Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Americana Restaurants' H1 2026 earnings call. I am Pujeet Parekh, Head of Investor Relations and Business Development, and it is my pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the entire management team.

Joining me today are Amarpal Sandhu, our Chief Executive Officer, Rahul Mathur, our Chief Financial Officer, and Harsh Bansal, our Chief Operating Officer for KFC and Pizza Hut. As usual, Amar will begin with our business updates for the first half, covering brand performance and strategic partnerships and new growth platforms that we are building.

Rahul will then take you through the financial review, after which Amar will again cover our 2026 guidance and concluding remarks. We will open the floor for questions at the end.

One point to flag before we start, we have now included country-wise revenue directly in the earnings presentation. This information was previously available only through the segment reporting note in our financial statements.

You will now find revenue and growth for our major markets on slide 11 going forward. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that today's discussion may include forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions.

These are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ. With that, let me hand it over to Amar.

Thank you, Pujeet. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us today.

As we look back on the first half of 2026, one theme that stands out above all is the enduring strength of our brands and also our countries of operations, brands that customers across our region have trusted for generations. It is this equity that keeps them relevant, compelling, and resilient through changing conditions.

That resilience really mattered this half as we operated against a backdrop of cost pressures and continued geopolitical uncertainty across our region. Through it all, Americana's performance not only held, but accelerated, reflecting the staying power of a business diversified across markets and a model refined over decades.

Equally important is the foundation that supports our continued growth. Our development engine provides a disciplined, return-led pipeline that gives us clear visibility on growth, while our people, the teams and operators across every market, are the ones who turn that strategy into consistent execution.

Supporting all of this is a playbook that remains simple yet powerful: an unwavering focus on value, purposeful innovation, operational excellence, and disciplined cost management. As we walk you through H1 results, you will see performance that reflects these choices and the strength of the foundation that has stood the test of time.

These strengths helped us deliver our strongest ever H1 in Americana's history. At KFC, the brand continued to demonstrate how a global powerhouse can create local affinity at scale.

The Excellent Sauce Twister in UAE and Krystal range in Saudi Arabia translated iconic regional flavors into distinctive KFC experiences, strengthening brand love and cultural connect. Recently, during the World Cup, this cultural momentum carried further with the Cheesy Captain Nacho platform, built around a nacho cheese dip and signature seasoning sprinkle, tapping directly into the energy of the occasion.

At the same time, the Arabi burger brought those same local cues to an accessible price point, making KFC an even stronger choice for everyday eating occasions. This balanced approach to innovation, combining emotional relevance with affordability, continues to strengthen KFC's appeal among youth, local nationals, and the wider Arab consumer, while also reinforcing long-term brand equity.

At Hardee's, innovation remained true to the brand's bold and generous food credentials. The Saucy Raptor refreshed a familiar format with a richer and more flavorful proposition.

Again, during the World Cup, the Cheer Like You Mean It Box connected the brand to the energy of the occasion, while the new Overloader range delivered an oversized punch with builds centered on Hardee's core promise of indulgence and satisfaction. Pizza Hut continued to strengthen its ownership of sharing occasions.

The brand activated around the World Cup through value-led offers and watch party experiences, including the Half-Time Half & Half pizza, giving customers greater variety when coming together with family and friends. On the product front, one of Pizza Hut's most impactful innovations in 2026 was the launch of the new Italian Crust, a more authentic, lighter, and crispier crust that elevated the core pizza experience and broadened the brand's appeal to a wider segment of pizza consumers.

Finally, Krispy Kreme remained true to the creativity and playfulness at the heart of the brand. Seasonal platforms, such as Hoppy Kids, brought color and excitement, while new formats reimagined familiar dessert experiences.

Tartini combined the freshness of fruit tarts with the indulgence of doughnuts, Twisties put a Krispy Kreme sweet twist to churros, while Bombolini introduced filled bite-sized doughnuts, creating new ways for customers to enjoy, share, and discover the brand. The real takeaway from the first half is that our brands' performance isn't down to one single campaign or one occasion.

