2024-07-25 20:29:08 ET
Jerónimo Martins, SGPS, S.A. (JRONY)
Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call
July 25, 2024 04:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Ana Luisa Virginia - CFO
Conference Call Participants
João Pinto - JB Capital
José Rito - CaixaBank BPI
Frederick Wild - Jefferies
Borja Olcese - JPMorgan
António Seladas - AS Independent Research
William Woods - Bernstein
Izabel Dobreva - Morgan Stanley
Presentation
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Jerónimo Martins First Half 2024 Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Ana Luisa Virginia, Chief Financial Officer of Jerónimo Martins Group. Please go ahead, madam.
Ana Luisa Virginia
Thank you, Nadia. Good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you for joining this call to present our first half results. As a reminder in our corporate website, you can find the results release, a slide presentation and factsheet for the period. In-line with our expectations, the operating circumstances in 2024, so far have been extremely challenging with a sharp drop of food inflation after the exceptionally high values registered in the last two years.
Significant cost inflation mainly driven by rising salaries and fierce competition. Also in our main markets Poland consumer behavior has been unresponsive to the real wage increases, which is somewhat surprising considering the current macroeconomic environment. In these challenging conditions, our banners continue to strengthen their competitiveness, investing strongly in price to push for sales without neglecting the overall quality of their offer to consumers. As a result, and despite the headwind from basket deflation, like-for-like performance was resilient driven by strong volume growth.
Throughout the period, all our banners increased their client base and gained market share. As expected, EBITDA margin went down, reflecting the negative effects of basket deflation and substantial cost inflation. Our net cash position excluding IFRS 16 stood at EUR394 million by the end of June after paying in May EUR411.6 million in dividends.
In the first six months of the year food inflation declined significantly in all three countries, while cost inflation rose mainly driven by wages increases. In Poland despite the growth in household income and the improvement of consumer confidence, food retail volumes are still muted. The cautious behavior from consumers is further contributing to stir up intense competition. In Portugal consumers remain promotions driven, and in Colombia, families struggled with massive pressure in face of food prices that today are on average 67% higher than in the beginning of 2021....
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Jerónimo Martins, SGPS, S.A. (JRONY) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript