Good afternoon. Monika Wszeborowska. Let me welcome you to day two of the results presentation of the LPP Group. We apologize for the slight delay we all suffered. Unfortunately, some technical glitches occurred that we couldn't have predicted. Hopefully, everything will go right. Marcin Bójko, CFO, is going to run the meeting today together with Magdalena Kopaczewska, Investor Relations Director. Ladies and gentlemen, our today's meeting is going to start with a summary of 2Q26 and for the first half of the year. We would like to proceed to referring the results of operational changes that we introduced into the Sinsay brand, and that we announced three months ago during the previous result presentation that took place in June. These are the modifications that we introduced to increase the sales potential of the brand.
The first results are already visible, and this is what we would also like to share with you today. We will also refer to our current financial targets for the current year, and the entire meeting is going to be completed with a Q&A session. You have a chat box window to use, and this is something that will be available to you throughout the meeting. Do feel encouraged to ask your questions. We will, of course, be at your disposal via media@lpp.com and also the contact to Investor Relations, lpp.investor.relations@lpp.com.
So much from me, ladies and gentlemen. Let us proceed to the summary of the results for the second quarter. Thank you.
Good afternoon. Without further ado, let us go straight to discussing the results. The summary of the second quarter. In the second quarter, we opened 230 new stores. In the first half, 351 openings of all the stores and all the brands, including 314 in the Sinsay brand. We are following the revised plan that we announced when we met last time, which means that by the end of the first half, we had over 4,000 stores in the entire group, including nearly 2,700 in the Sinsay brand. We are acting to our plan. Quite certain that by the end of the year, we will have over 3,000 stores in our youngest brand, that is Sinsay. The development of offline stores, these are not the only initiatives that we've been implementing. Officially at the beginning of September, we launched our marketplace also in the Sinsay brand.
Now, the platform has been operational in Poland only, but it is still at the very early stage. We'll keep developing it. At this early stage, what matters to us most is for this development to be quality development, well thought over for the products that we offer, enjoy the result of synergy so that they can contribute to what we've been already offering within the Sinsay brand, and this is how we are going to operate in the months to come. The first results show that the further we look into the future, the greater the platform is going to be. Over PLN 0.5 billion spent on investments in the second quarter. Most of it is CapEx investment expenditure concerning the openings of new locations. But as much as in 2025, most of our investments go for logistics.
In the second quarter, PLN 150 million, and an important piece of operation-related information. At the end of last year, we launched a fulfillment center in Romania, in July, a distribution center in Romania. That is our second location, which means that we are fully operational in terms of assets in Romania after the fire that we suffered, because these two locations replaced what we lost in the fire. We have those assets in Romania. We start improving our operations, shifting certain operations from Poland to Romania. First deliveries go to Constanța, so we are shortening the transportation route. It goes straight to Romania, to the newly opened DC, and the target markets already get the deliveries. Lead times are also improved. We have shortened the lead time quite considerably, which is good news. We are operationally very efficient .
Our business efficiency is also good news, but what is even better news is the result in the second quarter, PLN 1.7 billion in EBITDA, PLN 1.1 billion on operating profit, and nearly PLN 800 million of net profit. From 40% to 50% of growth at any level, so a very good quarter. Of course, what we were supported by was macroeconomic situation, strong złoty. But these conditions were there, but we needed to know how to make use of them. We know how to manage our prices and margins across all the brands. Therefore, we enjoy such great results that we can boast. This is the fifth quarter in the row with an improvement of profitability. A bit more detail on how we made it happen, and we will start with sales.
Traditionally, second quarter, 18% of growth on revenues, nearly 19% in the first brand, the stronger ones, so the offline stores, and over 16% of increase in online sales, and particularly online sales following the hard first quarter marked by poor weather, the coldest April in history, just to remind you. Rebounds very nicely from +1% in the first quarter to +16% in the second. That is a very sound level that we would like to stick to. As for the regions, the online sales grew everywhere at a more or less similar good pace in terms of offline stores, LFL also from quarter to quarter. So compared to the first difficult quarter, rebounced and was positive everywhere. Just one remark here, Southern Europe also noticed improvement, but in the first quarter that was -1.5%, now it is -4.5%.
