The floor will be opened for all upcoming questions via our chat box. Please note that in today's call, we will only provide the chat to take your questions. Having said this, Mr. Benner, please, the stage is yours.
Oh, thank you very much for this. It was part of our more transparent strategy to explain to you more regarding The Platform Group, how we work, and how we make our business. The idea was, you know, that we always make one or two times per year a Capital Markets Day. The Capital Markets Day is always in Frankfurt. We have a hybrid version that you can also have an online look on that. We want to make sure that you also can ask us in the month of August about maybe upcoming questions, maybe open questions. As you know, we have our AGM meeting by next week on Monday in Düsseldorf. Maybe you will also have some questions which you would like to get answered before that.
If you have some further questions which you might not get an answer in our reports, we can also answer you in this call. Bjoern, do you want to add anything from your side?
Just a warm welcome.
All right. Saying that, I think we can already start with the chat. Feel free to chat your questions. Björn and me, we can directly answer your questions. We already got 25 questions in the call right now, which we had at 10:00 o'clock . These 25 questions always covered the first half-year report. It was about the EBITDA, the BAT will, the revenue development, the segments. I think we had a quite good overview on that. If there's somebody here in the room who would like to ask some more specific things about the H1 results, you can also give us direct feedback on that or just ask us some questions regarding this report. I can see that we get the first questions here. The first question you ask us is about the access to new partners and new platforms.
This is a very interesting question because when we go back to this wheel here, you see that we always focus on getting new partners. With the partners, we get more products. This is very important because otherwise, we cannot grow and we have no successful development because they are the backbone of our growth. Let's make some examples. Maybe we just show you a web page here from MöbelF irst. This is a company which we acquired four years ago. They are very successful with their business because they sell luxury furniture.
Before you go into details, Dominik, I would say basically we have three ways to gain new partners. Way number one, that's the easiest one, they call us. Right? They say, we've heard of The Platform Group, can you help us? Way number two, we call them. Of course, we try to contact potential partners which we find are interesting and also offer them our services. Thirdly, by acquisition.
Yes, definitely. Maybe we just take one example here. When you go on these pages like this platform here, you see a typical sofa. When you go a little bit further, you see the background. It is a typical furniture store. We go to furniture stores, make all the pictures and all the data. Each day, we make 100 products with the content, with the pictures and so on. Then we go to the next door. This is the business model. We take more and more partners. People come to us and say, OK, how can we get more revenue? The stagnating revenue in the offline sector is relevant for everybody. We are one of the solution providers who give them a chance to get more revenues. We do it in the e-commerce.
As Björn already said, 80% call us or send us a message and say, OK, we want to be part of that. What is also important is that we go to classical fairs. Each industry has fairs, like IFA and so on. We go to these fairs and have a representation there. People come and show up and ask, OK, how can I sell products here? How can we make e-commerce with you? This kind of business is available for the B2B sector. As you can see here, we have a lot of partners who have machines all over the world. We sell their machines in more than 100 countries and make sure that they have good logistics. We make sure that they have good quality and that they work when we install this machine at the buyer's place.
These are just two examples between furniture and machines, which are quite a good example of how we get our partners. Next question.
Another lever is to grow with existing partners, of course.
Yes. Yeah. Next question is about the H1 results. I want to understand the cyclicity of the H1 and if we can show the GMV being down in Q2. I think the best way, if you want to have the Q1 and Q2 numbers, you go to our page, you see the quarterly report. In the quarterly report, you see the financial numbers showing you here. You can just subtract the numbers between the full half-year and the Q1 results. I think that is the easiest way if you want to calculate all the numbers. Next question. There have been persistent questions in the media about the company's accounts. Would TPG consider using a second bigger reputable auditor to end that discussion? Yes, thank you very much for this question. Bjoern and me, we always also think about that, to be honest.
In our history, TPG had two big auditors. In 2019, for example, we worked with KPMG. We had a very good relationship. After KPMG, we used Ernst & Young. In 2020, 2021, 2022, always Ernst & Young made the audit reports. For example, when you go to the Konzernjahresabschluss here, and you open it, you can see that it is audited by Ernst & Young. Let's just scroll down here. You see the report.
