Coca-Cola HBC AG

Good morning. Thank you for joining the call. In a moment, Zoran will share his highlights of the first half of the year before Anastasis takes you through our financial performance in more detail and discusses the outlook for the balance of 2024. And finally, Zoran will return for a strategic overview before we open up to questions. We have just over an hour available for the call today, which should leave around 30 minutes for questions. We will therefore ask you to keep to one question and one follow-up before joining the queue again. Let me remind you that this conference call contains various forward-looking statements and that these should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary statements in our slide pack and in our results statement issued today. Now let me turn the call over to Zoran.

Thank you, Joanna. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. I'm very pleased with our progress in the first half of 2024. We continue to execute our strategy, delivering strong performance in a mixed market environment and continuing to invest in our portfolio and capabilities. As always, the key to our continued success are our committed, passionate, and engaged people who have remained incredibly adaptive and resilient. Also, a very big thanks to our customers, the Coca-Cola Company, Monster Energy, and all our other partners for their trust and collaboration in jointly driving sustainable growth. I'd like to call out three things that stand out for me for this period. First, the strong and high quality organic revenue growth we've delivered with volume growth of 3.1%. Growth was led by the three prioritized categories across our 24-7 portfolio, sparkling energy and coffee. and we are gaining share with NARTD up 170 basis points and Sparkling up 80 basis points year-to-date. Second, the resilient EBIT performance even while navigating challenging environments in several markets, and we'll discuss that in more detail in the coming slides. And third, the ongoing investment we are making in our 24-7 portfolio and BISPO capabilities in support of our growth strategy. The numbers we reported today show our growth strategy is working. Organic revenue is up 13.6% in first half, with organic volumes up 3.1%. We have delivered continued top-line momentum, building on a strong start in Q1 with an acceleration of volumes in the second quarter. At the same time, we have continued to grow EBIT. Organic EBIT grew by 7.5%. and that is on top of tough comparatives in 2023. During the first half, we achieved strong performance despite significant FX weaknesses in two markets, Nigeria and Egypt. These headwinds contributed to a lower comparable EBIT margin by 30 basis points. Currency movements are a reality of some of our markets, and we have the tools and techniques to manage them in the best possible way. As we've said before, emerging markets offer tremendous growth opportunities and we are investing to unlock them. Sparkling remains the most important engine of our growth for our company and has performed well this half with organic volume of almost 1% against a strong competitive and with value share up 80 basis points. Once again, we have worked closely with a Coca-Cola company to develop our summer plans. The focus has been capitalizing on a summer of sport with targeted marketing campaigns during Euro 24 and in preparation for the Olympics. In Austria, we ran a consumer promotion to win tickets to the Euro for our biggest customers. And you can see here the players on the one-litre multipacks. we activated the entire sparkling drinks portfolio in Poland by offering consumers the chance to win tickets to Paris 2024. We are also building the connection between our portfolio and our consumers' favorite music and festivals. For example, the wristbands promotion shown here, which gives consumers fast access passes and only Coke can do special experiences. Adult sparkling continues to be a positive contributor to volume and revenue per case expansion, and we've benefited from several innovations in Schweppes and Kinley, including alcohol replacement offers such as Blueberry Mojito in Romania, or strengthening our zeros proposition in tonics with new launches and campaigns. And we launched 3 cents in a further 9 markets over the period, targeting the cocktail occasion in the super premium segment. Energy continues to perform very well, even with tough comparatives. Our segmented portfolio in energy allows us to target the offering to different markets, demographics, and affordability needs. We have seen strong performances from Predator and Fury, and emerging market-focused affordable offers, as well as from Burn, our premium brand. Monster also continues to do well, with particularly strong results in Egypt. and we launched Monster Energy Green Zero Sugar in 16 markets, opening up another area of growth for the brand. Coffee volumes grew 21.6%, and we continued to focus on out-of-home customer recruitment, adding 1,500 new outlets in the period. Costa had a solid start to the year, growing in out-of-home, while Cafe Vergnano delivered another strong performance with volumes up by 56%. Still volumes grew by 5.2%. I am particularly pleased to see the strong recovery in volume growth for water. We took the decision in 23 to drive more value in the category through targeted brand positioning as well as package and price adjustments in several of our markets. Following the initial expected volume decline, we are again seeing growth with first half volumes up high single digits. We are focusing this growth on a profitable sub-segment, accelerating single serves for the at-home occasion and the out-of-home channel. In sports drinks, we delivered strong mid-teams growth. Powerade campaigns have been targeted around the Olympics and we are significantly increasing sales distribution and activation. Premium spirits volumes grew by 17.3% with a particularly good performance in the developing segment. We took over the distribution of Finlandia Vodka in 19 markets, enhancing our premium spirits credentials and opening up incremental mixability opportunities for our NARTD portfolio. I am particularly excited about Poland and Czech where Finlandia has a great presence and where we weren't distributing before we acquired the business. And as we continue growing sales, it's important that we grow in a sustainable way and continually strive to increase collection of the packaging we put on the market. For that reason, packaging circularity remains at the top of our agenda. Deposit return schemes, or DRS, are one way to ensure both high packaging collection rates and supply of feedstock for recycling. DRS went live in Hungary and Ireland in January and February respectively this year, with promising starts in both countries. In Ireland, for example, around 335 million beverage containers have been collected since the 1st of February, with daily returns reaching 3.2 million on average in July. We are encouraged by the positive results in the first eight months of DRS operation in Romania. And in June alone, over half the plastic bottles placed in the market were returned for recycling. In general, we are finding that the transitions to DRS are progressing in line with plans and customers and consumers are responding positively. I'm pleased to share that in July, we were awarded $130 million loan by the EBRD to finance CAPEX and working capital requirements in Egypt. This loan recognizes our long-term commitment to Egypt and also our sustainability credentials in this market. The loan will also support our ongoing investment in people and in developing sustainability solutions. For example, continuing to fund our Youth Empowered and She Leads programs and continuing to invest in our energy-efficient coolers and sustainable packaging innovations. Let me now hand over to Anastasis to take you through the financial results in more detail. Thank you, Zoran, and good morning, everyone.

