...Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to welcome you. Based on yesterday's releases, we'd like to tell you what's happening in the organization, what are the reasons for the softer performance, what's happening in the organization, how we intend to move on as we function, and I'd like to give the floor at this time to Łukasz.
Good morning. Just as we published in yesterday's report, as at present, we assume that in the ending financial year of 2025, we're gonna have around PLN 11 billion. So the EBITDA that we are targeting is more than PLN 1.4 billion. These levels are lower than our estimates up until now and what we had intended to achieve, and this is a result of a consequence of what's happened in Q4 2025, being below what we had anticipated. Let's move on to the next slide.
Let me talk, drill down in what happened in Q4. We should focus first on revenue, where revenue, we assume, is gonna be down by roughly PLN 0.5 billion with respect to what we had planned for this year, and the lower execution of revenue breaks down in the following way: roughly PLN 250 million less in retail sales. We had assumed that we would have positive like-for-like around +4%, but in terms of the performance, we had slightly worse, and we're gonna talk about that in the various lines of business and how that basically fleshed out. And then e-commerce is PLN 200 million below expectations, and the PLN 50 million comes from wholesale. Our gross margin is lower by 3.5 percentage points than we had assumed.
This is a result of a write-down on inventories, which is roughly 1.3 percentage points. We also had greater promotional activity in order to stimulate traffic, which was clearly short. In terms of costs, we tried to catch up in this quarter through strict control of fixed expenses, and this was possible to have lower variable costs, and that means costs are down by roughly PLN 100 million. As a result, the EBITDA that we're estimating at this point in time, you have that information on the slide, it's roughly PLN 200 million, and what we've mentioned in the release, we put a range of PLN 180 million-PLN 200 million being the shortfall. If we look at revenue, if we look at revenue, we can say that this was driven by the softer consumer, which we observed in Q4.
That means that we had less traffic in our stores. The traffic meant that we had a like-for-like in the negative at 1.9% in fixed currencies, fixed currencies. And having in mind such great footprint expansion and looking what's happening with the competitors, we believe that this is a decent result. Of course, it's not a result that is satisfactory to us. If we look at revenue in e-commerce, here we saw revenue drop off by 23%, and this was primarily a result of intentional limitation in the transformation of our e-commerce model, as we want to generate more profitable sales through the sales of own products and licensed products. We didn't want to sell as much the third-party brands, and we were trying to reduce performance marketing costs.
It's not visible yet in our results, but they will clearly appear in the near future. If we look at the level of gross margin, year-on-year, it's down by slightly below 3 percentage points, and on the following slides, I'll discuss this on a drill-down basis. This is a result of promotional activities, the write-down on inventories, as well as some licensing fees, which in part pertain to future periods, especially when we have signed a new agreement where we're only beginning the sales of licensed products. If we look at costs in turn, we can say that costs are growing across the group at 20%, while the selling area has grown by some 28%.
So the pace of growth of costs is slower than the pace of growth of selling area, and so we're trying consistently to obtain, seize economies of scale, and in the more demanding market conditions, this is something that we'd like to endeavor to do in order to achieve the best possible or the most optimum result. Despite these efforts, our EBITDA that we estimate for the quarter is PLN 200 million, which is clearly below last year's EBITDA watermark. If we go ahead and look now at the results of the various lines of business, we can start with CCC. Omnichannel, which is the summary of our offline businesses and e-commerce business.
Here we can say that the level of revenue, which is PLN 1.03 billion, which is more or less slightly below what it was last year, and a gross margin of 59%, and we have a pretty decent cost ratio of 44.6%. As a result, the EBITDA margin is in excess of 14%. CCC line of business has additional costs of licensing fees for other lines of business. This is a consequence of the fact that the original license agreement was primarily for CCC, and that's why the licensing fees are allocated to CCC. And so, in part, these license fees pertain to future periods, and they will be spread over a 3-year period.
But as we had agreed from the very beginning of the new financial year, as more and more licensed products would be sold through our other lines of business and HalfPrice or e-footwear, well, those, license fees will be paid for in those lines of business, where in fact, those costs are incurred or to which they pertain. We also have CCC, which consolidates the other smaller lines of business like Szopex, Worldbox abroad, and so the sales potential has not yet been fully achieved. And as a result, we have wholesale business at a lower margin. So that is why the margin achieved by CCC is lower, but the gross margin is 47.4%, and we have a higher cost ratio in excess of 50%, and as a result, the EBITDA margin is roughly 7%.
