Thank you very much for the introduction and warm welcome from my side and also from Nathalie Richert. We would like to present you our Q1 figures for this year and give you some more insights about the development of our company. First of all, we would like to give you a short introduction to our group for those who do not know us. Here you can find our C-level management and our supervisory board, and we in total run this company with more than 1,500 employees. The history of our company is very unique, I would say. It was founded in 1882 as a classical brick-and-mortar store for shoes. In 2012, I took over the family business and changed it towards e-commerce and running e-commerce platforms. Until today, we increase this footprint, so we have a lot of e-commerce platforms already.
Our goal is that we want to achieve a good and solid growth over the next years, expand also geographically, and also implement AI in a much more relevant way than we did it before. On a total overview, we have in total 17,000 partners. Partners means retailers and manufacturers connected to our platforms. We have more than 8 million customers, which are buying all our products on several platforms in 26 different industries. How we do that, it is important to understand that we have a central operational holding. The central holding has more than 130 employees, They make all the background procedures in our subsidiaries.
When we buy a company, for example, we try to change the software system to our system, we make a centralized marketing approach, and we also take care that we implement other department and services like business intelligence, like our AI hub, or like finance, HR, and legal stuff. The backbone of our company is actually a software system, which is proprietary and developed over the last 10 years. This is a backbone on how we run our different platforms, how we manage our e-commerce activities, and how we make sure that we can expand our e-commerce and our platform strategy to new industries. Currently we cover 26 different industries, and we strongly believe that we want to increase this number and can use our software also in other industries, which fit to our strategy. Nathalie.
Yes. Thank you.
Nathalie, you are.
Thanks, Dominik. Our goal is to become the leading Platform Group in Europe. We are now active in five segments in more than 26 industries. We sell our products and goods directly to customers in both B2B and B2C. We started the Optics & H earing segment last year. That's a new segment. When we want to give you an update, that's on slide 10. It's always important to know that we enter new industries, always, that we buy platforms that you see on the right side that are the platforms we enter last year.
On the other side, it's important for us to strengthen our segments, where we acquire companies, that deepen our expertise at supply or expand segment and industry know-how. We have the closing, from 43einhalb, also 43einhalb, done in May 2026. We buy them in end of December, that's important to know. Every acquired company brings new products, partners, and new customers to TPG.
Thank you for that. Let's have a closer look on some of the acquisitions. Regarding AEP, we will provide you here an update. The process is still ongoing. We have several CPs managed in the SPA, so the purchase contract and for the closing conditions. Right now we are working on these CPs, as the buyer side and the seller side. We expect an update here by June. Additionally, we also plan a mixture of debt and cash investment here. From our side, we are happy to go forward in this process and also give you an update by June. So far, there's no further development which we can communicate here. The other thing is, the platform We Connect Work, we acquired it last year.
We launched a new platform, additionally to the existing business of We Connect Work. It was a very important development for us. We initiated this B2B platform. It's not for private peopl; it's only a B2B platform for craftsmen and craft businesses. We have more than 100,000 products there. None of these products are in our inventory, so they are completely from partners, and the focus is sanitary, heating, electronics, and construction. Let's go further with the luxury portfolio.
Yeah. We have here as an example our luxury portfolio. You see here five platforms. We have, for example, fashionette, where we sell pre-loved bags, for example. On the other side, we have CHRONEXT watches, or we could sell the luxury bags on the platform, Joli Closet, which we acquired last year. The most important point that could you see in all the status is the verification process. We offer this process at our different platforms. As you can see on the right side, the secondhand luxury market is growing three times faster than the firsthand market. When we go to the next slide, it's always important to know that we scale our ecosystem through partner expansion, both organically and via acquisitions. Since three years, we have increased the number of partners from 5,000 to expected 18,000 more in 2026.
