Sphera Franchise Group S.A. (SFG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to Sphera Franchise Group Earnings Call for the First Half of 2026. My name is Zuzanna Kurek, and I'm Investor Relations Officer at Sphera Franchise Group, and I will moderate today's call. Today morning, we have published our H1 2026 results, which you can find on our website and the Investor Relations section as well as on B2B website, Sphera Franchise Group investor profile. Before we begin, I would like to mention that this call is being recorded and that the recording of the call will be uploaded on our website by tomorrow, the latest. As stated in the call invite by joining the video conference, you automatically and implicitly consented to being recorded. If you do not consent to being recorded, please leave the call. In terms of organizational aspects, we will follow our standard call setup, which means, first, the management will deliver a presentation outlining the H1 2026 results. And later, we'll have a Q&A session. Please note that all the participants are put on mute. If you would like to ask a question, please type it in the chat box. Feel free to do so to answer all questions on chronological order as soon as the presentation of management is over. Last but not least, as always, I would like to mention that we might be making forward-looking statements today during this call regarding future performance of Sphera Franchise Group and that the actual results may differ materially. We encourage you to review the disclaimer that we have included in this presentation, which is available on our website and which you can see right now on your screen. This disclaimer applies equally to all statements made in today's call. We can now kick off the call, and I would like to introduce the management that is here with me today and will present our financial results. I am joined today by Calin Ionescu, Chief Executive Officer; Valentin Budes, Chief Financial Officer; Monica Eftimie, Chief Marketing Officer; Marian Gogu, General Manager of KFC Romania; and Costica Misaca, General Manager of Pizza Hut and Taco Bell Romania. I will now pass the floor to our CEO, Mr. Calin Ionescu, who will share some insights about our performance in the first 6 months of 2026. Calin?

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the presentation of Sphera Franchise Group results for the first half of 2026. Before we get into the numbers, I would like to take a moment to look at the market context in which we operate because the challenges that began to emerge last year have not only persisted, but have become more pronounced, particularly in Romania. Throughout the first 6 months of the year, the pressure was evident not only in macroeconomic indicators, but even more clearly in consumer behavior. The caution spending patterns we observed last year continued to intensify as high inflation, the VAT increase and rising energy and fuel costs further impacted household budgets. As a result, consumers have become increasingly selective, more value conscious and more focused on value for money with every leu they spend. And they have a good reason to be. In June, annual inflation was still above 10%. Since then, we have seen a decline of 8.2% in July, which is encouraging, but it needs to be put into perspective. Romania continues to face the highest inflation rate in the European Union. In practical terms, Romania has entered a phase where simply being present in the market and having a good product is not enough anymore. We need to give consumers a clear reason to choose you over someone else. For our industry, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. When people make more deliberate choices, brands they trust become more relevant, not less. And I believe this is, in fact, one of the most important conclusion for the first half of the year for Sphera. In a market that is no longer pushing us forward, we have continued to build. Consolidated sales reached RON 754.5 million, 1.2% above first half of last year. Valentin will go into the numbers in a few minutes, but I want to underline what lies behind them. A year ago, we were focused on protecting the business, controlling costs and making the necessary adjustments to navigate a period of uncertainty. While the market environment remains challenging, we continue to monitor developments closely and take the action needed to remain resilient and competitive, supported by a more diversified portfolio and continued investment. In Romania, Taco Bell remained the fastest-growing brand in our portfolio. The strong performance of our existing operation in the Republic of Moldova reinforced our confidence in the market. And this year, we expanded our presence there by opening the country's first Taco Bell restaurant in Chisinau. In Italy, we continue to grow the footprint of both KFC and Cioccolatitaliani. At the same time, we have continued to test new business formats, some of which have already been launched and other launched shortly after the first half of the year. And these initiatives are being delivered in a year when we have the largest investment budget in the history of the group. In parallel, we remain very close to our consumers by delivering value for money, innovation and relevant new products. In a market where every visit is a choice, we believe this is the best way to earn and retain consumer trust. Ultimately, I believe this is the message of the first half of the year. In a challenging environment, Sphera has not chosen to wait for the market to recover. We have continued to invest and build. I would now like to invite Valentin Budes, our CFO, to go through the financial results in more detail and show you how this performance has translated into the group's profitability and the way we have managed our costs. Valentin, over to you.

