Coca-Cola HBC AG (CCH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everyone. A very warm welcome to everyone in the room and dialed into the webcast to today's Coca-Cola HBC Bitesize event. This is now the third in our series of Bitesize investor events and our first in a hybrid format. So we're delighted to have both online attendees and participants with us live in Cairo. We really appreciate you making the time for what we believe is going to be a great day. The aim of these events is to provide deep dives into areas of the business that are important drivers of our strategy and investment case and especially the ones you've told us you want to hear more about. We've covered data insights and analytics, Nigeria. And today, we shift our attention to another key market, Egypt. Before I hand over to our speakers, let me walk through the agenda this morning. Our first section is welcome to Egypt. Our Chief Operating Officer, Naya Kalogeraki, will introduce you to our Egyptian business and our journey since the acquisition in 2022 to today. In our second section, unlocking growth, Naya will hand over to Adnan Topic or Ado, our General Manager in Egypt, who will share more details on our strategies for growth, including how we're leveraging our unique 24/7 portfolio and how we are winning in the market with our bespoke capabilities. Ado will also be joined by Sherif Fouad, our People and Culture Director here in Egypt, who will highlight the critical role our people and community partnerships play in our success. We will then take a short break before our last section, driving future value, where Ado will be joined by Konstantinos Vairlis, Egypt's CFO, to take you through the building blocks of our sustainable and profitable growth algorithm in Egypt before handing back to Naya to close. To finish off the morning, I will host a Q&A session with Naya, Ado and Konstantinos, who will also be joined by our CEO, Zoran Bogdanovic; and our CFO, Anastasis Stamoulis. We will take questions from the room, but there will also be an opportunity for participants online to write the question on the Spark platform. And for those of us here in Cairo, we will be visiting the market this afternoon to see our execution in action, but I'll come back on the details of that later. With that, let's play a short video to introduce you to Egypt, and then I'll hand straight over to Naya. [Presentation]

What a great place to be all together. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Jemima, and a very warm welcome to Cairo. It's great to be back with you for another one of our Bitesize events. As Jemima said, we have a full agenda plan and lot to share today. Today is a fantastic opportunity for us to showcase the significant progress we've made in Egypt since acquiring the business in 2022. As you will hear from the team, our journey in Egypt has been one of transformation, integrating the business, navigating through challenges and importantly, unlocking growth. Our progress has been underpinned by a core belief in the importance of culture, developing our people and with a commitment to investing for long-term success. And we're just getting started. We remain incredibly excited about the opportunities ahead with Egypt playing a central role in CCH growth ambitions. Before we dive in, I wanted to set out upfront the key messages we'd like you to take away today. Firstly, Egypt is a large dynamic market with clear growth potential, underpinned by attractive demographics and strong category momentum. Second, since acquisition, we have strengthened the business and built resilience despite significant volatility within the market, positioning us strongly for the next stage of growth. Third, our leading portfolio, bespoke capabilities and strong partnerships with the Coca-Cola Company and Monster Energy are driving stronger execution and performance, which we will bring to life today through the presentations, videos and most importantly, the market visit. And fourth, disciplined investments are accelerating growth in Egypt and creating valuable transferable learnings for Africa that we are confident will help underpin our future growth across the continent. So let me introduce you to Egypt. As you probably know, CCH acquired the Egyptian Coca-Cola bottling franchise at the start of 2022. In just over 4 years, Egypt has become a truly important part of CCH story. It now represents 11% of our group volumes, making it our third largest market, which really underlines the scale of opportunity here. This is a market with strong momentum. Working in close partnership with the Coca-Cola Company and Monster has led to encouraging early results across categories. Last year, Egypt was the fastest-growing country for trademark Coke in Africa. It was the largest market for Schweppes globally and the fastest-growing market for energy across CCH markets. We've also made solid progress on market share, narrowing the gap with the market leader, despite a challenging backdrop, which I'll get on to shortly. And this is underpinned by the investment we've made to unlock Egypt's potential. We now have a team of over 4,300 people, including more than 1,600 colleagues on the ground in sales. And from an operational standpoint, we've strengthened our footprint with 5 plants and 24 production lines, giving us the scale and capacity we need to support future growth. So if that's the picture today, let me just give you a sense of how we've got here. After acquiring the business in January 2022, we implemented our integration framework in a very disciplined way with clearly defined priorities and actions over the first 3 years. This has positioned us with a stronger, more scalable platform for future growth. And as we look ahead to CCBA, we will leverage the relevant learnings from this experience while adapting the approach to each market's local realities. Let me unpack our approach in Egypt in more detail. The first priority was stabilizing the business and integrating core functions, ensuring full business continuity. This included elements like back-office integration, aligning finance and governance standards and implementing our performance review processes to effectively measure improvements in performance as well as execution. We then started to invest decisively behind growth, expanding our cooler footprint, increasing production capacity and strengthening our sales force. At the same time, we accelerated digital transformation, including the rollout of SAP S/4HANA, SAP's leading enterprise resource planning software. We integrate critical functions into one centralized system with the rest of CCH. Post this in a while will share more. Next, we focused on upgrading capabilities and expanding the portfolio, rolling out our revenue growth management framework, transforming the route to market, leveraging data and AI, improving customer engagement and stepping up local talent development. On the portfolio side, we expanded into new and high-growth categories, including energy and sport drinks and worked jointly with the Coca-Cola Company and Monster Energy to recruit consumers, accelerating local marketing investment. Alongside this, we've leveraged the group's scale and expertise across digital, procurement and treasury while delivering targeted back-office efficiencies. At the same time, Egypt and its strategic location play an important role in supporting the group's broader strategy. Since acquiring the business, we've leveraged local talent here in Cairo to establish a CCH shared services center and digital hub, supporting group-wide capability development. Going through this process recently with Egypt gives us confidence for CCBA's integration ahead of us. We've learned a lot, but now that local agility is critical during transformation and lasting success depends on how we balance our global scale with local capability building. As you know well, it hasn't been an easy backdrop for us or anyone since acquiring Egypt. We've seen significant inflation, currency devaluation as well as geopolitical challenges. But this environment did not slow us down, if anything. It pushed us to move faster. We used it as an opportunity to accelerate investments and build critical capabilities, leveraging our strong track record of operating through volatility. In response to rising inflation, we deployed disciplined RGM scenario planning to manage pricing in a dynamic environment and ensured we protected affordability with relevant offerings while continuing to drive premiumization across categories. To mitigate currency devaluation, we leveraged central CCH capabilities in procurement and treasury, moved to local suppliers where possible and drove cost efficiencies. Finally, we navigated geopolitical challenges such as boycotts by strengthening our local relevance, activating meaningful passion points that truly resonate in the market while investing in local talent and communities, ensuring we remain closely connected to consumers. Despite these challenges, I'm really proud of how the team has executed, driving improving results. In the last 3 years, Egypt has delivered a strong financial performance. Volumes have grown significantly despite meaningful increases in price/mix to navigate inflation and currency pressures. I'm encouraged that this organic revenue momentum continued strongly in Q1 of this year as well with growth driven by volumes. Before I hand over to the local team, I want to touch on our market share progress. As you may remember, when we acquired Egypt, Coca-Cola was the #2 player in sparkling, which presented a significant opportunity for the future. I'm very pleased with the progress we've made in closing the gap to the market leader, reducing it from 13 percentage points in 2022 to just 5 points by the end of 2025. This reflects consistent share gains and clear outperformance versus the largest competitor even in a market disrupted by ballots and broader volatility. It is a result of the investments we made and the actions we undertook, which I touched on earlier and the strength we gained from leveraging the scale and expertise of the broader group. Overall, this is a strong and resilient performance that really highlights the quality of our execution with further upside still ahead. On that note, let me hand over to Ado and Sherif to share more details on how we are leveraging our 24/7 portfolio, bespoke capabilities and people to unlock growth and win in the market in Egypt.

