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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Maisons du Monde's conference call chaired by Julie Walbaum, CEO; and Arnaud Louet, CFO. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference is being recorded. We would also like to inform you that this event is available live with synchronized slide show.During this conference call, statements could be made that constitute forward-looking statements based on management's current expectations and beliefs, and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the future results expressed, forecast or implied by such forward-looking statements. For a more complete list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Maisons du Monde's filings with the French Autorité des marchés financiers.I would now like to hand the call over to Julie Walbaum. Madame, you may go ahead. I will be standing by.
Thank you. Good evening to everyone, and thank you very much for joining this call at a short notice.I am Julie Walbaum, CEO of Maisons du Monde, and I'm joined on this call by Arnaud Louet, our CFO; and Laurent Sfaxi, our Head of Investor Relations.As you know, we don't usually do quarterly sales calls, but we felt that in the current market context, it was worth taking a few minutes to quickly present our Q3 and 9-month numbers and give you an opportunity to ask any question you may have. I will begin with a few comments on our Q3 performance. Arnaud will detail on our sales, and I will then conclude with our updated 2018 full year guidance.Let me begin on Slide 3 with an executive summary. Overall, Maisons du Monde's third quarter performance demonstrates the robustness of our business model and of our omnichannel strategy. We posted solid sales growth in the quarter despite the soft trading environment, notably in France, as we had anticipated in our first half call in July. Like-for-like sales were also up at constant perimeter even with a challenging base effect. With double-digit growth both in online sales and in our international activities, momentum remains strong. And thanks to successful integration, Modani is also contributing to our growth.Finally, expansion continues with 5 new openings in the quarter, including a flagship store in Madrid, bringing the number of net openings since the start of the year to 12. We consider this a satisfactory performance overall. However, the trading environment in our French stores is tentatively soft. This context leads us to a slight adjustment in our full year guidance with full year sales growth now expected to be between 7% and 8 at constant perimeter and between 9% and 10%, including Modani. Despite the small cautious outlook on sales growth, we do maintain our EBITDA guidance in absolute value, both at constant perimeter and including Modani.I would return to that at the end of the presentation, but let me first hand over to Arnaud to detail our numbers.
Thank you, Julie, and good evening to everyone.On Slide 5, you see that our Q3 sales reached EUR 259.8 million, representing growth of 8.6% compared to the same quarter last year. On this amount, Maisons du Monde accounted for EUR 251.2 million at 5% while Modani contributed another EUR 8.6 million in sales in the quarter. On a like-for-like basis, Maisons du Monde sales were hurt by 1.1% in the quarter.Let's drill down a bit more on these numbers on Slide 6, which are all without Modani. As you can see, while overall growth stood at 5% at constant scope in the quarter, we saw contrasting sales between our domestic markets and international markets. As we had already flagged this December, the trading environment in France was soft. Moreover, we continue facing unfavorable weather conditions with exceptionally warm temperature. Both led to a growth of 8 -- 0.8% in the quarter while our international sales continue the robust growth, up 11.5%.In terms of channels, we also saw a contrast between store sales, which were up by 1.5% on online sales, which continued growing in a high double-digit rising by 17.6%. On categories showing similar trends with furniture up in double digits at 10.5% while decoration grew by 0.7%, in large part due to the decrease in store traffic in France.On Slide 7, we take a quick look to our performance in the 9 months. Total sales stood at EUR 766.8 million, up 10.2% year-on-year. Maisons du Monde sales at constant perimeter rose 8.1% to EUR 752.4 million. On a like-for-like basis, sales in the 9 months were up 3.6%. Modani contributed 45 -- EUR 14.5 million in sales in the 9 months starting in May, bearing in mind that we began consolidating the company in May.On the following slide, Slide 8, you see that the 9 months, we continued to outperform the market with our like-for-like growth, 6% percentage points above that of the market, as measured by the France IPEA index. Overall, however, as mentioned previously, the French market has been soft, both in Q2 and in Q3. In-store traffic was impacted by some specific factors, including the May bank holidays, the transport strike in Q2 and the unusually warm weather conditions and the football world cup in Q3.On Slide 9, we detail the 9 months sales by geographic channels and category. Sales in our home markets were up 5.1% while