Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli AG (LISN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the Lindt & Sprüngli half year results conference call and webcast. The presentation and transcript of my prepared comments will be uploaded to our website this morning. The presentation will take approximately 30 minutes. Following the presentation, I will hand over to the operator, who will then manage the question-and-answer session. The agenda points of the presentation can be seen on this chart and include a detailed review of the first half, an update on the key topic of sustainability, our expectations for the full year and the medium term and a chance for you to ask questions. I would also refer you to the disclaimer at the end of this slide deck. Despite an exceptionally difficult global operating environment with disrupted supply chains and sharply rising costs, Lindt & Sprüngli was able to continue its post-pandemic recovery. You will remember that we decided not to fundamentally change our plans over the past couple of years, but instead to continue making growth investments behind our core brands. Our continued strong growth in the first half of this year is further proof that this was the right thing to do. Over the past couple of years, we have also continued to invest in projects that drive efficiency, especially in North America, and we are now reaping the rewards. Overall, we are pleased with our progress and are optimistic about our future prospects. I will now take you through a detailed review of these results, starting with Slide 4. Before I begin, those of you who are new to Lindt & Sprüngli should bear in mind the seasonal and gift-oriented nature of our premium chocolate business, which is skewed to the second half of the year. However, first half sales absorbed roughly half of our annual fixed costs. As a result, both sales and profitability are always significantly lower in the first half. That said, the Lindt & Sprüngli Group has had an excellent start to the year, continuing the strong recovery that began last year. Organic sales in the first 6 months achieved a very positive growth rate of 12.3%, despite lapping an even stronger double-digit first half performance in 2021. This exceptional double-digit growth was mainly driven by North America and the Rest of World, while Europe's growth rate almost reached double digits. It is fair to say that group sales have returned to their pre-COVID growth trajectory with a compound annual growth since the first half of 2019 of just over 6.5%, within our medium- to long-term guidance. EBIT came in at CHF 185 million, delivering a record first half EBIT margin of 9.3%. This margin expansion was driven primarily by the positive impact of sales growth on cost absorption and the successful margin increase in the U.S. since 2020. Net income was CHF 138 million with a net income margin of 6.9%, again, a first half record. The tax rate in the first semester was 22%, which is in line with our full year assumption. Free cash flow reached CHF 204 million in the first 6 months, a decrease of CHF 24 million over the first half of '21, coming in at about 10% of total group sales. The key driver of this decrease was an increase of our inventories in order to safeguard business continuity. This resulted in a negative impact of CHF 85 million. Our net debt position, which includes a lease liability of around CHF 450 million, increased to CHF 667 million. This is higher than in December '21 when net debt was CHF 295 million and higher than 1 year ago when net debt was at CHF 326 million. The driver of this net debt increase was our CHF 750 million share buyback program, which we completed at the end of June. Given our confidence in the group's future cash flow generation and our relatively under-leveraged balance sheet, we have decided to launch a new share buyback program, this time of CHF 1 billion. It will start on the 2nd of August 2022 and is expected to run for 24 months. Finally, I would mention here that our equity ratio remains strong at 57% versus 58.3% at year-end 2021 and that our balance sheet remains healthy with a strong liquidity position. Let's dig a little deeper into our organic sales growth. First half sales grew by 12.3% organically despite a tough comparison of 17.4% growth in the same period last year. This development can be attributed to the following 4 factors: the chocolate markets on a worldwide basis have continued to recover well, generating very positive momentum, especially in the U.S.; globally, the premium chocolate segment again clearly outperformed total market; in all key markets, our group continued to gain market share within the premium segment with its core brand franchises, Excellence and Lindor, and the key Easter seasonal business; growth in our Global Retail business and also in Travel Retail was disproportionately strong this first half given that many of our retail stores were closed during the 2021 Easter season and international travel was still restricted throughout the prior year period. As mentioned above, we achieved just over a 6.5% 3-year compound annual organic growth compared to the first half of 2019, in line with our pre-COVID growth rates and in line with our medium-term guidance. Our Streamlining for Growth initiatives are also continuing to pay dividends in the U.S. where our 2 brands, Lindt and Ghirardelli, both grew organically at double-digit rates, faster than the market. I will provide more details on North America later in the presentation. Overall, we are pleased that underlying consumer demand has remained buoyant and that we are back on our usual growth trajectory. This strong first half performance is further confirmation that demand for our premium chocolate remains intact. Details of the drivers of sales growth are shown on Slide 6. Volume growth normalized at plus 3.6% after last year's sharp rebound. Price/mix at plus 8.7% was, however, much higher than usual, with price accounting for somewhat less than half of the total effect. Cost inflation has allowed us to take pricing actions in some markets, for example, in the U.S. As these price increases were not effective for the full 6 months, there will be some residual benefits for second half sales growth. Going forward, we will raise prices whenever and wherever it makes sense to do so. Mix nonetheless remained the most significant growth driver, with the most notable impact coming from the rebound of our global retail channel and a particularly strong performance from our core brand, Lindor. Reported sales growth was once again negatively impacted by the strengthening of the Swiss franc. In the first half, the negative ForEx impact was 1.6 percentage points, driven mainly by a weaker euro. As usual, there were no acquisitions or disposals, reflecting the strength of our existing business and our focus on organic growth. Reported sales in Swiss francs rose by 10.7%. On Slide 7, we see sales split by market. Please bear in mind that these numbers are shown in Swiss francs. Therefore, the percentage shares are impacted by currency fluctuations. North America, Germany and France remained our largest markets. North America gained significantly in importance, 37.1% of group sales versus 34.6% 1 year ago, thanks to its strong topline performance and a buoyant dollar. Excluding Russia, the rest of Europe continued its positive trajectory. As a reminder, Russia accounted for less than 1% of group sales in 2021, and we expect about 80 basis points negative impact on growth for full year 2022. The Rest of the World was the region most impacted by the pandemic. At 13.6% of group sales in the first half of 2022 versus 13.4% in the prior year period, it was able to make a good recovery. China, Japan and Brazil performed particularly well. We now turn to Slide 8 to begin our review of the regional segments. In our biggest region, Europe, organic sales increased by plus 9.1%, representing a very good performance, especially when compared to the plus 16.4% growth of the prior year period. Europe's 3-year CAGR was 6.7% growth, in the line with the group and demonstrating a full post-COVID recovery. We delivered good growth in almost all European markets and double-digit growth in important markets such as Germany, Italy, Austria, Eastern Europe and the Benelux region. North America grew by plus 15.2%, with Lindt in the U.S., Canada and Mexico and Ghirardelli all enjoying a very positive first semester and growing in double digits. Russell Stover was basically flat. The region's 3-year CAGR was almost 8%, indicating that North America is also back on its pre-COVID trajectory. Overall, chocolate market growth was very solid over the past 52 weeks in the high single digits. We were able to outpace the market, gaining market share and creating positive momentum. In the U.S., we continue to make good progress on the various projects aimed at further leveraging the Russell Stover business and on our overall Streamlining for Growth initiatives in the areas of production, merchandising, logistics, procurement and IT. Bottom line benefits already started to kick in last year, and this has continued into the first half of this year. We expect more from these projects in the second half and over the coming years. As explained previously, part of the efficiency savings will be reinvented in our brands and future growth. Overall, we are extremely pleased with our progress in the U.S. and our current strategy. In the Rest of the World segment, we also grew faster than the market and above the group average with 16.9%, despite lapping the tough comparison of plus 18% last year. Having said that, the region's 3-year organic CAGR of just plus 4% suggests that its recovery is not yet complete. Indeed, this