Avolta Ag Unsp/Adr

Good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to this half a year results presentation for Avolta. My name is Xavier Rossignol. I'm the CEO of the company and next to me, Yves Gester, our global CFO. I'm going to use the presentation from our website and also projected here going straight to page number four. The highlights of the first half a year. are another, and I think it's 12 now, quarters in line with our outlook. Very strong performance across all the key measures. It started with a reported growth, same currency, of 7.1% for the first six months of the year, which is a strong organic growth of 5.7%. As we're going to discuss in the next few minutes, this Percentage is particularly strong taking into consideration the challenges of the first half of the year, the slowdown in the U.S., the Middle East crisis, and the ongoing geopolitical challenges either in the Middle East, on Ukraine, or in other parts of the world. Despite all that, we have delivered a clear positive growth on the first half of the year. EBITDA margin has expanded again 30 basis points at the midpoint of our mid- and long-term outlook, and we have generated also a very strong equity-free cash flow. Of course, the cash flow per quarter is affected by the seasonality of the business and the CAPEX, as Yves is going to explain later on. Commercially, we continue not only with a strong like for like, but with a positive business development in all of our four regions. And we've been reporting during the last few quarters advancements in all of them, both in food and beverage and retail. And we never forget that we are here to deliver value. And in the business development, that means focusing on profitable and good return investment. So we continue with an active portfolio management, focusing on getting the right ones and when necessary exiting the wrong ones. We continue the strong push on the commercial and digital transformations. Our Club of Volta has reached, in June this year, 13 million members. If you look at the latest data we gave, it means we are recruiting about half a million new members every month. We are getting more and better data, and we are able to keep improving our performance thanks to that. We confirm again our mid-term outlook, the 5% to 7% organic, the 20 to 40 basis points EBITDA margin expansion, and a continuous growth of 100 to 150 basis points on the equity-free cash flow. As we said in our Capital Markets Day, we want to be surprising for the passengers in our stores, in our restaurants, but we want to be tremendously predictable in the investors' community. And this quarter and this first half a year are again an example of this predictability. And part of this predictability is how we approach capital allocation. And it's exactly the same that we've been saying now for almost two years, focus on growth, focus on the leverage, and focus almost obsessively in shareholders' balance. Moving to the next slide, we can see that the growth was strong not only during the full half a year, but also in quarter one and quarter two, despite all the challenges I mentioned. I think we explained in the past, our outlook of five to seven is based that, assuming that the market condition, the geopolitical conditions could change. And if we have a bad year, we should be at the lower range, and if we have a less challenging year, we should be more on the top range. If we move to the next slide, we can see that this positive growth, like in the first quarter, is in all the regions, with the exception of North America. And the weakness in North America is motivated by a lower number of domestic passengers in the U.S. This is well-known in the market. This is TSA-available information. The number of domestic passengers in the U.S. are slightly negative, and that's why our organic growth in that region is flat. Which I think puts even more value to the overall results. And I'm sure Another year might be in the other way around. But this resilient growth is because our strategy and our focus on customer does work and also because of our strong geographical diversification and business line diversification, food and retail. Going to the next slide. This is just a of what we explain in full detail during the Capital Markets Day. Our growth is based on like-for-like passenger values plus spend per passenger, which is either the average ticket growth or the conversion growth. On top of that, we have the business development and potentially, if they come to the right value, potential mid-size, small-size M&A. And we achieve the organic growth thanks to what we call the Avolta growth engine. And the Avolta growth engine is this extreme focus on increasing the satisfaction and the sales per passenger. Combining things on the physical space, the pricing, the assortment, the flexible spaces, the local look and feel, the combination of FMV and retail, the entertainment, but also the digital side with the smart stores, with the data, the loyalty program. And we do that not only to increase the sales per passenger, but also to attract and give more value to our brands, benefiting them, but also benefiting our margin, and also benefiting the landlords, the airport owners, Because if we sell more, everybody gets a higher return. And I want to make a quick mention. Yesterday, AENA, as you know, our largest airport partner worldwide, made a specific mention to us and gave us or put us as an example on how airport and operator can work together to increase the performance of in this case of retail, benefiting both the landlord, the airport partner, and the operator. And I think it's particularly relevant because it's a very sizable operation, and it was not easy to achieve the performance we are getting. But it's a good proxy that investing in the customer benefits everybody that is in the airport or in the transportation ecosystem. I'll give a few flashes on each of these pillars. Of course, there was much more detail in our capital markets data, and I think the video is available in our website if somebody wants to deep dive on that. Pricing and assortment. It's a key element of our basic