international sales were up by a strong 12.9%. Store sales rose by 5.4% while online sales posted a robust double-digit increase of 17.7%, very much in line with the Q3 performance online. And furniture sales rose by 10.7%, also in line with the Q3 number while decoration rose by 5.9%. This performance confirms the robustness of the group business model and the multichannel strategy.On Slide 10, we detailed the performance of our online and international business over a longer period to show their continued sustained growth and their growing weight in our overall sales. First, international sales in the 9-month period have risen to EUR 305.4 million this year from EUR 215.8 million 2 years ago, representing the compound annual growth of 19% over the period. International now accounts for 41% of our sales, up from 36% in 2016. As for online, in the 9 months of this year, sales stand at EUR 180.4 million, up from EUR 119.7 million in the same period in 2016, representing a CAGR of 23%. Online now represents 24% of our total sales, up from 20% 2 years ago.On Slide 11, you see that our sales growth in the 9 months is driven by a well-balanced combination of like-for-like expansion. Like-for-like sales have increased by EUR 23.9 million since the start of the year that is the same period last year, while expansions brought in another EUR 32.6 million. Of this amount, EUR 26.4 million come from the 16 net stores opening carried out in the first 9 months of 2017, while our 12 net openings this year, all in Q2 and Q3, have generated an additional EUR 6.2 million. Modani also contributed an additional EUR 14.5 million in sales since its acquisition in May, bringing our total sales in the period to EUR 766.8 million.Let me now hand over to Julie for our closing comments.
Thank you very much, Arnaud. On Slide 12, we are providing you with an update regarding our development in the U.S. As commented in our July call, Modani has opened 3 new showrooms, bringing the total number to 13. We are also continuing to implement our integration road map through a very positive collaboration with the founding team. Besides, we are happy to announce today the launch of our first test of the Maisons du Monde concept through a store located in Miami, leveraging the logistics and IT infrastructure of Modani. The store will open by the end of this year. It includes our main decoration themes and the selection of room setups with furniture to test the reach extent of our offer. It will also include a decoration advice corner following our successful test in Europe. Let's now move to Slide 13 to update you on our full year guidance. As detailed by Arnaud in the previous slide, we have achieved a satisfactory performance in Q3 considering the market context. However, as also said, the trading environment in our French stores is persistently soft due to unfavorable market and weather conditions, both of which impact our store traffic. While momentum in online and international do remain strong, fully in line with our expectations, the weight of French stores is such in total Q4 sales that we have decided to slightly adjust our full year guidance to take that into consideration. We now expect sales growth to be between 7% and 8% at constant perimeter. We also expect to open 22 stores on a net basis as constant scope. That is 3 more than our earlier forecast communicated in July. Out of the 3, this includes our test store in Miami. So 2 more in Europe and the test store in Miami. When we include Modani, sales growth will be between 9% and 10% with 25 net store openings in the year, 22 plus 3 of Modani. Nevertheless, despite our more cautious outlook on sales growth, we do maintain our previous EBITDA guidance in absolute value, both at constant perimeter and including Modani. So as a conclusion, in the context we've just shared, I believe Maisons du Monde once more demonstrates the robustness of its business model and its capacity to over perform the market also in tough conditions. The structural drivers of our sales growth, which are online and international, keep the strong momentum and do speak to our ability to win the game of tomorrow. Thank you very much for your attention. Arnaud and I are now happy to take your questions.
[Operator Instructions] We'll now take your first question from Caroline Gulliver from Jefferies.
I'm still just trying to understand the change between third quarter and fourth quarter and why France is being persistently soft. Obviously, in the third quarter, you had extremely hot temperatures, and you mentioned unfavorable weather in the fourth quarter as well, but I wouldn't have thought it was to the same extent. You obviously had the football, which isn't happening in the fourth quarter, a kinder impact you talked about and obviously, a much tougher comp. So you've got a much easier comp in the fourth quarter, but you said that market conditions were tough. Is that -- I'm trying to understand how much of that slowdown is due to, say, decline in French consumer spending or sort of reductions in housing transactions, et cetera? Or how much of it is just your being conservative into the year-end, given it's such a big quarter? And you said it's heavily influenced by French store sales. So that's my first question.
