Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (ABI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Please welcome to the stage, Sean Fullalove.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to day 2 of our Capital Markets Day. It was great to share ABInBEV 2 yesterday, some shared a few more at the bar afterwards, which was also fun. First things first, from the legal friends. On the screen here, you can see our legal disclaimer, again, which is available on our website and is also relevant to what we will share today. Everything that we talk about today that is not a historical fact. -- is a forward-looking statement, and these are not guarantees of future performance. As a helpful reference, we also have this up in 20-F, which you can refer to on our website, and that also contains a discussion of our risk factors including geopolitical and economic uncertainties. So yesterday, we heard some reflections from Michelle on the journey of the company. The progress that we have made in executing our strategy and our focus as we have shifted into the reignite phase of the 10-year plan. Today, I'll get some perspective on our category, our footprint and the unique leadership advantages of ABI. And then Marcel, Lucas and Nick talked about our progress and ambitions in the first 2 pillars of our strategy to lead and grow the category and digitize and monetize our ecosystem. When David showed us some real-life analytics products that are embedded in our business today that are driving meaningful value across both growth and efficiency. And then we closed the day with Brendan and Karl, who showcased how our global strategy has been executed right share in the U.S. market. driving market share momentum across total alcohol as we continue to rebalance our portfolio towards the growing segments of the industry. Importantly, we also took some time to experience firsthand our capabilities, innovation, and the cultural relevance of our brands, right share at the Arconic Saint Louis brewery. The opportunity to socialize swap perspectives, share AB InBev together is truly a great privilege of being in our category. And as you can see here in our photo colas from day 1, we also had the early morning spinning class. We have Fernando put me to shame and probably the less said about that, the better. So moving swiftly along. Today, we're going to start with Michelle who is going to talk a little bit about our culture and the 10 principles of the company. Then Simon Westenberg, our Chief Sales Officer, here in the U.S., is going to showcase our route-to-market route-to-market and sales capabilities. Then we're going to head for a market visit around the states area to see how our strategy and execution is coming to life with our customers and consumers. So let's start today with culture, and I'd like to invite Michel to this stage. Michel, over to you.

Hey, good morning, everyone. So I hope you enjoyed yesterday that you had a good time at the brewery. I always tell people, it doesn't matter how many times I go back to that St. Louis brewery is always different, it's always rewarding and it's fantastic to see everything that is happening there, but connect this with the culture, heritage and the history of Houser Bush. So we start today talking about culture. And as we put together the program for this 2 days, of course, there is always more things that we have ENHANZE and in the shelves that we want to fit in the time that we have together because it's just today, we need to make choices on what topics we bring forward what conversations we believe will be more important to you. And in talking ShongFernando and I, we thought that a refresh to you into the 10 principles and the culture and tell a little bit of what's happening and how we are evolving this over the last 5 years would be a good kickoff for the day to -- and I think that we are on the topic because yesterday through the conversations we had during the visit to the brewery or dinner many people asking me questions about the culture. And it's a frequent topic that time to time when we are traveling visiting investors, when they come to talk to us, people always have some curiosity about. So the next 45 minutes, give or take, will be a little bit about this culture. And I will do this in a way that they do internally. So I travel all zones that we have once a year. We have early event that we call LPC inside the company. It stands for our leadership performance and culture or as we like to call now leadership performance in cheers because it's always a very good opportunity to meet people and talk to them. And the way that they chose to talk about culture with our teams is by showing them examples, things that we do, and they are in line with our culture. Things that they -- on a day to day as they make decisions, they bring the culture to life. And this page is a very important one because it's one that you'll see in all offices when you visit an ABI office in all our breweries in all places, we always have this 10 principles around the office and where the management meets where our teams come together. Two messages here on this first page before we go through all of them. The first one is that we have decided on the last 5 years to bring forward on a big way this idea of ownership. For those that know us for longer, you remember that we are owners was somehow part of one principle and was described within the principles. And we think that this is so important on our culture for our company that we want to start with this idea of ownership and explain people why this is so important for us. And in a nutshell, if you think about our ownership structure, so we have families that for centuries they are around the business as investors as owners. We have, on our controlling group, a group of shareholders that they are in the business for the very long run. And the company itself was built and we teach people in a way we coach people every single day from the day that they start in the company. To the day that they are performing today and in the future that this idea of treating the company, as Zone is one of the most important things for us on our company. And our compensation system, there was a question yesterday, we reinforce the culture of partnership because a good portion of the management compensation is linked to shares, RSUs, PSUs and therefore, the way that the company performs, impacts directly the management of the company, their wealth and their future. And then when you look at the 10 principles, owners who dream big, owners who focus on superior results, owners who lead by example. Equally, for those who know us for longer, we will see that this is a simplified and more straightforward view on our principles. So at one point, for those that follow this through the years, those were very worthy principles. And sometimes, we were trying to accommodate for a huge amount of things in each and every principle. And what we saw was a little bit of a dilution of what the understanding of these principles were. And we decided to simplify as we did for many other things in the company, leave this very actionable, so people can clearly understand what these principles are about and when we go talking to people, of course, we explain a little bit, but we give examples, right? So I'll give you here 2 things: that I think that can give you more the sense of that. So when we talk about focus on superior results, we don't want to have another 35 words to describe what this is. We want to tell people in a simple way that we can't do everything, neither we can be everything for everyone. And therefore, our choice is to look at our business benchmark ourselves versus other companies and work as hard as we can to do better today than we did yesterday. And that's it. So everything else would be a complication. So on your Kenny line that you are visiting yesterday, our operator knows that he needs to have a better view that if can take more production out of that line -- he's making a contribution for a future of more cheers because for more cheers, we need more productivity. When you think about the idea of attracting and developing great people, so we tried to write in many, many ways. What does it mean? In simply put, great people are the right people for ABI that can produce great results and leave an uplift this culture each and every day. So you don't need more description because people are people and great people are those that are able to translate what they have and what they can put together in results, and they need to do this with their teams and in the right way. because as principal #1 at, we do not take shortens. So the idea of putting the principles in a simplified way, actionable was to make sure that across the globe, this can be translated in a simple way and that the 130,000 people that we have, they understand what we stand for. It's never intended to be better than anybody else is never intended to over select people, but it