Having that in mind, we can say that HalfPrice is doing very well. It is consistently achieving our intentions and what is expected of it. Sales are up by 29% to PLN 729 million, with a very good, a very decent gross margin for HalfPrice, which is 51.5%. The cost ratio is 40.6%, and we have a robust EBITDA margin in excess of 18%, which is close to our target of 20% for the group and for HalfPrice, too. This is where we've set the target.
The situation looks different from Modivo, and this is part of the transformation that we talked about in terms of having a smaller volume, but a more, let's say, a business model that's based on selling licensed goods and products, as opposed to the less profitable brands or the other brands. We can see that the revenue has fallen substantially by 24%. The gross margin is pretty flat year-on-year at 39.8%. We continue to ramp up the share held by more profitable licensed brands, but at the same time, we had to give discounts on third-party brands in Q4, which offset the upswing in revenue and margin generated by licensed brands and own brand. Licensed products and own brands.
So we can say that the margin, EBITDA margin that's achieved, which is clearly negative, is not in line with our expectations, so the results will improve. But across the full year, the EBITDA margin for Modivo is better. For the full year, it's around 8%, so compared to our peers in the competition, it's pretty decent, and where we have EBITDA for them, around 3.5%. So we do, of course, have, you know, clearly higher ambitions. As I move on to a more drilled-down approach to our results in the various lines of business like CCC and HalfPrice, in Q4, they were negative, in CCC, it was - 2.3% like-for-like, and you have to break down what this is derived from and within the quarter.
So it's -2% at CCC, and the picture for HalfPrice is better in terms of like-for-like, it's 0.2%. And if we compare that to the base for HalfPrice, where last year, we had like-for-like in excess of 8%, where we can say the 0.2% in Q4 is a decent result. Having in mind the dynamic growth in selling area of which is up by some 30%, and we also have market signals that the traffic in shopping malls in stores, generally speaking, is has fallen short. And if we look at the like-for-like, and we try to break that down, decompose that result, we can say that traffic is what's missing.
So the customers coming into our stores, well, as we look across the board at our business, we can say there's growing numbers. But if we look at the incremental growth of customers, it's not taking place at such a pace that it would be possible to generate a positive like-for-like performance. But if we look at the data available across the retail industry, and looking at the data published by our competitors, we can say that these results aren't too bad. What in this demanding picture, what is positive here is conversion for CCC and CCC and HalfPrice. We can see that it's improving. Conversion in CCC is close to 15%. It's up by 1 percentage point year-on-year. If we look at HalfPrice, conversion is coming close to 20%.
These are good results, or very good results, in fact. And so this shows that a customer who comes into our stores, to a greater and greater extent, is finding suitable products, and that person is happy with having his or her expectations met. But this is something we want to stimulate to an even greater extent. So on one hand, we can see we have high bars in January, so this is something that's pleasing because we've been able to sell off the winter product range. And so we have not very much of the winter left to go in terms of our stock. Our CEO will talk about that. You talk about the results, and I'll say more about those other items. Okay? So January is a period of more sales, but it's taking place. We have higher volume, but at lower margins.
So now, if we look at our sales results or our like-for-like results, this is also affected by the fact that footwear is the major product category in the group, and that means it's a category where our sales are more demanding in terms of the product range. Because the broader the product range offered by the group, well, that means that we can manage sales, and we're more and more independent of market factors and weather factors, so it becomes easier to do. And so you can see that we continue to work on expanding our diversification, but we can say that that only represents, say, 1/3 of our business, of our sales mix. So let me say a couple words about margins. At CCC, in an omnichannel, it's flat year-over-year at 59%.
It's so it's close to the 60% target that we have fixed, and so we have a higher percentage of licensed brands and improving purchasing conditions. So these positive effects were offset by the utilization of promotions. And if we look at CCC and what's strapping it down, we have the licensing fees we referred to, which in part pertain to future periods. We have the write-off of inventories, so and then 1.3%, and it's down by 2% because of wholesale sales being down in terms of the margin. And then the margin is flat in Modivo, and so HalfPrice is up by 1%. So we have a higher percentage of licensed brands and we're activating sales, so stimulating sales, driving sales for third-party products. So then if we can go on and look at costs.
