Sonae, SGPS, S.A. ($SON)

Good afternoon, and welcome to Sonae's First Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. The call will be structured in two parts. First, a presentation by Sonae's CFO, Mr. Joao Dolores. And afterwards, there will be a Q&A session where you will be able to put your questions. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the call over to Mr. Joao Dolores, CFO. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call where we will cover Sonae's Q1 results for 2026. Besides myself and the Investor Relations team, we have with us Cristina Novais from Bright Pixel, Fernando Van Zeller from MC and Miguel Moreira from Sierra. Let's now begin with the highlights of the quarter, starting with MC. In the first quarter of 2026, MC once again reinforced its leadership positions across grocery in Portugal and Health and beauty in Iberia. In grocery, turnover increased by 8% year-on-year, supported by high single-digit like-for-like growth across all store formats. The sales performance was underpinned by a solid growth in volumes having resulted in yet another increase in market share and a wider gap to the second player in the market. At the same time, profitability continued to improve. The underlying EBITDA margin increased from 9% to 9.5% benefiting from higher operating leverage and continued efficiency gains across the business. In Health and Beauty, turnover increased by 11.5% year-on-year supported by solid like-for-like growth and continued expansion of the store network, both in Portugal and in Spain. The integration and operational alignment across the different banners continues to progress well and this has enabled additional synergies and higher efficiency improvements. As a result, the underlying EBITDA margin improved from 11.6% to 12% in the quarter. Overall, MC continues to deliver strong top line growth while simultaneously improving profitability. Turnover increased by 8.7% year-on-year, reaching EUR 2.1 billion in the quarter, while profitability continued to improve with the consolidated underlying EBITDA margin increasing from 9.5% to 10%. This strong operational performance continued to drive solid cash flow generation and a strong deleveraging path. Net debt to EBITDA reduced further from 2.7x to 2.4x, reinforcing MC's financial profile. Moving to Worten. Worten delivered a very positive quarter in Q1, combining robust sales momentum with improved levels of profitability. Turnover increased by 8.9% year-on-year supported by a solid like-for-like growth of 7.6%. This performance was broad-based across categories and channels with strong momentum in core electronics and appliances alongside double-digit growth in services. Both the online and off-line channels contributed positively to growth, while the Worten app continues to gain relevance and strengthen customer engagement. The company's new loyalty scheme linked to the Continente ecosystem is also enabling higher benefits for consumers and increased levels of customer stickiness. Profitability improved significantly during the quarter. The underlying the margin increased from 3.8% last year to 5% this year, reflecting the stronger sales performance an improved category mix and reinforce operational discipline. Regarding Musti. Musti mostly continue to scale its operations while simultaneously investing in some transformational initiatives to support growth. Sales increased by 16% year-on-year supported by a solid like-for-like growth of 3.9% and by the contribution of the recent acquisition of Zu, which represented EUR 8 million in revenue this quarter. Excluding this contribution, mostly would have grown 9% year-on-year. Gross margin improved to 44%, benefiting from the increasing share of owned and exclusive food brands in the total sales mix. The adjusted EBITDA margin remained above 10% despite the significant investments the company is undertaking in growth initiatives, scalability and integration capabilities. Pet care remains a structurally attractive category with strong long-term fundamentals and mostly continues to represent a key growth platform within Sonae's portfolio. Moving on to Sierra now. Sierra sustained a solid operational performance during the quarter, which supported further NAV expansion. Across the European shopping center portfolio, tenant sales increased by 5.4% on a like-for-like basis with all shopping centers remaining close to full occupancy, while rent collection levels continue to be robust. At the same time, Sierra continues to expand its services and investment management activities, while progressing with several development projects. Overall, this strong operational performance supported NAV growth to EUR 1.2 billion, representing an increase of EUR 59 million year-on-year and EUR 32 million quarter-on-quarter. In Cellphone Technology, NOS continued to deliver quite resilient operational and financial performance at the start of this year. Total revenues increased 2% year-on-year to EUR 460 million, driven by IT and cinema and audiovisuals which more than compensated for the slight decline in telecommunications revenues which were partially affected by severe weather-related impacts in specific regions of the country after the storms that the country faced at the beginning of this year. Free cash flow generation remained strong as a result of the improved profitability and lower CapEx levels. NOS contributed EUR 20 million to our equity method results in Sonae's consolidated accounts in the first quarter. Bright Pixel maintain a disciplined investment approach, balancing selective capital allocation with evaluation of diversified investment opportunities. This was a relatively uneventful quarter as our active portfolio reached an NAV of EUR 321 million with cash invested amounting to EUR 242 million, implying a potential cash-on-cash multiple of 1.3x. Moving on to consolidated figures. Overall, our consolidated turnover grew 7.1% year-on-year to EUR 2.7 billion driven by strong performances of our retail businesses, which more than offset the deconsolidation of MO and Zippy fashion banners after the divestment process that we executed last year. On a comparable basis, excluding the impact of this M&A activity, total revenues would have grown 9% year-on-year. Underlying EBITDA grew 17% year-on-year, mainly reflecting the strong performance of MC but also the positive contributions from Worten and Musti. The underlying EBITDA margin improved from 8.5% in Q1 '25 to 9.3% this year, representing an increase of 78 basis points. Consolidated EBITDA increased by 14% year-on-year, supported by the solid evolution at the underlying EBITDA. All in all, our net results attributable to Sonae's shareholders grew 11% to EUR 47 million. The strong operational performance generated EUR 257 million of free cash flow in the last 12 months. And this enables further progress in our deleveraging path with consolidated net financial debt decreasing EUR 163 million. The group's loan to value reduced from 15.8% at the end of Q1 of 2025 to 13% at the end of March of 2026 as we continue to progress on this deleveraging trend. Our net asset value, notably grew 9% this quarter to EUR 5.5 billion. This performance was driven by the consistent positive performance of our retail businesses, particularly MC, and by the appreciation of a large share price in this quarter. On an annual basis, in the last 12 months, Sonae's net asset value increased 20% year-on-year. On a per share basis, NAV reached EUR 2.85 per share. As you know, our share price has been on an impressive run, having increased 80% in the last 12 months. Nevertheless, the room for further appreciation is still very significant. So we currently have an implicit 50% upside potential to reach the NAV level, and we remain fully committed to capture this potential. This is all for now. Thank you very much. You can open the session to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Juan Rios Peris from Santander.

