Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Adrian Skłodowski, Head of Strategy and Investor Relations at Eurocash. I'm joined with Paweł Surówka, our CEO.
Good afternoon.
Piotr Nowjalis, our CFO.
Good afternoon.
Today, we will provide you more details about Q4 2025, full year 2025, and give you also more update about our strategy. We will start from 2025 highlights. Paweł?
Thank you very much, Adrian. Hello, everybody. As usual, I will lead you through the overall market update, go over the main executive summary of the year, also comment on what has been done in terms of the strategy and the overall outlook, trying to comment also some of the questions that we have also seen coming from the analysts. I will ask Piotr to go through the exact numbers. I will obviously focus on 2025. As all of you know, in 11 days, we will be reporting Q1, so I hope that I will be able to answer questions more in detail that refer to the beginning of the year and the first quarter in this time. Okay.
Overall, 2025 obviously was a challenging year since the announcement of the strategy, it was also clear that this particular presentation of the yearly results would be quite challenging for us because we have already announced we are going to book the bulk or actually the entirety of the reserves that we see as a cost burden, resulting from the decisions that we have taken within the strategy to transform the business, mainly, to reduce our own stores, to reduce our logistical service centers, also to reduce labor costs by almost 30%. We have decided to transparently show the cost of this transformation and recognize it in this fourth quarter. Accordingly, these yearly results are tough for us because we are showing the cost of our measures without the possibility to show what they are actually achieving.
We obviously hope very much that after showing the cost side of the implementation of the strategy this year, we will be able to consequently show within the next years how this transformation appears in the numbers and in the results of the company. Therefore, 2025, obviously, we end with a quite challenging note, both on the sides of the restructuring costs that we have shown, clearly the organization has been very much focused in Q4 also with the implementation of the strategy, it was the time until pretty much the end of Q1 this year, where we have also implemented this strategy, and I will come to that later. Overall, when we look at the sales development, 2025, as we have also communicated over the first three quarters, was a tough year for our market.
On the one hand side, the consumer has somehow come back after two pretty painful years for the FMCG market, coming from high inflation and obviously the price war that were quite relevant in the last years. 2025 saw somehow the consumer coming back, however, in a different shape than we have anticipated and also coming back in a different shape than, for example, before those years. On the one hand side, we still see the consumer being quite price sensitive, quite keen on promotions. Discounters still having quite a lot of success attracting consumers to their channels. What we can see is that it costs them more and more to attract clients, and the investments in price and margin become more pronounced as they try to attract clients and maintain the quite high growth to which they have accustomed clients to come to the discounter part.
Nevertheless, discounters still had a good run in 2025, and that was partially at the expense of the traditional market. Hence, what we have seen still overall market growth of 4.6%, still something somehow muted, not much more than the growth that we have seen in 2024. What has been particularly marked in 2025, and that is this changing consumer that I spoke about, clearly a slower growth and an even decline in beer, spirits, and soft drinks, where we see not only the impact of the excise tax, but also clearly consumer behavior. Obviously, last year, we had weather impact; we had elements still about price and purchasing power. However, we do see clearly that the consumer in Poland also simply consumes less beer, less alcohol, and that is something that has impacted the entire market, but also particularly the wholesale relevant market.
Accordingly, what we can see is that the wholesale relevant market declined by 3%, compared to 4.6% in the overall for the total market. This has a lot to do with those categories that I mentioned. Obviously, beer being a very big traffic driver for the small stores that make up a lot of the traditional stores that form the wholesale relevant market or the traditional market in Poland, which obviously is also our biggest market, and therefore the Eurocash sales has declined by 4.6%. A little bit stronger than the market, partly has to do with intentional management decisions. As we have announced in the strategy, our strategy now focuses much more on profitability versus sales.
I will come to that later, but we have within our strategy that I've also explained through the logistical angle, clearly said that we have clients that make up the bulk of our sales who are loyal, integrated franchise clients, and what we call the tier one clients. Then we have a lot of, I would say, long-tail clients that create some wholesale sales but are much more challenging in terms of the profitability when accounted for by the entire cost. In a certain way, the thesis of the strategy is to say that Eurocash can become a sales-wise, somehow smaller company, focusing on the franchise and tier one clients, but a much more profitable one. That would set us for a better sustainable profit but also be strategically better positioned, as we are focusing on the franchise part that is more sustainable.
We'll come to that in a later slide. Just to say, within the 4.6% decline, our decisions that have been taken by the management, such as closing the cash-and-carry stores, discontinuing our alcohol distributor, PDA, partially insourcing his sales into the overall distribution sales, closing the unprofitable stores of Delikatesy Centrum, and also reviewing our store network of Żabka, all that had a sales impact. Having said that, it should set the foundations for the next years for a much more profitable sales, and you will see this in the results coming forward. Obviously, we have booked reserves for the overall transformation, and this transformation was supposed to yield or is supposed to yield PLN 400 million in savings. Today, I can say that the PLN 400 million savings are very well underway.
We are continuing as scheduled. We see no risk in achieving those savings that we have anticipated. What's more, when it comes down to the most important element of those PLN 400 million accounting for almost half of those savings, the labor cost part where we have said that we are going to reduce our head office and white-collar labor by almost 30%. I can report that the almost entirety of those actions have already been performed as of now. In those cases where we had to let go of people, we've already informed them, and they have been formally informed. Some of them are still with us until a certain time. Most of them will leave and have left by the end of the year. A lot of them have already left today.
