LuxExperience B.V. - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Greetings and welcome to LuxExperience Q3 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Today's call is being recorded, and we have allocated one hour for prepared remarks and Q&A. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Martin Beer, the Chief Financial Officer of LuxExperience. Thank you, sir. Please begin.

Martin Beer (CFO)

Thank you, Operator, and welcome everyone to the LuxExperience Investor Conference Call for Q3 2025, our first Investor Conference Call since we closed the acquisition of Hughes & La Porte and changed our company name to LuxExperience to reflect the best of the combined companies. Today's call is dedicated to the fiscal Q3 results of the legacy Mytheresa standalone business. With me today is our CEO, Michael Kliger. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that our discussions today will include forward-looking statements. Any statements we make about expectations are forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties, including the risks and uncertainties described in our annual report. Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially. We are under no duty to update forward-looking statements. In addition, we will refer to certain financial measures not reported in accordance with IFRS on this call.

You can find reconciliations of these non-IFRS financial measures in our earnings press release, which is available on our investor relations website at investors.luxexperience.com. I will now turn the call over to Michael.

Michael Kliger (CEO)

Thank you, Martin. Also, from my side, a very warm welcome to all of you, and thank you for joining our call. We will comment today on the results and performance of our third quarter fiscal year 2025. We are, of course, truly excited to have completed the acquisition of Hughes & La Porte on April 23rd and to now operate the leading global luxury multi-brand retail group under the name LuxExperience. This acquisition brings together some of the most iconic brands in digital luxury retail and will generate enormous value for our customers, brand partners, and shareholders. LuxExperience is now the pre-eminent multi-brand group in digital luxury with combined net sales of around EUR 3 billion. Our medium-term ambition is to reach EUR 4 billion in net sales and 7%-9% adjusted EBITDA margin. We will provide much more details on the just-completed acquisition tomorrow in a separate investor call.

As we now embark on the exciting new chapter as LuxExperience, I'm very proud to see our company in a very healthy and strong position. I'm specifically very pleased with our results in third quarter fiscal year 2025. With solid revenue growth and positive adjusted EBITDA, we continued to demonstrate our ability to execute well and achieve strong results under continued macro uncertainties where other players fail. We are the leader in a clearly consolidating sector and continue to display the unique characteristic of profitable growth. Our improved gross margin, the strong growth of top customer spend, the outstanding high average order value, and the excellent customer satisfaction all highlight the fundamental strengths of our business model. I wish to highlight today three key messages to you that make us stand out in third quarter and demonstrate the strengths of the Mytheresa business despite ongoing macro uncertainties.

First, our unique focus on high-spending, wardrobe-building luxury shoppers drove again our solid profitable growth around the world. We build a community for true luxury enthusiasts, and we create desirability with them also through unique physical experiences. Second, the strong relationship that we have with big-spending, wardrobe-building luxury customers continues to drive the desirable luxury brands to partner with us. This gave us again access to many exclusive capsule collections and pre-launch campaigns that in turn drove our global business growth in third quarter of fiscal year 2025. Third, our very resilient and consistent business model and execution allowed us to significantly improve many of our key performance indicators in third quarter: expanding gross margin, outstanding AOV, and increasing top customer spend were again drivers for improving profitability in terms of adjusted EBITDA in third quarter. Let me now comment in more detail on these three messages.

First, let's look at how building a global community for luxury enthusiasts is driving our business. In third quarter, our GMV with top customers grew by +7.8% compared to the prior year period, underlining resilience of top customers to macro headwinds. This growth was largely driven by an outstanding increase of the average spend per top customer in terms of GMV by +17.9% in Q3 fiscal year 2025 versus Q3 fiscal year 2024. In the United States, our business with our top customers even grew by +12%, driven by the impressive growth of average spend per US top customer of +17.8%. We mentioned already in the last quarter our two-week immersive invite-only apprenticeship experience in Aspen in collaboration with Bannerman's Bar. This is a great example of how we are able to attract high-net-worth customers in the United States.

Over 1,800 guests were seated over 17 days in the pop-up, and over 2,300 contact details were captured, with 56% registrants being new contacts. Since signing up for the event, guests have generated a total revenue of EUR 830,000, and their repurchase rate is already at 48%. Our clear ambition is to build the strongest relationships with our top customers and we, therefore, constantly engage with them. In Q3, we hosted again various events for our top customers across the globe. Examples include style suites in Miami, Düsseldorf, San Francisco, New York, and Hong Kong. We hosted Michelin-starred dinners in Houston and Washington D.C. We invited top customers to an intimate lunch with Khaite in the Cage showroom, allowing top customers to meet with Catheryn Holstein, founder and creative director of Khaite, as well as seeing the latest pieces from the newest collection.