Thank you, Calin. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for being with us. I'm going to talk you through the highlights of this semester. In the first half of 2026, our consolidated sales reached RON 754.5 million, as Calin mentioned, with different trends across the 2 quarters, a solid start of the year in Q1, followed by a more challenging Q2 due to the lower consumption. In terms of sales, restaurants in Romania continued to support the group growth. At the same time, Taco Bell remained the brand with the strongest momentum, up 11.3% and the Republic of Moldova, which stood out with an 18% increase, once again confirming the potential of this market. Here, you can see that although the total expenses increased slightly in H1 by approximately 1%, we managed to translate this evolution into stronger operating profitability, particularly in the second quarter. Restaurant operating profit increased by 20% in Q2, leading to a 4% increase in the first half, while normalized EBITDA remained broadly stable at RON 52.5 million, reflecting the discipline with which we manage costs throughout the macroeconomic environment in which we are operating. Now Q2 was a more challenging quarter from a consumption perspective, which was reflected in the 1.6% decline in sales. However, we managed to partially offset this pressure through careful cost control and procurement optimization. That's why restaurant expenses decreased by 3.2% at a faster pace than the sales, while their share of revenue declined by 1.5 percentage points to 91.5%. An important contribution came from our disciplined cost management, where food and material costs decreased by 6.3% reaching RON 114.5 million and contributing to the improved restaurant profitability. Restaurant operating profit increased by 20% to RON 32.5 million, while the margin reached 8.6%, an improvement of 1.5 percentage points compared with the same period of Q2 2025. Normalized EBITDA increased slightly by 1.6% to RON 29.4 million with a margin of 7.5% and net profit, respectively, normalized net profit reached RON 8.1 million in the second quarter of 2026. All these results reflect a combination of softer like-for-like sales performance, the temporary dilution effect of accelerated restaurant openings and adverse foreign exchange movements. Despite the headwinds, we continue to invest in network growth, strengthening the platform for the future revenue and earnings generation. However, Q2 showed a substantial step-up, normalized net profit up 47% versus Q1, normalized EBITDA up 18%. All this reflects the natural seasonality benefit, but also the improving operational leverage as all the new openings are beginning to contribute. Okay. In the first half of the year, sales increased by 1.2% already mentioned RON 754.5 million, supported by restaurants opened over the last 12 months, particularly Taco Bell and by the resilient performance of the Romanian market, which despite a more challenging Q2 from a consumption perspective, managed to deliver the figures. Despite the dynamic operating environment, we maintained strong cost discipline across all the business lines. Through this careful cost management and ongoing procurement optimization, we limited restaurant expenses growth to only 0.9% and reduced the food and material cost by 1.7%. Consequently, restaurant operating profit grew by 4% to RON 57.9 million, while the operating margin improved by 20 basis points, reaching 7.7%. For the first half, normalized EBITDA amounted RON 52.5 million, which is RON 0.6 million below H1 2025, while the margin decreased slightly by 0.1 percentage points to 7%, with the weaker performance in Q1 largely offset by the stronger performance of the Q2. Net profit increased by 7.8% to RON 13.6 million, while normalized net profit amounted to RON 13.7 million. Profitability was impacted by lower same-store sales, the costs associated with our accelerated expansion strategy and also unfavorable currency exchange rates. Beyond the financial performance in the first half of the year, we continue to invest in the development of our network and in expanding our presence across all the 3 markets. Our expansion strategy continued to gain momentum throughout the first half of the year with a steady cadence of restaurant openings across Q1 and Q2 as well as new development projects launched shortly after the end of the period. So in Q1 '26, we opened 4 new restaurants, 3 KFC restaurants, one in Bucharest, one in Balti in Republic of Moldova and one in San Dona di Piave in Italy. And one Cioccolatitaliani as well in Italy in Genova in Waterfront