Costs are something that we're very diligent about, and we can say that across all of our lines of business, the nominal costs are up, but they're growing more slowly, or at least on pace or at the same rate as the growth in the commercial space or the selling area that we have. If we look at the inventories now, nominally speaking, our inventory is up by 3% year-on-year, so it's up at PLN 3.7 billion. So we make an estimate at the end of the quarter. Well, these estimates don't incorporate possible consolidation of MKR at the end of the quarter. So nominally, we can say that the inventories are up by 3% quarter-on-quarter. They're down by 3%, and so the assumption is that we would want it to go even lower at the end of Q4.
But on the other hand, having in mind sales being lower than had been anticipated. And then we have this parameter, which is inventory per square meter. So here we can see a pretty robust decrease of nearly one quarter, so it's 24%, that we've been able to shrink those inventories. We've not yet gotten to where we wanna get, but we're more and more effective at managing our inventories. And so it's falling, inventories are falling across all of our lines of business, with the exception of HalfPrice. But it's growing at a slower pace than the increase in selling area.
And so we have, you know, higher receipts of our collections year on year, and so this gives us an ability to manage the financing of our inventories, and we can do more here to optimize that, and payment terms are being negotiated and extended with our suppliers. So a couple words I would like to say about the achievement of our operational objectives in this quarter. One of the goals was to continue growing the selling area, and so we talked about the-- in this past, we can say that brick-and-mortar stores are the pillar of our growth, and so we want to achieve our targets in excess, or we're gonna more than exceed our targets.
We have an addition of some 300,000 square meters, and so the increase at HalfPrice is particularly important because we have this up by 170,000. So Q4 was not evenly distributed, so a big portion was in December and January. And so the new selling area added in Q4 has only, in a small degree, contributed to the results of Q4. As we said, our brick-and-mortar stores are the pillars of our profitability. So the average EBITDA profitability in a store of CCC is 34%. So we have a higher average EBITDA in Poland, lower abroad. And so basically, we have 25% average profitability, EBITDA, in HalfPrice, 27% in Poland and 20% abroad.
And so as the brand and the line of business becomes more and more, people become more and more aware of it, and then we would have the, increasing efficiency, operational leverage, and that's why we want to increase the density of our presence, of our footprint. And we see that this is the right path to follow. And so if we talk about brick-and-mortar stores, what we need to work on is the improvement of profitability in e-footwear, here we see positive growth, but we have not yet achieved or gotten to the place where we want to arrive. And so if we look at the development of the licensing model across the group, we want to pump up the share held by licensed brands.
Over the last couple of years, we've been able to increase that by 10% or 10x from 2% to 20%. So if we look at the licensed brands, along with our own brands, that's nearly 50%. So partnership brands still account for 50-54%, but this is something that will be changed. The short view of what we see in 2026, why do we anticipate improvement in our results in 2026? Above all, we'll have a higher amount of commercial or selling area. At the beginning of the year, it's up by nearly 30%. We are in a totally different place now than we were a year ago, so we have more selling area, greater selling area, and so we have the newly opened stores, which have been open for a few months, and so we have good, positive results.
This is something that will continue to contribute to the group's result across the year. We also have new selling area in 2026, so we will continue to grow. The anticipation is that it will be 290,000 additional square meters, which would give 25% growth. We are continuing to have a higher gross margin, better purchasing conditions of collections, of negotiating better prices, and the U.S. dollar exchange rate is improving, freight costs are down, and also we want to optimize our discounting activity. We're beginning with a much better inventory, and so we've been able to drop that level of inventories per square meter. We'll be able to basically manage this discounting function more reasonably. We've been successful in terms of our implementation of the Modivo Club.
Having a bigger magnitude of our business will make it possible to be more efficient, and this will contribute to having a lower cost ratio. We assume that next year will be the year when Worldbox will function entirely within the group, and it will contribute to the results of the group. What I said, when we talk about financing working capital by extending the payment terms. That would be more or less it from my side, and now the CEO would like to take over.
Thank you very much, Łukasz. I'd like to go back to some of the slides and talk a little bit more extensively about what's happening in the organization. We're doing a large number of things simultaneously in terms of this expansion.
We're reforming Modivo, so we have more and more of our own products through our own stores being sold, and we're making these investments in the brick-and-mortar stores. We have new product categories, like licensed apparel. We've been able to achieve a large number of good licenses where we can produce clothing, among other things, and we're taking over Worldbox, I think tomorrow. So a lot of things are happening in our organization. Our model is more and more mature, enabling us to achieve synergies across all of the sales channels. This is what we're talking about in our organization. We're talking about being a group of synergy in the product, in logistics, in expansion, as well as through the management of our own brands. And perhaps I would ask you to display a specific slide. Okay, I see it's there. It's up.