I usually always add, we are discussing this, I started working a couple of years ago with one of the Big Four firms. What Dominik always says, unfortunately, he's very right. Usually, you get very young teams. That's why, after all, it's quite expensive because you have to hire half a bus of consultants because they are all very junior. If you have a senior guy, then he can really replace five to six juniors and still do a better job. You can look for them in both ways. Of course, you do have the brand. If you look at the quality of the results, you might be much better off with a smaller consultancy, which is familiar with your industry.
Coming back to the question, yes, we changed our auditor because we are growing. The auditor is, I think, a good middle way between a big company and a small one. We have chosen RR Group. They are operating in three different locations all over Germany. Carsten Maschemeyer is the auditor here. He worked for more than 30 years for PricewaterhouseCoopers. He was a partner there. With 60, he started his own business. We think that he's a very good partner. He has 40 different people working for him. We think that this is a pretty good way and also a financially acceptable way for us, how we can work together. All right, next question. If I recur currently, the revenue model in ApoNow was different in that service fee. Will this be different with a potential acquisition? The question is about the revenue model from ApoNow .
The question is, will pharmacy become its own segment or will it become part of the service and retail segment? Very good question. If you see the numbers which we've shown in our announcement, here you can see that these pharmaceutical companies have a three-digit million number revenue. You are right with this question. We think about establishing a new segment or integrating it into the service and retail segment, but have the majority of this pharmaceutical goods there. It depends when we close it, when we sign it. It's not certain that we sign it. We expect 99% probability to do that. If we do it, and if we have a closing, yes, we think about the segment question. Your next question was about the revenue model. Very important.
As you have mentioned in a correct way, ApoNow is the middleware between the 350 pharma manufacturers like Ratiopharm and so on and the pharmacies. If a customer orders something at Ratiopharm.de or another manufacturer, the order is completely delivered and taken care of by ApoNow . This is the way how they earn money. They are a great profitable company. Each order goes through ApoNow to the local pharmacy. The local pharmacy brings it to the customer. That is the business model. They do it for more than 41,000 pharmacies. In their business model, they get this, it's around 10% provision from the pharmaceutical company, from the manufacturer. This is the way how they make their business. It's very successful.
That is the reason why we think for more than one year how we can expand it and how we can increase the value chain, not just delivering orders from pharmaceutical manufacturer to the pharmacy, also to offer new additional services. I think with our M&A targets, we have a very good idea how we can do that. Next question. Given the complex onboarding process, how much does this affect the EBITDA along 12 months?
I would say we've been acquiring seven companies this year so far, which is Europet, Fintus, Herberts, and Joli Closet that have already been consolidated. We have three new ones which will be consolidated in the second half of the year. These are our three optics and hearing acquisitions: Karlsruhe, Freudenhaus Optik Handels-GmbH, and Beste Aussichten GmbH. I hope this answers your question. Of seven acquisitions which we have done right now, four are already included. Three will come. Of course, we're trying to acquire new ones. It will be more than three by the end of the year.
All right. Organic growth. Could you please provide more detail on the reported organic growth at segment-level and comment on the plausibility of double-digit rates in structurally weaker sectors such as furniture or automotive supply? Yes, absolutely. You are completely right that sectors like automotive or furniture, for example, they have had a bad development in the last two years. They are declining or stagnating. This is important to understand that our growth is not depending on an industry. Our growth rate is determined by partners and products. This is what we really always want to again and again repeat because the majority of the people do not understand our business model. That is a real problem for us. When we get more partners, for example, furniture partners, what we've shown you with Rolf Benz Sofas, we get more customers because they like Rolf Benz Sofas.
With these more customers, we get more revenue. We can grow in a market which is not growing. If we get not more partners, we have not additional product. We do not grow anymore. It's really no dependency between the industry and our business model. There could be also a negative correlation. For example, I can show you one example with the industry of bike. Bike- Angebot, this is a company which we acquired in 2020 before the COVID pandemic. Just for example, in COVID times, the revenue was very strongly increasing in this segment. In our case, it was a nightmare. We had declining revenues. We had losses. We were not happy about that. At the end, the retail partners, our partners said, no, we will not offer you any product because we are sold out. We have nothing to sell anymore.