is important for us to be able to operate at a global level that we have a set of principles that are very clear for everybody, and they work as a group to bring people from Africa, from Latin America, from North America together under the same company. Then if you go through the principles, as I said, the way I talk about them to my teams across the globe is with examples. So what does dream big means? And I will put 2 examples here. So on the left, I find this a fantastic example of explaining what dream big means because who would think that a small brewery from Belgium. -- or a small brewery from Brazil would have a dream to become the biggest brewery globally, but more than having the drain would effectively commit and work relentless to achieve that. Many steps on the way and ABI was built. But it's also an important pivot on the history of this company coming back from this acquisition and inorganic strategy, as I said yesterday, the difference in the words very small. The work to be done huge to transform this company from a company that was built and managed with an inorganic strategy. to become an organic compounding machine that can grow over time with smaller deployments of cash with higher returns on this growth and fully maximizing this footprint that we built. And interesting enough, not you here, but I have heard from people when we decide to do that, questions like why even bother to try -- the only thing you guys are good at is cutting costs. You won't be able to build brands. You guys are not good at marketing. So we have heard all of that. And part of our culture, it's benchmarking, is learning, is working hard, and I always tell people. If 1 day, you doubt ABI skews -- we're going to be very open to discuss and listen. But one thing that I always tell people don't doubt our view because these people, they can really do things -- and once you set the direction and people understand the value of what they are doing, they will usually becomes stronger than the skill. And as you saw, yesterday, and we will see today a little bit more. We can also improve the skill, and we are working very hard to improve our own capabilities. But I love this example, 2 different times, 2 different stories, 2 different outcomes. And you see this when you said consistent, compounding organic growth, the reason very simple. One year is more difference. 2 years, good difference. 5 years, a meaningful difference. By consistently compounding organic growth and the size that ABI has today, as we translate this to EPS, our returns -- they become way better than the CPG medium than the top quartile, and they start to become differentiated. And if we can continue to compound over time, -- that difference will become even larger. And that is what is behind our pivot from inorganic to organic. It is our ability to consistently compound growth over time and translate it to superior earnings and shareholder returns. Talking about superior results, we shared this yesterday. So as we continue to benchmark and as we continue to look at each and every opportunity inside the company, of course, we share all this challenge with our own teams. And we want to have not only superior organic growth, but superior translation of this growth into our financials. And these KPIs are further breaking down in many, many areas where we want our teams to improve their own performance versus last quarter, last year, versus the peer set, and they have the responsibilities as owners to build the plants, to learn what to do, to make decisions with the investments and resources that they have. And this translates in many different ways. So one story that I love sharing for our team because, again, it's about consistency. It's about compounding over time is about reading trends and deciding when to further accelerate. Think about this, Michela ultra, a brand that 20 years ago, was very small and just a small player in the largest profit pool for beer globally. And today, in less than 20 years, becomes the #1 brand in the U.S. is also the fastest-growing brand in the U.S. and is now a global brand that we are expanding across Americas, and we know that there is further potential for this brand. So consistent, compounding built over time, always contemporary. So we don't get ourselves into the traps of the past that try to define the brand just in one space, but it's a brand that proves what superior results over time is. If you think about leading by example, and taking accountability. This is a very important principle for us as we talk to our management team. As we discussed with them the choices that they make and we give them time to leave with the consequences of that. As we measure the results and we discussed the returns on the investments, the returns of the decisions that they make, what we learn with our own mistakes and what we want to replicate. And I always share this example because I think it's a great example, especially for the young leaders that we have in the company. And this today looks very obvious that we are investing, and we are driving growth with no alcohol beers, but believe me, that was not obvious at all. I myself, I have participated in many management meetings inside the company, Board meetings where we had this mix of blue and red teams trying to say whether we should invest more, where we should be selective, not waste time and interesting enough, the idea of -- this is too small People don't like it because the net tastes good. It doesn't make sense to have beer without alcohol. This team won many, many times. And for years, we watch this movie, not participating, showing little to no interest. But there is always a site companies, people that have different ideas. So right here in North America, a group of people had a different idea for that. And together with Blue masters, people from the commercial team people from the inside areas, even though it was not a big priority for the company overall, we thought that the beer could be better, and we kept working on the product and then our colleagues from Belgium, they found the technology that was just incredible that makes the non-alcohol beer taste as good as any regular beer. I heard a lot of comments yesterday on triple Carmila, right? Think how hard it is to make a triple without alcohol that taste fantastic. So this is what is happening today. Our product Innovation was a big breakthrough. But it's still the pace was not good enough. The focus was not big enough. And during a cold winter in New York, I remember this, Marcelle, Padelpeople that are here in this room, they came to me with an idea that 1 could think that was crazy. Crazy because we had already closed all our budgets. Our budgets, they closed somehow in October, right? Crazy because no beer brand has ever sponsored the Olympics. But we thought that we had the chance that we had an open and without thinking about budget without thinking that this could not be possible. We just decided to try and to go after that. And we, on this idea of leading by example, we not only saw the opportunity, but we committed to the opportunity. We invested big. We worked very hard to accomplish in 6 months what other people take a year or 2 years planning, which is activate an Olympic game. We decided to go global to each and every market. making an effort. And in a period of 3 to 4 years, we came from basically being part, but not really being there in this segment, to lead this segment globally. And today, there is no one country, one person in the ABI team that doesn't believe that we are just at the beginning of what is a massive opportunity for our company, but was necessary to commit was necessary to take the leadership, was necessary to invest ahead of time and then put the team to play. So across the globe, everybody has targets on that, but more people have a true commitment to lead in this segment. And this is really working, and we continue to shape the category. And the more we do, the more we learn that the opportunity is really big. It's an opportunity for more occasions for more consumers to make beer more available so we can continue to drive this incredible category. This is another principle that's very relevant for this because we often say that we have many competitive advantages, including our people and our culture. And as we work to develop people, this is always a very important part on each and every conversation that we have with our teams. So we have several ways in which people can access ABI as a platform. This starts with internship programs across the globe. We have what a lot of people know, the global management trainee what we have from 150 to 200 people coming into the company each and every year, 1% of our population is made of what we call partners. So these people are the people that they reach partnership level and then their compensation change, their participation on these events change, but moreover, their responsibility for the future of the company, also changed. And