The Magnum Ice Cream Company N.V. Ordinary Shares

Good morning and welcome to the Magnum Ice Cream Company webcast for the full year 2025 results. My name is Heidi and I will be your operator for today's call. Before we begin, please note that today's presentation is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, we will move into the Q&A session. Instructions for the Q&A session will be provided at that time, and we will take your questions one by one. With that, I am pleased to turn the call over to Michel Neger. Michel, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Magnum Ice Cream Company's first full year 2025 results webcast. My name is Michel Neger, Head of Investor Relations, And I'm here today with our CEO, Peter Terkelve, and our CFO, Abhijit Attegharia. The press release and investor presentation were published on our investor relations website this morning. The replay and full transcripts of this webcast will be made available after the call as well. Before we start, I want to draw your attention to our cautionary statement on the screen. You will also find this statement in the presentation published on the website. In a moment, Peter will talk you through the key elements of our performance in 2025 and how we are executing on our strategy. Abhijit will then look at the financial performance in further detail by talking you through revenue, profitability, cash flow, and looking at the financial outlook for 2026 before Peter closes. After that, we will open the floor for questions. So Peter, over to you.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to welcome you to the Magnum Ice Cream Company's first full-year results call as a separate, publicly listed company. This is an important moment for our business as we present our performance as a focused global ice cream company and outline what we're going to do to position TMICC for sustainable, profitable, and competitive growth. 2025 was a foundational year for MEC. It was a year of operational and strategic progress and delivery against a challenging macroeconomic climate and serious headwinds from commodity inflation at an unprecedented level of 380 basic points. At the same time, we completed the demerger and set up the business with the right structure, governance, and most importantly, talent, and culture to drive accountability and profitable growth. In headline terms, we delivered a solid performance in 2025 with full-year organic sales growth of 4.2%. And I was particularly pleased that volume grew by 1.5%. Every region contributed to growth with market share gains across most markets. This was supported by improved availability, innovation, strategic pricing, and operational rigor. To build on the volume growth in 2024, we made the decision to price competitively across brands and geographies to enable volume growth despite this intense cost inflation. In the year, we also right-priced our portfolio in several geographies and corrected trade margins in China and Southeast Asia. These actions were geared towards getting our business fundamentals in the right shape, and it worked. Forex movements and TSA-related cash costs affected adjusted EBITDA margin. But excluding these impacts, adjusted EBIT at constant exchange rates was up by 48 million. As disciplined execution of our productivity program, supported by select pricing actions partially offset the impact of commodity price inflation. The strength of the Magnum brand was evident as we maintained volumes despite price increases to mitigate cocoa inflation. Before I talk about our strategy and performance in more detail, a word on quarter four. The final quarter of the year is our smallest quarter. representing around 15% of full year sales. Many of our typical faster growing away from home markets, such as Turkey and China, have a limited contribution in this period. In these markets, we use this time of the year to take back cabinets and trade stock to get the cabinet fleet ready for next year's season. As a result, in Q4, the Americas drive over 50% of Q4's revenue, compared to around a third for the full year. This year, disruption in food stamps in the US and a late start to the Brazilian season impacted the fourth quarter. While we continued to outpace the category, both in the Americas and globally, it was more challenging, which led to a decline of less than 1% OSG in the quarter. As this is our first results call since the separation from Unilever, I want to take a step back and remind you of the market opportunity and strategy we outlined at the Capital Markets Day in September. The ice cream market is resilient. In many ways, we are the lipstick of foods. I just returned from Brazil, and it was interesting to hear direct from consumers that even economically challenged families make space for ice cream in their family budget. In 2025, the market continued to grow by 3% to 4%, in line with the last 10 years. This growth was again driven by penetration and distribution built in emerging markets. In more developed markets, by the trend from larger to smaller and more premium handheld portions, and increasingly better for you, high-protein, local, real fruit products. Our thinking on GLP-1 has evolved even since the Capital Markets Day in September, based on the premium treat substitution effect. When people eat less overall, the question is, which treat is the winner? And the data is telling an increasingly clear story. When on GLP-1, people still treat themselves, and ice cream is a very competitive treat. The category premiumizes as people choose smaller portions, better quality, and when on offer, more real fruit and protein. We believe that GLP-1s will accelerate the premiumization of the category, which is good for Magnum. Further, as consumers using GLP-1s are eliminating low-quality munching categories first, categories like premium chocolate, premium ice cream, and protein snacks could gain share in the overall snacking market. Increasingly, these trends are guiding our innovation and portfolio strategy, and you will see that come through today. Our vision for TMICC in this market is simple. We want to make the most loved ice cream in the world, to grow the market and build a highly competitive snacking business for our shareholders and customers, because life tastes better with ice cream. And we're going to do that by delivering our strategy to grow the ice cream market as category leader. Our plan is built on three pillars, growth, productivity, and reinvestment. As its course, that means combining the strengths of our brands with a business system designed specifically for ice cream, enabling faster decision-making, sharper execution, and disciplined capital allocation, to maintain an investment-grade balance sheet. Our growth strategy is built around growing consumption occasions with market-making innovation, pricing competitively across all snacking and refreshment price points, rolling out premium brands internationally and take them multi-format, driving digitally-led demand creation and massive out-of-home visibility. increasing our availability across channels, especially e-commerce and in emerging markets away from home. Importantly, this growth is enabled by a 500 million productivity program that resets our supply chain and structural cost base. This gives us the fuel to reinvest behind our brands, capability, and leadership through disruptive innovation, increased demand creation, and best-in-class digitized execution. The strengths of our portfolio, channel management, and global footprint give me confidence in our strategy and our ability to win in the market. We own some of the most iconic brands, Magnum, Ben & Jerry, Conetto, and then, of course, what we call the heart brand, which encompasses brand names like Good Humor, Ola, Algeda Walls, and sub-brands like Solero, Calippo, Cartador, and Twister. The strength of our brands has translated into leading market share positions across most channels in our core markets, and critically, in the fast-growing digital channel, which is growing double-digit. So, we have a well-balanced portfolio, world-class brands that grow ahead of market, clear growth opportunities through our presence in fast-growing emerging markets and in established markets like the US, our biggest, China, the UK, Germany, and next to that, a very strong channel footprint. Our performance in 2025 reflects the success of our strategy and the choices we made. A core pillar of that strategy is winning through skill innovation and premiumization, not