region was the one most impacted by COVID-19, not least of all because we report Travel Retail in this segment, while Japan and Brazil have a high share of retail stores. Correspondingly, in the first half of this year, Travel Retail recovered strongly and its sales are now at roughly 2/3 of 2019 levels, while our retail stores in the region performed very well but are still lagging slightly behind 2019 levels. It is particularly pleasing to see that important new markets, such as Japan, China and Brazil, grew in double digits. There are many large traditional chocolate markets within the Rest of the World segment where we see significant premiumization potential for Lindt. As a result, we are convinced that we can maintain double-digit growth in the region over the medium term. Let's move on now to the important topic of costs, category by category. We'll start with material costs. Material costs, which have been adjusted for changes to inventories, came in at 31.5%, 160 basis points lower than in 2021. There are 3 factors behind this overall positive development, 1 sales-related and 2 cost-related: as explained earlier, our price/mix increased by plus 8.7%, meaning that we achieved far higher net sales per ton; on the negative side, we saw increases over the past 6 months in the cost of packaging materials and certain raw materials, including milk, sugar and tropical oil; on the positive side, and as shown on the next chart, cocoa butter prices have come down over the past 12 months, leading to positive effects on the overall material cost ratio. Looking forward, we estimate that our total material costs will be slightly higher in 2022 compared to 2021 driven by packaging and certain raw materials such as milk and sugar, partly offset by a positive mix impact and price increases. These negative effects were not felt in the first half of this year as we had hedged many of these risks early on. We expect cost inflation to continue into 2023. Finally, our sustainability ambitions will lead to additional costs in 2022 and over the coming years as we transition to more sustainable and sometimes more expensive options. Sustainability is embedded into our operations and regarded simply as a cost of doing business. To offset these expected cost increases in 2022 and 2023, we plan further price increases over the coming months to supplement the group's inherent operating leverage. On Slide 10, I would just like to take a quick dive into our most important commodity, cocoa. As ever, the development of the cocoa market remains difficult to predict. The outlook depends heavily on the positioning of market speculators who have a disproportionate influence on market prices. Currently, the market expects a deficit of around 200,000 tons for the 2021/2022 harvest season but only a small deficit of around 10,000 tons for the 2022/'23 crop. The deficit forecast for the current crop is a key reason why cocoa futures have increased over the past 12 months by around GBP 100 per metric ton. Overall, as can be seen from this chart, cocoa bean future prices in London are currently trading at around GBP 1,770 compared to around GBP 1,650 in June last year. At the same time, the cocoa butter ratio has declined to about 2.0 compared to 2.2 1 year ago and 2.6 2 years ago. This is another reason why our material expense ratio is lower in 2022 compared to 2021. Based on current market expectations and including the living income differential, we assume that cocoa bean prices for the 2022/'23 crop will increase and cocoa butter prices in '23 will be higher than in '22. Coupled with cost inflation for packaging materials, milk and sugar, many players in the chocolate industry will, even with wide-ranging internal efficiency initiatives, be forced to increase prices. Despite the absolute increase of CHF 26 million, personnel expenses increased at much lower rate than sales, decreasing by 120 basis points to a new record-low first half cost ratio of 24.3%. This comes after a record-low cost ratio in the prior year period. A large part of our personnel expenses is fixed, so the sharp rebound in overall sales has reversed the diseconomies of scale experienced in 2020, as we predicted at the time. We achieved this excellent result despite double-digit growth in Global Retail, a high gross profit margin business, however, with disproportionately high personnel expenses. Operating expenses increased by CHF 78 million and the ratio increased by 130 basis points driven by 2 factors: firstly, in common with all businesses, Lindt has been impacted by the general pressures on global supply chains and, in particular, by higher transportation costs due to higher fuel and energy costs; secondly, in line with our high-growth strategy, we continued to increase advertising investments and to invest in our brands across all geographies, in line with our double-digit sales growth. In absolute terms, depreciation and impairments have remained at the same level as in the previous 3 years. Depreciation in recent years has been driven by our CapEx program aimed primarily at satisfying future volume growth and increasing production efficiency. One of our biggest capital investments relates to the Lindt factory in Stratham, New Hampshire in the U.S., which will absorb planned volume increases as we grow over the medium term. As already reported, the slowdown in 2020 due to COVID-19 persuaded us to slightly rephase overall CapEx for that factory. I will discuss CapEx in more detail later. Economies of scale derived from our topline growth delivered a 40 basis point margin improvement versus the same period last year. At CHF 185 million and 9.3% of sales, EBIT set a new first half record, increasing by 160 basis points compared to the first half of 2021 which, at the time, set a new record. The increase of CHF 46 million is due to the factors in the previous slides and are primarily the result of strong organic growth leading to positive economies of scale. First half EBIT improved substantially across all 3 segments. In Europe, we expanded the EBIT margin by 120 basis points and, in Rest of World, by 40 basis points. But in fact, the biggest achievement comes from the smallest column in this chart. In North America, the EBIT margin improved by 340 basis points, entering positive territory for the first time since 2016, after reaching breakeven in the prior year period. In North America, apart from the economies of scale generated by its sales growth, the region's sharply improved profitability is thanks to our Streamlining for Growth initiatives which began to pay dividends last year. For the current year, we are targeting a full year North America EBIT margin in the high single digits. Over the medium term, we expect these initiatives to lift North America EBIT margin by 50 to 80 basis points per year on a full year basis. Net income also reached a new first half record, coming in at CHF 138 million or 6.9% of net sales. Lower net financial expenses helped, coming in at CHF 7.8 million compared to CHF 8.5 million 1 year ago. This was mainly due to the lower hedging costs for subsidiary financing. As expected, the applied tax rate was at 22%, in line with our full year outlook. Over the medium term, we consider a tax rate of between 22% and 23% to be sustainable, assuming no major changes in tax legislation. Of course, we are closely monitoring the OECD debate around a minimum 15% tax rate as well as U.S. tax developments. Capital expenditure in the first half came in at CHF 121 million, just CHF 13 million lower than last year. This is in line with our revised plans which postponed certain growth-related investments from 2020. We now expect CapEx to be around CHF 250 million to CHF 270 million for the full year. From '23, we expect to spend around CHF 280 million to CHF 300 million annually for the next couple of years. As I take you through the bridge of the main cash-relevant developments of the first half, my key message to you is that we are focused on cash generation, now more than ever. Indeed, the period under review, we managed to generate a positive free cash flow of around CHF 200 million, which was about CHF 25 million less than this time last year. In the face of challenging and unpredictable global supply chains, we decided to build up our inventories more than in recent years, leading to a cash outflow of about CHF 85 million. We finished the share buyback earlier than planned at the end of June and, together with regular dividend payments, we returned around CHF 600 million to our shareholders. At the end of the first half, net debt reached CHF 667 million, higher than the CHF 295 million at the end of 2021 due to the above items. When assessing our net debt, please also bear in mind the ongoing impact of IFRS 16 on our lease liability with a negative impact of around CHF 450 million. On a pure cash basis, net debt would be around CHF 200 million. As mentioned at the start of this presentation, our confidence in the group's future cash flow generation and our relatively under-leveraged balance sheet have persuaded us to launch a new share buyback program, this time for CHF 1 billion. Over the past 3 years, our free cash flows were consistently at around 13% of net sales. On top of this, in 2020, we renewed our CHF 500 million bond at attractive levels and secured long-term financing to 2028 and 2032, respectively. Finally, we have a strong balance sheet with an equity ratio of close to 60% and expect our net financial position to return to around 0 by the end of 2022, excluding lease liabilities but including the new share buyback. The new share buyback program will commence on the 2nd of August 2022 and run for 24 months until the end of July '24 and will be executed via the second trading