Fomento Económico Mexicano - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day and welcome to today's FEMSA's Q4 2024 results conference call. Throughout today's presentation, all participants will be in the listen-only mode. Later, there will be an opportunity to ask questions, and instructions will be provided at that time. This meeting is being recorded, and now I'd like to hand the call over to Juan Fonseca. Please go ahead, sir.

Juan Fonseca (Head of Investor Relations)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to FEMSA's Q4 and full year 2024 results conference call. Today, we are joined by José Antonio Fernández Carvajal, FEMSA's CEO and Chairman of the Board, Martín Arias, our CFO, and Jorge Collazo, who heads Coca-Cola FEMSA's investor relations team. The plan for today is for José Antonio to open the conversation with some high-level comments on the full year results, some thoughts on our capital allocation framework, as well as a quick update on management succession. Martín will then cover our quarterly results, as well as provide more detail on our capital return plans. Finally, we will turn it back to José Antonio for some closing remarks and then open the call for your questions. José Antonio, please go ahead.

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

Thank you, Juan. Good morning, everyone. Let me begin by talking about FEMSA's results for the full year 2024. As you have seen in our report, our consolidated numbers show double-digit growth across the earnings line items of the income statement, as well as notable margin expansion. These numbers reflect very strong performances at our two largest business units, Proximity Americas and Coca-Cola FEMSA, coupled with solid delivery from the rest of the operations. And while the numbers are important as we track our progress, I believe there are just as important messages underlying these results. Everybody talks about focusing on profitable growth, but it takes time, effort, and skill to build the platforms and the capability to achieve that kind of compounding on a sustained long-term basis.

For example, when we look at what is driving growth at OXXO in Mexico, while it is important that we keep opening high-productivity new locations, which the team managed to excel at in 2024, it is just as important to look at the new capabilities related to data analytics, segmentation, and revenue management. These capabilities enable us to adapt our value proposition to an expanding variety of consumer environments, each requiring a different assortment and pricing combination. Similarly, we are increasingly able to develop and offer more sophisticated promotional activities to our supplier partners, as well as provide an ever-growing list of services that give our customers more reasons to visit and more needs that they can satisfy at our stores, driving and sustaining our performance.

And then, of course, and just as importantly, we transfer many of these capabilities to other territories like Europe, the United States, and Brazil, and other formats such as Bara and our Caffenio drive-through. Likewise, on the Coca-Cola FEMSA front, it has been remarkable to watch the constant evolution of our digital capabilities and how essential they have become to the growth and momentum of the business. Just as important is how these digital capabilities are evolving into a platform that will allow us to develop new lines of business and will help us maintain our leadership position in key categories, as well as achieve leadership in new ones. Across our business units, we are facing rich opportunity sets, and our teams are performing at a high level, which makes us optimistic as we look ahead. The second topic I wanted to discuss today is FEMSA Forward.

Two years after its launch, today, we are almost finished with the planned divestitures, having monetized and aggregated headline amount of approximately $10.7 billion as we simplified our structure and focused on our core business units. On the capital return front, in addition to paying the related taxes, we used approximately $1.7 billion to repurchase our debt under attractive terms, and during 2024, we deployed approximately MXN 44.8 billion or $2.5 billion at the exchange rate at the time of payment in a combination of ordinary dividends of MXN 14.4 billion, extraordinary dividends of MXN 10.1 billion, and share buyback of MXN 20.3 billion. However, we are still far from our leverage objective of two times net debt to EBITDA ex-corp.

Martín will provide you with more details in a few minutes, but assuming no extraordinary circumstances beyond our control, and in order to maximize the efficiency of our balance sheet, our plans to 2025 and 2026 involve accelerating the pace of our capital returns to reach that steady-state leverage in a disciplined fashion that takes into account rates, market dynamics, and geopolitical perspectives. Our plans for 2025, to be presented at the next shareholders' meeting, are to deploy, including ordinary dividends, also almost MXN 66 billion or $3.2 billion at current exchange rates over the next 12 months. This amount includes MXN 14.8 billion of ordinary dividends and MXN 51.2 billion of extraordinary dividends and buybacks, representing a 10.4% yield for shareholders at the current market capitalization. Our current plans for 2026 are to deploy, including ordinary dividends, almost MXN 41.4 billion or $2 billion at current exchange rates.

This amount assumes an amount equal to this year's ordinary dividends of MXN 14.8 billion, plus a minimum of MXN 26.6 billion of extraordinary dividends, totaling an additional 6.4% in yield for shareholders at the current market capitalization. The total sum of the amounts allocated and committed for the next two-year period, between 2025 and 2026, is MXN 107.4 billion or nearly $5.3 billion at current exchange rates, which represents approximately 17% of the market cap of FEMSA as of the close of yesterday. These actions should significantly help us reach our target level ratio by the end of 2026. As we have stated before, our broader capital allocation strategy aims to drive our long-term intrinsic value per share, as we understand that having an efficient balance sheet and returning capital to shareholders plays a key role in that strategy.

Finally, as you probably read in our release and in line with the time frame we discussed on this call last year, during 2025, we plan to carry out the succession process for the position of CEO of FEMSA, which I hold on an interim basis. Since late last year, the Corporate Practices and Nominations Committee of FEMSA's Board of Directors has been diligently working on designing and developing the actions required for this important process. During the board meeting yesterday, this committee recommended the creation of a special committee of the board to oversee this process throughout this year. The board approved this recommendation. The special committee will consist of seven directors, each of whom are independent. The special committee will be chaired by Ricardo Saldívar, who is the chairman of the Corporate Practices and Nominations Committee of FEMSA.

