Strauss Group Ltd Ord

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Welcome to Strauss Group's first quarter 2026 results earnings call. On our call today, management will provide a review of the results followed by questions and answer sessions. You are encouraged to post your questions to the Q&A function in the Zoom. As a reminder, this earnings call is being recorded Wednesday, May 20, 2026. A recording of this call will be available on the company's website a few hours after the call. With me today are Mr. Shai Babad, Strauss Group's President and CEO, and Mr. Toby Fishbane, the Group CFO, and myself, Absalom Shimi, Head of Investor Relations. I would like to remind everyone that this online webinar may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future performance of the company. These statements are only predictions and may change as time passes. Strauss Group does not assume any obligation to update this information. An actual event or result may differ materially from those projected, including as a result of changing industry and market trends, reduced demand for our products, the timely development of new products and their adoption by the market, increased competition in the industry and price reductions, as well as due to risks identified in the documents filed by the company with the Israeli Securities Authority. Shai, the floor now is yours.

Thank you very much, Afshin. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you very much for joining us for our new calls. Just to quickly summarize the highlights of this quarter, so as you can see in our financial reports, there's a substantial increase in our EBIT. We rose by 68% from last year, reaching 360 million shekels, and for the first time in five years, we got back to double-digit margins of 10.5% in EBIT. In addition, there is also a net sales growth, excluding foreign currency, of 3.3%. But more interesting to note is that we grew volume-wise by 3.5%, whereas other international food companies today are struggling to increase volumes, and most companies are not decreasing volumes. We managed to actually increase our volumes this quarter by 3.5%. Yet the increase in revenue was lower than we saw in the past, and I'll talk a little bit about that later. Net income also was improved, and here you can see a very good translation of EBIT to net profit, with net profit rising by 126%, reaching 181 million, and also substantial improvement in the cash flow, almost 450 million shekels improvement in cash flow due to the improvement in activity and improvement in working capital. We continue to focus on our strategy implementations, specifically in Brazil, the non-organic growth of our business in Brazil, transferring the company from a coffee company to a dry food company, increasing the non-RNG activity, and here the acquisition of Yoki. We signed the deal in April, and hopefully we will close the deal by July. and we will have a substantial increase of our sales there in our categories in Brazil, and we also expect the turnover of the Yoki to be within 18 months and even less. We already saw that the projection for Yoki this year results are much better than the one we reported when we did the deal of a 200 million loss, and we are looking forward to all the synergies that we are implementing here. In addition, we continue to accelerate our investments in core brands, you know, portfolio optimization, putting double down on innovation, and I'll talk about that a little bit later. And, of course, last but not least, the turnaround of the confectionery business. For the first time also in four years, the confectionery business is getting back on track, and our final indulgement segment has reached an EBIT margin of 9.5%, very close to the 10%. Next. So here you can see just a summary of the results. I'll just say one word. I talked about everything. I'll just say two words, one regarding the EBIT margin, the other regarding the net sales. Although net sales here are 0.4% growth, We have to understand that there was a correction in Brazil. We talked about that last quarter, that the increase in prices is not sustainable. While green coffee prices are decreasing, we are adjusting the price accordingly. The good news is that with the adjustment of price in Brazil, we managed to keep the margins in Brazil high. We have a new platform in Brazil. We've already seen that since the end of second quarter last year, third quarter, fourth quarter, and now the first quarter as well, is that Though now prices are decreasing, whereas last year they were increasing, we have managed to reach a 10 real gross profit per kilo, which is the margin that we want to keep in order to make sure that the platform in Brazil is profitable. So there was a correction in price. And because there was a correction in price due to last year, I think the business in Brazil increased by 30%, 35% in net revenue. That's not sustainable. And the reason it's increased by 35% was due to the increase in green coffee prices. Now that green coffee prices are going down, there is an adjustment. And this will follow us ahead of the year for the next quarters, for quarter two and quarter three and quarter four. So we will see a volume growth, but we will see a more moderate growth. revenue growth due to the correction of green coffee prices, but we will continue to grow. With the EOC implementation, hopefully in the second half of the year, it will help us continue to grow also in revenues and in quantities, in addition to, in spite of the price adjustment. And the last word I would like to say is on the EBIT, EBIT margin is 10.5%. This quarter, we see that there are no one-timers in profits, so there's no one-time events in our profits, neither in the EBIT or in the NET. And this is more of like a platform quarter that we hope to see ahead. Our expectations are that we will continue to see the 10% margin in the next quarters, in quarter two and ahead, so that we will reach the target that we set ourselves within the strategy to reach double-digit margin by the end of this year. When we look at Israel and do a little bit about Israel, so you can see a health and wellness, there is a nice growth. The growth here would have been bigger if we hadn't divested some of the distribution activity that we used to do with chilled drinks and some other products. those were there last year, this year they are not, so there's growth there. The Ibbots grew