then, of course, we have our senior leadership team, 120 people, 130 people globally. And the representation of this team here with the senior management team that you are having the opportunity to meet some of them here this year. And it's everybody, responsibility inside the company to make sure that we are improving the quality of these people each and every day. So people often ask me and someone asked me this question yesterday how I manage my time throughout the year. And I always say that 20%, 25% of my time is dedicated to what I call governance. So we have a Board. We have a senior management team. So we need to make sure that the companies work in the right cadence I explain another 25%, 30% of my time in what we call long-term planning. So from the planning for the 10 years, the sessions on innovation how we translate these plans for each and every BU in which you operate. That is 1/3 of my time, give or take, which is visiting areas seeing the markets, being close to retailers, consumers and 20% of my time is people and people matters, right? So 10 days ago, 2 weeks ago, my entire senior leadership team spent a week remotely. We're running Mexico this year, reviewing the talent bench of the company. and we were reviewing people by people for 3, 4 days to make sure that our people have the right skills that the right resources are in the critical missions that people are developing their careers at the pace of their own talent and where we have gaps that we don't have the right people, that we are going search, recruit, bring people along to reinforce the bench of the company. This is a machine that works for many, many years, a machine that people like me that's over 30 years in the company. I, of course, leave it through that benefited from the opportunities that the company gave to me, and we continue to run this machine in a very old way like all across the globe. It's crazy to think that there were more than 2,000 meetings like the 1 I did with my team across the company globally because every country, every region runs the same process -- and this all builds up to the way in which we manage the company pipeline across the globe. But people who work with us are not only the people that we have inside the company. I think that a massive change that happened in the last 5 years is how we are bringing even more people to help and to support our initiatives. And we are very proud about the partners that we have working with the company. Those partners are committed. Some of them come and talk to you here as we are running our programs, and we care a lot about these partnerships. We want people that want to work with us, not because we have great brands, big budgets, a big company, but people that are connected toward the dream and ambitions that we have are. So I participate personally in each and every negotiation of that. Of course, I'm not often talking about the numbers. What I'm doing is cultural check. We have Marcelo and I 1 thing that I call chemistry session. So we want to get a big name to work with 1 of our brands. They make the contact. They talk about the budget. I talk about the culture. I talk about what the brands are, what we want to achieve I want to feel that people are committed to what we want to do, that we're going to be able to work together, that will have a true partnership that will last. And in this process, sometimes you have great outcomes because I have no doubt that I'm talking to someone that we will represent the company. And sometimes you have people that they do not have a real interest on the brand on the category of what we are trying to do. And in this case, many times, we decide not to partner with. But this is not to be understated. The quality and the commitment of the partnerships that we have across the globe is second to none. Those are great people with great assets with great reach that can make a company like ours bigger more relevant, more present in consumers' lives each and every day. And we are very proud of the partnerships we have. Principal build brands that consumers love. Of course, you all remember, this is a principle that was not here before. It's a principle that was incorporated on this change. I will share this video with you because I never get tired of watching this video that says a little bit of what we mean by Love and why we measure this number of lives all the time. [Presentation]

Those are the beer lovers, and we start tracking this. We are tracking each and every quarter, each and every year, how many people across the globe declare that they love one of our brands. And this is a very important KPI on our flywheel because everything starts there with people who are beer lovers and connect with our brands. In a very interesting way, many times people ask me how I want people to remember the time in which I was at ABI as an architect as an engineer, as a financial engineer. And I always tell people that I'm a very simple person and they love beer. So on people to remember that I'm a beer lover and there is no better manifestation of this low than what we do in the care that we have with our brands, how much we invest, how much we care about the details with which we build these brands, the experiences that people have when they are a bar and in stadium, at home, and they are enjoying with their family, friends, these moments that they work very hard to have. So nobody needs to ask me this anymore. So I am a beer guy, so if you want to remember me at any time, thank you for that. I'm a beer lover and I love our brands. And I've been dedicating 30-plus years to make sure that these brands show up in the right way, in the right place, in the right moment for consumers to have the pleasure of enjoying a cold one and celebrate their great moments. But these people, they are the real deal for us. And building these brands is a mix of many things. Sometimes, it's pure talent, sometimes is a little bit of lucky, sometimes it's talent, lucky and investments. And when you get a brand right, it's fantastic because everything works better for the company. Those brands they grow. Our customers like us more, our consumers interact more with our products. And this is a history that I love is Stella pure gold in Brazil a line extension of Stellar tote that taps into these trends of low carbs, low calories, gluten-free, what we call balanced choices. I could tell you here four hours, everything that we learned as the team there decided to build this brand and the way that we build this brand. But I think that listening from a customer that centers a nodule. In Brazil, people do a lot of old dues on WhatsApp. Talking about this brand, we will say way more than what I could say. So I'll try to play the audio here to you. The audio is translated from Portuguese to English. So the translation can be a little bit lost, but I saw that we have some investors, analysts that speak Portuguese are Brazilian, so pay attention on them, and you see that it's way funnier than what you can get in English, which is already good enough, okay? So let's go. [Presentation]

Okay. So this is a point of sales sending a message to a sales supervisor talking about a brand that is filling the momentum, and this is what we call consumer love. Brand that represents a lot to people with platforms that are very premium with a product that's very modern that fits for what people want now. They want to socialize. They want to enjoy. They want to feel good about not indulging too much because tomorrow, they need to go and continue to do their activities that now have many more things on the day that they used to have in the past. -- because that is the gym that is the work that is meeting people that is watching the series and that is socializing. And as we continue to improve our portfolio evolve with innovation, we are finding more and more cases like this of making our product more relevant today for the consumers of tomorrow. So grow with our customers and communities, there is no example to me that speaks louder than this. Nick was telling here yesterday, the very young insight in which this was built. It's this idea that the small retailers across the globe are underserved. The mall retailers across the globe are underserved. And we are one of the few companies globally that serve them with a very high service level. They are very important to our business. In a world where people say that Posiet is very important, that 24/7 availability is very important. The knowing your customer is very important. The small retailer is right there in the neighborhood, in the corner of the street, but very few companies we're bringing them the best prices, the best product portfolio, the best credit, the best marketing activities, the best service. And with this, we were able not only to make our business better and more present in this retailers' lives but to bring along other partners that start to treat them as very important customers. And as they drive our business