Thank you, Naya, and a very warm welcome from my side as well. It's a pleasure to have you in Cairo and to have the opportunity to showcase what is truly an amazing market. energy, the scale and potential that makes Egypt so exciting. Let me start with a quick introduction. I have been with Coca-Cola Hellenic nearly the 25 years with experience across of many markets and different commercial roles. Before joining Egypt as a General Manager last year in June, I have been leading Ukraine, Armenia, Moldova business unit for the 2 years. Prior to that, I have been serving as a Sales Director in the same business unit for 5 years. Previously, I have worked on a different commercial position across the Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia. As you can imagine, that give me a broader perspective on operating and winning in diverse and very often challenging environment. So let me start with the fundamentals of the market. Egypt has very attractive demographics. It is one of the Africa largest country with a population of nearly 120 million people, which is forecasted to continue growing. Importantly, it's young population with about 60% of the population under 30 years. This results in a powerful engine for long-term and sustained consumer recruitment. Egypt also benefits from a large economy with the second highest GDP in Africa and is expected to continue growing at about 4% per year. It is also the top destination in Africa for foreign direct investment, and it's one of the world's largest consumer markets with an urban population of 40% and growing. Critically, there is a significant room for further growth in per capita consumption. Egypt's sparkling per cap consumption of 110 is the second lowest across current Coca-Cola Hellenic footprint. In 2025, we saw good progress with a growth of 8%, but we see significant room for future growth. But the opportunity is not only about scale. It's also about the unique characteristic of the market itself. Egypt is truly distingued market, shaped by rich cultural heritage and diverse influences. It sits in the center of Arab world with a unique blend of the Middle Easterian, African and Western influences that shape consumer behavior. Traditions and religious practices strongly influence daily life and the culture calendar, creating specific and important consumption moments throughout the year. At the same time, Egyptian consumers are highly social. Hospitality and social gathering are center of everyday life with the food at the center of celebrations, while strong passions such as football, film and music create multiple occasions for engagement and consumption. And finally, tourism is a key structural driver. Egypt is one of Africa's top destination with 19 million tourists a year and growing strongly supported by government investment in infrastructure and continue focusing on expanding the sector. This provides an additional demand tailwind, particularly a key channel and high-traffic location. So how we are unlocking this growth opportunity I just told you? The key focus for here has been ensuring we have a right 24/7 portfolio to win across more consumption occasions. Before acquisition, the business was relatively limited in scope. It had a dual category focused on sparkling and water, which restricted choice for consumers. What we have done since then is reshape the portfolio, moving from the narrow offering to multi-category, broader 24/7 portfolio that allow us to recruit more consumers, increase frequency and drive incremental value. Today, we are present across sparkling, energy and hydration with a balanced approach that combines both affordability and premiumization. Sparkling remains the core growth driver. With a wider flavor range and price pack architecture across 3 segments: core, value and premium, we are capturing more occasions and offering consumer greater choice across price points. Energy is a clear strategic growth pillar and a great example of how we are unlocking new value pools. We built category essentially from scratch, introducing a dual brand strategy with the Monster and Fury. The results have been very strong with a triple-digit growth and the category now contributing over 10% of the revenue. It is still in early stage, and we expect energy to be a key growth engine going forward as we continue to build distribution and relevance with our consumers. In hydration, our focus has been on moving beyond basic hydration into higher value segments. Alongside on core water offering, we have introduced Powerade, allowing us to participate in the performance of the sports hydration, expanding our role from the simple refreshment to functional hydration. We are excited for the opportunity in this space as we leverage our market leadership position to drive further awareness and consumption. Now let me bring to life how we are activating our portfolio in the market. Starting with the Trademark Coke, where we identified the opportunity to drive strong per capita consumption by recruiting more consumers and step changing consumer engagement by showing in the moments of the passion points that truly matter locally. We do this in close partnership with the Coca-Cola Company, combining global brand strength with the local execution excellence. Let me give you a few examples of some of our recent initiatives. In the football, we partnered with the largest club in the country, Al Ahly, giving us significant reach and cultural relevance at scale. Beyond core sponsorship activity to drive transaction, we are further elevating the consumer experience. For example, we have launched limited edition collectible can and retro jerseys that creating excitement in store and delivering a more impactful shopper experience. In the music, we are working with the top local artists such as Mohamed Ramadan, who has over 120 million combined globally followers, helping to amplify both brand visibility and cultural connection. Most recently, we leveraged this partnership during the Coca-Cola FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour with Ramadan performing and Trophy Reveal. The event delivered highest engagement across Coca-Cola platforms within 48 hours, generating over 30 million views. We are also leaning into local traditions and occasions, particularly Ramadan, where we activated around core consumption moments and community engagement to reinforce brand relevance and most important points in the country's calendar. And as Zoran mentioned at Coca-Cola Hellenic Q1 results, I'm very proud that this year, we achieved a Guinness World Record serving the most community meals with the Coca-Cola in 1 hour during Ramadan Meal Festival event. And finally, we are focusing on the Gen Z recruitment, prioritizing key consumption occasions such as breaks and meals as well as relevant channels, including end-to-end activation for our 4 university campus reaching over 1 million students. Importantly, we are seeing results. In 2025, Egypt was the #1 fastest-growing country for Trademark Coke in Africa and in the top 10 globally. And as Naya showed you, we are delivering strong growth share with the fastest growth in cola segment in 2025. Let's play a short video to bring it to life. [Presentation]