as one of launchers, but as a repeatable growth engine. In 2025, that engine delivered across our leading brands, combining premium formats and stronger execution to drive growth and share gains across the vast majority of our key markets, including the USA, our biggest. Magnum outperformed with the launch of Utopia and Bombols. Ben & Jerry gained share in the U.S. and Europe across the at-home and away-of-home channels, with its unique socially-led digital model sustaining strong relevance. Cornetto grew ahead across its top 10 markets, supported by the Cornetto Max and a new stick format in China. And the heart brand grew through socially-first excavations with our multi-layer stick architecture now scaling from Asia into Europe to secure a first mover advantage. We are also extending this engine into the formats shaping the category, Better For You and Portion Control. Yasso grew over 30% in 2025 as we expanded into the new formats in the US, while Briars CarbSmart continued to grow. We also moved Magnum and Ben & Jerry into bites, and we are extending this to other brands, including Solero and Conetto. Finally, we are getting faster from idea to launch. Magnum Dubai chocolate in Turkey was delivered in six months from concept to shelf. But as all of us know, it's not just about innovation. It's about execution in market. Most markets are seeing meaningful channel shifts. with growth moving to digital, convenience, and value-led formats. Our strategy is to win where the mix is shifting, and availability expansion across channels progressed significantly in 2025. We were an early mover into digital commerce, and it remained our fastest growing channel, delivering double-digit growth. In China, it is already more than 20% of our sales. Click and Collect is going from strengths to strengths in the United States and many European markets. In At Home, we grew mid-single digit by stepping up customer execution with our new, fully dedicated TMCC Salesforce, which enabled us to gain better shelf positions and promo effectiveness, whilst executing improved customer growth plans across markets. Away From Home achieved mid-single digit growth, This was supported by the second year of cabinet fleet expansion in relevant markets, progress on route to market digitalization, and a stronger frontline organization. Alongside delivering growth, we continue to successfully execute our productivity program across supply chain transformation, overhead reduction, and tech-enabled productivity. delivering 180 million further savings this year. This is on top of the 70 million savings delivered in the second half of 2024, bringing cumulative savings to 250 million. Key actions included reducing SKU complexity and focusing resources on our most productive innovations. We freed up capacity for our global brands in local markets and invested in our factories to remove capacity constraints and hasten innovation speed to market. We are also making significant progress in reducing under the skin complexity. Strengthening demand forecasting and seasonal planning using advanced weather forecasting models, which are being integrated into our planning systems. Driving end-to-end cost discipline across procurement, logistics, and overhead. This was evident across the regions, but particularly in the Americas. The US end-to-end supply chain reset enabled growth and realized efficiencies and cost savings, factory modernization, distribution optimization, and improved procurement. Continuing the process of exiting RTSA as planned with an expectation to be complete by the end of 2027. These actions are not one-off. They are structural improvements that will continue to benefit TMICC in the years ahead and fuel our reinvestment strategy to power the flywheel of long-term growth and profit improvement. We are reinvesting for growth and productivity. Cabinets are a key part of this as a critical enabler of growth and sometimes overlooked or misunderstood mode in our business. Our cabinets are like soft drinks chillers. They provide unique advantages that help us to maintain and grow market leadership. In 2025, we increased cabinet capex by around 10% to grow our market leading fleet of 3 million cabinets. And we began deploying new technology to better forecast out of stock and to spot trends. The impact of our growth strategy combined with improved execution was proved out in each of our regions. In the US, Our biggest market, we gained share for the second consecutive year, 24 basic points, and we are solid number one. We delivered organic sales growth of 1.7% and volume growth of 1.8%, which is high in the U.S. snacking industry. 2025 was a year of significant operational progress in the U.S. We finalized our organization with a dedicated ice cream sales force. Disciplined execution of our productivity program helped us to become cost-competitive and re-enter the club and value channel with good progress. But we have more to do. Joint customer plans with key omni-channel partners like Walmart and Target delivered strong results across store and digital channels. Ben & Jerry and Yasso grew double digits in e-commerce on-year. Our performance on Amazon went from strength to strength. In Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, strong performance in the UK, France, and Spain led to an OSG of 3.3% and market share gains for the second year in a row with 37 basic points in 2025. Growth was driven by strong innovation and brand performance, but critically was enabled by operational rigor. improved physical availability, new value channel listings, and strengthened partnership with key retail customers. Our performance in Italy is still a work in progress, but the performance in the UK was truly outstanding. We not only drove strong sales, helped by favorable weather, but also took share. Overall, it may not have felt like that in London, but the weather index in Europe and ANZ was close to the long-term average. EMEA delivered double-digit growth of 10.9%, with 4.5% volume growth and share gains. Turkey and Pakistan delivered double-digit growth. In Turkey, premium innovation and better distribution in the Horeca channel drove volume growth. In Pakistan, growth was driven by an expansion of cabinets, seasonal packs, and snacking formats. As mentioned before, in China and Indonesia, We delivered high single-digit growth and share gains by improved channel and customer execution, including right-setting trade terms, and a strong innovation program. It was a first that a Chinese concept, the multi-layer stick, has become a global innovation. Looking ahead, while the external environment remains uncertain, the ice cream market has good momentum. and we have a strategy that continues to deliver. We also have an exciting pipeline of innovation landing in 2026. As I said during the Capital Markets Day, the ice cream category had gotten a little bit stuck in nostalgia and creamy indulgence, and we are clear on the opportunity of bringing modern snacking and refreshment benefits to the ice cream category. There are four distinct pillars to our innovation strategy, which I will talk you through. And on the slides, you will see some of the fantastic new products we are bringing to market in the year ahead. Firstly is core superiority. We carefully benchmark every single core product versus the competition and continuously improve where appropriate. Over the last 18 months, we have relaunched 80% of our core products and have invested in better ingredients and formulations. Secondly, we perfect the portfolio by sharpening the right mix of format, flavor, pack, and price to match occasions and channels. Especially in the US and Europe, the teams have made great progress in optimizing our portfolio. Third is the global rollout of our premium brands and a deliberate strategy to take their core brand promise into new formats to unlock incremental penetration and usage. The last pillar is category expanding innovation, taking ice cream into new benefit areas such as better for you. For example, we are launching an hydration ice cream, scaling protein propositions, introducing new high food content ices, and investing in nascent sugar replacement technology. In regards to outlook, the ice cream market is expected to grow between the 3 to 4%. We expect organic sales growth for 2026 to be between 3 to 5%, with underlying margin improvement. Now, I will hand over to Abhijit, our Chief Financial Officer. who will take you through the financial performance in more detail. Thank you.

Thank you, Peter, and good morning, everyone. I'll walk you through our financial performance for 2025, focusing on revenue, profitability, cash flow, capital allocation, and our financial outlook for 2026. Starting with revenue, for the full year, TMICC reported revenue of €7.9 billion, with an organic growth of 4.2%. Price contributed approximately 2.6 percentage points, reflecting disciplined revenue management and selective price increases to partially combat material price inflation. Most encouragingly, volume and mix was up by a healthy and competitive 1.5%, despite cautious consumer sentiment in some markets, primarily the Americas. Innovation contributed meaningfully to growth in our premier brands, as Peter just highlighted with several super examples. Geographically, all three regions contributed to growth for the year. Europe, Australia, and New Zealand delivered a solid growth of 3.3% led by strong innovations, a disciplined and strategic approach to pricing, and improved execution in core markets, including stronger customer relationships and new value channel listings. Our productivity program delivered 72 million euros of savings as planned. The adjusted EBIT margin in the region declined operationally by 70 basis points and an additional 30 basis points due to lower royalties. Operational profitability in the region was impacted primarily due to raw material price increases, mainly cocoa. In addition to these factors, previously allocated depreciation costs, which are charged as cash costs from the second half of 2025, due to the transitional service agreements, impacted the adjusted EBITDA margin by 50 basis points. Now let me move to AMIA, which is Asia, Middle East, and Africa. AMIA grew by double digits with strong momentum in many of our markets, notably Turkey, Pakistan, China, and Indonesia. Across markets, we have expanded availability with more cabinets, met key snacking price points, and continued to land premium innovations including volcanics, our first premium multi-layered stick in Asia and Turkey. Profitability was impacted by rising cocoa price and hyperinflation in Turkey. The Americas was resilient with continued market share gains and distribution expansion. In the US, we expanded availability with new value channel listings and more cabinets and helped to grow the market with premium ranges in higher growth segments. This led to strong volume growth in the U.S. of 1.7%. In Brazil, we have reset the team, our proportional and pricing strategy, and invested in cabinets, and we are seeing early signs that this is working. On an adjusted EBIT basis, margin was up 10 basis points for the region as the productivity program more than offset the inflationary impact of raw material prices. On an adjusted EBITDA level, the reduction of 60 basis points was primarily due to the impact of depreciation becoming a cash charge due to the start of the transitional service agreements in the second half of the year. Now, turning to profitability, year on year on a reported currency basis, adjusted EBITDA declined by 100 basis points, of which 50 basis points was due to the translation effect of currency, and 50 basis points due to the commencement of the transitional service agreements with Unilever in the second half of 2025, where depreciation charges will be charged as a cash cost during the period of the TSAs. To give you a bit more color, let me start with cross-margin, which was resilient but impacted by commodity and other supply chain cost inflation in 2025 of 380 basis points, primarily due to significant COCO inflation. Selective pricing actions had an impact of 230 basis points, which helped offset part of the commodity headwinds of 380 basis points. Supply chain productivity savings of 170 basis points together with the pricing actions that I just mentioned more than offset the massive commodity headwinds. In addition, there was a negative 50 basis points impact from FX translation. Therefore, operationally, excluding FX, we were able to improve gross margin by 20 basis points while the reported gross margin was down by 30 basis points. Secondly, our SG&A cost increased by 20 basis points, primarily due to double running cost as we ramped up our group functions, reinvested in our frontline with more dedicated sales representatives and other strategic investments, for example, resetting the route to market in Italy. Our overheads productivity program delivered savings of 40 million euros, which offset inflation for the years. These savings were driven by organizational simplification, tight control of discretionary spend, productivity initiatives across the functions. Importantly, we achieved this while continuing to invest behind our brands, particularly in marketing and innovation. So to conclude, Although the adjusted EBITDA declined in the year due to the factors just mentioned, our underlying performance was resilient as adjusted EBIT at constant currency increased by 48 million euros as the significant raw material headwinds were more than offset with productivity savings, pricing, premiumization and operating leverage. I'd like to spend a bit of time to help interpret the cash flow for the year, given that we are operating on an interim operating model till 2027. Let me draw your attention to the next slide of the deck. The first thing is to make the free cash flow of 2024 and 2025 compatible. Since we were part of Unilever in 2024, we had very low interest costs. as the interest costs for 2024 only covered entities dedicated to the ice cream business. Further, due to the operation of the transitional service agreement with Unilever, depreciation costs are now part of cash costs charged to TMICC. Hence, the so-called comparable free cash flow for 2024 is 660 million euros. The comparable number for 2025 excluding separation related cost is 602 million euros. The difference of the 58 million euros comprises of two items. Higher capex of 31 million euros of which around one third is from additional cabinets and the rest for capacity and productivity. And number two, the negative translation effect of foreign exchange of 27 million euros. Our cash flow further had the effects of the demerger costs and the transitioning to the interim operating model, which amounted to 564 million euros, leading to a net free cash flow of 38 million euros. We ended the year with a net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 2.4 times, in line with our stated capital allocation policy. A brief word on the effective tax rate. The effective tax rate as reported is 31.3%. Excluding the impact of adjusting items such as hyperinflation, which is non-cash, and non-deductible VAT arising from the separation, the adjusted tax rate for the year was 26%, which is in line with our medium-term plan of 25 to 27%. For the year 2026, we expect the adjusted effective tax rate to be around 27% at the upper end of our midterm plan. I would like to provide some clarity on our perimeter. We had three entities that didn't transfer to us on December the 6th, 2025, the demerger date. Subsequent to that date, We've had the Indonesia business transferred to our company. We have secured the necessary permissions for the listing of the Indian business, and it will be listed in the stock exchange in India by around the middle of this month, which is earlier than planned. We then expect to acquire the Indian business in the first half of this year, subject to regulatory approvals. The last business that will move to us will be the Portugal business, which is expected to be acquired by us in the first half of this year. So our plans are now firmly on track. We issued our debut bond on the 19th of November 2025 and received a good response. Our offer was oversubscribed by over seven times, and we were able to secure our financing needs as a standalone company at very competitive interest rates. In order to help you with your modeling in the initial years of us being a standalone company, I would like to give you some estimates for the years. We expect net finance cost to be around 180 million euros for the year. We expect adjusting items for the year to be in the region of 425 million euros to 450 million euros, primarily for cost to build our new IT stack. as well as separation and restructuring expenses. Going forward, we will publish on our website a company-compiled consensus on a half-year and full-year basis. We will also publish the exchange rate impact based on actual movements in FX rates expected for the next half-year after this call and publish an update just before the end of the half-year and the full-year. Let me finish by giving you the outlook for the year. Looking ahead, while we are mindful of macro uncertainty, our expectations are as follows. We expect organic sales growth for the full year 2026 to be between 3% to 5%, with the ice cream market expected to grow between 3% to 4%. For the full year 2026, we expect adjusted EBITDA margin improvement of 40 to 60 basis points on a comparable perimeter basis. The reported improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be 0 to 20 basis points, primarily due to the impact of the anticipated acquisition of the India business in the first half of 2026. We expect the improvements in the year to be weighted more in the second half of 2026 due to the phasing of PSAs and commodity prices. Peter, back to you.