improves. As they drive, their committees improve. As this grows, more partners have great results and invest more with us to improve the lives of these retailers. Over the 30 years that I'm in the company for many, many years, each and every year when we do our plans on the SWAT, we would say, small retailers declining volume, big retailers growing relevance. And in the last 5 or 6 years, the more retailers grow at the same pace or faster than the small retailers because their business is stronger. Meaningless to say that's very important for us, the capillarity of our distribution the availability of beer. People don't want to travel 2 kilometers, 3 kilometers to buy beer. They want to go across the street or even order on that delivery of [indiscernible] to receive beer in 15, 20 minutes, cold preferably. And this network serves us for all for being there when people want to walk and buy or to be the base in which the delivery and Tada grows. So this is a great example of thinking about our customers and developing solutions to make them stronger, and therefore, our business will also grow. So simple and scalable solutions. I love this example. And this resonates a lot with our teams. So instead of many people thinking about small marketing activities, having the opportunity to assemble and put to work these mega platforms unleash the real benefits of our scale. As I always say, very hard for one brand on a given country to be the sponsor of the Olympics to be able to have Olympics and FIFA, but because of our scale, because of our 50 mega brands because of our playbook to activate that, we can build the calendar that our teams across the globe can activate. We can measure the ROI of these initiatives in a centralized way with great benchmarks across all countries. We can buy materials cheaper because we buy at scale. We can partner with people to activate these platforms and multiply that effect across many brands into our system. And because of that, these mega platforms are even more important today for us than they were yesterday. And they are growing in relevance in the way that we concentrate our market investments in the way that we build our brands in combination with relevant cultural moments for our consumers. We pride ourselves of managing our costs very tightly. And while in the past, a lot of people only saw this as people cutting costs to improve margins. Fernando, we'll share some examples of what we are doing and how serious we are about managing our budgets. But the way I speak to my team, is keeping things tightly, so you can own your own decisions. You can have the privilege of reinvesting money when opportunities arise. And let me give you here one example of that. So you all asked this question, how sustainable it is, the levels of CapEx that we have today? How were we able to reduce CapEx from $5.5 billion to $3.6 billion, while our revenues are growing, our volumes are growing, our portfolio continues to develop. And I keep saying that here is a great example of this ownership in practice. Not the ownership of the budget. So the bigger my budget, more of our owner I am, but the productivity and the returns of this money. The questions are on at asks before investing each and every dollar, the best practice and the long-term planning that we can do. So we build the right brewers for 10 years, not for next year only. If I know that I need 3 breweries in the next 10 years, I can then negotiate harder with the suppliers because of buy everything, the 3 at the same time, not one by one. The way that I coordinate my supply chain with a long-term perspective, so we don't need to build the same thing 2 or 3x. All of that allowed us to find billion. My speech to my team, that's the easiest one because it is the money that we already earned is already in our pocket. It's just hold this money. If you need to earn this money again, selling more beer, raising prices, getting more consumers, this is way tougher. But by doing that, we are able to go and get the Olympics. We're able to go and invest in Champions Lake. We're able to get this money the same money to work harder for us. because now is working in the benefit of our brands in making the lives of our consumers, one in which they can enjoy more things. And the ability to save in 1 hand and invest in the other hand is one that makes you feel good about the efforts you make each and every day, okay? So thinking long term, Principal #9. This is another example that I love, and I often give this example why it's so important to do a plan like our plan, the 10-year plan? Because you can see the trends for consumers you can project implications of these trends, you can foresee the creation of markets that yesterday were not part of your business. And you look at that when we start talking first time 2017 about this idea of beyond beer, okay? So this is something that we created. People can call TDs mixed beverage, whatever, we call Bioneer. We saw a trend with consumers, consumers that were not better, consumers that are more swifter consumers, that they were interacting several products, trying to find a brand for them to call their brand, a product to be their product of choice. -- not once, not twice, people said that this was not a strategy that this was dilutive that these products will not work Nevertheless, we built a business of $2 billion and growing in less than 10 years. Today, we have a global portfolio. of bond beer brands that has been deployed and scaled across different countries. And every time we do, the feedback is the same. More consumers, more occasions, incremental volumes. But you never do that if your horizon was just next quarter or next year. You had to think long term and where this portfolio can take you through. As Brandon was sharing yesterday, fastest-growing spirits brand in the U.S. They are the case that we have only 3 brands. They just get water neutral and bit box. Top 10 spirits brand in the U.S., selling 3 brands only. investing in 3 brands only using the capabilities that we have as you saw yesterday from the same brewery, from the same wholesaler and mostly same retailers. 7% growth on a year-to-date. In the last principle, as we close here, so never take shortcuts. This is very important for us. because there is always an easier way to go. There's always the temptation of doing something that sold for tomorrow, very few people, very few people have the courage to say no to stick to the long term with their own ideas to do something that is harder and takes longer but we'll get you to a better place than you were if you would take the shorter and the easy decisions. In this case, the example that I want to give you here, I think we are in the U.S. is worth sharing that. Go back to 2017 and think about how many times One had to explain what rebalanced the portfolio was. And why we should build the brands of tomorrow instead of trying to close the gaps in decline of the brands of yesterday. Why invest in RTDs when a lot of people think that this was not a strategy? Why to dedicate time to a value brand like Busch when BudLight was not doing well. And when you look at this business today and the business that we had 5 years ago or 10 years ago, as Brendan said yesterday, it's a very different business. This portfolio today simpler, growing more relevant to consumers, opening up the spaces and occasions that we have never had before. But yes, unfortunately, we are never able to solve in one quarter, the U.S. problem. We had to commit for 10 years of consistency of hard work and of believing on what we were doing because the temptations, the incentives to take shortcuts, even they excuses, they were always there. And again, people, most will never remember that it took us 10 years before we were able to get half of our portfolio as we have today in growing areas of the industry. And with this growth, market share comes, the engagement of the team comes, the engagement of the wholesalers and retailers comes -- and then you can go back to be the company that on Hauser Bush has always been in the U.S, okay? So it was a quick conversation. I know that you might have questions later. We thought that would be important to spend some time talking about our culture because as I say, we've been working extremely hard to build competitive advantage and best-in-class capabilities. But underneath, behind all these capabilities, that is this culture, a culture of learning, listening, work hard and deliver superior results. This is a durable culture. It needs to be nurtured and that's why I spend so much time traveling the world and talking to our teams about that, but it's one work that's worth because this makes the company durable together with teaches culture and together with the talent that we have in the company that keeps on growing and developing with us, okay? Thank you. I will hand over back now to the team. I think that we have Simon, if I'm not mistaken, coming and explaining the market visit. Simon?