Moving on to Schweppes. Egypt is the largest market globally for Schweppes today and has a long history within the country. It's a powerful brand that play a unique role in the market, catering very well to the stay drinking occasion. Schweppes is a great example how we are building category leadership while driving premiumization at scale through a series targeted commercial actions. First, we further build on its unique brand edge through local relevant communication, strengthening emotional connection with the consumers by prioritizing experience and social occasions. To give a few examples, last year, we launched the flavor of the quarter campaign, spotlighting one of the flavor per quarter to drive momentum and boost smaller flavor with great results. And this year, we have campaign with the leading Egyptian personalities tied to our experience win platforms. Second, we expand the flavor range with innovations such as apple and strawberry malt to elevate the stray drinking experience and broaden consumer appeal. Third, we optimized our price pack architecture, including the launch of new smaller entry packs with significantly improving execution excellence. Finally, we developed a compelling customer proposition supported by dedicated Schweppes coolers and unique displays, driving visibility and in-store impact. This has delivered strong results. In addition to remaining the largest market for Schweppes, Egypt has been the fastest-growing brand since 2022, achieving record sales in 2025. Let's play a short video. [Presentation]

Staying with the sparkling, let me turn now into flavors for Fanta and Sprite. Here, we are focusing on winning more food-led moments, particularly with the Gen Z by strengthening relevance, delivering superior taste and improving affordability and visibility in store. As you can see on the slide, with the Fanta, we are leaning into snacking occasions, positioning the brand as the perfect companion to light meals and everyday treats. And with Sprite, we are focused on spicy meals occasions where the brand has a strong and credible note. Together with Coca-Cola Company, we are activating this through targeted communications and bold activations, clearly linking Fanta and Sprite to these consumption moments. We've also introduced a new Fanta Lemon flavor while expanding our pack while offering new format for both brands, such as the 125 PET bottle to help us better address different price points and varying consumer needs. At the same time, we are strengthening execution in store with a more impactful dedicated customer displays that improve visibility for both brands. This approach is delivering results. We are seeing solid momentum across the portfolio with the Fanta growing volume by 6% and spread by 9% in 2025. Moving to energy. This is a category with highly attractive dynamics and significant long-term growth potential. As I mentioned earlier, we had no presence in this category when we acquired Egypt, making it an early strategic priority. Working closely with the Monster Energy team, we rapidly built and scaled 2-tier portfolio. In 2023, we launched Monster brand as well as the Fury, the affordable proposition like Predator in Nigeria. This allowed us to address both affordability and premiumization, supported by a range of the flavors innovation across both brands. Execution has been both fast and effective. We rapidly scaled the business to become the #2 player within the 3 years of launch, and Egypt is now the fastest-growing energy market within CCH territories. We invested early in local production, strengthening both the cost competitiveness and supply resilience. We started by adding a line for Fury in 2023 and added a line for the Monster brand at the start of this year. The key enabler has been our ability to combine local and global partnership across football, music and gaming to drive brand relevance and demand. For example, locally, with partnerships such as Fury with Zamalek Football Club, another one of the country's largest club, anchoring the brand in a key passion point; and globally, leveraging Fury partnership with the Chelsea Football Club to amplify reach. We also continue to drive growth through transaction and innovation with a strong pipeline and new flavors and pack formats, ensuring we stay relevant and competitive. This is translating into strong results with the growing volume and market share and the positive contribution to both revenue and profitability. And the business has continued its strong momentum at the start of this year as well. Let's play a short video. [Presentation]

