Fomento Economico Mexicano S.A.B. de C.V.

Hello and welcome to FEMSA's third quarter 2024 results conference call. My name is Melissa and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be in a listen only mode. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. This can be done by pressing star followed by one on your keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero to be connected to an operator. I'll now turn the call over to Juan Foseca, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to FEMSA's third quarter 2024 results conference call. Today, we are joined by José Antonio Fernández de Garzalagüera, CEO of our Proximity and Health Division, Martín Arias, our CFO, and Jorge Collazo, who heads Coca-Cola France's investor relations team. The plan for today is for Jose to open the conversation with some comments on the performance of proximity and health during the third quarter, and then to move on to a more strategic set of topics that follows and provides an update to some of the messages he shared with you six months ago during our first quarter call, including some preliminary views on our expectation for 2025. After Jose's remarks, Martin will provide more detail on the broader business and our quarterly results. Finally, we will open the call for your questions. José, please go ahead.

Thank you, Juan. Good morning, everyone. During the third quarter, proximity and health delivered a solid set of results. As you look at our financials, you see growth almost everywhere and margin expansion in all the right places. This is certainly positive and a testament to the strength of our business platform, the skill of our teams, and the permanent effort to grow and improve quarter after quarter, year after year. But Martin will go over the results in some detail in a few minutes. I want to focus particularly on what did not go that well, particularly the dynamics of same-store sales at Proximity Americas, which came in flat for the quarter. First, Let's discuss average traffic, which contracted 5.7%, reflecting a wetter and cooler third quarter, with its negative effects on some of our most important consumption occasions, thirst and gathering. The greatest contraction was in key categories such as beer, soft drinks, and water. Beyond weather, in the third quarter, we faced a demanding comparison base as same-store sales grew over 15%, and traffic increased a remarkable 8% in the same quarter of last year. Finally, a slowing consumer environment in Mexico also contributed to the weakness. This environment is typical for the second half of an electoral year. Ofsetting the polling traffic, average ticket grew 6.1%, reflecting revenue management initiatives while having a favorable effect on gross margin. A careful review of pricing and market share data leads us to the conviction that these revenue management initiatives have been implemented without losing price competitiveness or market share in the relevant categories relative to the traditional trade as well as supermarkets. It goes without saying that we will continue to monitor the data to ensure that we maintain our competitiveness. As we look ahead, our comparison base gets easier, and we look forward to an improvement in the Mexican economy in general and the consumer environment in particular. Let me walk you through our longer-term plans for proximity and health. My team and I have taken the first year of my time as head of the division to carefully review the portfolio and to start adjusting our long-range plans with a renewed emphasis on return on invested capital by format, line of business, and country. This has led us to sharpen our focus on the investments that we're making by accelerating, decelerating, or eliminating initiatives. A significant portion of my presentation to the board in the coming weeks will be focused on an in-depth review of the entire portfolio with a specific focus on Oxo Latam. This will complement the deep dive we undertook earlier in the year in the Health and Valora businesses. We expect from this session to finalize our medium and long-term plans. Although we must receive comments and final approval from the Board, I want to take the opportunity today to share some of the initial thoughts I have as to where we need to focus in the next few years. First and foremost, OXXO Mexico, where we believe the opportunity exists to continue to create significant value for the foreseeable future. The business has structural momentum and a very high ROI widespread. The three core drivers of OXXO Mexico are sustained growth in same-store sales, sustained growth margin at the current levels, and sustained high-quality store-based expansion. On that note, our preliminary store expansion target for 2025 is in line with the current trend of about 1,100 net new stores in Mexico, or more than 4% of the base. We will also continue to evolve OXO's value proposition by developing and integrating additional value layers with a current focus on three projects, food service, price and store segmentation, and cash management initiatives to strengthen our service business. Beyond Mexico, we have several compelling opportunities, and as discussed six months ago, we have the benefits of being able to modulate the pace of investment given the organic nature of the growth process and according to the stage of development of each format. Let me briefly go over the various opportunities and where we are with our plans for each. In the U.S., we just closed our acquisition of the DELEC retail assets. These are very early days, but we're excited to finally get to work in these attractive markets. So expect more information regarding our tests around El Paso and the broader strategic path we expect to take. At Vara, we continue to optimize our discount value proposition while we meaningfully accelerate store build-up. With a preliminary target for 2025 of approximately 40% growth rate in the store base, we have also undertaken the decision to administratively and operationally Segregate VARA from Oxo Mexico to ensure that it has the resources and focus it requires from what we expect to be a new stage of higher growth. This segregation may have a short-term impact on certain costs and expansion, but it will provide a solid foundation for the future. At Oxo Colombia, our mature towers are already EBIT positive, even after allocating overhead to them. And we are confident that we have a winning format with food convenience reaching approximately 15% of revenues and average sales per store matching those in Mexico. We are excited with the evolution of this market, especially as we continue to develop specific capabilities and fine-tune our value proposition. Therefore, our preliminary target for 2025 is approximately 15% to 20% growth in store base, while we also build out our supply chain infrastructure and improve our processes in assortment, price segmentation, services, and food. For certain other Latin proximity operations, such as OXO, Chile, and Peru, we are de-emphasizing expansion as we focus on improving their profitability drivers. This strategy will also help us reduce overhead in those markets As a result of these initiatives, we expect to improve the results of Oxfam generally and reduce the level of investment required in the short term. In Europe, Valora continues to perform well, particularly retail and B2B food service, and we are working to improve traffic to B2C food service, which will depend in part on an improvement in German economic growth. We expect this improvement in the next 12 to 24 months. We are also making progress with our organic growth initiatives, particularly in German retail, but we have chosen to take a cautious approach in recognition of the complexities of that market. We're also driving continued capability sharing with the rest of proximity by Valora, for example, in food service, and from proximity to Valora, such as the use of data for price and promotion optimization, and leveraging our scale to increase commercial income opportunities. At OxoGas, we're continuing to drive growth by increasing volume at our retail stations, as well as pursuing incremental growth with institutional clients, cautiously optimistic on our ability to obtain permits to increase our station-based organics, and pursuing small, bolt-on acquisitions in a very disciplined manner. We have also launched a pilot truck stop concept, which combines an OXO gas and OXO store with PEMSA and third-party food offerings, as well as specialized facilities for truck drivers, such as showers, a rest area, and mechanical services. These stops could be located in key highway areas, offering a compelling new value proposition that better addresses the needs of Mexican truck drivers. Regarding the traditional trade, after a careful analysis, we will recommend to the board suspending our pronto initiatives, both the franchise model and wholesale distribution. We may revisit these opportunities in the future, but given the many priorities in front of us, we have concluded that renouncing certain initiatives is as essential as identifying which ones we want to accelerate. Obviously, we will continue to leverage the proximity and cost capabilities to pursue the opportunities to provide the traditional trade with services and payment platforms through our digital division. Finally, at Pensa Health, each of our four country operations are in different situations and require different strategies. For now, let me focus on two countries, the one that presents the most dynamic opportunities and the one that needs the most work. In Colombia, we are achieving rapid growth in retail as we de-emphasize exposure to the challenging institutional segment. We expect to continue growing our leadership position by expanding rapidly with a unique value proposition for Colombia in pharma and health and beauty. We have also identified an opportunity in the wholesale distribution business where we will use our scale and logistics capabilities to serve the independent pharmacies which still represents close to 50% of the market. In Mexico, we will continue rolling out our new flagship drugstores with an important component of health and beauty as we navigate an intense competitive environment. It is still early to determine the results of the new flagship stores, but we're optimistic that the dual format strategy will work as well in Mexico as it has elsewhere for us. Wrapping up, hopefully the message we leave you today is one of ample opportunities for profitable growth in the short, medium, and long term of an organization that is highly focused and a management team that is determined to prioritize and allocate resources according to each project's potential to deliver the healthiest spread between ROIC and WAC in the long term. And with that, I will now turn the call over to Martin to talk about terms of third quarter results. Martin, please go ahead.