All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Simon Wuestenberg. I joined ABI 20 years ago and for the last 5 years, I have had the tremendous pleasure of leading sales for the United States business. With my team, I also have the pleasure of taking you all on a market visit today. But before we do that, I thought it would be a good idea to give you all an update of our route to market in the United States, how we approach sales and some of the capabilities that we have built to help us win. It's clear. I think you've seen that yesterday that the United States has unique aspects to it. As Brendan shared, our volume goes through wholesalers that are independently owned businesses, meaning that they make their own decisions. We have alcohol beverage laws that prohibit us from making payments to our retailers or incentivizing them for behavior. And that's true whether they are large chains like a Walmart or a 7-Eleven or whether that's your local convenience store or the corner bar. All this brings complexity into what we know is a highly competitive market. However, we have built a sales strategy a sales structure and capabilities that allow us to win within this reality. And I think that the results show that this is working. We're now consistently growing market share, not just within beer, but in total alcohol beverage and we are leading growth in the industry. So before we head out on our market visit, I wanted to touch on 3 main points, and let me start with our wholesalers. Our wholesalers are the very important second tier in the 3-tier system. We work with just under 400 independently owned wholesalers for whom our brands typically represent the large majority of their business. These are local businesses with exclusive territories, and they have the warehouses, the trucks, the sales teams. And our relationship with them is not transactional. This is a long-term partnership that is focused on mutual growth. Together, our wholesalers deploy around 10,000 sales reps, and they call on about 0.5 million accounts. On average, we call on each of these accounts just more than 1 time every week. We then partner with our wholesalers to apply this sales outreach in the most optimal way to grow our joint business. So our wholesalers have exceptionally strong relationships in the markets that they serve, and we then equip them with the tools to out-execute their competitors locally. That ranges from tool kits to activate our mega platforms to an advanced and a fully integrated sales tech ecosystem. We developed that technology, working closely together with Nick Caton and the Global B team, and it allows us to blend proven global solutions with a deep understanding of the unique 3-tier system. And the power of that digitization really comes to life in the 350,000 independent accounts that we call on. These are accounts where decisions get made store by store bar by bar, these decisions are made by the owner or by the manager. And in the last few years, we've transformed how we prioritize our efforts in these accounts, right? What are the most important accounts to focus on. when we're in these accounts, what are the -- what is the next most important thing that will impact our performance? And how can we help the sales rep get things done more efficiently. Our technology today is fully adopted by our wholesaler system and it helps answer those very questions. I'll give you an example. Today, just about all the execution priorities that those 10,000 sales reps focus on are defined through an advanced AI model. This model digests the tens of thousands of data points that we have for each account, industry, sales census, survey data. And so it basically reasons like someone who knows a market really, really well and can do that at scale with incredible granularity. It then recommends the highest impact actions in each of these accounts. And these objectives consistently outperform human target setting. Now that matters out in the market. Yesterday, Karl showed you the gap between high and low share markets for Mickelepultro and Busch light. This market share gap is equally reflected in execution as well. and our technology now helps us close those gaps by deliberately prioritizing the highest opportunity accounts. These capabilities are also helping us rapidly expand cut water space and distribution. And we all know, cut water is a brand where we are still in the early stages. And also here, -- our tools help our wholesalers focus on the biggest opportunities for expansion in their respective territories. So these are just 2 examples of how our tech capabilities now will allow us to identify and localize opportunities to accelerate our performance across the whole portfolio. We also deployed base and even if adoption is still building what we've seen is very strong growth over the last years. NBs connects flawlessly with the other tech tools that I just mentioned. So it also helps our wholesalers get things done in their market, resulting in superior performance. Now it speaks for itself that this partnership and these capabilities are easily flexed to win within beer and mall-based beverages, but they now do more than that. They help us lead growth with our spirits wine and now energy drinks. Our wholesaler partnership has proven to be ideally suited to not just compete but to win. So we are very connected to our wholesalers. And together, we get it done. Over the last few years, we have significantly improved our sales outreach, and that has translated into a step change in the execution of our brands. and we enjoy working together as well. Brendan mentioned it, our wholesalers have given us the highest marks ever in their latest voice of the wholesaler survey. So we feel good about how we're working together -- and I can tell you, we enjoy winning together. The second point I'd like to touch on is chain retailers or key accounts. Think of national chains like a Walmart or local chains like you'll see in our market visit today like Snook. Chains are becoming an increasingly important part of the market as more volume shifts into larger and more consolidated retail groups. Now winning here matters for a few reasons. They consistently outperform the rest of the market. They premiumize faster, and importantly, they set the standards for the full market. Decisions here are made centrally meaning that if we get the sale, it comes to life across dozens, hundreds or thousands of stores. And these customers are sophisticated. They have high expectations from us as we engage with them. And what makes the U.S. special is that the chain universe is still highly fragmented. That means that we call on hundreds of chain buying teams. So winning with key accounts in the United States is not just about hypercare on a handful of accounts, and that is why we have built an expert key account and category team that is designed to operate at scale, and it has been pretty successful in doing that. And that matters because we play a very special role for our customers. Beer and beyond beer are the second largest category in food and beverage. And obviously, we lead that category, not just in size, but with a rebalanced portfolio anchored in today's growth segments positioning us as the key supplier to maximize for growth. We helped double down on that growth with a robust customer capabilities that we've built across category management, revenue management and trade marketing. These capabilities, all have 1 thing in common, and it is that they are insight-led, deep insight in the consumer, in the shopper and how they engage with our category. And again, whereas these capabilities were very beer forwards that first, we now bring the same level of expertise across total alcohol beverage. And the biggest transformation for us probably has been around category management, where since 2018, we have overhauled how we help our retailers find category growth. And last night, you obviously visited the pinnacle of that effort at the Vault. But the real hero of our category work is not a building. It is our ability today to bring objective strategic views on the beer and beyond beer categories to all of our chain customers together with clear tailor-made recommendations on how to win within this critical category across the shelf, across the store floor across their digital channels. And this is working. You heard it yesterday. As we strengthened our capabilities, we went from being the category captain for 50% of the industry stores and dollars to now over 70%. And more important than that 70% number where we are the captain, the industry consistently quarter after quarter outperforms compared to where we are not. I think that's a great example of how our transformed customer capabilities helped drive results at scale. The third thing I would like to touch on today is how we are able to now activate our mega brands and platforms locally and at scale. And a great recent example is the FIFA World Cup and how it helped us accelerate MikelaPultra by combining a robust media plan with a message activation on the ground. Of course, we activated the 11 host cities from stadiums to key neighborhoods with fan fest and watch parties across hotels and stores and bars. And of course, we worked with our chain customers to roll out customized FIFA World Cup plans fully integrated from their store floors to their digital channels, getting as a record share of ads, a 20% increase in display activity and dedicated brand pages on their loyalty apps and websites. But where the new