Our growth model is highly scalable because new partners can onboard it quickly through our software solutions, TPG One. Today, as we showed, we operate more than 35 platforms, allowing local retailers to digitalize their businesses. I think this demonstrates that the ecosystem becomes stronger with scale. Once partners are integrated, they generate additional growth within the platform network. In 2024, around half of the partner growth, you see that on the slides, came from acquisitions. In 2025 and especially 2026, the majority comes from existing platforms and cross-selling within the ecosystem.
Yeah. Thank you very much for that. Now we go to the financials. First of all, we would like to mention that we had a very positive Q1 result. The GMV was increasing by more than 23%, and the revenue had an increase of 51%. It was totally in line with our own guidance and also with our internal forecast. The profitability was positive. We increased the EBITDA, the adjusted EBITDA by more than 37%. Actually, it was really a lot of cost-cutting and cost efficiency in this first quarter. We definitely had positive synergies through that. Especially, it's something really worth to mention, it is our AI cost project. We will come to that later. There, you can see how much we already do with AI and how we improve our cost efficiency here.
Especially the distribution costs, the marketing costs, and HR costs are directly affected by our AI measures. We show you later on what specifically we do there. Additionally, we see also good conditions regarding new M&A activity. We also see that our five established segments are growing and the number of partners, as Nathalie already mentioned, are increasing. We will give also an update on our debt strategy, because we changed it a little bit, and also on our M&A activity for this year. Overall, we would like to confirm our outlook and our guidance for this year, which we communicated by January this year. Let us go to the figures. In Q1 2026, we had a total net revenue of EUR 243 million, which is an increase of 51%.
T he gross margin was decreasing, so we had less margin in this first quarter, and this was due to discount activities and higher provisions which we paid. We had a decrease of 0.4 percentage points. Actually, we expect a slightly better margin development in Q2 this year. AI is a very effective and very important efficiency driver in our group already, so we can definitely reduce costs for product data creation, for customer service, and for marketing costs. You see that now, and you also see that in the future that we can step by step improve our cost figures with AI and through AI. There's one thing which is important to mention here. As you know, the war in the Middle East is affecting also our cost structure. We see higher rates for logistics in the future.
We see higher costs of transport in the future. We had a lot of activities to mitigate that and to make sure that our cost structure and the distribution segment is not increasing. What we did is that we also achieved a higher AOV, and when we have a higher AOV, the logistic costs are not so relevant anymore. The next thing is we finalized our central logistic hub in Gladbeck. As you know, we initiated it last year. We established it, and now more and more subsidiaries are onboarded into this new logistic hub, and therefore, we have significant cost effects. Additionally, we also have logistic cost ratios optimizations, like companies in the Optic sector, in the hearing sector, or in the service sector, they have actually no logistic costs or almost no logistic costs.
With increasing relevance, we see that there's a shift towards a little bit more of these companies, and they have, as I mentioned, almost zero distribution costs. Next thing is about the EBITDA development. We had a 37% increase here. The reported EBITDA was increasing by 28%. We can be very happy on this development, to be honest, and think that we are right on track with our margin goals for this year. On the net profit, you see that there's not a real change. You might ask yourself, why is it not increasing when the EBITDA goes up? This has actually a very simple effect. In Q1 last year, we had a one-time effect of a positive depreciation through one M&A activity, and that was the result why we had last year lower EBITDA but higher net profits.
This one-time effect is of course recognized in last year. Net profits was EUR 18.2 million, and this year we had EUR 17.7 million. When you eliminate this effect, we had an increased net profit, but totally we had a small decrease of the net profit. Our earnings per share was a total EUR 0.85 per share, and last year it was EUR 0.90. Here you can see also in charts, the development regarding GMV and regarding the EBITDA and net profit. You can also download this presentation if you want further information on that. Here you can see the development over time.