The committee will include all the other members of the committee: Gibu Thomas, Ricardo Guajardo, and Jaime El Koury. And in addition to them, the following directors will also form part of this special committee: Michael Larson, Elane Stock, and Olga González. Upon completion of their evaluation, the special committee will submit its recommendation to the board of directors. We will communicate the board's decision at the appropriate time. In designing and executing this process, as in prior CEO designations, we will have adhered to the highest corporate standards. We have engaged a leading global firm with extensive experience in such matters, along with others from various specialties. And with that, let me turn it over to Martín.

Martín Arias (CFO)

Thank you, José Antonio. Good morning, everyone. Let me start by talking about the consolidated results for the Q4 of 2024. In the quarter, we achieved total revenue growth of 12.8%, while operating income rose 31.5% compared to the previous year, reflecting strong performance across our business units. Net consolidated income increased by 78.3% to nearly MXN 11 billion, mainly driven by a non-cash change gain of MXN 2.7 billion compared to a loss of MXN 6.3 billion of last year related to FEMSA's US dollar-denominated cash position, which was positively impacted by the depreciation of the Mexican peso, and it was also a result of a higher net income from discontinued operations of MXN 3.3 billion, reflecting a gain from the sale of Imbera.

Turning to our operating results, starting with Proximity Americas division, we should note that we began consolidating our U.S. operations on October 1st, 2024, reflecting a full quarter of results within the division. For clarity, we are including in our earnings release a column with the organic growth rates that exclude the U.S. results. In the Q1 of 2025, we will seek to add additional detail in our disclosure to provide greater visibility on OXXO México and our proximity businesses outside of Mexico. Let me begin by focusing on same-store sales performance for the quarter. Average traffic contracted 2.8%, impacted by a sustained weaker consumer environment that has been present since the mid-year elections, and we expect will carry over to part of this year.

Offsetting the decline in traffic, the average ticket increased by 6.8%, driven by our strong commercial capabilities, including segmentation, promotion, and revenue management, as well as an increase in prices by our suppliers of key food and beverage categories. The resulting growth in same-store sales was 3.8%. Total revenues for Proximity Americas grew by 13.2%, or 8.1% on an organic basis, driven primarily by new store expansion, same-store sales growth, and strong commercial income dynamics. Gross margin expanded by 230 basis points, reaching 47.7%. Excluding the U.S. operations, the gross margin expanded by 360 basis points. As in recent quarters, this performance was supported by OXXO's revenue growth management initiatives, strong commercial income, and positive performance of financial services. Operating income increased by 18.7%, well ahead of revenues, while operating margin expanded by 50 basis points to 11.7% of sales, reflecting strict selling expense control initiatives across regions.

On the store expansion front, OXXO added 205 net new stores in the quarter, including 275 openings in Mexico, partially offset by 70 net closures in LatAm, particularly 98 in Chile. Additionally, we continued expanding in Brazil with 30 new net additions. With this progress, we successfully met our store growth objectives for the year, reinforcing our commitment to strengthen our presence and scale in key markets by prioritizing regions with higher growth and return potential, in this case, Colombia and Brazil relative to Chile and Peru. Turning to Proximity Europe, total revenues increased by 21.5% in pesos, or 5.3% on a currency-neutral basis, driven by growth in our retail revenue across countries. Gross profit rose by 17.5% in pesos, or 1.8% on a currency-neutral basis, below revenues reflecting changes in mix relative to the comparable period of last year when higher-margin food service grew ahead of retail.

Valora delivered an increase of 9.9% in operating income, or a 4.8% decline on a currency-neutral basis, and a 50 basis points dilution in operating margin, reflecting a challenging comparison base from the solid results of B2B food service in late 2023. It is worth noting that in 2024, Valora achieved record operating income driven by solid growth in the convenience business and a very strong performance in the B2B segment. Additionally, disciplined cost management enabled Valora to further support its results despite a persistently challenging economic environment. Moving on to the health division, total revenues grew by 13.3% in pesos, with same-store sales increasing by 9.4%. This was driven by sustained strong performance in Colombia, complemented by steady results in Chile and favorable currency dynamics.

Operating income increased by 109.7%, while the operating margin expanded by 250 basis points to 5.5%, reflecting a favorable comparison base against 2023, when we provisioned an uncollectible account of MXN 527 million in Colombia. Pro forma for that effect, the operating income of the health division would have grown by 9.3%. On the topic of FEMSA Health, as you can see from our press release, Jacobo Caller, who was heading up the multi-format effort within Proximity, has now transitioned to lead our health operations. Jacobo has a strong track record with more than 35 years in global retail, including the pharmacy sector, and we are confident that he will help the division navigate the current environment and capture its various growth opportunities. Turning to OXXO Gas, we continue to deliver solid results, posting a 9.7% increase in same-station sales and an 8% increase in total revenues.

During the quarter, the gross margin was 12.7%, while the operating margin remained stable at 4.6%. Additionally, our loyalty program in OXXO Gas continued to deliver strong results, with a tender rate of 37% and a redemption rate of 31%, further strengthening customer engagement. As we look at 2025, it's becoming clear that beyond the macro headwinds we have mentioned before, the fuel business in Mexico is facing its own set of distinct pressures, and we will likely see this reflected in our short-term results. Moving on to digital, the first thing we need to point out is that our digital ecosystem has now been fully rebranded as SPIN. And during the Q4, we continued to execute our strategic initiatives to drive growth and maximize the value of our expanding customer base across platforms.

Our SPIN by OXXO platform reached 8.6 million active users, reflecting 24.9% growth year-on-year, while the SPIN Premia loyalty program continued its strong momentum, increasing 27.5% year-over-year to reach 24.6 million active users. Today, approximately 40.7% of the sales of OXXO México are linked to SPIN Premia, reinforcing its role in driving customer engagement and retention. Building on these achievements, we are leveraging our data analytics from these strong tender levels to pilot personalized offers based on user consumption patterns, enhancing engagement and loyalty. Throughout 2024, we have prioritized operational and cost efficiencies, including the integration of SPEI functionality within our SPIN by OXXO platform, which has not only lowered operational costs but also enhanced the overall user experience. These strategic improvements have fostered greater customer loyalty while simultaneously reducing the operating expenses within this business unit.