Mall. In Q2, we continued our expansion by opening the first Taco Bell in Republic of Moldova, entering this market, as Calin mentioned in the beginning, i.e., in Chisinau and bringing the Sphera network to 176 restaurants at the end of the reporting period. Following the end of Q2, the development continued with the first KFC Delivery Carry Out format in Romania for us, the new KFC drive-thru in Bran and 2 seasonal restaurants in Costinesti in Nibiru project for the brands KFC and Taco Bell. Now our portfolio strategy is built around maximizing the potential of each brand through targeted optimization initiatives, selective expansion and continued diversification in order to ensure a balanced and sustainable growth trajectory. We start with Pizza Hut, where the priority is to optimize the profitability. We have already closed 7 restaurants that were very below expectations. And we continue to adjust the cost structures of the remaining network in order to be able to bring business towards breakeven. For Taco Bell, the direction, it's exactly the opposite, full expansion. We took the brand outside Romania for the first time by expanding the franchise in the Republic of Moldova. And we have the first restaurant in Chisinau in the most important mall where we opened at the end of the month of April. Through Wagamama, we are expanding Sphera into a new consumer category, the pan-Asian fast casual dine-in. Thereby, diversification, it's a core asset for our portfolio beyond the segments in which we are already present with the other brands. Turning to our 2026 budget. All the figures in the budget were built on the assumptions regarding a certain demand inflation and fiscal environment that reflected the condition prevailing at the time of the approval. Since then, the market environment has evolved, affecting those underlying assumptions. In Romania, our largest go-to market, inflation remained above 10% in the first half of the year compared with approximately 6% assuming the budget. The fiscal and the political uncertainty also remains, making its potential impact on disposable income and consumer sentiment extremely difficult to predict. We have responded with tighter cost control and much greater operational flexibility while continuing to assess different scenarios. Any update to our 2026 outlook will be communicated in line with the disclosure requirements, if necessary. In the meantime, we remain very focused on the factors within our control, strengthening the business today and preparing it to capture all the opportunities as the market visibility improves. This was from my side. Thank you very much. And now we're going to brand performance, and I will pass the word to my colleagues.

Thank you, Vale. I'm Marian Gogu, General Manager of KFC Romania. Good afternoon, and thank you for being here today. I will share with you the evolution from a sales perspective for the KFC brand across Romania, Italy and the Republic of Moldova, the 3 markets Sphera operates in. KFC Romania. The second quarter of this year was marked by a more cautious consumer environment, particularly in Romania, where consumer sentiment continued to be affected by fiscal uncertainty and the ongoing political transition. Nonetheless, KFC remains the group's leading brand, contributing with 85.8% of total restaurant sales during the quarter. Westwood Romania, the group's largest contributor, remained resilient with same-store sales declining by 2% year-on-year, while all store sales decreasing by 1.6% year-on-year, supported by the contribution of newly opened restaurants. Now turning to Italy. KFC Italy faced a challenging quarter with same-store sales declining by 15.9% year-on-year and all store sales decreasing by 9.8% year-on-year. The performance was influenced by softer market conditions in Italy alongside the impact of restaurant closures, including Verona Piazza delle Erbe and Bari Central Station. The group remains focused on optimizing the Italian network while further strengthening the long-term positioning of the KFC brand. Moving on to Moldova. KFC Moldova recorded the strongest performance within the group's markets with all store sales increasing by 43.9% year-on-year in Q2 this year and same-store sales returning to growth, increasing by 1.4% year-on-year. The performance was driven by the reopening of the relocated KFC Chisinau Moldova early in the second quarter as well as the contribution of newly opened KFC Balti. The evolution confirms the continued potential of the Moldovan market and the strength of the KFC brand locally. This is all from my side. Thank you.