In the first half, we achieved strong organic revenue growth, up 13.6%, with an acceleration in quarter two versus quarter one. The quality of this revenue remains high, with 3.1% organic volume growth in half one, and with volume growing organically in all three segments in quarter two. Organic revenue per case increased by 10.2%, keeping pace with quarter one. Overall, pricing remained the most important driver of revenue per case as we took actions to mitigate ongoing inflation, currency devaluation, and changes to regulation and taxation in specific markets. We also saw the impact of value over pricing from the prior year. Mix was also positive. with continued improvement in single-serve mix, which expanded 130 basis points in the first half. It is worth highlighting that while revenue per case expansion was similar in quarter one and quarter two, this was driven by an acceleration in the emerging segment in quarter two, as we continue to take actions to manage the currency devaluations in Nigeria and Egypt. Half one EBIT grew 7.5% on an organic basis, driven by strong performances from both the established and developing segments. As Zohra mentioned, we have managed currency devaluations in Nigeria and Egypt during the first half of 2024, and I'm really proud that the business was able to navigate the impact and produce another year-on-year expansion in comparable limits, both on an organic and a reported basis, and even on a short-term basis within months of the devaluations. Now, let's go through the drivers. Comparable gross profit expanded by 6%. We benefited from reduced COX pressure compared to what we have recently seen in the business. This was as a result of some easing of the rate of inflation of our key commodities, as well as foreign currency translation benefits from costs denominated in emerging market currencies. This easing COX pressure, combined with a strong revenue growth, allowed us to deliver a 100 basis point expansion in gross profit margin. Moving on to OPEX, we have seen comparable operating costs expand by 8.7% in the first half of the year, another result, an increase in OPEX as a percentage of revenue. The main driver of this has been currency weakness in the emerging segment, which has resulted in a mark-to-market adjustment on balance sheet items with a negative impact on the P&L in the emerging segment. Aside from this impact, we have also continued to invest ahead of the curve in the opportunities we see for our 24-7 portfolio. In half one, we expanded our sales force, in particular focusing on the out-of-home, as well as invested in premium spirits and coffee. Overall comparable EBIT margin declined 30 basis points versus 2023, and down 60 basis points on an organic basis, driven by the higher OPEX. Coca-Cola Hellenic has a strong track record of improving OPEX as a percentage of revenue. And we fully expect to return to improving this metric as a key driver of the margin expansion that we target for our medium-term guidance. Now, moving to the segments, established markets revenue grew 4.4%, driven by price mix. We are still seeing the positive impact of carryover pricing from 2023, as well as some additional pricing taking in the first half of the year. Quarter two price mix saw an anticipated decline relative to quarter one. This has been driven by cycling a very strong expansion in Q2 2023, as well as negative country mix driven in part by the strong growth from Greece and relatively weaker performance from Switzerland. We also saw strong performance in water compared to flat sparkling volumes, which drove negative category mix. On the other hand, we continue to benefit from actions to drive positive package mix, expanding single-serve mix by 120 basis points in the first half of the year. Volumes were steady in the first half, with a pleasing return to growth in quarter two as an