business, and the only message here is we are more and more driving both based on data. It's less a decision driven by procurement, it's a decision driven by the data on passengers. Second, the flexible spaces, and I gave some data during the Capital Markets Day from space Flexible space of less than 10%, 15%, we are moving to 30%, 40%, 50% on the new areas, on the new shops and the new restaurants. This business evolves very quickly. The profile of customers changes very quickly. We need to be having flexible stores. If we move to the next slide, also tremendous focus on the sense of place. Every airport, every service area, every cruise line has flexibility. certain particularities. Addressing those on the look and feel, on the assortment, it's a way to increase satisfaction and sense. We had some journalists this morning here in Italy and they were asking data about Italy. And two or three things came out that were pretty interesting. So, number one, SQ we have in the Italian airports and in the Italian activities is cheese, is Parmigiano-Reggiano. We sell more than three tons of cheese a year. That is, if you want a small example, but it shows that even the number one product in retail can be a local product. The other key pillar, and that is only possible thanks to the merger between Autogrill and Dufri, the new Volta, is the potential to use F&B and retail to mutually enhance each other. From cross-promotions, sharing data, cross-pricing, all the way to physical spaces that combine both, which could be a retail... Shop with some F&B or vice versa. Coffee and convenience. Food and duty-free. Champagne and luxury wine and spirits. Branded corners from why not to brand a retail space with a chocolate brand or a perfume brand, etc., etc. That capacity... It's pretty unique at a scale in this industry. And what is very interesting is we see more and more examples of market moving into that direction. More tenders, more spaces allocated to hybrid spaces. On the next slide, entertainment. I'm not going to go. We have shown videos in the past. It could be from a flight simulator, a Formula One simulator. specific festivities linked, but what is really important is the bottom left of the slide. We do measure everything we do, not only on entertainment or on everything. This example is of camera analytics, and we can see what our commercial actions produce on the spaces that we are operating. We can see how the flow changes. We can see how people look at certain displays or not, how they react if they talk to our personnel or not. And that is thanks to the smarter stores. And the smarter stores, they have the front end and the back end. Part of our digital push in the physical spaces is for passengers, from digital advertising to self-checkouts to QR coding ordering processes. interaction, perfume simulators, and part of it is to improve the back of the office, providing data, for example, on AI-generated copilot for our shop managers. If we move to the next slide. Data, one of my favorites. This data I'm giving in this slide is well known, but I keep repeating it because it's pretty amazing. Last year, we had exposure to 9.5 billion passengers in the locations where we are, 670 million of actual customers, and now I realize I'm not sure. I said 2.5. No, no, no. Okay, sorry. Just making sure I was. And then we have 13 million of members, as I mentioned, in our clapboard. From non-customers, just the people that go through our locations, the 2.5, we have data. We have data on how they move, how they behave. in the shop. From our customers, we have much more data. We have basket size, average tickets, and maybe we have the boarding pass. We have the passport. We have the destination. So it's a lot of additional data. And for the Club of Bolta members, of course, we have a level of intimacy, a detail that is much bigger. And we are using more and more of this data to fine-tune each of the pillars I've been mentioning in the prior slides. And to finalize this, again, some highlights on the loyalty program. The 13 million members that I already mentioned, and it's pretty consistent that they keep spending three times the average ticket. So they are the Philcorn flyers, and they are the highest vendors. At this speed, probably this year, the sales generated around Club of Volta will reach 6% or 7%. So it's already a sizable percentage of our sales. Next slide, please. All that is why we keep confirming our outlook. Despite all the things that are happening in the world, because of our Volta growth engine and our strategic focus and our diversification, we still believe we can generate this outlook I mentioned earlier, 5% to 7% organic. 20 to 40 basis points of EBITDA margin increase per annum and equity free cash flow conversion increasing by 100-150 basis points and my last slide is on the capital allocation this company and this management is tremendously focused on value first we invest in growth our existing stores the commercial transformation the digital transformation Second, we invest in business development, new locations. And potentially, third, we could be doing from time to time mid-size, small-size, bolt-on acquisitions. Only if they deliver clear accretion to the company and only at the right valuation and only if financed with our debt capacity and not with new shares. Second, financial discipline. We continue deleveraging this quarter again with a target to be a net debt to EBITDA of 1.5 to 2 times, potentially going to 2.5 if there is some specific strategic growth. But extreme discipline on the balance sheet. Last one, value for shareholders. Progressive dividend of one-third of the equity free cash flow every year. If you see the outlook I just mentioned, you see that the equity free cash flow will increase materially every year, and therefore also the dividend. On top of that, if there is excess cash, we will continue doing share buybacks. We already did one last year. We announced another one for 2025 of $200 million last year, $200 million this year, and we have acquired so far almost half of the shares needed for this year. With that, I'm happy to hand over to our CFO, Yves Gester.