These are elements that obviously cannot be seen in the yearly results of 2025, even though a lot of those layoffs have been already done in Q4. Obviously, the cost is still there, and it has been recognized also in the provisions of the PLN 290 million that we have announced, in combination of this transformation, you can see here also booked in the yearly results. Again, PLN 290 million of reserves booked in the results as anticipated, PLN 34 million of what we call one-offs, severance payments is other that affected Q4. These costs are associated with cost savings matters that are supposed to yield a total of yearly PLN 400 million less cost for the group.
I can say that this cost transformation is very well underway. We are very confident that we will have those PLN 400 million; we will be able to show their full impact in the coming quarters and the full-year impact in the next year. The profitability work, as I said, it is not translating fully in the Q4 because a lot of the costs have been pre-booked.
You can still see that in 2025, even though we had to sacrifice sales and some of it came from the market, we have still maintained a very healthy discipline, both on the cost and the margin side, which allowed us to maintain our EBITDA margin on a level of 2.9%, i.e., flat year-on-year, which I think shows you that while performing this transformation management is weighing carefully sales and profitability and being given the overall market context, being given that we did decline in sales, even though we have a pretty high fixed cost base, and there were also a lot of challenges and pressure on us in terms of the gross margin. Being able to maintain a 2.9% EBITDA margin throughout 2025, I think, is quite an achievement that not all of our competitors have been able to perform. Piotr will come to that later.
We had, still as usual, very good discipline on our balance sheet. The cash conversion cycle still improving. If it wasn't for the one-off reserves, we would also still be on our track to reduce the overall debt burden of the company as in relation to EBITDA. Now, obviously, it looks different because of the one-off of their provisions for the transformation. Our growth platforms, Frisco and Duży Ben, have both progressed very strongly towards profitability. Frisco here obviously shining through both high growth and a clear path towards profitability that we believe will be able to clear the way for 2026 to be a profitable year for Frisco. I'll come to that later.
As I already said, on the 11th of May, we will present to you Q1, and I hope I'll be able to show on that quarter a little bit more in detail of how the work that we've been doing so far already translates into the numbers. So, developing a little bit more the market, as I said, 4.6% of growth. We've expected more consumer, even though coming back a little bit more relaxed about prices. Still, when you look at consumer research, prices are still a dominant factor. Smart shopping is still very much underway. In such a context, discounters are very much profitable. Obviously, we here also count Dino to the discounters, so they now account for half of the entire FMCG market. As you know from our strategy, we believe that's very high, and we think that there should be a certain limit to that growth.
In a certain extent, we can see that already right now, where discounters find it more and more challenging to maintain this kind of pace when it comes down to both expansion and channel switching, as the consumer currently is clearly overstimulated with promotions and different multi-buying possibilities. We believe that is going to further evolve as the consumer becomes more and more confident, if market conditions allow. What is interesting, and you can see here, is the organized proximity chains that have been growing faster than the market, the 5% that you can see here. In this part, we have also part of our franchise stores and part of our stores, namely also Delikatesy Centrum. It is in this space where Eurocash wants to be stronger present.
The organized proximity chains, which are fulfilling a mission that is not only competing but also quite complementary to the discounter missions, we believe is poised to grow. Part of our strategy is to focus our presence as a group stronger on this segment of the market by focusing on the franchise stores that are present in this market and also by stronger integrating so that our franchise stores that are today more softer in nature become more organized. Therefore, it is part of our overall strategy to get from the more traditional point of work and the traditional market that, as you can see here, has been declining, as already mentioned, by 3% in 2025 and has shed its market share in the overall market to shift from the wholesale relevant market to the organized proximity market.
We believe that this should also position us better to grow in the future once we have repositioned and recalibrated ourselves in this space. I will come to that later. As mentioned, the wholesale relevant market declined in the same time, 3% down to PLN 108 billion in sales. Eurocash's market share on the market, very stable, 25.3%, the dominant player in that space. As already mentioned, we have quite deliberately reviewed our portfolio of clients and, particularly in the second half of the year, have reviewed our client relationships. We have invested less in bulk deals. We have very much focused on our franchise clients, which in some extent also meant sacrificing sales but maintaining profitability. I will come to that later. As you can see, obviously, the wholesale market declining also very strongly by decline of store numbers.
We see overall store numbers going down by over 4,000 stores. This predominantly in the small and unaffiliated part of the market. Hence, our very strong conviction that Eurocash's growth and standing in the future is very much related to making sure that we focus on franchise. We may focus on the somehow bigger stores that can fulfill the proximity supermarket missions, and we also very much focus on profitability and cost savings that are what are affecting those small stores the strongest. Again, just to remind everybody, today's group is made up of several sections. We obviously have our growth platforms, Frisco and Duży Ben. We have Delikatesy Centrum as, in a certain way, our spearhead as the most integrated franchise chain, but also our own stores that we are currently, within the strategy, transforming from owned stores to franchise stores.