less. The reason, and of course, part of the growth in cells is also the alternative milk drinks factory that we offer in the north. So it affected well on, it had a good effect on cells, but on the other hand, when it comes to Ibbots, we see that the growth in EBIT was smaller. The reason for the small growth in EBIT is that the first, the alternative milk factory has still, you know, it takes time. There'll be a ramp-up period till we'll get all the quantities that we can get out of this factory being sold in the market. So for the first year, there's going to be a stomach there. So it does affect a little bit the results. And also, we had a lot of marketing efforts expenses that were done in the first quarter. In those areas in general, specifically in the alternative milks, and compared to last quarter, this is what a little bit affected down, but yet you still see the growth and you still see the improvement in health and wellness. When we look at final indulgements, so here is the major improvement, is the one-time derivatives that we can take out that happened last year, but also an improvement in the activity itself, reaching 9.5%. Looking ahead to Q2, Q3, Q4, we actually see an improvement. Since we have a hedging policy and we are hedged when it comes to cocoa prices, so looking in the next, we still haven't reached the lower bottom of prices of cocoa that we anticipate. Actually, if we look compared to last quarter, the first quarter of 2025, there is an increase in cocoa prices that we encountered this quarter compared to last quarter last year. Going forward and looking forward into Q2, Q3, and Q4, we are expected to see and to encounter lower cocoa prices, which will have even improved the results that you see here. When it comes to coffee, again, an improvement there, and with coffee prices continuing to drop, we're also expecting to see even further improvement in coffee as well. And as you can see, there's a 4.5% growth in total revenues in Israel, but there's also a growth in volume, which is similar to that in Israel. And if we take out the divestment activities that were done, or we add in the divestment activities that were done, and we do apples-to-apples comparisons, then the growth in volume and revenue is much bigger. This is just a little bit part of the innovation that we are doing in order to generate that growth, in order to make sure that as a food company we will be able to grow also in volumes as we did in this quarter. So this is just examples of innovations that we did in Israel which helped us to reach those four or five percent growth in volumes. Our innovation is divided into four different categories. There's a diversified innovation, improving innovation, distinctive innovation, and destructive innovation. And when we talk about diversification, it's just giving different flavors to the same product. When we talk about improving innovation, it's how do we add protein, how do we add supplements, vitamins, how do we reduce sugar or salt. When we talk about distinctive innovation, we're talking about a product, for instance, a dessert that has three layers. which is very distinct to what we have in the market today. It's still a dessert, it's still similar, but it's distinct to what the market is producing today. And when we talk about the structure of innovation, it's bringing a product that is not there, such as Calfree that we launched last year, or Shabbat water purification system that we launched last year in Q4. So here is just a little bit part of some of our diversification and improving innovation that we've done as a company. In Israel, I think a percentage of revenues, we are the most innovative company in Israel today with the most innovation as a percentage of revenue. And this is part of what we put a lot of emphasis on, but only on our core categories, only on the categories after portfolio optimization that we decided to stay with. And doing innovation in those, this is what helped us actually grow. When we look at our coffee international company, then here there are good news from Brazil and also from CE. So we see we reached a new platform in Brazil with tripling our profit from 30 to 92, but you can also see the decrease in revenues from 1 billion 14 to 970. The reason for the decrease is, again, a correction in prices. We corrected the prices, but we kept a high profit of gross profit per kilo in every kilo that we are selling today in order to reach the EBIT. of 92 million. And you can see the percentage of it has also grown from 3% to 10%. And looking ahead again, we are expecting and we are working very hard to maintain this level of performance and maintain this level of profits. When we look at the total numbers of our coffee, you can see we increased from 55 million to 132 million. And the additional increase in EBIT is, of course, attributed to our CEE, to our Central Eastern Europe Coffee Activity, which has also done well in revenues, but also in profits and is improving according to the strategy we set for it. When we look at our Strasswater company, one of the things that I'll say about the coffee is that we do need to make sure that in the next borders we'll do a correct implementation of the Yoki business and make sure that we utilize all the synergies that there are. We reached today 400,000 points of sales in Brazil, whereas Yoki before, through third party, did 80,000 to 100,000 points. And we believe that through this distribution, through the synergies that we have, through the headquarters that we can and many other synergies will be able to turn around the business fast. We can already say today that we're expecting to have better results, as I mentioned before, for Yoki this year than the much better results than were last year when the ones we reported when we signed the deal. And with the turnaround, we believe that this will be a very crucial part of our portfolio in Brazil. In our world of business, this is where we had the hiccup. Due to the war in Israel, as you all know, the whole of March was intense. Israel has been in the war for the past two and a half years, which never stopped. But it was very intense with the war with Iran during March. And here is a place to stop and to say really a big thank you and inspiration to all our frontliners in the north and also in the south that continue to make sure that we have business continuity and make sure that all our factories are working well. and