Wal-Mart de México, S.A.B. de C.V. (WALMEX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. I'm Salvador Villasenor, in charge of Investor Relations at Walmex. Thank you for joining us again to review the results for the first quarter of 2026. Today with me is Cristian Barrientos Pozo, our President and Chief Executive Officer of Walmart de Mexico y Centroamerica; Prathibha Rajashekhar, our Senior Vice President of Sam's Club; and Paulo Garcia, our Chief Financial Officer. The date of this webcast is April 28, 2026. Today's webcast is being recorded and will be available at www.walmex.mx. Before we start, let me remind you that the content of this webcast is property of Wal-Mart de Mexico, S.A.B. de C.V. and is intended for the use of the company's shareholders and the investment community. It should not be reproduced in any way. This webcast may contain certain references concerning Wal-Mart de Mexico, S.A.B. de C.V.'s future performance that should be considered as good faith estimates made by the company. These references only reflect management's expectations and are based upon currently available data. Actual results are always subject to future events, risks and uncertainties, which could materially impact the company's actual performance. Now I'll turn over the webcast to Cristian. Please, Cristian.

Thank you, Salvador, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Let me start by recognizing our associates across Mexico and Central America. Their focus and adaptability continue to be critical as we navigate a demanding operating environment and stay close to our customers. We are executing well on our priorities, EDLP, availability and e-commerce acceleration. It's improvements in these strategic areas that will position us for longer-term structural improvement in growth and margins and durable share gains. Macro conditions remain unsettled. This makes focusing in what we control even more critical. Over the past months, we have sharpened how we operate the business with a stronger emphasis on the day-to-day. You will see in our results that we are showing progress in availability, pricing and e-commerce operations. I am pleased with the direction of progress and how our customers and members are responding. Now I would like to see us go faster. We believe improved performance will be driven by the actions we are taking today as well as those implemented over the past quarters. Let me now briefly walk you through the main highlights of the quarter before Prathibha and Paulo provide more detail on performance across the business. I'm committed to giving proof points of our progress every quarter. At a consolidated level, total revenues grew 1.7% and 4.1% in constant currency for the quarter, with Mexico reported a 4.4% total revenue growth, while Central America delivered a 2.5% increase in constant currency. In Central America, same-store sales growth in constant currency was 0.9%. Performance remained impacted by Costa Rica from a combination of weakened market share performance and continued deflationary environment across key categories. All other countries are seeing good growth. In Mexico, same-store sales grew 3.1% during the quarter. Importantly, for another quarter, we continue growing same-store sales well ahead of ANTAD by 170 basis points in the first quarter. While we continue to outperform our competitors, we still believe there is a huge opportunity to accelerate omnichannel share gains. Regarding EDLP, we continue to improve price perception in Q1. with an increase of 340 basis points year-over-year. This is the highest increase since we started measuring it. This was helped by the continued improvement in our price gap, the stabilization of prices and communications efforts. We see a similar dynamic in availability. In Q1, we continued to make progress in this metric with total availability in self-service improving by 100 basis points quarter-over-quarter, reflecting the impact of the operational actions we have been implementing. Regarding e-commerce growth, net sales grew 14.4% driven by on-demand, while GMV grew 9.1% versus last year, a disappointing figure impacted by marketplace. On-demand grew almost 20%, driven by improved reach and speed with delivery under 2 hours, up 700 basis points versus last year. On marketplace, we're building an aggressive plan to leapfrog performance in conjunction with Walmart Inc., team focused on building a winning customer value proposition, improving seller value proposition, while leveraging global marketplace footprint. E-commerce is our top priority for acceleration right now, and we are approaching it with a strong sense of urgency in full collaboration with Walmart Enterprise. We see this as a structural growth driver for the business, and we're fully committed to our goal of tripling our e-commerce business over the next 5 years. Also, I would like to highlight Warner Connect. Revenues grew 33% year-over-year. We continue to see significant growth potential in this high-margin business as advertising increasingly shifts from traditional channel to retail media. Lastly, we are making significant investments to strengthen how we leverage data, technology and global capabilities across the business. Through initiatives like Scintilla and Beneficios Program, we're using advanced analytics and AI to better understand customer behavior and support more informed decision across pricing, assortment at a very granular level. At the same time, we're embracing a stronger global mindset, leveraging Walmart's platform, technology and expertise to accelerate execution at scale. We're advancing with automation initiatives in our stores with digital shelf labels, RFID, bin location, complementing what we're doing in supply chain automation, including the development of fully automated distribution centers, which will enhance efficiency and support productivity improvements of up to 10% in the stores they serve. The scale of these investments and our ability to leverage Walmart's global capability including top-notch AI is something no other player in Mexico is doing today, and it reinforces our long-term competitive advantage. As we move through the year, our focus is very clear: execute better, move faster and stay close to our customers. The actions we have put in place are starting to gain traction. And while progress will not be linear, we are seeing enough to reinforce that we're moving in the right direction. This is a year of building, building a stronger execution, building more consistent performance and building the foundations to fully leverage our competitive advantages. We are approaching the months ahead with intensity and discipline, focused on converting these efforts into tangible results across the business. We have the assets, the strategy and the team to do so. Now it's about delivering consistently. I'll now leave you with Prathibha, who will walk you through our operational highlights in more detail. Thank you for your continued interest in Walmex. We look forward to speaking with you again tomorrow during our live Q&A.