power of our system now really shines is in the on-premise. Miklaultra was already by far the #1 brand in the on-premise. But with the FIFA World Cup, we increased our distribution by 13%. And we didn't stop there. Together with our wholesalers we executed almost 40,000 Michelob Ultra soccer activations where we had teams engage one-on-one with more than 2 million consumers, giving them the opportunity to win tickets to games, to win Miklaultraswag and where we put beers in hands. So in this example, for us, the FIFA World Cup was not just about the stadiums or even the whole cities. With our wholesalers and our retailer partners, we were able to bring this mega platform to consumers across all 50 states and meet them where they are. whether that was in a downtown Boston, a Scottish fans through a big party in Hispanic grocery store in California, a watch party in the main, Iowa or folks watching the game in a cowboy bar in Wyoming. We showed up resulting in Mikulapultra accelerating not just in its strongholds but posting strong growth nationwide. And so far, we've been using this muscle on Ultra and Stella but light and in 27, we're going to be bringing this to all of our mega brands because this is what our system can now do. Taking the biggest platforms and making them local, relevant and scalable. And you can see that right now, by the way, with our football season that just got off to a hot start America's #1 passion point where we'll be doing almost 30,000 activations. So if you step back, the U.S. sales story is about how we connect the dots across the 3-tier system so that the right things happen in stores and bars. Over the last 8 years, we have rebuilt the sales strategy, the structure and the capabilities that allow us to put numbers on the board in beer, in spirits and now also in energy. And we do that by partnering closely with our wholesalers by ensuring that they have the tools to win in their markets and by championing the category that we lead with our retailers. And we are now bringing our mega platforms to life as we build our mega brands at an unprecedented scale store-by-store, bar by bar, meeting our consumers where they are. I am incredibly excited to show you what that looks like in the market today in our hometown. So here is the plan. If we can keep the pace Together, we're going to be visiting 2 grocery stores, a convenience store and a bar that will give you the opportunity to touch and feel every channel. Now as you probably noticed traveling in, there are not a lot of stores here in the downtown area. So the ride is to the first store will take around 20, 25 minutes. During that time, you'll see a short video for me with more context on the St. Louis market and what to watch for as you're out in a trade. So from here, we'll break into 8 groups, each led by a member of my team. Very practically, you all have the number of your group on your batch. The ask is that we all get up, we go downstairs to the ground floor -- there are 8 buses waiting in front of a bus, someone's holding up the number of that bus and you just go into the bus that's on your batch. That's fun. Cheers. [Break]

So welcome back from the market visit, hope the traffic wasn't too bad getting in, and you manage back in time for some lunch. I know we've had some conversations with a few people where their flights are a bit earlier. So we're going to try and condense a little bit the schedules so people can stay for as long as possible. So we'll make the Q&A maybe a little bit shorter. And I think we'll end maybe 10 or 15 minutes earlier than we originally scheduled, so we can try and have as many people stay as possible. So thanks very much to the market visit leaders for hosting us. I really appreciate it. I know for my van, we had many interesting conversations with the different outdate owners. So that was great to see. I'd also like to welcome back the webcast audience, if you still with us. I hope you enjoyed the 3-hour break and back with us now. We have 2 more sessions or 3 more sessions before we let you leave to catch your flights home, or in the case of some of you, I think you're hitting on a grand tour of the U.S. and other Capital Markets Day, so I hope you enjoy those as well. So we're going to start with Fernando, who's going to talk about the third pillar of our strategy, optimize our business. So Fernando, over to you.

Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining our Capital Markets Day here in St. Louis. It is a great pleasure to welcome you all here in person, and thanks to those taking the time to join remotely across the various time zones. We always learn from talk with you at these events, and we really appreciate the time. Sean, where are you, Sean? Sean has given me the [indiscernible] task of being the final speaker on day 2 after lunch, too early morning spinning classes and a market visit. So once again, I appreciate the vote of confidence, Sean. Thanks. So the presentation yesterday we brought to life the first two pillars of our strategy. So lead and grow the category and digitize and monetize our ecosystem. Then we had the brewery tour and the branded merchant dinner last night, along with today's market visit. I believe that gave you an opportunity to see this strategy in action. Now I will take you through the third pillar of our strategy, which is optimize our business. This session, it brings together how it translates our strategy into financial performance and long-term financial returns and long-term shareholder returns. So let's get started. So quick introduction, I'm Fernando Tennenbaum. I'm AB Bev's Chief Financial Officer. I've been with the company for more than 22 years across different financial functions including investor relations, treasury, M&A. And just prior to my current role, I was the CFO of our publicly listed subsidiary, InBev. The goal of optimizing our business is simple. We want to maximize shareholder value over time. So every investment, every operating decision and capital allocation choice, we need to evaluate that through that lens. When we look at our value creation model, we focus on four areas: So the first one is consistent compounding growth. We talk a lot about it yesterday, but consistent compounding growth. The second one is disciplined resource allocation. The third area is strong free cash flow generation. And the fourth with this free cash flow dynamic capital allocation decisions. I'd like to say that each one of this supports the other, working together to drive shareholder value. So let's start with the first one, consistent compounding growth. When you see this slide now, you might be wondering, why the first slide in the finance guy's presentation is about sales and marketing investment. But in reality, it's strong. Quarterly relevant brands are the foundation for driving consistent compounding growth. Strong brands, the increased consumer loyalty, they earn a premium price. They enhance profitability which enables us to invest more to continue to increase the power of our portfolio. As you can see on the chart, we have consistently invested in our brands, mega platforms and capabilities. Since 2021, we've put more than $7 billion on average a year in sales and marketing. Yesterday, Marcel showed the impact of this investment. Our capabilities have evolved, enabling us to better serve our customers, attract new consumers and lead and grow the category. And in our industry, scale matters. It improves efficiency, profitability and importantly, increase our capacity to invest. Over the last few years, you have seen us partner with global mega platforms, such as the Olympics, FIF, Netflix, Live Nation and beginning 2027, the WFA Champions League. All of these partnerships, they are enabled by our scale, footprint and brands. So importantly, this investment, it has also been driving consistent financial results. So while the operating environment has remained dynamic over the last 5 years, our top line performance has been reliable. Revenue has compounded the mid-single digits over the whole period was supported by contributions from volume, revenue management and positive mix. If you move down the P&L, let's take a look at margins. Our margins are best-in-class across our CPG peer group, reflecting the full momentum strength of our business. It is our brands, scale, leadership positions, efficient operating model and ownership culture. Strong margins enables us to efficiently convert each dollar of revenue growth into earnings. At our last Capital Markets Day in Mexico City, we showed how commodity cost increases and transaction effects headwinds put pressure on margins from 2021 to 2023. Over this period, we chose to absorb cost increases on behalf of consumers, maintaining our disciplined pricing approach while we continue to invest in the business. At that time, we said there was no structural reason our margins could not expand over time. Indeed, over the last couple of years, we've seen some progress in this direction. Since 2023, input costs have increased mostly in line with inflation on average, and this more normalized environment has given us the opportunity to improve margins. By maintaining disciplined revenue management, unlocking production cost efficiencies and tightly managing overhead costs from '23 to '25, we expanded gross margins by 200 basis points and EBITDA margin by 220 basis points. The key point is that we have expanded margins while we continue to invest behind our brands and capabilities to drive top line growth. We are