of glasses from us. Secondly, we increased productivity. We talked a lot about that over the last 15 months in terms of what we do on that. It's AI-based automated refraction, it's better store planning where we match the demand of our customers and our working schedules, then accelerate expansion. We're aggressively going to move into opening more stores, and as you saw, you know, we already added 20 stores this year net. That's about as many as we entered or added last year to our store network. Those are the three levers.
And with better weather, we're going to be very, very sure that we see an improved growth dynamic across the board. For this year, we're guiding you on customer satisfaction. We want to keep that number at the high level of around 90%, and that's, for us, the most important KPI because it speaks to the longevity of our business model. Total consolidated sales shall grow at about 5%-7% year on year, so that gives us lands us at about EUR 2.55 billion-EUR 2.60 billion. Adjusted EBITDA, you know, should be we will keep the margin around 23%, and as you all know, we're adding a lot more new stores.
New stores are initially always loss-making because they don't address the full customer potential, therefore a slight decline in the EBITDA margin for this year as we announced last year at the Capital Markets Day. Somewhere between EUR 590 million and EUR 610 million. Adjusted EBT margin should be in line broadly with last year, 12%-13%. That's our guidance. I know, I read the comments obviously, that some of you feel a little, you know, underwhelmed with that. Looking at the environment and looking at where we stand in the world and what we're doing, we have great plans. We're ready to grow. We have the capital, we have the knowledge, we have the footprint, we're gonna execute on that. Let's see how it turns out.
With that, I open up to your questions, and thank you very much. Craig, we already did one of your questions, if you all can limit yourselves to two questions. We have 55 people on the call, if everybody maximum of two questions. Please.
Thank you so much for the presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, we're happy to take your questions in person via the audio line. To do so, just raise your virtual hand and I will give you the permission to unmute yourself. If you have dialed in via phone, you can use the key combination star key nine to raise your hand. Of course, you can also post questions in our chat. We will start with the questions from Mr. Rossi, please go ahead.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you very much for taking my two questions. The first one is regarding the U.S. market. A few weeks ago, you announced the creation of your U.S. Optometry Advisory Board. Could you provide more color on how this board will help you to better serve your U.S. customers there? I think it's gonna be interesting to have your view on that. My second question, you alluded to the German consumer sentiment, no signs of a deterioration so far. I was curious to have your view on how resilient the German customer is now compared to 2022 during the last major inflationary phase.
According to you, do you feel that the consumer is now better prepared to cope with a volatile macro environment? Thank you.
Thank you very much for your questions. First, the U.S. market, as most of you guys are aware, the regulatory landscape and also the professional structure is a little bit different in most of continental Europe compared to the U.S. In Europe, we basically have opticians and master opticians taking care of everything but the medical part, and then you have the ophthalmologist that takes care of the medical part. We're using telemedicine to bridge that gap and work closer together in Europe. In the U.S., we actually have doctors on site, we actually do provide medical services in store in our practices.
Those optometrists have a very high degree of training, so they can not only issue prescriptions for eyewear or contact lenses, but they can also prescribe medication and do treatments there. The main goal of the setup of this optometry board is to address the most important growth lever in the United States, which is the exam capacity and availability of optometrists. This has a twofold goal. The one goal is really to define a medical strategy and to define the medical scope that we provide.
We are very clear that we will not be an aggressively full medical provider. At the same time, we will also not just be an optical retailer in the U.S. We actually will provide comprehensive medical care in the U.S., pretty similar to Europe, where we're working with a hub and spoke model, meaning that we will not provide extensive medical care in every facility. We're using our dense store network in Europe, practice network in the U.S. to refer patients that have additional medical needs, especially to those locations where we then also improve our scope of practice. That's really an exciting field in the U.S., something that our doctors are very passionate about.
We really will bring and combine productivity and efficiency in the exam lane with an extended scope in the medical care. Many people consider this a contradiction. We actually think it's very complementary. If we free up time for our optometrists, if we can be more productive in exams, for example, by adding skilled, trained opticians that can do pre-testing and that take up time, take out time, precious time that our optometrists now spend on administrative work, then that's really time that we can use for additional exams and we can use for additional medical service, and that's something that our doctors really care about in the United States. To your second question, the German consumer sentiment, I think there have been publications there that actually say that the German consumer is more resilient.
