Good evening, everyone. Sorry for the late start. Thank you for joining us for the presentation of Stella International Holdings Limited 2025 Interim Results. This webinar is being recorded. With us today is Mr. Stephen Chi, CEO and Executive Director, Mr. Andy Tam, Group Chief Financial Officer, and Ms. Maisie Leung, Head of Investor Relations. Andy will first present a summary of the group's financial performance for the six months ended June 30, 2025, after which Stephen will present a business review of the group's manufacturing business. Andy will then return to present the group's outlook. Following the presentation, we'll be taking voice questions in English from the audience. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing the raise hand button at any time at the bottom of your console.
Once again, that's press the raise hand button if you wish to be placed in the Q&A queue. I will now hand it over to Andy to discuss the group's financial performance.
Thank you, Matt. Good evening, everyone. Sorry for the late start. We've some technical issues. Please start slide four for the highlights. I'll just dive in with pretty much flat for the first half, which we'll see now. Back in our future update, our volume grows 3.8% to HKD 27.5 million pairs. This was driven mainly by the sports segment, despite a high base effect from our higher shipment volume in the first half of last year. Of about, we're yielding a three-and-a-half times percent. Our ASP is down 3.2% due to a high proportion of sports products, with a low overhead ASP. Our operating profit margin is 10.9%, down close to fixed point. We faced some temporary gross margin pressure during the period, more merely due to short-term efficiency issues concerning the ramp-up of our expanded production capacity in Indonesia and Philippines.
As a result, our net profit for the first half fell 14.6% to HKD 78 million. You still can hear a solid net cash level of HKD 291 million, which is down a little bit as we pay out our final dividend for 2024, as well as an additional HKD 60 million under the Excess Cash Return Program that we paid in May. Today, we've declared a HKD 0.52 interim dividend, which is a semi 1% A/M ratio. Moving to slide five, I want to talk a little bit more about the P&L. Our margins and our gross profit margin, our gross profit decreased by 11.9%. Our margins, gross margin fell 22% compared to 25.8% last year.
Just a little one, we talked a lot about this before, we have a high base effect from the same period last year because the one million pairs that we shipped early fell outside the normal seasonality and therefore was a high margin product. Secondly, there's a temporary gross margin pressure caused by the Indonesian and Philippine factory, where we trained nearly higher workers in that area, but they did not, we're not able to fully attain the efficiency levels required for these production builds. Subsequently, we also slowed the ramp-up of the new factory in Indonesia, which led the group to redirect some production to work in Vietnam and resulted in higher production costs and overtime expenses. Meanwhile, our net profit was HKD 78 million. This becomes 77.9% on an estimated basis if there's a HKD 200,000 gain on the net value of our bottom line investment.
Our net profit margin is still at 10.1%. Now, turning to our cash flow statement, our net cash flow from operating is HKD 3.9 million, merely due to changes in our working capital. Our cash outflow in investing was HKD 25.3 million. CapEx was HKD 33 million. We will finish at more CapEx in the second half and we'll probably see more next year to finish the Indonesian factory for our sports customer. Our cash flow from the financing activity is HKD 48.9 million, and you see the dedicated dividend we paid is HKD 113 million in total. Going to our balance sheet position, we again have a solid net cash dollar of HKD 291 million. I'd like to point out that it's been reserved for our Excess Cash Return Program. The return is 2025 and 2026. What we do is accommodate any share repurchases or special dividends on top of our regular 7% dividend annually.
Going to the next page on our valuation and our dividend yield. We paid HKD 0.56 as a dividend in 2024. We'll draw our promise to HKD 60 million annual dividend expense returns on that. We initially made our total payout to be 87% last year, improving our normal dividend. This has represented a 9.4% dividend yield at the time. Right now, we declare HKD 0.52 as a dividend for the interim, which is above our 70% payout ratio. Based on the last 12 months' calculation, our dividend yield is about 10%. Coming to the next page on our cost structure, as you can see in the first half of this year, our gross profit margin was pressured by high labor costs and overheads in our factories. One or two costs particularly hit large components of our cost of goods sold.