Thank you very much, Xavi, and good morning and good afternoon to everybody on the line, also from my side. Moving on to the financial results with the first slide, slide number 15, with the highlights of the financial results. Organic growth came in at 5.7% for the half year, with reported growth at constant exchange rate or total growth of 7.1%. ABDA margin improved to 9.3% for the half year. This is an improvement of 30 basis point versus the same period last year, and in the midpoint of our guidance of 20 to 40 basis points improvement in the medium term. The equity-free cash flow came in at 216 million Swiss francs, in line or slightly ahead of expectations, which allowed us to deleverage to 2.15 times from 2.35 times, so by 0.2 terms over the last 12 months. reaching very close to the medium term outlook or guidance of 1.5 to 2 times net debt to a BTA. Moving on to the next slide, slide number 16, with the profit and loss statement. Before we look into the details, two comments to the profit and loss statement. Number one, it is affected by the slower growth relative to the Organization of North America. As you know, and as we have presented at the Capital Markets Day a few weeks ago, different concepts have different cost structures, but yield a similar APTA margin. Duty-free, convenience or duty-paid, and food and beverage reflect all quite different P&L structure, but yield the same APTA margin. And I think the P&L of this half year is a good example of that. because of the slower performance or growth relatively to the rest of the group, North America which is predominantly food and beverage and convenience has an impact on the group result and as a consequence we see a slight increase of the concession fee. Concession fee typically in North America because of the heavy weight of food and beverage is below the group's average. The second one is personal expenses. Personal expenses is more labor intense for food and beverage, and as a consequence is decreasing with the slightly slower performance of North America relatively to the group, and the same applies to general expenses. So that's the effect number one you see here. The effect number two is the growth engine, which you just have heard about. It's the continuous improvement of the cost structure and the performance of the group overall. That helped us to grow on the top line and has contributed to the turnover and the revenue generated in the first half, but it also has led to a reduction of personal expenses and general expenses overall, and ultimately yielded the 30 basis points improvement in the EBITDA margin. Then if we look at the P&L below EBITDA margin, you see a slight improvement in the financial result. This is mainly derived from the refinancings done over the last two years, but also the increase in the ratings by the two rating agencies, S&P and Moody's. On the tax and income tax paid, you see a very good result for the first half. That's obviously based on our approach to manage it, but then also we potentially see a slight pressure and a little bit more normalized picture in the second half of the year. In regards to the rest of the P&L, this is in line with expectation. ultimately leading a significant improvement of the earnings per share over the last two years by 19.6% in the half year 23 to 24 and 28.7% over the last 12 months from 1.22 in half year 24 to 1.57 this year. Moving on to the next slide, slide number 17 with the cash flow. Obviously, significantly supported by the operational results on the EBTA level with an additional 44 million of EBTA. The rest of the cash flow statement is actually quite uneventful, all in line with expectations and also previous year. CapEx slightly increased to 3.7% versus 3.5% last year, yielding ultimately the 216 million of equity-free cash flow for the first half. Just want to mention quickly two additional elements on the cash flow statement. That's the dividends to the group shareholders we have paid earlier this year of 143 million. It's one Swiss franc per share versus the 70 cents we have paid last year, an improvement of 43% or actually an increase of 43% year on year. The treasury shares we have purchased, which ultimately at year end, once we have purchased the full amount of up to 200 million Swiss francs, will be cancelled. So for the half year, we have purchased so far 92 million Swiss francs from a cash flow perspective. Moving on to the next slide, slide number 18, with the leverage. I've already mentioned it, but quite a steep deleveraging profile, disregarding the fact that we have significantly increased the dividend, as already mentioned, and purchased 100 million of treasury shares under the share purchase program of up to 200 million. So leverage stands at 2.15 times versus the target of 1.5 to 2 times net debt to EBITDA. On the maturity profile at the bottom side of the page, nothing surprising there. We have refinanced, as we have disclosed earlier this year, a 300 million Swiss francs facility, a bond, with a new 500 million euro facility. We will use that 500 million euro facility not only to refinance the bond, but also have now an additional capacity to potentially refinance with part of that cash the maturity coming up in 2026, the 500 million convertible bonds. And as you know, we have sufficient liquidity under the RCF and also cash on the balance sheet. And we also intend to generate some further cash for the remainder of the year. So no refinancing risk in that regard at all. The Euro bonds we have issued earlier this year, we have fully converted into Swiss francs. which will reduce the interest expenses from the coupon of around 4.5% to around 2.4%. So very attractive terms indeed. Overall, before I hand back to Xavi as a last statement, a very predictable financial result. And with that, handing back to Xavi.