We can see that this negative dynamics is the only one in the region, sustained. Romania keeps improving, but anyhow, what we are focusing on is to keep on operating and be the best in the hard market conditions. We are very active about our offer and about our logistics. Certainly, that will bring results. Now, looking at like-for-likes as such, another piece of good news following two quarters and negative LFL result, we have +1.8% at the group level, so a return to positive dynamics. In terms of brands, Sinsay, -1.2%.
I believe that it is for the first time that we can really say that -1.2% is not comparable with -1.67% because, well, we did face certain challenges concerning our offer, but now we started the sales earlier on, making space for the autumn offer, equipped with the knowledge that we are rich in now knowing what August and September sales might look like. -1.2% fits into our expectations. As much as we worked in this quarter with the products, we know that it is important to keep the margin strong. Everything now is heading in the right direction following the sales period. The remaining brands, five and four-- and Reserved, our second-biggest brand, eight quarters in a row with very good positive like-for-like dynamics.
What is also a source of our satisfaction is that our smaller brands, House and Cropp, for four quarters now have noted positive dynamics concerning like-for-likes, and Cropp in the last quarter has even reached really high, single-digit or low double-digit results, so really nice. Another component that keeps shaping our result is gross margin. Gross profit margin, as I mentioned, 3.7 percentage point over the previous year, sustained trend from the first quarter. That was 4.5 point and a strong złoty. We can see it in a common 3.6 versus 4 at this time of the year. Macro is not the entire result.
Around 0.5 point of this effect was something that resulted from our efficiency, our price management, particularly in the sales season. As far as macro is something that we cannot control, the entire market is doomed to rely on exchange rates. We do have a 100% influence on the effective management of SG&A costs. The work we carried out last year now gives results. We have lean bases, and we can again boast the drop of costs per square meter as well as versus profit. Now in revenues, the greatest components is this logistical CapEx that I mentioned at the beginning. It performs really well in terms of OpEx, so that means that we keep increasing our efficiency and quality of our operations. Those return periods really are now reduced to the window of a few months. We can see that reflected in OpEx.
The other big leverage is the increasing share of the Sinsay brand. This concept, pretty naturally in terms of stores, and the costs of stores constitute the greatest group in terms of our P&L, is lower. The more Sinsay stores we have, the lower the costs per square meter are. Also it is worthwhile taking a look on something that Monika mentioned right at the beginning. We have a number of initiatives. We planned them in June. We will show you the status, but looking at performance marketing, some buying advertisements online, that constitutes a high group of costs. With our good profits and the lean cost bases, we now see that the moment has come to spend a bit more on performance marketing. The July changes in the European Union concerning subsidies for Asian platforms, EUR 3 per product line.
At the beginning of July, we did not see the results, and this is what we expected. In May last year, when similar regulation was passed in the U.S., the full rotation also took a while. Starting from August, we have started noticing the changes in our e-com dynamics. That is the good moment to increase expenditure on performance marketing. In Sinsay, a percentage points in OpEx versus revenue is greater, is around about a 0.5 percentage point across the entire group. We are investing from this base into the costs, but in the coming period, certainly, we can see the positive results in traffic, customers traffic sales, and this is something that will surely bring positive results in the coming quarters. When we put all these elements together, what we get is what you see, so very dynamic and strong growth in profit and profitability.
After the first half a year, over PLN 3 billion EBITDA, over PLN 1.8 billion in EBIT and PLN 1.2 billion in terms of net profit. Record levels, a huge increase in profitability, a really strong foundation built after the first half of the year. Now pretty comfortably in terms of financial situation, we are entering the autumn and winter season, and we can focus on business initiatives and delivering good collections and continuous improvement of our efficiency. Out of the record profit, we finance investments in terms of CapEx after the first half is over PLN 1 billion . As mentioned, over a half of this billion is the stores over the first six months and over PLN 440 million is logistics.
Versus the entire year, the CapEx spent on the stores will of course result from the number of openings. In terms of logistics, a similar amount, maybe somewhat less, is going to be spent over the year. Guidance for this year is PLN 2.5 billion CapEx for 2026. This is something that we stick to. As for the balance and the stock level and the balance, PLN 1,633/sq m . We are entering now the autumn-winter season. We had to buy more products. Mid-September, we will have reached this level of stocks. Starting from the end of September, October, this level will gradually return to the benchmark. PLN 1,500, PLN 1,600, that is the stock level per square meter that we would like to work with in the coming periods.