Then we have our soft franchise that makes the bulk of our wholesale sales and is really what we would consider the core of the wholesale business. The entire strategy is to focus our wholesale business on those franchise clients, integrate them stronger, ideally under an integrated banner, then also integrate our cooperation with them, so harden this part of the franchise so that we get more into this organized proximity supermarket mission that is also better positioned from a competitive point of view to be standing in the market. On the overall positioning of the franchise clients of Eurocash, one could say that they have maintained their market share in 2025 above 10%. A very relevant player if seen as an integrated retailer. We always try to constantly focus and reiterate that those retailers punch below their weight because they are now fragmented.
If we were to combine them, they would actually make up one of the top retailers in Poland, and it is part of the strategy to do this integration. Their market share, when you look here at the numbers, they are strongly affected also by our own decision to reduce the owned stores of Delikatesy Centrum and reduce the footprint from Duży Ben. Also, we have discontinued in this section the Inmedio stores that, as you know, we have qualified as available for sale. We have also had a slightly softer showing of the ABC stores. This, however, has linked to the fact that in the second half of 2025, we have hardened and high-ended the minimum standard to become an abc and to become a franchise store in Eurocash, namely, it is now obligatory to be an integrated store.
Every new store joining Eurocash, also the ABCs, has now to be integrated into our POS system, and that has somehow increased the hurdle to become a franchise store. We have seen, as we implemented that change, that the new openings were affected by that. As the market now recalibrates and as our expansion team learns to work with that new requirement, we see that we are built to further progress on the expansion. It is also a change that, for us, is extremely important because the franchise that we now see, we don't see it only as a takeoff market for our wholesale. We see it particularly as a foundation to build an integrated and common retailer. Hence, the fact of being connected to those stores and having the POS systems is so important for us.
A short reminder of what the strategy again is about. Most of you have been present on our strategy announcement, so I will not dwell on this one for too long. Just, again, to remind everybody, the entire point of the strategy was to say Eurocash has one backbone and one core that has been, in a certain way, the foundation of this group and particularly of its wholesale business. That is the franchise business. We've developed a lot of other activities, such as our own stores, some of the projects. What we believe has been the most sustainable and successful and also profitable part of Eurocash has always been the franchise. Therefore, the strategy really clearly recognizes franchise to be the pillar on which we want to stand.
The idea is now to discontinue the owned stores, to go full in on the franchise, to bet the bank on franchise, and to say while trying to be and focusing on being the best franchise operator in Poland, we want to invest in those stores, we want to invest in the expansion of those stores, and we want to further integrate with those stores because we see that franchise, on the one hand side, is our most profitable way to operate and to grow. These are our most profitable clients. They buy regularly from us. They buy a wide assortment that it mixes the entire margin, and it is much more profitable from a cost perspective for us to serve them because they buy regularly, and for them, we are by far the number one provider.
We see clearly the profitability advantage of focusing on franchise on the one hand side, but strategically and in the long term, we also see that the franchise stores are much better positioned to stand their ground in the competitive landscape of Poland. We have the discounters on the one-hand side, we have the convenience player, Żabka, on the other. We believe that the proximity supermarket mission is one that is a winner in Poland, and it will further grow. We particularly see that our franchise stores are fulfilling these missions.
That's why we think that further investing in those stores, helping them become more cost-efficient and more modern in the way how they buy, how they advertise, how they build promotions, is the way forward. That's why franchise integration is such an important part of what we are. Integrating around franchise and focusing really on this +15,000 stores out of the 50,000 that we service in our client portfolio allows us also to adapt cost. If we really build our operations, build our head office, build our logistics around this relatively small part of our clients that we call the tier one clients, we'll be able to be much more efficient, better efficient to serve them but also more profitable as a company. That's why one element affects the others.
It is by recognizing that we want to focus only on franchise that we were able to announce this PLN 400 million cost savings that foresees that we will close one-third of our logistical centers, 30% of our head office, and reduce the own store network and some of the cash and carries. Those two elements are quite interdependent, and I'm saying this because I've also read in some of your comments the question about to what extent this cost savings will be eaten up by a decline in sales. I'll come to that more in detail in the next slide.
My message to you is that it is precisely by recognizing that Eurocash can be a sales-wise smaller company but one which is more focused on serving really the clients that are the most sustainable and the most strategically positioned that we are able to perform those savings. We have very much factored in our strategic targets the fact that we will sacrifice sales. Sacrificing sales or reviewing our client portfolio does not mean that we will forfeit growth. We very much recognize that Eurocash, once we have done the transformation that we have announced, we have to be able to show that we are able to maintain the client portfolio that we have, that we are able to maintain the market share that we have, and then further expand it. We will be able to show you that franchise is a growing business.
We grow from the fact that we'll be able to attract new stores to our franchise business by becoming the best franchise organizer and also by giving them the best conditions within the Eurocash network and also helping them attract new clients. We will be further growing by the fact that they will further grow in loyalty. Even though we are, for them, the number one wholesaler, it is still not 100% of their goods that they buy from us. We believe that by focusing on really having the assortment that those stores need, giving them the best service level, giving them the best conditions, we'll be able to further grow their loyalty and therefore grow their sales with us. Also, by investing in the marketing and the promotions and the overall consumer attractiveness of those stores, we believe we'll be able to boost their like-for-like further.