You can see very exciting category. Now moving on to hydration, a key pillar of our portfolio. As we said before, across Coca-Cola Hellenic Water plays an important role in our ambition of being the leading 24/7 beverage partner, enhancing portfolio coverage and strengthening our relationship with the customer, and Egypt is no different. Prior to our acquisition, the water business was largely volume-driven and low-margin category. Due to our intentional actions, water now represents a smaller share of our portfolio, but it's higher revenue per unit case and it's more profitable, driven by productivity improvements, better mix and strong revenue per case. We have also entered an attractive sports category with the introduction of the Powerade in 2024. Here, our focus has been on establishing the category, building awareness and educating the consumer in what is a relatively underdeveloped segment. We are activating locally relevant sports partnership and collaborating with the local influencers, while also leveraging the global Powerade platform with the football ambassador Lamine Yamal, ensuring strong execution across key consumption occasions. We are already seeing very strong results with the Powerade achieving 78% value share in advanced hydration segment, and there is much more to come. Moving on from our portfolio levers, let's go into our bespoke capabilities and how they are helping us winning in the marketplace. You will see the Zoran and I have talked to this field before in the context of the overall Coca-Cola Hellenic strategy. Our bespoke capabilities are a core driver of competitive advantage in [ Egypt ]. They are not generic tools, they are purpose-built for local market realities, enabling us to navigate volatility while driving growth. Since acquisition, we have invested in building and scaling these capabilities. And today, they are embedded across how we operate from better execution, strong customer relationship and improved performance. I will start with the data insight and AI or DIAI, which has been a key enabler of our transformation in Egypt. Before acquisition, data usage was very limited. Reporting was fragmented and static. Access was restricted across the functions, and there was no structural approach to execution or out the segmentation. This meant we were not fully leveraging the scale of the opportunity in the market. Today, DIAI is powering our execution excellence. Suggested orders generated by algorithm are helping us increase portfolio coverage by ensuring the right assortment in the place in each outlet rather than applying the same portfolio across the whole country. In parallel, daily analysis of the cooler pictures through image recognition provides to our BD with recommended activities to improve cooler occupancy of these outlets. We also strengthened prospecting and resource prioritization. Using our data and AI tools, we have identified over 31,000 potential outlets that we were not previously serving. We can now automatically segment outlet based on their characteristics and potential, which enable us to optimize resource allocation. This means we are not only expanding our footprint, but doing in a much more targeted and efficient way. A good example of this is our OwnTheStreets initiatives, which I will cover in more detail on the next slide. Another example is what we are doing with the power, where we are leveraging a new AI model to map local sports event across key areas and then identify the most relevant nearby outlets. This allow us to target the right customers and execute activation where we will have the greatest impact. Finally, we have made a step-change in the reporting capabilities. We have introduced a new dashboard analyzing data across the whole organization and providing the daily actionable insight to drive fast, more accurate decision-making. Today, more than 1,700 users are actively leveraging these tools, and there is still more to come. Looking ahead of the rest of the 2026, we will further embedded AI-powered insight into our reporting, expanding our segmented execution approach into wholesaler and the HoReCa channels and continue to scale suggested order across regions to drive even greater impact. A great case study is our OwnTheStreets initiatives, which we launched to activate outlet using the data-driven insight. You might remember that Ruchika spoke about this in her [ DIAI ] Bitesize presentation in 2024, but this has expanded even further since then. Using AI-led targeting, we have activated 15,000 outlets, focusing resources where returns are highest and suggesting specific in-store activations recommendations to our sales force. The pictures on the slide show how significant the transformation is for these outlets. And it's not just pictures, the initiatives is delivering strong results. We are seeing stronger execution in these outlets measured by our RED [ score ] execution daily, which looks at criteria, including availability of product, visibility, in-store displays and more. We have achieved 36% higher revenue per activated outlet compared to the benchmark non-activated stores, driven by strong single-serve mix. As you heard from Naya, when discussing integration, launching Coca-Cola Hellenic-level revenue growth management tools in Egypt was a key priority. Before the acquisition, RGM decision were largely experience-led rather than data-driven. The approach was reactive and transactional with unclear pack roles, which limited affordability and premiumization offers and unstructured commercial policy where we're not always linked to performance. Today, this has fundamentally changed. When it comes to pricing and planning, now we are deploying smart flexible pricing, running over 80 data-driven pricing scenarios during the period of very high inflation in '23 and 2024, enabling a more agile decision-making and helping expand revenue per unit case despite inflationary pressure. On affordability, we've accelerated investment in returnable pack and clearly defined pack role to drive higher recruitment, frequency and strong entry pack execution. To drive premiumization, we focus on Schweppes and expand into higher-value categories like energy, sport drinks as well as more premium packs such as can. And on mix, we optimized price pack architecture through disciplined commercial policy, we improved package mix within NARTD as well as category mix and achieving a leading position in transactions and single-serve sales. Overall, we shifted from a reactive model to a structured data-driven RGM capability, which is now a key driver of growth and margins. And again, we have more to come. Earlier this year, for example, we launched 0.5 liter PET pack Trademark Coke to support further single-serve growth. Let me bring this to life with a case on how we are growing single sell-through entry pack. The challenge was clear. We faced a diverse consumer base where affordability was critical, especially in inflationary pressure disposable income. At the same time, returnable glass bottle was losing relevance and Coca-Cola was underperforming. Our response was focused and data-driven. We prioritized 2 affordability entry formats, returnable glass bottle in 2 sizes and 300 ml PET pack. We invested in line upgrades, new fleet for RGBs and the deposit system to ensure we have the right infrastructure to support these packs. We improved availability through aligned trade and sales incentive and introduced micro segmentation, targeting high potential outlets and tailoring pack choices to store type and income level. The results have been strong. We see RGB returns to growth, moving to deliver 80% growth in the 3 years versus a sharp decline in the prior 3 years. We built leadership in a key segment of the market, including single-serve, total transactions and in affordable segment. And we have significantly strengthened distribution, growing our entry pack share from 47% to 82% in the last 3 years. Turning now to our route-to-market transformation. Before the acquisition, the route to market had clear limitations. Direct customer coverage was limited, constraining the reach. Customer service level were suboptimal, cooler penetration was low and sales team were operating with the basic tools and limited data, reducing effectiveness and visibility. Today, this has been completely transformed. We expanded to 53% direct customer coverage and double active accounts since 2021. At the same time, we shifted to fully omnichannel model with 100% presale operations, introducing a new distributor model and data-driven wholesale transformation. We tripled the cooler base versus 2021, reaching 87% penetration in high potential router while also improving cooler profitability. This is materially strengthening our presence at the point of sale. And on the sales tools, we moved to much more advanced data-driven model. Our teams now use image recognition for recommended activities, suggested ordering, market scanning and outlet prioritization based on potential while also identifying new growth areas. Overall, we moved from the limited low data route to market to scalable insight-driven engine, positioning us strongly for continued horizontal and vertical expansion in 2026 and beyond. Let me illustrate this transformation with the HoReCa case study. When we acquired the business, we had limited visibility in the HoReCa segment, particularly in high-density high-traffic areas. There was no dedicated team, no systematic outlet scanning and no performance tracking, which meant we were missing significant growth opportunity, considering the size of the segment in the market and the relevance of tourism. We took a number of actions. We brought in Coca-Cola Hellenic bespoke tools and algorithms that give full visibility of the HoReCa outlets in the market. You might recall that Ruchika demonstrated this in her presentation on DIAI. These tools use advanced analytics to identify and prioritize out, pinpointing high-value hotspot in cities such as Cairo and Alexandria. We then designed dedicated routes and deployed specialized route-to-market sales team to activate those locations, supported by new tools to better manage demand during peak periods. At the same time, we invest in capabilities through our HoReCa Sales Academy. This has delivered a tangible impact. We established 35 new routes in Greater Cairo and Alexandria, including seasonal coverage along Mediterranean and expand our footprint by nearly 4,000 out. As a result, HoReCa has become our fastest-growing channel with a 35% growth in Q1 and strong single-serve mix of 76%. Turning now to digital commerce. Before the acquisition, Egypt had no digital commerce presence, while ordering constraint by limiting working hours, restricting both convenience and customer reach. We introduced our customer portal for the direct channel in 2023, which give customers a seamless ordering experience and greater visibility. This has already scaled to 27,000 customers registered, 3x higher than 2024. In 2024, we took learning from Nigeria and launched the WhatsApp chatbot, which is particularly used by smaller outlets customers in indirect channels. It's a simple accessible ordering solution for the much broader customer base, and it's worked particularly well in Africa markets. We saw 20x higher volume versus 2024. Overall, we moved from having no digital commerce presence to rapidly scaling always-on digital commerce capability, improving customer convenience, strengthening engagement, expanding reach and unlocking the new growth potential across the country. How we partner with our customers to create joint value is a fundamental how we do business in Coca-Cola Hellenic. Before the acquisition, customer engagement was limited with minimum face-to-face customer interaction and low Net Promoter Score and limited sales capabilities of our customer and support systems. Today, this has changed completely. We improved customer management with the launch of in-house back office and customer care functions, strengthening our salespeople's capabilities and introduce daily communications and critical activities. We've also implemented new commercial policies and launched a wholesaler partnership program, allowing us to better tailor our approach based on customer segmentation and potential. Through our customer goods, we are now listening to customers in real-time to resolve any issue as fast as possible with our Close the Loop approach. And in 2025, I'm proud that our teams resolved 100% of the customer issues within 48 hours. And this is clearly reflected in our Net Promoter Score, which has reached 62 in 2025, up significantly year-on-year and has grown further year-to-date. I will now hand over to Sherif, who will talk to you about the actions we have taken to develop our local talent in Egypt and support communities.