Thank you, Jose. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Let's begin with census consolidated second quarter results. In the third quarter, we achieved total revenue growth of 8.3%, while operating income rose 14.6% compared to the same period last year, reflecting a strong performance across business units. Net consolidated income decreased 27.5% to 9.2 billion pesos, driven by a higher interest expense of 4.4 billion pesos net of interest gains, reflecting a tough comparison based on gains on derivative instruments in the third quarter of 2013. A lower non-cash foreign exchange gain of 4.2 billion pesos compared to last year related to FEMSA's U.S. dollar denominated cash position positively impacted by the depreciation of the Mexican peso, which was more than offset by a foreign exchange loss due to our debt positions in all of our currencies. And finally, a higher loss in net income from discontinued operations, which includes an impairment of 3.9 billion pesos from our divestment in Solistica. Turning to our operational results. Jose already discussed the overall performance of Proximity America and the same store sales figures, so let me take it from there. Total revenues grew by 4.8%, driven primarily by steady growth in our store base. Growth margin once again expanded above trend by 300 basis points to reach 44.2%. As has been the case recently, this was driven by healthy dynamics in commercial income and a positive contribution from financial services. Operating income increased 5.9%, while the operating margin expanded 10 basis points to 9% of sales, reflecting a modest reduction in the growth in operating expenses relative to the first half of the year. This includes initiatives to mitigate the impact of higher labor costs and lower variable costs due to the slowdown in sales partially offset by ongoing investments in capability building, such as segmentation, revenue management, and data analytics. On the store expansion front, in the third quarter, OXO added 367 net new stores during the quarter, with 273 openings in Mexico and 94 in South America, including 39 new stores in Brazil. Year-to-date, OXO added 1,266 net new stores during the quarter, with 961 openings in Mexico and 305 in South America, including 124 new stores in Brazil. This puts us well on our way to meet our objective for the year, allowing us to reduce the pace of openings and focus on maximizing sales during the key fourth quarter. Turning to proximity, Europe. Total revenues increased by 20.4% in pesos, driven by growth in our retail and B2B food service business, mitigated by still challenging traffic dynamics generally, particularly in our B2C food service, which is more exposed to German train service disruption and a weaker German economy. Valora's results also reflect the impact from positive currency dynamics of a weaker Mexican peso, which accounted for three quarters of the total increase. Gross profit rose by 20.5% as well in pesos, with gross margin remaining stable year over year with a solid contribution from commercial income offsetting the weakness in the higher margin B2C food service segment. At the operating income level, Valora delivered another strong performance with a 52.2% increase and 100 basis point expansion and operating margin, reflecting solid cost containment. Moving on to the health division, total revenues posted a 12.5% increase in pesos, with same-store sales growth of 7.4%. This reflects a strong performance in Colombia's retail segment, complemented by steady results in Chile, and with favorable currency dynamics, which contributed to approximately half of the overall result. Operating income increased by 7.2%, while the operating margin contracted by 20 basis points reaching 4.3%. Although these figures reflect a sequential improvement from the first and second quarters, this does not diminish the need for strategic adjustments to navigate ongoing challenges, particularly in Mexico, as Jose described a few minutes ago. Turning to Oxo Gas, we continued to perform strongly, posting 7.6% increase in same-station sales and 8.2% in total revenues. During the quarter, the gross margin was stable at 12.4%, while the operating margin expanded by 40 basis points and stood at 4.9%, reflecting effective cost management and operational efficiency. Income from operations grew a strong 17% relative to the same quarter in the prior year. Turning to digital at FEMSA, we continue to work on our strategic initiatives to drive growth and capitalize on the large customer base we have captured in our platforms. The number of active users for SPIN by OXA reached 8.2 million, marking a 28% year-on-year growth and indicating still solid customer adoption trends. Our SPIN Premium Loyalty Program also showed robust growth, with a 35% year-on-year increase reaching 23.8 million active users. Approximately 38.5% of OXO Mexico sales are now linked to Centrenia. While year-over-year user growth has been impressive, sequentially we are seeing a moderation in the pace of growth, partly due to the scale we have achieved, but also as a result of a purposeful policy of reducing customer acquisition costs further, focusing more on driving engagement and usage from our existing base, and thus, generally increasing recurring revenues. By leveraging data analytics, we are gaining valuable insights into consumer preferences, allowing us to better tailor our promotional offerings. We remain focused on building an omni-channel strategy that ensures we provide a seamless experience across platforms. Finally, Coca-Cola FEMSA reported a strong set of results, with a 10.7% increase in top line, reflecting a solid revenue management strategy while income from operations improved by 13.9%, spanning the margin and reflecting operational efficiencies across territories. A repaid QOPS quarterly call, which was held last Friday, is available on their website. In terms of our capital allocation strategy, we remain committed to sustainable growth and shareholder value creation. Our approach involves strategic strategically deploying capital across our business units while prioritizing return on invested capital in each initiative. This quarter, we allocated 12.1 billion pesos in capex, representing 6.2% of total revenues and a 26.4% increase compared to the same period last year. These investments are critical to keep growing our installed capacity and footprint, driving operational efficiency. and maintaining our competitive advantage in the industries we serve. Earlier this year, we announced our plan to return to shareholders capital in excess of our ordinary dividends, totaling 50 billion pesos over a two- to three-year period. In the first year, we allocated 30.7 billion pesos in a combination of approximately 10.3 billion pesos in extraordinary dividends and 20.4 billion in share buybacks. In this process, we repurchased 102.2 million shares, equivalent to approximately 3% of our total shares outstanding, leading to an increase in our earnings per share of 2.8% to 6.14 pesos year-to-date. As you know, we have set a leverage objective of two times net debt to EBITDA X for our Palafemsa by the end of 2026. At the end of the quarter, that ratio stood at 0.68 times, basically flat to where it stood three months before. So it is clear we have more work to do. As we move forward, our focus remains on prioritizing investments that can deliver the best risk-adjusted returns with our three core verticals. We aim to balance our expenditures with prudent cash management, ensuring we retain the flexibility to seize growth opportunities, including potential acquisitions. Our ongoing capital allocation strategy exemplifies our dedication to driving long-term value for our shareholders.