We have good numbers, but you don't get any product from us. That was our nightmare. This is very important to understand. We do not rely on the industry development. It is not really relevant for us. We rely on products and partners. This is the only key driver in our business case. Next question. Sorry, I wasn't clear. The Q1 GMV was EUR EI356 million. The Q2 was EUR 296 million. I wanted to understand how do you think about this being lower and how to think about GMV going on forward. Is it seasonal? If so, which quarters are generally higher? Yes, thank you for the question. You are right. We have seasonality in our yearly perspective and also in our quarterly perspective. The highest revenue that we have and the highest GMV is always November and December.
In these two months, we have, of course, the highest revenues, but not the highest margins. As you might know, we have the seasonal effects like discounts, like Black Week, and so on. All these consumer goods segments, which we have with more than 50%, are affected by discounts. In these two months, we have great GMV numbers, but low margin numbers. This is important to understand. Yes, you are right. We do have the GMV much higher there, but not with high earnings. Can you give us?
If you look at the industries, like currently, you see bike Angebot, that's something you sell more in the summertime anyways. If you look at our machinery, that's nothing you get as a Christmas present. These do not really increase. If you look at Lyra Pet, they are more into goods that you actually use. It's more like pet food and pet care articles. That's also something which you regularly use during the year. This does not really positively affect your sales. Generally, we do have more sales, but at a lower margin. Also, not all segments contribute to Q4 sales.
All right. Next question. Can you give us some insights about the economics of the framework? Get order, does your partner the product to the customer or delivery? OK, it's a question about our business process when we get an order and how is it delivered. Very simple, let's take this example here. If somebody is buying this Cube mountain bike for EUR 2,000, we get the order. When we have the order, we decide which retail partner gets this order. The next thing is we call our logistic partner or our own forces and pick up the bike. We adjust everything at the bike that the people can use it, the customer can use it. You have to make some adjustments with the bicycle. We deliver it to the customer. We also receive the money. We receive all the amounts from the purchase.
We also make the marketing and the customer care. The full value chain of e-commerce is always on our side. The partner, the retail partner, in this case, the bicycle partner, they are just offering their stock. We make the content. We make all the other thing. The delivery to the customer is always from our partner, from our logistic partner, or by ourselves. How has the transformation to a platform business developed at Lyra Pet, for example? How many partners did Lyra Pet have so far? What is the potential sales to partners? And what to own inventory? This is a question regarding a new company. We acquired this company some months ago. Currently, the majority of their revenue is still on their own inventory. The majority is about the food for the pets and so on and about hardware equipment for pets. Our strategic focus is always platform.
We have a roadmap together with them. Within the next two months, we implement our software. In the next two months, they use our software to make all the platform connections. After that, they can connect partners, manufacturers, retail partners. They can increase the number of products more and more. To give you an example of how it works, when we acquired Fashionette two years ago, they only had bags and shoes, nothing else. The biggest industry or part of the industry is fashion. It's not shoes. It's not bags. It's fashion. What we did here is the same thing. You can see that 37,000 products are listed in fashion. Before we acquired it, it was zero. Now it is contributing the majority of the revenue this year.
You see how fast the change between we have inventory and we are pure player to we are a platform and make for a lot of retailers, a lot of partners the revenue, how fast this can go. We always expect around five months to one year to implement our software, to change to the platform model, and to increase the number of partner products. Next question. Is the new Cargill R structure will be in place? Do you plan to increase the free float on the shares? Dominik, would you be willing to reduce your own ownership stake to increase the liquidity in the shares? Yes, good question. We showed you the planned change of the legal structure. We have our AGM next week. To answer your question, I don't want to sell shares, to be honest. It's not my intention.
If we see a good target, we can make a capital increase if it's necessary. Of course, we can do that. We always want to become with Benner Holding a long-term shareholder and make sure that the shareholder is aligned with TPG and stays there for forever or for a lot of years. This is really our focus. There's no intention on selling shares. Of course, you see that the liquidity of the share is increasing since two years. When we bought Fashionette, there was a daily trade volume of around EUR 40,000 per day, EUR 50,000. Now we already have EUR 300,000-EUR 800,000 per day. It's really a good progress. The average around is EUR 400,000 per day this month. We expect a further increase. We think that EUR 1 million daily trade volume is not unrealistic. I think we are on a good way.