line on the SIX Swiss Exchange. That concludes my review of half year results. Before we discuss our outlook, I should like to share with you our progress on sustainability. Sustainability plays a key role in ensuring our long-term business success and is now embedded in our corporate culture. Almost 2 centuries of pioneering and delivering consistently high-quality premium chocolate products clearly demonstrates our long-term orientation. The Lindt & Sprüngli Sustainability Plan is our pathway to becoming more sustainable throughout our value chain, demonstrating our commitment to a better tomorrow. This strategy addresses the sustainability issues that are most impacted by our business activities, both from a risk and an opportunity perspective. In June, we published a comprehensive update on our performance in Lindt Group's 2021 Sustainability Report. I am pleased to confirm that we continue to make progress against our commitments across the plan. Before I share a few highlights with you, I first want to discuss with you the Lindt & Sprüngli Farming Program for cocoa, which is a critical program that impacts 2 key pillars of this plan: improving livelihoods and contributing to an intact environment. Cocoa is our most important raw material, and we are committed to sourcing it responsibly. We purchase cocoa beans, cocoa butter, cocoa powder and, uniquely for us at Stover, chocolate mass. Since 2008, the Lindt & Sprüngli premium farming program has supported decent and resilient likelihoods for our cocoa farmers and their families while encouraging more sustainable farming practices. Through activities focused on traceability, training, investments for farmers and communities, and independent verification, we aim to deliver an impactful program which increases the resilience of farming households, reduces the risk of child labor and support conservation of biodiversity and natural ecosystems. I will continue with the theme of cocoa as we start the video of the recent sustainability highlights. In 2020, we achieved a milestone goal of sourcing 100% of cocoa beans through the program. In 2021, we also began sourcing cocoa butter through sustainability programs. Altogether, 64% of our total cocoa, including beans, butter, powder and chocolate mass, is now sourced through sustainability programs. This puts us well on track to meet our target to source 100% of all cocoa products through sustainability programs by 2025. The Farming Program also expanded to new origin countries. In '21, more than 91,000 farmers participated in the program in 7 countries of origin. In addition to scaling the program to cocoa butter, new origins and more farmers, we also made progress against the program's social and environmental objectives. For example, since the start of the program, we have distributed over 2.8 million shade trees in support of agroforestry and biodiversity, of which nearly 900,000 were distributed in 2021 alone. Child labor is a widespread systemic issue. We consider tackling child labor a priority, and we are firmly committed to avoiding and remediating it in our cocoa supply chain. For us, the effective prevention of child labor requires full protection of children's rights, involvement of community leaders and members, holistic interventions and close collaboration with relevant stakeholders, including public institutions. It should also provide a framework for case management and systematic preventive measures. Accordingly, in 2021, we developed clear guidance for our suppliers on a Community Child Protection System, our holistic interpretation of and an evolution to our Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System. In addition, the group also became member of the Child Learning and Education Facility, CLEF. Access to quality education for all children is at the heart of a holistic child protection concept. Through our new membership in the CLEF initiative, public and private stakeholders jointly invest in the education system to collaboratively contribute to creating a better future for the children of cocoa farmers and with the aim to prevent child labor at the landscape level. Addressing child labor is one component of our approach to respecting human rights. In June, the Board of Directors approved a new group-wide human rights policy, which formalizes our commitment to respecting human rights and establishes a commitment to conduct due diligence. We also made progress against our target to employ 40% women in senior leadership roles by 2025, having already achieved 38% in 2021. It is our policy and practice to ensure our current and potential employees enjoys equal employment opportunities, and women are one of the central target groups we strive to promote through our global diversity measures. For many years, we have reported on our progress to responsibly source cocoa, hazelnuts, palm oil, soy lecithin and eggs. In '21, we also updated our Responsible Sourcing Roadmap 2025 to include 7 additional priority materials we want to source responsibly by 2025. These include almonds, coconut oil, coffee, dairy, pulp and paper-based packaging materials, sugar and vanilla. We are committed to defining science-based targets for our entire value chain with a long-term goal to reach net zero emissions. In 2021, we partnered with third-party experts to develop our first complete carbon footprint in line with GHG Protocol standards. This carbon footprint covers our Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions for the year 2020 and was externally assured by PwC. Emissions from our value chain, Scope 3, represents about 94% of our carbon footprint, mainly coming from cocoa, other raw materials, such as dairy, transport and packaging. Taking this carbon footprint as a starting point, throughout 2022, we are working with experts to develop our decarbonization road map before submitting a target to the Science-based Targets Initiative to be announced in 2023. These were just a few highlights from our '21 performance and recent updates. For more information, I encourage you to read the '21 sustainability report. It was prepared with reference to GRI Standards for the first time. More information on the Farming Program is available on the dedicated website. After this update on sustainability, I will conclude the presentation with a discussion of the outlook for 2022 and beyond. We are extremely pleased that in the first semester, we were able to reestablish group sales onto their pre-COVID growth trajectory, even before a full recovery of our global retail and travel retail activities. In the medium term, we expect to reap significant top and bottom line benefits from our ongoing Streamlining for Growth initiatives in the U.S. At the same time, we'll continue to invest in advertising to stimulate growth and in production to satisfy that growth. And as we look further into the future, we see unchanged fundamentals driving demand for our products. As a result, we'll continue to focus on our leader products such as Lindor and Excellence, on premiumization in developed markets and on expansion in growth markets. In other words, we are firmly back on our virtuous cycle of generating high growth to generate funds to invest in more growth, all the while delivering superior shareholder returns. As you have already understood, we had an excellent start to 2022 with a recovery of our Easter business and continued strong growth of our core brands. From a channel perspective, Global Retail and Travel Retail both experienced high double-digit growth rates due to the post-COVID catch-up effect. For the second half, however, we shall face some headwinds and expect group net sales to grow less strongly than in the first half. Global Retail, in particular, will face a much tougher comparison while the effect of the discontinued Russian business will weigh much more on the second half given the loss of a full 6 months, which was not the case in the first half. Nonetheless, given a faster than expected recovery in the first half, we raised our organic growth guidance to 8% to 10% for full year 2022 versus previous guidance in March of close to 8%. Although we reached record levels of profitability in the first semester, we have maintained EBIT margin guidance of around 15% which will now be applied to a higher net sales figure. The second half of the year is much more important to our full year performance, and we expect significant cost pressures that were not present in the first half coming from raw materials, packaging materials, energy as well as the one-off costs to close down our Russian operations. As mentioned earlier, we plan capital expenditure of around CHF 250 million to CHF 270 million and expect a tax rate of roughly 22%. Of course, much depends on how the global geopolitical and macroeconomic situation develops. Currently, the most important assumptions for '22 guidance are that the geopolitical situation does not worsen and that the constraints within global supply chains improve slightly in the second half of 2022. Our medium-term guidance is unchanged, though starting from an improved base in '22. The group remains confident for 2023 and over the mid- to long term in achieving its goal of an organic sales growth between 6% and 8%. In '23 and thereafter, we expect to deliver an average annual increase in EBIT margin of 20 to 40 basis points. For the next couple of years, annual CapEx should be at around CHF 280 million to CHF 300 million while the tax rate should stabilize at around 22% to 23%. Thank you for listening to my presentation, and I will now hand over to the operator who will manage the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please note that written questions asked via the web will be answered by e-mail after the webcast.