Martin, before we head out for questions, let me add just some comments on our joint venture in Brazil. In Brazil, we're expanding the store base in the state of Sao Paulo at a steady pace. We continue to grow same-store sales for the almost fifth quarter in a row on double digits. And while we continue to fine-tune the value proposition and refine certain processes to reduce shrinkage and employee turnover, while this has yet to be presented to the board of group on us, in terms of store-based expansion, we will recommend to our partner an increase of approximately 20% during the next year. And with that, you can open for questions.

Thank you very much. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please press star followed by 1 on your keypad. To withdraw your question for any reason, you may press star followed by 2, and you will be advised when to ask your question. Our first question is from Ricardo Alves with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for the call. My first question on the OXO same-store sales, kind of the hiccup that you saw in the third quarter, can you elaborate on that from a couple of different angles? First, maybe prospects for OXO getting back to the mid-single-digit expansion, if that's something that... we can expect already for the fourth quarter. If you have any expectations with regards to December, for example, a very key month, or if you see some of the headwinds that we saw in the third quarter, for example, the weather improving in a better same-store sales direction. And second, still related to Oxo, While the same-store sales came below what market expected, the 6% increase in average ticket was certainly a very positive highlight. Can you expand on that? We suspect that financial services is still there, but the preliminary remarks were quite interesting in terms of the management reiterating the new revenue management initiatives. revenue segmentation strategies. Can you talk about that, those pricing initiatives, revenue management? Can you give us some examples of the good stuff that you're implementing within OXO, retail media and so forth that is probably maybe misunderstood by the market at this point? Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ricardo. Let me start. So first, obviously, The third quarter had very disappointing traffic numbers in particular. It was our toughest quarter in terms of comparison. So in the fourth quarter, we do have better comparison numbers. But to me, to make a prediction on how the market is going to behave Given how uncertain the weather and how volatile the weather has been all this year, it's hard for me to say. I do expect a better end of the year same-store sales comparison, but I'm not ready to give a prediction. I would say the team is working very hard on doing the very smart promotions. activating the stores the most for the December month, which is obviously a key month. And there's a lot of plans to enhance promotions, offerings, and special offers using SpinPremia. So I think that will give us hopefully a better quarter, but without me expecting or being able to predict much better in terms of sales. As you know, we are in the midst of the end of a presidential calendar and the start of another. And that always, the shift between the new team getting in and budgets approved, etc., There are some expectations of a softer economic environment. It has always been the case after every sexenio, so I'm still expecting it will be a softer economic development. Hopefully with better weather for the rest of the year and especially next year. And in terms of the pricing initiatives and what we've been able to say, there's been some price taking for certain big categories. I think tobacco and beer in particular have done some pricing initiatives which helped a little bit on the pricing. And obviously we are extremely excited about what we're seeing with with our promotion on our price and segmentation capabilities is giving us very good results. And that's coupled with an expansion in vendor income by doing all these special promotions and flagship stores decorated with, have been a good source of revenue and we expect that revenue to keep going forward. On the services level, we continue to add, it's still a source of growth. all these years has been a remarkable growth in financial services and we expect that to continue as we expand our infrastructure in cash services so we can start playing in the remittances market. And as we add other banks that are coming back into the corresponsalia or cash out and So I expect that financial services will continue to help us and be a tailwind. Does that answer you, Ricardo?