We think we are on a good way that we also have more volatility here and have more trade volume. Next question. Can you please explain the strong increase in receivables against affiliate companies in the Hage by report 2024? Yes, very simple answer on that. I can maybe show you another picture, which might be more adequate to answer. When you see the structure here, you see we showed it in the last call that we have our AG structure on top. Below that, we have three holdings, The Platform Group, Cargill, Fashionette GmbH, and Brandfield BV, FastFili BV. These are two Netherlands companies. Below that, we have the operational portfolio companies. The important thing to understand is that we always have a relation between The Platform Group AG on the top level, and the portfolio companies below.
That is the reason why we do not have much cash on top. We always have it in the operating companies or in the holdings below. It's very simple to understand that if we take a bond with EUR 50 million, for example, last year, we put it into acquisition, and we put it into the company below that we acquired. Then they have, of course, accounts receivables on the top holding. That is the reason why this increased to EUR 100 million. There's one other thing which you should understand. The company, The Platform Group AG, you cannot compare it with 2023 because in 2023, it was Fashionette AG. Fashionette AG was not a holding structure. It was not comparable to what we do here. It really changed in 2024. The similarity or the comparability is not given in this case.
In what respect are three pharma distributors operating in a niche? Do they only distribute specific products? OK, let's go back to the question regarding the pharmaceutical companies, the platforms. We are still in a confident procedure, so we cannot give you specific details on that. You can be sure, and we can announce that we do not only buy a company which is distributing products. We are looking for platform companies which are really operating in a niche. One of these niche segments can be, for example, specific drugs or specific relations to other pharmacies and also some e-commerce activities on that. It's really a niche segment where we operate in and what we want to buy. Sorry for that. It's still confident. It's not closed. Please understand that. Hello. Thank you again for your time. What do you say is your main motivation for the legal change, please?
Also, I was hoping to see the ROC for H1, and that is an important KPI. Yes. To answer that, actually, KPI and the return on equity, the problem with that is that you cannot calculate it for the half year because you see the balance sheet numbers. That is clear, but you need a full year perspective on the profit. That is the reason why we did not calculate it for the half year. If we would do that, we have to make an estimation on these figures, and then everybody would blame us and say, OK, you make an estimation on full year. This is not realistic. This is not calculability. This is not acceptable. That is the reason why we did not make this calculation.
Here you can see our return on equity and return on capital employed by last year, and we are pretty sure that we will have the same numbers this year. It will be around 18%- 28% as a range where we operate in, and it will be very similar. If you have a good idea, to be honest, how we can solve that, how other companies do it with a half-year report and calculate it for the full year, let us know. We are open for that. We did not really find a good solution.
We're doing fine. If you want to, you can contact me anytime. If it's reasonable, of course, we will try to factor it in.
Yeah. All right. The next question is about the auditor. The question is, can you explain what RR Group is doing and why we believe that Mr. Roesler is qualified to audit and so on? To answer this question, Mr. Roesler is our former auditor for last year. For this year, it will not be Mr. Roesler. We have chosen a new company which is qualified for our growing activity. That is a background for that. Can you please explain your cash management within the group and the holding? Is the balance sheet of the group by end of 2024 cash of only EUR 400,000? Yes, we already answered that. I'm sorry to give you this short answer.
We already answered you this question because when you see on this structure here, which we already presented in a public way, you see that we have no need for big cash reserves on the holding. Below that, we have our sub-holdings and our operational companies. We can always have access to the cash because the majority of them, 90% or more, have a contract with us for liquidity and cash pooling. We can work with that. Next question. What was behind the EUR 32 million decrease in Verbindlichkeiten aus Lieferung und Leistungen in H1 last year? I don't know if we really rely on last year. The answer is very simple. Last year, we sold a lot of cars in the Cluno company. With the sale of the cars, we reduced the Verbindlichkeiten aus Lieferung und Leistungen in that amount. That was the background.
