7/30/2025

speaker
Sharon
Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to today's JDP's Half Year 2025 Earnings Call. My name is Sharon, and I will be your operator for the call. For the duration of the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and the conference call is being recorded. Following the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If you do have questions, please press the star 1-1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Once again, please press star 1 and 1 if you wish to ask a question. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to our first speaker, Robin Janssen, Director, Investor Relations for J.D.E. Peets.

speaker
Robin Janssen
Director, Investor Relations

Thank you, Sharon. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to J.D.E. Peets Earnings Call for the first half of 2025. Joining me are Rafa Oliveira, CEO, and Yang Xu, CFO. After my introduction, Rafa will walk you through the operational and financial highlights related to our first half-year business performance, followed by a strategic update. Yang will then provide more detail on our financial performance and will provide an update on our full-year outlook. After that, we will be happy to answer your questions. Our press release was published at 7 a.m. CET this morning. both the release and the slide deck for this call are available in the investor section of our website. A full transcript of this conference call will be made available there as soon as possible after this call. Before heading over to Rafa, I'd like to draw your attention to the disclaimer on slide three regarding non-IFRS measures and forward-looking statements. Please take a moment to review this information carefully. With that, I'm pleased to hand over the call to you, Rafa.

speaker
Rafa Oliveira
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Robin, and welcome, everyone. I'm pleased to share the key highlights of the results of the first half of 2025 with you and provide you with an update on our five key priorities for the year, along with a brief recap of our new brand-led strategy we introduced at our Capital Markets Day on the 1st of July. As you saw in this morning's press release, we delivered another set of strong, broad-based results. On an organic basis, our sales were up 22.5%, our adjusted gross profit increased by 2.2%, and our adjusted EBIT grew by 2%. Our free cash flow was also solid at 565 million euros, underscoring our strong cash-generating capabilities. We are proud of this performance across top-line profitability and cash. especially when considering the persistently high green coffee prices that we had to continue to deal with in the first half of 25, which Yung will elaborate on later. Once again, we successfully managed to appropriately offset this semester's unprecedented level of inflation with efficiencies, productivities, and pricing across products and markets. This allowed us to protect our gross profit, enabling necessary investments for growth and profitability. Despite the short-term volume pressure we experienced during retailer negotiations in Europe at the start of the year, volumes rebounded quickly from March onwards, resulting in very resilient fall mix growth of 1% and overall stable market share performance, especially in faster-growing categories such as beans and aluminum capsules, especially in capsules we are very pleased to see that again in the first half of 25, we are outperforming the market with low-teens organic sales growth, fueled by mid-single-digit volume mix growth. We are also pleased with the progress we made on the five key priorities we set for 2025, and which we shared with you when we published our full year 2024 results back in February. I'll briefly address the progress we've made on each of those five priorities in the next slide. Last but not least, we returned 43% of our free cash flow to shareholders. 172 million was returned through dividends, while another 71 million was returned through our 2025 250 million euro share buyback program, which we launched nearly five months ago as part of our 1 billion euro share buyback commitment for the coming years. By the 25th of July, we had completed 38% of the 2025 share buyback probe. Overall, looking back at the first six months of the year, we are very pleased with the progress we made from a strategic, business, as well as financial perspective. More importantly, as a leadership team, we have clearly noticed that the organization is starting to refine momentum and that the new strategy and decisive actions we are taking are re-energizing and motivating our teams across the globe. Let's now take a look at how we are progressing on the five key priorities we've made set for our team for 2025. First and foremost, pricing discipline. It goes without saying that with an inflation headwind of about 800 million euros in half month, and an estimated total level of inflation at our cost base of around 1.6 billion euros for the full year. The number one priority for the entire organization is to stay laser-focused and extremely disciplined on protecting our gross profit, our EBIT, and our free cash flow, which we did. We pull all the levers we can to mitigate inflation and have built a robust pipeline of productivity and efficiency measures to absorb as much of the inflation headwind as possible. And only the part of inflation that we cannot offset despite our efforts has been and will be passed on to our value retail and our home partners through price increase. To this end, we are currently discussing pricing with customers across the globe, and I am pleased to report that we expect to have successfully concluded price negotiations covering 