encouraged with the margin progression so far. While each year will be different, we believe we can continue to trend in the right direction over time. Now moving to bottom line performance. Our top line growth and margin improvement, it has delivered reliable compounding EBITDA growth. Every year has had its own dynamics. But the resilience of our strategy and the diversification of our footprint have enabled us to deliver with team or above our medium-term outlook in every year since 2021, but is in the top quartile of our CPG peers on a CAGR basis. The next step is converting this EBITDA growth into dollar EPS. Since '21, we have grown underlying EPS at an 8.3% CAGR. Once again, it is putting us in the top quartile of our CPG peers. By improving cost efficiency and optimizing across the P&L, we have been able to deliver consistent EPS performance. Now let's move on to our second focus area, which is disciplined resource allocation. The scale of our business, it gives us significant capacity to invest, that makes disciplined resource allocation even more important. Every dollar must compete for capital and be direct towards the opportunities with the strongest mix of strategic impact, growth and financial return. Yesterday, David presented Watchtower, showing how you acknowledge to help make the optimal decision for our commercial investments. For CapEx, we follow project-by-project evaluation process that enables us to assess the trade-offs, make better investment decisions and invest in opportunities that offer the best mix of growth and financial return. Having said all that, frameworks are easy to put on light, very easy. What really matters is how we execute. It is the process. It is the quality of our decisions our willingness to make the right trade-offs. This is what delivers values. Our resource allocation capability has been one of the drivers of the improved CapEx efficiency across the business over the last few years. With technology, increased best practice sharing among our zones and applying as [indiscernible] mindset, we have reduced net CapEx from $5.5 billion in '21 to $3.6 billion in '25. Importantly, this increased efficiency did not come at the expense of growth. As our top and bottom line performance show, we have continued to invest in the initiatives that support long-term growth. Nearly half of our CapEx has gone towards growth projects. With the balance supporting our existing business. Let's take a look at some concrete examples. We have invested into new facilities, including a $400 million brewery in Colombia. We have expanded our Beyond Beer, no alcohol beer and premium beer production capabilities globally. You saw an example of [ this on this tour ] with the Beyond Beer packaging here in the St. Louis brewery. As you heard yesterday, we have invested into new partnerships with global mega platforms, such as the Olympic and Netflix, and we extended our partnership with Fifer. In addition to capabilities and capacity, we continue to invest to strengthen the resilience and efficiency of our supply chain. We remain focused on improving operational efficiency in three key areas that are essential to our business, agriculture, water and energy and emissions. In water, we have challenged ourselves to go further on water use. We are aiming to achieve an average efficiency ratio of 2 hectoliters per hectoliter across our breweries globally by 2030. Water stewardship is at the core of building resilience in our business. There is no water. There is no beer. Return on invested capital is a key measure of our growth, efficiency and disciplined resource allocation are improving the value creation potential of our business. Our main focus here is increasing total ROIC, which measures return across the full invested capital base. Since 2021, it has increased by 120 basis points driven by higher profit and greater capital efficiency. While total ROIC is the key KPI for us, given the change in our strategy to organic growth, ROIC excluding goodwill, is a use for additional measure for our -- of our return potential going forward. It shows the returns generated by the operational -- operating capital deployed in the business and it makes it easier to compare us with peers. We see a clear path to further improve ROIC through continued profit growth and greater efficiency across the invested capital base. That will bring us to the third pillar of our value creation model, is strong free cash flow generation. In the end, everything we do to optimize the business across the P&L and balance sheet is reflected in free cash flow. We often say inside the company, and I think I said a few times yesterday, cash is king. Free cash flow is the clearest measure of whether our growth, efficiency and capital discipline and translate into real financial returns. At our full year 2024 results, we spoke about the step change in our free cash flow from $9 billion to $11 billion. And we also noted that we expect it to grow from this base going forward. If you look at performance over the last 12 months ended June 30, 2026, this is a very good example of this with our free cash flow is stepping up to nearly $14 billion on the last 12 months. When you look ahead, EBITDA growth continue to be expected to remain the main driver. But along with disciplined CapEx, lower net interest expense as we continue to deleverage and the structural benefit we have given our negative working capital cycle. Similar to the CPG category overall, when it comes to free cash flow generation, is scale and efficiency are very important. The strong free cash flow gives us the capacity to invest for growth while maintaining flexibility in our capital allocation choices to drive value? And strong cash conversion enable us to make every dollar of profit become more meaningful for our stakeholders. Michel mentioned earlier that we are relentless in benchmarking ourselves against our peers, always looking for ways to improve and become truly best-in-class. The mix of our profitability, cash conversion and free cash flow scale is unique among CPG companies today. While we continue to see further opportunity to see opportunities for further improvement, we are already operating at best-in-class levels across these metrics, which provides a powerful platform for long-term value creation. And now to the fourth pillar, dynamic capital allocation. Free cash flow generation is only meaningful if it is being allocated in the most effective way to maximize long-term value creation. Our capital allocation framework remains unchanged. Our #1 priority is to invest into the organic growth of our business. Fully funding attractive growth opportunities remains nonnegotiable, and we continue to see many options for investment across the business. After funding the business, the excess cash is dynamically located across our other three capital allocation priorities, deleveraging, return of capital and selective M&A. And the goal is to create the greatest value for shareholders. In the near term, our ambitions are true: Fully fund our growth plans, progressively increase the dividend, complete our current $6 billion share buyback program, and further strengthen our balance sheet. Looking at the balance sheet, we are pleased with the progress we have made on the leverage over the last 5 years. From '21 to '25, we have allocated $25 billion of cash to reduce debt. And we reached a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio below 3x in the full year of '24 for the first time since 2015. Our optimal capital structure remains around 2x. But with leverage at the 2.87x at the end of 2025, there is some further progress to make but the balance sheet already gives us much more flexibility. As the balance sheet has become stronger, we have increased our return of capital to shareholders. We have increased the dividend every year since 2021, it was supported by EPS growth and a measured increase in the payout ratio. In 2025, we also declared an interim dividend for the first time since 2019. While our payout ratio remains low compared with CPG peers, our ambition is to maintain a progressive dividend over time. Together for our dividend, we have also been executing larger share buyback programs. Our approach is to deploy capital dynamically. When we believe our shares represent an attractive opportunity to create value, buybacks can be an effective use of capital along our other priorities. We have completed $5.5 billion of share buybacks since 2023. And $3.7 billion remains on the 24-month program announced in October '25. Our focus is on completing the current program. Beyond that, we continue to assess the buybacks through the lens of long-term shareholder value. M&A remains a core capability. However, it now complements organic growth rather than being the foundation of our strategy. We have the experience, playbooks and discipline to do selective deals that create value. Acquisitions and disposals must compete with the returns available from invest organically in our business. That creates a high hurdle and a very focused opportunity set. Over the last few years, we have sold some non-core assets and use that money to either increase the exposure to growth segments or to improve profitability. On the disposal side, you can see a few examples here such as -- the sale of certain nonstrategic brands and assets like more craft brands and facilities in the U.S. On the acquisition side, we have made bolt-on acquisitions like big box to improve our portfolio. I believe you saw a bit box on the market today. Cutwater and neutral are other good examples that were completed a few years earlier and are now meaningful parts of our portfolio. We have also evaluated EPS accretive opportunities like buying back the minority stake in our metal container business here in the U.S., while organic growth is our main focus. Selective acquisitions and disposals of relevant options to consider and they meet our financial and strategic criteria. Putting it all together. 