That is the reason why the H1 last year was a little bit a one-off effect in some financial numbers. A lot of analysts asked us about that question last year. I think we already have published it in our annual report that there was a one-time effect of acquiring this company and selling all of these cars. Do you own an online pharmacy? Yes, we have a niche pharmacy. It is called Doc.Green. This niche pharmacy, we have products online in the drug sector and sell it. It's not so relevant because we focus really on B2B. Our focus is B2B business. When you look on ApoNow , they have 99% with B2B revenues. We are not such a big fan of B2C business because it's very competitive there. There's a lot of advertisement competition.
We think that is a good way to lose money and not to earn money. We are quite conservative on that. Next question.
More comment on the cash topic we just had. It is very important to point out that we do not have cash transfer agreements in place, but we do have cash pooling contracts in place with all our subsidiaries.
Yes. Next question. Can you please provide an update on TPG Pay? How high is the turnover rate among partners? Are there fixed contract terms for partners? Yes. We have fixed partner terms or contracts. Usually, they are for two years, and they extend after these two years for another year. How high is the turnover rate? I'm not sure what it means, turnover rate. Bjoern , do you know what turnover rate means?
No.
OK. Maybe you can specify what you mean with turnover rate. The update on TPG Pay, very good question from you. We've shown you that in our Capital Markets Day.
It's probably the churn rate, which he's referring to. How many partners get exchanged in per year?
OK, got it. OK. It's about 3%- 4% per year, which we lose because they have no successor or they close or they are, whatever, insolvent or I don't know. That is the reason for that, why we have 3% or 4%. You asked us about an update on TPG Pay. We presented you our TPG Pay system in a beta version at our Capital Markets Day. We got a lot of feedback, which we really appreciated. We also gave you a timeline on our project pipeline here. You can see that we want to release TPG Pay in the first version by end of August or beginning of September. We are right now on track with that. We will go on the next version and release it in our shops by end of November or beginning of December. This is our pipeline and our time schedule for that.
We are, I think, pretty good on track. Next question. The answer was not clear for me. Are the two EUR 12.7 million payments for investments entirely attributable to the further development of the software platform? If not, can you provide a breakdown? Yeah, thank you very much for this question. Maybe we should give you a more detailed perspective on that. When you go on this breakdown here, let's go on the H1 report. No. Let's go on the H1 report. You see that there's an increase in the cash flow here. Let's go on that. I think you're talking about that here, the EUR 12.6 million for investments. Maybe it's a good idea to provide you with further information. Right now, we do not have it here. Of course, we can provide you in the next call for a detailed number on that.
I think, if I'm right, we also gave some more information here in the Lagerbericht. Maybe you should also have a look on that. Yeah, anyway, we give you more feedback on that. Could you give us a quick refresher on expected sales and adjusted EBITDA for full year 2025? Consider the contributions from recent M&A. Is the full year 2026 guidance for Glasses business integrating further M&A? Or is it 100% organic?
Sorry, both. One Glasses is growing organically. The local stores, you have to acquire via M&A in order to grow the number of partners.
Yes, absolutely. Could you also give us a quick refresher on current and normative return levels in key segments? Oh, yeah, very good question. This is a figure we actually did not publish so often because nobody is asking us for that. Our average return rate is about 25%- 28%. When you go to the segments in our report, we have no return reporting because actually, most people do not care about that. We can give you more or less the specific numbers. In the segment of consumer goods, there's a variety between, I would say, 11%, 12% for bags, up to 45%, 50% for specific shoes, especially women's shoes. This is the range. I think the average will be around 30%, 35% in this segment. The freight goods segment, it is below 5%. There are almost no returns or very low numbers.
In the industrial goods segment, it is below 3%. It's not existing. In segment service and retail goods, it is also below 5%. Really no numbers. When you calculate all this together, you can understand that we always talk between 25% and 28% return rate. This is predominantly coming from the segment of consumer goods. OK, how much of your transportation costs are actually related to returns? Yes. These are bad news. When we have a 25% return rate, for example, you cannot say that 25% of the distribution costs are because of returns. There is one negative thing in this industry, the returns are more expensive.
Much more.