Obviously, as their biggest supply chain provider, the more they grow in like-for-like, the more we believe we will grow with them. That's the growth engines that we want to focus on. We believe they are reasonably well-rooted in the market that, as you have seen, in the proximity supermarkets engine, part of the market is growing. We believe we can also show that this franchise pillar is one that is sustainable and prone to growth. On the other side, where we also see very strong elements that we want to focus on the expansion is locality, fresh, and private label. Locality is what differentiates those stores. It is very important for us that the proximity supermarket consumer value proposition is one where those stores compete by being different, compete by being more local, compete by being better attuned to their communities and the consumers that buy there.
This is something that our franchise partners do very well. That's why I and the board, we are very big believers in the franchise model. It is one that we can further enhance by helping them build relationships with local producers, build a platform around local producers, also help local producers scale within our network. Obviously, all of that is about fresh. Locality and fresh go hand in hand, and it is something that really creates a very strong consumer promise. Obviously, we recognize that fresh is by far the category where we want to grow the strongest, and we are investing now heavily into becoming more of a fresh player, both for our clients, and that our clients become more fresh experts than they already are.
Obviously, private label as one very important element that, on the one hand side, really forms the glue that built around which our franchise concept is built, forms the consumer recognition of those stores as one network that is combined by a single private label, but it also is the possibility for us to obviously enhance consumer propositions today. Our Cedena first brand is really the way of how those stores are able to build their price perception. Cedena is varied religiously and very disciplined in showing and being completely calibrated to discount prices. The stores that have already introduced our Cedena first-price brand, so Delikatesy Centrum and our partner brands of Groszek, Eurosklep, and partially ABC, have very good results by the fact that they are able to show that they have discount prices, and they're able to maintain them.
The last part of our strategy is obviously the digital part, where what we try to show is that we are a retailer that is very asset -light and that is very efficient by the fact that we are operating with franchise partners who bring their stores to the network. What we are about is to connect them, to work with them, and in nowadays, through the POS system, through the apps, is much more efficient than it was before. That is, again, to remind everybody of what our strategy is about, and let me maybe just focus with having that in mind to look back at the 2025 numbers and show them also how we read them. When you look at the overall sales numbers of Eurocash, as we've already said, overall sales decline is by 4.6%, but it is very uneven.
When we try to break down the sales into client segments, what we can see is that we have, on the one hand side, the independent small clients that, in the Eurocash network as a sales segment, have declined by 20%. Our wholesale sales to this client network, to this client segment, has declined by 20%. That is, to a big extent, linked to the fact that we have less clients in this segment, over 5,000 less clients, and that is partially linked to the fact that those clients have closed. As we have already seen, stores numbers in Poland have gone down in the traditional market, and obviously Eurocash, as the biggest player, is affected by those stores closures.
It is also affected by the fact that we have consciously and deliberately reviewed our client portfolio; we have not so much invested in seeking out sales with those clients, focusing much more on our franchise clients. Those franchise clients, when you look at this segment, has actually grown. It has grown by 2.6%, and it has grown in a profitable way because our overall gross margin, counted in złoty, has grown by over PLN 30 million in 2025. This is why we are very much convinced that the franchise business of Eurocash is actually the core on which we want to build and which we believe is the most sustainable one.
When we now speak about the model of the Eurocash strategy, we have assumed that the pillar of the foundation of our sales will be the franchise clients, added with the Delikatesy Centrum franchise, that is not included here. Added with around 50% of our independent clients. 50% is now a number. Obviously, we will calibrate, but this is more or less the clients that we have identified as tier one clients. Out of the independent clients, these are the clients that we consider to be higher in terms of their overall strategic value. They are bigger stores, better consumer positioning, better overall sales, and they have also more business with us.
These are clients with whom we want to continue working because, on the one hand side, they are profitable; on the one hand side, they are much less prone to churn, and we believe that they will also be a very, very good pool of growth for our franchise, because by working with them as independent clients, we will want to transform them into franchise clients through our cooperation with them. When we take this together, only on 2025 numbers, we take the franchise clients, we take the tier one clients, we add the different businesses that we have on top, like the HORECA business that we will maintain and others, we come to a total sales number of PLN 12 billion in wholesale.
When we just take the COGS and the gross margin and the direct logistical cost of those clients, we come to a gross profit of around over PLN 1 billion on what we consider to be our core client base. This gross profit on them represents some 8% of gross profit to sales. Now I hope you can see why we believe that this segment is the one that we want to focus on, because it is stable on the one hand side, and it is also much more profitable than the rest. When we have announced to the market that our target within the strategy is to reach PLN 600 million of EBIT, we have actually positioned ourselves on this core of the PLN 12 billion. We have assumed that the PLN 12 billion will be a stable client base that will be sustainable.
On top of that, obviously, we have applied the growth factors that I've already mentioned, which is increased loyalty, increased store numbers through franchise expansion, and increased like-for-like of those stores. On top of that, obviously, there are companies like ECS. There is the additional uptick of having the lack of the negative contribution of the own stores, and there is the projects coming into breakeven. There is retail media. This is how we got to PLN 600 million.
What is important for me to stress is that we have, when we formulated our sales target, very consciously taken into account that we will lose sales on the independent market as we are going to focus on franchise, as we are also to be much more picky in investing our margin on our clients, and we are going to deliberately choose our clients, being given that we have reduced fixed costs, particularly on the logistical side, on the other side. Therefore, if a lot of the questions that came from the analysts arose about, is sales decline going to eat up your savings? Our answer is no.