Good afternoon, everyone, and congratulations on the strong results. So I have three more strategic questions, let's say, on my side. And the first one, following last year's divestment in the fashion division, including the sale of MO and Zippy, what are the medium-term plans for Salsa? Then the second one regarding Musti, following acquisitions of Pet City and Zu last year and what are the next steps in terms of expansion plans for the business? And finally the last one, sorry, last year, you mentioned that you were not planning to do any share buybacks in the short term. I just wanted to know if that's still the case. Thank you.

Very good. Thank you, Juan, for the questions. So starting with the one-off regarding fashion. So as we've said before, fashion retail is not a strategic sector for us to invest in going into the future. And so we decided to divest from MO and Zippy, as we pointed out, last year. Regarding Salsa, Salsa is -- has been improving its performance throughout the last few years. We have no urgency to find the market solution for Salsa so that the current plan is to continue to support the business to continue to generate value and to continue to improve on its performance both in terms of growth, in terms of profitability and then we will consider different options in the future. But we have -- it's -- for us, it's clear that it's not a strategic sector for us to continue to deploy capital in the next few years. Regarding Musti, it's true that the company has done a couple of acquisitions in Pet City and Zu as you pointed out. and that positions the company well to continue to grow in its existing geographies. And so the current priority is to scale growth and continue to gain market share, particularly in the Nordics, where we still have a huge potential to continue to grow and then we have Norway but also in Sweden to catch up to the dominant market share that we have in Finland and then obviously, building on the acquisitions, growing in the Baltics and also in Portugal, where we have already been deploying a more aggressive expansion plan in the Portuguese market. As we've always said, we see Musti as a platform for potential consolidation in the European pet care landscape. So we are looking at other potential moves that could extend the company's presence in Europe. And we have that strong belief that we have a value proposition and a management team that is able to scale its position, not only in its existing geographies but also in possible additional ones. Obviously, whenever we have something to announce in that regard, we will announce it to the market. And in terms of share buybacks, the short answer to your question is yes, our position remains the same. And so we have no plans in the near future to expect to give any share buyback to the market.