That does answer super helpful. I just had a final follow-up on the digital side. When we look at the others, I think that the negative contribution on EBITDA was actually lower than expected, so meaning the number was better. I suspect that some of that could be driven by lower cash consumption at digital. I just wanted to confirm if that's the case, if digital is already turning the corner. I think that that would take a little bit longer. But given how much we've been talking about digital, you know, the loyalty program, new fintech capabilities, we have been talking about credit, for example. There's a lot going on at digital that we... analysts in the market, we don't have enough visibility. I just wanted to understand if there is a relevant new update that you care to share with the market or if maybe indeed it's consuming less cash. Thank you very much again. Thank you for your question, Ricardo.

Yes, in fact, on a sequential basis, the cash burn from digital has been lower. As I mentioned in my statement, there's a renewed focus on the part of digital on leveraging and Taking advantage of the scale we already have and focusing a little bit less on simply customer acquisitions Particularly on some of the more expensive digital channels that have been used last year and at the beginning of this year So generally that DHITAL hasn't had a better improvement in terms of its cash firm. And again, one of the challenges of measuring digital is that there are a lot of the benefits from digital that are hard to measure. For example, despite our clear conviction that the loyalty program has had a significant improvement in sales at both OxoGas and at OXO, Reality is very difficult to measure in a scientific, precise way. Obviously, we do measure it, but it's a little bit hard to publish those numbers because of the lack of sort of any accounting standard to them. And so what you see in digital and its burn rate really is just the cost of all the initiatives that they're doing. There is some revenues that they charge. oxo and so on, but it does not reflect the increase in sales of both oxo gas. And if you calculate the break even point of what you would have to believe in terms of improved sales, it's actually quite low. So we're highly confident that digital is doing its job, that it's quite productive, and that it's making progress. You still don't see in these numbers any big numbers associated with the credit opportunity. We're still at the very early stages of that and our expectation is that that be included within the total cash burn and that that be rolled out as we make progress on some of the other initiatives. I hope that answers your question.

It does, Martin. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Our next question is from Bob Ford with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Jose and Martín Juan. How do you feel about your activation capabilities within Pemia, and how does Pemia change the way you're thinking about further upside to commercial revenue? And Martín, you were talking a little bit about the focus on expenses and digital, but in the press release you also mentioned a greater focus on transaction-based, or I should say on greater profitability, right, on recurring revenue. And how do you think about the balance between fee and transaction-based revenue over the coming year? And where do you think the monetization opportunities will be over the next 12 months?

So I got your first part on premia, but I didn't get your second. Can you repeat that?

Sure. I apologize for that, Jose. It was long. In the press release, there was a reference to a greater focus on recurring revenue. And I was wondering how we should think about spin and the balance between fee and transaction-based revenue over the coming year. And you mentioned remittances in your comments, but I was wondering how you're thinking about the monetization opportunities there within the financial services over the next 12 months.

That's a great question. Thank you. I would start with, for SpinPremia, I would say we're still on very early days on understanding the amount of power that data that is delivering us. We are shifting our capability of understanding elasticity by SKU with our analytics in a very dramatic way on a store-by-store basis. With SpinPremia, we will be able to do it on a per-person basis. And that really keeps me excited about the ability to tailor promotions and really bring the best of OXO to each consumer. And so we have a lot of work to do yet, but the early promises is very promising. Already this year, it's still a small fraction of our retail media efforts. Most of it is still the digital screens that we're putting in OXO, but already almost 10% or so of the revenue is coming from SPIN PREMIA initiatives, and that should take a much bigger share in the next few years. So I'm very excited about that. On SPIN, and obviously Juan Carlos, my colleague, could comment much more, and hopefully he'll be here in another call, I do see, and what we've been talking together about the evolution of SPIN and SPIN by OXXO, a big chunk of his recurring revenue comes with more financial services. A big chunk of it would be remittances. But there's many other things that we see in the pipeline, obviously credit being one, regardless, I mean, still I think Juan Carlos is analyzing many alternatives of how to start credit within SpinBioxo, so it's still early to comment on a specific route, but I do know it's part of the plan for him in the next medium term or 12 to 18 months, I would say.

Very exciting, Jose. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Our next question is from Antonio Hernandez with Actinver. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. My question is regarding the healthy vision. Same-store sales have performed a resume, so if you could please provide some light on the drivers, also maybe a little bit on this same-store sales trend in Mexico, that would be really helpful. Thanks.

Yes. So, Antonio, as you know, health, it's a business that operates in four markets, and each market has very different dynamics. I would say, first of all, there's some currency dynamics that really helped this division this quarter. So some of that revenue growth comes from currency dynamics, although there's some interesting things that are coming in. One is Colombia. Colombia, the health sector, the government health sector is going through some tough issues and the private sector is taking a much bigger share of the market. With that, we are, I would say, the best pharmacy chain in terms of the amount of growth in same-store sales, the amount of expansion of stores that we are overseeing all over the country, and the results have been outstanding. That, coupled with our business in wholesale distribution, which we We've done it in Chile very successfully. That is really helping us offset our struggles with the institutional business. Chile is seeing some moderate growth. We're stable in share. We're already by far the largest players, and we haven't lost share in Chile. And we are still growing. Same-store sales were growing. in some store expansion as we begin to see more competition, but we are confident that Chile will continue to be a very healthy source of profits. Ecuador is doing well. Unfortunately, the country is going through some issues. We have some energy disruptions that were not only for us, all through the country, and that affected some of our last few weeks' sales. Other than that, Ecuador has been performing well. We have a small chain business, our Sanasana chain, which we are converting to franchise to lower our capital invested in Ecuador as much as possible. And as we've been very upfront, Mexico has been a struggle for us. It's been a very intense competition. And I think we needed to have a much stronger value proposition. I'm optimistic of what we're doing with our new flagship stores. We have some in Mexico City, and we're doing in our core regions, in the Southeast and in the Pacific region. And the results so far have been too early. We've opened maybe 40, and we are set to open a few hundred. But the results so far are promising. I would say cautiously optimistic. Does that answer you, Antonio?