Together with Carolina Herrera, we welcomed top customers at the Hôtel du Crillon, where Creative Director Wes Gordon shared the inspiration and artistry behind his latest runway collection, followed by a lunch with himself. Moreover, we partnered again with Porsche for a driving experience in Los Angeles and, for the first time, with Fat Ice Race, inviting top customers to a motorsport racing experience on ice in Austria, including a cocktail moment with Spurten and Porsche. Please see our investor presentation for more details on our various top customer events. To fulfill our ambition to build a community for luxury enthusiasts through digital and physical experiences, we organized for our top customers true money-can't-buy experiences.

In Q3, top customers were invited to an event with Alaïa in Venice, including a dinner on the first night at the famous Harry's Bar, a private tour for the very first time in the renowned Nilus knitwear factory in Vicenza, and a beautiful dinner to conclude the event at Villa Valmarano. We hosted an exclusive dinner with the creative director Christopher Asper of the namesake brand at Luleå Restaurant during Paris Fashion Week. We hosted a two-day experience with Patou in Paris to celebrate the exclusive capsule collection for Mytheresa. The first day included an afternoon tea at the private apartment of the brand's creative director, Guillaume Henry, followed by an elegant dinner at Brasserie Le Nil. The second day, top customers were invited to explore Paris with a curated guide to the city's hidden gems by Guillaume, concluding with an intimate lunch at Brasserie Le Pin.

Together with Pomellato, we also hosted top customers for a two-day Milan experience, including a private tour of the renowned Casa Pomellato factory, an elegant dinner at Cracco in Galleria, a Pomellato showroom visit, a private guided tour of Casa Fornasetti, and a lunch at the iconic Bice restaurant. Finally, we hosted a Texan experience with Pucci to celebrate the launch of the exclusive Pucci capsule collection in Austin. The afternoon started with an intimate cocktail moment with Pucci's artistic director, Camille Miceli, followed by a cocktail party at the famous Austin Motel, where guests were treated to custom cowboy head shaping, a live country music band, and lively two-step dance performances. In addition to providing our top customers a memorable experience, such events also create brand awareness for the Mytheresa brand through global social media amplification. Please see our investor presentation for more details on these unique money-can't-buy experiences.

Second, our strong relationship with such customers clearly drives the desire of luxury brands to partner with us. One evidence for the strong trust and support we enjoy is the recent expansion of our partnership with Prada, which allows us now to distribute Prada products globally, effectively doubling our reach and our business potential with the brand. Q3 saw again many high-impact campaigns and exclusive product launches that drove our global business growth with high-spending wardrobe-building customers. We launched exclusive womenswear and menswear runway looks from Loewe, as well as exclusive bags and accessories from the Loewe Luna New Year collection for womenswear. We launched an exclusive capsule collection by Manolo Blahnik for womenswear and menswear, only available at Mytheresa. We were the exclusive pre-launch partner for Totême's T-Lock clutch bags and the Totême Garderobe collection, as well as Etro's Spring/Summer 2025 collection.

We also launched exclusive womenswear styles from Balenciaga's Summer 2025 collection and exclusive menswear styles from Tod's Spring/Summer 2025 collection. Please see our investor presentation for more details on brand collaborations in the third quarter. Such unique offers drove the interest by wardrobe-building big luxury spenders and thereby our solid top line in third quarter of fiscal year 2025. We grew our net sales by +3.8% compared to Q3 of fiscal year 2024. In the first nine months of fiscal year 2025, net sales grew by +8%. The United States saw similar growth with +3.9% in Q3 fiscal year 2025, while in Europe, including Germany and the U.K., we experienced a very strong net sales growth with +8.1% in Q3 compared to the prior year period. Third, in Q3 of fiscal year 2025, we continued to improve our business performance thanks to our very resilient and consistent business model.

Martin will talk in a few minutes about the details of our bottom-line results for third quarter, but let me provide you with some key operational highlights. We achieved outstanding customer satisfaction measured by our internal Net Promoter Score that reached a record high of 86% in Q3 fiscal year 2025, demonstrating the consistent excellence of our customer service proposition. Our average order value last 12 months increased by +8.8% to an outstanding EUR 753 in Q3 fiscal year 2025, demonstrating the success of our focus on selling full-price high-end luxury products to top customers. Furthermore, our gross margin improved by 140 basis points, which underlined our successful strategy of full-price selling. Our return rates decreased in the third quarter, also contributing to the strong profitability of +3.9% in terms of Adjusted EBITDA margin. All these operational highlights serve as a testament to the fundamental strengths of our business.