Thank you, Cristian, and good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be speaking with you again following our Walmex Day last month. I'm excited to now also connect with you through our quarterly results. Having spent many years across different Walmart markets and with a strong focus on merchandising, customer behavior and technology, I'm happy to bring that perspective as we continue to strengthen execution and enhance our commercial proposition across formats. Let me now walk you through some of the key operational and commercial highlights for the quarter. Regarding growth, Mexico reported a 3.1% same-store sales growth with ticket growing 4% and transactions declining 0.9%. With the significant recent improvement in EDLP and availability, we expect to see traffic picking up in the coming quarters. As you know, it takes discipline and time to regain trust from customers and members. Health and Wellness led among merchandise divisions, followed by Food and Consumables, while the North region continued to be the leading region in terms of growth for another quarter. Sam's led across formats. Its omnichannel NPS remained stable throughout the quarter, while e-commerce NPS reached its highest level in March, signaling continued improvements in the digital experience and reinforcing member loyalty. Walmart Supercenter delivered a solid start to the year, closely following Sam's Club with double-digit growth in key seasonal events, such as Valentine's Day. Also, we continued to expand our licensed assortment in hand with trendy topics in the market such as Mario Brothers and the upcoming World Cup, enhancing our value proposition and driving incremental traffic through innovation and emotional connection with customers. Bodega's performance this quarter was softer, mainly due to a transition phase towards price stabilization, focusing back on EDLP, operational improvements in availability taking longer than expected during the quarter and a reduction in small ticket transactions impacting sales of big box Bodega format. In Walmart Express, we had initiated the rollout of electronic shelf labels, making it the first format where we fully deploy this capability across all stores. This is a key step in modernizing store operations, significantly improving speed and accuracy while simplifying execution at the shelf. Importantly, it also supports our everyday low-cost agenda by reducing manual processes and driving greater efficiency in store operations. We expect to complete the rollout across the format to 100% stores by quarter 3. Now let me do a deep dive in our 3 nonnegotiables. First, everyday low prices. Our private brands penetration continues to increase with an improvement of 90 basis points year-over-year in the first quarter. Growth was primarily driven by Sam's Club and Bodega Aurrera Express. By category, food showed the strongest gains during the quarter, while general merchandise, particularly home and apparel continues to represent the highest penetration of our private brands. As a result of the price investments we've been making, we expanded our price gap by 100 basis points in self-service versus prior year, strengthening our price leadership and reinforcing our value proposition for customers. We are also making progress on our pricing initiatives shared at Walmex Day, including extending the duration of rollbacks to 90 days and strengthening price stability, a key component of our Everyday Low Price strategy. All these, together with other levers, resulted in an all-time high improvement of price perception of 340 basis points versus last year. This is a key indicator we use to benchmark our performance against competitors, and it should translate into accelerated share gains in the coming quarters, especially in a consumer environment increasingly focused on value. Now turning to availability. We continue to strengthen store execution through process improvements aimed at driving availability. During the quarter, in self-service, food and consumables, all stores completed zoning and aisle creation, along with bin location mapping, establishing a more structured and scalable operating model. This reduces friction for both customers, pickers and shoppers and strengthens at the same time, our customer experience and e-commerce execution. At the same time, we advanced initiatives such as top-stock practices and new store routines supported by digital tools. Early pilots are delivering strong results with meaningful