Yes, that's very helpful. Thanks a lot. Have a nice day.

Thank you. Our next question is from Rodrigo Alcantara with UBS. Please go ahead.

Mr. Alcantara, your line is open. Please go ahead.

I think we can move on and maybe reveal gets back in the queue.

Thank you.

Our next question is from Ben Thor of Barclays. Please go ahead. Mr. Thor, your line is open.

Please go ahead.

I think they might be having some issues.

Can you hear me now? Yes. Yes. Who is this? Is this Ben? This is Ben, yeah. Does this work? Does this work? Okay. All right. Usually they say don't use the speaker, but in this case, speaker works. No. My question is related to the plans of breaking out some of the other formats, particularly Bada in Mexico. Help us understand a little bit the size of the business right now. How many... stores within that 20 plus thousand OXO stores is actually already a Bara format. And what's the value proposition? What's the differentiating factor of Bara versus OXO? And how should we think about the drivers, the consumer drivers into those stores? What's different in particular to kind of understand this as we think about how to model it going forward? Thank you.

I wish I could try to hide Vara as a secret for longer. The honest answer is Vara has been performing incredibly well the last two or three years, I would say. For the last six quarters, we've been outgrowing other players in the space in terms of same-store sales. Today, Vara is a 420 store count. It's not counted in proximity America. We don't count it when we give you the number of OXOs. That's not in the number. And Vara, it's really transforming into going from a soft to a hard there. I wouldn't say it's still a hard, hard discount, but going to a harder discount type of format. And we are very pleased with the evolution of Vara so far. We've been bringing talent from the hard discount place into the concept. And we've been slowly adapting the concept very well. So far it has grown mainly in the Bajio region with some expansion in Jalisco. And I would say Vara has the help of that still about 25% of its revenue comes from convenience categories. And that gives it an extra set of margin that compensate the hard discount growth margin that we tend to have in the rest of the categories, especially grocery and frozen food, et cetera. It's been a very pleasant surprise big is how fast it's growing, how fast it's growing in same-store sales, and we are planning to accelerate the store expansion of Vara, but being very careful, as you know, as we go out of the Bajio region, the stores are less well-known, so we need to prove ourselves that we can expand geographically outside of that region, with very good results so far in Jalisco. But I expect the Pacific and the North eventually to be a very good source of growth. The big challenge for BARRAN in the next couple of years is still the same POS as OXO. It's the same Sociedad Anónima. It's still the whole infrastructure of OXO operationally and not in talent. It has its own CEO. but we need to be able to separate all the systems and the processes out of VARA. That will cost us a little bit, especially in cost, in extra layer of cost, but I'm very excited about the future of VARA in the coming years.

Perhaps just to add, Ben, this is Juan. Some of the differences that drive this decision to segregate the organizations having to do with supply chain, the The SKUs are not the same as also the mix of products that comes from DSD suppliers that go to the store versus people that go to distribution centers is different. And to the part of your question about headroom or potential size of this business, we definitely think that it will be measured in the thousands. So early days still, but as Kota said, it's looking very promising.

Great. Fantastic.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next question is from Tiago Bartolucci with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Mr. Bartolucci, your line is open. Please go ahead.

We can't hear you. Yeah, no, there seems to be some issue.

I don't know if... Oh, there you are, Tiago. Yep.

Yes, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. We have two here. The first one, operationally, regarding traffic at OXO, right? We understand there's some seasonality and all the election stuff, but this is the second quarter in a row that we're delivering negative traffic, right? Obviously... There is this ongoing tailwind from all the changes and improvements you have done into the operation. But my question is, assuming your traffic base remains where it is, lower, do you see any risks of having more challenges to drive operating leverage going forward on a 12-month horizon? This is the first one. And the second one on capital allocation, you just completed your second ASR. Your leverage is below one times EBITDA. when should we expect more news regarding capital allocation is there a chance you could do something prior to the end or shareholders meeting or should we expect this to be a milestone to define what you'll do next thank you very much so um i will answer the first and i'll pass to martin for the second one um obviously the traffic is is a very big concern of mine um i do i mean it

As much as I hate that excuse from my team, it's been raining here. I don't have official numbers and I don't want to use it, but it's been one of the most rainiest years in a long time, at least in the north of Mexico. And that really had a big impact on us. So I don't think it's structural. And as you see, most of our decline is in cold beverages, almost half of it. However, obviously, I think there's a lot of things that we need to work in terms of making sure our stores are well-staffed, ships are open, and that the team has been doing a fantastic job in making sure no corner of the region has an offshore that is not servicing properly. But obviously, we will be fighting in terms of supply chain in operations to make sure It's not on us, but it's just on the consumer demand. I don't see any structural. I do think it will be medium term because next year is still part of the election and the election aftermath always creates some softening of demand. But I'm convinced that some of the value levers that we're playing and putting in place will get us back to traffic growth.

I would add one thing, Thiago. Hi, this is Juan. Sometimes it's hard to look at traffic, especially when you look at the long-term series, and look at it in isolation from the number of stores that we've been adding every year. So you're adding close to 5% new store base every year, and that has to play a role in the equation because at the end of the day, consumers are – satisfying their needs. If you would have gone five times to a store in a week, now maybe you go the same five times, or maybe you go six times, except you split it between the two stores, the old one and the new one. So we're going to start looking into ways to try to come up with an aggregate measure as well. Because the part of your question that talks about operating leverage, I mean, at the end of the day, we are getting a lot bigger every day. from a transactional standpoint, the absolute traffic number gets bigger every day regardless of what happens at the average store level. So anyway, we'll keep talking about this going forward with you guys, and you love to pick your brains. But you can't just not bring into the equation the fact that the speed at which we add stores, because it plays a role.