I wanted to reflect on a few parameters. Well, Łukasz mentioned that we want to show things more specifically and how those costs flesh out and how CCC EU has its results. This is the company that's responsible for importing all of the products for all of the channels. These estimates of products, provisions, licensing fees, because the omnichannel line of business is working well. In Q4 and across the full year, we had a lot, we were under pressure, a lot of pressure by the weather. Here, we're not talking about the competition. We don't really feel the competition here, because in terms of the brick-and-mortar stores, we have such a broad range of products, but we're talking about pressure from the weather and the inventory, and so we invested quite a bit in giving discounts.
Historically, in Q4, we had a 25% discount, and that's not something we had that, well, maybe with the exception of COVID, when we had a lot of inventory to sell off. So we have a high gross margin, but we wanted to offload a lot of products. So in January, we have nice sales, but we're actually selling the products today at pretty deep discounts. And so we're making investments in discounts, and so I think we are generating a pretty good margin. The outcome of that, however, is that we've sold twice as much of winter products in January, but this hasn't improved our margin, because the margin in the winter period is much lower than on spring goods. And so those other goods, full-year goods, have stopped to sell.
If we look at the winter stock, we look very good this year in winter because we're gonna have roughly 4 million units of products, less than 4 million units of goods. And that means that we're gonna have much less, and we're gonna have newer, younger products on better conditions. And what does it mean to talk about 4 million units of products? Well, this is 1 million for e-commerce, HalfPrice, and 3 million in the stores of CCC. So in our warehouse, we don't have anything. What? We have 3 million pairs of shoes. These are the type of numbers we have. That's, you know, 3,000 pairs per store. And so 3,000 pairs, that's 25% of the merchandising for a full store. So the bigger the scale of the business, that means we're always gonna have some products here.
Well, we have our own sorting place. We're repacking, products. We're giving discounts where necessary. Part of it goes to HalfPrice, some of it goes back to the stores, and we've done very well with that. If you look at the inventory structure or mix, I would add... that the mix is much better than could be illustrated by this graph, where we've dropped it by 1/4 . This was a lot of effort went into that in order to show you that we have a smaller inventory. Unfortunately, we weren't able to do that, but we would like to say that in this inventory, roughly PLN 100 million is products that we've picked up from Modivo earlier. We have 40% of the spring and summer collection already delivered. Last year, we were only at 20%.
That's a big success that we're gonna have these products at the beginning of this season. And then we have Worldbox, where CCC is buying products for Worldbox for the spring and summer, and that HalfPrice previously wasn't producing this level of product... and there's going to be more and more of that, and so we have to send products more quickly. So most of this is actually on various ships en route. And so we're looking at inventory per square meter, and so we had, you know, purchases down by 30% across the board, and so we did that on purpose, and I think that we're gonna get to rotation parameters, where we're gonna be utilizing trade credit from our suppliers.
We're gonna have very good turnover figures and then extended terms of payment, and this is a model that we'd like to embrace in the near future, and the entire organization is focused on achieving these targets. Let me say a little bit about e-commerce. It's very tough to, or hard to earn money in e-commerce if you're utilizing partnership brands, 'cause the margins. The first margin is already pretty poor. It's 50%+ . If we add to that, that all the players in the market are discounting prices in order to limit or reduce their inventory, so it's around 40%. There's a large number of returns, and logistics are more and more expensive, and then the investments in performance marketing, we wanna turn that around. As we said, well, we wanna have more of our own products, which is up by half.
But the investments in discounts, where the market started to invest in discounts, this was not something that could be reversed. We had the Black Friday. That's when people started to offer discounts. November was pretty warm, so this is not something that's reversible, and the margins are so low in e-commerce. Everybody's thinking about selling the products because it would be a bigger or smaller catastrophe for an organization if you retain stock, unsold stock. So the model is as follows: Ultimately, 50% should be our own products and licensed products, and this should grow the recognition of our brands, our stores. And so we'll begin the next season in terms of advertising our brands. So what do we have now? We have more channels, more synergies, more lines of business. We're complete.
So we have footwear and apparel, and so we have CCC and Modivo and HalfPrice and Worldbox and to fill out that picture with apparel, and that's the direction we're moving in. Our investments in discounts in this quarter, in Q4, was roughly 25%. Historically, this is a large number. The effect is that we're going to begin the upcoming seasons with pretty young inventory, relatively new inventory, and so that's something we might actually correct upwards, if we have more products there. So inventories. So we can say that brick-and-mortar stores are the pillar of our profitability. I wanted to tell you that we're not developing e-commerce to a big extent because we have to grapple with profitability, but we are investing strongly in new stores. And here, on purpose, we're showing you the profitability in Q4.
