Al Meera Consumer Goods Company Q.P.S.C. ($MERS)

Hello, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Al Meera's conference call. Please note that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to our moderator, Phibion. Please go ahead.

Thank you, John. Good afternoon to you all. I would like to welcome you to the Al Meera Consumer Goods Company First Quarter of 2026 Earnings Conference call. On the call from Al Meera, we have Abdelrahman Muayyad Khalil Aburub, the Finance Director; Fahad Bahzad, the Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer and also the IR officer; Quennie Gania Trajano, the Financial Analysis and Planning Manager; and Suddenly Sanchez Babaran, the Accounting Manager. And as usual, the management team will first give us an overview of what transpired during Q1, and then we have a question and answer segment afterwards. Let me turn over the call to Quennie. Over to you. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you, Phibian. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Al Meera's conference call for the first quarter of 2026. We will be starting off with the overview of Al Meera's results for the period ended 31st March 2026, then we will proceed to question and answers. The following are the financial highlights of the group results for the 3-month period ended 31st March 2026. Al Meera recorded consolidated sales of QAR 853.1 million for Q1 2026, an increase of 8.1% compared to the same period last year. Gross profit amounted to QAR 153.2 million, an increase of 12.1% compared to last year, and our gross profit margin was at 18%. Rental income is at QAR 20.7 million compared to the QAR 19 million last year. Other income is at QAR 12.1 million compared to QAR 9.2 million for the same period in 2025. Operating expenditures have increased by 11.9% to QAR 106.1 million compared to QAR 94.8 million last year. Overall, Al Meera reported a net profit of QAR 39.7 million, and the earnings per share is at 0.19 for the 3-month period ended 31st March 2026. I will now open the floor for question and answer.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of [ Ahshish Agarwal], the first investor.

So I recently saw your new website and good work on that front. So was this website active for the full 3 months of this year? And if you can talk about what traction are you getting from this website. My second question is on your rental income side. Given the regional situation, are you facing any request from your occupants in terms of rent reduction or maybe any vacancy request. So that is on the rental income side. And my final question would be your store opening plans for this year and next and CapEx for that. That's it.

Sure. Happy to take the question. My name is Fahad Bahzad. I'm the Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at Al Meera. In quarter 1, we went through multiple set updates. One of the key things that we have done is we did a whole refresh for our brand. We announced it in early the [indiscernible] we had a new logo accompanying that. Our website was also launched with that, and we had the soft launch in the first quarter, especially through our e-commerce application and that's available on a platform as well as the website. And we also rebranded our loyalty platform. So we are anticipating much more of the uptick to come [indiscernible] catches up in the future. So this is the first question. We did rebrand and we are now strengthening our online presence.

Sorry to interrupt. So this website was started in February or January or March?

No. The brand -- the official brand launch was done in early April. We had a soft launch started in the first -- I think it was February, late January, early February for the soft launch.

[indiscernible] updated in April.

Okay. Website was only updated in April?

Yes, that's true. The next question you asked is about our rental income and the current situation. We have not seen something that is significantly material. Of course, there is always people, the tenants that come in and request some changes and stuff like that, but it's not something that is material that's going to affect our operations going forward or the current period. And the last question that you asked is about our new stores, we are doing extensive studies to analyze exactly where we should expand and how we should expand. And as plans evolve, we will share them with our investors accordingly.

So if I understand from your answer, the store opening plans for this year and next year have not been leased. They are still under consideration, new store opening plan?

We are studying the market, and there has been a lot of changes recently that happened, especially with the current geopolitical tensions. All our future strategic new store openings and expansions are being carefully studied. And as we have financed -- once we have the finalized plan, we had them with our investors.

Okay. Just a final from my side, what would be the maintenance CapEx per store for the existing stores?

We can get back to you with that number. We'll get back to you with that.

Our next question comes from the line of [indiscernible] with Al Rayan Investments.

You had signed an agreement with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Could you just give us some color on what this agreement is and how Al Meera is benefiting from this agreement?

Sure. So as we have disclosed on the Qatar Stock Exchange and through the [indiscernible], the appropriate closure mechanism, we have recently signed a major agreement with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry that is in line with our operations, and we are currently working on it as more details will be shared with our investors as they come appropriate because there's a lot of -- it's a contractor to the sensitive government [indiscernible] to disclosure being aligned with the Ministry of Commerce.

Sounds good. Also, on the first quarter, I don't think that there are any new stores that opened. So the like-for-like sales are about the same as the revenue growth. Is my assumption correct?

Yes, approximately. Our like-for-like sales growth was about 4.1%.

And at this time, that is all the questions that we have. This concludes our conference call. You may now disconnect.