On the last Q1 results, we always had an increase in the revenue development, and we can also be happy that we are almost reaching our 10% goal for next year, and I'm very optimistic that we will also achieve it within the next upcoming quarters. Very important to mention, and everybody's asking that, how much was organically and how much was non-organically. Here you can see on the left side the proportion last year. Last year we had 39% of non-organic growth rate, and this year it was improved to 29% only. You can see that the number of acquisitions is lower and the contribution of acquisitions is less compared to previous years. We are quite optimistic that these figures, something between 30%-70%, will also continue in our business performance for this year.
What are the main reasons for our higher organic growth rate? One is the number of partners, so this was definitely increasing, and we had more products with that. Compared to last year, we had a higher growth rate in our consumer goods segment and also the freight goods segment, and important, we have a good and better customer retention on our core platforms. When you see the non-financial KPIs, we had in total an increase of our numbers of orders to 3.4 million.
The average order value was increasing to EUR 128. The active customers reached 8.1 million, so also very positive development and also it was growing with the GMV. The number of employees was increasing to 1,537 employees by end of March, and the number of partners was 17,221. Overall, there was also an increase by more than 12%.
What is very important, and this is, I think, the first time that we make a change regarding our debt strategy, is that, after the crisis in the Middle East and after all the interest rates went up in the last two months, we made a decision on the board that we want to reduce our debt leverage, that we want to reduce our debt leverage over time. You can see here the forecast. Right now, you see that we have a debt leverage of 2.0. Last year it was 2.1. We decided as a management board to definitely decrease this leverage. In previous presentations, we were thinking about 1.5 to 2 for 2030 as a debt strategy leverage, and we completely changed that. We want to reduce the debt in a much faster way.
Actually, in times of high interest rate, we see debt reduction really as a key for further profitability, and we want to make sure that the interest rates are not killing our P&L. We are a more risk-averse strategy here and try to reduce our debt structure and make it more simple. Also, with our cash flow, and we have a good operational cash flow and our equity potential, and we also think about portfolio management. I will show you that later. We think that we can decrease the debt over time, and we also started some projects regarding that. On the next slide, you can also see the ROCE and the return on equity development for the last two years. Overall, we always had with our investments about 19%-25% in these two metrics, in these two figures.
You can see every euro which we invest has a return rate of at least 19%, or when you regard the return on equity of 25%. This is very important to mention here because sometimes people ask us and say, "How can you spend 8% or 9% for the interest rate of Nordic Bond, when you only have an EBITDA margin of 8% or 9%? How does it work?" We always show, okay, this is nice to know that our margin is 8% or 9%, but it is important to underline what is our return on equity here and what is this number, and the number is above 20%. You can see that with a strong portfolio discipline and a really strong focus that, we want to be more active in the portfolio management.
We want to optimize our return on invest and want to make sure that we have good companies in our portfolio. Sometimes, of course, a company can also have a bad development. This could always occur. We have more than 45 different companies in our group, consolidated in our group, it can always be that one company is not performing perfectly. Of course, it is our obligation as a management to make a decision. Should we change that? Should we sell it, or should we do something else with the company? This is what we call a disciplined approach to optimize our portfolio. Also, here you can see our M&A activity. In our guidance at the beginning of the year, we communicated that we expect around five to eight acquisitions for this year; actually, we expect a reduced number.
We decided as a management board that we want to make less acquisitions this year because the integration takes a very long time, and we want to make sure that our acquisitions are integrated in a very good way, and 11 signings are maybe a bit too much for the organization. We adjusted this number to lower figures, so five to six signings this year. We could also imagine to make one or two divestments in this year. AI.
AI. AI is not a bad word for us. We've changed to an AI-first strategy and a cost reduction program. Today, around 12% of our processes are already AI optimized. In the next five years, we expect these figures to exceed to more than 60%. The strongest impact we think will come in software development, online marketing, HR and finance, and content creation. Important: this strategy supports both scalability and profitability at the same time.
