CEO's
Statement
Inditex is a company with a powerful corporate culture and solid roots.
The Group’s strong performance in 2024, detailed throughout this Annual Report, is the result of these qualities, our refusal to settle and our innovative drive, which guide everything we do and allow us to navigate any environment, no matter how uncertain or complex, with confidence.
The directions the fashion world will take are difficult to predict. Fashion is, by definition, constant change and innovation. That gives us an advantage: our very business forces us to read and listen to our surroundings constantly in order to respond nimbly, adapt and provide our customers with what they want at any moment of time, always living up to the expectations of society. Our results for 2024, which are very positive, reflect our teams’ dedication and success tackling these challenges.
In the last few months, specifically between 1 February 2024 and 31 January 2025, we delivered on the commitments we made to our stakeholders, as detailed throughout the various chapters of this report. Our collections were once again warmly welcomed by our customers: Group revenue increased by 7.5% year-on-year, underpinned by growth across all our retail formats.
These achievements can only be explained by the talent of our designers and creative professionals and the performance of our sales, logistics and corporate teams. The mutual and complementary support provided by our physical stores and online platforms is another key differentiating factor, while all of our brands), without exception, launched innovative projects in 2024. Some aim to reach new customers, while others seek to get closer to their followers in new ways, offering them new experiences, each stamped with their own style and identity. We once again demonstrated that ambition and audacity, not being afraid to launch innovative proposals (some in partnership with prestigious designers and artists), form part of Inditex’s identity.
Our brands’ physical stores continue to enter new markets (reaching 97 in 2024), accompanied by more visits to our online platforms (over 8 billion), more active app accounts (218 million) and more social media followers (257 million across all our brands). By the end of this year, we were selling our fashion proposals to customers in 214 markets thanks to our online reach.
Our execution was framed by efficiency, marked by a record gross margin and stringent control over operating expenses. Net profit was 9% higher than in 2023, while our net cash position topped €11.5 billion.
Getting ready for the future
2024 was also marked by intense work to get ready to take advantage of growth opportunities going forward.
We are executing our 2024-2025 logistics expansion plan, increasing our capacity through projects for several of our retail formats in Zaragoza, Lelystad (Netherlands) and Valencia. These are strategic investments that uphold stringent sustainability standards and incorporate cutting edge technology.
In our model, the product and customer experience go hand in hand. That is something we are very much keeping in mind as we look to the future. That is why our brands are driving continuous improvements in the design and image of their retail spaces. All of our formats continue to assess new formulas for using their surface area by tapping into new ways of displaying our products and providing new customer experiences. The combination of technology and our teams’ know-how when it comes to looking after each type of customer are the drivers underpinning these advances. Visiting any of our brands’ stores will remain a special experience.
Continuous improvement and innovation also guided our progress on the sustainability front in 2024. We made important strides in the use of lower impact and recycled fibres, with the latter already accounting for more than one-third of the textile materials we use.
In this same vein, in 2024, we tightened our ties with promising startups specialised in next-generation fibres under different forms of partnership. We continue to offer them our knowledge of textile processes and fashion and access to our network of partners and suppliers so that they can scale up their activity and align their research and lines of initiative with market demands. In short, so that they can effect change.
Partnership is also the backbone of our Supply Chain Transformation Plan, launched last year. We are leveraging that plan to support and advise our suppliers and manufacturers so that they can meet more ambitious requirements around water management, chemical substances, waste and emissions.
As a result of this and other initiatives, we made further progress towards a low-carbon economy: between 2018 and 2024, while our sales registered growth of 47%, our emissions came down by 5%. As for emissions generated by our own operations only, the reduction over that same timeframe increases to 88%.
Looking After our Professionals
Facilitating our professionals’ career development was a priority once again. Inditex’s unwavering effort to do better is underpinned by our teams’ commitment, dedication and passion for learning and innovating. In 2024, we provided our people with 3.3 million hours of training and filled 70% of our vacancies through internal promotions.
We remained committed to diversity and inclusion, achieving our goal of doubling the number of employees with disabilities over a two-year period and bringing our For&From platform to new markets. We made these inroads in a year in which Inditex signed the European Union's Diversity Charter, a commitment to fostering the principles of equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
Committed to our Surroundings
In 2024, we continued to work to have a positive impact on our business communities beyond the strict sphere of our organic influence as a fashion company. Our people devoted more than 353,600 hours to community initiatives. We supported 953 social and environmental programmes in partnership with 485 community organisations and initiatives.
The corresponding sections of this report outline the most important work done in our communities. I would like to use these lines to specifically recall the painful catastrophe that engulfed Valencia last October, which affected members of our team and had an extremely hard impact on our closest community.
How Inditex See the Future
The various chapters of this report give a very detailed account of our Group’s activities and performance throughout 2024. They also provide a snapshot of how Inditex sees a future filled with major opportunities:
That is how the creative, international and diverse adventure that is Inditex welcomes in 2025, the year in which we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Zara store. We are ready to continue to create quality fashion that helps make people’s lives that little bit better.
Óscar García Maceiras
CEO, Inditex