Thank you, Abhijit. To close before we go to the Q&A, we operate in a market that is large, is growing ahead of core foods, is highly resilient, and has attractive returns. We are the largest ice cream company in the world. with 160 years of expertise and heritage. We have a portfolio that is well-positioned for growth with world-class innovation and strong brands, channel positions, and geographic footprint. As a new standalone company, our governance is in place and operating effectively. We are building a strong, frontline-focused organization with the capabilities and culture to capture the market and value opportunity. We have a clear strategy to deliver growth and improve productivity, and we are delivering on it with a solid full-year operational performance that has proven that we can cope with even extreme input cost shocks. The day we listed in many ways was the end of the beginning. Now the hard work begins, but we are ready as an energized, as a one-magnum team to deliver. We will now take your questions.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. 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. We would like to ask you to ask one question per person plus one follow-up to give everyone a chance to ask questions. We will take our first question. And the question comes from the line of Warren Ackerman from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yeah. Good morning, everybody. Hopefully you can hear me okay. It's Warren Ackerman here at Barclays. So I've got one question and one follow-up. So my main question is around the – just to get a bit more clear on this EBITDA margin guidance, because I think sell-side – It's quite a wide range of estimates. So you're saying zero to 20 BIPs kind of all in on a kind of comparable basis. Can you maybe say what India will be? Because I think we know that India was 200 million last year with zero EBITDA. But what's your expectation for India when you buy it out? So any color on India. And then what happens around the India – because I thought that was also a 20-bit headwind on EBITDA in 26, and just trying to understand this TSA phasing and commodity to try and sort of give us a bit more color on those kind of moving pieces on the perimeter, but also a little bit on the phasing and the commodities. It's still a bit unclear to me on that. And then the follow-up is really on the outlook for pricing. I guess maybe one for Peter. I mean, Peter, obviously you know you've seen snacking prices are coming down big time in the U.S. from some of the U.S. food peers. Your commodity costs are coming down, particularly cocoa, and you've got a depremiumization strategy as you go after mass and value. So there's lots of sort of factors that would seem to suggest that pricing should be kind of going down, you know, strategy plus commodity, is there a scenario where you think pricing in aggregates for Magnum could be negative in 2026? And so, yeah, if you can maybe sort of address that pricing piece and how to think about the price volume equation within the organic sales growth guide of three to five. Thank you.

Good morning, Warren, or good afternoon. Yeah, good questions. I will start with the pricing question, make a couple of remarks on India, and then we'll let Abhijit explain the parameter. You know, this year, our raw material cost went up with 380 bps, and we decided not to fully price them and reinvest at 230 bps. structural productivity savings to stay competitive, and it worked, because this year we grew volume and we grew value. And particularly when you look at the U.S., where we grew volume with 1.8%, actually, and value 1.7%, so we hardly priced in the U.S., and did that very deliberately. In the U.S., we have less chocolate in our portfolio, And I expect that our pricing will stay stable and that we will have mainly mix and volume-led growth. But in general, I feel actually really good about our American pricing and the tough choices and painful choices that we made this year. In Europe, we priced Magnum, but not in full. We're partially covered, so I expect in the chocolate segment actually stable prices and overall an environment of more volume than value-led growth. In emerging markets, I still see a combination of good pricing and on top of the underlying volume growth that we always see. So I think our pricing environment will be relatively stable because we never made the enormous increases that some of other people in the industry did. Now, before I head over to Abhijit, a little bit on China. As you know, I worked in China in the 90s. And when I look at the Indian market, it is actually like China in the early 90s or Turkey in the last 80s. very low per capita consumption, but with a booming economy, you see consumption going up rapidly in the cities and increasingly also in secondary and tertiary cities. It is the biggest growth opportunity in the industry. At this moment in time, India is already the largest dairy market in the world. It would not surprise me that in 20 years' time, India is the largest ice cream market in the world, surpassing the US. We are lucky that we have a very good position in India from which to build, but it was not a very successful business over the last 20 years. Basically, it lost a lot of share. The profitability was flat this year. Last year, it was in decline. So we're in a turnaround mode, but we're extremely lucky to have this business in our portfolio because we can use it as a base to build up a leading business. Abhijit, over to you on perimeter.

Thanks, Peter. Hi, Warren. Good morning. Let me explain the guidance a little bit. So what we have said is for the existing perimeter, right, so that is for the Magnum Ice Cream Company, before the acquisition of India and Portugal, we expect profit to go up in the 40 to 60 basis points range. Now, as you mentioned, the Indian business is around the 200 million turnover, but because we are making investments there, it will come with a loss-making P&L, and that causes the headwind on one side, and then because The India business was not part of the perimeter. It was paying the Magnum ice cream company a certain amount of royalty because they were using our brands. Once it becomes part of our perimeter, that royalty will stop as well. And that's why we said that that will cause a headwind in total, both because of the negative profitability of India and the stopping of royalties. will have an impact such that the reported numbers that you see in 2026 in a perimeter that is including India and Portugal will be in the 0 to 20 basis points. Does that clarify on the EBIT? Then I take your question on the TSA phasing and commodities, Warren.