With all the above, it should come as no surprise that we are very pleased with our performance in Q3 of fiscal year 2025. We see this quarter as further proof that our business can deliver profitable growth even under ongoing macro uncertainties due to the strengths of our model and consistency of our execution. This proven strength and the track record of our teams for excellent execution drives our strong confidence in creating enormous value through the acquisition of YOOX NET-A-PORTER. I now hand over to Martin to discuss the financial results in detail.

Martin Beer (CFO)

Thank you, Michael. As Michael already mentioned, we are very excited about our successful closing of the YOOX NET-A-PORTER acquisition on April 23.

The closing in April falls within our fiscal fourth quarter, and as such is not reflected in the reported numbers for our fiscal Q3 reporting, which covers the period from January to March 2025. For this reason, we will dedicate today's call to Mytheresa's fiscal Q3 reporting. Tomorrow, on May 15, we have an additional call scheduled to provide more details on the newly formed group structure of LuxExperience, key strategic initiatives, financial details, as well as our plans and strategic direction moving forward. Therefore, let's talk today about our fiscal Q3 reporting ended on March 31st, 2025. We're very pleased with the financial performance in third quarter and also in the past nine months of fiscal year 2025. In the quarter, we achieved a solid net sales growth of +3.8%, fully in line with our guidance.

Our AOV LTM again increased +8.8% to a record high of EUR 753 per order delivered. Our gross margin expansion, which we've also seen in the two last quarters, continues with now 140 basis points improvement in the quarter. We continued to increase our profitability with an adjusted EBITDA margin of +3.9% in Q4. We also achieved positive operating cash flow of EUR 18.7 million, with stable inventory levels compared to previous year and achieving our day's inventory outstanding target of 260 days. This underlines Mytheresa's unique position with a track record of profitable growth at the high end of true luxury in an overall tough market environment. I will now review the financial results for third quarter, covering January 1st through March 31ts, 2025, in more detail and give additional information on certain key developments affecting our performance during the quarter. Unless otherwise stated, all numbers refer to EUR.

In the first quarter, net sales grew by EUR 8.9 million, or +3.8%, to EUR 242.5 million as compared to EUR 233.6 million in the prior year quarter. GMV per all customers grew by +8.9%, while the GMV per top customer grew even stronger by an impressive 17.9% during Q3 of fiscal year 2025. In the first nine months of fiscal year 2025, net sales grew by +8% to EUR 667.2 million, fully in line with our given top-line guidance for the full fiscal year. GMV increased by EUR 9.5 million to EUR 261.3 million in third quarter of fiscal year 2025, also a +3.8% increase from EUR 251.9 million in the prior year period. Increasing by EUR 61 per order delivered, our average order value LTM grew by +8.8%, now standing at a record high of EUR 753 as compared to EUR 692 in the prior year period.

The increase in AOV strengthens our unit economics and highlights our strategy of full-price selling at the high-end of luxury. Our growth was well-balanced worldwide, with our core market Europe growing by +8.1%, with a net sales share of 53.8%. The U.S. had a share of 22.5%, rest of the world of 23.7%. In the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, gross profit increased by +7.2% to EUR 108.5 million from EUR 101.3 million in the prior year quarter. The gross profit margin increased by 140 basis points to 44.8% as compared to 43.4% in Q3 of fiscal year 2024. This is fully in line with what we achieved in the preceding quarters. In a less competitive and discount-driven market, we stayed true to our strategy of a higher full-price share in our curated offer, and thus we were able to improve our gross profit margin.

In the last nine months of fiscal year 2025, our gross profit margin increased by 150 basis points. The shipping and payment cost ratio decreased by 130 basis points in Q3, from 15.3% prior year to now 14% of GMV. The decrease is mainly driven by continuously improving unit economics, resulting from the increase in AOV and lower return rates. The same effect is visible for the first nine months of fiscal year 2025, during which the shipping and payment cost ratio decreased by 90 basis points to 13.8% compared to 14.7% in the prior year period. The marketing cost ratio increased from 9.2%-10.2%. As we continue to invest in capturing market share, we build on our successful strategy of investing marketing efforts directed towards our top customer base and brand campaigns, while maintaining efficiency in targeting high-quality first-time buyers.

