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4/25/2025
hello and welcome to the coca-cola femsa first quarter 2025 conference call my name is george i'll be a coordinator for today's event please note that this conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call your lines will be in listen only mode however you have the opportunity to ask questions towards the end of the presentation and this can be done by pressing star one on your top of the keypad towards your load if you require assistance at any point please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator And I had your host today, Mr. Jorge Correos, to begin this conference. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, George. Good morning to you all, and welcome to this webcast and conference call to review our first quarter 2025 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's 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 was published earlier today. And 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 today. Let me begin by saying that despite increased uncertainty and a soft macroeconomic backdrop in key markets, I am very pleased with the capacity of our company to adapt to external headwinds and deliver results. Our teams implemented several initiatives on commercial, financial, and supply chain to rapidly adjust to the environment, ensuring we maintain on course towards our key objectives for the year. As I have mentioned in previous calls, we are fortunate to be participating in a vibrant beverage industry within a growing region, and Coca-Cola FEMSA's resilient profile becomes even more evident while navigating an environment of increased uncertainty as the one we are seeing today. Our resilience enables us to continue managing the business for the long term with a consistent strategy while adjusting initiatives in the short term. As such, the strategic playbook for 2025 remains focused on three key pillars, growing our core business, second, taking Juntos Plus to the next level, And three, continue fostering a customer-centric and psychologically safe culture for Coca-Cola fans. During our call today, we intend to provide you with an update on the main developments of our business, diving deeper into initiatives we're implementing to successfully navigate the current operating environment. Then Jerry will guide you through our division's performance and provide updates on sustainability following the recent publication of our integrated annual report. With that, let me begin by summarizing our consolidated results for the first quarter. On the back of a more challenging macroeconomic backdrop, our consolidated volume declined 2.2% year-on-year to 986.5 million unit cases. This was driven mainly by declines in Mexico and Colombia, partially offset by growth in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Guatemala. On the one hand, our sparkling beverage volume declined 3.3%, driven mainly by contractions in Mexico and Colombia. On the other hand, still beverages grew 3.9%, driven by Mexico and Brazil. And bottled water grew 4.6%, driven by the positive performance achieved in most of our South America division. Despite the low single-digit volume contraction, our revenue management initiatives and favorable currency translation effects led our total revenues for the quarter to grow 10%, reaching $70.2 billion. On a currency-neutral basis, our total revenues increased 5.9%. Gross profit increased 12% to $31.8 billion, leading to a margin expansion of 80 basis points to 45.4%. This increase was driven mainly by lower sweetener costs, top-line growth, and raw material hedging initiatives. 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 7.3% to 9.2 billion pesos, with operating margin contracting 30 basis points to 13.2%. This slight operating margin contraction was driven mainly by lower operating leverage coupled with higher operating expenses such as freight, labor, depreciation, and maintenance. However, we mitigated margin pressures by implementing cost and expense controls across our operations. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter increased 11% to reach 13.3 billion pesos, and EBITDA margin expanded 20 basis points to 18.9%. Finally, our majority net income increased by 2.7% to 5.1 billion pesos. This increase was driven by operating income growth and a decrease in our comprehensive financial results, which was partially offset by a higher effective tax rate. Now, expanding on our operations highlights for the first quarter. In Mexico, our volumes declined 5.4%, cycling a high comparison base from the previous year. which grew by 6.9%. This performance was driven mainly by a deceleration in economic activity, geopolitical tensions that affected consumer sentiment, and more challenging weather. In this environment, we swiftly adjusted our tactical calendar and activated targeted promotional activities in single-serve and multi-serve across both modern and traditional trade channels. Additionally, our team implemented an execution plan focused on increasing exhibitions at the point of sale. These initiatives are showing encouraging results. For instance, we improved coverage by close to 8% in brand Coca-Cola and more than 12% in flavors by the end of the quarter. Our coverage of exhibition space increased from 50% to 60%, with modern trade showing faster signs of recovery. Regarding customer service, Our capacity investments and supply chain adjustments have contributed to improve order fulfillment by 1.4 percentage points and a 2.1 percentage point increase in geo-efficiency, the metric we use to measure the accuracy of our sales risk. Finally, as a result of a softer macro backdrop, our team in Mexico has identified potential savings, mainly from supply chain procurement and IT. All these initiatives underscore our capabilities to recover positive