Now, this is year to date, so for twelve months. So this is the annual EBITDA year to date. These are decent EBITDA watermarks. HalfPrice, we're counting on even better EBITDA, because several important things are happening there. One is achieving the scale, and then we'll have the logistics warehouse that will be commissioned in the middle of the year. We're doing very good with logistics, but it's still somewhat provisional, and the scale of the business is basically forcing us to do some investments, and we're gonna have a warehouse dedicated to support HalfPrice business dynamics. And so then we have the costs of the off-price model, and so you have to accept goods, you have to change price tags, put on new price tags. And the next thing is, well, the owner... Own production on licensed, of licensed goods.
This is something that's changing the value in sales, and we're gonna ultimately we want to drive up the margins on the sales of our own products. And of course, this is something that would be labeled with our labels, with the price tags, and so we might be able to save, you know, 5%-6% on the logistics costs. And so we continue to invest in stores. What I can tell you with full awareness of the importance of this, we have very good conditions for expansion. We have good conditions, and so we have, you know, our rents defined as a percentage of revenue. We have turnkey brick-and-mortar stores. We're expanding into multiple countries. This is not something that's gonna be stopped. We have 290,000 square meters of new selling area. Well, can CapEx be a problem?
Well, it shouldn't be a problem because we are getting very good conditions for investments in most of the places where we're present, so. Our investments in stores are there, but the challenge is product, and we want to, you know, extend the payment terms. Everybody wants to work with us, and so this is something that's getting better and better, will probably surprise you in terms of the rotation and the payment terms, what's gonna happen in the near future. Of course, if we look at the results, we can say that they're soft. We've had a soft quarter, bad quarter, and we can confirm with full confidence that we had bad results. Of course, we were disappointed with the level of traffic, but our business model is more and more mature, and we've achieved major magnitude.
And so if we look at HalfPrice, we can say that it's been very successful, highly profitable business with a good level of EBITDA performance. This is a very important slide. Even though we had lower traffic, we've been able to achieve higher conversion. So we have good products, good merchandise. These stores have to mature somewhat. We're opening quite a few stores, sometimes one city, then its neighboring city. And so we have, basically, you know, this, like-for-like, and we're happy with the like-for-like, even though it's negative, 'cause we've opened several stores in Warsaw. So we're going to generate money through the scale of business magnitude and having better margins on our products as a result of purchasing conditions and producing our own products, and then the logistics costs.
And then here, I'm trying to make you aware that the footwear business is not something that you can compare really with the apparel industry. I understand that the market leaders like LPP and others are reporting high EBITDA, and this is clearly an enticement for us to be there. But when we think about, you know, footwear, which still represents 62% of our sales mix, is quite dependent on certain factors. Well, you know, shoes are like car tires. If you have good weather or suitable weather, then the sales will just be done by themselves because people have to change those products. But for the full year, we can tell you that in the spring, we didn't really have good weather. It was for a month in the summer period, and the fall, early winter disappointed us.
So the retail business is okay, and so there's no reason to be concerned. What's disappointing is the level of sales in e-commerce. I was highly disenchanted, and so the costs, the level of returns, all this is somewhat terrifying, and we wanna control this very strongly to move in the direction of having our own brands. If we look at next year, we're looking at that very optimistically and having in mind certain events which should insulate our business. So the first thing is, higher amount of selling area, and as we presented this to you, these stores couldn't really have generated much return 'cause they were opened up at the end of December, and so we have certain months when stores aren't earning. But, you know, so they're drawing us down as opposed to generating. But there are no unprofitable stores.
If we talk about the Half Price line of business in CCC, this is a very mature business at present, and we're doing a lot to make sure that it becomes even more profitable. We're working on the product, we're working on our licenses. The work we're doing in marketing will give us some pretty substantial benefits. And so then, expansion of selling area by some 25% this year, and so we're hoping that this will support us. And so we'll have, you know, this greater amount of selling area from the beginning of the quarter, but the dissipation of costs from openings will be down because the relative share of... It's not gonna be 35% like in the past, but like 25%. So we have a strong resolution in the group that we've invested in discounts of 21%. That's still a lot.