Much more. Yeah. That means the Deutsche Post or UPS or so on, they charge you more for the returns automatically per parcel. Additionally, you have higher internal costs for returns. When you say you have a 25% return rate and ask us how much will it be in the distribution costs here in this line, you can estimate about 34%, 35% of these costs are coming from returns. It's not proportional. It's more than proportional. Yes. We got great feedback. Thank you for that. CHRONEXT was acquired at the end of last year. Yes, December. What is the product strategy here, particularly in terms of increasing the range of available products? Yes, good question. It is the same strategy we always do. We acquired CHRONEXT, and they had no real platform strategy. What we do now is the same as we ever do in all our companies.
We get partners connected to our software and increase the number of products. This is our strategy. We do it for Lurapet, for Fashionette, for CHRONEXT, and so on. I think they already have 20% or 30% revenue from partners already, so from external partners, which in this amount they did not have before. We expect a further increase up to more than 50% by the end of this year. That growth driver is clearly the partner model and the platform model. It will be no longer only focused on inventory by themselves. Does the automotive business still exist? How are the developments here? We have a lot of automotive or automotive supply business. One is LOT, for example. This is a company which we acquired three years before, and they are working in the automotive car parts segment. It is very successful.
They have good growth rates, and they also started two years ago with a platform model. That means if you buy anything like a brake or something here, it is in the majority from a partner, and they sell it for the partner. This is how they earn their money, and they make it in a very profitable way. We also have our activity with X-Mobility. This is a company where you can make contracts for monthly contracts for cars. Volkswagen here, EUR 600. It depends on how many kilometers, and you can make the contract for each month individually and cancel it each month. Yeah, we are still active in that. Two years before, we acquired two different companies and got a third company with an asset deal.
We decided to consolidate everything into one new brand, cut off all the former brands, sold the legal entities, and consolidated everything into one company. There were critics for that, to be honest. A lot of analysts asked, why did you do that? Why did you split off the old companies and put them away? We said, yes, we want to have one new company with one brand because we had three different customers. Every one of these customers has a different brand on his paper, on his invoice. We said, no, we make one new company. This is called X-Mobility.
The next one is going to have definitely a big impact. Two months ago, the entire managing team of TPG made a field trip into the valley in order to get acquainted with the latest developments of AI. We brought that all back. We wouldn't be TPG . What we did is we hired three people in order to establish an AI academy. All employees have a course once a week. Of course, we have specific takeaways. This is going to revolutionize everything. It starts with content generation, the way you make the contents for your articles. It's photos. Right now, we have a large photo studio in order to make pictures and mood pictures, especially of all our articles. With certain tools, you are able to optimize this fully. Basically, you just take a clear shot of the article.
Then you tell the AI what the background and the setting should be. It's generating this. It's doing it by now in a quality that probably most of us could not differentiate from a real photo. At least it's really doing the business for us. You can expand this into how you do your entire planning. This is how you do the invoice control. It's going to have an impact on pretty much every single area in the company.
Yeah, absolutely right what Bjoern says. It was really an eye-opener when we visited Silicon Valley with all our executive members. We decided, yes, we have to implement an own team. AI does not work if only some key people know how it works. We have to implement it at the basis. Now every employee, jeder Mitarbeiter, gets an education one hour per week on AI, everybody. That was a clear strategy, how we have to implement AI on the bottom of the organization and not only on the top. Maybe you can see it here. Right now, we are still making physical photos. We are making physical videos. We need a model and a photographer and so on. Next year, there will be no model. There will be no photographer for this anymore. We completely eliminate this and can significantly decrease the cost structure on that.
It has a huge impact. Next question. I assume your answer was lost. Could you please remind us on your main rationale for changing the company legal structure? Yes. We already made an update call on that by August 1. Maybe you remember that. We mentioned our reasons for that and why we did it. Basically, we had three reasons. The one reason was, first, we want to have a safe anchor shareholder with Benner Holding. Even if they would dilute the shares, if we have more capital increase, we always stay on board and be a valid and long-term partner. The second is we want to make more international acquisitions. We think that when we make international acquisitions, people are used to have shares class A, shares class B, and class C. It's not with a negative connotation like it is in Germany.