The first question comes from Jon Cox from Kepler.

Congrats to the team, a really strong set of figures. I wonder if you can just talk us through a little bit about the price/mix dynamics you're seeing. I think in the statement, you talked about the price component being roughly in line with the volume, which is about around 4%, 3.6%, which seems a bit higher than you were guiding for maybe at the start of the year where you talked about maybe low single-digit price increases. That's the first question on that. The second question on that is really the mix component looked really big. What is driving that exactly? Can you give us some examples? And then last question, really, are you getting much of a pushback from retailers as you put through the price increases? And are you seeing any sort of signs at all that maybe people are switching to other products? Although clearly, the competition is different from yourselves.

Yes, Jon, thanks for your questions. Probably starting with your question on the price element. Yes, look, it is probably slightly higher than we anticipated for the first half. But things also got a bit tougher with regards to the cost side at least what we can see in the forecast for the full year. So that obviously led to price increases, to some extent, additional price increase because the pressure on the cost side is surely here. I mean in the U.S., for example, we increased the prices in February between 7% and 9%. In other markets, we also had to take similar measures or will take similar measures. So the first result of that, you can already see in the first half with this 4% roughly on the price side. Yes, mix is definitely a core driver. I mentioned Lindor. Lindor had really a fantastic start to the year. And Lindor is higher net sales per kilo, let's say. Then Global Retail had a very strong recovery. So Global Retail is super high on net sales, let's say, per kilo. So that drives the mix a lot as well. And Travel Retail also had a very nice recovery on top of that. So those are the drivers of this very positive mix impact. And in terms of the pushback from the retailers, I mean, look, it really varies from market to market. There are some markets which are, I would say, easier and other markets where it's more difficult to push through price increases. So it's never easy because you have to justify it, of course, you have to show the retailer that your costs are going up. But in the current situation, obviously, we have a clear proof that costs are going up a lot. And we can even see lots of peers, not even in the chocolate industry but other companies in consumer goods, are taking unprecedented measures with regards to price increases. So the retailers, they are really used to it. But of course, there are still some markets where it definitely takes long discussions. But we have to have these discussions. It's important. The inflation will remain for some time, I think, also with regards to input costs. So being successful in increasing prices going forward, apart from driving efficiency as well where we can, which we anyway do, is absolutely key for the success of any business in consumer goods.