5 years ago, most of our excess free cash flow was allocated to the leveraging and for a good reason, moving from nearly 5x net debt to EBITDA to below 3x was the best use of capital to create shareholder value. Since 2021, we have allocated $25 billion of cash towards reducing debt and made our balance sheet much stronger. As a result, we have already begun to rebalance our capital allocation priorities. As we continue progressing towards our optimal capital structure, we see clear scope for that rebalancing to continue over time. Optimizing the business is a simple idea. And by simple, I don't mean easy because the actions behind it are very detailed, and they require everyday financial discipline, some judgment on trade-offs and a long-term view. We have made progress across key metrics in our P&L, balance sheet and cash flow. But as Michel said, the job is not finished yet. Actually, the job is never finished. So it's important to keep score and ensure that we are moving in the right direction. So here is my scorecard for the last 5 years. Our business has consistently grown revenue and EBITDA at the top end of our peer group through different operating conditions. Our margins have seen some recovery in 2023 while we continue investing behind the growth. EPS and ROIC have increased through stronger profit growth and capital efficiency. Free cash flow has increased from $9 billion in 2021 to nearly $14 billion in the last 12 months. In capital allocation, we have made our balance sheet stronger, steadily increased our dividend and run larger share buyback programs. When you look at this score card, I believe the progress is clear. We have made the business stronger, increased our earning power and improved our financial flexibility. At the same time, we still see meaningful upside ahead. So let's shift from reflecting best performance to discussing our future potential. When we introduced our medium-term outlook in 2021, EBITDA was the right measure at that time. It was the right measure because we are focused on the leveraging organically building our capabilities and showing the resilience of our business. But going forward, we believe EBIT is the more relevant measure. As we focus on consistent compounding growth and better asset utilization, EBIT more clearly reflects business performance and long-term shareholder value creation. Our new medium-term outlook is for consistent compounding EBIT growth of 5% to 9% on average, reflecting the progress we have made in building the earnings power and capital efficiency of the business. The drivers of our underlying growth model, they remain consistent. It is category expansion and market share momentum. Revenue management and positive mix. Its operating leverage, capital efficiency and margin expansion. Just to be clear, our outlook for 2026 remains unchanged at 4% to 8% EBITDA growth. And we will provide our outlook for 2027 when we report our full year 2026 results. Our key focus areas for value creation going forward. They are no different than what we had in the past. Why is different from 5 years ago is that now we are starting from a position of strength. We have built better processes and invest in the capabilities we need to drive consistent compounding growth. We have improved the efficiency of our resource allocation and are using more technology to make better investment decisions. Together, organic performance, best-in-class profitability and strong cash conversion are increasing our free cash flow generation. With a stronger balance sheet, we have increased the flexibility to continue to evolve our capital allocation mix. What gives us confidence is that these are not independent drivers. They build on one another. Consistent compounding growth increases profitability and cash generation. A strong cash generation gives us more capital so we can allocate. Disciplined capital allocation allow us to continue invest in growth, make the business stronger and increase return to shareholders that, in turn, support the next cycle of growth. This is how we intend to compound superior long-term shareholder value. Thank you.

Thanks, Fernando, for the presentation. I think next up, we're going to have a second Q&A panel. We're originally scheduled for 30 minutes. We might try and keep it at 25, just to make sure we can have as many in the room stay for the session and the closing as well. So I'd like to invite Michel and Fernando back to the stage, if you can join me up here. In terms of logistics, we're going to do the same as we did yesterday. So we're going to start by taking some questions in the room. Those that didn't get a chance to ask yesterday, we'll probably prioritize you if you would like to ask a question. Ed, you are on the blacklist for today, but if you would like to ask another question, then you can still be allowed. We also have the live stream questions here. So if anyone is -- would like to ask a question to livestream, I can take a read here, and we might take 1 or 2 of those. So we have some mics around the room like we did yesterday. Please raise your hands, and we will get started. Same rules, no ones As, no ones Bs, no half part, half part, trying to stick to one question as much as possible. Great. Let's get going, James from RBC, let's start with you.

Interesting, the increase in medium-term growth. Why are you changing from EBITDA to EBIT. You've kind of you alluded to it, I think, but I didn't really understand the justification.

James, it's the evolution. If you look like over the past 5 years, there was a lot of emphasis in resetting the business, which means to strengthen the balance sheet and probably one of the key KPIs when I think about leverage net debt to EBITDA. So while we were working on the fundamentals, we are also resetting the business and preparing for this next phase with reignite. When you move into reignie, it's not only the growth of the generate, but how you grow kind of how efficient you are in growing and delivering this growth. So for us, is the natural step to move from research to ignite to move from EBITDA to EBIT, and then you can see kind of all the benefits of that we have in a business at the scale that we are. And when we grow the scale that we are, we believe kind of this new range of 5 to 9 is one that makes more sense for this next phase.

We'll come to Trevor over here in the middle.

Question for you, Michel. I appreciate it's impossible to cover everything in two days. But one zone that we haven't really touched on is Asia, neither the challenges in China nor the opportunities in Asia ex China. So maybe could you give us an overview of where you see Asia today?

So Asia is a great opportunity, as you know, when you think about population and population growth. Asia is a massive pocket for today's business and for future business. And our business in Asia over the years, as you know, has a growth story, let's say, from 2010 to 2017, '18. And we had the period between '18 to '25, where many things changed mostly in China, and our business did not catch up at the speed that we needed to catch up with the market and with the change. Some of this change when you think about what happened during post-COVID were really, really big structural changes in the market, like the change between the East Coast and the inland China, the changes that happened between on-trade channels and off-trade channels. And this all had an impact on our business and what impact that one day can come back because the business remains somehow strong in these regions with the brands that we have, but we can't wait forever for the change. So we should be acting, we should have acted. And now we are running after this adaptation on the portfolio, on the channels, on the gas taking long because the consumer in China is also not in the best place. It's taking long because the fact that the business shift away from the channels and regions where we operated, created an issue on inventories, on the role to market, on the sales force, but we continue to be very positive about the long-term outlook for the region overall for China as a specific market. If you look around China, so talking about Asia, as I said, in general, so our business in Korea remains very strong... [Audio gap]

in terms of performance in the U.S., both top line and bottom line to be able to deliver to be in that range. What do you need to see happen there?

I think let me start and then Michel can follow up on that. We don't disclose market-by-market because actually, that's one of the strengths of our company. They have a very diverse portfolio of countries of brands around the world. If you look over the last 5 years, we discussed different topics around the world. And every year, there was one topic, one way or another, and we deliver nevertheless. So I think when we look at kind of when we set our goals, we look at the whole portfolio of countries, the whole portfolio of brands. And when we put the outlook at that, we feel confident with this portfolio, we can deliver this 5 to 9 on the medium term on a consistent basis.