Across our power brands, we've built a repeatable model, one that combines customer insight, cultural relevance, and commercial discipline to create excitement, strengthen preference, and deliver sustainable growth. Beyond the momentum across our existing portfolio, we also continue to build new and scalable avenues for Americana's long-term growth.

First, we announced a landmark strategic partnership with ADNOC Distribution. This agreement goes well beyond a traditional leasing relationship.

It gives Americana preferential access to 200 high-traffic locations over 5 years, supported by a shared capex and profit model. It creates a strong platform for capital-efficient expansion, and it also brings our brands closer to customers across their everyday journeys and routines.

Second, we continued the integration and expansion of Malak Al Tawook. With the UAE acquisition complete and the Saudi Arabia acquisition closed in July, integration is now underway across both markets.

Led by Americana's procurement efficiencies and the optimization of service contracts, we expect to drive significant margin expansion versus pre-acquisition levels. At the same time, we are building a strong pipeline to expand the store network in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and preparing to launch the brand in Kuwait in the second half of this year.

Malak Al Tawook strengthens our position in the fast-growing Arabic QSR category and gives us a locally rooted platform with real regional potential. Finally, we opened our first Carpo store in Qatar, marking Americana's entry into premium food retail.

The opening brings Carpo's premium nuts, artisanal chocolates, and refined coffee experience to a new market. The response has been remarkable.

The Carpo store in Qatar recorded the highest ever launch sales in Americana's history, an encouraging early signal of the brand's potential and the appetite for premium food retail across the region. Together, these developments demonstrate how Americana is combining strategic partnerships, targeted acquisitions, and portfolio diversification to create new engines of sustainable growth.

Turning now to our first half performance, the strength of the operating model comes through clearly in the results. As you can see on this slide, revenues increased by 12.1% year-on-year to $1.36 billion, supported by a 6.3% like-for-like sales growth, continued brand momentum, and contributions from new restaurant openings.

Profitability continued to grow ahead of revenues. EBITDA increased by 26.7% to $348.2 million, demonstrating strong operating leverage and the benefits of continued cost discipline.

Net profit rose by an impressive 59.2% to $147.2 million, reflecting the strength of top-line performance and meaningful margin expansion during the period. Capital expenditures stood at $67.2 million, representing 4.9% of revenues as we continue to invest in expansion and long-term growth while staying disciplined in how we allocate capital.

Our restaurant portfolio reached 2,756 stores as of June. Over the last 12 months, we added 167 gross new restaurants and 108 net new restaurants, reflecting continued expansion across the portfolio while maintaining discipline around location quality and return thresholds.

On the back of this strong performance, the board has approved an interim dividend of $100.8 million for the first half of 2026, equivalent to $0.012 per share. That represents close to 70% of first half net income, a very clear reflection of our confidence in the business and our commitment to delivering consistent, tangible returns to shareholders while we keep investing in growth.

Overall, the first half delivered strong growth across revenue, profitability, and the restaurant portfolio, reinforcing again the resilience of our platform and the quality of our team's execution. Turning now to our restaurant network, we continue to build scale while keeping a disciplined, return-led approach to expansion.

Over the last 12 months, we added 167 gross new restaurants, including 134 across our power brands, 26 across growth and niche brands, and an addition of 7 Malak Al Tawook restaurants. During the same period, we closed 59 locations as part of our ongoing portfolio optimization, bringing the total portfolio to 2,746 restaurants and delivering 108 net additions.

These closures were deliberate and focused on underperforming locations, strategic relocations, and opportunities to improve the overall quality of the network. Looking at the 2026 pipeline, we opened 26 restaurants from our core portfolio during the first half and added 7 Malak Al Tawook locations.

As in previous years, the first half carried a larger share of planned closures, while development activity is weighted towards the second half. Our forward pipeline remains strong, with 56 restaurants under construction, 47 secured sites, and a further 47 locations with approved feasibility studies.