As a result, we can reinvest resources into additional monetization, reinforcing our long-term digital strategy. Finally, Coca-Cola FEMSA delivered its own strong close to a remarkable year, reporting double-digit increases across their income statement. This growth was driven by the company's disciplined revenue management strategy and the strategic investments in CapEx throughout the year, which have increased production and distribution capacity, enabling Coca-Cola FEMSA to meet rising demand and expand its market presence. Income from operations in the Q4 rose by a notable 25%, reflecting their continued focus on operational efficiencies and capturing value across markets despite the challenges posed by flooding in parts of Brazil and México, which impacted two plants. For those interested in their detailed results and insights, a replay of KOF's full-year earnings call is available on their website. Let me close with a couple of comments regarding FEMSA Forward.

As José Antonio mentioned at the outset, the FEMSA Forward plan was launched two years ago. From an execution standpoint, there were two broad phases to the plan. The first one related to the divestiture and monetization of non-core assets, and the second related to the allocation of the resulting capital, considering our medium-term investment needs in the business, the pursuit of potential M&A opportunities, and the return of excess capital to our shareholders in order to optimize our balance sheet to drive intrinsic per-share value growth. Regarding the divestiture phase, as of today, we are almost finished with the related transactions. We successfully divested our stake in Heineken, our stake in Jetro Restaurant Depot, or JRD, a portion of our stake in Envoy Solutions, now combined into BradyPLUS, as well as our smaller legacy refrigeration and plastic business units.

We have also announced a transaction for the bulk of our remaining logistics business, pending customary regulatory approvals. As we take final stock of these divestitures, it merits highlighting the fact that the bulk of our major investments delivered double-digit internal rates of return. In particular, the entire Heineken stake and JRD jointly generated total absolute value creation of dividends and pre-tax capital gains of approximately EUR 7.6 billion and $734 million, respectively, or almost MXN 180 billion at current exchange rates. Beyond the divestitures and focusing on the allocation of the resulting capital, certainly our number one priority is investing in growing our core operations, and to that effect, we are in the middle of a multi-year investment cycle across our business units.

Regarding M&A, during 2024, we made our first investment in the convenience sector in the U.S., and we aspire to grow in that important market, but we expect a large proportion of that growth to be organic and thus not relying on any transactions exceeding approximately $1.5 billion. In terms of our balance sheet management, in addition to paying the relevant taxes, we carried out three separate processes to tender for some of our outstanding bonds and were able to raise approximately $1.7 billion to acquire $2.1 billion of debt face value. Now, that brings me to the capital return to shareholders, where we were quite active in 2024.

As José Antonio mentioned, we deployed MXN 44.8 billion, or approximately $2.5 billion, at the exchange rate at the time of payment through a combination of MXN 14.4 billion, or $774 million, in ordinary dividends, MXN 10.1 billion, or $542 million, in extraordinary dividends, and MXN 20.3 billion, or $1.2 billion, in share buybacks. However, given the steady inflows of cash from the divestitures as well as from our operations, we only managed to get our leverage ratio to 0.45 times, far from our medium-term objectives of two times net debt to EBITDA, excluding Coca-Cola FEMSA. As a result, we need to pick up the pace this year.

FEMSA's board of directors has approved to submit to the 2025 annual shareholders meeting the following proposals: an ordinary dividend of MXN 14.8 billion, or $725 million, at current exchange rates, which reflects an increase per unit of 4.2% in pesos compared to 2024, in line with Mexican inflation, to be paid in installments beginning in April of 2025. Number two, pay an additional extraordinary dividend of MXN 32.7 billion, or $1.6 billion, at current exchange rates, over and above the ordinary dividend to be paid in installments and on the same quarterly schedule. And three, allocate to share repurchases an amount of up to MXN 18.4 billion, or $900 million, at current exchange rates, with such share repurchases to be executed subject to market conditions.

Assuming no extraordinary events outside of our control, we also expect to submit at the 2026 annual shareholders meeting plans for an ordinary dividend per unit in line with our recent trend and a minimum additional capital return of approximately MXN 26.6 billion, or $1.3 billion at current exchange rates. All these initiatives have anticipated minimum operating cash requirements and preserving cash for strategic projects at our Proximity division, which is why the 2026 amount is set as a minimum. This figure will be reassessed at the beginning of next year based on macroeconomic conditions, visibility regarding strategic projects, and our cash generation during the year.

The aggregate amount, including ordinary and extraordinary dividends and share buybacks to be deployed in the 24 months, represents almost MXN 107.5 billion, or $5.3 billion, at current exchange rates, positioning us well to close the gap to our leverage objective of two times by the end of 2026. Now, let me turn it back to José Antonio for some closing remarks. Please go ahead, José Antonio.

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

Thank you, Martín. As we look ahead, we are fortunate to have a wide runway to continue creating value in every one of our core verticals across markets, but the challenges are always around. There is no doubt that macro uncertainty is up, and we are already seeing a softer consumer environment in our key Mexican market. That will combine with a tough calendar setup for our Q1 performance.

However, this only adds urgency to every initiative we are working on to keep driving growth, to keep defending and expanding profitability, and to keep creating value. Finally, I want to take this opportunity to thank our entire team for a fantastic job in 2024 and to thank all of you for joining us today and for your continued support and interest in our company. And with that, we are ready to open the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask a question, please signal by pressing Star 1. If you wish to cancel your request, please press Star 2. And please make sure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, it is Star 1 to ask a question. And our first question is from Ricardo Alves from Morgan Stanley.Please go ahead.