87% of our total sales by the end of next week, which will then include France, where a different timeline is applicable due to the rules that apply to their market. And to be clear, Being disciplined on pricing and protecting our absolute gross profit is crucial to our ability to continue to invest in areas such as new product development, product quality, sustainability, capacity expansion, etc. And this ultimately benefits all our stakeholders, including consumers, customers, employment, and the more than 1 million farmers we source from. Our second priority for 2025 is to identify and deliver additional efficiencies to fund incremental investments behind our leading brands, Peets, Lore, and our 10 iconic brands led by Jacobs. We have done intensive granular analysis to identify the four main areas where we are going to get these productivities. We share these four areas at our capital markets day. and started to execute on since the start of this year. The four areas we have identified are portfolio simplification, synergies in the way we work, drive continuous improvement, and focus on asset life throughout the market and partnerships. We have a specific target for each of these areas and a very detailed zip code of where we are going to get these productivities from. In terms of timing, we expect to deliver 250 million euros of net savings by the end of 2027, and in total, 500 million euros by 2032. And of course, we will update you on the progress we are making on this front on a regular basis. Let me call out some of the most important initiatives we undertook in the first half of this year to simplify our operating model and optimize resource allocation. We divested our tea business in Turkey, which was loss-making, to air for holding. We discontinued the rollout of lore barista machine in the U.S. We transferred our lore capsules business in the U.S. to pits in San Francisco to better capture the significant potential of U.S. coffee market. In procurement, we implemented a design for value program that is already bringing productivity. Using our coffee expertise, we are able to mix our blends to optimize cost while maintaining quality. When it comes to manufacturing, we announced the intent to closure our plant in Banbury in the UK. And we also announced the optimization of our operating model in Europe by reducing the number of country clusters from 10 to 5, harmonizing ways of working across teams and centralizing finance transactional activities in a global business service model to improve effectiveness and efficiency. So, yes, a good start has been made, but as this is a significant and multiyear program, what we've done today is just the beginning, and we'll continue to work on strategic initiatives to simplify and optimize the company. So, stay tuned here. Third, the strategic assessment we have done in the first half of the year and the new brand-led strategy that this resulted in provides us with a clear strategic roadmap to be much more selective and rigorous in our capital and resource allocation to drive brand investments behind our three big bets, Beats, Lore, and the 10 iconic brands led by Jacobs, with a bigger focus on organic growth. To revigorate the focus on organic growth, we are deploying as the fourth priority a spectrum of initiatives to increase agility, remove bureaucracy, and drive an ownership culture across the organization. An example of this is a two-day summit we organized right after the market day for the 100 most senior leaders of the company for alignment and deployment of the new brand-led strategy and crystallized what this means for the entire organization. When it comes to the fifth priority, to put more emphasis on stakeholder value creation, I believe we are also making good progress. We continue to invest in the business with, for example, a mid-single-digit organic increase in AMP. We improved our engagement score. We are intentionally engaging an additional 165,000 farmers to reach a total of 1 million farmers by the end of this year. and we deliver a solid free cash flow, which is used to return 243 million euros to our shareholders and to reduce our net leverage to 2.5 times. Let me now briefly provide you with a recap of a new brand-led strategy we reviewed at our Capital Markets Day on July 1st. We are simplifying the organization into one unified JDP, with three big bets, PITS, lore, and 10 local icons led by Jacobs. These 10 local icons have the strongest meaning, brand salience, and penetration in the markets where they are present and across all age groups. And very importantly as well, these are brands that enjoy very high rotation and have proven to be highly responsive to activation. And these 10 iconic brands are 100 complementary since they mostly do not coexist nor are they activated in one or same geography moving forward and leveraging the commonalities that bring these brands together we will platform once and deploy multiple times on the on the back of jacobs we will create a chassis that will adapt on the last mile for meaning and distinctivities And this is not a theoretical model. We've been experimenting over the last months, and we have proven the model can work. The focus on these three big bags does not mean that the other remaining brands in the portfolio will, by definition, be neglected or sold. We see various future avenues for the second-tier brands and the ones that find themselves in the tail. These brands could. either develop a plan that steps up their performance to aspire to become part of the group of local icons, or be transitioned to another brand like we have, for instance, done in the past with L'Amour and Carte Noire that transitioned to L'Or, and Medailles