The next question comes from Antonio Seladas from A|S Independent Research.

Three questions. First one regarding wealth and Arenal. I noticed that the number of stores have been more or less flat for the last two or three quarters, [ marginally ] is going faster. So this is kind of profile that we should could see or we will continue to see in the coming quarters or not, rather MC and grocery, I don't know if you can talk a little bit about the competitive environment and margin improvement. It includes consolidated figures in the 60 basis points year-on-year. Should we expect this kind of performance over the coming quarters? And finally, still rated with MC and grocery, if you can mention about Easter impact on your figures in the first quarter.

Thank you, Antonio. These are all for Fernando. Fernando, do you want to take them?

Yes, of course. Antonio, thank you very much for the questions. Regarding Easter, in terms of top line, what we have seen is an impact of less than 1%. There is also a little bit of an impact on the margin given the higher mix in this quarter versus last quarter of 2025 in the first quarter of 2025. But in general, I would say, a relatively limited impact apart from the less than 1% in like-for-like. In terms of the margin improvement, a very good question. I think when we look at the trend of the first quarter, obviously, it was quite positive in grocery with an increase of 0.5 percentage points. I would say two main components of this. One is obviously, as Joao mentioned, the cost efficiency plan that we have seen. The second one is obviously the very strong like-for-like growth we have seen. And actually, the third one that is also relevant to point out, which is the Easter has a slight positive impact on the margin in Q1 2026 versus Q1 2025. And therefore, what we expect for the remaining of the year is a lower trend in terms of margin improvement because in this quarter, we have a positive impact -- a slight positive impact on Easter. That being said, if the sales continue at the same level they had in the first quarter of 2026, we expect to at least maintain the margin or slightly increase the margin in the remaining quarters. And the third question around competitive environment in Portugal. Very good question. What we have seen in the beginning of Q1 2026 is, I would say, a more competitive environment. We have seen players, our competitors being more aggressive, both on price and promotion. And so we are seeing players who usually have or were less aggressive in terms of promotional campaigns to be much more aggressive campaigns on price campaigns with fuel, all types of campaigns. And so we are seeing a much more aggressive dynamic in both of these two dimensions. And the final question around Wells and Arenal. So different realities. When you look in Spain, as you know, since the merger between Druni and Arenal, the main focus for us has been on the expansion of the Druni concepts. And our expectation is for this year to open around 30 stores for Druni, both in Spain as well as in Portugal. Arenal has a very strong footprint in the north of Spain and [indiscernible] specifically but our priority is to grow in other regions. And therefore, we don't expect to have, I would say, relevant openings this year and for Arenal, maybe one or two, but a much more limited expansion even at the regions where we want to focus the growth of new stores is in regions where Druni is present and has a dominant position versus Arenal. In terms of Wells, we have been opening stores and doing some extension of sales area in Wells. We have done it last year. We continue to do it this year. And so the goal is really to maintain the trend there and continue to open stores. But if you have any follow-up questions, very happy to take it.

The next question comes from Luis Colaco from JB Capital.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for the always detailed presentation. I think most of my questions have been asked regarding competitive environment and margin evolution. But maybe I'll ask a couple of questions more. Regarding the like-for-like. I think a few quarters ago, I asked you about the robust like-for-like performance. And at the time, I think you still guided for a low single-digit like-for-like, which continues to look quite conservative at this stage. Any update on this view? And maybe also in your answer, take into consideration all the comfort that we are seeing in Iraq and the potential acceleration in inflation. Also regarding the competitive environment and how you're seeing the beginning of the second quarter, you already said that you are seeing some more competitive environment more pricing investments from players. Are you also seeing any trading down from consumers? And my third question, maybe I missed this one. Can you provide us some color on the indirect income results and lower effective tax rate that you recorded in the first quarter?