improvements in total availability and in full metrics, reinforcing our confidence as we scale these initiatives across the network. Self-service total availability improved close to 100 basis points versus the fourth quarter of 2025 on top of the previous 2 quarterly improvements. We have continued to strengthen our inventory position with days on hand improving by approximately 3 days year-over-year in constant currency, reflecting better balance and discipline across our operations. We still see a significant opportunity in this metric within the next 18 months. We see it as both an important revenue driver on top of an optimization initiative. Turning now to e-commerce in Mexico. In the first quarter, e-commerce GMV grew 9.1%, while net sales grew 14.4%. As a result, e-commerce penetration reached 7.7% of the total GMV in the first quarter, up 30 basis points versus last year. On-demand continued to lead growth, increasing 19.5% in the quarter. As we know, speed is critical to winning in on-demand e-commerce. We remain focused on expanding rapid delivery capabilities in line with targets shared at our Walmex Day of delivering 85% of on-demand orders same day and over 50% within 2 hours over the next 3 years. In Q1, we delivered 68% of orders in the same day and 14% within 2 hours, up 700 basis points versus prior year. Operational execution is also key. In Supercenter and Walmart Express, perfect order improved 130 basis points over last year. In Bodega, execution gains translated into a 600 basis points improvement in perfect order and a 27% growth in repeat customers, reinforcing customer trust and long-term engagement. For Sam's, digital sales delivered high double-digit growth with sequential improvement throughout the quarter. E-commerce penetration increased sequentially month-over-month, reflecting the sustained shift from members toward omnichannel behavior and reinforcing its role as the fastest-growing channel. Marketplace GMV decreased 14.4% in the quarter. This reduction was primarily driven by issues affecting key electronic sellers. We are actively addressing these challenges in full collaboration with Walmart, Inc., as alluded by Cristian. Regarding reach, we continue to expand our coverage, now serving approximately 81% of the population in Mexico, making progress towards our goal of reaching 99% of households. As we look ahead to the next quarter, we are preparing for the Football World Cup and Hot Sale, one of the most important moments for our e-commerce business. We see these events as a key opportunity to drive traffic, capture incremental demand and continue strengthening our omnichannel proposition, supported by a compelling assortment, competitive pricing and improved execution. Let me now turn to our commerce solutions, previously known as new businesses that enhance our core. Bait reached 26.6 million active users, generating revenues of MXP 3.4 billion, in the quarter, up 48% versus prior year. Walmart's Connect increased revenues by 33% year-over-year, reflecting the continued strength of retail media. As anticipated, advertising investment is beginning to recover in 2026, supported by strong demand ahead of key seasonal events such as summer World Cup. During the quarter, we also launched Digital Landscapes, the third Scintilla module in Mexico, providing visibility into the full digital customer journey prior to purchase across app and web. This new capability enables a deeper understanding of the digital funnel, significantly strengthening our data offering to suppliers and our ability to partner with them to make better decisions for our customers and members. Within our Beneficios program, we reached 47.2 million active contactable customers, stable versus previous quarters, giving us clear visibility into what drives customer visits and spend, allowing us to fine-tune space allocation and pricing decisions to a granular level. Before handing it over to Paulo, I would like to highlight the strong alignment we are seeing across the teams around our key priorities. There is a clear focus on execution with teams operating closer to the customer and with greater discipline in the fundamentals. From a merchant perspective, what gives me confidence is how we are strengthening our value proposition, improving assortment, availability and the overall shopping experience across channels. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Paulo, who will walk you through our financial results. Thank you.