Thank you, Caroline. So, indeed, just to make it clear and to answer your question, it is a problem of French store sales which are linked to French store traffic. So just to clarify, international grows in line with expectations, online grows in line with expectations. So it's really a matter of French store sales, which are very linked to French store traffic. So what is happening in Q4? Well, Q4 started with October. And in October, we did see also exceptionally warm weather through half the month of October. And the fact is, France store sales has a disproportionate amount of weight in the total Q4 performance. If I take the store sales of France, it's more than 40% of the total Q4 performance. And as we were describing this slow traffic in French stores, given the weight of French stores in total sales, we decided to adjust the guidance. But again, all the other drivers are green light and in line with our expectations.
Okay. And then just a few more qualitative comments if you could, on customer reaction to the home decoration advice offer that you've just launched.
So indeed, in the fall, we did launch our autumn-winter collections and also our Capsule collections with Chantal Thomass and a lighting catalog. Autumn-winter collections did perform well. And if you look at our online decoration performance, you can see that we performed well also in our decoration collections. So this performs well. But indeed, in stores, the decoration collections are linked to store traffic. And when store traffic gets softer, it can get a bit softer on decoration as well when it comes to stores. The Capsule collection with Chantal Thomass has been welcomed with excitement by our consumers, which could see again the creative touch of the brand. And our lighting catalog does bring the site that we were expecting and the lighting category is showing very good dynamics.
And just -- I don't know if you're able to say anything about the customer take-up of the home decoration advice services, the 3D app or anything like that.
Thank you. Sorry, I didn't get your question right. So this is very well received by our customers. If I take the 3D app, it was downloaded more than 20,000 times. And indeed, we see a very nice improvement in conversion rate once the users use the app.
Great. And then just very finally, you talked about confirming EBITDA guidance unchanged in value. Is that approximately EUR 150 million in terms of including Modani?
So it is very difficult to give a specific amount because if you resort to the communication we made in July, we said above 13% of sales, which was around 8% at constant scope and 10% with Modani. So that gives a range in absolute value, so we do commit to this range.
Okay. So you're just confirming the above 13% margin.
Yes.
We will now take your next question from Aurélie Husson from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Three questions for me, please. Still, again, about the EBITDA guidance because this is the first time that you mentioned a value, an absolute value, so just wanted to be clear if you can give a number, exact number or at least stay with the margin, so we are still -- we are all on the same page, that would be great. I have a question also, you had very little growth in decoration in Q3, so what happened there, especially if you said that the Capsule collection of Chantal Thomass, I guess, it's decoration mostly was successful. And there is also a huge discrepancy between France and international. You said that and it's obvious in the figures. Could you make an exception this time and give us an indication of like-for-like in France versus international, so at least we know exactly where we stand.
Thank you, Aurélie. So to your different questions, your question around EBITDA and an exact value to associate to that. Again, it is pretty hard for me to give an absolute value in the sense that in our previous guidance and that's what we always been doing is to give a range and to guide on 13% plus of sales, which we continue doing. And the sales growth expected was around 8%. So that gives a range in absolute terms. So doing the math of 13% times 8%, that gives a range in absolute terms and this is that range we commit to. So this is -- the best insight I can give is that it is within that range.
Okay. Just a quick follow-up on this one. So this is the first time you mentioned absolute value. We would have been very happy if you just said that you were keeping the 13%, more than 13% margin. So can we keep that as a guidance?