Okay. Thank you, Luis. So I'll ask -- I'm assuming the first questions were around food retail, in particular. So I'll ask Fernando to [ cover the rest ] and then I'll cover the last.

Okay, sure. Thank you very much for your questions again. So in terms of the like-for-like in grocery in Q1 2026, as I was mentioned, obviously, we had a very robust performance, as you mentioned, of 8% like-for-like. This is comprised of 3% price increase, 3% volume increase and 2% mix increase, which is obviously also impacted by the Easter has positive impact on the mix in this quarter versus the first quarter of 2025. It's true that we have always mentioned that an 8% like-for-like growth in the mature market like the grocery market in Portugal is, I would say, abnormal and not what we should expect in the mid to long term. And when we look at backwards to a longer trend, we are seeing -- we have seen obviously 4%. That being said, Portugal in terms of macroeconomics and mainly the two main variables of our business, the increase in disposable income as well as increase in population that has obviously impacted positively the sector and MC has also increased their market share in this period. And so we have even improved our like-for-like compared to the market. That being said, it's very difficult to predict what's going to happen over the next quarters of 2026. In terms of the conflict and the question around inflation, we are not seeing yet impact on inflation. As I mentioned, we had an inflation -- a full inflation of around 3% in Q1 2026. What we are seeing is actually a slightly lower inflation, though still above 2% in the first weeks of Q2 2026. So we're not seeing a relevant impact on inflation from the conflict. But obviously, all this uncertainty creates some, I would say, a conservative approach from clients in terms of buying. And what we are seeing in Q2 2026 to date, we are seeing a slightly decrease in terms of like-for-like when we compare with Q1 2026. And so I think it's too early to say what's going to be the trend on like-for-like for the remaining of the year and especially because this conflict and the increase in fuel and other prices, not for deflation, but other prices that might impact with inflation in the next few quarters, they create a lot of uncertainty. In terms of trading down per se, we are not seeing -- in the market as a whole, we are not seeing a trading down, meaning we're not seeing an increase in profit level. That being said, as you know, we have seen a significant increase in profit level over the last few years. And so we believe that for now on, and if things don't change very materially, there shouldn't be a significant increase in terms of profit level share and trading down, especially because Portugal is already a market where the private label has a huge penetration compared to other markets in Europe. I think I addressed all the questions, but if you have any other questions, please let me know.

Sorry, just a follow-up on what you said -- sorry for that. Regarding the second quarter, you said that you're seeing some deceleration of the like-for-like. Is this excluding the calendar effect or including?

Yes. So if we exclude the calendar effect and so if you compare apples to apples, we are seeing a slightly decrease on the first few weeks of -- on the first weeks of Q2 2026. It's also important to mention this is a period where there was a lot of extraordinary events, meaning the Easter, the weather was different. So there's a lot of bank holidays, as you know. And so I wouldn't pay a lot of attention or we don't have still a super, super firm view on where we will land in terms of like-for-like for Q2, but I think it's important to mention that we are seeing a slight deceleration in when you compare apples-to-apples on the like-to-like grocery compared to Q1.

Very good, Luis. On your last question, on indirect income, as you know, indirect income is the line in our P&L where we registered reevaluations of assets, namely at Sierra in our real estate division, but also at Bright Pixel and other assets that are revalued on an ongoing basis. This was a quite uneventful quarter in that regard. So we typically have some upwards and downwards valuations every quarter. This year, the net impact was the one that you saw, but I would say it's a relatively uneventful quarter. And it's mostly due to some prudence in the revaluation of a couple of assets that we have in the portfolio, but nothing material or that should have a reading beyond this quarter going forward. In terms of the lower effective tax rate, our tax line is impacted by a number of things and mainly tax incentives and credits that we achieve annually, and these vary quarter-by-quarter. And in this quarter, in particular, we were able to account for a number of tax incentives related with innovation that we're able to soften a bit our tax line in the quarter. But I would not also anticipate that for the full year, you would have a much very different tax line that we had last year.