Ricardo Alves (Associate)

Hello, everyone. Thanks so much for the call. First of all, congratulations on the transparency and for being consistent with the message around shareholder remuneration and balance sheet optimization. To start off on that point, on the returns proposed for 2025, a pretty impressive commitment, but specifically on the 3% component as it relates to buybacks. Can you expand a little bit on that? How do you execute that? We saw a mix of local buyback in Mexico last year and then a couple of big accelerated share repurchases. Curious to hear what was your experience with those different possibilities and what are your thoughts as we go into 2025. The second question on the operations, I think that this one is more longer-term but triggered by recent trends that we are seeing.

I wanted to see what are your thoughts when you weigh in aggressive expansion of OXXO store base as we saw last year versus OXXO same-store sales trends and the store-level returns? I mean, you opened more than 1,000 stores in Mexico last year. When you look at 2025, I'm curious to hear your latest thoughts, but I think that more importantly, in the longer term, what is the prospect for opening new OXXOs or new OXXO stores considering that same-store sales decelerated last year or considering the traffic performance that you see? Do you perceive significant differences, for example, in the stores that you are opening right now or in the marginal returns that you see at the new stores that you open?

Is that something that you weigh in when you're thinking about five years from now and the pace in which you're going to be opening stores, or can we still be comfortable with this quite impressive 1.1-1.2 thousand stores per year? I mean, impressive numbers, but I'm just trying to see if the marginal returns are still very in line with what you expect with the new openings. Thanks so much for the time, and congrats again.

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

Martín, would you like to answer the first question?

Martín Arias (CFO)

Sure. With regards to the 900 million, I suspect it'll be a mix of purchases on the Mexican Bolsa and through ASRs, accelerated share repurchases in the U.S., very similar to what was done last year. There are a variety of legal technical issues that lead us to do it that way. One of them has to do with windows.

We can only be repurchasing during the trading windows, and we can only log ASRs during the trading windows. Number two, sometimes the windows are closed. The problem is we're not really in a position to inform the market when windows are closed because they're normally closed for a reason, which is that we have some material non-public information that impedes us from being able to execute in the market. So I do expect there to be a mix. They won't happen at the same time, generally, but pretty much like we did last year.

Ricardo Alves (Associate)

Would it be, and this is Juan, what do you have to say, Martín, within the constraints of the windows and the lower liquidity in Mexico that we'll, because last year the mix was significantly weighted to the U.S., would you expect a more balanced, I mean, again, based on what the markets give us?

Martín Arias (CFO)

Again, it's very hard to do. The advantage that the ASRs do give us is because we can trigger them during a window, and then the bank basically is instructed to operate during a longer period of time. It does allow us to operate in more days and at a bigger volume than would otherwise just operating in Mexico during the windows. So I would have to tell you that it will depend. If some of the windows get closed for any reason, I may have to skew towards ASR because I will have to take advantage of a window and a period of time to execute a larger volume. In an ideal world, it would be balanced so that we give all shareholders an opportunity to share in this liquidity.

Although people move back and forth between ADR and the Mexican shares, the reality is there are shareholders that focus and specialize in both those markets, and we want to make sure that we try to be as fair as we possibly can.

Ricardo Alves (Associate)

Great. Right. On the OXXO stores, Matías Eguía, explain a little bit how we see the.

Juan Fonseca (Head of Investor Relations)

Matías is the CFO for our Proximity and Health division, and we asked him to join us to also answer any questions you might have.

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

All right. So we monitor our expansion and our capitalization coming out of our expansion. We don't see any problems at the pace that we have been expanding over the last years. We're very meticulous about monitoring this. So to the first question, we don't see a problem.

And the second piece of the question is going forward, we do expect to keep opening those amounts of stores even more. But again, this is an exercise that we constantly monitor, and as long as the capitalization of the new store openings is under control and creates value for us, we'll keep the pace. There are some new formats like OXXO Smart and OXXO Nichos, which are that we are expanding that create a lot of growth with very safe and controlled capitalization ratios for us. So the answer would be yes.

Juan Fonseca (Head of Investor Relations)

I would add, Ricardo Alves, Juan again. If you remember, during COVID, we spoke about the process for approval of new locations. It became evident back then that we had been opening some stores that probably should not have been opened, and so the team tightened the standards for approvals.

And so the later cohorts of stores that we have been opening have been better and more productive than some of the cohorts that were opened in, let's say, 2019, 2018. So the point I want to make is very focused on measuring everything, including changing the requirements for locations to get approved. And that does wonders for the productivity of the stores once they get open. So I think that feeds the confidence that we can keep at current pace for basically the foreseeable future. And to Matías' point of finding successfully different types of stores, and this actually ties to something José Antonio said in his remarks, where this segmentation is allowing the team to get into apartment buildings and office buildings and manufacturing facilities and have all kinds of different stores that allow us to keep the pace. So I'll just leave it there.

Ricardo Alves (Associate)

Thank you so much for all the details, and congrats again, everyone.

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

Thanks, Ricardo Alves.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question is from Melissa Byun from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Melissa Byun (VP)

Hi, and thanks so much for taking my questions and, again, for the additional insight you've provided in terms of your capital return strategy. On the topic of cannibalization in Proximity Mexico, how much of the traffic decline would you say is attributable to cannibalization from new store openings, which I imagine is in large part by design versus other factors? And then how are you thinking about operating and leveraging this year given the wage increases and softer economy? Thank you.