Thank you very much. I'll move now to page 20. Just a few messages. I'm not going to read the slide, but very good performance on the first half. Similar start of the summer. Half one has been challenging. Despite that, we have provided a very strong set of results on the top line, but also on the results. We expect a similar second half, challenging environment. But because of our engine growth and our diversification, we will keep performing in the mid and long term in line with our outlook. We want to be a company that surprises the passengers, that provides an experience that they are not used to have, which of course incentivizes them to consume more to our benefit and the benefit of our landlord partners themselves. and our brands. But on the markets, on the investors' community, we want to be extremely predictable, both on the delivery of results and the use of resources on the capital allocation. And that, all of that, is what you have seen now for two and a half years. With that, I thank all of you for your attention, and we can open the floor for Q&A.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Questionnaires on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast while asking a question. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relative field. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Manjari Dar from RBC. Please go ahead.

We are not hearing the question.

Ms. Manjari, your line is open. You can ask your question. Maybe your line is on mute. We take the next question from Jaffar Messari from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. I have three, if that's all right. Firstly, on the IANA operations, as you said, you received some praise from the management of IANA yesterday on their own conference call. That was a renewal where obviously you had your retail operations, but also you were allowed to experiment with hybrid concepts and with the potential convergence between retail and food. So my question is great testimony. What are the next steps now that you have a very satisfied major client, you have a case study of what hybrid concepts can do to like-for-like performance? Can you do more with I&I in the short term, or will that only be at the next renewal? Or elsewhere, now that you can show your other clients What we can do with hybrid, do you think you'll have more landlords around the world letting you do the same sort of experiments? Second question on operating leverage. Today, do you have an estimate of what percentage of group revenue is still trading at or below the local minimum guarantees, particularly in Spain? So from here, every extra point of revenue Is it still generating significant operating leverage in some locations, or is it more steady state from here, fully viable rent in most airports? And just lastly, on the early terminations in Asia Pacific, if you could just tell us a bit more about the countries or the airports that have been under review, quantify the revenue you're terminating, and just philosophically why is that not treated as simply negative net new wins within organic growth, please.