Thanks, Prathibha, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me share with you our consolidated financial results as well as the breakdowns of Mexico and Central America. Starting with consolidated results. During the first quarter, total revenues grew 1.7% on a reported basis and 4.1% in constant currency. Consolidated EBITDA margin was 10.2%, a 20 basis point contraction versus prior year. I will comment more on consolidated results in a moment. Turning to Mexico. Total revenues grew 4.4%, driven by 3.1% same-store sales growth. Gross margin had a 40 basis points expansion versus last year with higher price cap while SG&A represented 16.8% of sales, 65 basis points above last year. We will go through the gross margin and the SG&A breakdowns in just a moment. All this led to the EBITDA margin of 10.4%, contracting 30 basis points versus the same quarter of last year. With a 3.1% same-store sales growth, we outpaced ANTAD self-service and clubs same-store sales figures by 170 basis points, continuing the positive trend of the last years. We expect to continue accelerating share gains versus the market driven by the progress we are making in our strategic priorities. These remain the core levers to strengthen our competitiveness, and we are confident they will translate into improved performance going forward. Let me now expand on gross margin. We delivered a 40 basis point expansion versus last year, reaching 24.4% of total revenues, whilst improving price gap by 100 basis points, as previously mentioned. This improvement was primarily driven by the contribution from new businesses such as Walmart Connect, Bait and Financial Services. This highlights the importance of our higher-margin new businesses, which provide additional income streams that allow us to invest in price. During the quarter, this enabled us to expand our price gap without compromising margins, reinforcing both our competitiveness and financial discipline. Now let's review our SG&A. General expenses increased by 65 basis points year-over-year as a percentage of sales, closing the quarter at 16.8% of total revenues. Gross investments added 70 basis points, mainly related to new stores, digital capabilities and initiatives to strengthen the customer and associate value propositions. Additional sales are key to better leverage our investments. Now let's review Central America results for quarter 1. Please consider that on this slide, I will refer to figures on a constant currency basis. Total revenues increased 2.5% versus last year with same-store sales of 0.9%. Results are heavily affected by Costa Rica's performance with deflationary and competitive pressures. Excluding Costa Rica, the region would have grown 6.7% with 5.6% same-store sales growth. Gross margin contracted by 40 basis points to 24.1%, with new business contribution not being enough to offset our price investments, notably in fresh. SG&A represented 17.8% of revenues. contracting 10 basis points versus last year behind efficiencies offsetting growth investments. The aforementioned resulted in an EBITDA margin of 9.2%, 20 basis points below previous year. Regarding same-store sales, as said, in Q1, Central America reported a 0.9% same-store sales growth with Nicaragua and Honduras leading and Costa Rica performance weighing across the whole region. Costa Rica is still being affected by deflation, especially in food and beverage sector and a soft consumer environment. Still, under that context, we know we can do better by sharpening our execution and increasing price investments to regain traffic and volume to turn around market share performance from the last 2 quarters. Regarding e-commerce, Central America posted 24% e-commerce GMV growth versus last year, driven by our on-demand business. As mentioned previously, at consolidated level, total revenue increased 1.7% in Q1, which was 4.1% in constant currency and with new stores contributing 1.6% to total growth. Gross margin expanded 20 basis points to 24.3% during the quarter, while SG&A expanded 40 basis points to 16.9% of sales. This is an increase of 7% in constant currency. EBITDA contracted 20 basis points to a 10.2% margin, while net income grew broadly in line with sales, helped by lower tax rate, remaining flat at 5.1% of sales. Our top line performance this quarter shows that we still have an opportunity to improve. While we know the consumer environment is not optimal and we continue outpacing the market, we also know that we must do better to increase traffic. Recent improved price perception and availability metrics should drive higher traffic in our stores. At the same time, we will continue to operate with strong financial discipline, ensuring we protect profitability while positioning the business to capture growth as demand improves. We expect stronger quarters to come following continuous improvement of our fundamentals. Now let me move to cash flow. During the last 12 months, we generated MXN 89.5 billion in cash from operations. We also had a net benefit from working capital of approximately MXN 6.7 billion, driven mainly by inventory improvements. As stated in the past Walmex Day, we continue to see significant opportunity to improve inventory levels in the next 18 months. Capital expenditures amounted to MXN 38 billion, in line with our growth strategy, and we returned MXN 36 billion to our shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. All this resulted in a cash position of MXN 28.1 billion at the end of the quarter. Regarding our expansion activity, in the first quarter, we opened 70 stores across Mexico and Central America, 14 in Mexico, all Bodega Aurrera Express, 2 in Costa Rica and 1 in Guatemala. Contribution of new stores was 1.6% and in line with the guidance range we shared at Walmex Day 2026 of 1.5% to 1.7%. To close, I'll leave you with 3 key messages. First, we continued to outperform the market, delivering growth above ANTAD same-store sales for the 12th consecutive quarter, which reflects the strength of our value proposition and execution across formats in a softer consumer environment. Second, we are seeing encouraging progress in key operational indicators, reinforcing our confidence that the actions we are taking today will translate into stronger performance and share gains in the periods ahead. This progress is increasingly supported by how we are leveraging technology, AI and Walmart's global capabilities. Still, we recognize that we need to accelerate in certain areas, particularly in e-commerce. And third, we remain focused on maintaining strong financial discipline as we navigate this consumption environment, ensuring we balance investment for growth with profitability. As always, thank you for your continued interest in Walmex and for joining us today. We will see you tomorrow at 6:30 a.m. time of Mexico City for our live Q&A session. Please contact our IR team if you have any questions. Thank you.