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

Well, I can say that the traffic has various components. Even rain is one component. Last year, we had way much more rain than the year before. Thank God because we needed a lot of water in the country. But it doesn't help our traffic, as you can imagine, but that's one. The second is that it's clear that we noted a clear slowdown on the second half of the year because the first half, we were in presidential campaign, and there were a lot of movements all over, traffic everywhere, money on the streets, let's say, in a way, so that changed.

That's definitely changed, and the last thing is obviously a little bit of cannibalization. I mean, but OXXO has a very good way of measuring what happened to all the contiguous stores of a new location where we open it, and we measure it very clearly. We are cannibalizing on how much damage is the new store doing to the surrounding stores, and up to now, those numbers have not been worrisome at all.

We have found very good control places like campuses and universities or campuses of big manufacturing, but they are even inviting us to install an OXXO adapted to their requirements, more convenience, less alcohol, for example. And they are working very well. So we will continue looking for these new formats that are working very well for us.

Martín Arias (CFO)

To complement José Antonio, there's a very detailed exhaustive work that gets done measuring each store and the hurdle rate that's set internally. And if you're not meeting that hurdle rate, the store is closed. One of the advantages of our businesses is that the amount that we invest per store gets paid back very quickly, and it's a very small amount. So we don't have the traditional pain point of a very, very large retailer that has a 20 to 25 year lease and/or has invested tens of millions of dollars in a store.

In this case, normally, we will just simply close the store, and we're pretty disciplined about that.

Melissa Byun (VP)

Great. Thank you so much, and on the theme of operating leverage or margins in Mexico, Proximity specifically this year?

Juan Fonseca (Head of Investor Relations)

A lot of that probably has to do with labor. I mean, when you look at our 2024 results, obviously, the gross margin expansion, and I'll take this opportunity to talk a little bit about that because it never ceases to amaze me how the team keeps finding ways to do that. I mean, Martín mentioned as he was giving his remarks, if we control for the U.S., if we take the U.S. out of the numbers, again, the expansion of the gross margin was, I think, 50 basis points. It basically brought the full year above the 300 basis points expansion number.

Then in the quarter, that became 50 basis points expansion at the operating level. So clearly, we're losing a chunk of the expansion between the growth and the operating. But a lot of that has to do with the dynamics that we've seen on labor, right? I mean, you've seen, I guess, six years of double-digit minimum wage increases. Of course, we've done a lot of things to address that. And that is scheduled to continue at a lower rate, right? The minimum wage increases are now not 20%, but maybe 12%. But still, that is kind of the main reason why there's such a big difference between the growth and the operating.

Melissa Byun (VP)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And now we'll take our next question from Hector Maya from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Hector Maya (Associate Director of Equity Research)

Thank you. Thank you very much for taking the questions and congratulations on the results. The first one, just if you could help us understand, please, the growth strategy in the U.S. You mentioned that it would be mostly organic and that you see no acquisitions of over $1.5 billion. But we see that there would be interesting players in the space that FEMSA could acquire in the states closer to the border. So FEMSA could become the fourth largest convenience store player in the U.S. relatively quickly. I mean, current comments on most organic growth, what would be FEMSA's ambition in scale in number of stores and market relevance in the U.S. in the medium term?

Martín Arias (CFO)

This is Martín speaking. Really, during the last few months, and we'll continue to explain it going forward. We'll have José on the call soon. On one of these calls soon, he'll be able to explain.

There's a series of experiments going on where we're launching OXXO standalone stores. We're launching rebranding existing stores with gasoline stations with value propositions, particularly around food service, and our hope is over the next 18, 24 months, we will get some feedback on those experiments. There are several of them. There isn't just one, and those experiments will then provide us guidance as to where we should be focusing our organic growth. Juan, I think correctly, always said, "The United States doesn't need more convenience stores. It needs better convenience stores," and we expect to be part of that solution. We don't have an objective of being number two, three, four, five, six. We have an objective of being profitable at whatever scale that we achieve and to have good returns on the investments that we make.

Our expectations of growth will be determined by the success of these experiments that we're undertaking. We do expect to make smaller acquisitions, small bolt-on acquisitions, which arguably are almost real estate plays many times of acquiring a good location and then introducing a new value proposition and taking advantage of whatever scale you've achieved to improve gross margin both on gas and on merchandise.

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

I must add that, as you know, OXXO has developed a very, very good practice of organic growth in Mexico. That capability we have to develop in the United States. That is critical for us to be able to grow organically with very good locations at a good pace. That will be our first and most important way of growing. Obviously, finding and being open to certain size of inorganic growth also.

And I think it connects, Hector, to at the end of the day, it connects to returns, right? I think the more you manage to grow organically, or I'm going to include there the kind of bolt-on strategy that Martín was mentioning. The more you're able to do that, the lower the cost of your expansion is going to be and the better chance you're going to have to realize higher returns. So that discipline, you should assume that it's going to be there.

Hector Maya (Associate Director of Equity Research)

Thank you. Thank you very much. That's very clear, and also, if I may, if you could help us understand the dynamics that you are seeing in financial services and the higher contribution to margins from that and a bit more details on the monetization of the critical mass in SPIN. I mean, how should we think about timing and relevance of new services in SPIN, like potential loans, insurance, and how is Spin thinking about a potential bank license in Mexico?

Martín Arias (CFO)

A couple of quick things. We continue to see growth in the financial services, and the store continues to be a place where people go for financial solutions. Banks who had left our system have come back to our system for purposes of correspondent banking. We continue to grow OXXO Pay and the number of merchants that use OXXO Pay as an online payment solution within the store. We are dedicating a lot of time and energy to developing our remittances businesses.