easier comparative. Overall, sparking was down slightly, although our continued focus on zeros delivered good growth on a top comparative. Energy was up high single digits, And I'm pleased to report that Stills grew too, with sport drinks growing high single digits. The established segments saw organic EBIT growth of 11.1% and 70 basis points expansion in comparable EBIT margin. This was driven by good leverage from top-line growth, as well as lower inflation in Cox per unit case. Revenue in the developing segment grew by 11.5%, with volumes up 3.1%. Revenue per case increased by 8.1%, benefiting from carryover pricing, ongoing pricing during the period, and also improved category mix. Sparkling and energy were the main contributors to volume growth. We are also encouraged to see growth in our premium offerings in the market, in particular Powerade, and also Kinley, which has benefited from the brand relaunch. Comparable EBIT grew substantially by 62.3%, with comparable EBIT margins up 310 basis points. benefiting from good leverage from top-line growth, as well as lower inflation in COPs per unit case. Revenues in the emerging segment grew by 22.7%, and price mix was positive at 17.6%, mainly driven by pricing to manage the impacts from currency devaluation, and also benefited from positive category and package mix. Volumes were robust, growing 4.3%. Sparkling continues to be the growth engine in the emerging segment, and both stills and energy also contributed positively. In Nigeria, volume grew double digits as we continued to execute well in a challenging macroeconomic environment. In Egypt, we saw good recovery of volume in sparkling in quarter two, as well as ongoing strength in energy throughout the period. In Water in Egypt, a strategic decision to focus on profitable growth has been successful, and the category grew following the reset last year. It is our execution and deep knowledge of emerging markets that sets us apart at times like this, and we are immensely proud of our team's hard work and commitment to delivering a highly dynamic environment. Moving further down the P&L, we can see a slight decline in comparable earnings per share in the first half to deliver one euro and four cents per share. Finance costs were higher year on year, mainly related to foreign currency. We expect second half finance costs to be lower on the first half. We have adjusted our finance cost guidance to the range of 60 to 75 million euro. And as expected, our comparable tax rate of 27% was at the top end of our guided range. Moving to the balance sheet, the first graph show a year-on-year decline in CAPEX in line with our planned phasing. We still expect CAPEX as a percentage of sales to be within our guidance rates of 6.5% to 7.5% by year-end. We generated precast low of €220 million, a decline year-on-year due to the phasing of networking capital. Our balance sheet remains very strong with net debt to EBITDA below our guided range of 1.5 to 2 times. We continue to return cash to shareholders, paying 93 euro cents dividend in June, an increase of 19% versus prior year payments. And we have also returned over 160 million to shareholders throughout our share buyback since its start. Now, let me say a few words on the outlook before passing back to Zoran. While we're mindful of the challenging macroeconomic and geopolitical backdrop, including a more uncertain consumer environment, we are upgrading guidance for 2024. This reflects a strong first half performance and high confidence in our bespoke capabilities, our 24-7 portfolio, and the potential across a diversified country footprint. We now expect organic revenue growth of 8% to 12% and organic EBIT growth in the range of 7% to 12%. We have not changed our guidance on COGS per case, which is still for a low to mid-single-digit expansion. Thank you with that, and back to Zoran.