We also make sure that in the second quarter we have an improvement, 157 days against 176 days last year. The situation in all the brands looks very comfortably in terms of this inventory turnover. Good profit and good inventory management are also good financial and cash flow results in terms of liquidity improvement year-over-year, net debt, EBITDA on leverage, on level one. Improvement year-over-year as well. Very comfortable level and a graph that is not very pleasing looking at our results is the improving operational workflow. We spend a lot on CapEx, more than PLN 3 billion last year and PLN 2.5 billion this year. This year we will finish the record period for the extent of CapEx, the large investment program.
We also pay dividend. We also are at the maximum level of the payment of dividend. We are also able to operate a very stable financial foundations. The cash flow is improving the closer we get to the end of the year. In 2027, we expect a permanent increase of cash and we will be comfortable with financing the cash six months. Good results, comfortable situation in terms of cash flow and working capital and a very good liquidity situation that is improving as well. That was about the last 6 months, but we are also in the middle of the third quarter. We will also, as always, look at what we see in the data. At the beginning of the autumn-winter is back-to-school season.
I will ask Magda to discuss the details of that specific period in our case.
Few pieces of information that was important about the back-to-school period. First of all, despite the high base last year, this year we are very happy with the back-to-school season. It was a very strong season. What we could see was that it was stronger online, practically in all the brands online. We also prepared a couple of numbers for you.
It is worth mentioning here that it is a period analyzed since 17 August is the time when parents and children start thinking about school, till 6 September is the time when people still do back-to-school shopping. We divided the data into two groups. The first group is, purchase in Reserved and Re Kids brand and Sinsay brand. There you can see that in the omnichannel, there was a 23% growth year-over-year. In offline, +19%, and online, as I mentioned, as much as 30% growth year-over-year. The second group that we analyzed, against the back-to-school period, were the brands dedicated to teenagers, Cropp and House. There we observed in omnichannel, the growth was 20% year-over-year. In offline, 18% year-over-year, and online, 42%.
Short notes, to finish this off with, in Sinsay, we noted in this period there was more interest in products in a higher price point level. Whereas in the Cropp and House brands, we noticed that teenagers were more interested in viral products. This is a very brief overview of the back-to-school season.
Thank you. This is what we observed in the last couple of weeks in the back-to-school period. What happened over the last couple of weeks and months, as Monika mentioned, in June, we presented to you our initiatives focused on increasing the dynamics of sales in the Sinsay brand. We split it into five areas. Some of the things I already discussed, I will not go through all of them, but I would like to comment the areas that we have not touched upon yet. In terms of collection, we can see that our back to fashion and smart value approach works at the beginning of the autumn.
Our focus on the middle price points, but with a better fashion, works. We see better likes and better sales parameters. It was a move towards the right direction. In terms of buyer experience, maybe these initiatives are not so media or PR-focused, and they are not on the opening pages of the magazines, but it is PR work and it brings profit in shops. Strengthening the customer service works. We are also replacing the furniture in the stores. We are showing the collections, displaying furniture in a better way. The initial results show that this works as well. We will be doing that constantly. Now more than 500 stores have self-service checkouts.
On Monday, I did shopping in Reserved myself here in Gdańsk. Apart from me, four more customers used the self-service checkouts and a colleague from our customer service team had a time to look to the sales part of the store. It shows that the customer service can focus on better display of the collection. We discussed performance marketing already. In home, we continue working in expanding the brand. We eliminate the slowest-rotating products with the lowest margin in shops. We do mini remodeling. We reduce home area. We put different furniture there. We are increasing the garment zone. After the mini remodeling, the results of such stores versus the comparable group are very positive. In home, in terms of numbers, the positive information is that the only department in the Sinsay brand in every month of the SS26 period, we saw positive likes.
Maybe the base was not too demanding, but it is a good forecast for the future. We also move in the right direction here in terms of logistics. Our optimization of the network and our assets in the optimum layout and adjusting operations and flow of the products to them. This is happening the closer we get to the end of the year. We will be getting closer to the optimum. With time, we have to make customers used to the fact that we have good products, or our logistics is improving, and the customers will have to get reused to the fact that they will not have to wait for the product as long as they had to immediately after the fire in late 2025.