I see your second question relating to capital allocation. As I mentioned, of the 50 billion pesos that we committed to distributing in the form of extraordinary capital return to shareholders, we've done about 60% of that, about 30 billion pesos. Our expectation is, as a matter of discipline, all I can speak to is as to our current plans, and our current plan is not to launch another ASR. in part because just discipline would tell you we should pace this out over time and not get ahead of ourselves. We have a U.S. election coming up, so if that were to cause volatility, we will reserve the right and the flexibility to move or to launch something. That's not our current plan. We don't expect anything significant to happen associated with the elections other than the as everyone will be curious to what the result will be. And then I would expect towards the first quarter, the end of the first quarter of next year, that we'll start thinking about what we need to do with regards to the shareholders meeting to announce any additional extraordinary dividends. And as we've said in the past, we're always We're agnostic as to whether we return capital through extraordinary dividends or through buyback of shares. It's really just a function of where we may see opportunities, and for the most part, they're small opportunities. It's not like all of these questions are easy to answer at any given moment because you have to take into account a whole bunch of information. So I don't expect any announcements. until then.

That's clear. Thank you very much, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alvaro Garcia with BTG Paxual. Please go ahead.

Hi, can you hear me? Yes.

Thank you.

Great. Two questions. One, just a pretty easy follow-up on You mentioned, uh, you want to de-emphasize some of, uh, also Latam, some also Latam markets, if you could just clarify which ones I wasn't able to catch, which ones. And then the second question, a bigger picture question on your payments business, um, sort of in the context of, of Cofres' FinTech report from last week and your, and your great banking correspondence business, you know, what, what sort of pushback, if any, have you seen from, from banks that pay you for access to your platform, you know, given the growth of spin, given your aspirations there, How do you envision these agreements to evolve over time?

Thank you.

Thank you for your question, Alvaro. I would say first on the Latin markets. We remain very excited on the region in general, but we are much closer to very to accelerated growth and profitability in Colombia, and we want to emphasize Colombia, and Brazil. Brazil, the evolution of the store and with same-store sales growth on the double digits over the last, at least through the year, keep me excited that we're close to have a good plan. Obviously, that has to be aligned with our partner, but I think Continue to evolve the value proposition, especially in Brazil. Fix some operational stocks in terms of filling out the stores well, reducing turnover in the stores, reducing shrinkage. So we will do it by not expanding outside of Sao Paulo and concentrating on expanding maybe 100 to 125 stores. Again, this has to be approved and agreed with my partner, with our partner. But Brazil and Colombia are the ones that keep us excited. Chile and Peru are much behind in the curve towards profitability. And particularly Chile has been going, the whole country, through some economic strain. So we are reducing the velocity of growth there. And by that we may do some overhead adjustments as well. to reduce the amount of cash burn and be able to concentrate much more on the ones that are very, very close to success. So that's Colombia and Brazil. And in terms of the FinTech evolution, I have no comments on the COFESE thing. Obviously we are always monitoring and cautious on whatever recommendations from authorities provide. We provide a fantastic service throughout the country. Most banks that have left us are coming back. So we are very eager to provide services to all banks and to all communities. And everywhere we go, we love and welcome to have much more players servicing the communities. We don't like being the only guy in a region or in a town. It's good for us that financial services are serviced by many, many people. We like to see other convenience store players in Oaxaca, in Chiapas, and I hope to see much more Corresponsalia players throughout the country. So I have no No worries about that. I hope that will expand.

Yeah, and I would just add that, I mean, people regularly underestimate the cost and complexity of what it involves for also administering, transporting, counting, depositing the money, the complexity it adds to lines in the store and so on. So I would generally say, and emphasizing what Jose said, We're providing an amazing service to the community. We're very proud of it. And, you know, just check the return on equity of the financial institutions to see they're doing just fine.

Totally agree, by the way, and just had to ask, and super hopeful, and thank you for those answers. Thank you, Alvaro.

Thank you. Our next question is from Rodrigo Alcantara with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, guys. Can you hear me now?

Yes. Hello, Rodrigo.

Yeah, that's awesome. Hey, thanks. Hi, Jose. Thanks. Hi, Martin, Juan, Pan. So my question would be here for Jose. If you can perhaps comment on the price and income elasticity of OXO, please, and how comfortable you are with current OXO's price competitiveness relative to the mom-and-pops and the self-service formats in Mexico. That would be my first question on price competitiveness. And a second one, very quickly, also, if you can comment more on what you mentioned in the press release about commercial capabilities driving higher objects. So if you can comment more about that, that would be also very helpful. Thank you very much.

