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4/24/2024
Hello and welcome to Copacola FEMSA first quarter 2024 conference call. My name is Melissa and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be in a listen only mode. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Jorge Collazo, Investor Relations Director. Please go ahead.
Jorge Collazo Good morning to you all and welcome to this webcast and conference call to review our first quarter 2024 results. Joining me this morning is Ian Craig, our Chief Executive Officer, and Gerardo Cruz, our Chief Financial Officer. As usual, after prepared remarks, we will open up the call for a question and answer session. Before we proceed, just a reminder for all participants to take note of our cautionary statement included in the earnings release that went out this morning. This conference call may include forward-looking statements and should be considered as good faith estimates made by the company. These forward-looking statements reflect management's expectations and are based upon currently available data. Actual results are subject to future events and uncertainties that can materially impact the company's performance. With that, let me turn the call over to our CEO. Please go ahead, Ian.
Thank you, Jorge. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. Coca-Cola FEMSA showed another strong performance on top of the positive results achieved in 2023. As we mentioned in our previous earnings call, In 2024, we are focusing on three key drivers. First, build on the growth momentum of our core business. Second, take Juntos Plus version 4.0 to the next level with the deployment of advanced AI capabilities. And third, continue fostering a customer-centric and psychologically safe culture for Coca-Cola PEMSA. During today's call, I will provide you with an update on the main developments of our business, our views on the operating environment, and our strategic progress, focusing on the three key drivers. Then, Jerry will walk you through each of our divisions' performance and provide updates on our progress regarding sustainability. With that, let me begin by summarizing our consolidated results for the first quarter. Our volumes accelerated sequentially to increase 7.3% year-on-year, surpassing 1 billion unit cases. This increase was driven mainly by the strong performance achieved in Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Colombia, and most of our Central America South territories, which offset volume declines in Argentina, Uruguay, and Panama. We continue to report volume growth across all beverage categories, Sparkling beverage volumes grew 7.5%, driven mainly by brand Coca-Cola, which achieved 7.9% growth. Filled beverages grew 5.4%, and bottled water grew 12.1%. Total revenues for the quarter grew 11.2%, reaching 63.8 billion pesos, driven mainly by solid volume growth, offsetting an unfavorable currency translation related to the appreciation of the Mexican peso as compared to most of our operating currencies. On a currency-neutral basis, our total revenues increased a solid 17.7%. Gross profit increased 11.7% to 28.4 billion pesos, leading to a slight margin expansion of 20 basis points to 44.6%. This increase was driven mainly by the operating leverage resulting from our solid stop-line performance and the appreciation of most of our operating currencies as compared with the U.S. dollar. These effects were partially offset by higher sweetener costs across our operations and the significant depreciation of the Argentine peso as compared with the previous year. Our operating income increased 11.6% to 8.6 billion pesos, with operating margin remaining flat at 13.5%. Our operating leverage, top line growth, and cost and expense efficiencies enabled us to maintain flat margins despite increases in operating expenses such as labor, freight, and maintenance. Notably, our comparison base includes a larger non-cash foreign exchange gain due to the significant appreciation of the Mexican peso during the same period of the previous year. Adjusted EBTA for the quarter increased 13.5% to reach 11.9 billion pesos, and EBTA margin expanded 40 basis points to 18.7%. Finally, our majority net income increased 27.8% to reach 5 billion pesos. This increase was driven mainly by the operating income growth I previously described, coupled with a decrease in our comprehensive financing results. This decrease in comprehensive financial results was driven mainly by the significant depreciation of the Mexican peso during the first quarter of 2023, which generated a non-cash foreign exchange loss of 640 million pesos in the year earlier period. Now, expanding on our operations highlights for the first quarter. In Mexico, our volumes increased 6.9%, reaching 490.4 billion unit cases. We continue to see a favorable macroeconomic backdrop, driven by structural and demographic tailwinds, such as decreasing unemployment and continuously improving payrolls. For instance, Mexico's unemployment rate has declined from 5.5% in June 2020 to 2.6% in February 2024, while average wage in real terms has increased by almost 18% in five years. This environment, coupled with favorable weather and our initiatives to grow our core business are driving strong demand across our Mexico territory. Regarding