Thank you, Ado. Hello, everyone. I'm very proud to be with you today and to take you through our journey on how we develop our people and our community. My name is Sherif Fouad. I am the People and Culture Director for Egypt. So I joined the company 6 years ago, and I have been working in HR in Egypt for the past 20 years. I think I was very fortunate to be part of the transformation journey that happened here in Egypt, specifically in the company and into people and culture. Before CCH took over the business, our people strategy in Egypt was relatively underdeveloped. There were no formal leadership development programs, no structured recognition programs and our policies and procedures lacked clarity. As a result, the business was not viewed as an employer of choice, limiting our ability to attract and retain talent. We wanted to bring the people and culture strategy to CCH group standards and embed our values into the Egyptian business. We have a growth mindset driven culture with high-performing standards, but one that invests in its talents. We are focused on developing capabilities, giving ownership and accountability and unlocking speed and agility. Today, the picture in Egypt is very different. When it comes to talent development and training, we have introduced structured talent reviews, succession planning and development programs alongside dedicated leadership initiatives, and we also launched the sales and supply chain academics. We've also made strong progress in building diverse talent pipeline, introducing internship and graduate programs and expanding opportunities for women and particularly in areas like the sales department. On retention, we have strengthened engagement through recognition program and improved employee experience through introducing town halls, team buildings and well-being programs. We've also updated our policies and procedures to be more aligned with the group standards and market best practices. Finally, we have significantly enhanced our employer brand. We are now ranking #5 in Egypt overall, coming from #55 back in 2022. In addition to investment in our people, we have been investing also in the local communities in partnership with the Coca-Cola Company to build trust and relevance. Let me share some examples with you. Ramadan remains a cornerstone to our community and engagement. Our Corporate Affairs and Sustainability department is now in its 10th year of partnership with Egypt's largest NGO, Misr El Kheir, which reaches over 1 million people delivering hot meals, food boxes to thousands of families. Our YouthEmpowered program focuses on bridging the gap between education and employment. Through our initiatives, we have reached 30,000 young people annually in the last few years, which is one of the highest outreaches across CCH markets, and we're also partnering with [ third ] technical universities for vocational training. Finally, in communities, we are focusing on job creation for women and young people, supporting small businesses through cooler placement and integration into our value chain. We are also sponsoring intellectual disability sports Federation, enabling inclusive participation across youth sports events. The people who are here in Cairo will get an opportunity to meet some of our salespeople and other employees later today. But for the benefit of our online audience, let's play this video that brings our people, culture and engagement to life. [Presentation]

Thank you very much, Naya, Ado, and Sherif. So that concludes the first part of the presentation this morning. We're going to take a quick break, and then we'll return for our final section on driving future value and the Q&A session. So we'll break for 15 minutes. We'll be back at 10:45 local time. That's 8:45 British Summer Time. We'll see you soon. Thank you.

I am Konstantinos Vairlis, the CFO for Egypt. I have been in CCH for 24 years working across the group head office and diverse range of markets. I joined Egypt in 2022 as a CFO, focusing on the integration journey. And prior to that, I was CFO in Poland and Baltics for 5 years. Earlier in my career, I worked in finance across Serbia and Montenegro, Ireland and Hungary. You have heard a lot this morning about the growth and the opportunity we have in Egypt. The investments we made have been fundamental to drive that. Since acquiring the business, we have taken a very disciplined approach for increasing CapEx and OpEx with a clear strategy to allocate resources where they will create the most value. Importantly, we have maintained the commitment to invest even in volatile times. This was supported by the strength and the scale of CCH Group and our continuous partnership with Coca-Cola Company and the Monster Energy. You might also remember that we secured EUR 130 million from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Bank in 2024, which further reinforced confidence in our strategy and provided additional support to accelerate all of our key initiatives. Overall, our investment approach has been both disciplined and consistent, ensuring we have the capabilities, infrastructure and execution in place to fully capture the market opportunity and sustain the growth going forward. Let me go now into a little bit more detail on some of the key strategic initiatives that we invested behind since acquiring the business. When it comes to CapEx since 2021, we have tripled our annual capital expenditure. This has been focused on capacity expansion, modernizing our production facilities, including 2 PET lines and a can line. We also expanded our cooler footprint and advanced digital and e-commerce platforms, while at the same time, we are investing continuously behind sustainability initiatives. On OpEx, we have stepped up our commercial execution, investing in marketing, salespeople and capabilities. Overall, annual system marketing investments with the Coca-Cola Company has doubled since 2021, particularly focused on trademark of Coke and Schweppes, as we said previously. We have added salespeople in the market and increased remuneration, critical to ensure we are covering our customers adequately in the market and serving appropriately. And of course, we have invested behind enhancing our bespoke capabilities and training for our people. The other side of the growth equation is driving efficiencies, and we're embedding this systematically across the business, processes and operations. First, on productivity, we're modernizing production, leveraging group scale procurement and driving several initiatives like lightweighting, reformulations to structurally lower the cost base. Operational, we have tightening of execution, improving route to market with the launch of the new distributor model, allowing us to move from the fixed cost to variable cost, having more efficient cost to supply centralizing key processes like the market to cash collection and reducing exposure to hard currency. This is about consistency, discipline and scalability. On the digital agenda, we have rolled out the SAP S/4HANA, as Naya mentioned before, and we are deploying advanced AI-enabled sales tools to improve decision-making and salespeople effectiveness. The result is clear. Since 2022, we have delivered a 350 basis points expansion in our gross margins alongside improvements in working capital. We have also seen resilient EBIT margins despite the significant volatility we have faced. Thank you very much for your attention, and I will hand back to Ado.