Thanks, Anastasi. The first half performance shows that our 24-7 portfolio combined with our bespoke capabilities can deliver in a range of market conditions. As Anastasis mentioned, we continue to operate in a highly dynamic market environment with some increased uncertainty. In the face of this, we are confident we can continue to win in the marketplace. When it comes to affordability, we are ready with enticing anti-pex size adjustments to maintain attractive price points and affordable return glass offers like in Nigeria and Egypt. And we still have significant premiumization opportunities across the portfolio and a very precise understanding of where to play with those offers. And innovation in adult sparkling, growth in power rate, or ongoing focus on premium package formats such as our premium returnable glass portfolio in Austria are good examples we are calling out today. We have confidence in our 24-7 portfolio and the strength of our BIS4 capabilities, and these, combined with the opportunities we see across our diverse geographies, enable us to drive our growth algorithm. We shared this slide at our Investor Day last year, and I'm showing it again now since it's a good reminder of the areas that we continually invest behind. We make these investments consistently on sunny days and on rainy days. It is these capabilities that allow us to drive personalized execution in every outlet. And when combined with our 24-7 portfolio and diverse markets, ultimately drive our growth algorithm. I believe that our strong first half performance and ongoing share gain in a wide range of market backdrops demonstrates the benefits of these investments. Across all of this is the importance of data, and we continue to invest in our leading data insights and analytics capabilities because we see the connections data insights analytics allows us to make and the way it enhances the other capabilities you can see here. DIA is a game changer for our business. Our investments allow us to continue to expand our data sets. And with that, our insights and understanding of our customers and consumers. And data is also one of the key areas where we are working together with the Coca-Cola company, integrating their consumer data with our increasingly detailed outlet data. We would love to share more on these topics. And to do that, we are starting a series of bite-sized webinars on key areas of the investment case for the Coca-Cola HVC. Our first will be on October 8th and focused on data, insights, and analytics. I hope you can join the team then. I'd like to conclude on the three areas I highlighted at the start. First, the strong and high-quality organic revenue growth we've delivered with volume growth of 3.1%. Growth was led by the three priority categories across our 24-7 portfolio, and we are gaining shares. Second, we are demonstrating ongoing resilient financial performance, even as we manage in a volatile and challenging environment. And third, we continue to invest in our strategic priorities and our bespoke capabilities because they make the difference. And finally, one more, which is in fact the most important. I would like to sincerely thank all our colleagues, customers, suppliers, and our partners for their ongoing efforts and support through the year. We rise to the challenges and seize the opportunities together as one Hellenic, with our 24-7 vision and our purpose to open up moments that refresh us all, that keeps us motivated to deliver for all our stakeholders. Thank you for your attention, and with that, let us now open the call to questions.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1, 1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. We will take our first question, and the question comes from the line of Sanjit Ulia. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good morning, Zoran and Anasasis. One question each for both of you. For Zoran, on Establish, can you Just give us a bit more context around the volume improvement and the price sharp, price mix normalization we've seen. Love to get your take on the underlying dynamics across those geographies, please, and if anything's materially changed with the consumer over the last few months, disaggregating weather. And then my question for Anastasi is just really understanding a bit better the mark-to-market FX impact on EBIT in the emerging segment. Can you just help us, A, quantify that, B, clarify if it's non-cash or cash, and what would group organic EBIT have been in the first half, excluding this impact? Thank you.