As we continue to grow organically and through acquisitions, AI becomes a key lever to integrate businesses faster and operate the platform more efficiently. When we jump over to the next slides, the slides explains how we use AI not only as a technology initiative, but as a directly profitability driver. Our approach is clear: AI first. For us, AI is primarily a cost efficiency and scalability program.
The biggest impact in 2026 will become the software development and marketing. On the other side, we could reduce in human resources, the costs and the headcounts on all subsidiaries. The new structure of TPG needs less executives. What's really changing, and we see that all, is the customer behavior, and that's a really big impact for us. Our goal is clear: sustainable margin improvement through technology-driven operational efficiency.
Thank you for that. As you can imagine, this has also impact on our own organization. That means if we reduce the number of organization levels and if we reduce the number of MDs, this has a big impact on our group. We think that the cost efficiency and the AI efficiency is so high that we can go really this step and bring the organization to the next level here. When we have an outlook on our strategy, and here you can see our vision for 2030. As you can see here, the revenue is going to be more than EUR 3 billion, what we plan for the next years to 2030. We want to achieve double-digit margins and want to make sure that we also reduce the leverage. Here you can find the new figures for 1.0%-1.4% leverage.
This is definitely reduced to everything what we presented before. The number of partners, this is our key driver for further growth. We expect to be more than 40,000 with active in different industries, and we want to achieve more than 50 covered industries. Also, here you see some more details on our strategic dimension. We are right now still very active in the region of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Netherlands, though around 70% was generated in these countries. We strongly believe that we want to expand it to further other European countries and also make sure that our U.S. expansion is getting a bigger footprint, and we want to make sure that more platforms are active in the United States. On the right side, you also see our M&A approach.
As we already mentioned, we want to reduce the number of further acquisitions slightly and want to make sure that our TPG One system is perfectly integrated and that we can grow together with the subsidiaries in our group. On the right side, on the bottom, you can also see our Optic segment, which is running in a very good way. We are very happy with that investment. We achieve an EBITDA margin of more than 25%, which is pretty high compared to our other activities. We want to expand to up to 60 stores in the next years. Currently, we have almost 30 stores, I think we are right good on track. We can combine it with our online platform, MyGlasses.
Here you see our guidance, which we already confirmed for this year, though this is a guidance without the acquisition of AEP. It is unchanged, and within this, we confirm our guidance. Also, here you can see our guidance on a pro forma basis, including the case of AEP. Nathalie.
Yeah, you see our next touch points. They were all on our investor relations page, and we invite you all to come to our annual meeting. It's physical because it's very important for us to get personal in touch of you. All the documents are online on our investor relations website. We had some road shows in Switzerland. We will do some road shows in Amsterdam, and we will be in June in Paris. If you don't follow actually our newsletter, then you have the QR code here to get all the information from The Platform Group. Thank you.
All right. Thank you very much. Now we can start with our Q&A session.
Great. Thank you so much for the presentation. With this, we are happy to take your questions, if you may have. If you would like to ask a question, just post your question written in our Q&A box, and I will be happy to read them out for you. During the presentation, we received a couple of questions, so we will start with the first one. Can you give us an update on the AEP acquisition, and especially to the planned new financing structure?
Yes. We already provided this information. Let me just share the screen again that you can see that. We provided this update for you right here. Here you can find it on slide 11. Feel free if you have further questions on that. You ask also for our vision without AEP and with AEP. We already presented that in the last presentation. Whenever you have questions, just feel free to contact us. You also ask the question of new capital increase. We had two capital increases, which you mentioned here of EUR 9.8 million. These are two investors, one investor from Switzerland and one investor from Germany. You can also see that on the German public company register. You wanted to have a more detailed overview on the higher trade volumes of shares.
Actually, maybe Nathalie can give you some short update on that because, as you already mentioned, the trade volume of our shares increased over the last two years. We are quite happy with that because, as you also know, the free float is also increased in our share. I did not sell shares, but we saw that the free float with the capital increase was higher in a percentage. Of course, the trade volume is higher, especially on Xetra. Nathalie, you want to mention something here? Nathalie, you're muted.