Good afternoon. I'm Costica Misaca, General Manager of Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and I will walk you through the latest sales performance of Pizza Hut in Romania and also Taco Bell in Romania and in Republic of Moldova. I will start with Pizza Hut. As my colleagues have already highlighted, we continue to operate in a challenging environment and the pressures facing the broader HoReCa industry clearly reflect this reality. . As a result, Pizza Hut continued to face headwinds in Q2 2026 with all store sales declining by 9.5% year-on-year. The performance reflects ongoing pressures in the casual dining segment where consumers demand remains more sensitive to discretionary spending pressures. As part of our commitment to sustainable value creation, we continue to implement the operational efficiency and network optimization measures introduced in Q1 2026. This includes the closure of 7 underperforming units, a necessary step towards improving the brand's long-term profitability. At this stage, 6 of the 7 units planned for closure have already been closed. Moving on to Taco Bell. Taco Bell continued to be a standout performer within the group's portfolio, delivering all store sales growth of 5.3% in Romania and 10.4% year-on-year in Q2 2026, supported by the contribution of the recently opened restaurant in Moldova. However, the same-store sales declined by 8% year-on-year compared with the high sales performance recorded throughout 2025. Nevertheless, the brand maintained its growth trajectory through ongoing network expansion, including the opening of the first Taco Bell restaurant in Republic of Moldova, which further strengthened its contribution to the group's revenues. That is all from my side. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm glad to be here again to share the evolution of our business from a marketing perspective in the first semester of 2026. Consumer behavior remained cautious and the challenging economic and political environment -- amid the challenging economic and political environment in Romania, which continued to weigh on sentiment, influence purchasing decisions and reinforce a more prudent spending behavior. Therefore, our marketing strategy remained consistent with the approach adopted in the first quarter, focusing on value-driven campaigns and platforms while identifying the optimal brand-specific mix to drive transactions and support continued sales growth. I will highlight some of the key product innovations and marketing campaigns introduced across each of our brands during the second quarter of 2026, and I will start with KFC. At KFC, 5 campaigns stood out with a focus on value and innovation. Tuesday Bucket, as its name suggests, the disruptive value campaign runs exclusively on Tuesdays. Given its strong consumer appeal, we reintroduced it with the objective of increasing transactions, expanding the offer for the first time to include small, medium and large buckets with prices starting at RON 20. Moving on to BOGO, buy one get one free, running exclusively on Wednesdays across KFC restaurants and the KFC app. This initiative marked the second wave of our 2026 disruptive 360 value campaign, supported by a new creative platform and refreshed one plus one free offers. The campaign was designed to drive higher transaction volumes, both in store and through digital channels. Moving on to the Crispy Bagel, launched as an innovation platform, it's digital-oriented campaign focused on the introduction of the bagel, a new format for the brand. Consumers could choose between 2 recipes, crunchy and creamy, both offered in spicy and non-spicy versions. The key objectives were to drive transaction growth and increase consumption frequency among heavy users while broadening the brand's appeal to new and light users looking for fresh and innovative product experiences. Pizza Twister was the second innovation campaign, a digital-led initiative centered on 2 new recipes, Pepperoni and cheese, available in both spicy and non-spicy versions. Combining ingredients from the world of Pizza and KFC chicken, the platform aimed to drive sales and transactions growth through increased frequency amid heavy users and by attracting new and light users seeking innovative flavor combinations. The campaign also featured the dedicated Gen Z layer, the Twister drama developed under our KFC platform. Pui Burger was a survey campaign of the quarter, 360 value-led innovation built around one of our most successful value burger platforms from previous years. The campaign featured a new range of value burgers offered at a highly competitive entry price of RON 8.9. Its main objectives were to drive sales and transactions by increasing visit frequency among existing users while also attracting light users through a compelling value proposition. The campaign was further supported by dedicated digital activation designs to boost engagement and stimulate purchase intent. A few words about our KFC app. We continue to build deal-of-the-day platform by relaunching awareness and the app download initiatives supported by exclusive daily in-app offers and targeted value campaigns aimed at expanding the app user base. And now moving on to Pizza Hut. At Pizza Hut, we had a very busy quarter marked by a strong emphasis on value-add innovation as key sales drivers. Cheeseburger Crown was a main campaign. We launched the Crown Crust filled with mini cheeseburgers. This innovation was launched with a focus of increasing