I wonder if I could just add then on the price. What do you expect for the year and for the group as a whole? You're very kind to mention that 7% to 9% in the U.S. Can you give us some idea of the pricing in Europe and the Rest of the World in H1?

Look, I'm not exactly ready to give all these detailed figures for the first half per segment. But let's say, for the full year, we expect a similar figure of around 4-ish percent as well on the price side. So I think we will have about 4% price for the full year as well, yes. And we will have also a positive mix, we believe.

The next question comes from John Ennis from Goldman.

A couple of questions from me as well. My first is on the North America margin development. I appreciate the 1H margin is not overly reflective of the margin for the full year. But your first half margin in North America was in positive territory for the first time in the last 5 years, I think, which does look like a turning point. I mean how much should we read into this? And can you maybe give a bit more detail on the changes there, where we could see the North America margin getting to medium term? And then my second question is a relatively broad one, but it's on recession risk. Your volume growth has been very resilient, very strong so far. And that's, in answer to your first question, to Jon, been alongside price increases. As you stress test some of your assumptions, what do you think would happen to volumes if we hit a recession in Europe and North America? And to what degree do you expect consumers to down-trade from premium chocolate to mainstream chocolate? And I suppose within that, are there any geographies that you worry about more or less in that environment? So a very broad question on recession sensitivity is the second one.

Yes, John, let's talk first about the North American margin. Look, it's really a mixed bag of positive measures. Of course, number one, it's the price increase we have been able to successfully implement. And it started in February. What I should mention here, of course, is this 7% to 9% price increase. It did not include Valentine's and Easter. So that will also have a lapping effect into 2023 from there. So one, surely this price increase; and secondly, all the measures we communicated in the beginning of 2020 where we started to close the unprofitable retail stores, which the plan is full on track where we outsource the merchandising force, where we close 1 factory and also where we kind of had some improvements in logistics and also the ongoing just initiatives in procurement, et cetera. They definitely bring us positive impact. And then, thirdly, if you grow double digit, you also have really nice fixed cost absorption. So definitely some operating leverage, which helps us a lot as well in North America. So I think those are really the 3 key drivers. And as I mentioned, for the full year, we are also positive. So we believe it will somewhere be in the high single digits, somewhere between 9.5% and 10% EBIT margin. And from there, for the medium term, if you take my 50 to 80 basis points improvement per year, if you project that, if you take 5 years, and you take the middle of this more or less 60 basis points per year, you are 300 basis points higher. So we'll be at about 13% or so in 5 years. So definitely on a very positive development, and we are confident that we have taken lots of measures to be able to successfully achieve that on North America on the EBIT margin. And also with regards to growth, we are and remain positive about North America. Then recession risk, yes, of course, that's always something we have from top of mind. What I should say, in the last recessions in general, Lindt didn't suffer that much. Or chocolate in general, I would say, it didn't suffer that much. That's a very broad statement. Of course, there are particular countries, emerging markets, where you'll probably see a bigger and larger impact if more people somehow are not, let's say, able to earn at least $10,000 or $15,000 per year, which is probably the middle class. That's above the minimum salary for someone to be able to buy a premium chocolate. But in Europe and North America and also in large parts of Rest of World, we are positive that also in a recession, we should be able to continue with our growth. We have seen in the recession 2008/'09, we had 1 year, I think it was 2008, where growth was a bit lower. And one part of that was really driven also by retailers who were a bit nervous about the Christmas business at the time in the U.S., for example, to order the volumes. They didn't want to take the risk. The offtakes were still quite good. So are we completely immune to a recession? Probably not. But chocolate in the past has proven to be relatively something that people, even in a recession, still want to buy. And let's not forget that Lindt is affordable luxury, right? The difference between Lindt and the mass brand in terms of absolute value, if you buy 1 bar of Lindt, it's not that much more expensive in money. So overall, we remain optimistic that also in a recession, we should be able to grow volume.

The next question comes from Jean-Philippe Bertschy from Vontobel.

The first one is on Russia. You stated that you are closing the operations. If you can give more details on that and as well as the one-off costs you're expecting this year and as well in cash terms. And the second one is on Russell Stover who wants to ruin the party here, but flat sales with probably some very strong growth in sugarless, so that leads to some significant market share losses in the rest of the business 8 years after the acquisition. If you can give us as well a bit more color on that, Martin.

Yes, Jean-Philippe, not surprised about your question on Russell Stover. I expected that question from somebody. It's only the third one who asked this question, not the first one. So yes, flat sales. As we communicated actually in March, in the second half of '21, in Russell Stover, there were really certain problems with regards to hiring enough people into the production plants, right, in Texas and also in the State of Kansas. And bear in mind that in the second half of each year, we produce basically the seasons, right? We produce Valentine's and we produce Easter. Both of those are very important seasons for Russell Stover. So basically because of the fact that we had this issue in the second half of '21, we were not able to produce basically the volumes that were needed to drive a positive growth in Easter. Those problems have been solved now, and we are confident that in the second half, we'll have a much better work in supply chain in Russell Stover. And we have no indications right now that we will face again the same issue that we are not able to hire enough people into those 3 plants. So this is really the key driver of this, the fact that we are just not able to produce enough volume last year. Then with regard to Russia, yes, I mean as we announced in March, we temporarily closed Russia and all retail stores have been closed from March. We have not delivered products. We have not produced additional products for Russia. And now for the second half, there will be basically 0 sales compared to the first half where we still had some sales in Jan, Feb and March, right? So sales will go down to 0 basically in the second half now or will be 0. And from a profit perspective, there will be, of course, an impact. We are expecting something on the profit side, probably for the entire group, something between 20 and 30 basis points impact from the Russian, let's say, shutdown. And we are still observing, right, I mean what happens there. But for time being, there are no plans to reopen it or something like that.

And you're confirming EBIT margin, on a group level, including this 20, 30 bps negative impact.

Exactly. Yes. But as I said in the guidance, it's around 15%, right? So the second half definitely brings some challenges not only because of Russia, what I said, raw materials, packaging costs go up, at the same time, increase prices. It's not a walk in the park to get to the 15%, but we kept our guidance of around 15% also because we had a really strong start into 2022. In general, we are quite confident about our business. But yes, 15%. At the moment, the guidance is still 15%, including the correction in Russia, yes.