Thanks, Kostis. The progress we outlined today and the opportunity we continue to see give us clear path to drive sustainable, profitable growth in Egypt. We have already embedded Coca-Cola Hellenic best practices and bespoke capabilities in Egypt, stepped up investment and materially improved both commercial and financial performance. But we are still early in the journey, and we will continue to invest and evolve the business to fully capture the opportunity. Looking ahead, the fundamentals are strong, an attractive growing category with a significant headroom in per capita consumption, diverse portfolio with a clear expansion potential and strong capabilities that help us grow volume while improving both pricing and mix and driving share gains. Combined with operational leverage and ongoing efficiency gains, this underpins a very clear midterm algorithm to deliver double-digit organic revenue growth and consistent margin improvement each year. And we are not stopping here. We have a clear ambition to become the #1 player in Egypt in the medium term. Let's go a bit more details on top line growth opportunity, starting with the portfolio and consumer recruitment potential. We forecast strong market growth across NARTD, but we are not relying on the market alone. In a close partnership with the Coca-Cola Company and the Monster Energy team, we are actively driving recruitment. We will continue to leverage our deep partnership across key passion points, football, music and food, focusing in particular on our strategic priorities categories, sparkling and energy to further build and drive increased per capita consumption. This summer, we have very exciting activations around the FIFA World Cup, which started with the trophy tour I mentioned earlier this year and with activities ongoing throughout the tournament. For example, we will see here today the special edition pack we launched to celebrate Egypt historic win on July 3. While we see a clear runway within our existing portfolio, beyond that, there is a good opportunity to expand into new categories with the ambition to build a true 24/7 portfolio over time. Already in 2026, we launched new flavor across existing brands such as Strawberry Malt, and we will soon launch Coke Coffee with unique proposition catering to consumers looking for a caffeine boost. Looking ahead, we also have more we can do with our capabilities. We will further scale segmented execution and invest in DIA embedding AI, data-driven insights into more decision-making and expand coverage more intelligently. We have more to do on RGM with opportunities to continue growing revenue per case through premiumization, category mix as well as continue to drive our affordable strategy. We will continue to accelerate our route-to-market expansion, strengthening our presence in the Greater Cairo and in HoReCa , expanding our distributor model and increasing our visited universe fueled by DIA. Let me conclude by saying how excited I am about the future in Egypt with growing categories and a clear road map to broaden our offering and distinct capabilities. We are very well positioned to accelerate consumer recruitment and capture the next phase of growth. This all underpinned by our strong system partnership and our continued commitment to invest. Thank you very much for your attention. And now I will hand over to Naya to close.

Thank you, Ado. Thank you, Ado, and all the team who have presented and worked behind the scenes on bringing this to life. Let me close where I started. We're excited, and I hope you are too, because Egypt is a large dynamic market with clear growth potential. Since acquisition, we have strengthened the business and built resilience despite volatility. Our portfolio, physical capabilities and partnership with the Coca-Cola Company and Monster Energy are driving stronger execution and performance. And the disciplined investments we're making are accelerating growth and creating transferable learnings for Africa, particularly ahead of the completion of the acquisition of CCBA. Egypt is no longer simply an acquisition story. It is becoming a growth story and an important proof point for how CCH can combine disciplined integration, local execution and group scale capabilities to create sustainable value. Thank you for your attention. I will now hand back to Jemima to host the Q&A session.

Thank you very much, Naya. I'd like to invite Ado and Kostis back on to the stage and also invite Zoran and Anastasis to join us. We'll just get a couple more chairs added to the stage. Before we start taking questions, let me just explain briefly how this will work. I will start with some live questions in the room, and please make sure you wait for the microphone before asking your question. [Operator Instructions]. All right. Why don't we get started with Sanjeet.

I have a couple of questions, please. Firstly, on market share. I think you highlighted a 200 basis points increase. I think your competitor has gone down 600 basis points, but there's a gap there. I think probably local brands have taken a lot of share. So can you just talk about how the local brands have been developing since boycotts and where we are on that into 2026? That's my first question. And my second question is just on profitability. I think Kostis mentioned EBIT margins have been resilient in recent years despite the volatility. Can you just remind us of what the margins were when you inherited the business? And is there any kind of structural gap to not get you to group levels over time?

So I think that's over to you first, Ado.

Yes. Thank you for the question. As I presented today, you saw that the gap between us and Pepsi has been reduced from 13 percentage points to 5%. And very well noticed that there is something in between as well. Of course, during the boycott of '23 and '24, the local players gained some share as expected. But we are very proud that how our portfolio hold during this period and we even grow the share. What we are seeing very recently on those local brands that they are on declining amount. So we are very much confident that share that has been regained over the last period, we have the good projection to continue to grow. And looking to our midterm ambition, as I said just in my closing word, we are clearly targeting to be a key player in Egypt.

As we said over the last years, we navigated very high inflation, extreme FX volatility and the boycotts. And as a result, of course, the EBIT margins were under pressure. However, we are very pleased that we see gross profit margins expansion. And since '25, even our margins are expanding. So in the midterm, we feel confident with all the moves we did on the quality of the revenue and especially on the volume growth, put together with the price mix and the category expansion, we will -- and all the cost initiatives that we have made that the margins will remain resilient and we'll see further improvement in the midterm.

Fantastic. Can we go to Andrea. And please can you just also introduce yourself for the webcast as well.

Andrea, Bank of America. I had a question on -- of course, on energy. You showed a slide where the category is projected to grow at 25%, 30%, which is basically tripling over 5 years. Your share is 16%, I think you showed, but presumably, you grow faster than the category. So very significant growth. So could you go a bit deeper, for example, where your distribution is, how far that can go also the profitability of the category versus the rest of your business? How profitable will this key engine be? And then my -- I'll just wait, I'll ask a follow-up after.

Ado, do you want to start?