I'm not an economist or an expert of German consumer confidence. I've seen that the German consumer confidence has retreated slightly. Translated to the German optical industry, I can definitely report that there has been some hesitation when it comes to repurchase cycles. I think an important part for our industry and for us specifically is to make sure that we match the, or that we manage the repurchase cycles. For us, of course, we benefit from consumers looking for value offerings. As the price leader, we obviously have a big opportunity at gaining additional market shares. That's something that we managed in the last five years. That's something that we managed last year.
As per our numbers, we feel that specifically also in Germany, we will be extending our market shares this year as well. To our current information, we're significantly outperforming the German market with the numbers that we have right now. Hope that answered your questions.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for the questions. We will move on with the next question. It is from Craig Abbott. He would like to know, the sales guidance implies a clear acceleration in sales the remainder of the year, 6%-7%. Apparently, the investments you have been making are starting to pay off. Could you provide some color on what underlines your confidence in achieving this?
I think, Craig, we answered that question already with that slide. You know, we grew in our core market GSA 4% to 6% last year, we're actually accelerating the growth pace by adding more stores. Number 2, we're adding exam capacity mainly in the U.S., which will help us, after all the integration work, we're now ready to embark on a growth trend in the United States. We continue to increase productivity of our opticians and of our optometrists. Thirdly, you know, we're really embarking on opening more stores, that should drive sales. As I said, you know, this year alone, we added almost as many stores on a net level as we did for the full year last year, that's gonna continue.
In our meetings, I talked about that in Spain, for example, we're gonna go from 10 stores to 25 to 30 stores this year alone. That's the growth dynamic, why we're confident around the 5% to 7% growth rate.
Maybe if I can add one thing, we're not only going to add exam capacity, we have already added exam capacity, in the U.S., and that was met with soft demand by very temporary weather effects, as we alluded to. I mean, Wisconsin, we had 3 ft of snow. That's why Steffen literally, you couldn't get into the store, not even anywhere near to it. We are pretty confident that with that additional exam capacity and weather obviously having improved already from March onwards, that obviously the demand is there. U.S. consumers, U.S. patients on average wait 16 days for an eye exam. In rural areas, they wait months for an eye exam. When you add exam capacity, that translates into demand.
That's why we are pretty confident that as now weather has normalized, that we can also capture this additional growth, especially in the U.S. Then you will also see a normalization and improvement in the EBITDA margin, because now what you saw on the EBITDA margin in the U.S. was soft demand on an already improved exam capacity that obviously drives up the cost base there because it was prepared for a higher demand that only temporarily didn't come, but is coming now.
Thank you so much. The next question is from Harrison Woodin-Lygo. On the expectations for rebranding in the U.S., will new U.S. stores bear the Fielmann banner? What will be the branding transition look like?
Thanks very much for this very important question. We are actually now in the transformation phase. As we have said in the past, 2024, 2025 was the integration phase. We have moved all of our banners into one Fielmann USA organization. Even now as we operate under SVS Vision and Shopko Optical, they all use the same systems, they all use the same core processes. In the next step, we're now transforming the business. We are actually piloting right now the Fielmann brand in a few stores, and with that we are piloting our new offerings. We will take the time that we need to make sure that we have a superior customer experience. I think we've alluded to that in the past. It will feature readily available exam availability.
Especially in regions where people wait for weeks or sometimes months for exams, that's a great USP to be able to say in 48 hours you do get an exam guaranteed. Secondly, we will have a huge selection of glasses fully covered by the vision insurances. Again, I think that's another really cool USP. The third one will be really a transparent patient experience where people can fully understand what there're paying for if they pay out of pocket. Those are the three big changes that we are piloting. We've introduced new products, new technology, new services into the practices that we're piloting in. We're iterating it, and once we feel confident that the customer experience and the patient experience is really superior, we will roll it out to further stores.
That will take this year, I would suppose, and then the pace of transformation and introducing it to other practices, will depend obviously on the success of the pilot that we're running right now.
Thank you so much. His second question is, can you quantify the productivity improvements, especially in the U.S. so far? Can you break down the revenue drivers for price volume mix? Is Fielmann brand outperforming other branded frames?