We've always been under the pressure of the weather and also the level of inventories. I hope that now the level of inventory is small enough and weather, well, things should be better. We should be more aligned to the weather, and so the decreased inventory by 25% per square meter, so we won't be forced to sell at a discount. But we can say that the higher scale of HalfPrice is participating, and we're able to move a portion of the old collections. So CCC will no longer be under the pressure of, let's say, discounting policy, and so we have, you know, we want to relinquish 7% less of the discounts. So-
[Foreign language]
... We've done some calculations. We have good starting prices for the new season, so several percentage points, and that's because we've been able to reduce freight costs. We've gotten good negotiation results there, and then the hedged exchange rate for the US dollar. And so this, taken together, should assume that the results for CCC and HalfPrice will be much better. If we look at Modivo Club, we can say that the reception has been very good. We have more than 1 million customers, the bulk in Poland. So within the course of half a year, now we want to expand that and roll it out across all of our markets, and we want to have 3 million gold customers. Of course, we're gonna have a lower cost of performance marketing. We're gonna invest less in performance marketing.
We're gonna invest more in standard marketing, which is less—which is more inexpensive. And so we don't have loyalization amongst customers utilizing performance marketing. It's only a matter of price there. And then we have costs, making sure that we watch what's gonna happen with our costs in 2026. And so I already mentioned about the cost of logistics and HalfP rice, so Worldbox will make a positive contribution to the group. And so we have a lot of our own products at high margins using licenses. The products are already en route on the seas, and so in the fall, we should reach maybe... In the spring, we should have, you know, maybe half of our own products.
And so perhaps we'll even be able to move up to 80% by the end of the year, and that should give us a higher margin across the business, and we'll have a higher margin, more attractive margin, in all of our brick-and-mortar stores. I believe in Worldbox, 'cause there's no reason whatsoever for this not to be the case. This is a model that's selling similar to CCC, based on licenses, and so it's selling like CCC, but the thing is, it has accessories and apparel. And so this concept is not for smaller towns and communities, but for the larger cities. And so December was proof positive. We saw that the trading results were much better than, say, in CCC. Of course, there was a high level of discounts, but those are-- that's the price level we're gonna have.
We're gonna have our own products, and this is gonna be, like, similar to a case in which it had been discounted. So I'm very convinced of this concept, and some of you didn't believe in our HalfPrice approach. I feel HalfPrice. I understand what's happening. I understand also what's happening with Worldbox, and we're gonna move forward strongly in that area. In terms of extending the payment terms, it's clear that we continue to work on that with quite a bit of success. I've been surprised myself, to some extent. Our suppliers want to raise the scale of the business. They're joined together with us, so we're very close to achieving what we want to achieve, 15 partners, and all of this is going in line with our thinking. So it's going very well here.
We can say, in brief, that we've done a lot in terms of the product, in terms of the margins and expansion, and now we're waiting for this year to be better for us. So we won't talk about the financial result, 'cause then you're gonna say what sort of like-for-like we're gonna have. If I know the like-for-like figure, if it's gonna be positive, it's gonna be very easy for us to calculate the level of the business in the upcoming year. Well, this past year, they were soft. If we compare those results to 2024, where like-for-like was, you know, in the teens, now we're - 2.8 or -5, 'cause now we're trying to catch up. So we can say that the current LFL performance is weak or soft.
I'm talking only about footwear, not apparel, because in apparel, we have a satisfactory level of sales. So I would thank you very much for listening to me. I've said what I wanted to tell you, what I wanted to convey to you. Okay, now we can field a few questions. If you'd like to pose some questions, please raise your hand, turn on your microphone, and then pose your questions as you would like. And so, Maciej Wojtal.
Thank you very much for the presentation. I would like to pose a question. My name is Maciej Wojtal, and I'm a representative, [sometimes at] TFI. Can I ask you to explain or expound upon slide eight, where you talk about the gross margin year-on-year, and what's the disproportion between CCC and in total with omnichannel?
This is including the licenses, and the statement is made that some of the costs are costs of future periods. Could you give a little more detailed explanation? Why do we have a deterioration of more than 9 percentage points year-on-year?
Let me add, I forgot to explain. In our negotiations in the recent period, we've not raised that, but it's been a great success to be able to achieve licenses for other brands for the production of apparel. This was not something that was available, where we, somebody had to relinquish a license for the region, and, and so now we have licensing fees there. And so we are at a specific stage that we're paying for the license upfront, even if we don't have, an apparel product. So those products are being produced, and we are already paying the license fees.