The next question comes from Bruno Monteyne from Bernstein.

Martin, my first question is sort of going back to the increased medium-term growth guidance you gave a few months ago. You increased it by 100 basis points, but it was clearly entirely on the back of higher expected pricing going forward, not really any change in the market. Now in your release today, you again talked about an exceptionally strong confectionery market. I think most of the additional growth comes from the U.S. and has been happening for a while. So how long would you need to see this kind of exceptional growth in the U.S. to possibly increase your medium-term guidance even further on growth? Or what would it take for that to happen? And my second question is, I think you said you have a relatively under-leveraged balance sheet. That sounds like you might want to change that. Is there any material change in the amount of leverage you would want to have in the next few years?

Bruno, thanks for your questions. Probably, just starting with your last questions on the leverage of the balance sheet, I think when we look at the balance sheet, we should always exclude, at least in this analysis that we're discussing now, the lease liability, which is CHF 450 million. So when we exclude that, as I mentioned, we should be at about 0 in terms of leverage at the end of the year. On the liability side, we have CHF 1 billion in loans. That would mean that we would have about CHF 1 billion in cash at the end of December. And we have projected basically just the next couple of years and how will it look actually at the end of 2024, assuming that we can achieve our internal financial plans. It would actually mean that by the end of 2024, we would still be at more or less the same, right? We would still be at a leverage of about 0. So there's no plan now to go to a leverage of 1 or even more. So of course, temporarily, it may be a bit less than 0. But overall, there is no plan now to change the leverage completely. So we believe that with the positive free cash flow that we will generate over the next 24 months, we can actually work on this, right, with the share buyback without actually leveraging the balance sheet at the end of this 2-year period by much more. Then with regards to your guidance question, yes, we have increased now the guidance, as you have seen, for the full year 2022. There's actually no plan to increase the guidance further. Yes, we can see headwinds coming our way, of course. I mean we actually believe definitely that we can see a slowdown in markets. I mean you can see over there a slowdown in markets in Europe. In some European markets, we can see a slowdown. We have HFSS, the new law about high fat, sugar and salt in the U.K., which will kick in at the beginning of October, I think. So there may be an impact there on the markets. So we definitely think, also for the U.S., let's say, the volume growth in the U.S. in terms of the markets will slow down. So in general, we will see slowing markets. And we can see it already in some markets, as I mentioned. In the second half, we will have definitely less strong growth on our Global Retail business. And also bear in mind, as we already mentioned in March, Easter was one of the parts of the business where we had a catch-up, where we thought there will be a catch-up effect still from the 2021 numbers. So that's also one reasons why we had this strong growth now in the first half, but this will not happen in the second half. And then also the impact of Russia, right? So no, I'm not expecting to increase our guidance. I mean because if we increase the guidance, it would mean that we would be confident that, at least in some years, we will be coming in higher than the 8%, right, in the future, '23, '24. And at the moment, we don't believe that. But of course, we are always taking the situation, the development effect. But at the moment, there is no plan to change the guidance for '23 and beyond.

The next question comes from Jörn Iffert from UBS.

The first one would be, please, can you give us an indication what was the volume growth per region? Are there any differences just to double-take this? And second question would be, please, when you now increase your price points in the U.S. and other regions, I mean there will be main benefits going into 2023. Can you confirm that the price benefit in 2023 is again around 4%? And also what do you have for internal data here on consumer price elasticity? At what point in time you would expect consumers to trade down or walk away or reduce consumption, if you have any internal data here. And the last question is, please, is there any read-through learning you have after the salmonella cases at Ferrero and Barry Callebaut recently? Is there anything you are changing right now, just to give us an update here.

Thanks for the question. Starting with your salmonella question, no. I mean we believe that we have very solid processes and there is no plan now to change something. I mean we believe we have the right systems from a quality assurance point of view. We have very tight controls. Quality assurance department plays a very important role in each factory, and we believe that we are really best in class in this area. Now of course, can we completely exclude if something happens in general in a food manufacturer? We can never completely exclude something. But so far, our controls have proven to be the right ones. And we also have systems in place where we would communicate very quickly within the company if something happened basically. So we are confident that we are prepared for something like that. Now your first question was around price elasticity. I mean this is really always a difficult question, right? And if you ask our sales departments, obviously, they tend to be a bit pessimistic when you increase prices that the volume may have an impact. But when we then look at the numbers, oftentimes, the impact, at least after a 3-month period where the market has to adapt to a new price, it's not that big. We see that, for example, in the U.S. now, in the first half, right, I mean the numbers have been very strong, in general. I would say now, not specifically, the market has grown still quite nicely in the first half despite many of our key competitors also increasing the price. So I cannot give you numbers here on price elasticity because it always depends on what your competitors do at the same time. Are you actually backing this up with additional advertising? What is your promotional pattern at the same time? Have you increased at the same time your promotional price? So it's very complicated. Let's say, there are so many factors, so it makes it a bit complicated. But what I can say is that we do not believe that our need to increase prices going forward, which we believe we may have to continue to do also in '23, right, I do not believe that this will have a huge impact on our growth in terms of the total of the value growth, right? So therefore, we have also maintained the midterm guidance at 6% to 8%. So overall, of course, we will have a little bit of a volume impact, but we are expecting that the overall value, the overall impact, to be positive. With regards to your question around Europe, you asked, I think, about volumes, the volume growth in the first half by segment, yes? So I mean, Europe was around 3%; North America, around 2%; and the Rest of the World, around 14%.

The next question comes from Patrik Schwendimann from Zürcher Kantonalbank.

Patrik Schwendimann from Kantonalbank. Congrats for these excellent results. Again, on the price effect, I was a little bit surprised to hear that you are expecting a similar price effect for the full year of 4% as we have already seen in H1 because I would expect further price increases in Europe. So shouldn't be the price effect for the full year higher than this 4%? And what's your best guess expectation for '23 in terms of price effect for the whole company? And the same question for the mix effect, what's your best guess for the current year and for '23? And last question, what's the best guess for volume growth? You mentioned some slowdown. What does it mean? And what number would you expect here as a best guess?