Well, don't really, Harrison, don't really wanna turn this into a modeling call. Your best source to go to is Nils. AOV in the U.S. have been relatively stable, and growth mainly comes from, you know, more sales basically, and a slight increase in sellout structure, which is for us more important than the price increases as you know. Improving the quality, selling more multifocal, that's basically the way we're going, and that's the same in the U.S. as it is in Europe.
Thank you. Then we have a virtual hand from Diana Gomes, so you should be able to speak now.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Could I ask, in terms of the guidance for the 5%-7% revenue growth, would you be able to share with us what's your expectation in terms of the currency impact? And in terms of the U.S. margin improvement through the year, could you give us a little bit more color in terms of the shape of that trajectory and the implied sequential, say, deceleration in terms of the margin through the year? Should we think about it more due to the fact that you have the store openings coming through, or is there something else that we should keep in mind?
Yep, okay.
Thank you so much.
Sure. Diana, good to talk to you again. Hello. Why don't I take those two question. The 5%-7% growth and the FX impact, we're modeling on a constant, well, constant US dollar to euro exchange rate. It's now, it stands at about 1.18. I think, the last time I checked, which is about a few days ago, the forward for the end of the year was around that area. We're implying, as we say in all our documents for read the fine print, we're saying the US dollar, euro exchange rate should be stable for the remainder of the year. Which basically means it's, you know, also for Q2, Q3, Q4 in line with last year. On the margins, that's a tricky question.
The U.S. margins were a little softer than we wanted it to be, because as Marc said, we increased doctor capacity, which cost money, personnel expenses, and we had a little softer demand than anticipated. That's not good for margin in our business, as you know. The really good news of this quarter is that our gross profit margins, so cost of goods sold, is very stable and slightly improving over time. We do see that we have a big resilience on the gross profit margin. Everything that happened to the margin is basically happening on the personnel expenses. As soon as demand picks up, we will be seeing an increase in the U.S. margins as well. That should happen over the next over this quarter really.
Because I spoke with Wisconsin yesterday, and yesterday it was raining, but it was above 32 degrees Fahrenheit, which is good news for them.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Sorry, one last thing on that. Just a reminder, you all know that, but you know that contrary to our European business, the U.S. business has the strongest sales in Q4 because everybody wakes up in December and thinks, "Oh, I still need to get my pair of glasses for this year." The big, you know, the big margin improvement in the U.S. typically comes in Q4.
Which is because of the insurances. You get your insurance reimbursement and, if you don't use it in the last quarter, you obviously lose it for that year.
Thank you. The next question comes from Mr. Zabel. Congrats for the great margin lift up in all your major markets. What needs to happen in order to lift Germany's and Austria's EBT margins back up to or close to 2018, 2019 levels? What would be a realistic timeframe?
Well, we don't anticipate, our guidance says for this year as well for, you know, for this year, we're guiding to 23%. In our target 2030, we say 25% for the group. Germany, Austria, Switzerland make up a big part of our business. We're not targeting the 28%, 29%, 30% that we saw in the past. We are continuously investing. We're even in Germany this year, we're gonna open 15 new stores, so that has a little drag on margins as well. We don't have a plan to increase to 28%, 29% overall, because our guidance for the group is 25. Yeah.
Thank you. Mr. Neff would like to know, you mentioned an improvement environment in March compared to January and February. Can you give more details regarding the growth rates during this month, and has this trend continued into April?
We could, but we don't, because as you know, we are reporting quarterly numbers. We don't report monthly figures. Just take my word. January, February were not good. March was a lot better. We don't break by month and drivers.
Thank you. Next question. Please, can you quantify the exit rate for the quarter or give us an understanding of the improvement seen in growth during March?
Same answer. We don't guide or give details on individual month. I think that would be over-detailed. You know, we're reporting quarters and, take my word, March was a lot better.
All right. We have a question I think we already covered a bit. The number of trainees has been declining gradually the past five years. To what extent is this reflection of personnel intensity of your stores structurally declining as the various in-store tools like AI-enhanced refraction equipment reduce the average time per customer? Is it simply a reflection of a shrinking talent pool? If so, to what extent might this become a growth hindrance?