This provides us with solid visibility for the remainder of the year and supports our guidance of 120 to 130 net new restaurant additions in 2026. Overall, our expansion strategy remains unchanged: grow selectively, prioritize high-performing markets and formats, and deploy capital only where opportunities meet our return thresholds.

With that, I'll hand over to Rahul, who will take you through the financial review. Over to you, Rahul.

Thank you, Amar, and good evening, everyone. I will now take you through our H1 2026 financial performance.

Our revenues in H1 grew from $1.22 billion in 2025 to $1.36 billion in 2026. This represents a double-digit growth of 12.1%.

Like-for-like sales growth at 6.3% was the largest contributor, adding $76 million, driven by successful, locally relevant innovations, effective campaigns, and continued improvements in our operational excellence. New store openings contributed a further $75 million.

The foreign exchange translation was a modest benefit of $4 million, and this was primarily from the strengthening of the Kazakh currency. Store closures had a marginal negative impact of $7 million.

Moving to the revenue mix, the broad-based growth across brands reflected in a stable mix year-on-year, while 83% of our revenues continued to come from stable, pegged currencies. Looking at the channel mix, home delivery increased to 52% compared to 47% in H1 2025, reflecting the continued shift towards at-home consumption, especially during periods of uncertainty.

Kiosk mix continued to increase, reaching 17% versus 14% last year, enhancing customer experience and improving operational efficiencies. Now let me take you through our brand and country performance.

We had very strong growth momentum across all our power brands. KFC revenues grew 12.6%, driven by locally relevant menu innovations such as Krystal in KSA and Excellence in UAE.

In addition, KFC's value positioning has been strengthened through flavor innovation in the Arabi and Raheb burgers. Hardee's also grew 13.9%, driven by successful partnerships such as One Piece and premium menu innovation which resonated well with customers, such as the Overloader.

Pizza Hut grew 4.4%, driven by innovation and broadening of the sharing occasions, while Krispy Kreme delivered a 10.2% growth, supported by menu innovation and continued strengthening of value offerings. We also had a broad-based growth across all our major countries.

Now let me walk you through the profitability metrics for H1 2026. Both the four-wall EBITDA and the total EBITDA margins expanded by close to 300 basis points, while the net profit margin expanded by 320 basis points, taking the net profit delivery in H1 to an all-time high of $147 million.

This profit expansion was underpinned by a reduction in the cost of inventories as well as disciplined cost management, which has created a fixed cost leverage with the strong sales growth. The profit metrics reflect the strength of our model, where profitability improvement outpaces revenue growth through scale, discipline, and execution, rather than short-term measures.

Moving to the cost of inventory evolution, in H1 2026, we have been largely able to hold the cost of inventories in line with the second half of last year. While we have experienced elevated costs, especially due to higher logistics and insurance, we have been able to largely offset these with our sourcing initiatives and some measured price increases in the form of lower discounts and margin-accretive innovation.

Our supply chain during this time has been extremely resilient, enabling us to seamlessly serve our customers and providing us with a competitive advantage. I would now draw your attention to the capital allocation efficiency.

Across the 356 stores that we opened in the assessment period, the average capex per restaurant invested was $402,000, and it delivered a very healthy payback of 3.0 years. KFC continues to be anchor of our expansion, with 142 new stores and a payback of 2.4 years.

Similarly, in Hardee's, we added 57 new stores, which delivered a payback of 2.5 years. Pizza Hut and Krispy Kreme new store paybacks are longer, about 5 years, which also is a reflection of the current situation, wherein dine-in footfalls in some of the locations has been impacted.

Overall, this reflects our disciplined, return-led approach while investing in brands and formats where the payback is the strongest, as well as carefully establishing new brands. Moving to working capital and the capex deployment, our business continues to benefit from structurally negative working capital.

The net working capital in H1 this year stood at -10.0%, which was an 80 basis points improvement over the previous year. This was driven largely by improvement in supplier payment terms and reduced inventory.