Moving to the next long-term trend on volume and ASP, again, this shows in the physical that in 2018, we had kind of a steady enhancement of our customer portfolio, really building up that luxury and the higher-end package type of business. Because of the longer cycle time, our volume has been relatively flat over the last few years. We've also had our volume figures also on the right-hand side, both insurance and services as well. At the same time, ASP has been falling as our sports business recovered this year, and we also added new customers in a new segment as well. Looking at the operating profit and the margin, our operating profit between 2021 and 2024 is still good. It has been growing about 21% savings, which means we'll probably meet our in-margin of 10% operating margin and maintain paradigm growth up after tax under a three-year plan.
Despite declining operating margin, especially we talked about earlier. This is really attributed to our strategy of enhancing our customer revenue to better align to our unique strengths and capabilities and expanding, really diversifying our manufacturing capacity to fit our cost base. We are really optimizing our management and technology efficiency, and kind of be really focused on changing and improving our working capital. On the next page on net cash balance, you see our net cash balance in the first half of HKD 291 million. We did actually pull up from debt, actually, HKD 50 million still outstanding in the first half. That's merely because when we paid the Excess Cash Return Program of HKD 60 million, we were going to liquidate some of our short-term U.S. dollar investments, but we decided not to do that and figure on a higher interest income.
While our short-term interest rate in the Hong Kong dollar market is less than almost above 1%, we were office-pricing the market for a little bit. All of that HKD 50 million loan has been paid off, 74% of the quarter right now. Looking at the next page, this is our seasonality. Just to remind everyone, we have a high base effect with the one million pair that got shipped to the first half in 2024. It's just showing that as a comparative system, if we look at that, what the volumes are being achieved and what net profit looks like. Let me turn to the presenter here and turn it over to our Stephen.
Thank you, Andy. Good evening, everyone. The board of 50 provides an overview of our customer portfolio we work with. We basically separate our portfolio into four different categories: Sports, well-known sports brands, including limited edition and cross-brand collaboration; Luxury, which are mostly alligator footwear and the style to develop and commercialize the luxury and common fashion brands by working closely with their printed era; Fashion, most high-end fashion brands that sell fancy classic wear, including Louis Vuitton and Dior; Casual, mostly long-term customers. We have commenced shipment to Under Armour in the first half of this year, as we now supply with a bigger product line called Caleb. In the second half of this year, we just shipped a new quarterly customer in the fashion and sports category. It's called Skywalk. It's just a beaver's first-time brand. Another major sports brand we've both shipped in September.
For our selective sales, it's a great chance to manufacture and review by product categories. Going by category, sales in our stores increased by 8.2%, accounting for 48.1% of total manufacturing revenue. This was driven by higher shipment to our largest sports customer and other existing sports customers as well. Obviously, the success program for both Under Armour and the New York Steels. Revenue attributed to our faster and lesser reliability together reported a near decrease of 3.5%, a decrease of 2.6% and 6.2% respectively, and it accounted for 25.4% and 7.8% of our total manufacturing. Revenue attributed to our academy category declined by 9.2%, accounting for 18.3% of total manufacturing revenue, as we continue to reallocate capacity to grow our other categories in line with our business plan. What revenue percentage breakdown of revenue by region?
North America and Europe are the two largest markets, accounting for 48.7% and 23.4% of our total revenue. This is followed by PRC, the rest of Asia, and other geographic regions, which contribute to 50.9%. Turning to 2018. In the first half of this year, China accounted for 25% of our manufacturing capacity, the amount of 52%, and Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Philippines accounted for 23%. By the end of 2025, we estimate that China would account for 25% of our manufacturing capacity, the amount of 52%, and other parts 23%. Turning to the next slide page, we remain on track towards the same growth as we are starting to finalize our next three-year plan. Our next plan includes continuing to fill our total capacity by an additional 21%.