This should be around EUR 10 million, sorry, $10 million, excuse me. These are fees that we're gonna be able to recover in future periods, 'cause I have three years in order to basically even out those fees. If I produce more than the limit suggests, then I can calculate that or cover that. We have all the licensee fees, but this is a result of the apparel as opposed to the footwear, and so it's $10 million, more or less, on a flat basis. That's something we're gonna be able to, as I said, recover in subsequent years, and that's also in these results. If I re-speak in greater detail to your question, the major elements of that bridge from the margin for CCC and CCC Omnichannel, well, it's the cost of licenses.
We've mentioned it's more or less 2% of that figure. We have a write-down on inventories of 1.3%, and wholesale and the profit or profitability, let's say, downswing is around 2%, 2 percentage points, and the cost of transport to HalfPrice, 'cause when we move priced products from CCC to HalfPrice, HalfPrice purchases those products at a price point which is based on the market conditions, and so for stock products being purchased. And there's a discount given, which is debited to the line of business of CCC, it's 1.3%. Those are the major indicators which sum up to roughly, well, more than 7%, and the other things are smaller items, smaller elements, constituent elements. And so we talk about Worldbox and HalfPrice and licensing fees.
So CCC is importing, paying the licensing fees, but the products haven't arrived yet, so we can't invoice those products. So that's part of the part of what's happened. But this is something that will come back in the upcoming quarters. So we're producing a large amount within the limits that we have, that we're gonna be able to make that recovery in the course of the first year. We don't have any more questions, I think. So, Sylwia Jaśkiewicz, you wanted to ask a question? Sylwia?
Thank you very much. I'm from the brokerage house of BOŚ. I have a question. If I wanna make sure that I understand you well, and I don't wanna make a mistake. So in Q4, the results year-on-year, well, we have a deterioration in Modivo, and so it's a negative impact of PLN 140 million, PLN 65 million was a one-off. And then we have... I don't really entirely understand what's happening with these licenses. Does that mean that the margin will deteriorate by a PLN 100 million? Is that what you're saying?
Yes. It's hard to talk about deterioration of margins, but if we sum that up or, or draw a total from that perspective that you've taken, I think that's something you could say. It's really hard to say that's deterioration of the margin. These are costs of the licenses and costs of the business in terms of the other lines of business. And so if we look at, at the 1.9, you know, 1.3%, that's roughly 90-odd million.
And then there was some information about Szopex and Worldbox abroad. How much has that taken off the result?
That's roughly PLN 10 million. That's in the CCC result, in terms of the lower margin of CCC S.A.
And the PLN 65 million write-off on products that aren't full commercial value and the exchange rates, can you split that PLN 65 million down into its constituent parts?
FX rates is PLN 22 million.
I'm looking at my notes. So products, PLN 25 million, PLN 22 million for FX rates, and the impact will be slightly smaller because we'll see what's gonna happen with the last few days of the quarter, because the changes here are dynamic. And so products of not full commercial value is PLN 25 million, then PLN 19 million, and then PLN 22 million for the FX rates.
Okay, thank you very much. And then I have another question about banks' reactions.
Is there anything we should expect here in terms of covenants or the reverse factoring covenants are under control?
We are in constant communication with the banks. We don't anticipate any negative reactions in this area.
Mm-hmm.
Of course, we have stable financing secured, and so we see amongst the banks, there's a lot of interest in place in terms of establishing cooperation with us, and so we're looking at this quite calmly. In terms of reverse factoring, what's the value of reverse factoring at this time? Well, we have slightly less than PLN 2 billion in limits. These limits are not fully utilized, and in fact, it's around PLN 1.3 billion is being utilized, so roughly 65%, you could say. And so we're moving more and more in the direction of using trade finance to finance our purchases. I apologize, but maybe I've missed something.
In terms of Modivo, we hear in the marketplace that November was very soft, December was mediocre, but across the industry, we see that January is better in terms of e-commerce. What's happening with you?
If somebody has a large amount of inventory for winter, then you're going very well because you're selling that inventory, but at lower margins. And so perhaps there is, you know, revenue, but we wanna have less products being sold at discounts. And the most important thing is for a product to arrive on a timely basis. Well, this is something that we've always had a problem with in the past. Now we have 40% of the spring and summer collection already received from Modivo, so that's very good as opposed to 20%.
Once the weather shows up, then we're gonna be able to have better sales at Half Price. Well, this is not a major success yet in terms of the sales in the winter period. In terms of the brands, I wanted to mention that our major business is where we're investing, so brick-and-mortar stores. Things are going very well there. E-commerce is always a matter of the inventory. If you have a lot of inventory, then you're trying to catch up with sales. If inventories are at a standard level and they're gonna be cut down by some 30% for the future period, we won't have that pressure on us to have lower prices or offer, you know, margins at a lower level.