In terms of numbers, last month, the first half, sorry, the entire August and the first half of September, 20% increase in omnichannel. In online, similar dynamics and positive LFL of 4%. My note is that this trend is very positive and it is improving the first half of August. We saw less summer in our offering. We work more on the margin, so the likes for likes were slightly below the numbers in the table. The second half of August and the first part was better, and the first part of September was the strongest. We are happy about that. In the window of 1.5 month , it looks quite good. We also saw a good margin, the gross margin above last year. In terms of our opening plans for the second half, they remain unchanged.
They stay within the goal that we planned in June. The payment of the dividend is very comfortable situation. We share our profits with them and by the end of October, we will pay the second tranche of PLN 500 per share. If I remember correctly, the payout date is 9th of October, so you still have time to buy shares, which we encourage you to do. Summing up the last six months, the last 1.5 month , and our initiatives looking at the entire year, our guidance for this year remains mostly unchanged. The only change in plus is the gross margin.
We can see after the results of the second quarter and what we are observing now by mid-September enables us to increase gross margin estimation from 56% to 56.5%-57%. It cascades down into higher EBITDA margin and net profit margin. The remaining positions remain largely unchanged. The net debt and EBITDA, we expect to improve slightly against the latest estimations.
We would like to end with this positive note. Now we move to Q&As.
What are the total group likes for the first half of 2026?
Let me open the data. Let me display the right slide. The first half of 2026, - 0.3.
Next question, the impact of foreign exchange rate, dollar versus dollar. Recently, we can see a reversing trend where the Polish złoty is losing against the dollar. How do you prepare yourself for this situation? If the dollar costs circa PLN 4 , will it significantly affect the future margin of the company?
Yes, this is a very good question. I think we saw it on the slide where the margin from 3.7 in the second quarter, it was even shown in the commentary. Right now, as I said, 26 is 3.60. Last time, the exchange rate was PLN 4 . So from the 3.7 point, the stronger Polish złoty with the same purchase prices is circa 3 percentage points. So this is the impact. What we see now is 3.71-3.75. So the impact, if it materializes next year, would be in mid-year.
What is the exact cost of the share program on the first and second quarter? Is it presented in the functional layout? What cost do you expect for the second half year of 2026 and for 2027?
The costs are assumed as reserve, mostly. Most of it is booked in July to the second quarter, but I will not mention the exact amounts. The program is constructed in the same way in terms of indicators and bonus KPIs for our teams. Now, the option is to replace that into the share. In terms of cost or calculation or approach, nothing has changed. Still the most important are the business goals, and there is a share program for the achievement of business goals. With these results, of course, these amounts are significant and positive, but by the end of the end, they motivate our employees to work hard, and we share the success of LPP also with them.
Next question is about insurance or damages. How much damages did you actually receive in the second quarter and in the first half year? What amount is still to be recovered, and what additional operational costs of the fire still charge the second quarter? Would you expect them to expire entirely? What is the value of the receivables by the end of July in trade receivables?
This is a very specific question. We have recovered more than PLN 250 million from insurance damages. The additional cost for the second quarter, they are minimum. As I mentioned, we are close to the optimum network, and the second quarter, it is for maximum PLN 5 million . But for now, it has expired by now. In P&L, profit and loss, we have below PLN 350 million posted to the P&L account, so the liquidation process is ongoing. Now we have recovered more than PLN 250 million. We are still talking to the consortium and to the insurer. So once we close this case, we will let you know.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the 4% of the group since August for the brand broken down into brands? Have you confirmed a return to the positive dynamics?
Yes. With every two weeks, it was improving. Mid-August, it was still negative. The second half of August, it was 0.5, and in the first half of September, it is a strong one-digit number positive. We are happy that the relation of the dynamics of Sinsay to Reserved is very close in this period. We are happy about that because in previous quarters, the gap was higher, but right now the dynamic is close to the level. We are in the middle of the quarter, the beginning of autumn, but the result is very promising.
The question concerns gross profit margin. Gross profit margin was 57.7% in the second quarter, and in the third quarter, it is still higher versus last year. Can you tell us how much of this improvement results from FX sourcing and freight, and how much from better management of sales, bargains, and prices? How come it dropped to 56% that you envisage for 2027?
A good question. I guess more from the perspective of 2027. Indeed. When discussing the results, I focus on 2026, but I am happy that this question was asked. Starting from the beginning, the first part of the question. As mentioned, out of 3.7 percentage point of improvement year-on-year, 0.5 percentage point is our efficiency and around 0.2 is the remaining impact, including logistics. The rest is stronger złoty with similar sourcing costs.