The next question comes from Antonio Seladas from A|S Independent Research.

Sorry, just a quick question on Sierra. The NAV increased by EUR 30 million, I think, quarter-on-quarter, EUR 20 million are probably explained or explained by the profit and loss account. The EUR 10 million is that we didn't understand. So maybe towards FX. I don't know if you can explain.

And thanks for the question. You are right, it's related to FX [indiscernible].

As you know, Antonio, we typically only revalue assets or we revise yields at Sierra based on external valuations twice a year at the end of June and at the end of December. So in this evolution that you see in the quarter, as Miguel pointed out was -- and as you pointed out, was basically due to the operating performance and also as well FX impacts. If there are no more questions, I see some written questions on the chat, which we can also address. So one of them is touching on the liabilities from Julian, touching on the like-for-like in food retail. We achieved a [ sound ] 8% of which 3% was explained by volume growth. Can we break down the remaining 5% and what was the exact impact from Easter? So the remaining 5%, and Fernando can elaborate more on this, but they were basically -- it's basically 3% inflation and 2% relative to mix effects or the difference in mix in our sales bucket. But Fernando could probably give us a bit more color on this.

No, I think you're obviously right. So what we have seen, as I mentioned, was an increase of volumes of around 3%, which was relatively aligned with what we have seen in 2025. And in terms of the mix, so the 2% was mainly driven by Easter and the different product mix we see in Easter versus other times of the year. So that's pretty much it. Around the impact on Easter, which is the remaining of the question, as I mentioned before, less than 1% on our like-for-like right?

And then there's a question on having deleverage to a point very similar to what we were before acquiring Musti and Druni, could M&A be on the table again in the near future, and if not, would we consider changing our remuneration policy. So it's true that our deleveraging has happened as we foresaw a few quarters ago, and we basically addressed on these calls. It's true that we have a lower level of leverage today and this deleveraging path will continue. That being said, we are still pretty much focused on supporting our existing businesses and their investment needs which might also entail some bolt-on M&A. And so we keep -- as you know, we have a very programmatic stance on M&A, and we keep looking for possibilities to strengthen our value propositions, be it organic investment or through M&A. But I would still not expect any transformational M&A of the same size of Musti, for example, in the foreseeable future as our priority right now is really to make sure that we integrate the acquisitions that we did recently. The fact that we can and that we can provide our existing businesses with the right conditions to drive in their markets. So I would not expect any transformation on our end, although we will continue to be doing M&A as we did during 2025, acquiring a few companies that helped us reinforce our positions in each market. I would also not expect a change in our remuneration policy. And so our remuneration policy has been quite stable throughout the period, and I would expect it to remain stable and with the same policy in the foreseeable future. Let me see, we have a few more written questions from Bruno Silva. Grocery sales and like-for-like pretty much in line, what was the contribution from commercial area change? I'm not sure if you're referring to expansion and the expansion of our store network. And if that's the case, if you look at food. Grocery sales alone, so isolating the complementary formats that we have around our food retail format, we basically grew 8% like-for-like and 8.8% in total, which means that we had an 80 basis points impact from expansion at the start of the year. And then if you take the full segment that we report in terms of food like-for-like is the same as year-on-year growth because we also include the ancillary concepts which in this case includes Zu last year, which we sold and deconsolidated from this year's figures at MC, right? So that's why the like-for-like is the same as the year-on-year contribution. We are still seeing an important impact on expansion this year. What else. On Worten, should we expect positive EBIT this year from each business? It's probably not yet this year because we are still investing in a few initiatives to support growth in coming years, but definitely an improvement versus [indiscernible]. Then another question. Franchising Grocery, if there is a deliberate decision to reduce it at the benefit of all stores. Fernando, do you want to take this one?

