Central Retail Corporation Public Company Limited (CRC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, fund managers and analysts. This morning, we would like to welcome you all to the meeting, Analyst Meeting for CRC for the First Quarter of 2026, Business and Performance Update. And as you show, I'm Rangsirach Pornsutee, the Head of Investor Relations, being the moderator for today's session. Also we are with Khun Panet Mahankanurak, the CFO. Khun Panet will be presenting the information and will be answering your questions. We will start with the presentation in terms of the performance and the financial reviews. Then we will -- for the second half, we will go through the Q&A session. And those who need English translation, you are currently in the right room. And you have to mute your original audio as well. So as you can see, the first quarter, even though there is a headwind without having the Easy E-receipt scheme from the government anymore, we still have concluded the top line by 1.3% year-on-year, which is what we have done very well. Top line is around THB 66.5 billion. And core EBITDA also similar, around 1.2% year-on-year. And core operating profit grew by 3% year-on-year. And core NPAT to owner, the bottom line to owner grew, which is the best since listed, since IPO. Before the IPO in the first quarter, during that period, there wasn't any Robinson or [indiscernible] with us at all. So it wasn't as good as this year, first quarter. We will go through details again later on. For the SG&A, we still have room for improvement. But what we have done very well, which is the financial health in which we could strengthen. Our debt-to-equity is very low and debt-to-EBITDA, lower than 2x. So we move on to the next slide. So for this page, yesterday, we have already discussed this part. So I would like to just recap. If we look by segment, in the first quarter, our actions that we have done for the Fashion segment is that we had renovated Central Pinklao. So it has completed and already relaunched in January 2026, which increased the traffic by 30%. So this is the new concept store. And for JD Sports that we have already talked about last -- in the last quarter, last time, I would like to inform that the performance in terms of the financial results is that we have supported by the shared profits in February and March. It's a positive addition to our operating profit. And third, our tourists, also maybe most of you and also for us that we might be a little bit worried about the number of tourists and also the tourist spending might have changed, but actually in March was really strong. And the movement between months was actually better than 2025. So still growing strong in the first quarter, also in March as well. But in the second quarter, we can see the slowdown in the traffic. And for the top customer of our department store, still growing consecutively. And for Hardline, Thaiwatsadu has opened a new store in Bangkok, and had renovated 1 store and converted 2 stores to hybrid format. And for B2S, in terms of the Pokemon card, that was driven in terms of our business very well in the first quarter. And also the OfficeMate has reinforced the B2B business more strongly, which is the strength of OfficeMate anyways. And for Nguyen Kim that we have already divested in 1st April (sic) [ 23rd April. ] And we have grew very strongly in both top line and margin in terms of TOPS that we have opened 2 new stores in Pattaya and Prannok, which is at the outskirt of Bangkok. And TOPS Daily, we also have the cooperation partnership with Shell, within the Shell stations nationwide. We have launched specialty shop called No Brand, which is usually in TOPS normally. So this is the new concept that we have cooperated with the Emart Korea as a stand-alone format. We have already opened in Central Bangna as the first store. And for Vietnam, as we can see, major renovation. But food sales, we can see that it grew much higher than the GDP and same-store sales growth in Vietnam grew by 10%. And in terms of the Property have driven top line by about 4% on the rental income growth year-on-year and has completed a big renovation that affected last year's result quite a lot. And the mall in Vietnam, we have increased rental income by 9%, and traffic increased by approximately about the same, which is 8%. And we will go through more in detail in the next page. And Mini go! has opened 1 new store in the suburb of Ho Chi Minh. This is similar. So I'll just skip to the next part. In terms of the online channel, we have grown strongly by 20% in the past quarter. Also in the offline, grew by 9% and bottom line positive. We have also adjusted every part of the IT to preserve our cost for the online business to be more efficient, more cost efficient. And we move to No Brand that we have just launched. This is a standalone format. And TOPS Daily and Shell Cafe that's attached together in the Shell stations, as I mentioned earlier. For Thaiwatsadu, so