Koninklijke Ahold Del Ord

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to the Analyst Conference call on the first quarter 2026 results of Erhold Dalhais. Please note that this call is being webcast and recorded. During this call, Erhold Dalhais anticipates making projections and forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that are difficult to predict and that may cause our actual results to differ materially from future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Therefore, you should not place undue reliance on any of these forward-looking statements. The introduction will be followed by a Q&A session Any views expressed by those asking questions are not necessarily the views of Aholda Hayes. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to JP O'Meara, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, JP.

Thank you very much, Heidi, and good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to welcome you today to our Q1 2026 Results Conference Calls. On today's call are Franz Muller, our President and CEO, and Yolanda Pootsbile, our CFO. After a brief presentation, we will open the call for questions. In case you haven't seen it, the earnings release and the accompanying presentation slides can be accessed through the investor section of our website, aholdeles.com, which also provides extra disclosure and details for your convenience. To ensure everyone has the opportunity to get their questions answered today, I ask that you initially limit yourself to two questions. If you have further questions, then feel free to re-enter the queue. To ensure ease of speaking, all growth rates mentioned in today's prepared remarks will be at constant exchange rates unless otherwise stated. And with that, I hand over to you, Frans.

Thank you very much, JP, and good morning, everyone. We had a solid start to the year. Our Q1 performance reflects the strength of the foundation we have built with our growing together strategy, focused on delivering value for customers, associates, and all our stakeholders, and this every day. This is underpinned by clear choices, investing in our customer value proposition, strengthening our portfolio and expanding our footprint, while maintaining discipline in how we allocate capital. We continue to operate in a dynamic and at times more demanding environment. Food inflation was more moderate in this quarter, with year-over-year deflation in several categories, which has been helpful to consumers. At the same time, geopolitical tensions, including the recent conflict in the Middle East, are contributing to uncertainty. Energy prices are elevated, putting further pressure on household budgets. This is not necessarily new for us. We have managed through similar conditions before, and we are applying those learnings today. For example, customer value remains at the heart of everything we do. Across our brands, we continue to invest in price, in quality, and in relevance, whether through our own brands or fresh offering, or the experience in our stores and digital platforms. In an environment like this, consistency builds trust. and trust drives share. Secondly, we remain disciplined in how we run the business. We focused on cost, on productivity, and on simplifying how we operate, but always with the flexibility to support our brands locally. We have strengthened our energy position by moving to longer-term contracts and increasing the use of renewable energy sources. And we are further embedding shoot cost models to ensure cost increases from suppliers are proportional, transparent, and well-managed. And lastly, we continue to invest in the future. We are sharply focused on our growth model, combining scale, relevance, and execution. And whether in digital, in data, or in omnichannel capabilities, we are building a platform that allows us to serve customers in more relevant and more personal ways. These factors, gelling well together, enable our strong financial performance and our ability to deliver consistent and attractive returns for our shareholders. Looking at the quarter, net sales and comparable sales excluding gasoline increased 2% at constant exchange rates. We delivered an underlying operating margin of 4%, and diluted underlying EPS increased 8.9%. When we launched our strategy growing together, I talked about quality. It's a defining characteristic of the culture of how we operate our company. The quality of our sales, the quality of our brands, the quality of our execution, and foremost, the quality of our people. And that's the lens I would like to use as we look at our results today. Customers continue to navigate the environment carefully, making deliberate choices and seeking value. Our response is clear, strong, consistent customer value. Across our US brands, excluding some technical and macro factors Yolanda will go through in more detail, our first quarter sales performance kept a similar pace to the trends we have seen last year. And inside this growth, we are enhancing own brand assortments, executing our second full year of on top price investments and optimizing personalized offerings. Own brands continue to outpace the rest of the store in both sales and volume, supporting price perception and margin quality. And at the entry level, we are playing into the growing demand from customers who are looking for high quality products at affordable prices. Examples for the US includes Stop and Shop lowering everyday prices across key states, Hannaford introducing refreshed on-brand packaging to improve navigation and value perception, and the giant company launching its Simply Low campaign. At Stop and Shop, Roger and the team are