AmRest Holdings SE

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AMREST FY2025 results. My name is Elliot, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to register a question during today's event, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Alternatively, you can submit your recent questions via the Q&A box found on your screen. And I'd like to hand over to Lucas Wojcielko with Wooden Company. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Lucas Wojcielko. I'm representing Wooden Company. And I have, again, the pleasure to moderate the call of AMREST after the quarterly results. The company is being presented by CEO, Mr. Luis Comas, CFO, Mr. Eduardo Samaripa, and Chief of IR, Mr. Santiago Camarero Aguilera. Without further ado, guys, the mic is yours.

Luis Comas Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. We appreciate your time and continued interest in AMREST. I'm Luis Comas, CEO of AMREST. and I'm delighted to be with you today. Joining me are our CFO, Eduardo Zamarrita, and our Head of Strategy and IR, Santiago Camarero. Today's call has two clear objectives. First, we want to give you a transparent view of the work delivered over the last 12 months, how we have executed, and what we have strengthened, and what we have learned. Second, we will share our perspective on 2026 our expectations, the main opportunities we see to accelerate performance, and obviously the challenges we are navigating in a dynamic environment. At the heart of our message is confidence in the fundamentals we are building. We believe we are laying the foundations for a compelling value creation story, maintaining discipline, profitable, organic growth across the portfolio, and improving consistency and execution, so discipline and the financial approach. With that, let's turn to the materials. Let's move and we'd like to share with you today. Let's move to slide two, please. Ambrose is a truly pan-European company with a broad and diversified footprint across 22 countries in Europe, China, and the Middle East. With 2,139 restaurants and a portfolio of eight brands spanning quick service, fast casual, casual dining, and coffee, We serve more than 30 million customers every month across multiple locations and channels with offerings tailored to local preferences. Our scale is a clear competitive advantage. It allows us to replicate best practices across markets, drive efficiencies, and continuously enhance the guest experience while focusing our resources where demand is strongest. And what truly powers that scale is our local expertise. more than 44,000 colleagues who understand their markets and execute with discipline every day. Taken together, this combination of geographic reach, brand breadth, and operational know-how underpins our ability to identify and capture attractive growth opportunities. Moving to slide three, let me remark the most relevant milestones for 2025 that I would like to try to summarize in seven points. On a like-for-like basis, the group revenues increased by 2.4% year-on-year, reaching almost 2.6 billion. Groups that beat their generation during 2025 reached 407 million of euros, representing an EBITDA margin of 15.9%, with a clear divergence in the performance across countries. Third, despite a challenging operating environment throughout the year, particularly in the fourth quarter, The profit of the company increased to 18 million euros compared to 13 and a half million last year, supported by lower impairments and interest charges. In addition, the company made a dividend payment in the amount of 15 million, or a 7% share, which was paid on the 22nd of December 25. In terms of new openings, during the year we opened 92 units, and we also renovated 213 restaurants. From a leverage perspective, the group remains prudent with a leverage at 2.3 times at the year end within our internal target range. And finally, during 2025, we also advance our strategic roadmap throughout a meaningful step in our operating model with a disposal of our 51% stake in SCM and determination of our mutual commercial agreements and obligations. These milestones supports our ambition to strengthen value creation through a more integrated and efficient platform, enabling Ambrose to conduct supply chain management and product quality assurance services internally going forward, and identify additional synergies that can support future growth, opening up a significant avenue for value creation throughout the supplies of our more than 2,000 restaurants. With this context, I invite you in the slide fourth to review the performance in 2025 versus the expectations that we shared with you one year ago. First, revenues grew in the low single-digit range, despite an operating environment marked by moderate growth in Europe and declining inflation, alongside elevated trade policy and geopolitical uncertainty, which continued to weight on consumers' confidence. While easing inflation supported a gradual improvement in financing conditions. Household purchasing decisions remain cautious in several markets. Second, on profitability, we experienced a decline of 0.8% points in our EBITDA margin, affected by the disconsolidation of the SEM business, temporary business affection in the check market during the latest month of the year, and to still elevated operating cost pressures. Most notably, labor costs in certain markets, while absolute food prices remain also elevated, despite lower inflation rates. With respect to CAPEX, we significantly reduce our capital intensity, fully consistent with our guidance. CAPEX has stood at 158 million euros in the year compared to 194 million in 2024, while we have maintained the number of new equity stores open. The total number of openings reach 92 restaurants in 2025 versus 109 in 2024. And finally, as I already