Yes, and I'm sorry, just on the final piece on the technicals and the non-cash cash depreciation, is that still 20 BIP headwind in 26 as well? Yes, yes, yes. So it's 80 BIPs of technicals, 40 BIPs India, 20 BIPs royalty, 20 BIPs depreciation.

Exactly, exactly. And that is what I had explained in the earlier call that we did together with the sell side. Then on TSA phasing and commodities, So the way it works is, of course, we have started with PSAs from the 1st of July last year. It phases out over time because as we build up our own organization, we stop services from Unilever. That is done in a proper schedule that we have agreed between the two companies. So as we go through 2026, our PSAs during the year will come down. And then in 2027, they will come down further and then we will exit all TSAs by the end of 2027. The phasing of commodity prices, we expect some benefit when it will come in the second half of the year because, you know, as you've also heard from many other companies, all the COCO prices have now come down. A lot of us are hedged already at higher prices and that's why we've said that the improvement in our performance will be more second-half rated. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Warren.

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Celine Panetti from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. So my first question is on trying to understand the TSA again for 25 because there was a 50 basis point extra that we did not expect. So can you, because you had the TSA impact, if I look at your bridge, you had a 20, minus 20 basis point net negative on the SG&A when you had TSA and then you had the non-cash. So if you could explain that, because I think that was new news this morning. And then, you know, putting all together on what you said for the top line and the margin expectation, your effects, your tax guidance and your net income, how should we look at EPS for the year, on a year-on-year basis? We're expecting a decline. If you could help us framing that. My second question is on the overall environment. Peter, I heard you saying that you think that pricing should remain positive. If I look at Europe, it seems that the volume was still negative in the fourth quarter. I appreciate it's a small quarter. And then you mentioned as well that the USA, it was a tougher market environment. So I am a bit struggling about that. what you're saying on the market growth of three to four, and yet it seems that the exit rate, at least in developed markets, has weakened into the fourth quarter. So if you could help on that. Thank you.

Hi, Celine. Let me answer Q4 first, and then give the difficult questions to Abhijit. You know, the overall year, we grew ahead of our expectations at 4.2%, with 1.5% volume, share growth everywhere, with especially a very good third quarter. I don't know whether everybody appreciates that, but in 24, we grew more than 9%, and we did 4% on top of Q3. So actually not Q2, but Q3 was the remarkable quarter for us. Let me give some context on Q4. In our seasonal out-of-home channel driven businesses, we use Q4 to optimize the system, take cabinets back, replace them, optimize distributors, and did this in a very disciplined way to have a really good start in 2026. In the Southern Hemisphere, we had a particular good performance in Indonesia and ANZ. China is like Europe, it has the same seasonality. But Indonesia and ANZ did a really good job. Philippines was a little bit soft because there were a lot of typhoons this year, unseasonal. And in Brazil, we had a slow start of the season. You see that also with the beer companies. And it only started in December in earnest. And Brazil was weak last year. So we were really happy with this December pickup. In Europe, we shifted the promo strategy last year. And we did the promo pressure more towards Q2 and Q3 as it gives higher returns as the market is larger. And this has proven to be a really good strategy with solid volume and value growth in Europe. And 3.3% overall growth is not bad. And actually, 1.2% growth in Europe was a really good year. The U.S. started well early October, but then became soft end of October, November, and especially November with the government shutdown, slip of the tongue, and food stamp challenges. It only picked up in the last weeks of December when the momentum came back in the market. So having said all of this, there was nothing structural in Q4 that makes me worried about 26 and the predictions that we have for the market. I hope this answers, Celine, and then I'll, when that is okay, I will hand over to Abhijit. Are you okay?

Thank you.

I assume yes.

So let me clarify on the margin expectation and the tax guidance. Maybe first let me start with the extra depreciation. So what I've said is on the SG&A bridge, we increased our SG&A in the second half of this year, right? There were two big factors there. One was the double run cost. So basically, you know, we were building up our organization as we were trying to take over functions from Unilever that just brings additional costs. And the second one is the temporary service agreements, which comes with a certain tax markup. So those are the two factors there. that increased our overheads by 20 basis points. The 50 basis points which you said was not expected, actually, that is what in the earlier call I had mentioned, that depreciation which was allocated to us from Unilever used to come before separation as a non-cash cost. So, therefore, in the EBITDA, that used to be a depreciation that was deducted. When you go on to a TSA, Unilever charges us that depreciation as a cash cost, and that's simply a technical impact, why it impacts the EBITDA, because what was earlier a non-cash cost will become or has become a cash cost for the period of the TSA. Then regarding the EPS, given all the moving parts, we are not guiding because also the separation cost and all of that. But if you look at an adjusted EPS for the year taking out effects, we will see a little bit growth in earnings as we have said. And that should help the EPS to be around flattish or a little bit up for the year on an adjusted basis.

All right. That includes the tax rates being higher and the net financial cost as well.

Yes, yes.

Thank you.

Next question. The next question comes from Jeff Stent from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Good morning, gents. Two questions, if I may. Both very simple. The first one, could you just clarify whether or not 2025 profits, i.e. EBITDA, were actually in line with your expectations? And the second one, just to clarify the last point, you said taking out FX, you expected the EPS would be flatty short. What do you expect based on current FX? You know, what the sort of adjusted earnings will do just as current FX stands? Thank you.

Thanks, Jeff. On the first question, Yes, because we knew the massive cost inflation that we had at the beginning of our years and our plans had built us in, and we more or less ended where we ended, helped because the productivity plan came through in full. Otherwise, we would not have been able to price as we did and basically have slightly positive EBIT. On the second one, or on the first one, Abhijit, over to you.