We are investing in driving sustainable growth, and we deployed a capex of $67 million in H1 2026, which was $17 million higher than the same period the previous year. This capex was largely deployed behind new store openings as well as the acquisition of Malak Al Tawook.

Overall, our H1 performance reflects the strength of our brands, the resilience of our operating systems, and executional excellence. These strong fundamentals position us well to continue delivering sustainable, profitable growth and creating long-term value for our shareholders.

With that, I will hand back to Amar.

Thank you, Rahul. Now turning to guidance, we are reaffirming our revenue and restaurant expansion outlook while providing greater clarity on our profitability expectations and priorities for the remainder of the year.

On revenue, we continue to expect mid-single-digit like-for-like growth, consistent with our first half performance. Our focus remains on strengthening brand love and customer trust through local relevance, compelling value, and disciplined execution across all our markets.

On expansion, our guidance remains unchanged at 120 to 130 net new restaurants in 2026, including new brands. New store development will remain focused on high-performing brand market units alongside the disciplined scale-up of our newer growth platforms.

Digital leadership remains a key enabler of our strategy. We are evolving towards a loyalty-led ecosystem, making loyalty a core pillar of customer engagement, and also leveraging Americana's proprietary customer stack to deliver more relevant and personalized customer experiences.

Category expansion also continues to progress. We will build on the successful acquisition and integration of Malak Al Tawook in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, advance the brand's launch in Kuwait, and continue exploring attractive opportunities across the Arabic food category as well as scalable global brands.

On profitability, we expect gross profit margin, EBITDA margin, and net income margin to expand versus 2025, with net income margin increasing by at least 100 to 150 basis points. This guidance is measured against our reported 2025 results, which included certain favorable one-off items.

Adjusting for these items, the underlying margin expansion would be meaningfully higher. Cost efficiency remains a central priority.

We will continue driving inventory savings through menu optimization and supplier negotiations, while streamlining G&A by leveraging our scale and also expanding the use of AI across our value chain. As we conclude, the first half of 2026 reflects the strength and resilience of our business.

We delivered strong revenue growth, accelerated profitability, and meaningful margin expansion, while also continuing to invest in our brands, our restaurant network, and the capabilities that will support Americana's next phase of growth. Importantly, the improvement we are seeing is driven by fundamental business performance rather than transitory benefits.

It reflects the increasing scale of the business, the benefits of operating leverage, robust cost discipline, and sustained execution against our efficiency agenda. We are therefore confident that the margin levels achieved are sustainable and provide a platform for further enhancement over time.

As we continue to grow revenues, optimize our cost structure, and unlock productivity opportunities across the business, we see a clear pathway to further profitability expansion and long-term shareholder value creation. Our playbook remains consistent: focus on value, purposeful innovation, operational excellence, and cost discipline.

In the first half, that consistency showed, translating into stronger brand momentum, healthy restaurant economics, and expansion we pursued with discipline across all our markets. At the same time, we continue to create new and scalable avenues for growth.

Our strategic partnership with ADNOC Distribution, the integration and regional expansion of Malak Al Tawook, and the opening of our first Carpo store in Qatar all strengthen and diversify our platform for the future. For more than 60 years, Americana has weathered every kind of cycle and emerged stronger each time.

A business, quite simply, tested and proven by time. The first half, the best in our history, is the clearest evidence of that enduring strength.

We move into the second half with clear priorities, real momentum, and cautious optimism in what lies ahead. Our foundations have never been more solid, and I believe without hesitation that Americana's best days are ahead of us.

Thank you all for joining us today. We are happy to take your questions now.

Hello, am I audible?

This is Abdulla Al-Buraidi from Emirates NBD Capital. Thank you very much for your great presentation and congratulation for the very brilliant results.

My first question regarding the raw material cost visibility for the third quarter. We heard before that you have the visibility until the second quarter and by then you've been pressured by some certain suppliers to renegotiate as their cost pressures emerge.

How do you see the visibility on the third quarter as we are almost having the inventory of it in total, rather than the guidance for the rest of the year, just maybe the third quarter? My second question is regarding the Saudi revenue.