So I want to take the first one. Look, I think IANA and our operations in Spain, it has become a very good proxy. of what the Avolta growth engine means. Hybrids is one part of it, but every other single pillar I explain in this presentation has been deployed in AENA. And that has been possible thanks to the vision of the landlord, the excellent collaboration between the Avolta team and the AENA team. And I do believe we have a lot of learnings in this collaboration that we can progressively extend to other places. The operational leverage that you asked particularly on the minimum guarantees. We have some minimum guarantees, but it's limited the number of minimum guarantees we have across the group. Of course, I always say the same. On one side, it reduces the operational leverage, but it's also very positive on the risk profile. We do not favor minimum guarantees, and when we have them, we favor them per passenger. We believe this is a better option. But in some cases, it's not possible that the minimum guarantees exist. Spain is one of the cases. But as it was discussed yesterday, they have more freedom to discuss what they want and more limited on the confidentiality. But there are some parts of the business... in Spain that are already ahead of minimum guarantee. That's something that was expected to happen much later in the concession, so that are definitely good news. And as they said yesterday, it's a combination of very strong passenger growth, but also a very positive spend per passenger. The last one you might want to take.

Of course. So look, in regard to the last one, so look, we enter via direct negotiations or tender into new concessions, and those are reflected on the next new concessions when we win them, and also once they expire naturally. In some limited cases and very specific cases, we may want to negotiate at mutually agreed terms between us and the landlords, a potential early termination, and if we do that, this is reflected almost kind of like a disposal under M&A and other.

Thanks. And in Q1, M&A was contributing positively, almost 3%, and now it's flat for H1. Is that roughly a good estimate?

No, there are a couple of things. I mean, point number one is you need to consider that in Q1, the positive M&A was mainly the free duty acquisition in Hong Kong, and you need to consider that this has been affected by Chinese New Year. So it was a very strong quarter in that regard, obviously because of Chinese New Year, which then in the second quarter was not there anymore. That's point number one, and point number two is what I've just mentioned before. Thank you. Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Harry Goers from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning, gents. A couple of questions if I can. Just the first one, on your EMEA organic works, that clearly continues to be very strong. So maybe you could remind us how much of that division as a split is from the Middle East in particular rather than Europe and how much of a drag that might have been in the last couple of months, just given the geopolitical tensions. And the second one, I just wanted to ask on Heathrow in particular. You know, we've seen Lagardere enter with a new recent contract win for the first time, which is inconvenient. So could you remind us when your Heathrow concession is up for renewal, and do you envisage maybe that potentially being a bit more of a competitive tender or seeing some bidding pressure when that finally comes? I guess Heathrow may be looking to diversify their wheat partners a little bit. Thanks a lot.

Heathrow.

So on the organic growth, we don't give details below region, but I can tell you that in the second quarter we estimate, it's always an estimation, the missed sales because for sure you don't have it. But the Middle East crisis on the locations that affected and also the passengers from other locations that couldn't travel to the region, we estimate in quarter two was an effect of between 0.2, 0.3 percent on the growth. So the growth of 6 percent would have been 6.2, 6.3 without the Middle East crisis. You know our policy, we do not disclose specific details per concession or location. So the only thing I can tell you is that any relevant location, we work always, ideally even ahead of time, on renewing. And we are very disciplined, as you can see, year after year, on what we pay for space.

All very clear. Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Darman Jari from RBC. Please go ahead.

Hi. Can you hear me this time?

We hear you very well. Thank you.

Brilliant. Thanks, Darby. I just have two questions if I may. The first question was on North America. I think the IATA data suggested a pickup in July so far. I suppose if we were to see a more sustained improvement in the U.S., how quickly can you guys ramp back up and add costs back into the region? And then secondly, I just had a question on the loyalty app. I think it's off to a good first nine or so months, but I just wondered what are your thoughts on further development opportunity for the app and could you give any cover on what you're seeing in terms of the spend profile of Club of Alter members versus non-members. Thank you.