How do we perceive it?
You can see that macro is certainly helpful here in the second half of the current year. As we already see in September, the margin is over that from last year. That shows our efficiency, particularly in smaller brands, like Reserved, but also in Sinsay. The FX impact is actually balancing now. Last year, we bought collection for PLN 3.7, and now we have reached a similar level, so we can see that things are leveling out here. The second part of the question, 2027, quite naturally, I believe that was the second question in the Q&A session. In our plans, we envisage the weakening of złoty as we observe in the market, so, say, 1.5 percentage point. This is the impact of the weaker złoty.
Another percentage point, 2.5 percentage point, is higher purchase prices. What happens in the oil market, I guess, is closely observed by everybody. Quite a leap in spring, then a release, now returned to over $100/bbl . That translates into the purchasing pressure on the part of Asian suppliers. Polyester is quite a significant share. We have quite a share of this material in our production, which of course also translates into this pressure. We model that in our margin as well, but we are going to compensate for that in increasing prices in [RCMH] premium brands and partly with our efficiency. When we look at 2025 or 2026.
There were periods, particularly the first half of this year when this collection of Sinsay, as reflected by likes, actually lagged behind the market, so we had to work with a lower margin. When we add up our efficiency, that is where the result for the coming year comes. It looks worse against 2026, but when you actually go back to 2025, 2024, or 2023, then this level in the long run, we consider to be repeatable, repetitive, so 50+, and we find it comfortable.
The current situation in the Red Sea may potentially impact the timeliness of the deliveries. What percentage of products go via the Red Sea and what percentage goes around Africa?
Prior to the conference with our logistics team, we verified the status. We cannot see any delays, so that is the good news. Even after all the havoc and the outbreak of war in Iran, we never had any issues with delivering on time. We learned it of the first crisis on the sea, so we are planning everything well in advance, so lead times are really good. As part of the world, as the return to the Suez Canal goes, most of our ship owners actually go around Africa, if not all of them. There are single voices that claim that they would wish to return to Suez. That would, of course, reduce the time needed to cover the distance, but this is just the first voices.
The ship owners keep exploring that potential, and I guess mid-November, we are going to sit and discuss the freight rates for next year. Everything will become clear then.
The media talk about the shortages of gas in Bangladesh and India. The shortages do impact the operations of factories. Can that impact our production?
We do not have such information reaching us. As of now, we have the orders for the first half of next year. We have placed the orders. There is no worrying information. The only thing is awaiting the decisions on the higher prices that we actually did take into account in our guidance for next year.
The question concerns-- Sinsay. Can you give us the specificity as per country concerning Sinsay like-for-likes?
Yes. We will give you the precise data in a moment. As for the entire SS26 season, apologies, that was the group level. So at the level of Sinsay, -3.8 the first half of 2026. Actually, all the regions were underwater. The only positive exception was Europe. This was Eastern Europe, Kazakhstan, Ukraine. So after the weaker previous year, we saw them rebouncing this year. Southern Europe with Romania, that constitutes the greatest share there, the like was below the average, -3.8.
The other part of the question is whether the negative like in Sinsay results from the growing competition, collection, or any other factors, and what does the situation look like in terms for Sinsay like in the third quarter. As for the reasons, I guess there are multiple factors. We tried to address them in our initiatives that we outlined to you and the status of which we reported to you earlier today. The collection somewhat. We had some other price points and expectations from the customers, maybe performance. We are operating in the omnichannel. This is the source of our strength, so maybe we should focus on profitability more than on consumer traffic. These are communicating vessels, so this is something that, again, worked to our favor. There are many factors here, the weather.
Well, we keep developing at a very fast pace, so there is this natural level of cannibalization setting in that would account for up to 2 percentage points. That is something, again, that reduces our like-for-like, so we can talk of a number of components here. But anyhow, our initiatives do work. By the end of the year, the logistics will keep on heating up. We will keep on optimizing our order-placing process, display of collections in the stores, and our work on the home collection. In the third quarter, after the 1.5 month , so half of the quarter, we can see that the like is behaving well. It is above the average level expected. In August, we worked more with the margin. We had more of autumn than summer, so the first half of August was lost.