because we have already opened the branch in Rattanathibet, and the other 2 are renovations and conversions, which is the hybrid format. Now we currently have 89 stores. We count it as the number of locations. So if hybrid altogether, we are not counting as 2. In Vietnam, this is the GDP growth by -- of 7.8%. So I'm not going into detail on this page. So we'll just go through it really quickly. In terms of the mall, after we have opened, the occupancy rate has increased. The occupancy rate is 87%. Last year, 83%. And the traffic increased. And this year, we're going to open one more store, Tuyen Quang, that is going to be open in the fourth quarter this year, so now on progress. And for the brand, GO! brand, we have plan to continue promoting and enhancing the brand. And for The1 membership that we have already launched, we have increasing number of memberships since the first launch. The market share of modern trade in FMCG has grown continuously from 22.4% to 24.6% in terms of the modern trade. It's still ongoing a good trend. And for hypermarkets, sales grew double-digit and same-store sales growth, high single digit, which is 10%. And Mini go! achieved more than 10%, and total sales double digits. So still going very strong. For Vietnam, Lifestyle & Sports in Vietnam. As you might have seen that we introduced earlier to capture the high paying customers in Vietnam, and that we can see the double-digit growth in any dimension. We have seen a significant growth, and we are trying to control and we'll drive their brands together into the market. And we are already -- started to understand the market and continue to improve. Next, we will just go directly to the financial review. This page might have a lot of numbers, but the highlights, just a few points. So we have mentioned top line, that had grew by 1.5%. So for fund managers and analysts, you can see that we separated this table into 2 parts. So operating profit, which is the EBIT from operating, so we can look at the top and the bottom. Operating profit, that grew by 4% due to the business driven in the top part, which is growing in a very striking quarter. So the EBIT, which is the operation, grew higher than the top line. And for the bottom, which is the share of profit and the JV. Because we don't have Grab in our portfolio anymore, we're going to get impact from the profits the whole year last year. And as like-for-like, where for the investment that we're currently having will not be our headwinds anymore. And for JD Sports that we have joint venture, already captured the shared profit. So these 2 months, we have captured THB 10 million each month. So we are adjusting the base of the joint ventures. And in the next line, which is the finance expenses that's very outstanding in which we can lower, so from THB 230 million, which is similarly to other players that we are also one of the parts that we can -- that we have done very well, which core NPAT to owner grew by around 14.2%. So everyone has seen the number. So in the report, that has Rinascente. But we have grew significantly, as you can see on this page. I will skip to the next 2 to 3 pages. So for Food, actually, every business units and every segments have grown very strongly both sales and margin. But for Hardline, total sales is negative, mainly from Power Buy. And Thaiwatsadu is flat, not getting effects as much. For Fashion, there is a consequence from Easy E-receipt, both Power Buy and the Fashion business, especially our department store that got influences. In terms of the total sales, it's lower by around 3% comparing to last year. And for EBITDA margin for each segment, so it actually -- okay, I'll skip to this page first. As we can see the trend of margin for EBITDA has improved. Our Hardline, we can actually maintain -- got effects from the sales a little bit, but gross profit actually improved. And for Fashion, it's mainly from sales. Margin has also improved. These 2 parts actually from Easy E-receipt mainly. This is the government scheme that is actually affecting our sales, but not on our margin. So we will discuss about this later. But if we go back to the expenses. For our SG&A expenses, last year like-for-like basis, we did 24.1%. And for this quarter, we are trying to manage much better even though we are currently doing very well, but we are trying to improve. So this is mainly from the commission to the third-party. In order to service the customers online, this causes that increase. But we still have very high profit. And we are trying to control these expenses much better. For our financial health, the interest this year has reduced by 2%. And we have just launched new bonds. The average is 1.97% (sic) [ 1.90%. ] We extend the tenor, adjusted our debt profile to 4 years. So this is very short-term. So we will shift this to be longer term. And this fourth quarter, we are going to launch a new bond as well if the market is going steady, and we will move towards the long term more.