Yes. To your second question around decoration performance, so -- and your questions around Chantal Thomass. So first, the Capsule collection with Chantal Thomass was not intended to provide the significant sales. It was always aimed at giving some excitement and opportunity to our consumers to come to our stores and see again what's new. It was a very limited collection of 50 SKUs for 4 months in our stores. So it did have the impact that we were expecting, which was more around excitement around novelty and traffic, but not sales. What happens in decoration is a little bit of what happens in the rest, that is, it is showing strong dynamics internationally. But indeed, it is soft in France and quite soft in France. Why is that? Because decoration sales are fairly linked to store traffic and this is -- and this slow traffic that we were explaining through unfavorable market conditions, consumer confidence being low, all the press release around oil prices going up, make it less likely for visitors to go into impulse purchases in our stores. So those impulse purchases, which are decoration purchases, are less promoted by unfavorable consumer confidence context. And if you add to that the very warm weather, which really encouraged people to go out on weekends and on restaurants rather than shopping, this -- both effects did impact store traffic and then impulse purchases, which are decorations. So this is very much restricted to that effect. But again, if you look at online and international, the dynamics goes very well. Now in -- I can even give a bit more flavor on this decoration performance. If you look at categories, for example, which can help a bit giving more flash, let me take 3 categories like tableware, textile and lighting. Tableware was quite soft in Q3 because it was facing product availability issues, some supplier operational constraints that we are -- that we have sold now. And indeed, tableware sales are picking up very nicely in the beginning of Q4. If I take textile though, textile is exactly in -- exactly the example of what I was describing. Textile is very much of an impulse purchase. It's very much driven by store traffic. And also, when you speak textile, in winter textile, you speak a lot about plates. And when it's very warm weather outside, you're less likely to buy fur plates, for example. So textile indeed is a category which is more challenged in this warm weather context. But on the other side, if you take the lighting category, it is showing very good dynamics. So going category by category, you can explain a bit more the deco performance.
And Aurélie, I can take your third question regarding the like-for-like. You know that we do not usually comment and do not provide the breakdown between France and international. And in this context, we maintain these positions. But what I can share with you, even if we do not usually comment on a monthly basis, I can tell you that in July, we were negative in stores in France and globally, store at the international level. And after, for August and September, we were positive at the international level but not in France. So France is gradually improving. We are not in the same base compared to July, but it's still negative due to this decrease in traffic.
We will now take our next question from Marie Fort from SG.
Sorry to come back on the EBITDA guidance. I understand that you want to reassure with mentioning a flat EBITDA guidance in absolute -- in value terms, but it's not so reassuring because we don't have any comparison. So could you comment the consensus expectations for 2019, which is forecasting EUR 152 million? How comfortable are you with this estimate? And my second question is about Debenhams corners? Is there any risk on that point, given the current difficulties of Debenhams? Any risk to close the corners next year or current this year?
Thank you, Marie-Line. I will take your first question. The -- you know that we do not comment the consensus, so it will be difficult for me to give you any comment on that. The thing is, we want to say to the market on our guidance regarding EBITDA, the fact that we do not -- the slight difference that we provide regarding sales won't impact our profitability. That's the main point. So we -- you know that we are very cost-oriented. We know how we can manage and implement action plan regarding costs. And our message is, for sure, we maintain the stats in EBITDA but in addition to that, what we want to say to the market is, we had an idea of absolute value as our previous guidance, and we do think that we will be able to maintain this absolute value. That's the main point. The point is, we do not see any difficulty to maintain this profitability.Regarding your second questions, I will hand over to Julie.
Yes, thank you. So Debenhams in our minds and in our strategy around the U.K. has always been considered as a test. So we've been pretty cautious in our sales forecast concerning the Debenhams corners, so it is really nonsignificant in terms of the total sales impact. So we do take the learnings that we wanted to take on the ground, and this includes how our collections are received by the consumers. Any learning regarding the in-store experience, which is really helpful in reflecting around our go-to-market strategy for the U.K., but it has really no significant impact on total sales, so we are not worried at all on this point.
We will now take our next question from Georgina Johanan from JPMorgan.
I've got 2, I suppose, please, 2 or 3. First one is, just looking sort of at November and December, are you implicit within this guidance? Are you still expecting some pickup in performance in French consumer spend? Or are you less confident about that now? And I guess, looking into the start of 2019, particularly, when there's an incremental tax collection changes coming in, in France, are you sort of now more concerned about this, given how long the like-for-like drag has now been continuing for? And also, if you could give us any color on the comparative last year sort of through Q4, like do they ease from here, for example? That was my first question. My second question was just on the EBITDA guidance and how you're sort of confident in holding that in absolute terms. I would have expected the operation gearing to be higher in the final quarter. Are you sort of actively pulling back on some costs in -- some variable costs, say, for example, marketing spend or something, if you can sort of share on that. And then finally, I appreciate you don't speak to consensus, but given that you have an absolute EBITDA sort of floor clearly in mind, is it possible to share that number, please?
Thank you, Georgina. So I'll take your questions 1, 3 and 4, and Arnaud will comment on the comparable month by month for Q4. So on your first question around what do we expect for November and December, really, it's quite early to say because we are in the very early days of November. What we can see is that the online dynamics is good. The international dynamics is good also in November. So it's really a matter again of stores layout in France and quite linked to store traffic in France. Now, it is true that the next 2 weeks, we are so high in volume of sales because you're right to say that Q4 has a very strong weight in the full year sales and November and December are really strong months in this Q4. So this is the best forecast that we can give to the best of our knowledge at this date. What we expect is French environment for store traffic and store sales, which we expect to stay soft for a couple of reasons. First, weather is becoming a bit more normative but is still really quite warm, and the first days of November is still in line with that. And also, the consumer confidence, which it is true we were hoping it would pick up in November, December with the government measures around tax cuts. So far, it's not being observed, probably because those tax cuts even if indeed they will take -- start taking effect in November because the sales tax cuts will have -- have happened just at the end of October, so we could potentially expect regain in momentum for that reason, but we also see a lot of diversity around oil prices. And if I can just give you a couple of numbers, if we look at the 12 last months, the gasoline price has increased by 14% and the diesel has increased by 23%. And diesel is more than half of our total costs in France. And this is spending that people cannot cut on, so it -- they might make this arbitrage on nondisposable income. And this leads us to stay cautious on the trading environment for store sales in France. And that's really the only reason. Now, maybe the government measures will have an impact, a better impact that we currently observe, and that will be for the greater. But so far, we prefer to stay cautious, because we also see this market context. But indeed, this is why we give a range between 7% and 8% because it is true that the coming weeks are high volumes. And what will happen in the last 4 nights of November and beginning of December, will impact the full year guidance for sure, hence, the range.Now about any concern for 2019, it is, honestly, fairly early to say. And it is true that the next couple of months will give us quite a bit of light on the consumer confidence and the consumption context and thus will help define the more precise view of 2019, again for French stores because we are fairly -- we are really confident on the other drivers. So it's really a matter of better understanding French store sales in the coming year. And to be honest, it's a bit early to say, especially regarding those government measures that we are still expecting. But in the next year, we have -- we also have all the other drivers that we are mentioning and that we also believe that the momentum will regain because it always does at some point. The government measures, we hope that they will have an impact, maybe not in a very short term given these oil price increases, but at some point, it will probably, so we're still optimistic for 2019 for sure. To your question on comparable...
On comparable, yes. Just to give you that, on Q4 last year, we were quite well balanced across the 3 months. Even if we had a softer performance in December, you remember, maybe, that we had some impact due to early days calendar effect in France, which impacted a little bit the performance in December. But for the rest, quite well balanced across October and November.
And then on the variable costs that perhaps you're pulling back on or not?
Yes. So it is true that we stay very vigilant on our cost management as we want to respect the guidance regarding the EBITDA value. Now we're also very pragmatic, and we do not want to put that risk in the sales potential, whether it is in the short term or in the medium term. So regarding marketing, as you mentioned it, it's very important for us that we keep our marketing efforts at the same level. If anything, we do reinforce them by the end of this year, and we have a number of marketing initiatives to help, and that includes a series of drugstore initiatives to bring more dynamics to the store traffic. So if anything, we maintain. If not, we accelerate the marketing spending for the end of the year. But it is true that we have adopted a very tough management of other variable and fixed costs to make sure that we stay nimble, and we can achieve the EBITDA guidance in absolute value that we committed to.
And did you want to share the sort of absolute value that you, sort of, have as a floor in your planning? Or would you rather not share that?
The -- sorry to be repeating the same thing but again, we -- it is really hard for us at this moment of the year, given the weight of November, given the weight of December. Again, Q4 is not only more than 1/3 of our sales, but it's 1/2 of our full year profit. And November, December are, by far, the strongest part of Q4. So it's really hard to say more than a range, for that precise reason, because Q4 is so big in the year, it's 1/2 of the profit of the year. And November, December are more than 2/3, they are probably 70%, 75% of the profit of Q4. So it wouldn't be reasonable from us to tell it's more than the range. This is why we give this range.
We will now take your next question from Anna Patrice from Berenberg.
Couple of questions from my side. First, again on France, could you indicate at least what was the online growth in France? So that will be gorgeous. So second question is on indications on the current weakness, so to say. So basically in the past, you were saying that you can increase the guidance maybe with Q3 or adjust the guidance with Q3 depending on how your autumn-winter collections have been taking. So from the collection perspective, what do you see? Do you think -- are you happy with the collection? Do you think it's quite better? Are you happy with your inventories? Is this weakness just down to the market or it's also something to do with how the market has taken the collection? And then the last question is actually on the U.S. Why such rush to open a new store in the U.S.? I thought you want to take it a bit more slowly. So understanding how the market works with Modani. You had a question that it -- not that long time ago, to really understand how the market works. So why such a rush to open your own new store in the U.S.?
Thank you, Anna. So to your different questions, you're asking about France online numbers. I'm afraid I cannot disclose this exact number because we do not disclose by channel and by country. It is -- what I can say is that in this online has been really strong in Q3 as we posted a 17.6% in Q3 2018, and that goes after 21% growth in Q3 last year. So 18% on top of the 21% last year. So this online growth is very strong, and it is strong in France and abroad. It is stronger abroad than in France, but it's also strong in France. And if you take the 9 months view, this 18 -- this 17.6% -- because -- becomes a 17.7%. So we see and this momentum keeps strong throughout the year, and Q3 is a good sign to that. So we are pretty happy about the online performance, including in France. While talking about collections and inventories, so what I can say is the following. So we've released our autumn-winter collections. And we -- if we decorrelate that from the traffic, we are pretty happy with the collections. And what makes me say that is that online decoration is performing well, and international decoration is performing well. The problem with decoration collection in France is that decoration is pertaining to traffic because it's an impulse purchase and we have less traffic in store in France, hence, decoration collection performance in France. The thing is, in Q3 -- in Q4, the weight of decoration performance in France is pretty high, hence, the impact on the global performance. But again, this is very restricted to that one effect. And we're talking about inventories versus quality of items. As I said, we could face, in the first few months, some availability issues, and that was the case with tableware. Tableware is a big category at Maisons du Monde. And it is true that over Q2 and the beginning of Q3, we had some product availability issues, and we solved them. We worked with our suppliers. And now we have no store counts in tableware, and the sales are very much picking up. So I would not say we have inventory problems. The ones we had have been solved now. And if we talk about interesting performance of the collections, it's more -- I would give more the read of the categories and, hence, my comment earlier on, on tableware versus lighting versus textile. So indeed, textile is a bit more challenged these days because of the traffic and the warm weather, but it's not a matter of collections performing poorly compared to the past. It's more a matter of categories and fitness with the market conditions. And now the question around the U.S. It is - first, it is strictly in line with what we had shared with you in July, that we wanted to test the concept, and we take this opening very much as it is, as a test. And for us, the earlier, the better. Because the earlier we can understand better how our consumers in the United States receive our products, potential adjustment to be made with no pressure indeed on the timing because we do have time because it is not included in the current plan, so we do have time. But if we can open in nice conditions, which is the case with this store because it's a short-lease store. So we don't commit to a long term. It's a short-lease agreement, so we don't take any risk. Operationally speaking, we do leverage both the expertise of the Modani team and also the legacy called infrastructure, so it is not time consuming for us. It is leveraging the strength of the team out there. So for us, it's indeed the best condition to do this test and again, leveraging the Modani. So it's an opportunity that we wanted to tackle. We had this short-lease opportunity in a great district in Miami, which is a windward district, which is a very high district. So in terms of brand building, it is also very positive. And this is how we consider this store as a first step to potentially build a brand and so the need to test our concept.