Yes, these are great questions. So I think on pricing, when we are proud of our pricing and using our AI model to optimize price, we are not talking about raising prices. It's actually a blended mix. We are reducing prices on certain categories that have high elasticity. and we are increasing prices in others. So pricing is up and down and we will continue to monitor that. We monitor the share on the other channels and we want to remain a significant portion of the fulfillment of the Mexican consumer. And I would say we've been seeing very healthy growth in share for the traditional trade. A big chunk of it is recovering after COVID. I think pre-COVID they had a higher share and they lost a bunch of it during COVID and they are slowly recovering and we welcome that. I think it's a very healthy channel. It's healthy for the FMCGs. We like to have a healthy traditional trade. In Mexico, we are not concerned. We have not been losing share on the measurements we made. We've been seeing that evolution of the traditional trade growing competitiveness against supermarkets mainly, big supermarkets especially. So I'm still not concerned. Obviously, I monitor that very closely and if that requires a change, or we need to be more aggressive on pricing, we will do it. But so far, we see opportunities for us to raise some prices and to lower some prices, and we will continue to do that. And then we are segmentation and all our analytics in segmentation. It's a wide spectrum of projects that all... we're being able to do it much more granular. One is space segmentation and how we accommodate the store, but there's things in variety where we should put more SKUs, more high-end SKUs, more lower-end SKUs. Furniture, a lot of things we're studying and we have more and more learning about. In certain stores, you put up a big bench where people sit down and food binions grow dramatically. And so where is it worth to invest in bench for people to eat, where it doesn't make sense because people have elsewhere options. So that also plays into that. And promotions. People in our stores love promotions and ask for it. And now what we are learning with SpinPremia we are being able to do them much more granular. I would say it's a complex team, but that requires some investment in people, in capabilities. It's a big, big team and growing, but we will continue to do that because so far it's been worth the investment. Hopefully we will offset that overhead with maybe other initiatives that we can be much tougher in overhead expansion and control that line item.

Awesome. Thanks for the answer, Jose. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Carlos LeBoy with HSBC. Please go ahead.

Yes. Good morning, everyone. Jose, maybe you can take a step back and give us some historic context on the strategy for bringing traffic into the OXO stores over time. How has this evolved? and how much of a reacceleration that you see looking forward over the medium term can be digitally enabled. If you can help us with some granular examples, it would help. Thank you.

Thank you, Carlos. I'll try not to extend myself to many decades in the past, but you know the story of OXO as well as me, and obviously OXO started as a beverage first channel and that was a big value lever for many years. Then it got into more and more value levers in grocery, tobacco, expansion and it has always been this fantastic machine of adding levers and extracting levers and some things have, you know, we used to sell the A big chunk of our business was selling Ladatel or the phone cards, and that moved away, and other services came. Then financial services started with municipal permits and paying your fines, and then that evolved into a fantastic business. And that business obviously is evolving faster than other ones. I'm not too concerned about the financial services Obviously, a big chunk of them will eventually go digital, but we see a very interesting evolution of more services coming in and others. So maybe people are buying less airtime in Oxxo, but people are buying, paying their online shopping with all these e-commerce, not only the Amazons and Mercado Libre's, but Temu and Shane are growing dramatically and people love to go and pay at the OXO. People that are banked and they just don't want to use their financial services and rather pay cash. And I see there it's too early, but I've always been doing numbers on when we can really become a part of the fulfillment sector. And the OXO team is studying that hard and we see an interesting evolution of becoming a much more omnichannel presence where we can help on the first and the last mile of products. We are already doing incredibly well with Amazon. We are starting to do some stuff with MercadoLibre, but I'm much more eager to be able to help the Facebook marketplaces and people, and usually also for pick up or drop or pick up or for reverse logistics. I would say that's one that's too early to say if it's going to come, but I'm very eager on that. And I would say the other one that's obviously a big one that we need to upgrade dramatically is food binance. We've been playing a good role in Mexico with food. but I wouldn't say a fantastic role. We still have a much better role to play. And I'm very eager from what we've been able to do in Colombia, in Brazil, and in Chile, I would say as well. But in Colombia in particular, almost 15% of our business is food. We got a big share in the cities where we operate, especially in Bogota. We own the breakfast category. We own the lunch for the office worker category, and we will continue to grow, share on that. And I think in Mexico, obviously Mexico has a food dynamic that's very different. People like to eat in the street and compete with that. It's a tough, tough market. We have street vendors winning Michelin stars. So that's the type of competition you face. But I do see an evolution to more food on the go, easy to carry food, and I think maybe evolving from the taco to the burrito or things that you can carry in your hand, start working with more other types of food is something we are beginning to try and also encouraging results with much less shrinkage. And I do hope that we can start winning in certain categories like breakfast, snacking, So that's something that also excites me. And I would say the third one that we're just scratching the surface is we're finally putting a lot of cash infrastructure that would allow us to do big cash out deposits. We were the kings of cashing but not so big on cash out in Oaxaca and Guanajuato where we installed all this cash infrastructure. We are beginning to try remittances. And the results are encouraging. And hopefully with the U.S., we're also, I mean, obviously in El Paso we can play a bigger role of connecting the twins and do DELEC to OXO or eventually OXO to OXO payments. But I would say we're also learning a lot about the remittances market on the other side and how we can gain share by convincing the easiness to send to the OXO or to the SPIN and then cash out in OXO is something that could bring us some value of growth.

I would just add, Carlos, it's Juan, Jose's reference to the cash infrastructure just for the benefit of everybody listening. We are rolling out these cash recycling machines that, you know, I would have the conversation with many of you, but These machines allow us to increase significantly the amount of cash that can be disbursed at the store without increasing the risk profile. And that's how we can play in remittances where the average remittance is somewhere between $400 and $500, which is way more than what we have in the till in a traditional store. So the cash machines so far are looking really good in the places where we've rolled them I will also make just one kind of reflection on your question and everything that Jose just said. I think at the end of the day, what OXO has done remarkably well over the decades is identifying consumer needs and finding a way to serve them. Obviously, in the past, all of them required physical exchange of cash or exchange of goods. Now, some of those are spilling over to the digital realm. But the capillarity of the store base, the trust level, what the brand means now for people, if you think about a lot of what Jose said, none of that would be happening if we weren't just everywhere, and kind of a part of people's lives. And so it's really been a story of people doing more. From our side of the equation, it's making their lives easier, but it really is about finding other things. Jose talked about Temu and Shane and those e-tailers that weren't present in Mexico a couple years ago, and now they're everywhere, and we have found a way to play a role and make it easier for people to buy from them without increasing their risk, if you will. So I think that's part of the story, Carlos. It's kind of a through line from beer, to soft drinks, to tobacco, to snacks, to services, to e-commerce. It's just being everywhere and finding a way to make people's lives easier every day.