Core to that is the use of new cash registers, which have a safe deposit box below the cash register where we can hold significantly more amount of cash, and you have the capability of depositing and extracting money in a safe and secure manner. That I expect to be rolled out by the end of this year to over 3,000 stores, if I'm not mistaken. That will allow us to significantly increase the size of remittances we cash out and to provide significantly greater certainty to a consumer who goes to the store, being assured that there will be cash available while also obviously protecting the security of our employees and of the store. We continue to believe because of the convenience of the store that that should continue to grow, while at the same time, we need to prepare for the future.

The future of potential digitalization of certain payments is where SPIN comes in. Creating an ecosystem around loyalty, data, retail media, a wallet will, without a doubt, serve as the vehicle for that transition. Context of creating an ecosystem with all the elements that I added from a digital perspective, we have concluded that we need to have the optionality of offering financial services. For that purpose, at some point over the next few months, we will be applying for a banking license. Again, it's incipient. It's starting out. We have no intentions currently to make any large significant bets with regards to credit.

We will be experimenting, including exploring the possibility of finding a partner for the credit part of that business to ensure that we do it not only as responsibly as possible, but responsibly and quickly, understanding that those financial services are a key element of monetizing a digital payment strategy. So everyone who is in the game of providing payment and wallet solutions is also exploring financial services generally as a means to help monetize those payment systems. I hope that answers your question.

Hector Maya (Associate Director of Equity Research)

Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And now our next question is from Rodrigo Alcantara from UBS. Please go ahead.

Rodrigo Alcantara (Wall Street Analyst)

Hey, hey. Hi, José Antonio, Martín, Juan. Thanks for the space for questions. The first one, especially the one that we are receiving from investors as we speak, is how confident are you on the ability to keep increasing the gross margin? I mean, going more deep in that more into Juan's commentary on the gross margin, if you can help us understand or to think going forward about the trends on the gross margin by all means of commercial services, financial services as we're speaking. So any comment on what to expect from you guys on gross margin would be very, very helpful. Again, this is one of the main questions we received, especially as it has helped you guys a lot to offset the labor expenses in Mexico, right? The other question would be a very quick one on Brazil.

If you can give us any updates regarding your operations there, I mean, how you're seeing the customer reception, profitability, store profitability, any commentary that you can give us about the evolution of your business in Brazil would be very helpful.

Martín Arias (CFO)

Let me take a crack at the gross margin just because I'm the greatest cheerleader for their numbers. Look, first thing I would say is the performance of 2024 should not be the number that you put in or anybody puts in their model, right? I mean, 300 basis points of expansion is extraordinary, and the number I would put in my model is probably a third of that or less than a third of that. There's three reasons why the gross margin expands, right? It's commercial income, it's financial services, and increasingly, it is kind of the pricing and revenue management capabilities that are being developed.

I would say commercial income, it feeds on the scale at the end of the day, right? The more stores we have, the more relevance we have for certain categories, the more constructive the conversations become with some of these large suppliers, and the more we can help them to grow beyond just the selling of the products and getting into the whole marketing and positioning of their products. So that one clearly has been doing a lot of heavy lifting. I expect financial services to stabilize because there's only so many banks and there's only so many. Although, again, we've been surprised to the upside here in terms of the number of retailers and the number of things that people increasingly use the store for.

But if I had to guess, I would expect the pricing component to be the one that grows with the stable financial services and perhaps slightly diminishing commercial income because there are, I suppose, at some point, you hit some walls. But we've been thinking about this for a long time, and fortunately, we keep being wrong because the team finds a way to expand that margin. And again, I think all of this is I sometimes say that scale is the magic ingredient, right? And every day, we're a little bit bigger. With regards to Brazil, just a couple of quick thoughts. One, the stores continue to do well. You can see in the numbers that we provided in the Q4, the same store sales were, I think, 9%. So they continue to do well.

We're very happy with how we focused our entry and expansion in the market to make it as concentrated as possible in the state of São Paulo, not only because of the macro and socioeconomic benefits going to the wealthiest region in Brazil, but because it really has allowed us to create a brand awareness that continues to surprise us, how all of us are friends who know that we work for them to say, "Hey, I saw an OXXO store." So it certainly has had an impact. We also are exploring the idea of using OXXO stores at the gas stations, which has given some promising early results. And then finally, I think the big question that will come up is obviously our partner with some of the financial challenges that they have been facing, their willingness and ability to continue to invest with us.

We have ongoing discussions with them about that. We have an extremely detailed shareholders' agreement that's very clear on what happens under a variety of different scenarios. And so we feel comfortable that we will continue to expand our stores in Brazil. We do believe the expansion this year will be a little bit slower than it was last year because we now have reached a size and a scale that we need to focus a little bit more on operational metrics to improve the profitability of what exists so that that is a solid base on which you then do the next large wave of growth. Again, particularly focused on São Paulo State. But at some point, we will achieve the scale that we will even explore other regions of Brazil. I believe 20% was the number that José had given in this call, right?

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

Yes, 20%. And I will just add that, as Martín was saying, we see improvements in sales, we see improvements in gross margins, we see improvements on spoilage. So in general, all the operational improvements that we are doing, we see them reflected in all the different lines of our P&L in Brazil. So not to get into numbers, but we do have good expectations of keep on improving our economics in Brazil and keep the pace as Martín was mentioning.

Rodrigo Alcantara (Wall Street Analyst)

Awesome, guys. Thank you very much for the answers. Very helpful.

Martín Arias (CFO)

Thanks, Rodrigo.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now take our next question from Renata Cabral from Citibank. Please go ahead.

Renata Cabral (Assistant VP Equity Research)

Hi, everyone. Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my question. So on the same lines of the question about OXXO Brazil, my question would be actually about Bara. We saw here impressive numbers about the growth in 2024. So I wonder if you could give us some color about the strategy going forward as we see the echo of growth for the company. Thank you so much.