And then the final question again on the EBITDA. Basically, normally, you have higher EBITDA margins in stores. Now you will have negative regional mix, given that France is declining just in terms of sales. So how would you think about the margins from a group level? What would be the headwinds to the margins on a group level. It's first question. And then the second question, normally, you're guiding a bit on the gross margin in terms of high rate of the furniture, that the furniture has lower gross margin. However, I would think that in absolute values, the gross margin of furniture is higher and has actually, on the EBIT or EBITDA level, the margins from the furniture could be higher. So could you provide some kind of indications on the margins on the EBIT or EBITDA margin, how the different figures compare to one another?
So first on the EBITDA in France versus international, it is true that French EBITDA -- French store EBITDA is higher due to the long-standing presence of our stores here in France, but it is quite comfortable. So even if it gets a bit softer and slower than expected, it's still in the higher range of the average. So we don't -- we have obviously included that forecast and this does not change due to that reason of really coming from a very high point of the stock. And then it is true that it does require an active cost management on our site to make sure that we also optimize our fixed cost, for example. And this is why we are comfortable committing to this range because the cost management measures have been done, and we are seeing the impact. So this cost management program helped us absorb the softening of the sales growth in France, which would indeed impact a little bit EBITDA in value. Now when it comes to furniture vessel decoration, it is true, you're right, furniture margins are lower than decoration, but it's not significant enough to impact more than what we said the EBITDA guidance. So again, we are committing to the EBITDA guidance in value.
We'll now take our next question from Tushar Jain from Goldman Sachs.
Three questions from my side. Can you just give us a sense like how much is online growth in France cannibalizing your store? Or it's just due to the weather issue that you're highlighting? Second would be in the 5 stores you have opened internationally, how many of them are shop-in-shops? And the third question, how is the management in the U.S. incentivized? Is it based on the growth in Modani or the total sales growth in the U.S.? If you can give us a little more color on that one.
Thank you, Tushar. So I'll take questions 1 and 3 and Arnaud will answer on the stores. Online growth in France potentially cannibalizing store growth, I honestly wouldn't say that. First, online sales are primarily furniture based, so even if decoration is growing as a part of online sales, we are still very heavily biased towards furniture. And this is the beauty of the complementarity of our model between stores and online. So the online segment does not represent a significant threat for stores. If anything, actually, it's really the opposite because we see more and more consumers coming into our stores after having seen our decoration products, not only on our website but more and more on the social networks, such as Instagram and Pinterest. So it is actually very interesting to notice that the higher and higher share of our store traffic is coming from people like really spotting the trends online and making -- and then coming to stores, and this is what we call a right to store campaigns, which are both tactical campaigns but also branding campaigns and both really help with the store traffic. So I would not really not see any cannibalization or the opposite for me. It is a virtuous circle by all means. On the store count...
On the store count, it should be as clear as possible on the shop-in-shop. So on a full year, we will add 6 shop-in-shop openings, 4 in the U.K. and 2 in France. On this 6 openings, 5 are done at the end of September. We are still waiting for 1 in France with [ Le Printemps ] in a very nice place close to Paris in a very high-traffic mode. And I take this opportunity just to be as clear as possible, that shop-in-shop, we have different level of site because the first one we opened this year in [ Le Printemps ] in Strasbourg. It was -- it is more than 1,000 square meter store, so it's like a store opening. It's just a -- store opened in [ Le Printemps ], but it's a large size. So we have a huge difference between the different types. And on one more time, the good news with this model, it's very low CapEx stores opening, and so we are able to leverage the payback ratio and the return on capital employed.
And to your final question around the U.S. team, it is incentivized on the development of the U.S. activities that is both Modani sales and Maisons du Monde sales.
No more question? So thanks a lot one more time for attending this call in such short notice, and we wish you a very nice evening.
Thank you very much indeed, and have a very nice evening.