Thank you. And just a comment Juan Martin Jose. The step up in the quality and the insight of these calls is really phenomenal. Thank you for helping us with all the insights you're giving us.

Thank you, Carlos. We enjoyed it. Really thank you for your question.

Thank you, Carlos.

Thank you, Carlos.

Thank you. Our next question is from Hector Maya with Social Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you very much for taking my questions. First, if you could please go ahead deeper on details regarding the line of non-cast charges at OXO that helped to drive the EBITDA margin, just to confirm what was the main change in the digital platform that resulted in the lower cash burn there and how sustainable this could be going forward. And also, if you could give us more details on the decision to suspend the PRONTO initiative. It would be interesting to know what plans remain in place to empower the traditional channels with a digital platform Particularly to understand if the company is still thinking about being a supplier of the channel or if this is over and PHMSA will just focus on B2B payments. Thank you.

Thank you, Hector. Give us just one minute.

Hi, on the non-cash charges, because of an automation process that we did with regards to the reporting from the different operations, we found that there were certain non-cash charges that were being treated as cash expenses in the past. And so we tightened a little bit more the definitions and the classifications and so on. And so what you're seeing really is just in more detailed and a better way of classifying cash versus non-cash charges. And this happened not only in proximity health, there was a little bit of that also in .

I could comment on that, Hector. So I would say We have many initiatives to serve the traditional trade. The ones that are most exciting and we see much more promising are two. One is the one that our Coca-Cola FEMSA is doing using their Coca-Cola truck to supply other categories. That's evolving from what I hear. Interestingly, coupled with their Juntos Plus program, which uses the loyalty infrastructure that digital FEMSA provides, So that will continue. Secondly, Digital Pensa has very interesting projects, still on pilot, I would say, but evolving interestingly, of using their payment infrastructure, the SpinPremier initiative to create a network of... It's working on the traditional trade, but more in fund, small restaurants, flower shops, etc., I think, if I'm not mistaken, the trial is in Puebla and it's evolving interestingly well. The one where we were performing well, we had a good traction on that, but we saw the distance to profitability was so high that we thought we needed to refocus was the PRONTO initiative. In the PRONTO initiative, the main business was creating routes where we would take certain OXO products to the traditional trade. I would say the cost to serve of that business was too high, and these traditional trades are served by other wholesalers that have an infrastructure and costs that are much different than the ones we would need to provide a good service. I do see a service where we could provide an interesting service, but I would see it I don't want to get ahead of myself, but eventually I think the cost to serve would need to be served on a cash and carry type of system where we leverage our distribution centers to create something different. But so for now, we are so encouraged by the VADA evolution that we much rather concentrate our resources in where we see a good opportunity to become a significant player in the market. and our other avenues, Caffeineo and etc. So we decided to put Pronto on hold and we're stopping that business, reducing the cash burn of proximity significantly through that. And so hopefully in the future we can come back with a business that's not so high cost to serve.

And then you had, I believe, a question about the cash flow in digital and what was causing improvements. And just to get a little bit more specific than I did in my statement, one, now the digital ecosystem is connecting directly to SPAY, which is the Mexican payment system. That has allowed us to save significantly on fees of third parties that we were using. to make that connection. Number two, we're negotiating better with credit card companies on some of the fees they were charging us. And number three, we're using some of the more, we're using less some of the more expensive customer acquisition channels where with the guidance from Juan Carlos, he had maybe the cost benefit analysis of some of those channels in terms of churn and the quality of customers you require wasn't as good, and so there was a decision made to de-emphasize those channels. I would tell you those are the three biggest things that have helped reduce the cash burn.

Perfect. Very, very clear. Thank you very much. Thank you, Arthur.

Thank you. And our next question is from Ulysses Argote with Santander. Please go ahead.

Hi guys, thanks for the space for questions. I just want to hear from my side to José Antonio. So on your remarks, you mentioned there the kind of organic growth recognition for Valora. I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more detail on what kind of potential are you seeing for openings and maybe on what formats or regions. You mentioned something there around Germany, but maybe if you could be a bit more specific on what the plans entail for this part of the business. Thank you.

Thank you, Ulises. Yes, that's a good question. We are very happy with the development of Valora, and I think by now it's not a post-COVID recovery. The team has been doing a very solid set of results in the three businesses, but more importantly, obviously, the B2B business has been very healthy, and I would say the Swiss convenience business as well. Our Long Range Planning Ballota considers that we will expand in Germany and we see an opportunity to serve through convenience stores outside of the high traffic areas like airports and train stations. We see two avenues to do that. One is to partner with fuel providers that do not have a convenience platform or have an underserved convenience offering and there's a lot of them. I forget the number off the top of my head but a big chunk of fuel providers need to enhance the value And we're talking to big ones, medium ones, and small ones about selling convenience stores in their fuel stations. And hopefully we will have some updates soon, some relevant info there. And the other one is in high street areas. And we are taking a longer time to really evaluate where we put ourselves, given the softening of the German consumer. But we still believe a big chunk of our projection to grow that business. We are opening certain stores in cities that are not as affected economically, especially in the south of Germany. But so far we're opening much less than what we thought. But eventually we hope we can be able to open maybe 50 to 100 stores a year and have positive momentum. But it's early and we are more eager to see what we can do with fuel stations, which has proven demand and we know how to run them.

That's very clear. Perfect. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Fonseca for any closing remarks.

Thank you. Obviously, we're around, my team and I, for follow-ups. You all know where to find us. Thanks for participating in the call and have a great week.

Thank you very much. That concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.