We have carefully calibrated that, and we are very confident that when we focus really on what is the most profitable segment of clients, already giving us over PLN 1 billion of gross profit in 2025, we will be further able to grow it, and then we apply on it the reduced head office cost. We are coming up on a completely different profitability level and a completely different EBIT level than what we see today. Somehow a complicated slide, and I am sorry for speaking at length here, but it was important for me to stress this point because I have seen in some of the notes that people were a little bit concerned about the sales performance. I will ask Piotr to walk us further through the numbers.
Thank you very much, Paweł, for bringing our investors with the full and very complex picture of the market and 2025 highlights, as well as our strategy, the five pillars we focus on. Let me now take you through the financial statements, financial numbers, and let us have a deep dive into the numbers. As concerns sales and growth margin, as you all already know, we had a negative sales dynamics in 2025. Our sales dropped from PLN 31.4 billion -PLN 30 billion and PLN 24 million, which is negative dynamics of 4.6%. We state that there were two reasons behind the drop in sales. The first set of reasons were internal, while the other was purely external.
As internal reasons, we identified, obviously, closing down the unprofitable cash-and-carry stores, closing down of unprofitable own stores in Delikatesy Centrum, as well as some 50 franchise stores to whom we delivered as well.
It was about 54 stores. Closing down Duży Ben and discontinuation of one of our entity's operations. It was distribution of alcohols by PDA. Obviously, all these factors had to be taken into account when analyzing the sales drop in 2025. As external factors, we identify a significant change in consumer behavior and challenging market environment. You have already heard about it from other participants in the market, so I think we will elaborate a little more in a later part of the presentation. As concerns growth margin, we managed to increase it by 0.1 percentage points by 10 basis points, in 2025. Increase was supposed to be higher, but what we observed in Q4, I mean a contraction of 34 basis points in the last quarter of the year, made this growth not as impressive as we hoped before.
The increase of gross margin was driven by the deliberate actions we have taken. Those described in details by Paweł, which is purely a shift towards the franchise clients, and our focus on this very segment of our business. As concerns EBITDA and its split, we have provided shareholders and investors with a detailed explanation of what happened to EBITDA and EBITDA margin in respect of recurring EBITDA and restructuring provisions effect. When we compare 2024 with 2025, we observe a stable level of EBITDA margin of 2.9%, and for the drop in recurring EBITDA, we may blame only drop in sales.
When we take a deeper look into the structure of the adjusted EBITDA, you would see that pre-IFRS EBITDA, after booking the restructuring provisions and one-offs, was PLN 140 million, PLN +403 million post-IFRS EBITDA, which in total accounts to PLN 543 million, which is EBITDA post-IFRS reported after adjusting for restructuring provisions and one-offs. I will have a deeper dive into the segments and EBITDA per segment in a second. As Paweł mentioned before, that was quite a good year for working capital and cash conversion cycle. We managed to improve it by two days, which is, I think, quite impressive, taking into account where the company was before. As concerns financial indebtedness, our net debt to EBITDA was at 0.6x as of the end of December 2025, compared to 0.8x last year. That's obviously after the adjustment for restructuring provisions, and it refers to 12 months EBITDA.
Looking at our reported segments and business units, as concerns wholesale, we observed growth in our tobacco and impulse division in Eurocash Serwis, which increased its sales by 1%, from PLN 10.5 billion - PLN 10.629 billion. All the tendencies and all the market challenges we've been discussing so far today, they have had an impact, obviously, on cash-and-carry sales. This division had a significant drop of 12% in sales, from PLN 4.601 billion - PLN 4.051 billion. We also had a drop in sales in the distribution part of the Wholesale business from PLN 7.697 billion - PLN 7.106 billion. On the retail side, the sales decreased by 7%, and it was mainly due the lower number of stores, both owned and franchise. So we dropped from PLN 7.196 billion - PLN 6.690 billion.
As concerns Growth Platforms, very interesting situation with those two entities we deliver comments on for many quarters; I mean Duży Ben and Frisco. Frisco posted a significant increase in sales by 16%, which was only in this very segment, only partly offset by lower sales of Duży Ben this year versus last year. In Duży Ben, we had sale of PLN 471 million, while last year we had PLN 481 million. While at Frisco, we delivered PLN 533 million turnover last year compared with PLN 619 million turnover in 2025. Looking at pre-IFRS EBITDA, that's something that always shareholders and investors are interested in. We provided detailed split what we managed to deliver in 2025.
Well, the group EBITDA pre-IFRS declined from PLN 424 million last year to PLN 389 million in 2025, a drop of PLN 35 million and 8%. In the wholesale business, which is still the key EBITDA contributor, this segment generated PLN 481 million.
It's also declined by PLN 80 million because last year we delivered a solid PLN 561 million EBITDA on the Wholesale segment. Retail declined by PLN 59 million, and it was only PLN 53 million in 2025 of EBITDA. And the key driver was the negative sales dynamics and obviously, the restructuring one-offs. For the Growth Platforms, which are Frisco and Duży Ben, there was a significant decrease of negative contribution from PLN 100 million last year to PLN -50 million in 2025. And the picture of financial results of 2025 would not be full and complete without costs. As all investors know, Eurocash is very strict on cost control. We've been quite successful for a couple of years in significantly reducing the cost base in all key cost categories.