Ever since, the likes have really grown higher. I would not like to give you a very precise level because still we have the other half of Q3 ahead. But as I said, in September, we are reaching those high single-digit levels. There are even days where the like is at the level of 10% or 12%.
Another question concerns competition. Does the company regard it as a competition, and is the off-price concept of any threat to the group?
We perceive it as a natural segment, a pretty different segment, something that was mentioned right at the beginning when the entire board talked to you in Warsaw. This market is a different segment. I believe there is a place for them to grow and for us to grow, including Sinsay or other brands of ours like Reserved. House has been showing it for a year that you can actually grow very fast. And for two quarters also, Cropp has been showing that you can actually produce very good dynamics following our model.
You have increased guidance for 2026, but at the same time, you, well, kept the one you had for 2027. Is this conservative approach related to the period being distant and to there being a lot of uncertainty, or simply you have exhausted certain improvements?
Well, of course, there is a lot of efficiency. That is why in our guidance, in this part, we do wish to leave certain space in order to stay on the safe side. But as mentioned, this macro effect that particularly still in the third quarter is observable as persisting, that is the main reason for the guidance to be increased. We have a higher macro. Earlier on, we thought about 55%, 56% at a certain macro level. Now it increased, but taking the entire macro away and given our efficiency, we still reach the same levels. We will keep emphasizing that in the long run, 55%, 56% is the safe and repetitive result. And this is something that, well, as this year has proven, is a very good year that we know how to use in terms of profit margin.
In the long run, what is our main goal behind our initiatives is to grow on sales to offer repeated positive LFLs at a more balanced margin.
How about the demand in Ukraine and the Baltic States? And the question is whether in Romania you can see a lower level of competition. Is the demand in Romania stabilizing?
It is stabilizing, starting from the last part of the question, the retail consumption there is still much different from the historical data, but further forecasts say that the closer to the end of the year or the half of the next year, we are to expect a rebound. We hope that the likes will follow. This is what would historically happen. The market is equally challenging to everybody. We simply need to be the best amidst everybody else in these conditions, and this is what we are trying to deliver. As for the other countries, well, those are actually very good questions. When you look at the Sinsay brand, I am looking at likes, the Baltics and the Eastern Europe, be it the second quarter or now, these are the markets with very strong likes at a very good level.
Ukraine, it is the second-biggest market now at capital g roup. Following a very good year, 2024, it was nicely stabilized, and we know that it was around 1.5 percentage points that was taken away by Ukraine in the entire Sinsay brand. Now, there is a reversal of the situation. There is certain standardization in terms of numbers, so the likes are, on average, a single-digit strong kind of likes. Performance marketing-related question.
Has the cost of performance marketing changed when the tariffs were introduced and the pressure from Chinese players has decreased?
Cost-wise, per click, there is a slight positive effect, but I guess the entire market is benefiting from it because we can see, as mentioned, that the regulations have been in force since July. We see that Sinsay, as reflected in browsers, we of course looked at the entire market, but we saw that Sinsay has been doing pretty well and the cost of performance can be accelerated. We can increase expenditure, which we treat as investing into winning a new customer, keeping our customer with us. We know that any customer you attract, of course, has their expiry date, so to speak, but it is an investment for, let us say, three years to come. We are focusing now to improve the conversion.
The question about turnover, what is a difference in the turnover of products across Reserved and Sinsay?
These turnovers are pretty similar in Sinsay, owing to the volume and lower price point, it is, well, two weeks faster, I would say.
The question concerns the category of home.
We already mentioned the home category, but the question is what categories in general in the home collection are the strongest and which are the weakest, and what are the sales of the home collection at the moment? The home collection was the only department in Sinsay that in every month of the first quarter of this year noted positive like-for-likes.
I do not want to tell you which product groups are the best or the worst and on which we focus, because this is some kind of market information. I think that the information that I share with you is that we focus on optimizing the extension of the brand. We reduce the extension of the brand, and we increase the depth of the brand, so we will increase the choice in the best products.
When can we expect the first results of the Sinsay marketplace that you recently launched? Will there be any data in the report for the third quarter?
We are thinking how to report that, but the scale, even according to reporting requirements, is still negligible in the GMV scale. It is just hundreds, thousands of Polish złoty in the month scale rather than millions or billions. It is a very early stage. We focus on quality growth. We want to select categories wisely so that they fall into Sinsay already offers. We can see that it already works. Quite many customers get to us through marketplace. Even if they do not buy anything at marketplace, quite a large percentage buys things from Sinsay. We can see the synergic movement as one of our marketplace assumptions is already working. But the scale is still limited.