Throughout the quarter, we increased our marketing activities in line with this approach. The adjusted selling, general, and administrative SG&A cost ratio in the third quarter stood at 13%, lower than what we've seen in previous quarters. In relation to Q3 of the previous year, the cost ratio increased modestly by 80 basis points, from 12.2%-13%. During the first nine months of fiscal year 2025, the adjusted SG&A cost ratio decreased by 40 basis points, from 14% in the prior year period to now 13.6%. In Q3 of fiscal year 2025, adjusted EBITDA increased by EUR 0.5 million-EUR 9.3 million, from EUR 8.9 million in the prior year quarter. The adjusted EBITDA margin increased from 3.8%-3.9%.

For the first nine months of fiscal year 2025, adjusted EBITDA increased significantly by EUR 13.2 million at an adjusted EBITDA margin of 4.3% compared to 2.5% in the previous year period, fully supporting our guidance for the full fiscal year. Depreciation and amortization remained stable at EUR 3.9 million and 1.5% of GMV in Q3 of fiscal year 2025 compared to the previous year period. Our profitable growth is also evident at adjusted operating income and adjusted net income level. In third quarter of fiscal year 2025, adjusted operating income was at EUR 5.5 million, a 20 basis points increased margin at 2.3%. For the first nine months of fiscal year 2025, adjusted operating income was at EUR 16.6 million, a 2.5% margin, with a significant improvement to previous year. We also delivered positive adjusted net income in the quarter at EUR 5.4 million.

For the first nine months of fiscal year 2025, adjusted net income was at EUR 21.4 million at a 3.2% margin, also significantly improving from last year. Let's take a look at the cash flow statement. During third quarter of fiscal year 2025, we achieved a positive cash flow for operating activities of EUR +18.7 million compared to EUR -11.6 million in the previous year quarter. This is a EUR 30.3 million positive cash stream driven by effective working capital management. For the first nine months, operating cash flow only used up EUR 13.9 million compared to EUR 26.4 million in the prior year period. This is mainly driven by our careful management of inventory levels. Our inventories stood at EUR 372.8 million, fully stable compared to the beginning of the fiscal year and despite an 8% net sales growth in the first nine months of fiscal year 2025.

As of March 31st, 2025, our days inventory outstanding were right at our long-term target of 260 days. Cash flow from investing only used up EUR 0.6 million in the quarter and only EUR 2.3 million in the first nine months of fiscal year 2025. The heavy investments in our new tech platform and the move to a new central warehouse all have been completed successfully, and we're now returning to our expected long-term CapEx average of below 1% of GMV. We ended the quarter with EUR 14.2 million cash at hand and a EUR 25 million cash utilization of our EUR 75 million revolver. The solid financial performance in third quarter of fiscal year 2025 is fully in line with our expectations and supports our given guidance for the full fiscal year on all levels. The new tariff situation, and especially its impact on customer sentiment and the global economy, still remains unclear.

We, therefore, for the full fiscal year ending June 30th, 2025, expect the lower end of our given guidance of GMV and net sales growth between 7% and 13% for the legacy Mytheresa standalone business. Given our continued focus on profitability, we confirm our guidance on adjusted EBITDA margin between 3% and 5%. The acquisition of Hughes & La Porte in fourth quarter of our fiscal year 2025 is expected to add another EUR 300 million-EUR 350 million net sales and an adjusted EBITDA loss of EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million to the legacy Mytheresa standalone business fiscal year 2025 numbers ending on June 30, 2025. With all of the above, it comes as no surprise that we are very confident in the continued success of the Mytheresa business as a cornerstone of our new LuxExperience Group.

With the successful closing of the acquisition of Hughes & La Porte, we are very excited for the medium and long-term outlook of the combined business. With our proven ability to execute and to show strong results, we reconfirm our medium-term outlook for the combined business to achieve EUR 4 billion net sales and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 7%-9%. In our tomorrow's call, we will provide more details on our exciting journey ahead and therefore would welcome very much your participation in tomorrow's call on LuxExperience. With that, I'll hand over to Michael for his concluding remarks.

Michael Kliger (CEO)

Thank you, Martin. We are very pleased with our third quarter of fiscal year 2025 earnings results. We have seen a continued performance improvement this quarter. With this strength and consistency of our business model, we see ourselves well-positioned for any further macro uncertainties.