This will be achieved through further ramp-up of our new factory in Seoul in the new year, and that will deliver us 73%. Launching and operating our second manufacturing facility in Bangladesh, which will deliver HKD 3 million, and accelerating the construction of our dedicated factory to our largest sports customer in Indonesia, and that will deliver around 10%. Also, Andy mentioned earlier, the challenges required would be expensive. Page five. To provide an update on the downside in our revenue business, our retail and wholesale business in Europe has already been entirely wound down. In the first half of this year, we closed about 100 sales, and eight are still remaining up to date. The revenue from distribution and performance is set to grow to boost overall performance as we continue to wind down the business by the end of this year.
Finally, on our slide 21, I'm pleased to share that Stella has received an upgrade in the MSCI ESG rating of AA, up from its previous A rating, marking the second best to that in the new album. The MSCI rating upgrade was an indicator for progress in environmental performance, shipment and raw material sourcing, and product harvest for branding. Stella's score across all 16 industry issues in textile, apparel, and luxury goods has now exceeded the industry average. We'll now hand it back to Andy to discuss our update.
Thank you, Stephen. As you know, that ends our previous item in the new 2025, we got a few more months left. The company is at probably a mid-market market with 10% operating margin and one team standard over that previous period. Turning to the outlook, on the next page, on the full year, we expect a moderate increase in shipment environments compared to the quarter. Our profit will remain constrained as we continue implementing our protective issues in Sweden and our manufacturing facilities, especially in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. We may also see further customer marketing pressure as we deepen partnerships with our key U.S. customers to optimize operating production operations. This really allows us to reinforce our long-term strategic relationship with them.
We'll continue to optimize the allocation of production capacity, of course, across all the various categories focused on, you know, what size of profitability we have. Our non-customer excuse manufacturing facilities are still expected to boom during the second half as we commence our shipments to two-day customer supply from the sports category in the second half of the year. Despite all the developing market uncertainty, demand for our product development skill set and manufacturing capacity still remains strong as we continue to bring new customers. Increasingly, more and more brands are actually revisiting their supply chain needs and prioritizing the strategic expenses to offer differentiation, high quality, and value. We are also looking forward to the next release lineup. Stephen has already discussed the 40 million pair of capacity we plan to drive to bring online.
We're also firmly committed to establish our handbag and accessory factory in the business as a core growth driver with the aim of introducing to more of our high-end customer base. We've completed the acquisition of a small handbag and accessory factory in Vietnam, and this will be a great change to the breadth of expertise and experience that we can really help us improve our quality level and take us to the next level. Finally, we remain committed to determine our additional cash up to HKD 60 million per year to show all those. They involve about 2025 and 2026 through a combination of repurchase and special dividends. This is quoted on top of our regular dividend 7% pair. I'll give the end of the presentation. I look forward to hearing and answering your questions.
Thank you, Andy and Stephen. We are now ready to answer your questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press the raise hand button to be placed in the Q&A queue. We'll take our first question from Alexia of Citi. Alexia, I'll let you start with asking questions.
Thanks. Thank you, management, for giving my question. I have several questions. First, I'd like to understand the handbag business benefits. Could you please share some information about the current P&L situation? How long before we require investment? What's our target for the revenue needs by 2028? What is the timeline for the meaningful profits? My second question is if there is any update to your full-year outlook or guidance you can share with us. My last question is about the margin recovery. I'm wondering if we can get to a normalized margin next year. Thanks so much.
Okay. I answered the handbag question. I think that's question number one. We recently made an acquisition of a Meraki factory. It's a very small factory that produces around a million pieces. What their specialty and expertise with handcraft and also great management. Obviously, this year, we have done a great job in terms of the handbags. I think acquiring a small manufacturer like that with the expertise and know-how will definitely be the roadmap to expand the handbag business. Because handbag business in terms of the people, it's not as easy to obtain compared to the shoes. The main reason why we're able to, and also the reason why we wanted to obtain the factory, is for their capability in craftsmanship and also their management to expand our handbag business into the proper business model. The second one I passed to Andy.