are reaching everything that we need to do so that the Israeli citizens will find the products on the shelf. We don't take that for granted and a big thank you for that. But when it comes to our water business, consumers were not buying our machines during that month. So those sales increased by 6.4%, which is an amazing achievement. We were supposed to grow much more than that due to the launch of all the new products that we launched, especially the Shabbat. The water purification for Shabbat that we launched for the Haredi community, and because of the war, we sold much less machines that we planned, although the cost structure that we added in order to support that growth was there already, and therefore, if it declined a little bit, Also in China, we see that we have managed to get back on market shares and to become again number one, between number one and two. And Xiaomi, who was our big competitor, which distorted this market, got back to being number four or five. But on the other hand, the profitability levels that we used to see before, we are not there yet. And it will take time. It will take another two, three to four quarters in order to get back to the same level of profitability that we had before. We do see that we gained back the market share. We grew in sales by more than 9% this quarter in China in local currency. which is a very, very positive sign for us that we are in the right way, and the next phases in the upcoming quarters will be to continue to improve the profitability. So, overall, the reduction that you see here is because Xiaomi wasn't there in China in the social events, is that Xiaomi wasn't there in China in the first quarter last year, and also the worries over the impact on the sales. Thanks. This is just a quick word on the strategy. And this year, by the end of the year, we will launch the new strategy for 2027-2030. This strategy is going to end by 2026. Many of the strategies talked about double down on coal with putting an emphasis on our three engines of growth, Israel, optimizing the portfolio, and putting a very big emphasis on productivity in Israel. on snacking in Israel, on alternative milks, the plant that we've built, and on protein products that we've done in Israel. And we've put a lot of emphasis on that to grow. And you can see with the turnaround of the confectionery, the business today is much healthier than when we started. In Brazil, the strategy was fix the RNG, fix the coffee platform, and also increase the non-RNG. through organic and non-organic growth. And also there you can see that the new platform in Brazil is doing quite well. And with the acquisition of Yoki and the organic increase of the non-REG, we also attract there. And with the water business, we talked about making the company a multi-product, increasing our activity in China. We are now building a second plant that will launch in August. This year will help us reduce our costs and also increase ourselves. We also did a turnaround in the UK. And with the multi-product, we believe that we'll be able to think about how we can continue international expansion. And when it comes to future ready and resilience, we did a lot of productivity. We set an aim and also showed in the necktie to reach a productivity goal, which we are going to reach, changing all the processes that we are doing, bringing automation, investing in CapEx, changing the processes and the skills of our people. And on the other hand, we had to deal with the health, with the culture of the organization, with the leadership of the organization. And there was a lot of work done with that bottom line. strip which all the growth engines are sitting on Israel coffee and water which is the basic infrastructure of the company which was substantially improved during the past three years and helped us to reach the results that we are showing today and last but not least when we look at top time growth we when we went on with the strategy in the beginning of 2024 there were five indicators that we gave to the market first one was regarding We believe that taking out the foreign exchange effect, and of course, if we look at organic growth, platform growth without the divestment, we will definitely reach much more than 5%, but even with the divestment, we believe we will reach the 5%. and expanding the margin to 12, 10 to 12%. So we've been talking about this quarter by quarter saying we believe we might, we'd be able to reach it by the end of 2026. And there's some concerns because we were around between six last year, first quarter to eight and nine by the end of the year. And we did reach the 10.5 already the first quarter. And here is the place to say that we do believe that we'll be able to maintain the margin of EBIT till the end of this year. And of course, also going forward. We talked about productivity, changing the productivity structure, and having productivity between 300 and 400 billion platform savings. We believe that also this will be reached on the higher spectrum of the target that we gave. And this, you can see already the results. It helps us a lot. What we already achieved helps us a lot improve our results. Investing in our future, we do invest almost double than what used to invest in the past in the years 24, 25, 26, whether it's increasing our capacity, pulling in new lines, whether it's maintenance, whether it's quality, whether it's digitization and technology we're bringing into the company. And this, of course, helps us improve the infrastructure and get better productivity and better utilization of the equipment that we have. And last but not least, we gave an indicator that from 67% of core activity that we used to have in the company, we defined core activity as categories that are growing 5%, at least can grow at least 5%. They have an EBIT of more than 10%, and we are either number one or number two in that category in the market in which we are playing. 