This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
2/21/2025
Hello and welcome to Coca-Cola FEMSA fourth 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 on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. This can be done by pressing star one on your keypad at any time to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, you may press star zero to be connected to an operator. I'll now turn the call over to Jorge Collazo, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Melissa. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this webcast and conference call to review our fourth quarter and full year 2024 results. Joining me this morning are Ian Craig, our Chief Executive Officer, Gerardo Cruz, our Chief Financial Officer, and the rest of the Investor Relations team. As usual, after prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A. Before we proceed, please allow me to remind all participants that 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 expectations and are based upon currently available data. The actual results are subject to future events and uncertainties that can materially impact the company's performance. For more details, please refer to the disclaimer in the earnings release that went out this morning. Now, let me turn the call over to our CEO to begin our presentation. Ian, please go ahead.
Thank you, Jorge. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. 2024 marked the second chapter of our transformation and another positive year for Coca-Cola FEMSA. Our full year results reflect progress in the implementation of our sustainable long-term growth model, coupled with our ability to navigate external headwinds in the form of challenging macroenvironments and extreme weather events, including impacts to our infrastructure, such as a temporary closure of our plant in Porto Alegre. I am encouraged that we continue cementing the growth of our core business by expanding our customer base and by working together with our partners at the Coca-Cola Company on powerful marketing campaigns and on relentless commercial execution across our markets. In digital, we took Juntos Plus to the next level with the deployment of advanced AI capabilities. We finished the year with 1.3 million monthly active users. This means that 60% of our customer base are monthly active buyers, up from 4% from September. Additionally, we multiplied the number of enrolled clients in Premia Juntos Plus, our loyalty program, by more than four times during 2024. We went from 250,000 in January to to more than 1.1 million by year-end. Notably, we're also digitizing our sales force, as we successfully developed the Juntos Plus advisor tool in Brazil, which will be a great enabler for our sales team. Although there is still more to be done, our technical and supply chain team made remarkable progress in removing infrastructure bottlenecks to capture the growth opportunities that are ahead of us. As part of our agenda for today's call, I will begin by summarizing our consolidated results for the fourth quarter. Then I will expand on key developments across our markets and finish with a few comments regarding 2025. Before opening the call for questions, I will hand over the call to Jerry, who will walk you through our division's performance and provide you with an update on capex and savings achieved for 2024. as well as our plans for 2025. Moving on to the summary of fourth quarter results. Volume grew 2.2% year-on-year, reaching 1.08 billion unit cases. This increase was driven by growth across most of our operations and the slight volume decline in Colombia. Total revenues for the quarter grew 14.3%, reaching 75.5 billion pesos. driven mainly by our revenue management initiatives and favorable currency translation effects from most of our operating currencies into Mexican pesos. On a currency-neutral basis, our total revenues increased 13%. Gross profit increased 17.1% to 35.7 billion pesos, leading to a margin expansion of 120 basis points to 47.3%. This increase was driven mainly by our top-line growth, favorable mix, easing sweetener and PT costs, and the favorable effect of hedges. These factors were partially offset by higher fixed costs, such as maintenance and the depreciation of most of our operating currencies as compared with the U.S. dollar. Our operating income increased 25% to 12.1 billion pesos. with operating margin expanding 140 basis points to reach 16%. Operating margin expansion was driven by top-line growth effects and cost and efficiencies across our operations. We were able to mitigate margin pressures related to higher operating expenses such as labor, freight, maintenance, and an operating foreign exchange loss that was driven by the depreciation of most of our operating currencies as compared with the U.S. dollars. It is important to mention that our operating income includes extraordinary unfavorable effects driven by asset write-offs and expenses related to purchases of finished products, site cleaning, and removal of debris related to the impact of Hurricane John in Guerrero and the flooding in Rio Grande do Sul. This effect was partially offset by the recognition of insurance claims in both Mexico and Brazil. As such, the net impact at our operating income level is an unfavorable expense of 730 million pesos. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter increased 22.5% to reach 16.1 billion pesos. An adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 140 basis points to reach 21.3%. Finally, our majority net income increased 35.1% to reach 7.3 billion pesos. This increase was driven mainly by operating income growth, coupled with a decrease in our comprehensive financial results that Jerry will explain later. Moving on to our full year 2024 results. Volume growth met our expectations for the year, increasing 4.4% to reach 4.2 billion unit cases. Our full year top line increased 14.2% to reach 279.8 billion pesos. Notably, our operating income increased a solid 17.4% year-on-year to surpass 40.1 billion pesos for an operating margin of 14.3%, the highest for Coca-Cola FEMSA since 2015. Moreover, we invested a record capex of 25.3 billion pesos, representing 9% of our total revenues, with investments that will enable us to add the necessary capacity to support our long-term growth ambitions. Now, expanding into our operations highlights for the fourth quarter. In Mexico, our volumes increased 0.8% year-on-year, cycling a high comparison base over the previous year, which has grown 5.5%. After the 1.5% volume decline experienced during the third quarter, we saw a gradually recovering volume print month-over-month, with October being affected by unfavorable weather conditions and a deceleration in overall economic activities. Our initiatives to expand our customer base, coupled with a revamped portfolio architecture in the sparkling and still beverage categories, continue driving profitable, positive results. For instance, by leveraging a growth mindset, process simplification, and the use of big data analytics, we targeted existing white spaces to expand the customer base in Mexico and by more than 150,000 new clients over the past 18 months. In the COLAS category, Coke Zero continues outperforming, increasing double digits as compared to the previous year. Additionally, our initiatives to adjust our portfolio architecture supported our 4.8% growth in multi-serve, one-way presentations year-on-year. In Steels, An ambitious portfolio revamp led to 4.2% growth during the quarter, driven mainly by 67% growth in TEAS and 14% growth in both PowerAid and Monster. Despite facing capacity constraints, our technical and supply chain team in Mexico produced more than 2 billion unit cases, moved more than 18 million pallets, and covered more than 110 million kilometers. Notably, their efforts to alleviate capacity constraints resulted in 15 bottling plants in Mexico breaking production records this year. To give you a sense, over the past two years, improvements in bottling efficiency in Mexico resulted in a 14% increase in production, which would be the equivalent to the addition of eight bottling lines. Moreover, improvements in warehouse efficiency and the opening of four new distribution centers increased our storage capacity by 50% compared with 2022. These improvements in efficiency coupled with the implementation of dynamic routing equal an investment of more than $290 million in capacity expansion. We are confident that these enhanced capabilities, together with the additional capacity expansion we plan for 2025 and beyond, ideally positioned our Mexico operation to capture its many growth opportunities. Moving on to Guatemala. Our volumes in Guatemala grew for the quarter 7.5% year-on-year, driven mainly by our initiatives to grow the core business and to expand the customer base. As I mentioned during our previous call, Guatemalan consumers are looking for convenience and affordability which coupled with our solid execution at the point of sale, has allowed us to become leaders in the COLA segment. Indeed, we have improved our competitive position by more than 15 percentage points of share of value in COLA since 2018. Moreover, we continue to focus on expanding our customer base. For instance, in 2024, we increased our total customer base by 12% year-on-year, which represents a 48% customer expansion as compared with 2018. As we enter the new year, we are confident in Guatemala's long-term opportunities. To capture them, during 2024, we expanded our production capacity in the country by 20%, with two new production lines, one of them for returnable bottles, and we expect to add two more lines in 2025. Additionally, We added 5,000 new pallet positions in warehouse capacity, a 12% increase as compared with 2023. Now, let's move on to discuss our markets in South America. In Brazil, our volumes for the quarter grew 3.7% year-on-year. This growth was achieved despite the suspension of our plant in Porto Alegre and the unfavorable weather conditions in December in which the major cities in our territories received four times more rainfall than in the previous year. Notably, our results continue to be driven by healthy performance across our categories. For example, Coke Zero sugar increased an outstanding 63% year-on-year. Indeed, this is a global market where Coke Zero is