Yeah. As Dominik said, the trading volume is increasing, but on the other side, we have some days with smaller volumes and some days with higher volumes with no news float. Everybody could see this on the different regional exchanges, but we think it is a good sign to have more trading here.
Yes. Next question is regarding the bond price. You mentioned that the bond price is lower compared to its initial price, and despite the fact that the performance of TPG is outstanding, how you're thinking of the refinancing it as a maturity is approaching? To answer that, our maturity is in the mid of 2028. We have, I think, good perspectives how to refinance it or how to pay it back with our cash flow. You will get definitely an update six months before that so that you have a full perspective and transparent view on that. Next question is regarding the share price. You ask that this is not reflecting the financial performance, and that also maybe another auditor could help and restore this confidence and other things.
Yeah, actually, as a CEO, I don't want to comment the share price because this is a market price, although I have not a real influence on that. Yes, we agree with you that definitely there's an upside potential, and if there is a loss of confidence, it's up to you. We get different feedbacks. We also get a lot of positive feedback. I'm not sure if this is a majority or not, but yeah, it is your own decision absolutely. Next question is regarding the double- digit adjusted EBITDA target. It was a question if with AEP is it still possible or not? Definitely, with AEP, it is more difficult to achieve that. AEP also, when we integrate them, has to achieve higher margins that we can achieve that. Otherwise, this is very difficult.
Next question is about how many shares were issued since 2026 January. Here you can go on our public page. You can see the number of shares there, and it is the current number of shares. The interest rates, given your bond is fixed rate and matures in 2028, can you quantify your actual floating rate exposure today? Actually, I don't know what is a floating rate exposure, to be honest. Maybe you ask what kind of interest rate we expect in 2028. Maybe this is a question. We would assume that it'll be more or less on the same level. Yeah, I think this is our estimation currently. Maybe it can be a little bit higher. It depends on the interest rate in two years. There is also another question regarding buyback of some bonds in the open market.
Of course, this is definitely an option. Together with our supervisory board, we discussed that. Maybe if we make a decision on that point, we will update you. This could be, of course, a potential decision point. Somebody's asking us, Mr. Zafer, for the closing conditions of AEP. Actually, this is a confident contract, so we cannot give you details on that. There are closing condition CPs on both sides, and we are still working together with the seller on these points, and if they are done, we can continue. There's a next question about the AGM authorization of capital measures to finance AEP. No, we don't plan to finance the acquisition with such kind of capital increase. This is not our plan. Next question was about the development of the bank debt.
You say that, thank you for the strong quarter results. What level of bank debt is TPG aiming for end of the year? Actually, we always have relational bank debt figures, but if you ask me on a total level, it will be something between EUR 45 million-EUR 55 million, maybe EUR 60 million totally, because there are also credit facilities on a variable basis, and it is hard to calculate exactly where you stand at the end of the year. This, I think, is a realistic perspective on that. Next question, it is about TPG share price again. I think I already answered that. Next question is about the EBITDA margin, which declined by more than gross margin deleveraging of staff cost. I do not understand the question, to be honest. Yes, it is right.
The margin is a little bit lower compared to last year, and the gross margin also is a little bit lower. Because of the gross margin is lower, it has a big impact, of course, on the EBITDA and also on the net profit side, definitely. As I mentioned, last year, we had a one-time effect regarding the positive amortization. You should consider that, without this effect, our last year figures were a little bit lower compared to what we've shown here.
Can you give more color on your plan to pay down debt? What is the status of the decisions and relationship with existing lenders? Actually, our bond lenders, our bond holders, they have a formal contract regarding the Nordic Bond. We plan to reduce the bank debt, as we mentioned in the presentation, this year and also next year.