So maybe also on the 2025 EBITDA, if you remember for the first half, we were already minus 30 down. And at that time, we had also said that we don't expect an improvement, maybe a slight decline. So that's where you see that the minus 30 only became minus 50. And then the additional 50 basis points was simply the whole depreciation thing that I just explained. The EPS look is very difficult to predict FX rates in next week or so. We will publish what is our FX expectation for the year. Now, that will change, of course, because if we could predict it accurately, then we would be in a different business. But I will give you that outlook next week. When we say around flatish EPS, you know, it could be a bit up or a bit down, depending on where we end the year. But that is kind of, it's not that there is a big decline in adjusted EPS. And the effects impact will give you some idea next week.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Deb.

Thank you. We'll take our next question. Your next question comes from David Roo from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Good morning, gents. There's two questions from my side. Firstly, on the margin, if we take a step back and we look at the two main components of your medium-term investment, margin expansion ambitions. You've got the cost savings and you've got the reinvestment, right? By the end of 2025, it looks like you've hit about 50% of your cost savings targets on a cumulative basis. Just out of interest, by comparison, how much of your reinvestment spend have you done by the end of 2025? Thank you. And then I'll follow up with the next one.

I will hand over to him, but let me say a little bit, you know, what we did this year. You know, we basically want to run the business on long-term fundamentals for the long run and aim for volume and competitive growth. With the 380 bps inflation, which was truly unprecedented last year, mainly dairy and chocolate, We decided to invest our 230 bps productivity savings to keep pricing competitive. That was a choice. We discussed it internally a lot. Shall we do more profit and have less volume growth and less share? But we took the decision to invest behind the competitiveness of the business. And as discussed with all of you, get this volume engine going for the second year. That was the big thing that impacted profitability this year. Over to you, Abhijit, to further build.

Yeah, so on the reinvestment part, there were two parts, as you will recall, David. One was the step up in CapEx. So that we have moved up. We are now, I think last year we ended around the four and a half. We were coming from three and a half to four. We ended at four and a half. So that is going as planned. The second part we said was to, or actually there were three parts. We said we will invest in our sales force by adding a dedicated sales force that has also been done, 1,000 people. And then the last thing we had said was we will step up A&P, but we had said we will do that in two ways. We said first we will make the 12.5% that we spend more efficient, and then if necessary, we will take that up And you would have seen we have announced our new collaboration or partnership with Publicis, which gives us, despite being a separate standalone company, quite some leverage and efficiency in the spend that we do. And once we have captured that and we feel the need to do more, we have enough room to do that in the coming years.

Okay, that's clear. So just to clarify, so on the sales force as a percentage of revenue, the cost for the sales force will come down a bit from 2025 given those double costs you spoke about.

Yeah, the double cost is not for the sales force. The sales force, the double cost is more for the support functions. So for example, you know, if you have I take a number, 50 people doing payables from Unilever. We have to build up an organization of 50 people. They have to learn the work from Unilever, and then Unilever winds down their people. That's the double cost.

Okay, so your headcounts on the sales force is at steady states by the end of 2025, right?

Yeah, steady state, and when possible, I will add You know, our business is very demand creation driven. When we see that more demand support works to drive growth, we'll do it. When more salespeople would lead to more sales, we would invest. We're actually pretty – we try to keep head offices and regional offices and back offices as lean as possible, central teams as lean as possible, and push the resources to the front lines. where they drive, you know, turnover growth.

Okay, that makes sense. And then just briefly on my follow-up question, you mentioned taking out some cabinets in Q4. Can you quantify the impact of this on OSG in Q4? And then how should we think about the phase-in on the 2% growth in cabinets?

It's basically what we do. There are certain markets where, you know, like a convenience store, a 7-Eleven, the cabinet will stay in the outlet and in the low season just sells not a lot. There are also markets where a lot of the other outlets, small stores, leisure, we pull back at the end of the season. We take them with stocks. And we basically resticker them, put the stock in really cold warehouses, and make everything ready to start the season again. Same for regional distributors. We optimize their stock levels, and we make sure that the whole system is ready to basically, yeah, we are like farmers, to put the cabinets on the ground again when the season starts in February, March, and April. This is a yearly process, so there was nothing new last year. But as you can imagine, we basically said, you know, this is one of these fundamental issues. You need to do this with very big discipline because you can postpone it and have a little bit of extra sales. But we said best practice is to manage the whole out-of-home network with a lot of discipline. both at distributor level, as well as outlet level. So that is basically it. I think in general of the 3 million outlets, but I'm now making it up a little bit, but I think somewhere between the five and 700,000 cabinets come back every season. Thank you. And we have 2000 distributors and you can imagine, you know, it's very important that you manage that. with a lot of discipline that you don't have a lot of stock at the end of the season because it would destroy your Q1. And you want the cash back. So, you know, this is a very nice, this is operationally intense activity system where discipline is really important, and we applied a lot of discipline this year.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Carol Zotti from Capital Chevro.

Please go ahead. Yes, good morning all. Thanks for taking the questions. I want to start with a question on cash flow and working capital because there has this year been some negative outflows on the working capital side of about 200 million. You already provided more insights in cash flows, but How should we think about working capital going forward? The guide is minus 4.5% of revenues. What are your expectations on cash flow in 2026? And then the other question is much more about... Latin America, historically I think Brazil used to be a good business. What are you doing to get the Brazilian business back on track, as well as what you're seeing in Mexico? What are some of the interventions you've made in that market?

Thank you. Okay, Karel, this is a really good question. I'm just back from Brazil, and I went there the week before Carnaval, so it was strictly business. You know, Brazil is a really interesting country because the Brazilian ice cream market is on fire. But our Kibon business, which used to be a star 10 years ago, had sort of deteriorated. And why? What was the problem? A, the market has grown mainly more premium and more cheaper, more affordable. And we got stuck in the middle and we actually over a 10 year period had lost a lot of share. Now, what did we do? We first last year replaced the full management team and all managers in the business. So we put a new team in place. Then secondly, Our factories ran on very high waste levels and bad operational efficiencies. And I'm very pleased that we are making now really good steps to improve that. And over the coming years, we'll need to evolve the portfolio in Brazil and become more affordable and more premium. at the same time. And that will take a little bit more time. As I said, we luckily, it was really a horrible year. It was a horrible year before, and this year was not very good. But in December, we actually made really good progress as we hit the new season with good growth. And actually, the beginning of this year, I can't say anything about it. I just hear. But I was just there. And, you know, we're in much better shape.