We continue to focus on building a community for true luxury enthusiasts worldwide and creating desirability through digital and physical experiences. We see ourselves as well-prepared for the formation of LuxExperience and the transformation of the combined business to the world-leading multi-brand digital luxury platform, creating significant value for our high-end customers, brand partners, and shareholders. I ask the operator to open the line for your questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Once again, if you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. As a reminder, we will ask everyone to stick to one question and one follow-up so we can take as many questions as possible. Thank you.

If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Once again, that is to press star one to ask a question. The first question comes from the line of Oliver Chen with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Hi there, this is Katie on for Oliver Chen. I'd like to ask a question about the 4Q sales guidance and what's assumed for the legacy Mytheresa business. I know you spoke to sales sort of at the lower end of the original fiscal year guidance. Can you talk through your assumptions for the consumer health and consumer reaction to the current environment and how that's derived from any trends you saw during the quarter or even quarter to date?

What's assumed for both pricing as well as sort of the number of orders? I'll have a follow-up. Thank you.

Michael Kliger (CEO)

Thank you. I'm happy to give a bit of insight on the assumptions, but of course, mathematically, it is pretty clear what we assume if we believe we're at the lower end. I think the biggest challenge at the moment looking at Q4 is, of course, understanding how further decisions by the administration would influence consumer sentiment. We have seen a lot of decisions at the beginning of April. Some of them were reversed. We saw very positive development on Monday. We at the moment expect a slower demand in the first and last quarter based on uncertainty, particularly in the North American market. As we highlighted today in our call, the strongest region in Q3 was Europe with 8%.

U.S., North America used to be the strongest region, so that's where we feel uncertainty and therefore caution is warranted as we simply don't know, I mean, how new changes would influence our business model of sending products through customs into North America. Current decreases for China made in China tariffs are great. There was a report that the de minimis would be abolished. These are all factors which we don't have specific assumptions other than we feel we expect further uncertainties and that has dampened demand effects. I don't know, Martin, you want to add anything?

Martin Beer (CFO)

Yeah, I mean, but you picked up the growth assumption for Q4, right? Because it's mathematically just easily done, I mean, fiscal year to date for the first nine months, we grew 8% net sales.

If we guide to the lower end of the 7%-13% top-line growth, that would imply that we expect to grow in Q4, obviously at a low rate, 4%-7% in Q4 to arrive at the lower end of the top-line guidance.

Okay. Just as a follow-up to that, how you're thinking about the pricing and if you've seen any different changes in pricing versus the number of orders placed. As we think about gross margin, what were really the most significant drivers to the gross margin improvement in Q3?

On pricing, I think we always have to consider the lag effect in our industry. I mean, we are currently selling spring-summer, so we do understand that some brands are looking at price increases.

Some brands have done price increases, but that will most affect fall-winter merchandise, which is arriving, but the current season is spring-summer, which has price decisions that were taken months ago. That is on that part. Gross margin, the biggest influence of gross margin is free price selling. How high is the share of free price? That is the biggest driver for further margin improvements that we expect.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Boss with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Matthew Boss (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks. Michael, maybe larger picture, how do you see the luxury industry positioned today just given the dynamic economic backdrop?

Maybe near-term, just based on the changes in sentiment that you cited, have you seen any direct impact on spending to date so far with your core high-net-worth customer base, whether it was April or May in the U.S. or Europe? Is your guidance change more reflective of just the prudent potential that we could see a softening effect?

Michael Kliger (CEO)

Thank you, Matt. No, I think this is really influenced by the short-term impact that we have seen. It's a multifaceted game. I mean, as you know, a lot of our customers are managers, are company owners, so a lot of these have kept them busy. I'm not in a position to say, "Oh, fundamentally, something in the market has changed. Was there something broken by these decisions?" I don't see that. Have these decisions over the last couple of weeks really created uncertainties? Definitely.

As always in the consumer game, stability is the key. If the new number is X, but that is a guaranteed new number, companies can adopt it, consumers can adopt it. We have, unfortunately, seen more than numbers change all the time. At the moment, we are cautious, but we have also seen that the mood has dampened. I do not see at the moment any concerns that something has changed in the luxury industry.

Matthew Boss (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Great. Martin, just maybe relative to this year's guidance for 3%-5% adjusted EBITDA margins for the legacy Mytheresa business, what would be the timeline that you see for profitability to return back to the high-single-digit EBITDA margin that you realized pre-pandemic?