I think the major change in the last few years has been that the labor market, slightly, I wanna say slightly changed to our favor, from a labor market that was really reflective of a lack of skilled labor. Now with economic weakening of Germany's stagnation, rising unemployment, it is really a situation where the labor market is becoming a little bit more favorable for employers like ourselves. As you already imply, we have enacted and continue to enact quite a lot of measures that drive productivity. The most recent one is the AI-based self-refraction. This is not replacing the optician's core competency and refraction, but it is significantly accelerating the process at the same or better quality and the same or better customer satisfaction.
At the same time, another big driver was and remains our technology, also AI-based, that we use to match capacity of labor in our stores in Europe with the customer footfall. Generally, the challenge is not that we have tons of stores where we don't get people, but the big challenge is always to have the people at the right place at the right time, where there's the patient footfalls or scheduling and appointment systems help a lot there. Another big lever on productivity has been a continued centralization of our glazing. We're really centralizing and bringing the manufacture of glasses into our own supply chain instead of making a lot of glasses in the individual stores. That's another big driver for productivity and also one that will continue quite a bit. Little bit less labor needed.
I think big perspectives and potentials for opticians in Germany, especially as we extend into the medical services, really adding a lot of new tasks and roles to our opticians. The labor market developing a little bit more into our favor, and that is amplified by the productivity gains that we have seen and where we also still see potentials.
Thank you. Mr. Koch would like to know, could you talk to the competitive environment in the U.S. and also where you see your customer satisfaction level in the U.S. today relative to Europe? Is this improving?
Mid-single digits, lower customer satisfaction rates in the companies that we took over that I would label as very solid companies in terms of the customer experience. We didn't acquire them solely because they were best in class in terms of their customer experience. We acquired those companies specifically because of their dense store networks and their great positions with insurances. They really are also in a lot of positions where insurances are great partners that love to work with us. When you have one store in New York, one in Los Angeles, and one in Florida, where a lot of other optometrists are, that doesn't make you very favorable with insurances. If you have a lot of practices in locations that are generally labeled health deserts or rural areas, you're much more favorable among insurances.
Having said that, we are in the right spot in the U.S. market. That's generally where there's a lower competitive environment, and that's also where we're gonna continue to play. Specifically in the greater Midwest, that's a very different competitive environment to, say, downtown New York City or L.A. or Miami, and that's where we feel very comfortable and where we will continue to expand and where we feel a lot of value can be added to the customer experience.
I've visited a lot of our practices there, and when you go to rural Minnesota or rural Nebraska or rural Wisconsin, there's not really a lot of people out there. I think we're really doing a great job in improving the accessibility and affordability, not only of eyewear products, but also of the eye care there. That's definitely something that we will continue to do.
Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Diana again.
Thank you for the follow-up. Could you share with us the progress you have made in the progressive lenses space? I know it was one area where you were aiming to train the personnel in the store to be able to increase that product mix. If I could squeeze one more in terms of smart or AI glasses, are you seeing any impact on the product mix from that as well? Thank you.
Great questions, Diana. Thank you very much. Highly relevant question because the improving sales mix, especially in progressive lenses, has actually been one of the biggest drivers of our EBITDA margin success story. We said we're gonna grow in Europe to 25% adjusted EBITDA margin. We did. One of the most successful measures was really exactly what you mentioned. Really training our teams, making customers aware, and then being able to see also the sell-through of progressive lenses. A far more complex product that takes more time, a product that really also requires more expertise. We're super happy that we were able to deliver it. Yep, we set ourselves the goals to really improve this share. We managed to improve that share.
Still upside, that's also one of the drivers that we still see continuing in the coming years, especially in our mature markets. With regards to smart glasses, we've been following that topic, I would say for nearly a decade. You might remember Google Glass and so on. In my experience or my observation, smart glasses come and go in waves. There's always these waves of excitement. We've seen multiple waves in the last decade of moving up, then it totally crashed, nobody bought smart glasses. I think now we see the first time a wave where smart glasses are here to stay. I believe that's the consensus in the industry. Smart glasses have established themselves as a category. For now, in my personal view, smart glasses, I see them a little bit like sports sunglasses.