Anastasiios Papageorgopoulos Good morning, Sanjit. Yeah, thank you. We are very pleased that we see volume growth in Q2 as part of the plan, and what we guided that for the full year we see positive volume in all three segments, including established. And this was enabled by very strong performance that we see in Greece, and also very good volume performance of Italy. in q2 and also low single digit in switzerland so in balance this came as a result of what we said that we will be doing this year where we will be mindfully adjusting our algorithm between price mix and volume so that we do more of volume support through well-thought-through and designed promotions in this segment. So with that, I'll hand over to Anastasios to give more color on the price mix, particularly for Q2.

Good morning, Sanjeev. Good morning, everybody. For establishing in the quarter two, we have we've seen that organic price mix grew by 4.5% in half one, and we expected a slowdown in quarter two, right? And that has to do with the carryover pricing impact in quarter two being lower than the impact we have seen in quarter one, cycling a higher base from 2023. As I mentioned, the goal also, we have a category mix negative trend in quarter two, as we have seen a stronger performance of water with volumes up 8%, mainly coming from countries like Greece and Switzerland. And at the same time, we have a country mix, which was also negative, with stronger volume performance coming from Greece, whereas we saw slightly weaker performance in Switzerland and Ireland. And to that extent, this was partly offset by a positive packet mix, which was up 80 basis points on single serve. Now, when it comes to promotional investment for the period, I mean, this is something that we have been using as part of our revenue growth management, and the promotional intensity in our market was slightly higher than prior year, but it was in line with our plans. And let's not forget that also in the established segment, we included the support for the transition to the DRS model in Ireland, and a certain step up of promotions in Italy. So in general, we are very pleased with the actions that help to deliver volume growth in quarter two, as Zoran said. And I think that's on that one. And I know there's a second one when it comes to OPEX, right?

Yes.

So maybe give a little bit more color on the OPEX for the first half of the year. And rightfully, we saw an increase of OPEX as percent of revenue by 130 basis points. As I said in the call, the main driver has been related to currency weaknesses in the emerging segment, which required us to mark-to-market basically remeasure balance sheet items to adjust for these devaluations, specifically an intercompany loan in Egypt, which is a non-cash item, but a balance sheet adjustment. We are taking steps to protect against this in the future. We have better visibility and availability of the hard currency now in Egypt following the currency devaluation. which means that we can convert many of our suppliers' contracts into local currencies from hard currencies in the past. And although in the past we know that it was not possible to engage in hedging on the currency in Egypt, we see early signs now with the free float of the rates, so hedging may soon be possible and we are also exploring this. This is one half of the case of the story on the OPEX's percent of revenue. The other important thing we need to highlight is that we continue to invest ahead of the curve in our business, especially expanding our sales force in markets where we are really targeting out of home and at the same time investing behind our premium spirits and the coffee business. I think I need also to highlight at this point that it's well known that we have a very strong record of improving OPEX's percent of revenue. For example, we have improved by 300 basis points over the last years, and we are very confident that we will be intending to improve this metric again. We have upgraded our organic EBIT growth to 7 to 12 percent today, and this is capturing that we're also assuming a better leverage when it comes to the second half of the year compared to the first half on opposite percent of revenue.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Simon Hales. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. Morning, all. Firstly, I wonder if I could just sort of follow up on those last comments around margin analysis, around just if you could provide some specifics as to the scale of the mark-to-market impact at all that the FX had in the first half on your numbers. And then associated with that, obviously you also saw a big sort of positive margin development in the developing segment itself, obviously helped by lower COGS in the sort of coming through in the period. How should we think about that into the full year? Is there any reason to think that that ongoing strong operational leverage in that region won't continue? And then maybe a second one, perhaps for Zoran around Finlandia and premium spirits. Clearly a strong performance in the first half. You've raised the scope contribution, you know, expect for the full year from that business. Can you just share a bit more detail of what you're doing there? What's driving that improvement in the profit delivery and your midterm confidence in that push into premium spirits more broadly?