In 2025, those tendencies were continued. The key category for Eurocash Group, which is personal cost, including social security, decreased by 8%, despite of minimal salary growth. It was in line with our cost optimization policy. Partly, this impressive number of PLN 137 million of cost savings was offset by increase by third-party services, PLN 74 million, providing us with the final number of cost savings of PLN 63 million in 2025. Second key important category for cost optimization, materials and energy. The costs were lower by 12%. It brought our company PLN 35 million in savings. A few more words about working capital and cash conversion cycle. What, in fact, happened in 2025, and where exactly those improvements were made. Well, in terms of days receivables outstanding for our receivables turnover, there was no significant change versus last year.
What was the biggest contributor of the improvement was the days inventory outstanding. We managed to improve our inventory management and inventory turnover by three days in total versus last year. While on the payables, we shortened the payables by one day. In total, net effect was two days for cash conversion cycle. Last but not least, in respect of financial performance in 2025, we need to address, as we always do, some comments and remarks related to financial indebtedness and relation of net debt to EBITDA. Reported was 1.77x before IFRS. Reported post-IFRS was 3.46x versus 0.76x last year and 2.44x last year, respectively. As you realize, the significant amount of non-cash One-offs and restructuring provisions were booked in 2025, and we need to address it properly.
Taking the restructuring provisions and one-offs into effect and recalculating, adjusting the 12 months EBITDA, we come up to a conclusion that our net debt to EBITDA was better because we ended up last year with a ratio of 0.6x versus 0.8x in 2024. That was pre-IFRS; while post-IFRS, it was 2.3x versus 2.44x in 2025 versus 2024. The short summary, which is slightly more complex than it used to be in previous quarters because obviously of one-offs and restructuring provisions. I will not go through all the lines. I will try to highlight what is the key to understand what happened in 2025. Well, first of all, as we mentioned before, single-digit decrease of sales, 4.6% lower sales last year versus 2024. Slightly better gross profit margin, 13.3% versus 13.2%. Now coming to EBITDA, EBIT, and net profit.
EBITDA post IFRS, so reported last year in 2024, it was PLN 904 million, while in 2025, reported post IFRS PLN 541.9 million, so a drop in PLN 40 million. We cannot read this number without taking into account the restructuring and one-offs. Two lines below, we need to compare PLN 904 million with PLN 867 million, which means a drop of 4.1%. Very similar, exactly the same EBITDA, IFRS 16 margin in percentage points of 2.9%. Going below, EBIT post-IFRS 16 result in 2024, PLN 299 million, while reported non-adjusted was a loss on the EBIT level of PLN 43.4 million.
Taking into account restructuring provision and one-offs, we land at values of PLN 299 million in 2024 and PLN 280 million in 2025, with very insignificant decrease year-by-year. In respect of the margin, EBIT post-IFRS adjusted for restructuring and one-offs, it was 1% in 2024 and 0.9% in 2025. The same story applies to net profit. Reported net profit positive last year in 2024, PLN 3.8 million. In 2025, PLN -311 million reported, taking into account all the reserves, provisions, and one-offs.
When you adjust the net profit for what happened with our restructuring provisions and one-offs on continued operations, so excluding Inmedio, which is an asset dedicated for sale, we need to compare PLN 3.8 million net profit in 2024 with PLN 12 million loss in 2025. Why this table looks so complex and why so many lines? I hope that investors and shareholders will understand and appreciate that we wanted to provide them with the whole picture and detailed information. What was the real picture of recurring both EBITDA, EBIT, and net profit? As concerns fourth quarter, if you don't mind, Paweł, I would kindly ask you to go through the highlights, and I will go through the details later.
Yes, exactly. I've spoken a lot in the beginning; please allow me to be brief on the fourth quarter. As I already mentioned, the implementation of the strategy that by the fourth quarter has already been announced and started to be executed by us has foreseen a deliberate sacrificing of sales. That is something that we see in 2025, in the fourth quarter. Our wholesale sales have been down by 5%. Retail segment, obviously, also down by 8.5%. That is linked, obviously, to store count going down. We have closed own stores. We have closed Żabka. We are reviewing the entire portfolio. That is also linked to wholesale clients. Recently, we have increased the logistical minimum for clients for our distribution service.
That has obviously affected the distribution sales, partially being offset by those clients going to cash and carry, but part of those clients are also lost. Yes, I feel like I have to make the market aware of the fact that the implementation of our strategy is also partially affecting deliberate sacrificing of sales. I expect this kind of reviewing of the portfolio and sacrificing some sales for the benefit of the profits also going on this year. The gross margin has been slightly decreased by 34 basis points, still at a high level, 13.8% gross margin. We have invested in the margin, obviously, responding also to very high price competitiveness in the market. You have seen some of our competitors, namely, for example, also Dino, investing very heavily in prices. Our stores had to react. We had to react.
That has put up some pressure on our margin, but still we believe that is manageable, and going forward, we also believe this is manageable. I should also mention, still on the sales side, that what has stood out also in the fourth quarter, on top of all the factors that I've mentioned before, which is obviously the beer and the alcohol category, the overall wholesale market, it is deflation. We have seen deflationary pressure, particularly on categories like animal fats, that has been huge drops in the overall price level, creating quite a lot of shifts. We have seen now recently, butter being sold for as little as below PLN one. A little bit also of a promotion craze, but that has obviously also had an impact on retail prices and then also wholesale prices as a effect. Cost optimization well underway in the fourth quarter.