growing the most. Single-serve mix is another important growth and profitability driver. During the quarter, our single-serve mix expanded two percentage points, to reach 26% in Brazil. In steels, Powerade and Monster brands grew 12% and 21% respectively. Innovation has really taken a central stage in our industry, as evidenced by 85 product launches in Brazil during 2024. Among other innovations, we launched a successful limited edition of Coca-Cola Zero Oreo, the new Monster Peachy King Zero Sugar, And in the alcoholic ready-to-drink space, we launched Absolute Vodka and Sprite last November. During our previous call, I mentioned the initial rollout of our new Salesforce automation tool, Juntos Plus Advisors. Packed by advanced AI models, this tool enhances our Salesforce capabilities, improving key coverages and Salesforce effectiveness at the point of sale. During the quarter, we moved from pilot phase to a large-scale rollout. Now more than 40% of our sales force in Brazil is using Juntos Plus advisors. Its initial results are already exceeding expectations, improving location accuracy, and providing our sales force with real-time information during visits. Moreover, our AI-driven guided missions have resulted in increased SKUs per store, and digital revenue per month. Finally, I want to recognize the efforts of our technical and supply chain team in Brazil, who in the face of the temporary closure of our Porto Alegre facility, managed to surpass our Brazilian operations single year unit case production record. Thanks to their commitment, we expect to operate Porto Alegre at full capacity at the beginning of the second quarter positioning us for growth in 2025. Now, in Colombia, we are working to ensure a winning portfolio in an industry that has been affected by the implementation of an excise tax since November 2023. During the fourth quarter, despite adverse weather conditions, our volumes improved sequentially, declining 0.3% year-on-year. This sequential improvement was driven by our team's efforts to provide affordability and revamp our multi-serve portfolio. As a result, our multi-serve volumes increased 2.2% year-on-year. Our team's focus on driving cost and expense efficiencies is generating profitability improvement, resulting in a 5% reduction in cost per unit case during the year. Moreover, we are strengthening our installed capacity by adding a new PET line in Barranquilla, which started operations this month. This new production line will alleviate supply chain pressure, providing self-sufficiency to the coastal region while further reducing our freight costs to enhance profitability. Finally, our quarterly performance in Argentina. Although the environment remains complex, we are confident in a gradual sustained recovery. For instance, we're seeing encouraging signs from the recovery of the tradable and durable goods sectors who are losing away. Importantly, macro indicators such as monthly inflation continue improving and are now close to piercing 2%, the lowest reading in almost five years. During the year, we implemented the right strategy to navigate the crisis and emerge stronger. focusing on affordability while maintaining our customer base and household penetration. As a result, our fourth quarter volumes increased 2.9% year-on-year. At the same time, we leveraged cost and expense controls to reduce our cost and expenses by 6% year-on-year, maintaining a flexible and lean cost structure while accelerating digitalization. To continue this path, during 2025, we expect to fully roll out version 4.0 of Juntos Plus and our loyalty program. We're confident in our capabilities to capitalize on the expected turnaround in Argentina, enhancing our affordability initiatives, boosting single serve, and consolidating our market leadership. Now, let me switch gears to provide some initial comments as we look ahead to 2025. We're convinced that we have the right strategy and a highly motivated team to execute our plans. The implementation of our long-term sustainable growth model is underway, and we expect to continue following the same strategic playbook as in 2024. We're leveraging the many learnings of the year to fine-tune our plans, making Coca-Cola FEMSA a highly adaptive organization. For 2025, our main pillars are, first, to continue growing our core business by leveraging our big bets, accelerating coconut sugar, improving our competitive position in flavors, and developing profitable non-carbonated beverages. Second, we will continue taking Juntos Plus to the next level, leveraging our AI capabilities, and rolling out Juntos Plus Advisor in Mexico and Brazil. And third, to continue fostering a customer-centric and psychologically safe culture for Coca-Cola FEMSA, consolidating our research purpose, vision, and principles across our operations. We are fortunate that we are participating in a vibrant beverage industry within a growing region. We are confident that Coca-Cola FEMSA is ideally positioned to capture the many growth opportunities that are out there in 2025 and beyond. With that, I will hand the call over to Jerry.
You're reading a preview of the COCSF Q4 2024 earnings call.
Free account.