share, we continue with gains in COLAs, but have seen impact in flavors due to unavailability. Additionally, we saw share gains in water, energy, and sports drinks. To give you a sense of the strong demand we are seeing in Mexico, we achieved historic production records of 186 million unit cases in March. However, despite our supply chain team's effort to add capacity, productivity, and improve our customer service metrics, we still identified unserved demand during the quarter, mainly in the flavors category in the southeast region of the country. To address this situation, and consistent with our priorities, we are on track with our ambitious capacity build-up plan. On March 22nd, a new PET one-way line started production, and only three days later, a new distribution center began operations in the Valley of Mexico. As we mentioned on our previous earnings call, we began the rollout of our version 4.12 Juntos Plus in Mexico during the first quarter of 2024. Our customer's adoption and feedback has exceeded expectations. In just the second month after its launch, we have more than 214,000 active buyers in this new version from a total of 490,000 monthly active purchasers in the country. Importantly, 36% of our traditional trade orders are already done digitally. We are confident that with these capacity expansions, coupled with our commercial plans and our customer-centric culture, we will continue driving positive results in Mexico. Moving on to Guatemala. Our volume increased 17% as we continue outperforming with brand Coca-Cola, energy, and juices. During the previous earnings call, we mentioned that, on a comparable basis, volume in the country has doubled since 2017, and we continue to see plenty of opportunities for continued strong growth. Regarding B2B, Guatemala is growing its monthly active buyers with the rollout of Juntos Plus, strengthening our digital relevance in the traditional trade. For instance, we have reached 68,000 monthly active purchasers representing 50% penetration of our customer base. To continue supporting growth, we're also adding capacity in Guatemala. During the quarter, a new one-way bottling line started production, and we are on track to switch on a new returnable bottling line next June. Now, moving on to our South America division. In Brazil, a resilient macro environment with controlled inflation And declining interest rates, coupled with favorable weather, drove 10.4% volume growth during the quarter to reach 288.2 million unit cases. We continue strengthening our competitive positions across key beverage categories. For instance, we reached record levels of share in the sparkling beverage category, driven mainly by gains in brand Coca-Cola. Notably, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar continues its impressive rate of growth in Brazil, growing 49.2% year-over-year. As we continue to focus on growing the core, our single-serve mix increased 0.4 percentage points versus the previous year, reaching 24.2%, while profitable emerging beverage categories accelerated, driven mainly by power rates, which grew 39.5% year-on-year. Similar to Mexico, strong demand tailwinds are putting our infrastructure under significant stress, and our supply chain team is taking both short-term and long-term actions aligned with our strategic priority to de-bottleneck our infrastructure to support our growth ambitions. Finally, on the digital front, we continued scaling version 4.0 of the Juntos Plus app in Brazil, with more than 65% of traditional trade orders now done digitally. In Colombia, despite a challenging environment driven mainly by stubborn inflation, our volumes increased 9.7% to reach 88.3 million unit cases. Our team's focus on improving service and availability, coupled with our commercial initiatives, is resulting in share gains across categories and channels. Among the initiatives to grow the core We're expanding our refillable platform while focusing on single-serve mixed growth and our zero-sugar portfolio. As in other high-potential markets, we're increasing capacity and streamlining our value chain. We expect to install two new lines this year. One will begin production during the first half of the year and the other before year-end. Finally, Argentina. as anticipated, the consumer environment during the first quarter worsened significantly, leading to a 28% contraction in disposable income. This challenging start to the year, coupled with unfavorable weather, led our volumes in the country to decline 16.9%. However, despite the many uncertainties ahead, the team remains focused on the objectives set for the year. leverage affordability, drive costs and expense controls, and increase productivity. We're focused on protecting the short-term to emerge stronger in the long-term, and although hard to predict, we continue to expect gradual sequential improvements as the year progresses. As I previously mentioned, we are encouraged to start the year with positive momentum. We have robust plans for the year, and most importantly, we have the right team to execute them across our markets. Together with our partners at the Coca-Cola Company, we are prioritizing long-term sustainable growth. With that, I will hand the call over to Jerry.
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