We noticed quite an improvement on the revenue on a top-line basis and even when you delve deeper into the per store LFL, this quarter was substantial. Could you shed some light on the reasons or whether as it been surely lift covenant during such quarter?

My last question, sorry for taking too much, we noticed Pizza Hut LFL having a bit of weakness. What are the strategy to turn this around, and how do you see the expansion in such a franchise?

Thank you very much.

Abdulla, thank you for your loaded questions. I think we'll take turns to answer some of these.

Rahul, you want to answer the one on raw material cost?

Right. Thank you, Abdulla, for your question.

Most of our major commodity contracts are locked for the current year. While we do experience elevated costs, these are largely coming from higher logistics and higher insurance costs, as well as some alternate supplies that we had to source during the current situation.

As I explained in the presentation, in most part, these impacts have been mitigated in quarter one and quarter two through a number of measures, from banking on sourcing changes as well as taking some measured pricing. We do not expect the balance to go to be materially different from quarter two in terms of these impacts.

Having said that, it is a dynamic situation, and therefore we will continue to seek additional measures to offset any further cost increase impacts that we might come across in the balance of the year.

Abdulla, second question, one was on Saudi LFL improvement and also Pizza Hut, it's lagging the other brands. Given that Saudi reports to Harsh directly and also Pizza Hut, I'm going to turn it over to Harsh to answer those.

Thank you, Abdulla, for the questions. The first is on Pizza Hut.

On Pizza Hut, the two big markets we have is UAE and Saudi. Saudi, the LFL continues to be strong.

We have seen some headwinds in UAE given the overall situation with the conflict. Pizza Hut as a brand has slightly different customer base, and even the occasion is slightly different than KFC and Hardee's, where Pizza Hut is more family/group occasion, which got impacted more, similar to some of the casual dining brands as well as coffee brands like TGI Fridays and Peet's.

That is overall dragging the Pizza Hut performance down. Having said that, we are seeing good recovery in July, and we expect Pizza Hut to be performing similar to other brands starting September.

Hopefully, the families will come back once the school starts and we should start seeing that impact. In other markets, Pizza Hut performance is largely in line with other brands.

In your question on Saudi performance, there is no single answer to that. We have been working on initiatives across the board, which includes top line as well as bottom line.

We have been able to make a significant progress towards that. Especially from a top-line perspective, a lot of focus on driving local relevance.

If you look at some of the campaigns across brands we have done are very locally relevant. For example, for KFC, we did a Krystal campaign, for Hardee's, there was collaboration with the football player of Saudi and also Overloader and One Piece.

Similarly, Pizza Hut has been also building on a strong calendar. Largely product and local relevance-led, which has helped to get Saudi into a positive LFL territory.

We still have a long way. We continue to work on that during the course of the year.

Pizza Hut in July is already much stronger than the first half.

Okay. Thank you very much.

That's quite informative. Wishing you all the best and good luck.

Thank you, Abdulla.

Hi, hello. Am I audible?

Thank you, management, for the presentation. This is Sid from QIC Asset Management.

I have two questions, if I may. The first one is on your full-year guidance on the store opening.

Approximately, you still have 120 to 130 net addition to close your target for 2026. Just want to know how much of the current pipeline is expected to open in Q3 versus Q4.

The second question is on the home delivery revenue. The home delivery increased to 52% versus 47% last year.

What proportion of delivery sales are generated through your own channel versus the third-party aggregator? Thank you.

Hi, Sid. On the NSO, we gave guidance of 120 to 130 net new units, we reaffirm that.

We have clear visibility. Now in terms of exact numbers, Q3 versus Q4, it is difficult because the dates move.

We currently have 57 under construction, hopefully all of those will open in Q3, and then every day or every week, there are more restaurants that go under construction. We are confident about delivering the guidance that we have provided on NSOs.

On HD, we have about 65% is through aggregator platforms. Keep in mind, in many of our markets, the aggregators are a marketplace.