Okay, so hi Simon, good morning.

First of all, to your question on the impact of the re-measurement on the overall OPEX percent of revenue, we say it's about half of it. So 130 basis points, just half of that is connected to the re-measurement effect. Then you had a question in connection to the developing segment performance. And you're right, we're very pleased with this performance. A large part of this comes from good operating leverage that we had on a very strong organic revenue growth of 11.5% while we continue to invest in these markets. So as an example, in Poland, we increased our sales force and our local warehouse capacity to support the new categories and the spirits lost with Finlandia. But we also saw very good gross profit margin expansion, benefiting from lower inflation in input costs compared to the previous years. Also, a recovery that we have been seeing on the challenging inflationary dynamics over the last years. So, for example, Hungary is a market where in the past, on average, we were facing about 16% of inflationary pressure. We are currently at 4%. In 2024, check also of 15%. and we are currently at 2.3 percent. Now, we have also said in the past that we had a good opportunity for EBIT margin expansion in the developing segment in the mid-term, especially after the implementation of the sugar taxes in Poland and Hungary in the last three years, and we are very pleased to see that we are getting this through. I have to highlight that the strong performance in the developing but also the established segments really demonstrate the benefits of our diversified portfolio of these countries. It's also pleased to see that despite the significant FX weaknesses from the emerging segments, we're still able to deliver EBIT growth for group level even in a short period of time. So very pleased with the developing performance and as expected.

Simon, good morning. Just to say on Premium Spirits and Finlandia, we overall see a good performance. For Finlandia, when we took over the business on November 1, ever since we have done integration, which is proceeding very well, we have been now, as I mentioned in my remarks, starting the distribution of Finlandia in a number of markets where we didn't have Finlandia before. Overall, Finlandia is a marginal creative business addition to us, on top of the fact also that it really supports all our mixability activities and initiatives with the various parts of our NARTD portfolio, which makes it very interesting and especially relevant brand across our central Europe countries. Now, in terms of what I think you mentioned, in terms of this increased number, it's a matter of scope, and after the call, our IR team will be happy to give you more details on that.

Got it. Thanks very much, Sarah. Thank you. We will take our next question.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrea Pistacci. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yes. Hi, Zoran and Anastasis. Two from me, please. The first one on your EBIC guidance, which implies quite a wide range for the second half, I think around 7% to 17% growth in the second half. Now, of course, you flag the uncertain environment, but with good visibility on your cost base, in what areas of the business do you see more uncertainty and what scenarios and assumptions are you baking in for the top end and the low end of the range? And then a question, just on a simple question on Egypt, where you delivered strong, I mean, good double digit volume growth in the second quarter after a softer Q1. So can you talk a bit about the environment there? Has the boycott impact eased? update on what you're doing, energy rollout and what you expect for the rest of the year. Thank you.

Good morning, Andrea.

So let me start with the first one on the EBIT range guidance. So yes, after the strong start of the year, we are with a growth of 7.5%. We need to remind ourselves that it was on tough comparatives. Half one delivered last year was on the abnormal scale. And we are upgrading the full year guidance on EBIT growth from 7% to 12%. We have said also in the past that we expect EBIT growth to be weighted more towards the second half of the year. But we have left, as you said, this wide range of guidance because we do see still a very dynamic environment with microeconomic and geopolitical backdrop to remain a challenge and even more uncertainty when it comes to the consumer environment. But we were to see that, let's say, from the range, if we were to look at what drives the lower part of the range, that would clearly indicate a deterioration in the consumer environment that would impact volumes. And there are some markets in Europe where we are seeing increased signs of consumer sensitivity to pricing. A further, deeper foreign currency headwinds with devaluations that could impact profitability. A worsening of the geopolitical environment. We see what is happening out there. And also within our guidance range, We are also capturing about 200 basis points of headwind related to the impact from the business disruption as a result of the fire in our Bambi plant, something that we highlight in our subsequent events. Now, if we were to move on the top end of the range of the guidance, of course, that would be by seeing a stronger momentum across the markets, especially in the rest of the quarter three period. and any improvements in the currencies as we see happening ahead of us.