Martin Beer (CFO)

Yeah, I mean, we always said that in the medium term, we want to go back to the 7%-9%, and we will go back. The question is, the key determining factor of this reversal we always mentioned is the continuous improvement in the gross-profit margin that we saw in the last two quarters, that we also see in this quarter, 140 basis points in the quarter, in the last nine months, 150 basis points. We are right on track in improving the overall adjusted EBITDA margin. We also pointed out in the call, the higher AOV, lower return rates all increase unit economics and also help on the, for example, shipping and payment cost ratio. For this, we expect a continuous improvement in the bottom line as our core focus stays on improving the profitability levels that we have showed in the last quarter.

Given the uncertainty in the top line, obviously, has some effect on the profitability, but we explicitly kept the 3%-5% bottom line guidance because the focus is on maintaining and improving the bottom line profitability and all the underlying business elements of our business model are fully intact on the journey to improve the bottom line profitability, to improve the adjusted EBITDA profitability. How and when we will come back to the 7%-9%, this is in the medium term, and we will continue this trajectory. In our September call, we will give the guidance for the next fiscal year, fiscal year 2026. At that time, we will also have a much better visibility on the overall macro situation that obviously is also a key driver.

The driving forces to continue to improve the bottom line profitability are fully intact, and we will strongly continue to follow that path to the 7%-9%.

Matthew Boss (Equity Research Analyst)

That's great color. Michael, just one quick follow-up. On the dampening that you cited, have you seen that both in the U.S. and in Europe?

Michael Kliger (CEO)

More so in the U.S.

Matthew Boss (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Best of luck.

Operator (participant)

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from the line of Ashley Helgens-Koziel with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Blake on for Ashley. Thanks for taking our questions. Just wanted to build on that last one in terms of the U.S. performance.

Could you break out at all by providing a little bit more color on sales trends by month and then aspirational versus your top customers in the U.S.? It would be great to get a little bit more color there if you could.

Michael Kliger (CEO)

Yeah, easy on the second one. Our top customer group in the U.S. in the last quarter, our business grew even by, if I cite it correctly, 12%. So that business is intact. It is further, as we have seen in the past quarters. It is always the lower median, and that was hit, and uncertainty hit it again. That is where it is happening. The resilience on the top side, the resilience on the ultra top is fully intact.

With these shocks that you see, with these shocks that also the equity markets took this time, the aspirational, the occasional customers, not speaking to their wealth, just speaking to their spending patterns, are always impacted more so. It is an even deeper polarization. Again, what we have observed seems to us a snapshot, seems to us an immediate knee-jerk reaction to this, as we have seen over the last weeks. There has been some reversal of it, but I will not be in a position to predict in which way we will go from here. On a month-by-month basis, it has started end of January, and then you get peaks with events. I mean, we are really in an eventful moment, and it is the stock market, but it is also macro crisis in regions. I do not know. It is almost impossible to predict.

That does not take anything away, as you can see from our numbers, the fundamental strengths. I mean, in a reversal, look at what is happening, and we can confirm our profitability. We can confirm margin improvement. We can confirm cost control. While the top line is not fully controllable, our business model allows us to control our bottom line.

That's super helpful. Just to follow up on that, I wanted to ask on gross margins specifically, and you kind of just referenced the ability to still grow margins and maintain profitability. How should we think about in an environment where maybe the aspirational customer slows down? Can you still grow gross margins, or how much incremental promotions do you see yourself doing?

Wondering how you think about your target of maintaining gross margin expansion versus maybe leaning into promotions or any other headwinds that you might foresee that would limit that ability.

No, we are absolutely able to further increase margin. I mean, the pace and the size of it, we will not guide now, but we absolutely have the ability to further improve our gross margin.

Got it. Last one, was just wondering if you had any more color on your exposure to brands that are manufactured in China, maybe how that is impacting your business, and if you could talk any more about indirect versus direct tariff impacts and maybe China exposure specifically.

No, I mean, we had different tariff impacts. One is, of course, that there is a flat increase by 10% for product going into the U.S.

Of course, made in China has very high, and they were not reversed. They're still in place. On Monday, my understanding is there was a decision to reduce them for the moment, which is, again, this uncertainty. It's not clear if it's now permanent or not. We do not have a huge chunk of made in China in dresses and contemporary brands. We do have brands that have manufacturing in China. Most of our products are not only sourced in Europe but also manufactured in Europe. Therefore, there is an impact on the U.S. channel, and there is an impact for product made in China. That impact is, at this stage, controllable. Obviously, at duty rates, which we had at 140%, you cannot pass that along. That effectively means you cannot sell the product.

Really appreciate the color. Best of luck.

Operator (participant)

It seems that we have no further questions for today. That concludes the Q&A session in today's conference call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines. Have a pleasant day everyone.