d'Or transitioned to Jacobs in Switzerland. In some cases, we could conclude over time that we are no longer the best owner of certain brands, and thus we'll look for alternatives and state models. Our transformation will be driven by five key catalysts, a winning culture of agility, ownership, and transparency, a consumer-led organization built on iconic brands, commercial excellence across four mission-critical capabilities, a simplified structure to an ambitious productivity program with financial disciplines at the core. Before sharing some examples of the progress we've been making on these five catalysts, Let me first highlight some of the promising product launches we have rolled out to our leading brands, Peeps, Lohr, and our 10 iconic brands led by Jacobs. The three big bets I just mentioned, Anchor and our brand-led strategy, are creating a powerful focus for innovation. And we are already seeing great results. We are bringing meaningful new products that meet changing and evolving needs and preferences. at the right time while increasing the value of every cup. Let me share a few highlights from the first half of the year. Peeps stepped into exciting new territory with the launch of Peeps Popping Pearls, a bold innovation designed to surprise and delight. These pearls gently burst with intense coffee flavor, deliver a unique and playful sensory experience. Because of its success, we've now brought popping pearls to more markets than the Lolo brand, where it's becoming a key feature in our experimental activations. With more than 50% of U.S. coffee drinkers now choosing medium roast, Peace is expanding its beans offering in the medium roast category. Off the Grill is our latest addition to the beans portfolio, and specifically crafted to attract new consumers by offering the coffee they already love with the premium taste and quality that only Peet's can deliver. We are also building on the strong momentum of the fast-growing iced coffee trend, especially with millennials and Gen Z. Lower Coconut Iced Espresso made a strong debut in over 20 markets, and it's just the beginning. We are now preparing to launch a seasoned lineup that reflects how our consumers live and feel throughout the year. Coming this autumn, Lore Pumpkin Spicy, a typical warming blend with notes of cinnamon, clove, allspice, and nutmeg. In June, we launched Lore Barista Absolute in six markets. Our most advanced machine yet, offering 18 brew options, including a dedicated ice function to brew a perfect iced coffee through a machine. Whether hot or cold, each cup is elevated with richer flavor and aroma. To elevate the experience for consumers when brewed cold, our innovative punch function pre-wets the coffee grounds, allowing them to bloom before extraction. This means you also get full aroma and flavor of ice when the ice button is selected. Let's now switch to the iconic brands led by Jacobs and provide you with an example of the exciting opportunities we have to platform and roll out new innovations across these strong heritage brands. Dubai Chocolate. In response to a fast-moving social media trend, this product went from concept to shelf in just 18 weeks. Its strong performance allows us to roll it out quickly across more than 20 markets under several of our leading brands, and it's already becoming one of the top-performing products in our mixes ranging in the UK. And lastly, after Peet's Ultra Coffee Concentrate opened a new category, Mocona launched Liquid Espresso Coffee Sachets in Australia. It's the first of its kind there and answers the growing need for convenience. 76% of survey consumers indicated that they will make it part of their daily routine. With that kind of response, we are now planning a wider rollout across Asia. Let me now move on to share a selection of the progress we are making on each of our five strategic catalysts I just referred to. As I mentioned at the start of this call, we have clearly noticed that the organization is starting to refine momentum. and that the new strategies and decisive actions we are taking are re-energizing and motivating our teams across the globe. This is also underpinned by the most recent outcome of our annual Gallup Employee Engagement Survey. The score improved to 4.12, based on participation rates, which was 91%, compared to 81% on average at other FMCG companies using Gallup. We also announced a new setup for the central marketing organization aligned with our new brand-led strategy and aimed at consolidating all category teams under one portfolio strategy role to drive a holistic category agenda and align priorities. Scaling up expert capabilities and removing duplicity. To beef up commercial excellence, we have, among other things, set up a brand-new revenue growth management platform and are enriching our key account management reach and capabilities. As you have heard earlier during this call, our simplification and productivity programs are in full swing, and our financial discipline remains strong, reflected in strong free cash flow, a leverage of 2.5 times, and 38% of our 2025 share-by-back program complete. So, to wrap it all up, I would like to conclude that we've delivered a strong set of broad-based results. We've put a clear and simple, brand-less strategy in place. And we've set the strategy in motion that are making solid progress since the start of the year. taking these three points into account, we feel confident in raising our full year guidance, which Young will come back at the end of their session. With that, I would now like to hand the call to Young to discuss our first half financials and the outlook for the full year 2025.

Disclaimer

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