The Magnum Ice Cream Company N.V.

Good morning and welcome to the Magnum Ice Cream Company webcast for first half 2026 results. My name is Razia 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 question one by one. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Lloyd Midwinter, Head of Investor Relations. Lloyd, please go ahead.

Hello, and welcome to the webcast for the H1 2026 results of the Magnum Ice Cream Company. My name is Lloyd Midwinter, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm here with our CEO, Peter Ter Kulve, and our CFO, Abhijit Bhattacharya. Our press release and this presentation are published on our investor relations website, where a replay and transcript to this webcast will also be made available. Before we start, I would like to draw your attention to the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements and assumptions. This applies to the presentation and webcast, including the Q&A session. In a moment, Peter will share some key highlights on our business performance, showing how we are executing on our strategy. Abhijit will then run through our financial results and outlook. We will then be happy to address your questions. So, Peter, over to you.

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining. Lloyd, it's nice to have you with us. Welcome to TMICC. Let's start with the headline first. We delivered a solid first half. The ice cream category keeps growing and we outperformed it by achieving growth of 4.7%. Growth was balanced across volume and value, every region and each of our global brands. Importantly, our performance was driven by innovation and operational rigor. And this rigor meant we got off to a strong start for the summer season. Disciplined execution of our productivity program delivered 90 million savings during the first half, helping us deliver underlying margin improvement and providing fuel for growth. Adjusted EBITDA increased to 880 million, 18.7% margin, and adjusted EBIT margin was 15.3%, 50 basis Transformation remains on track for end of 27. Looking ahead, while we are clear-eyed on the wider external challenges, we are committed to our strategy, confident in our ability to execute and reaffirm our full-year outlook. Before diving into the results of the first half, I want to take a step back and remind you of our vision and strategy. It's been almost a year since we presented this at our Capital Markets Day and we're in the middle of our most important period of execution. When you can see, impact in action. Our vision for the Magnum Ice Cream Company 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. and we will do that by delivering our strategy to grow the ice cream market as category leader. We are executing against that strategy and today's results show that it is starting to work. I really do believe that life tastes better with ice cream. We have a simple but powerful value creation model that underpins our performance. Strong brands and innovation that create desire and demand, execution rigor that converts demand into results, and the culture and structure that empowers our colleagues to act like owners. So, on innovation, we will generate demand through building and activating our brands like the best in the beauty industry, because like beauty, Ice Cream is a marketing and innovation-led category, and we will leverage our unique capabilities and skill to create unmatched desire for our products. Secondly, execution. Execution matters, especially in ice cream. We aim to have the rigor of our bottling and soft drinks peers, getting the right product to the right place, at the right price every time at some lengths of desire. And lastly, an ownership culture. None of this is possible without the right culture. It is the hardest thing for people outside the company to see, but it is the most powerful change we have made in the past 24 months. We are creating a culture with clear accountability. A simple structure and aligned incentives that empower, enables every colleague. Everyone at the Magnum Ice Cream Company is an owner and everyone is here to sell ice cream. This model will enable us to deliver against our median term targets for growth and returns. We're off to a solid start. Turning to our business performance during the first half. In the first half, we delivered 4.7 billion revenue, achieving organic sales growth of 4.7%. We balanced volume and value to outperform the global ice cream category with 2.5% volume and price up 2.2%. It's important to remember that this performance is against strong Comparisons from the previous years. In the first half of 2025, we delivered organic sales growth of 5.8%. I'm proud of the team for delivering such a strong result. It shows our strategy is beginning to work. All three of our regions contributed to growth, with Europe and ANZ at 4.1%, America at 3.2%, and the Maya growing 7.6%. Our focus on operational rigor meant the key summer selling season got off to a strong start. We gained share in all regions, including the US, our biggest market, with 1.1 billion revenue for the first half. France and the UK were key growth drivers for Europe, and Maya was driven by double-digit growth for Turkey and Pakistan. as well as India included from Q2. However, we also have some markets not yet achieving their full potential, which we see as future opportunity. And we are working with the local teams to get it right into the detail of the challenges and fix the issues. For example, in Italy, we're making progress with our sales and share stabilizing after taking action to address declines. We have also renewed our team in Brazil and are making structural changes to be ready for the next peak season. This deep market focus work will take time to show in