Yeah. In terms of the full-year outlook, you know, Alex, there's not much change than what we talked about in Q2. I think we talked briefly about the issues in the experience teams in Indonesia, which kind of snowballed to Vietnam on the efficiency side. The team has worked on it, and we just went through an operational kind of turnaround action plan with our management team and the board as well. The plan is in place, and people are on the execution mode. Hopefully, that will get better in the second half. You know, we got about HKD 7 million, HKD 6 - HKD 7 million. That's still the case. Second thing, you know, we talked about it in the second half. We have about HKD 6 - HKD 7 million of tariff impact. Sorry, HKD 7 - HKD 8 million of tariff impact.
That will be helping some of our strategic customers for this time period. That's still the same. Not much change in terms of our guidance, really.
Thanks. Yes, I have the third question. It's about the margin recovery. Can we expect it to be back to normalized margin in the next year?
In the next year, in 2026, you mean?
Yes.
Okay. Yeah. We aim to get our margin back or efficiency back to normal at least by Q4. I'm not assuming in Q3, depending on the factory. Next year, we aim to be on our optimal normal efficiency that we have always targeted. Of course, we learn a lot this year from expanding probably too quickly. We do not have enough right support, but we are looking to eradicate all of that and have a learning lesson for our next year and also future growth as well.
Okay. That's all for my question. Thank you. It's very helpful.
Thank you, Alex. Just a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press the raise hand button. We'll take our next question from Kai Sheng of Gultran High Tow Securities. Kai, you may continue to ask a bunch of questions.
Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I got a couple. The first is about the regional growth because we're just seeing the revenue in China actually decrease around 8% - 9%. In Europe, it declined about 4%. May I understand that in Europe, it's more because of the pre-order due to the Olympics last year? May I also know the reasons behind in China? Another question is about, may I dig into more details about the margin driver next year? Will it be more about the recovery of efficiency in the Indonesian factory and also maybe the low margin casual segment, the contribution will also be lower next year? The third question is about, may we know more visibility of the order for next year? Thank you.
Okay. Just on the geographic breakdown of revenue, to be honest, we don't really control that. Our customers dictate where they want to ship, where they allocate, you know, the order should be on. While some of our customers in luxury and high-end fashion are exclusive, not all of our customers are exclusive. They're like 300 different vendors, and they have their kind of sourcing strategy of where to ship from where to where. Given this, I would say, 2025 of the tariff and kind of uncertainty everywhere, there's like a whole bunch of changes and things like that. It's harder for us to explain exactly like if why say Europe is down. It's really because of our customer making that decision, actually.
On the margin drive for 2026, number one, at least we hope that we get to get our efficiency back to a normalized level, especially in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam as well. That's really the kind of number one key margin driver back to normal. Secondly, we of course will be looking at our next year and also our three-year plan, next three-year plan as well, looking at what category of customers, how we mix, and what kind of customers are winning. Obviously, we got to make a change to a debate between among like all our customers, you know, we have existingly and also new ones that we're trying to win or have won. We have to look at the capacity we have. Overall, that will make up a kind of portfolio mix, okay?
You see, at least from the first half, as Stephen Chi alluded to, our casual, the percent of revenue has gone down. That will probably continue in a longer long term. By definition, in a way, margins should slightly go up a little bit because the casual margins are actually slightly lower.
Okay. I understand. Also, maybe no more visibility for next year, maybe by segments about the orders?
I think in terms of visibility, it's actually okay. Here our main for luxury, sports, and casual, and also fashion, we'll be quite clear about the visibility. I think for us, from our side, we'll make maybe a tough decision within the next two to three months in terms of the allocation of capacity to who and what. Obviously, with the support of tariff and this and that, we'll make decisions on reallocating our capacity, especially if we have other new brands and customers coming in. I think in order to give you a very clear guidance of what we are going to do, probably takes another month or two.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
If you wish to ask a question, please press the raise hand button. We'll take our next question from Calcin Lai of [Dialogue]. Calcin, if you can unmute yourself and ask a question.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just two quick ones. One for Andy. Can you just quantify the one-off in the first half in terms of the extra freight expenses and overtime expenses that are due to the inefficiencies? The second question for Stephen is just kind of wondering what kind of conversations you're currently having with brand customers. Are they still kind of just relatively cautious? Are they still talking about consolidating their suppliers? What kind of things are on their minds? Also, we've been hearing from some other OEM peers that they're actually talking about ending some of the pricing supports in 4Q of this year. I was wondering, are we close to that? Are we starting to see a kind of turnaround in terms of, say, the potential price support and all that, and just talk kind of normalizing for 2026? Thanks.