mentioned, the leverage continues at the low end of our internal target range. Moving to slide five, let's now focus on what we expect for 2026. From a sales perspective, we are facing a challenging start of the year. However, we expect 2026 to be a period of progressive improvement. building momentum throughout the year with a very clear second half is stronger than the first. Overall, our guidance is for mid-single-digit growth. Second, as trading momentum improves, we also expect this to translate into better profitability supported by an ongoing discipline on cost and continuous focus on operational execution. Third, and very importantly, we expect a strong increase in free cash flow generation driven by both higher operating cash generation and tighter control of investments levels, including continued CapEx optimization. In addition, we plan to maintain a similar level of growth openings to 2025. However, the growth is expected to remain modest as we plan to accelerate our portfolio optimization, including a higher level of closures of restaurants that are not strategically aligned or are structurally underperforming, so that they are no longer dilute the group's profitability. And finally, we will continue to preserve a prudent risk profile, keeping leverage at the low end of our target range. If we move to slide six, we would like also to share with you our midterms expectations. Over the last few years, a combination of temporary factors has meant that the group's revenue growth, both at the sales line and across other income streams, has not progressed at the pace we believe the business is capable of delivering. Looking ahead, we see a clear path to decelerate our return to a high single-digit growth profile of time. That acceleration should, in turn, restore operating leverage and support a meaningful uplift in profitability, targeting around two to three percentage points of margin recovering versus current levels. This, combined with a disciplined investment framework, that it will translate into a strong increase in free cash flow generation supported by a stronger operating cash flow and continued focus on capital allocation. Finally, our ambition is to keep strengthening our portfolio by incorporating new concepts and brands so we can address emerging customer needs, broken occasions of use, and remain highly relevant to local preferences across our markets. If we move now to slide seven, I would like also to share with you some key strategy considerations. Digital transformation remains a key enabler of efficiency, engagement, and growth across AMBRIS. In 2025, we continue to scale a more unified and data-driven operating model centered on four pillars. EI Agents supports almost all AMBRIS employees in central services, streaming daily operation and improving productivity in all business areas. We have also rolled out a comprehensive customer care solution, seamlessly integrated feedback from every channel, and enabling efficient resolution of customers' inquires and issues. Our digital platforms are continually refined to meet changing customer expectations, offering features like personalized kiosk offers in Central Europe or table payment capabilities at La Tagliatella. Ongoing systems standardization ensures agile and modern technology environments. And finally, we have implemented an intelligence platform that empowers daily restaurant and organizational decisions, support targeted marketing, boost customer retention, streamlines the resource management, and enhances pricing strategy, so enables self-service analytics for all teams. These initiatives improve efficiency and scalability by automating central services, unifying customer interaction across channels, and enabling faster and more accurate data-driven decisions. Very important. In summary, these initiatives are providing a tangible improvement in the quality and speed of the decision-making. So, on slide eight, we can provide some examples of how advanced analytics translate into tangible commercial outcomes, driving traffic, improving financial performance through data-driven pricing, menu simplification, and a smarter promotion optimization. Data-driven decisions based on advanced analytics allow us to drive traffic and improve financial performance across our portfolio. By applying data-driven pricing tailored to the local demand and competition landscape and so simplifying menus to strengthen margins and optimizing promotions based on the incremental impact, we are attracting more customers while improving the efficiency and returns of our commercial investments. Now, changing topics, let me take you to slide nine, where we can summarize the evolution of our restaurant portfolio for your convenience. While we have already discussed our short and mid-term expectation, this slide provides a clear view of the underlying openings, closures, and the resulting net change. Finally, if we move to slide 10, our commitment to sustainability continues to be a part of a long-term value creation. And as it is stated in headline of this slide, our sustainability agenda remains integral to how we build long-term value. In 2025, we advance our environmental and social priorities, including a significant reduction of energy and water consumption in our restaurants by 11 and 4% comparing to last year. We also continue to embed ESG criteria into our supply chain processes. including suppliers' evaluation and tender processes. Beyond metrics, our people brought up our values to life across markets, as said in the fifth edition of the Food Sharing Day initiative, delivered across multiple brands and countries, reflecting our continued commitment and connection to the communities where we serve. And saying this, with this, Eduardo, if you can cover the main financial highlights, please.