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

Good day and welcome to today's FEMSA's third quarter 2025 results conference call. My name is Sergey and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. You may register for questions at any time by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. And now I'd like to hand the call over to Juan Fonseca. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to FEMSA's third quarter 2025 results conference call. Today, we are joined by our CEO and Chairman, Jose Antonio Fernandez-Carvajal, Jose Antonio Fernandez-Garza-Laguerra, our current CEO of our proximity and health division and future CEO of FEMSA, Martin Arias, our CFO, and Jorge Collazo, who heads Coca-Cola FEMSA's investor relations team. The plan for today is a little different than usual. We will begin with our CEO and chairman who is traveling today and is therefore joining us remotely. Jose Antonio will share with us some thoughts on the past couple of years, where he sees our company today, and how he sees FEMSA positions for the future as he gets ready to step down from the CEO role at the end of this week. He will not be able to stay for the remainder of today's call. Next, we will hear from Jose Antonio Fernandez Garzalagüera, still in his capacity as CEO of our proximity and health division. As you know, he will assume the role of CEO of FEMSA in a few days, but most of his comments today will focus on the performance and trends in our key retail operations during the third quarter, as well as some thoughts on the short and long-term initiatives we are taking to address an evolving consumer. Next, Martin Arias, We'll discuss FEMSA's consolidated and operational results for the quarter in further detail. And finally, we will open the call for your questions. For the Q&A, please keep in mind that as of today, Jose Antonio is still the CEO of Proximity and Health, and there is a lot to discuss regarding those operations. If you would rather ask him about his views on the broader FEMSA platform, I'm sure he'll be happy to provide some high-level directional comments today, but these are early days as he onboards to his new role. Obviously, we'll be happy to dedicate ample time to this topic during our February call and beyond. And with that, let me turn it over to our chairman. Jose Antonio, please go ahead.

Thank you, Juan. Good morning, everyone. As you all know, in June of 2023, I returned to the role of CEO at a challenging moment because of our good friend, Daniel Rodriguez, had fallen gravely ill and we were in the thick of executing on our vicious fence-forward strategy. I committed at the time to wear the two hats of CEO and executive chairman for a certain time with a clear plan to fill the CEO position and return to the separation of these key roles within that timeframe. With the help of our board, we've been able to deliver on that plan. And while I'm happy to hand over the keys to the incoming CEO next week, I appreciated the opportunity in these past two years to get close to the operations again, particularly through such a key process as FENSA Forward. Today, I would like to share some thoughts on our recent past and on our future. Pensa Forward was all about maximizing long-term value creation by focusing on our core verticals, retail and beverages, enabled but digital, and setting out very clear capital allocation targets. In the past 32 months, we've been hard at work executing that plan. divesting nearly $11 billion of assets while in our core at the same time. In addition, the capital allocation framework we put in place in February of last year is guiding our actions and allowing us to move steadily toward our leverage objective by distributing between March of 2024 and March of 2027 and expected a total of approximately 7.8 billion of capital through ordinary and extraordinary dividends and also through some share buyback. As I briefly recap these last two years, there are two messages I want to highlight. First, that everything we set out to do when we announced Cremsa Forward, we have delivered on. We told you what we were going to do, and then we did it. Second, that these actions have been driven by our shared pursuit of long-term value creation for all of our stakeholders. Our purpose and interests are well aligned. Finally, I would like to quickly touch on how I see FEMSA's position today. I feel very confident that our business units have never been stronger. I know this year has been sluggish in Mexico and I know that the team has addressed this and we will discuss this later during this call. But I also know that the last year was a banner year. So I am talking about the forest, not the trees. On the retail side, We have also Mexico filled with at least a decade of continuous store growth at the current pace, world-class returns on capital and a full range of levers to adjust as we ensure our value proposition continues to satisfy a growing number of needs for an always evolving consumer. In Mexico, we have successfully completed the leadership transition to Carlos Arroyo, an experienced retail operator with a decade-long track record who is bringing a new set of capabilities that will serve us well for the challenges ahead. In the proximity convenience environment outside of Mexico and in the discount space in Mexico, we have a compelling set of higher growth opportunities that are ready to be scaled up, such as OXXO Brazil, OXXO Colombia, and VARA, among others. Any one of these opportunities has the potential to create billions of dollars of value over the next decade and beyond. In our other retail investments, specifically Health and Europe, we are laser-focused on organic growth and on improving the returns on our invested capital. At Coca-Cola Fence, we are in the middle of an ambitious multi-year investment phase, continuing to increase our production and distribution capacity, as well as our long-term growth capabilities, underscoring the strength and resiliency of this business, even as we navigate a challenging short-term environment. On that note, the recently announced tax increase in Mexico will present challenges, but we believe this will be like the one we have faced in the past, and we will make the necessary adjustment in order to balance our return on investment capital while allowing us to take advantage of some growth opportunities. At SPIN, We continue to grow our user base and engagement as we make steady progress in developing... Hello, Jose Antonio?