Look, North America in June, July, not a consistent trend, but we have seen a few weeks that have been better than the first five months of the year. You also had some airlines reinstating guidance for the second half. But we remain cautious. That's why, because it's not a consistent trend yet. We cannot state the recovery is starting. So that's why I said we prefer to be prepared and expect also like the first quarter, the first half, still a volatile situation. If the recovery will be there, of course, we can ramp up very fast. We have a very flexible labor. I'm not talking about hours or days, but I'm talking about weeks. So if the recovery will be there, there will be no material or significant miss of cells because of that.

The second question, I have to confess, I couldn't... What is the further development on the app in general in regard to spend per person?

So on the app, on the loyalty program, the loyalty program is not only the app, because some of our loyal members of Club Volta use the app. Some of them use just in the wallet, you can download the card and use it. For the full use, as I said, it's 13 million with a recruiting of half a million average per month, which is super strong. Different behavior in different locations. The more frequent flyers you have, the higher is the penetration of the loyalty program. Every day, the... team of Club of Volta adds features. It could be improving the technicalities of the app. It could be adding new services, new airports that provide the service. Add new partners. We added a couple of airlines in the last quarter. Adding more special products, more experiences, more opportunities to donate. So any successful commercial interaction needs to be alive. If you do something and it works very well, but you don't change it, you don't improve it, you don't innovate. But that applies to the app, applies to the Club of Volta, applies to the shops, and applies to the visitor. Which reminds me that I don't think I fully answered one prior question. If the improvement in Spain was going to be continuous or just in the next renewal. And the answer is it has to be continuous. Of course, if you do a major intervention, maybe you do a first jump. But the idea when we talk about flexible stores... It's precisely because you need to continue improving and surprising the passengers. The model that you do one refurbishment, you enjoy it, and then slowly decrease is not valid. You need to constantly improve. And that's the same thing we do on the digital world and in the physical world.

Great. That's very clear. Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of John Marcovero from ZKB. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Two questions from my side. The first one is on your expansion plans in Asia. You mentioned that you want to expand there also with duty paid and also with food offerings, especially China, I can remember, Wuhan, for example. It would be great to have some of your insights there about your first experiences, which categories are working the best for you, and then also the further expansion plans there. Second one, you also gave a lot of details at your Capital Markets Day for your growth drivers, especially new spaces is a big topic. Can you give us the impact of new spaces also for the second quarter of 2025? And then very general also for the spaces, can you provide to us the total retail spaces that Avolta operates today must be around or close to 500,000 square meters today? Thank you.

Thank you very much. I mean, look, I think we've been very clear that the geographical diversification process including Asia, but also Middle East, also Africa, and also continuing Europe, North America, and Latin America, we believe it's very important for two reasons. It facilitates the growth because you have exposure to more passengers. And second, it's a risk diversification. The world is very volatile. Geopolitics changes a lot, as we see over and over. And having the most global presence at the right terms and conditions means It's something that guarantees this resilience and this predictability in the growth. In that context, APAC remains a priority for us. But we always make the caveat that it's a mid-long-term strategy that will take a few years to get the right presence because we are not pursuing market share per se. We are pursuing value. And for that, we need to enter each of the markets at the right terms and the right conditions. We believe that the new behavior of the Chinese passengers, which is probably here to stay, will produce a material restructuring of the Asia-Pacific market in the next two, three years. We monitor it very closely, and we will do more things when it's the right place, when it's the right moment. So patience, you will keep seeing developments, but only at the right time. Growth spaces, I mean, you have, I think, in page five, we don't need to go to the slide, but in page five, you have the net new concessions on quarter one was 0.2, and quarter two was 1.2. And the average for the first half was 0.8. I don't have the number of square meters in my head right now because our main driver are passengers and not the square meters. So I keep in mind. passengers, spend per passenger, average ticket, conversion ratio, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but not the square meter, but I'm sure Rebecca can provide you that data after this call. Thank you. Thank you. Great.