Okay, I can go first.
Yeah. Great. Thank you, Calcin. On the inefficiency as it relates to the Philippines and Indonesian factories, we talked about in Q2 investor update. That's going to be about HKD 7 million profit after tax equivalent. In terms of your feedback, that's conversations.
In terms of conversation about the brands, obviously, depending on the brands you're talking about, I think luxury in general, overall segment is not great, but they're okay. They're not being cautious. They actually are being a little bit more aggressive, I would say, trying to develop new things and trying to recapture the desire for the market. Fashion, overall, they're a bit more cautious. Tariff is coming into effect, I think, now into the market. I think everybody's waiting for the holiday season and see what happens, especially, I would say, that with whether it's fashion or casual, the same thing. As for the sports, some are doing well. Some are doing okay. I think the most important thing right now is about innovation, having something that is new, having something that is great. I think sports is probably not as affected as much.
It's more about putting the right thing into the market. In terms of the consolidation, we do see that a little bit. When business is not good, you want to focus on your key partners, your key vendors. It also depends on the capacity and where geographically you have factories located at. As tariff comes into place, people are jumping around. I'm sure you're aware, given today, the tariff is like 20% here and there. It might change next month. Some of the customers right now are just waiting and seeing exactly what might happen in the next month or two. They're used to all these new announcements, new news. I think in general, most of the customers are quite calm. They're more looking for next year, how to attract customers, consumers, how to innovate. I think that's what most of the conversation I have right now with the customers.
As for the tariff support, most of the support will end by end of this year. Right now there's only one client that we have right now. They're just asking for an extension beyond that. That's it.
Perfect. All right. Thank you. Thanks, guys.
Sure.
Thank you, Calcin. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press the raise hand button. That's press the raise hand button if you wish to ask a question. We'll take our next question from Darren Yoon of Chapel Capital. Darren, please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Hey, everyone. I have a couple of questions. The first one is on the situation in Indonesia and the Philippines. You guys highlighted that as a main reason for the lower gross margin, right? I was curious about the effect of the mix as well because we do have a higher sports mix. Is that not, you know, much of an effect on margin during this period? I'm wondering whether kind of like the new sports orders perhaps have a margin higher to some of the other higher-end categories. Is that kind of why we didn't cite that as a reason for the gross margin going down? That's my first question, please.
Okay. Let me answer the first question for you. I think both in the Philippines, they basically said it's an issue. I would say Philippines last year, we did about HKD 1.8 million. This year, we're planning to do HKD 2.8 million. The increment of increase is probably too much to attain. We recruited a lot of workforce early. The training was not done properly. It snowballed the effect that happened. That's basically the only thing. Indonesia, pretty much the same thing or similar, but Indonesia had a little different issue. The factory we're talking about right now, actually, it's a solo factory. We did HKD 1.2 million. This year, it was supposed to, I would say, HKD 2.5 million. What happened with that factory is that factory consists of both casual and sports.
In the roadmap of moving all the casual out of the factory, there was a deficit in terms of the know-how and the skill set for the sports. It's not because of the margin on the shoes that we're taking. It's more on the change of styles and change of, I would say, a bit of know-how and skill set. That basically was the cost behind the margin drop and inefficiency, especially.
Okay. Cool. I have another question about the free cash flow. As you guys highlighted, it's down quite a bit, mainly because of the investments in the working capital, right? Could you maybe address some of the reasons for the outside investments and any comments on the size or any timing considerations behind those working capital investments?
Yeah. Just two things there. One is inventory is definitely higher. This is June. Just say like seasonally June last year, we had about probably HKD 20 million incremental inventory on, you know, products that had been spent more time in different things shipped on June 30th. We were supposed to ship in July. A lot of that is because of bottleneck issues we have in the Philippines and reinventory that delayed some of those shipments. Also, because they're behind, there's extra raw material and risk in that kind of inventory number as well. That's a big part. The second part is on the accountability side. As you know, we have a new customer Under Armour. I don't know if you guys know, but we were doing the business with them quite for a while. We were actually exiting them as a customer back in 2024.