Thank you for the question. So -- as I present, we are very excited about the energy potential in Egypt market overall. We are -- that was one of the first choice after acquisition that we start with the energy category and critically playing the both in affordable and premium segment. Having said that, this is really the unique, I think we are the only player to play on both segments, and that really give us a solid leverage moving forward. Looking to per capita overall, last 3 years, we see solid growth, I mean, 150% over the last 2 years. But still comparing the Egypt market to the rest of the Coca-Cola Hellenic footprint, we are below. At the moment, energy per capita is 15.5%. As I mentioned, with the solid growth in our business, it's doubled in 2025. And we see also the solid results this year. I think the -- together with the Monster Energy, the team and overall really targeting those local passion points that I was presenting, partnering with one of the strongest clubs in a country like Zamalek and being in a gaming and being in a football, leveraging on Fury and sponsorship with the Chelsea in EPL, which is very well watched and followed in Egypt. I think we are really targeting the good passion point of the local market relevance. And then everything that fuel with our RGM framework, route to market and overall execution capabilities, I'm really looking and exciting about period and years in front of us. On distribution level, we are progressing. As in any other market, there are still opportunities to further growth. But looking at the progress over the last 3 years, I'm really happy and I'm quite confident that we will capture further growth via distribution. On profitability per se, overall, you are very well known that Energy has the highest revenue per case across our markets. That's not changed in Egypt as well. We are very happy with the profitability of Energy category. I will not go in the details. For me, the critical is that we are highly accretive business to overall our business and both an affordability proposition with the Fury and the Monster Energy. So fueling by innovation, capability, distribution, with the great tools that the Monster Energy team always have, future looks very bright.

Just maybe to add on this, like in this category, there's a lot of consumer demand there and the category is growing across. And here in Egypt now, we're in a position where we can play in both mainstream as well as the affordable segment. So from the RGM perspective, there is a lot of opportunity in terms of how we can capture more out of this category.

The follow-up is on your execution capabilities, more though looking ahead, potentially what you could do with CCBA. You think of RGM data route to market, where do you see -- probably all 3, but where do you see the bigger opportunity at CCBA or what needs more improvement versus what you're finding now?

As we mentioned earlier, the blueprint that we have from Egypt, but also the learnings from Nigeria are placing us in a great position to really plug and play or lift and shift the approach overall. Every market in CCBA is very different. There are opportunities in different sort of from a different perspective of the capabilities like South Africa and Kenya, they do have very strong overall base, both in terms of RGM and route-to-market. So as we speak and as we're in the process of getting ready, we will try to see how we can activate some of the toolkits that we have in the blueprint and towards microsegmentation, for example. There are some other markets, CCBA, but they do have the basics, and we would need to a little bit accelerate. So sky is the limit in terms of how we'll be going after, but I want to stress here that it's a very good overall at the moment base for each of these markets, and we're going to bring our bespoke capabilities to really accelerate more the journey there, both in RGM and route-to-market as well as the digitized overall commerce and AI tools, not to mention also the customer development. So this would be the areas that we'll be looking after.

Great. Let's go to you, Laurence.

Just thinking about the amount of CapEx you put into the business so far, there was slide sort of showing it's gone up 3x. You sort of at the limit of the amount of CapEx you need to put in? Or what's the sort of ongoing percent of sales do you think you need to be putting in on an annual basis?

Yes. Indeed, as we spoke, we invested heavily on revenue generation and putting coolers -- increasing the coolers footprint and additional capacities. We'll continue with that. Definitely revenue-generating asset purchases is part of our focus, increasing the capacity, digital agenda, I mean, by further increasing our e-commerce platforms and of course, several sustainability initiatives. So Egypt will be higher than the average of the group spend as a percent of revenue.

And Laurence, if I can add here is that we always said that at the early stage since the acquisition of Egypt, we never slowed down behind our strategic plan, the growth opportunity that we see in the country. And despite the volatility and the challenges that we face, the leverage of the group allowed us to continue to invest and you do see the return of this investment today in the market, and we will continue to do so as we do believe that the opportunity is still ahead of us.

And just to follow on, you've had enormous success with the adding energy to the portfolio here. Elsewhere in the CCH portfolio, you do have alcoholic drinks and Egypt is a market that does have a relatively healthy alcoholic consumer base despite its dynamic background. What do you see any opportunity to bring alcoholic drinks into the Egyptian market? And would you consider doing so?

Ado, [indiscernible] Is there an opportunity?

I think at the moment, I was explaining that the current category and brand, they still have the space to grow with innovation without the current category that we are playing. So at the moment, in a medium-term period, we don't see entering in alcohol.

Yes. And maybe I can add here like when we talk about RGM, it always starts with really proper and intentional reading of what the consumer is asking. And in that exercise, identifying, prioritizing and capture revenue boost is the very first step we deep dive, combined with obviously, the assumptions from external environment. So we never say no. That said, at the moment, the consumer is asking more when it comes to playing and win in the overall NARTD and of course, sparkling, energy and the rest of the portfolio.

Great. Can we go to Nadine and introduce yourself?

Nadine Sarwat, Bernstein. Two questions from me, please, perhaps a more local to Egypt question and then a bigger picture question. So obviously, for historical geopolitic reasons, Pepsi has been the #1 player. You guys outlined that in your market share chart, although the gap is closing. Can you give us an idea of practically how can you overcome the stickiness that comes with investors? We hear consumers gravitating to Pepsi for generations. How can you drive that further? And then my second question is obviously a lot of compare and contrast to other African markets, and you answered that quite well. What are the key learnings. Could you actually detail some ways that your other markets in Africa or CCBA? What are some things that we might see [indiscernible] To Egypt?

We'll start with Ado.