Let this concept grow, let the platform grow. What the ambition is, we shared PLN 40 million-PLN 50 million EBITDA for next year as our goal. PLN 50 million would be above our expectations. PLN 40 million would be very good, but whether that would be PLN 25 million or PLN 30 million, it still would mean that we are going according to plan.
Could you make a note about the situation in Bangladesh and diversification of production markets?
To sum up the situation in Bangladesh, once again. The situation in Bangladesh is the end of the transition period. In January 2025, the transition period ended, and since then, the company that bought the Russian part of the LPP business worked for their own account. LPP paid its own invoices, but I think that we all remember it was a very hard decision, but a necessary one to make. We had to write off more than PLN 800 million by the end of last year. When selling the company, we wrote off PLN 300 million. We lost PLN 1.1 billion in this direction, from unrecovered debts. The similar situation is for most suppliers in Bangladesh.
The reasons are unknown. Everything was communicated. There were attempts to allocate the debts to LPP locally. There were no reasons to do that, but on the local market in Bangladesh, there was quite a lot of media mess about that, and our employees had some unpleasant bullying from the authorities, and we cannot let anything bad happen to our employees. They are the most important, especially that everything was clear. So that was the reason why you made that decision to stop orders for two weeks. In that period, many communication channels opened.
We explained a lot of questions with the local authorities. We issued a shared statement with the biggest organization in the garment sector, and our positive narration made its way and that we have big orders in Bangladesh. We grew with Bangladesh over the last couple of years, and we want to continue doing that, and everything returned to normal. Our order level this year will be slightly higher than last year. We think that this situation has been solved. We are still in contact with Bangladesh. About diversification, naturally, the situation forced us to more actively look for diversification of sources. This will continue to be local markets around Asia. But we enter new markets in Central Asia. I will not mention which, but we see some positive options there. We are exploring the possibilities there to operationalize and to make the offers more in-depth and specific.
I think we have a very broad group of suppliers. We will be keeping you updated, but the situation is addressed, so we can focus on designing in 2027 and deliveries of good collections.
Another question is about Sinsay. What return on investment comes from the open store of Sinsay, and what is the policy for closing unprofitable stores, and how much time do you give them?
As we mentioned repeatedly or communicated repeatedly, we show the paybacks that we earn on this concept. At the moment, it is about 17 months. We target payback period below 24% and margin EBITDA of at least 25%. These are the border conditions, but we have some safety margin, and we give ourselves a bigger buffer. As to closing, whatever is unprofitable in the flows is currently analyzed and is cut off at the first possible opportunity. When the first lease period expires, we do not extend the lease period. We will be optimizing it on a current basis, and we are analyzing subsequent years for Sinsay.
In June, when showing results for the first quarters, we showed expectations for the prospects beyond 2027. We looked at that, and for now, the quality of the Sinsay brand is good enough, and the results are good enough, and we took care of the quality of the openings. So maybe painful but necessary, and by the end of the day, the profitable cut-offs and reductions of the opening plans translate into fewer closings. Our leasing team looks at the results on an ongoing basis, and when a store is permanently unprofitable, we close it.
Allegro opened an office in China. Are you planning to do that? If so, what is the reasoning behind that?
We have a big office in China for many years and a big office in Bangladesh. These are our two main markets, in terms of supplies, where we are very active. For the online supplies, we are only optimizing these activities. We want to optimize the value for the customers from there, but the teams that are there constantly monitor and audit the factories, so the cooperation must be on an adequate level and according to our standards.
No custom duties from India from the beginning of 2027. Have you calculated the impact on margin? Have you already moved production to India?
We will be calculating that and communicating it to you. We already have the first margins calculated for the first half of 2027. It is also included in the guidance. So for now, the answer is yes, but we will see how the situation develops.
It was the last question from our today's Q&A session. Thank you very much for your time, for your involvement into the Q&A session. We hope that we answered all the questions that you had. At the same time, we would like to note the date of 3rd of December . So save 3rd December . We will have another conference summarizing the third quarter. So please save this date and join us on 3rd of December . Once again, thank you for today and see you in December.