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Qoria Ltd

Q22026

2/26/2026

speaker
Paul
Head of Investor Relations

Good morning, everybody. I would like just to highlight today that we have on page two a forward-looking statement that highlights some certain risks and uncertainties that impacts our business. These risks and uncertainties are relevant to today's discussions, especially in relating to forward-looking statements. I would now hand over to Urs Jordi for the presentation. Thank you, Paul.

speaker
Urs Jordi
Interim Chairman & CEO

Good morning, Paul. Welcome. with our full year 2025 result call this Monday. We will start on page four of the presentation. As you can see, a revenue of 2.223 billion being achieved in the year 2025. And with this an organic growth of 1.5% supported by volume and by price. An EBITDA of 306.9 million we have in our books and with this a free cash flow of 120 million euro. Based on this, on this solid performance and the strong cash flow, we decided to repurchase the remaining hybrid bond, the outstanding Swiss franc bond on the amount of 144.3 million by end of April this year. On the next page, then, you can see that we did complete our customer negotiations, year end 25, beginning 26. We maintain a strong share of innovation, 19% of revenue. New capacity is ramping up in Switzerland, as you know, the new line for Gipfels and Pastry. The first investment goes operational soon as we are speaking now and in the next two, three weeks. An investment in Portugal, the Bergoban factory is confirmed and the planning execution starts. There's a new investment planned in Poland. Planning is continuing and as you know from our last calls, business cost optimization is accelerating. On the next page then about the organization of the company, the board and the management, the dual mandate, the chairman and the interim role will end at AGM 2027. The board will propose for then, for this AGM 2027, a new chairman, I will remain CEO of the company and board member of the company. A board refreshment is as well proposed for this year's AGM 2026. We propose Heike Seng-Smith to join the board. Helene Weber-Duby decided not going for the next round after being more than five years with us. We did as well decide to relocate the head office from Schlieren to Zug. This is subject to the AGM approval from April. The guidance then for the coming year on the next page. We confirm to deliver our midterm plan as disclosed. We will achieve a low to mid single digit organic growth. We will continue with our EBITDA and EBIT improvement activities. We will remain on a strong cash flow generation for the business. And the board will publish a capital return policy 2026. This is a remarkable point. First time in Arista's existence since many years. The company is in the situation to debate. and to propose a capital return plan for shareholders. On the next page, then, you can see the mid-term targets. You know them about EBITDA margin, EBIT margin, 15% or more, 9% or more. CAPEX amounts to 3.5% to 4.5% of revenue, as we had in the past. total net debt leverage from 1.5 to 2 times is a target level we will achieve. All of this supported by a strong cash generation and improvement on ROIC and on earnings per share. We would go now to the financial review and I would ask Martin to guide us through, please.