Basically, we think that we make any activity and buy companies, we have no problem in foreign countries to work with that and also to give the seller some shares if we acquire this company. The third reason, we are more flexible with that. Maybe you know some German specifics on that. We have more and quicker decisions when we choose this new structure, just to mention that. The next question is about, can you please explain how you incentive your different managers and executives? Do you have a variable remuneration?
Since I am one, I expect we do have market-oriented salaries as a base pay. They are not too low, but at the same time, they're also not too high. Of course, like in any of these positions, you do have a success-oriented fee, so you can get a bonus. This is attractive, but also not sky-high. Again, it's market-oriented. This is how we pay our people.
Yeah. We have no stock option program. It's very important to say that because actually, we do not believe that a basic employee and the stock have such a strong relation. We always believe that making a good bonus, which is paid every year when they are successful, and having a good basic salary, I think these are two things which are enough for us. We can work with that. Maybe you have seen that in our adjusted figures, we never have any stock compensation programs, which you see in a lot of other balance sheets. There are numbers of subsidiaries of which you own 100% or less than 100%. What is the plan for the minorities? Do you plan to buy out the majority this year or next year? Yes, we have the option after two or three years to increase our shareholding in the company.
It depends on the development. If we see a good development, we want to increase it, but we have to pay, of course, for this higher value. It's a very good strategy from our perspective to reduce the risk, to keep the managers on board, and to pay when it's successful and not when it's not successful. This is our strategy, how we reduce risk and make sure that they have good valuation development. What proportion of your newly acquired partners previously had no online presence? I don't understand. Maybe the partners. If you connect a partner on Bike Angebot, for example, and the partner is selling a bike here, to be honest, 90% of these partners have no online presence. They are really offline players. They maybe have a Facebook account or Google Business account, but they are not having their own online shop.
They are not selling products online. In general, it's about 90% which are not online in an active way.
Some might have some, especially like white-label shops. If you do not work on them, if you do not invest in zero and zero, the number of people, potential customers you're able to reach is relatively low. You might have your own shop, but still, it's not a high seller. If we connect it and if we focus TPG and performance marketing power on these new shops, this always leads to a Bing Zhang.
Yeah. One last question, which you see here in the chat, it's about the internationalization. Could you please talk more about your strategy on this front of internationalization? Yes, good question. As you know, we have around 75% with revenues in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Netherlands. It is one of our goals to expand our international footprint and to have more revenues in other countries. We are not very happy that we are so much focused here on Germany and the countries around Germany. I think we already started that. For example, with Winkelstraat we acquired last year. They are very successful in the Netherlands and outside the Netherlands. It's a good first move. Last year, we have Brandfield. They are operating also in the Netherlands. Last but not least, we just acquired Joli Closet this year. They are a good player in France.
You can be sure also with the pharmaceutical acquisition that we will expand more into Southern and Eastern Europe. We will do it in the next month. We will step by step go forward, always with a risk-averse strategy. We will never open an office with 100 people. Let's see if it works. If not, we will fire them. That's not our business. We are a family business. We are conservative. We have to take care that the cash is not going out. We have to take care that we make profits. That is the reason why we always move into small steps and make sure that this will work. The last question is about AI, AI progression, and the possibility to open a web store, easier access to big players like AWS, similar big upcoming. To be honest, it does not change so fast for us.
We see no real competition on that. We use AI for our own processes internally. We think that it does not change a web store or the easier access to players like AWS. AWS is a server provider. We use it. Other people also use it. I don't see a real relation to our business model so far. OK. These are all the questions. We see no open questions anymore. Thank you very much from our side. I think it was a very good conversation with the chat and all the questions here. Thank you for that.
Yes, thank you very much for your time taking all the questions. There are no further questions. Thanks to everyone joining and your shown interest in The Platform Group. Should, however, further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations.
Thank you to Dr. Dominik Benner and Mr. Bjoern Minnier for your update and your time to take all the questions. I wish you all a lovely weekend. With this, I hand over again to Dr. Dominik Benner for some final remarks.
No final remarks. Happy to see you at the AGM or the next Capital Markets Day, which we plan in the next two months. Bye-bye.
Oh, thank you for your very interesting and fair question.