67% of the activity when we started the strategy was actually met those definitions. I can say that already now, around 85% are already reaching this definition, and we believe that until the end of the year, we will also reach this goal as well. So overall, just doing a recap, we are meeting the goals that we set in the strategy, and we are looking forward, if the strategy till now talks a lot about double down on the core and making the most of the current activities and current categories and kind of fixing and building the infrastructure for the next phase. The next strategy will talk a lot about growth and where we want to expand on the very good foundations that we have built, mainly in the international arena. And with that, I'm done, so thank you. Tobi, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Shai. Let me now move to our financial results for Q1 of 2026, starting with the group-level performance, and then I'll drill down into each business segment. On slide 13, Group sales reached 3 billion shekels, reflecting a 0.4% increase year-on-year, or 2.5% growth excluding the impact of foreign exchange. Stroud Hydra delivered a solid 4.5% sales growth, driven by volume, mix and pricing. Coffee international revenues declined 4.7%, led by lower sales due to pricing adjustments in Brazil, although we saw volume growth overall and decent revenue growth in Central and Eastern Europe. Strauss water grew 6.4%, supported by the expansion of the install base and an improved mix in Israel. FX was a headwind for the translation of our group sales in Q1, given the stronger shekel versus most of our foreign activities operating currencies. Moving to slide 14. Group EBIT reached a Q1 record of 316 million shekels, up approximately 68% year-on-year, on an improved EBIT margin of 10.5%. This improvement was mainly driven by strong performance in our Coff International and Strauss Israel segments, offset by lower EBIT and EBIT margin in Strauss water, mainly due to the impact of the war in Israel and increased competition in China. Moving to slide 15 for an overview of net income and free cash flow. Net income increased to 181 million shekels, up 126% year-on-year, driven mainly by EBIT growth and a lower effective tax rate, and partially offset by higher financing expenses. Free cash flow improved significantly with an approximately 450 million shekels year-on-year uplift, driven mainly by stronger EBITDA and a much lower working capital seasonal increase. Moving to slide 16 for a view on our net debt and coverage ratio. Net debt declined 11% year-on-year to 2.35 billion shekels and the net debt to EBITDA ratio improved to 1.5 times from 1.6 times in Q4 of 2025 and from 2.3 times a year ago. This improvement was driven by robust EBITDA over the last 12 months and lower working capital requirements than at the beginning of last year. Overall, our balance sheet remains strong and well within our target leverage range. I will now turn to Strauss Israel results. On slide 18, Strauss Israel posted solid sales growth of 4.5%, Year-on-year, to 1.46 billion shekels, health and wellness sales grew 4.4% on volume and pricing, adjusting for regulated meal price updates. Funnel indulgence delivered 8.5% sales growth, driven by pricing adjustments made in the second half of 2026, as well as seasonal volume growth. Coffee Israel sales declined 1.2% year-on-year and was impacted by the coffee-to-go retail chain divestment last year, but on an apples-to-apples basis saw volume and net sales growth. Overall, our Strauss Israel business growth remains broad-based across the portfolio. On slide 19, Strauss Israel EBIT increased significantly with strong EBIT margin of 12%, up from 8.1%, in Q1 of 2025. Health and wellness EBIT increased over 2% to 90 million shekels, driven by volume growth and productivity, albeit on slightly lower EBIT margin, due to the addition of our new shekel plant-based facility. Funnel indulgence EBIT improved materially, given the 49 million shekels one-time derivative loss recorded in Q1 of 2025, and also benefited from higher volumes, pricing and a stronger shekel. Coffee Israel delivers epic growth and epic margin expansion, supported by mixed and favorable FX. This reflects strong operational execution across all segments. Let's now move to Coffee International. Moving to slide 21 for an overview of the Coffee International financial highlights. Coffee International delivered record profitability, supported by higher gross margins, resulting mainly from lower green coffee costs and offset by lower pricing, mainly in Tres Corazones, our 50% owned joint venture in Brazil. Sales declined 4.7% year-on-year for the whole Coffee International segment to 1.32 billion shekels, mainly due to lower green coffee prices. Excluding FX impact, sales were roughly flat year-on-year, combining lower sales in Brazil with volume and revenue growth in Central and Eastern Europe. Profitability improved significantly on the back of successful execution of our new platform in Tres Corazones, segment EBIT increased to 132 million shekels, up 142% year-on-year, and the EBIT margin reached 10%. This reflects strong commercial execution as well as productivity gains across our coffee international markets. On slide 22, looking at our coffee geographies in Brazil, Tres Corazones sales, as mentioned before, declined due mainly to RNG pricing adjustments, partially offset by decent growth in non-RNG categories. In CEE, we saw strong growth driven by pricing, volume, as well as market share gains in key markets such as Poland and Russia. On slide 23, the 3-square source results, we saw that this JV delivered strong profitability despite lower selling prices. The sales decline reflects pass-through of lower green coffee costs. At the same time, we achieved much higher gross profit through effective procurement, with gross margins moving from 15% a year ago to 24.1% in Q1 of 2026. This resulted in record Q1 EBIT of 310 million Brazilian Reais, up 221% year-on-year, and an EBIT margin of 10% for Tres Corazones versus 2.9% in Q1 of 2025. This highlights the strength of the ThreadCrosser JV platform in Brazil, which was able also to maintain its market leadership. Turning now to Strauss Water. On slide 25, water revenues grew 6.4% year-on-year to 220 million shekels, supported by a higher install base, particularly in Israel and in the UK, and improved sales mix. However, heavy decline 33% year-on-year, to 17 million shekels, mainly due to the impact of the war in Israel, as well as lower contribution from our Chinese 49% owned JV with higher, higher source water, driven by increased marketing investments to confront increased competition in China. At the same time, we are progressing with our capacity expansion plans in China, and our previously announced second manufacturing facility, Build, is on track to open in the second half of 2026 and support growth. Thank you, and I will now turn the call back to Afshi for Q&A.