Yeah, let me, Carol, take your question on the cash flow. You know, the interim operating model creates a bit of difficulty because it's a very complicated process where on an average basis, we have a subsidy from Unilever and then they manage our receivables and payables as part of the interim operating model. So it's not really a cash outflow, it's a temporary cash outflow which will unwind when we get off the TSAs. So the way to understand it is a couple of things one is if you look at our working capital as a company in terms of number of days between 25 and 24 there is no change so we have actually managed uh well we have a little bit of increase in terms of number of days on receivable and we had a two-day improvement in inventory, the payables have remained the same. So if you look at the operational working capital and therefore if you look at the bridge on the operational or comparable cash flow as I have presented, you will see that there is no impact on working capital because we have managed that roughly flat year on year. So That is also the reason why in the capital markets day we didn't give a separate guidance on cash flow for 26 and 27 because it's just very difficult to do. So, therefore, we've said from 28 and 29, we will, the guidance we have given or the outlook we've given for cash flow will remain. As we go through the year, we will probably give some clarity, but this year and next year, just because of the interim operating model, it's difficult to give an outlook on that.

Thank you. But stock creditors, debtors is all fully in control, and we're as tight as we ever were. Yeah.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Robert John Voss from ABN AMBRO-Oddo BHF. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hi. Good afternoon, all, and thanks for taking my question. I have one left in the meantime. Your guidance for adjusting items, it implies a cumulative roughly 750 to 770 in 2025 and 2026 combined. If I recall correctly, your guidance was 800 million for the years 2025 to 2028. So I was wondering, are you ahead of schedule timing-wise, or should we anticipate that the 800 million cumulatively will be exceeded?

Yeah, thanks, Robert. Let me clarify. So when we, if you look again at the capital markets, they were guided to 800 million of separation cost, including the IT stack. And then we said we would have 80 basis points, if I'm not wrong, on restructuring. And basically this 425 to 450 that I'm guiding for next year is including both. So therefore, it's not a big shift in timing. It's pretty much give or take a few million is in line with what we have said.

That makes sense. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question comes from Bingham Zou from Rothschild and Co. Redburn. Please go ahead.

Hi, Peter and Michelle. Hope you're well. Thank you for taking my question. I want to shift gears a little bit. I have a couple of questions about AMEA. So you had a sort of growth there, but it seems like from the presentation, you've maintained or gained market share slightly in that region. Can you touch on the market share performance in AMBA and how the competitive landscape is evolving in some markets with some strong local player? And tied to that, at the Capital Market Day, you highlight the cabinet penetration in markets like Philippines, China, and Indonesia still lack of others. Can you give us an update on the progress you've made this year in order to prepare for the high season next year? And then I have a follow-up, please. Thank you.

Thanks, Bing, for the question. Yeah, you know, as you know, Asia is not a homogeneous sort of territory, so I will need to go in a little bit of country detail. We won share in China and, you know, I'm very proud of that because it follows a long trajectory of share growth. We gained share versus most of the players and menu and are a solid number two. New organization, new sales approach. We reset trade margins and had a really good innovation program. In Indonesia, for many years, we were under share pressure because the Chinese ice, which is related to menu, had moved into Indonesia. And with new management and a new strategy, we basically were able to grow share. And the leader of China, of Southeast Asia, is the boss of China. So we apply all our China knowledge to compete. We also get a share in Thailand after a long period of weakness and massive share gains in Pakistan. I can't comment on India, of course. In Turkey, we lost a little bit of share, but that is planned because we don't always want to compete in the value segment versus DOBs. But it is sort of planned requirements. Overall, we gained share in the region. Now, talking about cabinets, China is actually less of a cabinet business because it's more e-commerce, more convenience stores who run their own cabinets. In the Philippines, we increased distribution. In Pakistan, we massively increased. increased distribution, and in Indonesia, a little bit, because main part of the year was to get the distributors, their margin, and the portfolio in good order. So that is approximately, you know, where we were with distribution and share gains in the region. You know, I love the region. I lived so long in Singapore and in China. But it is still an area of really good growth for us. But it's not hyper-growth like Asia. It's very solid, high single-digit growth, but not hyper-growth, but very, very good still.

Thank you. That's really helpful. Then my follow-up question is, still on AMEA, that is your highest margin region. I'm listening that's helped by the channel mix. But how much further room do you see to improve productivity in the margin? Especially, it seems like a lot of focus is on driving top line, and with the Indian consolidation being margin dilutive, and you mentioned to invest in Indian being high growth. How should we think about kind of median term margin in a region?

There are the main opportunity to improve margin in our business is Europe and the U.S. We have pretty solid businesses in Asia, but like everywhere else, we can still improve the supply chain by further automation of the factories, improving layouts, robotization, but a real focus in Asia and EMEA is growth, growth, and growth. Margin is for Europe and the U.S.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Your next question comes from David Hayes from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Morning, all. So two from me, or two areas from me, I guess. Just on the food voucher flag that you made in terms of the U.S., I wonder if you can quantify that at all for the fourth quarter. And then should we think about that as a sort of three-, four-year dynamic that we take account of? Because as I understand it, it's kind of a fading of these food vouchers. over a longer period of time. And just in terms of the dynamics of it, is this certain states taking out ice cream products from what is eligible for the vouchers, or is it just an indirect effect that people have got less spend generally in grocery channels, and that's kind of knocking onto their purchase of ice cream? And then the second area is on the freezer rollout. I wonder if you can quantify to what the freezer number went from and to from the beginning to the end of the year. And it looks like when you look at the quality of the Indian subsidiary slides that perhaps almost half of the extra freezers are going to be based in India. Is that right, or is that an additional number of freezers that we should look at once it's consolidated? And then just a point of clarification, still on freezers, just what you were saying before about the fourth quarter freezer review, it sounds like there's almost a sale and return dynamic in the fourth quarter, which you see in other seasonal freezers. businesses that if you don't sell sun cream in certain retailers, then they basically give the money back. It's a negative sales dynamic in the fourth quarter. Is that what goes on? Is that what you're saying happened a little bit? And then that just varies year by year in terms of the season success. Thank you so much.