speaker
Martin
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you Urs. Good morning. We are pleased to share with you the details of the resilient results we achieved in 2025. A register has delivered on the updated guidance after the executive leadership change in October 2025. We achieved revenues of 2,223,000,000 euros corresponding to an organic growth of 1.5% with contribution from both volume mix and pricing. Our EBTA of 306.9 million euros is above the guidance. The corresponding margin of 13.8% demonstrates our ability to deliver robust results despite the context. Free cash flow of 120 million euros representing a cash conversion of almost 40% of EBTA confirms the cash generation strength of Redstone's business model. Despite lower operating result, the disciplined management of our invested capital protected ROIC. The 12.1% is well above the group's weighted average cost of capital, delivering value creation for the shareholders. Next slide. In a challenging consumer and market environment, Arista delivered an organic growth of 1.5%, supported by volume mix growth of 0.5%, and a resilient pricing of 1%. Food service and QSR contributed with solid growth levels, while retail was flat. Important to highlight that pricing was strongly supported by our food service business, while QSR was a key contributor to volume growth. Retail delivered a contrasting picture with some businesses delivering substantial volume mix growth, compensating others. Innovation with a revenue share of 19% was organic growth accretive. Next slide. Europe achieved an organic growth of 1.3% with positive volume mix and pricing. Contribution to pricing was stable across the year. The growth in Europe was broad-based, with good contribution from Ireland, France, Germany, and Poland, as well as our European bond cluster. Good performance in food service, driven by pricing and to a lesser extent volume, as well as solid volume progress in QSR. Retail had a generally more challenging performance in both pricing and volume. Innovation share of revenue reached 19%, underscoring our category leadership. While EBTA margin of 12.9% was below last year and further decreased compared to H1 2025, we have been able to significantly recover profitability in the last quarter. The reset triggered by the leadership change supported this acceleration of margin recovery in the last quarter with the several cost optimization initiatives we have implemented. put in place. Next slide. The rest of the world delivered strong results with an organic growth of 2.9% and an EBTA margin improvement of 110 basis points to 20.9%. Key contributors to this achievement are the mid-single digit organic growth in QSR with important contribution from volume and mix. The continued QSR recovery also resulted in improved profitability. The other segments of rest of world achieved largely flat organic growth, however, added with important margin progression to the results of the region. We expect the QSC to further progress. The new factory in Perth will be commissioned at the end of the first quarter this year and will support this trend. Next slide. We delivered an EBITDA of 306.9 million euros, which was above the October guidance. The resulting margin of 13.8% is 80 basis point behind previous year, but largely stable versus our H1 result. Input cost inflation, particularly related to labor costs, as well as some commodities like butter, protein, and chocolate, have impacted gross margin by 290 basis points. Ethics and other elements had a negative impact of 50 basis points. This was partially offset by pricing as well as procurement and simplex cost optimizations, which have benefited cross-margin by about 190 basis points. The increasing share on revenue of margin-accretive innovation has also helped to mitigate the negative effect the input cost had. Distribution cost and SG&A have contributed 60 basis points to the result through disciplined cost management, efficiency gains from the shared service center, and procurement savings on the newly onboarded indirect categories. We have delivered these robust EBTA levels and have continued investing in our strategic efficiency initiatives to ensure our business model and setup is future-fit. Next slide. During the Capital Market Day last year, we committed as part of our 2025 to 28 midterm plan to deliver 20 to 30 million net savings. Operations, procurement, and structure cost improvement will contribute 40 to 60 million savings, of which we will use 20 to 30 million euros to invest in improved digital maturity and AI. Over the last couple of months, we have further evolved and refined our savings and IT investment roadmap and incorporated them under the umbrella of the Arista Continuous Excellence Program. The focus will be on operations as well as commercial. We will drive efficiency in manufacturing through initiatives such as centerlining, waste management, and changeover cleaning optimization, as well as accelerating the rollout of bakery best practices to our factories. In logistics, our focus is on driving the efficiencies of our distribution platforms and our direct store delivery setups. In sales and marketing, we have launched a set of measures to accelerate customer and channel contribution. The excellence program is complemented with transversal initiatives addressing the structural costs by aligning our organizational models, implementing a standardized integrated business planning process, and further extending the reach of our above-market procurement organization. The investments into our digitalization roadmap will evolve the IT and OT capability of the group and will ensure that the benefits of the excellence programs are sustainable. On the next slide, I'll share a couple of early examples of this acceleration of our excellence program, which we have intensified over the last quarter of the year. In operations, we have run a manufacturing optimization pilot project in our Swiss bakery in Dagmarsellen, and identified material cost reduction potential. The realization of these saving potentials has already started. We will roll out this program further. Germany will be the next manufacturing hub which we target. Through the alignment of our organizational model, we have identified across the group circa 10 million euros of gross annual structural cost reduction through the alignment to our predefined organizational models. The implementation of these actions has started and will show its full effect in 2027. as we will have some one-off restructuring costs in 2026. Our business service center now drives major process redesign and technology rollouts across 60% of our revenue, enhancing controls, efficiencies, and scalabilities, and with that positions a red star for sustained profitable growth. In terms of our digitization roadmap, we continue strengthening our digital core by unifying DERP and business application landscape, tied to data governance, and deeper end-to-end system integration. This is reducing manual work, moving supply chain, or improving supply chain visibility, and enabling faster AI-supported insights. Next slide. ERIGSA delivered 120 million Euro in free cash flow, continued strong focus on working capital management, discipline management of CapEx, which only increased by about four million Euros versus previous year, and the reduction of total financing costs supported by the hybrid buyback program and increased efficiency in cash management were the key drivers of this result. Next slide. Our continuous focus on working capital management allowed us to further reduce trade net working capital as a percentage of revenue to 0.2% compared to the 0.7% at the end of 2024. Management of inventory was one of the contributors to the positive evolution as well as continuous discipline collection management. Next slide. We made Good progress in strengthening our balance sheet. The solid cash flow supported by the hybrid buyback program and the further improved working capital efficiency allowed us to reduce the leverage to 2.6 times. We are fully on track to deliver the targeted levels of our current midterm plan. In addition, our core equity is progressing as planned and represents already 21.1% of the total balance sheet assets. As announced today, we will repurchase the last remaining hybrid on its next entry payment date at the end of April and repay the outstanding principal of 144.3 million Swiss francs. With this, we will successfully conclude our hybrid buyback program and further progress towards a normalized financing structure. Next slide. Our discipline and consistent management of financing has delivered strong results. Total financing costs, including hybrid dividends and lease interest amount to 41.6 million euros. This is over four million euros better than the lower end of the guided range for 2025. The hybrid buyback strategy contributed almost 23 million to the reduction of the financing cost and was only partially compensated by higher bank financing interest. Our interest exposure hedging strategy has paid off. Currently, around 37% of our total exposure is covered. For 2026, we expect that our total financing cost remains stable at 40 to 43 million euros. Next slide. Return on invested capital is at robust levels with 12.1%. The lower operating profit is impacting the 2025 results. Our invested capital remained, however, stable compared to previous year. Discipline management of CapEx and Wharton Capital have contributed to this. The 2025 result of 12.1% is well ahead the group's weighted average cost of capital of 8%. creating value for our shareholders. The earning per share increased by 5.7% to four euros 25 cents. The positive contribution from our discipline financing strategy more than outweighed the impact from lower operating results. The tax charge, as you can see on the slide, was largely stable. Concluding now, We have delivered a robust set of figures in a complex and volatile context. The measures we have taken in Q4 to reposition the company and correct the course towards the midterm plan flight path are delivering results. We have refocused the commercial organization and expect to deliver an organic growth in the low to mid single digit range. Our negotiations with customer are mostly concluded and pricing is expected to be largely flat for the year. We are focusing the organization on operating profit and expect to return the EBIT margin towards the flight path of our 2028 targets. Certainly our cost discipline measures structured within the excellence program will support this. We expect to sustain strong free cash flow generation for the current year and end of April 26, we will repay the remaining principal of the last outstanding hybrid bond and further normalize our financing structure. And, last but not least, we have validated our SBTI targets and are making good progress in our ESG journey. Thank you, and I hand back to Urs.

Disclaimer

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.

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