momentum and deliver results despite a softer than anticipated start to 2025. Now, moving on to Guatemala. Our volumes increased 1.9%, reaching 46.8 million unit cases. The deceleration in the pace of volume growth is explained by what we believe were temporary macro factors. On the one hand, inflation in the food basket remains high, affecting consumer sentiment. On the other hand, despite a 10% increase in remittances year-on-year, the uncertain environment resulted in a higher propensity to save instead of flowing through to consumption, with saving deposits increasing 24% year-on-year in Guatemala. We are maintaining the course of our long-term plan while implementing short-term initiatives focused on recovering our positive momentum. Among our portfolio initiatives, we're leveraging the successful Share a Coke campaign to continue improving our competitive position in brand Coca-Cola. Regarding our sales force and route to market, we are strengthening training while adding more than 80 additional routes. With this route increase, we expect to take our frequency from 1.32 to 1.45 average visits per week by the end of 2025. Regarding commercial enablers, we're leveraging Juntos Plus and Juntos Plus Premium. We have now more than 90,000 monthly active users, a 32% increase versus the previous year, with more than 50% of these users active on the app. Finally, our team in Guatemala has also identified savings initiatives focusing on rigorous cost and expense control. Now moving on to discuss our South America division. In Brazil, a resilient consumer environment rose 2.5% volume growth year on year. Despite facing a challenging comparison base driven by the temporary suspension of our plant in Porto Alegre and the 10.4% volume growth achieved last year. We continue focusing on growing our core business, achieving a healthy performance across categories and channels. Coca-Cola Zero Sugar maintained an impressive pace, growing 65% year-on-year, while Powerade grew 36% and Monster grew 17.6%. Notably, our single-serve mix increased 1.9 percentage points versus the previous year, reaching 26%. On the digital front, Juntos Plus in Brazil added another 10,000 monthly active buyers with a 17% higher average ticket than the prior year. Furthermore, We completed the rollout of Juntos Plus Advisor, our state-of-the-art sales force enabler. We see this tool as a game changer to the empowerment of our sales force. Finally, regarding our plant in Porto Alegre, we expect to reach full production capacity next quarter, which should help improve our customer service metrics as well as our freight costs. We are also making important progress in the development of an ambitious engineering project designed to protect our plants. This additional project is expected to be completed in March 2026. Moving on to Colombia. In Colombia, we faced a more challenging macro and sociopolitical context to begin the year. Inflation remained stubborn while consumer confidence deteriorated during the quarter. Against this backdrop, our volumes for the quarter declined 8.1%. However, our commercial initiatives enabled us to improve our competitive position in key segments such as sparkling beverages, juices, energy, and flavored water. As is the case across Coca-Cola FEMSA, our team in Colombia has identified cost and expense efficiencies that will help us navigate the current operating environment, focusing mainly on procurement and supply chain. Finally, in Argentina and Uruguay, our volumes increased 9.1% and 6% respectively. In Argentina, the sharp adjustment experienced last year led to a deep decline in consumer spending. However, the macroeconomic indicators have improved and remain under control, with monthly inflation below 3% and a disciplined financial surplus policy. Since the second half of 2024, we continue to see gradual sequential recovery across different sectors, including beverages, with durable and tradable goods leading the way. We anticipate that this recovery is paving the way for long-term growth in Argentina. Disposable income in the greater Buenos Aires area has improved by 15% as compared to the previous year. To continue outperforming, we maintain the same strategy that has allowed us to deliver results, providing affordability and fostering single-serve growth, grabbing cost and expense controls, and on the digital front, We're excited by the rollout of Juntos Plus version 4.1 Argentina, which we anticipate will be an enabler for continued business growth. In Uruguay, we strengthened our competitive position by leveraging growth enablers. For instance, our focus on single serve allowed us to increase our single serve volumes by 13.4% and expand our mix by 1.5% to reach 23.5%. We're also focusing on growing in hydration, strengthening power to continue growing our position in profitable non-carbonated beverage segments. Finally, our team in Uruguay has implemented significant initiatives to strengthen our customer-centric culture, resulting in improved customer service metrics. During the first quarter, our commercial and distribution service metrics improved by 1% and 1.3% respectively, as compared to the previous year. As I previously mentioned, Coca-Cola FEMSA's resilience is even more evident today. We remain focused on our long-term objectives and are optimistic about our capabilities to leverage our long-term strategy while fine-tuning our plans, generating efficiencies to deliver results, and continue making Coca-Cola FEMSA an even more adaptive organization. Together with our partners at the Coca-Cola Company, we're implementing a playbook that has enabled us to successfully navigate uncertainty and emerged a stronger system, prioritizing long-term sustainable growth, collaboration, and relentless execution. With that, I will hand over the call to Jerry.
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