Having said that, still not reflecting the actual amount of cost savings that we have enacted in the fourth quarter already. As I mentioned, in the fourth quarter, we have started to let off a lot of people that have been affected by the strategy, and that has been continued in the first quarter. Obviously, these people have a leave period, and with some of them we also agreed, and we asked them to have a prolonged time where they're with us until they leave, because we also want to make sure we have a controlled process here. We don't see the actual actions that we have taken in the fourth quarter actually being translated in the numbers. We only partially see this in the first quarter. That is going to appear as we go further into 2026.
Accordingly, EBITDA, obviously, lower both on the margin point of view as we see sales decline. Our fixed cost reduction has not been able to pick pace yet. We have started in the fourth quarter already to close logistical centers. By mid-2025, we will have closed all of those that we wanted to close, i.e., five. Obviously, taking down those fixed cost takes time. That's why in the fourth quarter, you do see, from the sales decline, also an impact on EBITDA margin that is going to be offset by the cost-saving measures that we are taking and that are coming into fruition in the course of 2026. Overall, Q4 impacted both by the sales trends that we have seen in the first three quarters of the year, accentuated here by deflation, accentuated somehow by pretty aggressive price moves by our competitors that we had to react to.
Obviously, impacted by the implementation of the cost-saving measures that have had an effect on the company, but whose results we will be only able to present in the quarters going forward. Piotr, back to you.
Thank you. Now let's go through some details related to Q4 only. As Paweł mentioned, our EBITDA margin decreased by half a percentage point to 3.5% from 4% in 2024. The amount of EBITDA we had in 2025 in Q4 was PLN 255 million recurring after adjustment for all the restructuring costs and one-offs, compared to PLN 312 million in 2024. How to read this graph? Well, all the restructuring provisions were booked in Q4 in December. PLN 215 million is a portion of restructuring provision related to non-IFRS items, while PLN 75 million, the orange part, is a portion of the provision related to IFRS 16. PLN 6 million—you see the small number in gray; it's the one-offs that happened in Q4 only. Out of PLN 34 million one-offs in total, PLN 6 million were booked in Q4 only.
As concerns wholesale segment, as we heard before, it was still under pressure from both cash & carry and distribution. Cash & carry segment reported a significant loss of sale from PLN 1,078 million in 2024 in Q4. We went down to PLN 949 million in Q4 2025. While for the distribution segment, distribution business unit of wholesale segment, the drop was also significant. It was 8.8%. It was more than PLN 150 million of difference. What went quite well in last quarter of last year was Eurocash Services, so tobacco and impulse products, with the increase in sale by 0.8% from PLN 2,531 million - PLN 2,550 million. The decline, as Paweł mentioned, was driven by competitive pressure and worse-than-expected performance in core Eurocash categories.
It's worth to mention here, once again, what would be the reported EBITDA in this very important segment, in the wholesale segment. Last year, we reported PLN 232 million of EBITDA. This year, reported one was PLN 96 million, while adjusted was PLN 164 million. Still worse than last year, but after adjustment, you see the impact is not so severe. It's the drop from 4.1x - 3.1x after adjustments. As concerns retail segment, all the information we provided our shareholders with during the last year, in terms of network optimization and number of stores being closed, it had to affect the overall sales performance throughout the year, and so it happened. The overall decrease in the retail segment was 8.5% from PLN 1,823 million in Q4 2024 to PLN 1,668 million in Q4 2025.
Number of stores being closed down in Delikatesy Centrum-owned stores and Delikatesy Centrum franchise exceeded 110 over the year; it has a very severe impact on sale performance. As concerns EBITDA in this very segment, in this very quarter, we observe very significant effect of booking the restructuring provisions because almost half of this provision is directly related to store network optimization and closures of owned stores belonging to Delikatesy Centrum company to this network. Reported segment EBITDA was negative, was PLN 103 million loss on the EBITDA level, while adjusted should be PLN 93 million. A few words from us on like-for-like sales in Delikatesy Centrum. That's the franchise part of the business.
Like-for-like sales declined in the whole financial year 2025 by 2.6%, while in the last quarter of the year, in Q4 2025, like-for-like sales decrease was 2.8%. We blame weaker traffic as a key contributor to lower like-for-like sales. Now, just for final clarification in terms of fourth quarter pre-IFRS sales and EBITDA per segments, how we performed segment by segment. The drop in sale was 5.5%, and the biggest contributor was in value in nominal terms, wholesale, with the drop of PLN 279 million versus last year. As concerns EBITDA, reported EBITDA pre-IFRS was in 2024, PLN 190 million, while reported for last quarter 2025 was PLN -81 million. The biggest contributor of the drops were both wholesale and retail, PLN 125 million attributed to wholesale and PLN 159 million attributed to retail.
As concerns adjusted EBITDA, adjusted for restructuring provision and one-offs, we need to compare PLN 190 million reported in Q4 2024 with PLN 140 million reported in Q4 2025, which is a 26% drop. If you don't mind, Paweł, I will again kindly ask you to walk us through performance of Duży Ben and Frisco.