Okay. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. You know, most of the stuff last year went totally in line what we had planned for and what we had worked to. This government shutdown, the main impact was not the delay of the listing, but was basically government employees not getting paid. And food stamps, which basically fell out in November, which had an impact on our business, but it actually came back at the end of December, as I already mentioned. And, you know, we got further momentum. 6% to 8% of our turnover in the U.S., it comes from food stamps. It's, by the way, in every food category in the U.S., so this is an important channel for us, but it was temporary. Then when you look at the freezers, yes, indeed, India will be a core investment area. And we actually saw last year a couple of things. We were able to negotiate freezes better than we did in the past because we put a lot of focus on it. So we got more bank for our freezer buck and invested more money behind freezes. And a large part of our new freezes, you know, as we optimize them, go to the areas with higher returns. And, you know, and this is also logic. You know, there are not that many new swimming pools in Germany. But there are many new outlets and regions in India, in Pakistan, still in Turkey that we can develop. But as you know, because you've seen it, in India, we have a sort of a cabinet for every 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants, in Turkey for every 250. So as the market develops, these massive growth opportunities will take a large part of our cabinets. On your last question, on these cabinets, actually, as I already said during one of the other questions, there are many geographies where we put cabinets in in certain channels and pull them back. There's nothing new, but that is the sort of dynamic how we run these categories. And I think some, you know, indeed, sunscreen businesses do that as well. You put your whole rack with all your sunscreens in, and at the end of the season, you take it out. and then you bring it back again in the season. You have to see it like that, but it's not all of our freezers, but it is a part of our freezers, and you want to do that because you want to start the year with a bang again.

Thanks so much.

Thank you. Your next question from Anton Prevost from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Hi, Peter, Abhijit, and Michel. One quick question for me. So on pricing for Europe in 26, please, I think you said you expected broadly flat price environment. But, I mean, with crock deflation in 2H that you pointed out, I mean, what makes you consider that you will not need some price fallback or reinvestments to remain competitive as you target volume growth there? And ultimately, Europe remains quite a competitive market on price.

Thank you. Yeah, you know, As I said before, this is a business where we live in volume-led competitive growth, and we have priced accordingly. At this moment in time, we feel that we are well placed in the European context, also analyzing the covers everybody has in the industry. And we do believe that we will still get a little bit of mixed growth in Europe as consumers everywhere. I didn't get the GOP question yet, but there's the consumers everywhere going to more handheld units, more portion control, more, you know, premium products. So you get mixed. But But, yeah, you know, we are price competitive, and we do expect, because the European market is actually quite a healthy market, that there will also still be volume growth in the market. So a little bit of price, a little bit of mix, and continued volume growth.

Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question is from Maxine Stranout from ING Bank. Please go ahead. Maxine Stranout, your line is open. Please ask your question. If you're happy, we will move to the next question. The next question is from Jeremy Lindsay Kincaid from Van Lanshot Kempin. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I'll have one, remaining one. Obviously, you closed the deal with Indonesia and transferred that business into your business, clearly. However, I don't see any entry on the cash flow statement there for an acquisition. Can you help me understand the dynamics, please? Thanks.

No, this was just part of the overall demerger dividend that it does not go out from the cash flow. It was just a delayed transfer which happened for technical reasons one day after we became a listed company. So you will not also see in our cash flow the price or whatever we have paid for all the other markets. So you should look at Indonesia as just any other market, just that the technical date of transfer was the day after we listed.

It is different than India and Portugal.

Understood. Thanks.

Thank you. Your final question comes from the line of Gillian Delmas from UBS. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good morning all. Main question is market growth because you anticipate another year of 3% to 4%. But Would it be fair to assume that category growth this year should be more driven by volume mix rather than pricing, given what's happening on the commodity cost front? And therefore, by extension, does it mean that for Magnum to comfortably reach the 3% to 5% organic sales growth in 2026, your volume growth would have to further improve compared to the 1.5% you've just achieved in 2025. And then my second question, I mean, just a quick point of clarification. Commodity cost-wise, so you've signaled that we should have a contrasted picture between the first and the second half of 26. Just wondering if, for the year as a whole, you anticipate commodities to be a headwind or a tailwind. Thank you very much.

On the growth, as a global business, we believe that the American market will have low volume, still good mix, as the glyphs drive also the underlying premiumization trend further. A little bit of price. Europe will be still volume based on the historic trends and mix. And Asia and the rest of the world will be a combination of price and volume. And actually, we expect that the overall global mix, although built up a little bit differently than three years ago, we'll still be into the 3% to 4% growth. What you also get is that certain really fast-growing markets, like Brazil and like India, become a larger part of the global pie. So this 3 to 4 is pretty robust, and we feel good about our 3 to 5s. And why do we feel good about that? Because we have a good geographic mix. Our portfolio is more premium, and most of the accelerated growth is in premium segment of the market, handheld portion control, premium. And yeah, so in this way, we believe that again, it will be a three to five years. And Yeah, that is the year, and yeah, our volume growth of 1.5%, it will be 1.5%, 2% this year, and we will think with a little bit of mix in pricing, we'll end up between the 3% and 5% again.

On commodities, maybe good to clarify that 2025 was just a very specific year where we had close to 9% inflation on commodities. We expect that to be significantly lower, maybe in the low single-digit range this year. So there will be a little bit of headwind, but not anything near as much as we saw last year. Very clear. Thank you.

This concludes today's question and answer session. I'll now hand the call back to Peter Tickle for closing remarks.

Thank you, Heidi. Thank you, Michelle. Let me leave you with three messages. One, the ice cream market is healthy and resilient. It's partly the lipstick effect, but also increasingly GLP-1s that will help to premiumize the category, further premiumize the category. Two, over the last two years, we took 8 billion turnover out of Unilever and created the company with a hungry team, solid fundamentals and good governance. Performance was in line with plan and strengthening. Market shares are really good. We had positive volumes everywhere and have a good grip on profitability. As shown this year, how we effectively dealt with this 380 bps cost spike. But in our thinking, it's still very much day one, and I will keep it that way. Thank you very much for being here today, and look forward to catching up with many of you over the coming weeks and months. Bye-bye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.