leveraging strong local knowledge. Volumes are trending positively. Online penetration is at record levels. and own brand growth is strong. Customer response to price investments remains encouraging, and NPS continues to reflect strong engagement by customers to the actions we are taking in the day-to-day quality of our execution. As we have now seen several quarters of consistent improvement at Stop and Shop, we will accelerate our store remodel program and expand our price investment across the full fleet by the end of 2026, with over 40 targeted store remodels planned for 2026 to further improve the in-store experience. Staying with quality sales growth in Europe, performance was a little ahead of where we had anticipated. Our brands continue to strengthen their positions through relevance and execution. And key developments here include the Dell Food acquisition, adding over 300 convenience stores in Belgium. Continued rollout of Deleuze affiliate model to seven new locations offering customers the best Deleuze standards with appealing assortments, the latest digital experiences and great local customer service. And we made progress in Serbia following the end of government pricing measures. Simultaneously, our European brands are using their own brand propositions to play a leading role in innovation across our store. Recent success stories include, for example, Albert Heijn's recently renewed barbecue assortment with over 18 new products, right on time for the sunny weather. Alpha Beta's award-winning own brand range called AB close to the Greek land, highlighting their commitment to high quality products, inspired by the richness of the Greek gastronomy and local production. And to support customers who have faced ongoing pressure on their household budgets, Maxi Serbia significantly stepped up their own brand offering. Switching gears now, and let's talk about the quality of execution. Our omnichannel proposition continues to scale. And for example, in the US, online sales grew 14.3% at constant exchange rates, marketing the eighth consecutive quarter of double digit growth. over 90% of customers have access to online shopping, and more than 90% of online sales are fulfilled through same-day services. At Bol, where consumer discretionary spending in general is less robust than last year, we are on top of the rapid changes in customer behavior, with AI and social commerce reshaping how customers shop. Maite and her team are expanding Bol's suite of AI power tools. including the soon-to-launch shopper agent, ensuring customers have the support they need throughout their total shopping journey. In Romania, we have merged Meg Image and Profi into one legal entity under the leadership of Xavier. Xavier, who has an extensive track record at Meg Image, recently served as brand president at Deleuze Belgium and brings deep expertise in driving change. The synergy capture from the integration is progressing well, which will provide fuel as we speed up space expansion in the quarter ahead. As we focus on the quality of execution, technology helps us secure it for the future, bringing greater consistency, efficiency, and precision at scale. And with technology and innovation, we stay curious and disciplined. exploring early and scaling only when our customers are ready and it fits our business. Our approach to AI is a good example. Under the leadership of Jan Brecht, we have brought 30 experts together in a group focus area to speed up execution and learning. And the power of our portfolio is we can trial and learn a lot quicker than a single operator. And this is similar to what we did with things like retail media or mechanization. As you see with outcomes like Edge, our US European retail media application, and our fully mechanized e-commerce fulfillment centers in the Netherlands, we test and learn quickly and scale what works. For AI, we concentrate on four domains, sourcing and merchandising, marketing, store operations, and agentic shopping. And with more than 100 active use cases, we are already capturing value by improving availability and freshness, optimizing pricing and assortment decisions, and increasing operational efficiency in stores. And again, we can integrate these across the system. We really see compounding effects. As we built on our existing AI supported store associate app in Albert Heijn, we are moving towards a self-optimizing store. Here, AI serves as the store's brain reading every signal, and orchestrating work across people, systems, and devices, including electronic shelf labels. And lastly, before I hand over to Jolanda, I would like to spend a few moments on the quality of our people and the strengths of our distributed operating model. What continues to set us apart is the strength, experience, and passion of our local teams. They are closest to the customer, owning the business in real time, and making decisions every day that truly count. And around them, our support functions continuously improve, simplify and strengthen the system so that our brands can perform at their best. As you will have seen from this morning's announcement, the supervisory board has completed a thorough process to identify Thierry Garnier as my successor. And in the meantime, I remain fully committed. We have a clear strategy that gives focus and is delivering results. My priority over the coming periods is exactly where it should be. Strengthening the foundations for the long term and deliver on our promises in the short term, but also working with our teams, keeping the business on track and continue to execute with discipline and consistency. Now over to you, Yolanda, to talk more about the financials.