the average check on the loyalist client base, but also attracting lapsed consumers. Around the World was our second main campaign of the year, and it was built around product innovation, including 8 pizza recipes inspired by 8 different countries under a culinary travel concept. The campaign was designed to strengthen brand relevance, generate product trial and provide a compelling reason to lapsed consumers to reconsider and revisit Pizza Hut. The Thursday 1 plus 1 small pizza was launched to respond to increased consumer price sensitivity and support traffic. So Pizza Hut continued its Thursday only buy one get one free offer on small pizza. The limited weekly availability was designed to create urgency while providing a strong and easy-to-understand value perception with the primary objective of driving transactions. Since it was football season in Q2, we launched football dedicated offers and extended our delivery hours in Bucharest. To capitalize on the summer football occasion, Pizza Hut introduced 3 dedicated pizza and beer deals with a particular focus on abundant value business bundles. In Bucharest, delivery hours were extended until the 2:00 a.m. to capture incremental late night demand generated by matches taking place later in the evening. That was for Pizza Hut. Now moving on to Taco Bell. For Taco Bell, we rolled out 4 campaigns designed to broaden customer choice and drive sales in the second quarter. Lay's Crunchwrap. We launched a new Lil' Crunchwrap project in partnership with Lay's, combining one of Taco Bell's most recognizable products with an added crunchy twist, priced at RON 12.9 to encourage trial. The campaign was supported through an integrated media approach across outdoor, digital and social media channels, CRM and delivery platforms. For value, at Taco Bell in Q2, we had 2 value platforms, Mass Menu and the Bell Combo. So value remains a key pillar of our strategy with initiative designed to stimulate traffic and encourage more frequent visits. During the quarter, we extended mass menu to Bucharest because it was available only outside of Bucharest previously at RON 21.9 on and continue to offer the Bell combo at RON 9.9 as an affordable option for budget-conscious consumers. The platforms were prompted through outdoor, digital and social media channels, the Taco Bell app and in-restaurant communication. We also celebrated the National Burrito Day, which is a key Taco Bell occasion. So we activated a one plus one offer on the Cheesy Bacon Fries Burrito. The campaign was designed to drive traffic, encourage product trial and attract both existing and new consumers, supported by dedicated activations across digital channels, social media and mobile app. To celebrate Children's Day, we also had a special offer, one plus one on our churros, a very popular dessert. That was for the marketing activity. Moving on to delivery. I'll only say a few words here. In Q2 2026, delivery remains an important component for Sphera, accounting for 20% of total group sales, similar to both Q2 2025 and Q1 2026. In absolute terms, delivery sales decreased by 2.3% year-on-year, reaching RON 74.6 million, broadly reflecting the overall evolution of group sales during the quarter. Despite the more cautious consumer environment, delivery continued to represent a resilient and structurally important channel across Sphera's portfolio. So that was it from me. Thank you.

Thank you, Monica. This concludes the presentation of our results for the first half of 2026. We are now ready for a Q&A, but we will give you 1 to 2 minutes to questions. [Operator Instructions].

Thank you for your questions. We can now start the Q&A. The first question is, KFC Romania delivered an 18.3% year-on-year increase in restaurant operating profit in H1 despite a much softer sales environment. What were the main drivers of that margin improvement? And which of those are structural rather than temporary.

So I will take this question. So basically, there are 2 main cost categories that help us to deliver this performance. The first one is related to cost of goods sold, where our focus on being very tough in renegotiating all the contracts and securing as low as possible cost for the materials help us to improve the margin. And the second one is related to cost of labor, where we have done the maximum optimization possible in order to calibrate the cost of labor with the new level of sales. So basically, here, we can speak about flexibility that we have embedded in order to align with the current performance. Definitely, if it is to judge the structure versus the temporary approach on the 2 ones, we can speak about a temporary one in cost of labor because this is nothing to be replicated. It's done on milestones, still have flexibility, but it's not a direct -- totally elastic flexibility. Though the cost of goods sold, it's basically a continuing process, as you already know in our company. So here, it's rather a structural one because we'll continue to work even harder to be able to secure as low as possible cost of raw materials in our companies.

Thank you, Valentin. The next question is about Taco Bell. Taco Bell Romania restaurant operating profit declined to RON 1.5 million in the first half of 2026 from RON 4.7 million a year earlier. Would you attribute to network expansion and the ramp-up of recently opened restaurants. How much of the profitability decline is related to these ramp-up costs? And when should we expect margins to normalize? .