It is a continuous process here, and we think that we have good strategy to reduce it and also to reduce our interest costs, because as you know, interest costs are also point of our P&L, and of course, we want to reduce that. Can you give more color on the EBITDA adjustment of the decrease of 90 percentage points as the gross margin was only down by 40 percentage points? Yes, this is right. In total, the gross margin, of course, has a higher effect in the decrease compared to the other things. When you just see the relational HR figures, for example, those are personal costs, it is not so relevant compared to the material expenses. Actually, this is the most important cost driver in our structure. You mentioned that you achieved a 2.0 leverage in Q1.
Why have leverage decreased materially from here, given ongoing M&A? Well, as you know, M&A we do with three different components when we pay it. On the one side, we have cash component. On the second side, we have debt. On the third side, we also use earn-outs and sometimes shares. This combination of these three instruments, I think, are very important to underline why we develop it over the time and why we have a good mixture when we make M&A activity. Next question is about the stated target is 1.0 to 1.4 leverage by 2030. How much of this can be achieved with ongoing M&A? Well, actually, we cannot make a forecast on how much M&A we will do in three years. This is not possible.
You can be sure that when we communicate such a goal, we want to achieve that, and we took the right measures to achieve this goal in the next years. How many acquisitions are planned in Optics & Hearing? Definitely, we will make acquisitions this year, at least one or two in the Optics & H earing segment. This is definitely one of our focus. TPG Pay is still working. Yes, it is. We have successful projects here. I think this is a good idea that we can communicate that in the next Capital Markets Day, then we can give you a more detailed overview on our status there and what we have achieved there. You mentioned divestments in 2026. What companies does this concern? Non-performing assets, question mark. No.
These were companies which we also communicated in our corporate news that we sold them last year. These were companies with revenues below EUR 1 million, where we decided this is too small for us, where we do not want to continue there because we have the same management attention, we have the same capabilities there. We think that our investments are better in bigger assets, and we want to force that.
Can you give us an update on the strategy regarding USA? Yes. We increased the number of sales channels there. We also connected more partners to United States selling activities. What we did not so far is to open an office with people there. This is one of the next steps, which we carefully do because you can easily lose money when you enter a market in a not very good way.
We make it step by step. We have three steps. First thing is setting there. Second is build up an office there and run our own platforms. Third step is connecting local U.S. retailers to our platforms. Next thing is about CHRONEXT. Maybe you should also contact directly the people there because we do not comment individual subsidiaries here. Do you plan further share issuance? Could you please share any guidance about potential size? Actually, we have no guidance on that. We do not plan to double the number of shares. That's not what we plan here.
Of course, it can be with some investors where we have close and long-term relationship, we can always consider that because if the parties are interesting and contribute something to the growth and profitability of our company, we are open to that. Are you aware of any legal or other restrictions preventing professional investors to invest in share? No, I don't know anyone. Hi there. Great first results. Thank you for that. What is your thought process on equity issuing? Are you planning to issue more shares in the near future regarding M&A and for reducing leverage? When we make M&A activities, I would say in half of the transactions, we sometimes use shares.
For example, Nathalie mentioned the acquisition of the shoe online store, the sneaker store, and therefore, we made a small capital increase for the seller of the company, and they received the shares, and it's a long-term relationship where we think this is worth to do, and they have a strong connection to our group. Since share buybacks are not an option at the moment due to your bond covenant. Yes, you are right. Are you willing to repay the bond earlier in order to start share buybacks at this share price? Good question. Yes, it could be an option. On the other side, it is not so easy to make a rebuy of the bond because when you start doing that, you have directly a price impact that it will go up very fast again.
Right now, we made no decision on that, and so I cannot give you an update here. All right, these have been all the questions in the chat.
Great. With this, I think we would come to the end of today's call. Thank you, everyone, for joining and to your shown interest. Maybe if there are some further up questions, Nathalie will be happy to assist you. With this, Mr. Benner, some final remarks from your side.
No, feel free to contact us. Nathalie, you can always reach out by email or cell phone, and happy to get your feedback. Thank you