Thank you, Toby. We will now move on to the questions you have sent. So, our first question is regarding the confectionery business. Your confectionery business reached a good margin. Is that sustainable? Was Passover holiday timing part of that improvement?

So, yes, as I mentioned in the presentation, since The COCO prices that we see today are still not at the level of the decrease that we are going to see and meet in the next quarter, in quarter two and quarter three. We are expecting to see lower COCO prices, which will help us even improve the margins that we have today even further. So our expectations is that not only we can expect this quarter to move forward, we actually expect an improvement until the end of the year. We also said last year, I want to remind everybody, that we said last year that the improvement will be gradual and that through the year we'll see a continuous improvement because our hedging policy is set in such a way that we don't see all the cocoa reduction price immediately, but we see it over time, and with that, the results will improve.

Thank you, Shai. And our next question regarding the coffee business, if green coffee prices will continue to decline, how will that affect your business, overall coffee business?

So the effect on the overall coffee business will be that there will be a continued correction in price. So as there was a correction in price this quarter, and we've seen revenues top-line reducing in our coffee business, mainly in Brazil, that will further happen. What we will try to make sure is that the new platform of profit that we have managed to gain, that will remain. So one of the major indicators that we look today is at gross profit per kilo. And we are aiming to sustain the same level of gross profit per kilo that we have today, even when prices decrease. So green prices will reduce. We will also probably adjust some of our selling prices with that. But at the end of the day, we will try to maintain the same growth process per kilo in real as we have done so far. So our expectations regarding profit and margin is that the profit probably will stay the same. Margins might improve because revenue will go a little bit down. But volume should continue to grow. One of the emphasis that we are pushing on is that even if we'll have a little bit of correction of price, the volumes should continue to grow and the company should continue to grow as we've done this quarter when we grew 3.5%.

Thank you, Shai. I see that we don't have any further questions, so I will now return the call to Shai for closing remarks.

Thank you, Afshin, and thank you all of you for joining us today. So just to summarize, I think it's a solid and good quarter. It's a quarter where we don't have one-time events. which is also very good because you can actually examine and see what the activity is about. It was a quarter where our translation from EBIT to net profit has substantially improved. It was a quarter which we still managed to gain volume growth, whereas most international companies are struggling to do so of 3.3%, 3.5%. And it was a quarter where we reached our goal of double-digit margin of 10.5% in EBIT. So overall, I think the results are good. We also done a turnaround to our confectionery business today. All our businesses are in line with our core activities and are in good shape for continued growth. And we are looking towards the end of the year when we'll publish our strategy for year 2027, 2030, which will take us to the next step of exciting journey of growth for our company. So thank you very much for joining.

Thank you. Thank you for joining Strauss Group first quarter 2026 earnings call. So this concludes our call for today. Thank you.

Thank you.