So just trying to repeat a bit your questions here. I think your question was around the price effect for 2022, why it is around 4% and not higher. Look, we have definitely a positive impact coming from North America. And in some European markets, we already increased prices last year. And in some other European markets, we'll increase prices early next year. So it's really a mixed bag of different initiatives of price increases, which my best guess is, at the moment, 4%. It may also be a little bit higher at 5% or so. I would not be too fixed on these 4%. It may be slightly higher, of course, somewhere between 4% and 5%. So that will be that part of the equation. And then your next question was about mix?

Price/mix, yes.

It's around 5%, I would say, when we look at the current numbers. But it's a very dynamic environment what happens with the different raw materials, what happens with packaging. You have seen in the last 18 months, palm oil, for example, which we don't buy a lot, which had an impact on some of our competitors, going to the roof, tropical oils. We have seen milk now. Actually, milk price is going up a lot. And so it's very difficult to predict what happens with milk or with sugar next year. So we also try to be flexible, right? I mean we have some plans, of course. We raised those plans at the current raw material prices. But since it move in the wrong direction, then we may have to shift even a bit higher. So yes, I would say, at around 5% more or less next year. Then you can calculate the volume. I'm not expecting such a huge mix impact next year. We had really this mix, a huge mix impact, mainly driven by our successful Global Retail business in the first half.

Mix for the full year is similar to H1, so around 4.7%, something like this?

No, it's going to be lower because Global Retail has been not growing with the same pace in the second half. Global Retail will come back to a more normal growth, right, to really have this massive positive impact. So therefore, it will be much lower than in the first half. The mix impact will be back to low single digits.

Of like 2% to 3%?

I would say go lower, 1% to 2% maybe, around 1%.

Okay. And that's for '22, right?

Yes, '22.

Okay. And then lap for '23, obviously?

Exactly.

And volume for the current year, roughly?

For the current year, you can calculate it, right? I mean if you say the 4% to 5% and you take then the mix as well, and then volume would be roughly where it is now in the first half, maybe slightly lower, around 3%.

The next question comes from Pascal Boll from Stifel.

I have just one question. Given your new guidance, what do you expect for the festive season? And how much of the guidance upgrade is based on the very strong H1? And how much is based on visibility you already have into H2?

Yes. Pascal, it is really mainly driven by the fact that we are starting so quickly out of the gates now in 2022, so that we have had a very strong first semester. Less so on, let's say, improved visibility on our seasons, et cetera. I really think the second half, we will definitely have headwinds, as I mentioned before. And yes, I'm very positive after second half that the upgrade in guidance is really mainly driven by the strong first half.

The next question comes from the Baig Faham from Crédit Suisse.

A couple of questions from me, if that's okay. I noticed the commentary on U.K. was missing in your release and your prepared remarks. Could you shed light with regards to what is happening in that market, which has historically been a strong growth driver? Secondly, are you willing to share your split between wholesale and retail in the first half as a percentage of sales as well as the growth rates between the 2 categories? And then a final question, look, if I take the top end of your guidance and even add back the sort of Russia impact of 80 basis points to 100 basis points, so assume 11% topline growth, your 3-year CAGR is still going to be below the bottom end of your 6% to 8% medium-term guidance. Is that just a reflection of conservatism going into the second half and the volatilities that we have?

Yes. I'm taking your last question first. No, it's not conservatism, it's really driven by the fact that in some parts of our business, it still takes more time to recover. Take Travel Retail as an example. Even though we are now at 2/3 of where we were in 2019, we are just at 2/3, right, which is fantastic and much better than we thought where we would be now or at the end of the year. But that recovery will still take another couple of years, into '23 and '24. That view has not changed. Let's also bear in mind in Global Retail, we are still roughly 5 percentage points behind our 2019 numbers when we just look at comp store, right, store by store comparison. So also that catch-up effect will still take some time, even if we have very successfully grown it now in the first half. So it is not conservatism, it's I think the realistic guidance. I think if the environment is positive and we are not thinking about the worst case scenario then we are positive that we're probably a bit higher end of this 8% to 10%. And if you are more on the, let's say, most realistic case, then you are probably more a bit in the middle of this guidance. And if you are a bit more pessimistic, you are a bit more on the lower end. I mean still a lot can happen. Definitely, there are some headwinds. And I mentioned in the U.K. HFSS, which is just one topic because you asked about the U.K., I mean in the U.K., we are confident about the business in general. I mean you are right, we have had a very positive development in the U.K. over the last many years. We have grown double-digit each single year. This year, we are also seeing positive growth. Now for the full year, we are expecting, depending on this whole situation on HFSS, we obviously still have a bit of difficulties to understand the exact impact of it, so our best case is that we would be somewhere around mid-single digits or so probably in the U.K. for the full year. But as I say, it's still very difficult to assess at the moment. And with regards to your second question, which was around wholesale and retail and how we actually split that business in the first half, we are not disclosing those numbers. The only thing that I can say is that our Global Retail business had a very nice high double-digit growth and which was very positive, of course, to our mix, also to our bottom line, right, a very nice fixed cost absorption there.

The next question comes from Warren Ackerman from Barclays.

It's Warren here at Barclays. A lot of the questions have been asked already. So I'll have a go and try to ask a few that haven't. The first one is just around this contrasting growth in chocolate in Europe versus the U.S. If I look at the scanner data, Nielsen, it does show like this normalization or slowdown in Europe. But in the U.S., kind of ex Russell Stover, it seems really strong on volume. And both markets have seen mobility improving. I'm just a bit unclear why you'd see a normalization in Europe but still super strong volume growth in the U.S. when the kind of macro post-COVID recovery is pretty similar in both geographies? Is there something kind of structurally different? I know you're talking about a slowdown in the U.S. You've been saying that for a long time now, and it hasn't happened. It's actually getting stronger, it seems to me. So any kind of color would be helpful on that contrast. And then just secondly, on the guidance, on the inflation for next year, you're obviously signaling that things might get a bit tougher. Are you able, Martin, to give us a little bit more color as to what the overall kind of aggregate inflation that you are expecting on either your COGS or raw mats? And maybe specifically, I know you've called out milk, sugar and cocoa butter, but are you able to give us an idea of what kind of percentage inflation you are looking at on some of those key commodities, milk, sugar, cocoa? And anything on living wage as well just to understand how that's going to kick in next year versus this year in terms of the kind of all-in cost increase that we should expect for next year?