Back in December 31, 2023, we still have a much bigger AR balance with them. By the end of December 31, 2024, it's close to zero. The new shipments that we have now shipped for June, that kind of pays balance back to where our AR balance used to be. It's going to go up higher as we grow that business. You get this kind of weird thing where while the factory is busy, that customer kind of went kind of round trip, went down, and then went back up as we put AR as we shipped. It was not reflected in that kind of cash flow. The third thing is a bit of timing difference. It's a little bit weird. This is the commonplace. Back in December 31, 2023, December 31 is actually a Sunday.
Typically, our customers pay on a Monday and Thursday, and Monday is a holiday during the 1st. They didn't pay us until like the following two days when we got back to work. Whereas in December 31, 2024, 31st is actually a Tuesday. Everyone paid on Monday on time. It looked like our AR was lower. When you compare June, the June AR versus the 2025 and 2024 is about the same. The seasonal is not any different. It's more like just a timing difference from the public holidays.
Okay. Cool. I just have one last question, which is about our largest customer. If I heard correctly, they were the main sports mix during the period, right? Firstly, could I get maybe the latest utilization rate for the dedicated facility? Second of all, I think they recently guided kind of a healthy restocking outlook, looking for the end of the year to complete that. It might be a bit early, I guess, but do we have any rough guess or feeling as to what our utilization could be with them for the next year?
Yeah. For them, a large customer, we can't quote their specific utilization, but, you know, they are basically on par. We will guide it. The customer will be flat year on year. We basically don't need any utilization flat. It's basically similar. Sports did go up because of them, but also Under Armour is a new customer too. It's not just them as well. Darren, what was the second question?
Kind of the outlook with our largest customer going to 26 because I think restocking is kind of going as planned. I think that might ease up going into the end of the year, right? Whether we have any expectation about where utilization on the sports side could land in 2026.
No, we're looking at the utilization being everything this year for one of our largest sports orders. The only thing I'll put in mind is that because of tariff, for sure, our utilization in Vietnam is going to be over 100%. That's the one thing too. Also, because of that, there are attempts to speed up our Indonesia new facility. That will go online during the second half of 2026. China, that's the thing you need to watch just a bit, because the tariff might not be what it is today. That is the only thing we're continuing to monitor.
Okay. Cool. Thanks. That's it for me. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Yi Chang Yang of Phoenix Securities. Yi Chang, you may unmute yourself and ask your question.
Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to ask the questions. I have a few questions. My first question is about capacity. I noticed that our Nike factories in Indonesia, which is expected to contribute an additional 10 to 15 million pairs of shoes in the future. This seems to be a little more than the original plan. Could you please tell us, explain the driving force behind this, and will it affect our future capacity plan? The second question is about the tariff. Do you think the impact of tariff will still occur next year? How does looking forward this influence in the future? Thank you.
Oh, no, I'll do the tariff first and then I'll pass it over to Andy for the case study. I think the tariff mostly to me in terms of price negotiation and talking to customers. By the end of this year, I think obviously everything's going to be back on track. What both us and also the customer worry about is the effect on the customers. We will not know until probably the holiday season. If it really affects it, actually, the overall business might go down a bit. That is why I think most of the customers are looking forward as to developing new products to be innovative because if you see right now, things do sell. Good products do sell. At the end of the day, it's having the right product in the market.
On the capacity side, our new facility in Indonesia, originally it's flat for 10 million, but of course, that's optionality expanded to 15. That's kind of what we're looking at. Most of the CapEx is already on the balance sheet that we earmarked for a long time. Most of that, the remaining part of that, will be spent second half this year and a lot of it first half next year so that the plant can be operational by the second half in 2026.