Martín Arias (CFO)

Well, on Bara, we're very happy with the results of Bara. This is a business that we've been in for a very long time, and we do seem to have hit a sweet spot of things that are going well and that have allowed us, given us greater confidence with regards to the expansion. Bara, historically, was fully integrated into OXXO's sort of backbone of operations. So one of the things that we've been doing in order to give Bara the ability to develop its own set of capabilities, which we acknowledge are quite distinct to OXXO, is to separate its operations both from systems, commercial procurement, and distribution.

And so part of the reason we haven't been a little bit more aggressive in the expansion is we're setting up those systems in a way that we minimize disruption to Bara and then allows Bara to develop its own path forward. As you know, Bara also has new leadership, Jaime Longoria, who until recently was head of OXXO Gas, now will be leading the multi-format effort. One of the most important parts of that is Bara. Jaime is an experienced retail executive that's been with them for decades.

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

He ran commercial for OXXO for years.

Martín Arias (CFO)

He ran all of commercial for OXXO for many years. So it's in very safe hands. Jacobo, who was the previous CEO of that business, did a great job of solidifying that as a standalone platform. We continue to expect that business to grow, and hopefully, it addresses a need in the market, meaning that it will continue to have the results it's had.

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

I'll just add that it's a space that we really like. We've seen how the discount formats have grown in Europe, have grown in Colombia, and we think there's a big leeway in Mexico. We've been improving our value proposition. I would add also that we are doing lots of work in private labels, which we consider is key for the format. We are keeping expanding our presence in Jalisco, our strongholds in Bajío and Querétaro there, and we might be opening new regions soon. Very good expectations that we have for the format, I would say.

Renata Cabral (Assistant VP Equity Research)

All right. Thank you so much for the call.

Martín Arias (CFO)

Thanks, Juan.

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

Thank you, Renata.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question is from Ulises Argote from Santander. Please go ahead.

Ulises Argote (Research Analyst)

Hi, José Antonio, Martín, Juan. Thanks for all the added quality you've been providing here. Very, very helpful. I'm sorry to come back to this one point, but on the traffic dynamics in OXXO, maybe I wanted to get your sense on what you were seeing at the start of 2025. Obviously, it was a bit challenging end of the year there traffic-wise. So maybe if you can just comment on what you're seeing there early 2025 and maybe on some of the specific initiatives that you're kind of taking to turn dynamics around. The other question I had was on Delek, and thanks also for the color there on the experiments that you're running and the way that you will roll out the business.

But maybe I was wondering if we could pick your brain just to see if you can share any color on trends or dynamics that maybe have surprised you to the upside or to the downside on these first months of operations there in that business in the U.S. Thank you.

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

On the traffic question, it's a tricky subject for us because at the beginning of the year, we're not seeing very good signs on the traffic side. At the same time, we do see a lot of bad weather. Somebody was telling me the other day, I think it was the coldest January over the last 10 years. So the weather is not helping to the situation of the traffic. But we've been analyzing this, and we're very comfortable that we're going to be able to recover the traffic down the road. We don't see, as we were saying before, we don't see any cannibalization issues. We don't see any pricing or competitiveness out of the value proposition of OXXO. So we're pretty sure that the traffic situation is temporary.

Juan Fonseca (Head of Investor Relations)

Yeah, and I would just add, Ulises, this Juan on the traffic thing, and I think we commented a little bit on this in the last call. Just looking at the full year numbers, the same store traffic was down, I believe, one and a half for the full year, but if we look at the aggregate traffic, it actually was up about one and a half. So there's a three-point swing between the same store sales number and the aggregate number, so clearly, in the aggregate, significantly more people are buying.

But that's where the kind of careful cannibalization that Matías was talking about a few minutes ago comes into play. I think there's no question, and obviously, you cover all of the retailers. Everybody on the call is very aware that the softness, and this is something that Martín mentioned in the remarks, ever since the midterm elections or the mid-year elections, the consumer environment in Mexico is soft, right? And we're not seeing that pick up. And we're two months into the quarter. So it's become pretty evident that the Q1 is not going to be the quarter where the consumer recovered in Mexico. Having said that, because of everything that we measure, you look at market share dynamics, and of course, you monitor the impact of things like weather. It makes us feel pretty good about things.

But we also mentioned in the beginning, Q1, Semana Santa changes quarters. We have one day less. All of it adds up. So just to keep that in mind when you're modeling the Q1. The second question you asked about DELIC, I think the thing that has caught the most surprise is the number of opportunities that have been identified for improving operations. This was a business that was run by a refiner. And I think it was a business that was run primarily to push through gasoline. That was the primary objective, given that the bulk of that business was a refining. And I think this is a challenge that all the big oil companies and refiners have had. Managing retail is a very different business, and it's hard to run it just to push gasoline through.

And so I think the team that's been assembled there is constantly finding all sorts of opportunities. In terms of challenges, and this was one we were well aware, this is a carve-out. So one of the things we need to do is create the platform on which this business can operate going forward, and then this is the business on the basis of which we can expand going forward. And that just doesn't refer just to systems and people and so on. It also refers to capabilities that we can transfer there, but we need to transfer the know-how so that it then gets built and adjusted and adapted to U.S. needs and U.S. issues. So I would tell you that the best thing is the number of opportunities, and the biggest challenge is creating the platform. Both of them were theories of value creation that have been confirmed.

So maybe surprise is not the right word, but it's the two areas on which we focus on.

Martín Arias (CFO)

Actually, we can even announce to you that yesterday we opened the first OXXO in Texas. Historically, it's a very important day. We transformed one of the DELIC stores. We had to change the commercial offer to make it more OXXO-like, aligned to what we do most in OXXO, like a Mexican OXXO. And it was launched in Midland. Yesterday, we started measuring in Odessa. Yes. In Odessa. Okay. So we are very eager to see how we are evolving, and we will keep on evolving the stores, some of them that are easier to transform and faster to transform to OXXOs on these next couple of months.