For me right now, they are a category. We do offer smart glasses in around 150 stores and practices across our network. If they would be highly attractive, meaning if a lot of consumers would ask for them, we would have added them to all of our stores. This speaks a little bit to the importance in the overall sales mix. If I look at our store network specifically, you can see a very divergent demand pattern. You can really see the different markets such as the U.S. or different, let's say regions such as metropolitan regions, such as Detroit, where we operate a lot of stores in the Detroit metro area. This is really where you can see a lot of demand.
In other markets, such as GSA, German-speaking regions or, also in other regions, let's say if you go more to rural areas, I think customers still struggle with finding the use cases for it. Maybe also interesting for you, I've just been to China last week to look at the landscape there. I visited the first smart glasses-only store in Shenzhen metropolitan area, and I was speaking there with some optical retailers and asked them about the importance of smart glasses. You really have a lot of technology companies betting on it. Actually, China is a little bit further ahead, if you ask me, in terms of the use cases that they provide.
They have simultaneous translation, so you're basically having something like subtitles in your glasses, and those glasses, I think, will take another 1.5- 2 years to come to the Western world because of the ecosystems. They currently only operate in the Chinese ecosystems, but it's only a question of time until those will come as well. The optical retailers there that already have them, so that already have more advanced smart glasses, they are currently seeing a low single-digit share, and they expect it to rise maybe to 10%, and that's currently my perception as well. Our focus at Fielmann is to be ready, be it that they remain at a low single-digit share, they go to 10%, or they go even to the high double or to the significant double digits as some others predict. We are ready for that.
We are offering smart glasses of all major brands in our store network. Whatever works, we roll out. Obviously, a big field that we see is obviously the glazing, so providing the optical lenses and working with strategic partners. Once you move from the camera glasses that you have today, meaning the lenses are completely normal, they're transparent, into the display smart glasses or what they also call XR glasses, extended reality glasses, that gets very, very complex in terms of lenses. It gets complex in terms of regulatory environment because those are medical products, and that's again something we feel very comfortable about, and we're working very closely together with some strategic partners to provide solutions there.
If you wanna have screens in your glasses, that's a, let's say a totally different level of complexity, but a very exciting future ahead. I think smart glasses is very exciting. Right now, they are a category. They are not a wearable yet. They might become a wearable, but it's a long way until they can replace smart glasses. All of this is possible. For now, they're a category, and I have yet to see the super convincing use cases that may make them a wearable. In metropolitan areas, some consumers in big U.S. metro areas and in some cities like Barcelona and Southern Spain, we do sell them quite well, but generally not a mega trend yet for us.
Thank you. We have one question left from Mr. Lacy. Could you please comment on the competitive landscape in Germany? You mentioned that you keep gaining market share. Has the pricing pressure increased? Last year, there was news on eyes + more is planning to expand aggressively in Germany. How has this impacted your business?
I might be a little bit biased, but I would feel that Germany is the most competitive market for optometry and optical retail in the world. We are offering a free eye exam, plus a full pair of glasses individually manufactured for EUR 18.90. I haven't found that, not even in China or other places in the world, at least not for the same and comparable product. I think we are the fiercest and most competitive market in the world. As you mentioned, with 57% unit sales market share, I think we're managing quite well in that market, which is why we also love other markets that are a little bit less competitive and which is why we're very happy to grow there.
As we have shown in the last five years, as we have shown last year, and I feel also as we will show this year, we can not only survive, but also thrive in the most competitive market to us in the world.
Thank you so much. The really last question from Mr. Koch. I would be interested to hear management thoughts on capital allocation, more specifically potential share repurchases, given your confidence in the long-term outlook, the strong cash position discussed early on the call, and what appears to be a discounted valuation on the stock.
No plans to do any share repurchases at the moment. We're very happy to accumulate that cash. We're very happy to pay a great dividend to our great shareholders. We're very happy that we're ready to act on M&A opportunities as they might arise for us. No process running currently, if they arise, we're very happy to be able to act on them very quickly and very convincingly. I think that's part of my job description, to provide our business with the opportunity to move and grow in all possible directions, and that's what we're doing.
Thank you. This answer concludes our call for today. Thank you for your shown interest in the Fielmann Group. With this, we wish you a lovely remaining week and say goodbye.
Thank you. Goodbye.
Bye.