Hi, Andreas. Could I just follow up quickly on two clarifications on what you just said, Anastasios, please. On the Bambi fire impact, you're saying the guidance includes a potential up to 200 basis points, two points of EBIT impact from that. And then you talked about, you know, you're seeing some, probably some signs of deteriorate consumer softening in, in some markets. If you could just maybe Zoran even elaborate on that also. Thank you.

Yes. Yes. Sorry. The, the, well, to the Bambi part. Yes. So on, on the Bambi part, we are estimating about 200 basis points on the low end of the guidance. um because you know we we have a certain business disruption and we are progressing with activities with settling any business losses disruptions with our insurance company and there is always a timing delay to that yeah okay hi andrea i'll uh i'll i'll build on just to close uh on on clarification you asked on the consumer um just to say that uh look

across the number of territories that we have across three segments, it's not a one size fits all. And we do see in a couple of places some more softness for which we also said that we see a little bit of cautiousness because of more higher price sensitivity. We do see that in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and this pull of market. Also, Some of them are impacted because of the DRS implementation and sugar tax introduction, whether that's Ireland, Hungary, or Romania, as usually happens. But on the other side, there is a whole pool of quite resilient markets where we see continuously good performance. So all in all, in the context of what Anastasios was saying, this just gives us Some cautiousness knowing that we also have another two months in the important quarter and then obviously whole whole q4 Needless to say but I will that we are very confident in the ability how we will navigate through these various backdrops in which we are operating and one of those is Egypt as you as you said and where I'm really pleased how Egypt has performed in the first half, bouncing back in Q2. In spite of the quite volatile environment there, I give a huge credit to tremendous work that is done on the ground from the team on capabilities, on customer relationships, on commercial policy, route to market, revenue growth management, all the things that you hear us very often talking, this is exactly what is happening in Egypt and it does make a difference. Environment is not easy with the devaluation and still currency being active as we see also these days. On top of that, there is still a level of boycott that is ongoing in the same trends as we've seen before, which particularly means that as for other companies, international brands or mostly US brands are affected. In our case, this means that it is the Coca-Cola trademark that is more affected than others. However, the rest of the portfolio Compensate for it and I'm very pleased with the performance that we have seen in rest of sparkling with Fanta and Schweppes particularly Also, we have a very good performance of energy in the country with two brands now And also after one year of doing necessary steps mindfulness on the water category and we see now also very good performance of double digit performance of water in Egypt. So overall, we remain very agile and we will adapt to the circumstances as they happen in the country. But that's what we see at the moment. And I'm absolutely convinced of the importance of Egypt for Hellenic not only for this year, but even more for all the years ahead. Thank you, Andrea.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Charlie Higgs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, Zara and Anastasios. Hope you're both well. I had a question on channel mix, please. And if you could perhaps comment there, either the group level by region, if anything changes in where consumer habits are buying products and within maybe the 13.6% organic sales growth in H1, how that was balanced between the at-home and the out-of-home. And then my follow-up is just on Nigeria. I just wanted to comment on the consumer there. what you're seeing on the ground. I think you talked about volumes up low, double digits, but returnables are up 27%. So I'd assume maybe some pressure on the PET lines. And can you maybe just reiterate your pricing ambition in Nigeria? Is it to try and offset the FX devaluation we've seen in Q2? Thanks.