Sure, sir, thanks for the question. In terms of franchising, as you know, we have [indiscernible], which is a relevant -- a small part of our business in terms of grocery. The main strategy around the franchise business is really to occupy regions where we typically don't go with our own stores because they are typically smaller regions or smaller cities or smaller villas in Portugal. Our goal is obviously to continue to grow this business. That being said, obviously, the traditional market in Portugal, as you know, is reducing their share in the total market that obviously has some challenges for our franchisees. We continue to support them. The new super chain continues to be strong. That being said. The modern retail continues to gain more and more share. And therefore, the expansion of the franchisees in this more traditional chain is more difficult and that being so, obviously, the pace of growth in terms of new stores in the franchisee business is smaller. And I would say that will continue to be so in the forecoming years and months because the trend that we're seeing in the traditional markets.

Okay. I do believe we have no further questions or at least the questions that I'm seeing on the chats were either already answered or are similar to ones that were answered before. So we have one additional one that just came in. Portugal Food Retail continued market share evolution in the first quarter and expectations for the remaining of the year. Fernando?.

Sure. So in the first quarter of 2026, we continue to increase our market share. Our market share grew about 0.3 percentage points in Q1 2026. I think that translates -- it shows well the continued good performance of the company both on top line but also on the bottom line as you saw. In terms of the remaining of the year, it's difficult to say. As I mentioned before, there is an increase in competitiveness in the market with a lot of players investing more in price, more in promotions. Expansion continues to be an important driver, particularly of the more recent entrants in the business. Obviously, we continued confidence that continue to reinforce their market share. But it's obviously, as you know, we have a very strong position in the market, and it's difficult to say where we'll land in the year, but the goal is obviously to continue to reinforce our market share in the following quarters.

Okay. So we have an additional question. Given our continued focus on portfolio optimization and recent inorganic growth, how should we think about capital allocation priority going forward between M&A, deleveraging and shareholder returns? I think I covered part of this question before, but just to clarify, our deleveraging path will continue for sure because, as you know, we have a strong cash flow generation capacity in the portfolio. And so that means that even with the strong investments that we are doing to reinforce our value proposition in all the sectors in which we operate. We will, for sure, continue to see a deleveraging trend at the group level. At the same time, we will continue to invest in our businesses. We are -- as you know, we have significant investment plans in all of our businesses, namely in MC in terms of expansion of our core network and continued refurbishment of our stores. We have important investments as well in Worten's digitization of this business. We have important investments in Sierra, whereby the company has been recycling capital to deploy to new projects that are highly value accretive for the company. And as I said before, we continue to see opportunities to expand both organically but also through bolt-on M&A. And so we will continue to be active in finding options as we did, for instance, last year in Sierra to scale the company's property management business in Germany and position the company as the #2 player in that market. So we will continue to be on the lookout for potential bolt-on acquisitions and additions to the portfolio, while we maintain our shareholders' dividend policy as we have maintained it in the past. So I think we have given the ability that we have to generate cash in the portfolio, we have the ability to sustain all of these initiatives, continuing to invest organically and inorganically in our portfolio, continuing to remunerate our shareholders and at the same time, continuing to deleverage the group. And so this is a bit how we look into the future. It's possible that down the road, we will have a bit more firepower to look at additional sizable M&A, but that's not our short-term priority at this point in time. So this being said, I think we covered all the questions in the chat and also all the questions that were posed in the call -- in the line. I would just like to leave you with a final remark to say that we're extremely happy with the performance of our portfolio because not only the businesses that have been performing extremely well in the past and most notably, MC, which continue to have -- to show that level of performance. We're seeing some of the other businesses actually improving tremendously on their growth and profitability such as Worten and Musti, for example. And we continue to see the strong resilience and performance of assets such as Sierra and also NOS even under very competitive backdrops in each of their markets. So we are quite happy with the start of this year, and we are also quite positive for what remains of this quarter. Obviously, it's a volatile geopolitical situation, but we have shown that in these times and in this context, we typically excel in the market, and that's what we will continue to try to do in the foreseeable future. So thank you very much for listening in. Thank you very much for your questions, and talk to you soon when we announce our Q2 results in July. Bye-bye.