Perfect. Thank you so much for the clarity there, and congrats on that first OXXO. Now we'll have to make our way to Texas to test it out. Thank you. Thank you so much, guys. Congrats. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We'll now move to our next question from Ben Theurer from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Benjamin M. Theurer (Managing Director and Head of LatAm Equity Research)

Thank you very much and good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in. Just a real quick one as it relates to your willingness or your openness as to M&A. If I interpret it right, it feels a little bit more muted right now in terms of looking into M&A opportunities. But just wondering what has changed from, call it roughly two years ago, where it was about having the opportunity to build into the different businesses, and M&A felt to be more of a cornerstone of the strategy, and now it feels more like a little more muted.

You've flagged just that little under $400 million investment in DELIC last year, but more return of cash to shareholders. So what's changed and why is that? Maybe that would be my question I have for you this morning.

Martín Arias (CFO)

I'm going to be bluntly honest with you. I don't think we've changed. I think people have just started, to be honest, believing what we've been saying. I've been at this job now for a year. For a year, I've been telling people, "Don't expect big, large M&A as our entry strategy into the United States." We have repeatedly said our focus is on the core strategic businesses that we have, Coca-Cola FEMSA, and then Proximity.

De-emphasizing M&A in our health businesses and to some extent in Valora, although there may be opportunities in Valora, and that our primary focus was to do what I would consider a small deal in the United States relative to the size of FEMSA. And I've always been signaling this number of $1.5 billion. And the team is very disciplined. We have been offered opportunities within the range, and we have said no because they weren't, in our view, appropriately priced and/or didn't fit our strategic objective of growth. I think part of this has been the nervousness around the issue of the amount of cash that we had and the speculation about the cash and what we would do with that cash. But at least since I've been here, when I did my first call, I believe, in April of last year.

We've been sending this, and I hope to the extent that people didn't have clarity about our strategy, we are patient. We have a set of controlling shareholders who I have never heard them deviate from everything I've just said to you. And my instructions and my mandate from the CFO perspective have been very, very, very clear. So I think part of this is just expectations catching up with what we've been saying. And I hope on that regard there will be greater alignment so that people at least don't have that as a concern. And we have plenty of things we need to worry about. There are plenty of things we need to do. A $4 or $5 billion M&A deal is not one of them, in my humble opinion.

Benjamin M. Theurer (Managing Director and Head of LatAm Equity Research)

Okay. And then one last quick one. I know you don't provide that yet. I don't know why, but kind of like same store sales dynamic, traffic versus ticket in Europe. Anything you can share that, even if it's at a high level, to understand a little bit the dynamics of the consumer in Europe?

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

We've seen Europe quite stable. Germany, obviously, has struggled to come back from the COVID level as well as Switzerland. But what we've seen in our business is we're being able from our core business because a lot of the growth in Valora came from our B2B business. We are improving ours. We are transferring capabilities from Mexico that allow us to improve our economics in Valora in our retail business, which is our core business. And things that I think we've mentioned in the past, like commercial agreements that we improve, pricing techniques, assortments.

So there are a lot of capabilities that we're transferring and helping the business to be more profitable. But with regard to the consumer sentiment in Germany, we've seen it struggling, and we expect to continue. So I mean, obviously, we don't know what's going to happen with all the new governments forming out there, but so far, it's been our experience.

Martín Arias (CFO)

Now, just to clarify why we don't give this information, the European business, really, if you think about it, is four or five businesses. It has a B2B pretzel business for traffic, and those issues are not relevant. Then within Switzerland, we have a retail and a food service business. They're very different businesses. We have everything from small startups, concepts of food service, to more mature convenience stores and mature food service businesses.

And then we have the German business, which is an incipient retail business and a slightly more mature food service business. And so again, one is I've heard him make this comment in a couple of forums. More and more, all of FEMSA, as we mature, is going to do something very similar to what Coca-Cola FEMSA did, where we used to obsess about volume, and now we're really obsessed about share of sales and top-line growth because the product portfolio is so diverse that volume per se doesn't really capture. And I think Europe, in a way, is a little bit ahead of the curve. As our businesses mature and the value proposition changes, traffic per se should be less of a concern as opposed to top-line growth. So in Europe, this is primarily the reason why we do this. It's not really trying to hide the ball.

It's just it really wouldn't be meaningful. And then we would end up discussing these very nuanced traffic issues in four or five different businesses that would be very hard to explain and wouldn't provide much insight. Having said all that, Ben, I think we are looking for as we look at disclosure, we mentioned for Q1, we're planning on already making some changes to increase the transparency of OXXO Mexico and some other things that we're working on. Just directionally, we'll keep looking for ways to provide you guys and the market at large with data that allows you to kind of take the temperature of what's happening at ground level in our different businesses.

José Antonio Fernández Carbajal (CEO and Chairman of the Board)

I would just add that, for instance, in the Swiss stores, avec, which are the convenience stores, the change towards offering convenience with fresh food in the stores is huge, and it's moving quite well. That's one of the positive things that we can see. We are testing that to grow all over Switzerland and maybe even taking it to Germany. So those are good projects that are very concentrated on Switzerland to take them out to the rest of the sites.

Benjamin M. Theurer (Managing Director and Head of LatAm Equity Research)

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a final reminder to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. We will pause for just a moment to allow you to signal. It appears there are currently no further questions at this time, but this I'd like to hand the call back over to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

Juan Fonseca (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you for joining. Obviously, any follow-ups, any questions that you forgot to ask or that come up later, you know where to reach myself, Pamela, Alex, the rest of the team. And then we'll see you on the road, many of you, in the coming weeks and months. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.