Warren, thanks for your questions. Yes, with regards to growth Europe versus the U.S., definitely, the market has been more positive in its performance than what we expected, let's say, from an overall market perspective. I agree with that. What is the reason for it? I mean it's difficult to say, right? But definitely some points that are worth mentioning is, I think, the disposable income is still high in the U.S. You know as well that during the COVID crisis, there were lots of money flowing to the consumers, basically, I mean, unemployed and also people who are working just to make sure that they could get better through this whole COVID crisis. And I think some of this money has not been spent yet, and some of this money is now being spent basically on consumer goods. What I can also observe, and this is not kind of a big study I've done, just based on some of our feedback from our offices. I think in the U.S., in general, people probably still tend to work a bit more from home than in some European countries. And I think people spending more time at home definitely is positive for Lindt because they tend to eat more premium chocolate. And then in general, I think, the consumer is also a bit more cautious. I still think the U.S. consumer, maybe because of the fact that there is still disposable income available, the consumer seems to be relatively optimistic, which I wouldn't say is the case in all European markets also, to some extent, driven by the Ukraine war, right? So I think if you listen to the German consumer or to the U.K. consumer, they are less optimistic than the U.S. consumer, in general. So that may also be one of the reasons why you see some slowdowns in Europe. With regards to your question around inflation, it's early days, as I said before, right, because the markets, those are very volatile raw materials to some extent. But if I had to give you a best case at the moment, I would say probably next year, we'll see another 5% to 7% inflation, general impact in raw. Basically, what happens, let's say, is other fixed costs but definitely something that I would expect at the moment based on where we stand today.

Okay. And maybe can I just squeeze one more in actually, Martin? Just on capacity increases, are you able to tell us how much extra capacity will come online in the U.S. in '23 versus '22? And also in Europe with the Olten investment that you've made, I think CHF 75 million, I think that's on the chocolate mass in Switzerland, how much extra kind of capacity will come online next year in Europe versus this year? Just trying to get an understanding of what's happening on the sort of supply side in the manufacturing footprint.

Yes. Again, yes, I mean, obviously, these investments tend to be large investments because if you buy one additional liquor line, I mean it's actually -- for example, liquor, we had so far 1 line in the U.S. Now we will have a second one. So on cocoa liquor, we are doubling the capacity. But then with regards to the -- in the Stratham plant, right, not overall in the U.S. because we also have -- we have already a plant, the Russell Stover plant. But in the Lindt plant, we'll double the capacity on liquor. And on the lines, on the molding lines, we do this in a step-by-step approach. So by the end of 2025, more or less, when we have finished the project for the Stratham plant, is we'll add between 30% and 40% additional capacity overall, roughly. Olten is also big. That's cocoa liquor as well. So that's also an investment over the next few years. There, we are also adding something between 20% and 30%, which we know that our factory footprint should be okay for at least the next 5 years, overall, the footprint. So we are not planning to build a greenfield or something at the moment, right? For the next 5 years at least, we can go in our existing factories even with the current volume growth.

And next question comes from Andreas von Arx from Baader-Helvea.

First one on the cash flow statement, the CHF 22.4 million noncash effective items, could you elaborate a bit on that? What's behind that number? And the second question is, given your statements on the North American margin improvement of 50 to 80 basis points per year in the medium term, so let's take 60 basis points, I mean this is close to half of your business. So that's basically already your midterm margin improvement guidance just coming from that one region, which means, on the other regions, the margins is supposed to stay flat. Isn't that a bit conservative or cautious given this growth that you're expecting in the other regions as well? Or is that just you basically spending that much money on additional marketing so that there is no operating leverage in the other regions than remaining? If so, is that really the best shareholder value creation and why?

Yes, thanks for your question. I'm starting with your second question here. Yes, correct, I mean based on these numbers, absolutely correct. Look, I think, on the one side, you have Europe where we are obviously eager to further improve the profitability in the subsidiaries. I mean those are relatively mature subsidiaries, if you look at some of the bigger European factories and subsidiaries like in Italy or in Germany or in Switzerland. So we are, of course, working on lots of projects and operations in the supply chain to improve the profitability further, which is absolutely in the interest of the shareholder, as you say. So that's for Europe, right? And of course, even within Europe, we have some growth markets where we are trying to really mainly drive top line, of course, also to work on efficiency but very huge opportunities to grow the top line. We are mainly driving that and spending more behind that growth in terms of advertising, et cetera. But I would say, in Europe, you can say in general, we have quite mature markets, relatively mature companies where we have also relatively high EBIT margins. And we are trying to increase EBIT margins further, and I'm also confident about that. But then you have the Rest of the World segment, right, which you could characterize as the segment that should achieve high growth, right, double-digit growth. Actually, as a matter of fact, nowadays, the environment as of today, the Rest of World segment is quite profitable. And that's partly because of the fact that prices are relatively high in those markets. It's also a fact because in some markets, probably, we have not exploded the full growth potential, right? And when we start to exploit the full growth potential, it means that we will actually create subsidiaries in the next 10 years in some of those markets which, in the beginning, has an additional cost compared to today's model. So we'll invest basically, right? We'll invest with some fixed costs because we need a certain base, but we'll then also invest more even in behind the brands. So I'm expecting the Rest of the World segment not necessarily to increase the profitability each year, right, I mean if we invest in some of those markets for future growth, we may only see, let's say, no improvement or a very small improvement. Or sometimes if we open a new subsidiary and there are costs behind it, we may also see a negative impact slightly from there. So that's a little bit the mix here. With regards to the CHF 22.4 million, I suggest we come back to you after the call and send you an e-mail to explain you this CHF 22.4 million.

Ladies and gentlemen, this was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Hug for any closing remarks.

Look, thanks a lot. I think it was a very interactive meeting, lots of very interesting questions. As I mentioned, I'm very happy that we have had such a strong start into 2022. For the second half, as I mentioned, we are positive. But surely, there are some headwinds coming our way which we are optimistic that we can manage them successfully. And at the end of the year, hopefully report a growth between the 8% and 10%. So thanks a lot for your time, and have a nice day.