our results, but we are focused on setting ourselves up for long-term success in those countries rather than quick fixes. Our four leading brands, Magnum, Ben & Jerry's, Cornetto, and the Heart brand, continued to drive organic sales growth. Magnum delivered mid-single-digit growth, driven by the successful launch of Magnum's signature La Pistache, ranked as the top ice cream innovation in Europe, as well as La Pêche, bonbons in Europe and ANZ, as well as cones in multiple markets of Europe, ANZ and EMEA. Ben & Jerry's gained further momentum and grew mid-single digit across the period, with performance accelerating to 9.2% in the second quarter for both the Americas and European set, with the new sticks in the U.S. and sandwich formats bringing new consumers to the brand. Stick and sandwich formats of Ben & Jerry are as popular as our other brands. Maybe even more so. But it is an innovation for Ben & Jerry's which customers are loving. It's allowing consumers on the go snacking with one of their favorite brands with their favorite flavors. And they are in sizes that resonate with consumers on GLP-1s. Ben & Jerry's social reach and engagements continue to grow. and our annual free cone day was the most successful yet with more than 1 million scoops shared with consumers. I also handed out scoops. Cornetto delivered low single digit growth following high single digit growth last year supported by the launch of Pistachio Max in Europe and Turkey and an improved windmill structure for its famous topping as well as on-trend fruit sorbet variants in Europe, China and selected Southeast Asian markets. The hard-rent delivered mid-single-digit growth driven by strong performance of Solero within the core range and newly introduced Solero bonbons as well as continued momentum of Volcanics in Europe and Turkey. Our core portfolio superiority was enhanced with the success of new range additions. New pine flavors for Ben & Jerry's included strawberry doughnut tea and Churki Choli Churisi are within the top 10 of new ice cream products in the UK, Netherlands, and Germany. We're also taking our premium brands increasingly multi-format, expanding occasions. Magnum sandwiches and bowl counts launched Strongly in Turkey, Ben & Jerry's Sticks made up four of the top 10 super premium novelties in the US. And Ben & Jerry's Sandwiches were the number one new impulse ice cream product in the UK. I have spent a significant part of my career in ice cream, and I cannot remember a time when this much innovation was successfully delivered into the market for Magnum and Ben & Jerry's. We also continue to create our perfect portfolio with a clear offer across all price points. This included new launches for Popsicle in partnership with Hello Kitty and Bluey in the U.S. and reinventing quality walls to lead with a new improved dairy recipe in India. This is really important in India, the biggest dairy market in the world. Our category expanding innovation continued with the launch of Yasso Pines in the US, delivering six quarters of double digit growth and ice balls in Asia, or Hydro Ice off to a good start in Iberia and the Benelux. Our increased speed and rhythm in innovation is delivering results. We can do more than just flavor renovations. Our frontline first model and ownership culture is driving growth in all channels. The at-home channel grew mid-single digit, supported by improved service level, which enhanced availability. Growth was further supported by stronger in-store execution, driven by more frequent visits from our dedicated sales force and a greater focus on merchandising. In the US, we continue to rebuild our business in the value and club segments. The Away From Home channel delivered mid-single-digit growth, supported by continued expansion of our cabinet fleet in key markets, including India, Pakistan, China, and Mexico, sets us up for a better key summer season. Digital commerce maintained double-digit growth, driven by solid execution and supported by strong collaboration with key partners as well as improved digital assets. Across regions, we see DECOM driving category growth and we are positioning ourselves as the category partner of choice for leading players in the space as we partner on marketing initiatives. It is one of the biggest long-term opportunities we see with DECOM changing consumption patterns in a way that can be structurally supportive to the ice cream category. I'm pleased with the disciplined execution driving our productivity program, which delivered 90 million of savings in the first half and remains on track to deliver the planned savings of half a billion in the medium term. Savings in the first half included 70 million in the supply chain and 20 million from overhead. We continue to reduce waste, improve factory utilization, and de-bottleneck our supply chain, with a proportion of this saving being reinvested in growth. I was very pleased to see that we were able to increase market share during the last week in June when there was a heat wave. Only when you get operationally the thing really tight. you gain market share in heat waves. Our acquisition in India and Portugal were completed on 30th of March, 2026 and 1st of April respectively. And they're successfully integrated to our results. We have appointed six strategic partners as the backbone of our future technology stack and we're building our systems, processes and capabilities. We are now in the heavy lifting phase and the team are doing a fantastic job. All TSA access planned for the first half of 26 were concluded on time and we continue working to access remaining TSAs by the end of 27. We'll now share more details on financial results and I will hand over to Abhijit, our CFO, to take you through the numbers.