Okay. Thank you very much. I don't have any other questions.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Daniel Roth of Parkway Capital. Daniel, you may unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yeah, thanks. Just another couple of questions on the expansion. When you say on slide 19, total 20 million- 25 million pairs, and you're talking about additional capacity, are there any assumptions for capacity closures, like say in China or something? Is this a gross capacity add or is this a net capacity add?
We want a net capacity add. We have no plans right now to close in China. We have one China factory for luxury, and then, of course, it's a large place for large sports customers, and that's a dedicated factory for them.
Okay. For the ramp-up of the second factory in Indonesia, that's currently underway, but can you give us some more clarity as to when we expect to complete the 7 million pair ramp-up?
The Stella factory?
Yeah, the Stella factory.
Within the next four years.
That's a four-year ramp.
Yeah, that's a three to four-year ramp. Each year, we'll do about, starting for next year, HKD 1.5 - HKD 3 million ramp-up. That's the speed for the.
Okay. How about for the Bangladesh factory?
Bangladesh factory will start probably the year after at about 1.5 million pairs as well.
That's starting in 2027?
Yeah, late 2026 and beginning of 2027.
Okay. For the ramp-up for the large factory, is it a 10 million- 15 million pair factory?
That one will start second ramp-up next year.
Okay. That'll take a few years to get ramped up, I assume?
I think that factory will be basically around 2 million pairs per year.
Got it. Okay. For the three-year plan that we're currently under, that's through, I guess, FY 2025.
Yes. Correct.
I mean, maybe it's too early to talk about, but are we considering another three-year plan like this?
Yeah, of course. We're just talking about that to the board today. We have kind of finalized the numbers. I'm sure we can share some guidance in September, October. We're making a final plan right now, but in terms of the actual numbers, I think it's better for maybe Andy Tam to expose that by October.
Got it. Yeah.
All right.
That's it. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Daniel. We have a follow-up question from Alexia Citi. Alexia, you may unmute yourself and ask your question.
Thanks. I'm sorry, Andy. I have a follow-up question from the largest customer. Is the shipment increase due to the low base? Are you actually seeing quarter-on-quarter momentum? Thanks.
First half last year, our largest customer was just, I would say, recovering, rebounding. Definitely for the first half, a lot of it is obviously a lower base in the first half last year because of the lower utilization. That is why we're in the sports category. It's not because it's a large customer. It's mainly because of that. Just so that when we quote efficiencies, that utilization for the full year for this customer, we flat year on year, we're taking into account of that. It's basically according to almost exactly their plan that they've given us.
Okay, thanks so much.
Thank you, Alex. This is your reminder. If you wish to ask a question, please press the raise hand button. We'll take our next question from Robert Holmes of North of South Capital. Robert, you may unmute yourself and ask your question.
Hi there. I actually joined the call late, so apologies if you already covered this in your initial comments. How is all this influencing the dividend payments and buyback strategy? Is there any change in terms of the capital return orientation of the company?
Thank you, Robert. Absolutely not. First, our dividend payout policy is 70%. Additionally, when you talk about the Excess Cash Return Program of HKD 180 million, we paid HKD 60 million worth of it already. The remaining HKD 120 million will be used this year either through share buyback. If we don't use it, we will pay out as a special dividend next year as well. It's called a final dividend. The same thing for the last remaining HKD 60 million for 2026. No change in that.
Okay. Great stuff. All right. Thanks very much.
Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Daniel Roth of Parkway Capital. Daniel, you may unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yeah, sorry, just a quick one. In terms of the retail stores, I know there aren't too many left, but have you taken kind of write-offs as you close those? Is there a risk if you were to close all the stores? It could be kind of a one-time large write-down or write-off.
No, I don't think there's any more write-off. We're closing by the end of this year, all the stores will be closed. I think we've already taken all these write-offs.
Good. That's it.
Yep.
Thanks.
Thank you. This is a reminder. If you wish to ask questions, please press the raise hand button. We currently have no more questions. Management, did you have anything else you wanted to discuss or any final comments?
No, thank you, Matt. I think that's it for today. Thank you very much for joining. We'll talk to you guys soon.
Thank you. Thank you for joining. Thank you for joining us this evening. You may now disconnect. Good evening.