Yes, absolutely. Thank you very much. Maybe if you allow me, I would just very briefly do something unusual and just skip back to one slide that we had before that I just wanted to highlight again. As you all remember, we have this segment called projects, and still two years ago, it was costing us PLN 100 million in negative EBIT. 2025, it was already reduced by half, and the negative contribution was PLN -50. Obviously, our goal now is to get this up to zero. There, I think that this is in this slide that you have to see everything that is going on in this segment.
On the one hand side, we have obviously Frisco that is growing very nicely and our way to think about Frisco is that it is really a business that has built its infrastructure, has built everything that it needs in terms of presence in the Polish market, the automated warehouse and warehouse, and now all it needs is the scale to dilute fixed costs and get to the profitability. With every new customer that they acquire, they become more profitable. We see this, by the pace of their growth right now, as something that is very linearly coming to fruition. We believe that's going to happen this year, just based on pure mechanics of how their sales is performing and how fixed costs are being diluted.
When it comes down to Duży Ben, obviously, it needs to be said that I already mentioned the performance of the beer and alcohol category and how it has affected the entire market, not only the wholesale relevant market, but also the entire market, as consumption has dropped very strongly in sales, but particularly in liters. There was probably no other format being affected by it stronger than Duży Ben that is all about alcohol, so all about beer and alcohol. It has affected both transactions and the profitability of those stores. Hence, right now the focus of the new management of Duży Ben is much more also a review of the portfolio of Duży Ben to make sure that we get to what is now our core target for Duży Ben, which is full profitability.
Therefore, they have, on the one hand side, reviewed the positioning of Duży Ben as a, I would say, convenience alcohol store. Not only a pure alcohol store, but really making sure that we now drive the positioning of Duży Ben as a category killer for what is still a very relevant category in Poland, amounting to more than PLN 50 million of sales, PLN 50 billion of sales last year. But with a new positioning, then reviewing the entire store presence, focusing on the stores that we really believe we will be able to get into full breakeven within one year. Then obviously, the biggest shift that is going on right now in Duży Ben is a shift from a business model, from an agent business model to a franchise business model.
It is going to be, from our point of view, on the one hand side, very in tune with our strategy because, as you have learned by now, we are all about franchise now. Duży Ben will become one of our franchise banners, and that will allow us, on the one hand side, to work much more efficiently on the existing 400 stores that we currently have. But on the other hand, it will allow us to build the foundation for making Duży Ben a concept that we can scale also to the smaller traditional stores that you have seen are under pressure currently. They are also under pressure by players like Żabka, who are expanding aggressively into the smaller cities and into the countryside. We believe that those stores need a concept to fight back.
Duży Ben as a convenience player in a very relevant category, particularly in those regions, we believe is an answer. We think that in order to scale it and to make it something that we can actually offer to our franchisees as something that they can enact very quickly and we can scale quicker, will function better as a franchise concept rather than an agent concept. That is why what the Duży Ben management is currently focused on is to convert it into a franchise model, which obviously takes time because every time we are changing the license from an agent to a franchisee, it takes some time. We have to close the store for a couple of days, depending on how quickly we get new licenses to sell alcohol.
That is something that is affecting sales, but we believe that once we have gone through that shift, Duży Ben will be better positioned as a consumer proposition, better efficiently functioning as a franchise concept, and then also being able to scale quicker and faster by not only focusing on opening new locations in an organic way, but then also being able to convert the many thousands of small stores that we are working together, not only ABC, but independent stores, of which there are tens of thousands in Poland. Being able to bring this to the market. Frisco, on the other side, as I already mentioned, having a strong growth of 16% in 2025, so way outperforming the Polish FMCG market, really taking market share, and particularly growing by converting clients from offline purchases to online purchases, and still way underway.
Fourth quarter here, with a softer showing compared to the full year. I would say, partially affected also by what I mentioned before, deflation, obviously, Frisco. Many people don't associate it with it, but it's a lot about fresh, and obviously fresh categories have seen a lot of price deflation also on their price side. Here is that affecting; we can see that, also in the first quarter, Frisco is coming back to its more regular CAGR. At that pace, we very much expect Frisco to, again, very mechanically go to break even and then going from there beyond. Back to you, Piotr.
Thank you, Paweł. I will focus now on just four key figures related to last quarter results and performance. Negative change in sales, 5.5%, and three adjusted numbers. Adjusted EBITDA in Q4, PLN 255 million versus PLN 312 million in 2024, so the difference of 18%. Adjusted EBIT of PLN 113 million versus PLN 157 million in 2024, so change of 28%, negative change. Last but not least, adjusted net profit, PLN 35 million versus PLN 76 million in Q4 2024. As we both mentioned, very challenging quarter. A lot of tough decisions, with the toughest one being the creation of the restructuring provisions, which laid the foundation for the key cost savings pillars of our strategy.
We haven't spoken too much in detail about all four pillars of our cost-saving strategy because in no more than 11 days, we will have the pleasure to talk with our investors, with shareholders again. As concerns the quick review and delivering comments on financial results and financial statements, from my side, is all.
Okay. Thank you for today.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll provide 1 Q results on May 11th. Thank you very much. See you on May 11th.
Thank you.