And so we wanna sell as much of our own products as possible, and we don't wanna be subject to any inventory-based pressure. And if we're gonna be able to achieve that, we're gonna be able to improve our margins substantially and move them up. When could this happen? I understand that the inventory... We're prepared for spring. We've purchased, you know, 30% less, and we're selling down the old inventory, so we are ready for that. Okay, thank you very much. And maybe the last question. I see one colleague is raising his hand.
My name is Łukasz Wachełko. I have a single question to clarify things. Do I understand you correctly, Mr. Chairman, that since we have to tell you what the like- for- like should be to make your projections, that you don't have the forecast, the forecast for next year, you know, for 2026?
Well, Łukasz, our ambition is to achieve the 20% profitability. And so we're in the Tour de France. We have 21 stages, 21 quarters. We're going to achieve that profitability target, and I'm convinced of that. There are several reasons. We have a very good product. I don't know if you've been in our stores recently, but the product has changed substantially. We have very nice margins, first price margin. Maybe I won't talk about that because then you'll try to zero in on that in terms of what the EBITDA should be.
If I tell you about the first margin that we're starting with, the first price margin we're starting with, because the exchange rate for U.S. dollars is improving, and so we'll talk about how we're gonna achieve that 20% EBITDA margin. This is something we're gonna. I'm convinced we're gonna achieve, whether it's 6, 12, or 18 months. But of course, we can always have a softer stage. We've not lost any pace or anything with respect to our competitors. We're doing what we have to do. We're opening stores. Let me mention once again, consolidation of Worldbox, which will take place tomorrow. We're opening up the new Worldbox network, and we have the maturation of Half Price, and then Modivo, and then CCC, which is the most profitable footwear store or brand, perhaps not only in Europe, but abroad.
But farther than that, we have—we're adding 300,000 square meters on very good, solid, conditions, turnkey buildings. There's a lot of effort there. So suppliers from China wanna cooperate with us. We understand what the situation is like in the United States and other continents. Today, we're the largest importer of footwear in the world. Nobody's producing that level of footwear. Even our European competition is buying shoes on site from brands. We have a very high gross margin, and nobody else is achieving that. I won't say that it's across the world, but the model itself is very mature if we talk about, you know, CCC and Half Price.
Of course, there's always some turbulence, and perhaps not everything works immediately, but we have the strong, you know, club, Modivo Club, and so we have, you know, some 22 million members, 3 million who've paid for their membership, and this is a cashback. We're not gonna give the money back, we're gonna give them discounts, rebates. These are great ideas that will prove themselves. Market, traffic, and competition in e-commerce are the problems. So we're purchasing the same shoes. Basically, everybody's buying the same brands, the same shoes, and everybody's trying to sell them, and everybody's trying to lower the level of inventories. And so we're not pumping in that. We should have e-commerce as a group.
We're not going to retract from e-commerce, but we do estimate how it should be done in order to be profitable, because I also want to achieve a very high profitability target. All these things are in place. So, so let me ask you directly: is your goal for 2026, is it being upheld, or should we forget about that, and we should think about 2030? Which, which target are you talking about, Łukasz?
I would say, at one of our conferences, we talked about our ambitions for next year. I think it was November when you said, you know, 22% EBITDA.
Well, our ambitions are even higher, but there are so many times that we haven't delivered. We've decided to basically speak less and deliver more. That's what we've been advised.
Sometimes I have the impression, to speak directly, the atmosphere around the company is a result, perhaps, that we've talked too much about our ambitions and our expectations, and now we want to alter our approach. We continue to have a high level of ambition, but we wanna focus on our work inside the group. We have a lot of ambitions, and we're all ready and poised for this year to be a landmark year across the board. We're ready for that to happen. I can't promise you that Worldbox will deliver a 20% EBITDA target in the first year, but we're doing everything we can to make sure that this is gonna be as positive as it can be.
So going past the semantics, in 2026, your official forecast, CCC, does not exist. It's only your internal ambition, which is always high, but in terms of something that we can track, treat as, you know, guidance or as a forecast, you don't have anything.
No, we don't have it. It won't be in place. At this point in time, we're not publishing a forecast, an official forecast.
Okay, thank you very much. This is something I wanted to clarify. That's it from my side.
Thank you very much for this morning session, morning meeting. So until next time.