Good morning, Charlie. Let me start with channel, as you said. um um well i'm we are very pleased that we we saw volume growth in both out of home channel as well as the uh at home channel um and uh i would particularly call out that we are um uh pleased to see also the the performance in out of home uh in emerging and sorry in developing and established and of course uh in emerging so We see growth from both, even on balance a little bit higher growth in the out of home. And that's quite encouraging and it's in line with our continuous investments that we are putting behind this part of the market. And we called some of those in our remarks and also strong investments and targeted campaigns and activations that we have in out of combat of course also in in at home so both of those are positive and That's how we are planning also going forward moving on to Nigeria very pleased very pleased with the performance of Nigeria in spite of the volatility that we saw with currency but also with some of the strike in may now so we see some movement related to cost of living protests however i would really first of all call out a very strong team on the ground that acts very fast and with strong expertise together also with our partners from the coca-cola company we are quickly adapting to this environment. When the valuation happened, we have quickly reacted in a matter of days of activating the plan, which was already kind of half cooked because we did expect that the valuation will happen sooner or later. And of course, this reflected was embedded in our revenue growth management framework, which was then activated with price increases that we are taking. this connects also with the question that that you said on pricing that it's absolutely normal that we are taking price in Nigeria we have done so so far and we will be doing that but now we with data insights analytics capability which really helps us with different granularity and insight that we have that informs our revenue growth management plans so that's why pricing that we are doing is done in a very mindful way differently by agent differently by category differently by by packages and that's why that's why we've been so far quite successful in in driving price mix in a very good way and we will continue to do so and to conclude I we really remain positive on how Nigeria will perform this year.

Thanks, Zoran.

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1, 1 on your telephone. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Edward Mundy. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Morning, Zoran. Morning, Anastasios. One question, one follow-up. The first is around the Candler Cup, which you won in both Greece and Cyprus. Could you perhaps talk about what you're doing from an execution standpoint in those markets that led to that prize being awarded to you? And are there any things you're doing in Greece and Cyprus that can be rolled out to the rest of your operations? That's the first question. And the follow-up is coming back to spirits. I think page 36 of the release shows that it's about 1.5% of your volume growth, but about 20% of your sales growth. And it's quite accretive to you know, revenue per case and your core business. But the question is really that you're probably aware that a bunch of spirits companies have lost control of the supply chain and they're going through a pretty bad destocking cycle. Could you perhaps talk about some of the safeguards you've got in place, you know, given you've been doing spirits for quite a long time, you know, perhaps the fact you own the distribution, that you've got good data and insights, you know, what is it that allows you to not go through that type of destocking cycle? What gives you confidence that you have better visibility of inventories, you know, relative to perhaps some of your spirits peers?

Good morning. Good morning, Ed. On Fendler Cup, and well, needless to say, we are really...

proud of our unit of Greece and Cyprus for winning the Candler Cup, which is the global bottler competition. And it's the second one that we have won after Romania for 2017 year. I think this is really a reflection of, as you might have seen, ongoing good performance that we had for the last few years in Greece, and it's a reflection of how our bespoke capabilities that we develop on a group level are executed with excellence in the market across all channels, customer intimacy, and raising the bar continuously. So I would just say that it's a one-team spirit and very holistic performance because to win in such competition, it's a matter of many parameters that have to be consistently performed. And it's a matter of what we always talk about and that is in the core of Hellenic which is the execution excellence. So I hope for a couple more over the next years, and hopefully also in another continent. We'll see. From our end, we will do our hard work, as always. Moving on to premium spirits, from our end, we can't see an issue for... anything related to this talking. We work very closely with the brand owners that we partner with. We have a very good, diligent planning routines with all brand owners. So we haven't seen any of that. Actually, we have a continuity of the stock and we are also mindful on the stock levels that we have in the in the market. So no issue there, actually quite pleased with the performance of this whole category.

Very good. Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to hand back for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. I'd like to thank everyone for taking a part in today's call. join the team on october 8th for our first bite size webinar and we look forward to catching up with you again soon thank you very much have a great day and goodbye