Thank you for your question. As we outlined that we last 4 years or since acquisition, we see the solid progress on narrowing the gap between us and competitors Pepsi. As I also outlined in the presentation and Naya, I will start with not just action, but there are numerous actions that we take since acquisition, and we will continue driving those even more speed, more agile and with more capable team. I will start with RGM framework. I think that's assets that really help us in the last 4 years, and we see the tangible benefits, how we navigate volatility, inflationary pressure, currency devaluation, but still growing share and volume. I will continue with the route to market, our bespoke capabilities and the all transformation that we did so far with the wholesaler, moving 33 depot to the 10 reducing and then introducing distributor model or capability that we are doing on the digitalization and introducing those multiple source of solution for the customer for ordering. But then I truly believe together with the Coca-Cola Company and Monster Energy, the team, I see the great progress on brand equity. And I truly believe the recent years, what we are doing on those local relevant passion points such as football, playing and actively associating with the local football club Al Ahly, Zamalek. Ramadan, another great occasion throughout the year, the most important month in the yearly calendar, what we are doing there with the meals and how we are associating that overall occasion. So I truly believe that biggest advantage also is Naya mentioned, playing between those affordability and premiumization segment, and we have the right portfolio to do so. So we are very happy with RGM, with OTC framework, but there are many things that we can do more. For instance, this year launch of the half-liter bottle that I was just showing is absolutely delivering incremental value. It boosts overall the single-serve mix. And as I mentioned in my presentation, the overall, we are already a key player in certain segments of the market. We are leader in modern trade. We are leader in HoReCa, we are leader in single-serve and in affordable segment. So that gives us huge confidence that we are on the right track and moving to the narrow gap further.

And if I can add, we are all -- we're playing in such a great industry overall, respecting competition and all the players, we all have a role to play in terms of increasing the pie and capture more per capita. And at the same time, of course, when it comes to us on the share gain, making sure, to your point, on the capability overall to continuously focus on what we do great when it comes to execution excellence. We always lead the market and be able to actually adjust because it's a very dynamic market. like everywhere. At the same time, making sure that we get the learnings from what's working, what's not working, lifting and shifting from Cairo to the rest of the Egypt, readjusting the tactical plans. So it's an ongoing overall game plan out there. To your second question, when it comes to similarities with other markets, CCBA. Again, the beauty about all these markets is that there is a wide range overall of market dynamics and levels of maturity per market. For example, some markets are more developed in CCBA versus where Egypt was when we acquired like South Africa. Others are more easily comparable like Kenya, for example, Uganda and Ethiopia. And what's important is that we do have the approach overall that we presented and the learnings. At the same time, we respect the differences per market. Where Egypt is different and where we see every market having differences, it starts with the consumer relevance, which is very important. Consumers do have patterns across the globe, but they are very market relevant. And we're doing great job together with Coca-Cola Company to honor the overall global brand, but at the same time, make it relevant. So this part is very specific market by market. Then when it comes from the route to market, we may have indirect in many markets, but the nature of indirect is very different market by market. A wholesaler or distributor in Egypt is very different than the wholesale and distributor in Nigeria or from any of the CCBA markets. So many opportunities out there and at the same time, respecting obviously, the individualities or the particularities that are set market by market.

One thing to add, Nadine, is that Schweppes business in Egypt is something that truly stands out. This has been a brand for so long that is being so well nurtured and really stands out. You might have heard it's the largest Schweppes business globally. And that's really something that other African markets, irrespective, even those who are pretty good, for example, like South Africa, can really take lots of inspiration from. Innovation of flavors, positioning, brand communication, packaging, look and feel, activation in the market is really something that is very replicable from Egypt to other markets in Africa, but quite also beyond. So that's one really beautiful stronghold.

So following up on that, what is behind Schweppes huge success in this market? How much of it is a historical precedent that maybe we don't have a full appreciation for versus actions taken by you guys over the last couple of years or the previous owners?

Well, one word that comes is consistency. We had a team dinner the other night, and there was this conversation, how long actually Schweppes is such a strong brand in Egypt, and it goes way back to Coca-Cola Company having fantastic brand positioning and commercials that talked about the famous secret of Schweppes and what is secret of Schweppes that somehow from then on kept maintaining this brand. And another thing is that the investment in refreshing the look and feel, even when we came here for the first time to -- as part of due diligence, we were impressed when we saw the package plus bottle with this beautiful sleeve, cans was amazing. So brand part together with the look and feel of the package and overall communication, but done consistently with a great care.

And maybe I can ask you sometimes we talk innovation and we think like a new -- completely new product. The work that is done by the Coca-Cola Company when it comes to innovating in flavors, for example, within Schweppes, which is making it very attractive.

Great. Let's go to Mitch.

It's Mitch Collett from Deutsche Bank. I think, Ado, you said earlier that in the outlets that are fully activated, you get 36% higher sales revenue. Can you just give us like what is the total number of outlets in Egypt? What proportion of those are fully activated? And how far can you push that? That's my first question.

Thank you, Mitch, for the question. On the street that I was presenting is at the moment, we have the 20,000 outlets activated. Out of overall at the moment, over 150,000 that are on the market that we are covering the directly. So at the moment, we are covering the 53% direct coverage. And as I explained, those fully activated out bringing absolute incremental growth versus non-fully activated. The comparison basis was 36% as you outlined. But it's not just about expanding the coverage. And I think I always elaborated during the break. That's one parameter of overall how we are doing the business in Egypt, how we are progressing to increase the coverage. But I want to really stress the importance of active outlets. And those has been the double since acquisition of 2021. Those are outlets who are ordering regularly and repeatedly. So what I'm trying to say also, we are looking to the quality of the coverage and outlets rather than just chasing for the numbers and the quantity. So yes.

And then one for Anastasis because I don't think you had one yet. Ado talked about, I think, double-digit revenue growth as the sort of medium-term aspiration. How does that kind of flow through into incentivization within Egypt? And then if you think about CCBA, which has had double-digit revenue growth coming into you acquiring it and all the tools you're likely to deploy, what is the sort of right level of medium-term aspiration for CCBA.

Well, I think we will have the chance to discuss in detail our medium-term growth with CCBA once the completion is done, and we expect that to be done over the next course of the months ahead of us within 2027. What I can say for CCBA in particular, is that nothing has changed from how excited we are on the opportunity that CCBA has for CCH. And we've always been discussing with Zoran and the rest that this is a great top line opportunity growth. I mean we do expect to bring acceleration in the business. But bear with us when it comes to the specific midterm guidance that will come once we're ready to communicate that.

Great. Can we go to Javier?

It's Javier Gonzalez-Lastra from Berenberg. I have 2 questions. First one is on Zero Sugar products. If you could let us know where you stand in the market in Egypt with regards to those variants and whether there are any plans to grow that in a meaningful way? And then secondly, on the distributors, I'd love to hear a little bit how you work with distributors. What are your targets with them? Do you intend normally to represent a certain percentage of the business? What is the -- what are the key KPIs that you're looking at and how you develop them?

I think that's over to Ado to start.