For any further questions, please press star and 1. The next question comes from the line of Manuel Lange from Fontobel. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good afternoon. I have two follow-up and then a separate question. So the first one on North America, so passenger growth, it was roughly flat, right, and U.S. domestic very slightly negative in the second quarter. So I'm just wondering if you can point out the magnitude of the spend per packs versus the passenger growth mix in your North American business. and what we should think of that going forward. Then another follow-up on the club members. So we've seen members growing strongly and also contributing now significantly to the sales. But what's your estimate on how this will impact margin, given also the relevant discounts that members are getting on the purchases? Or in other words, do you see a big difference in margin between the revenues from club members versus non-members? Then the third one would be on CapEx. So in the first half, you were at around 3.7% of sales. I'm just wondering if you will repeat that in the second half as you did last year or if it would increase to the guided 4% of sales. Thank you.

Look, the passengers in the U.S., because the way the terminals work, they are not measured exactly the same way than in Europe. But basically, you have passengers being negative depending on the month between minus 0.5 and minus 1%. TSA reports that data. And our like-for-like has been slightly positive. So it means that our productivity has been around plus 1, plus 1.5%. Still the organic at the end of the day when you put everything together is roughly flat. The behavior between the first and the second quarter has been similar with the exception that I mentioned that a few weeks in June and July the trend was a little bit more positive but then it's still not consistently a change of trend. I need to be Now, careful how I answer your second question, which was a very smart question. We are working in a way by which the net effect of Club of Bolton members is not dilutive. And how we do that? With a lot of collaboration with the brands on providing... The necessary benefits that sometimes are discount, but sometimes are exclusive products, sometimes are access to collectibles, sometimes are experiences, so it's more than discounts. We work with brands to make sure that the net effect of that in our gross profit margin is not dilutive. And probably you want to take the last one, Steve.

So looking in regard to CapEx, we are not guiding for CapEx. We have the outlook on turnover on APTA margin improvement and cash flow improvement. What we have said several times in the past, especially at the beginning when we disclosed the strategy was around 4% and that's still true. So look, we are not going to deviate from that and I think it's a good proxy also for the future. This year, half year is 3.7%, around 4% give or take and in some years can be a little bit more, in some years can be a little bit less. I think it's a very good indication and proxy from a modelling perspective.

We now have a question from the webcast from Tim Barrett of Deutsche Bank. You speak about restructuring the concession portfolio. Are these contracts materially loss-making? Will there be a cash exit cost? GM was unchanged despite the lower mix of F&B. What other factors are impacting here? Thanks.

For obvious reasons, we cannot disclose the specifics of confidential agreements, but everything we do is always based on the idea of generating value. You should not expect any material or significant negative effect because of those exits generated. So there are no one-offs, material one-offs for that concession restructuring. On the GM, on the gross profit margin, I guess.

Look, I mean on the gross profit margin, it's basically what we have discussed on the P&L now. Due to the fact that North America is not growing in line with the rest of the group, it also affects to a certain extent the gross profit margin because North America, its food and beverage, or predominantly food and beverage, has an above-average gross profit margin. And because that's not growing in line with the rest of the group, it puts a little bit of pressure for the gross profit margin. So year-on-year gross profit margin is neutral, positively affected by our improvements, and slightly negatively affected by the slower performance of North America.

There are no more questions at this time. I would like now to turn the conference back over to the speakers for any closing remarks.

Well, just to first to thank your attention, particularly in many countries, the middle of holiday periods. So for the ones that are enjoying your holidays, enjoy them. The ones that you're going to do it, enjoy it and always remember when you're traveling, Don't forget to spend in our food and beverage and our retail operations. And if you're a Club of Volta member, you will get even some very keen advantages. So thank you very much. Hope to see all of you soon. Thank you.