For example, in UAE and Kuwait, which are two of our biggest markets, and even in Egypt, aggregators are platforms or marketplace where the last-mile delivery is handled by Americana. Hopefully, that answers your questions.

It is. Thank you very much.

One last question, if I may, on the like-for-like. You had a really good like-for-like for H1.

Could you break this down between customer transaction and pricing?

It's about equal, check is slightly heavier in the first half, but we are seeing that shift over the last couple of months where transactions have outpaced check. Definitely, there's a lot more focus on driving new traffic into our restaurants, and we are quite pleased with the traffic growth over the last couple of months as well.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Hey, good evening, gentlemen. Thank you for giving me the chance to ask these questions, and congrats on the results.

I have two, if I may. The first one, just piggybacking off of the last question, Amar, can you talk through how you use price increases proactively to manage the impact of the conflict so far, and how much more headroom you think you have to continue pushing pricing from here?

It seems from the remarks that it was less about maybe headline price increases and a bit more around kind of playing around with promotions and innovations, but if you can tease that out for us, that would be great. Then similarly, I think in Q1, you had guided for gross margins to remain strong, but to start to come down sequentially in Q2 given the cost environment, yet you managed to deliver, I think, about 90 basis points of expansion over Q1, which I think is the highest since at least the IPO.

Can you talk through the moving parts there and whether you see this as kind of a sustainable gross margin level going forward?

Good to hear from you, Rashad. I'm going to turn it over to Harsh on the pricing, and then Rahul can handle the gross margin.

Rashad, two things before I jump into pricing. One is given we are a multi-country, multi-brand operator, it gives us the flexibility to navigate the situation or the conflict much better, we don't have to take as much pricing as some of the other players would have to given we still have been able to contain and manage the input cost.

Now second, specific to your question on the headroom on pricing, it's very difficult to put in a number. Some of these situations continue to evolve, but we don't take a blanket approach to pricing, as we have mentioned earlier.

We look at the time of the year, the platforms, and also look at what the competitive situation is, as well as the campaigns we're running. Absolutely, when we do an LTO, which has more novelty, we tend to take slightly higher pricing, which helps to drive check.

We also want to make sure we have entry-level, which is our everyday value, which is very affordable. If you look at some of the campaigns we have done are at 7 riyals, as well as 9, but that doesn't mean they are margin-dilutive.

They're still good-margin products, but give entry value to the customers. We continue to look at pricing opportunities on an ongoing basis.

We don't see there is any ceiling to that. Depending on the situation, if you need to, we'll take more pricing in the future.

Rahul, I will hand it over to you on the margin.

Thanks, Harsh. Rashad, as our gross profit, apart from the cost of inventory, also includes an element of fixed cost for the kitchen.

With the strong growth that we had in quarter two versus quarter one, as well as year-on-year, there is an element of leverage of this fixed cost in the gross profit expansion. Having said that, we have also had quite a few successful innovations, which have been margin accretors, and that's helped the profit margin of quarter two.

The full impact of the higher costs that we currently see, the elevated cost because of logistics, were not fully reflected in quarter two as we consumed some of the inventory that was purchased earlier, and we are expecting a marginal dilution in H2 coming from this new inventory that has been purchased at slightly higher prices. Having said that, in balance, the dilution that we are expecting in the balance to go is not significant.

That's very helpful. Thank you very much, and congrats again.

Hello. Am I audible?

Okay. Thank you for taking my question.

I have a couple. First, can you please elaborate on how did you manage to improve the unit economics of delivery orders?

Because usually we would expect lower margin associated with the higher contribution of food delivery. Is it via lower commissions?

Can you elaborate more on this one? My second question, excluding any tactical cost benefits, what will be a sustainable EBITDA margin and net profit margin for your business?

Thank you, Ahmed, for your questions. I will take the first one and would hand over to Rahul on the second one.

See, on your home delivery cost question, there are multiple things. One is we have had new players coming in which are at a lower take rates compared to some of the existing ones, which has helped us to reduce overall cost if you look at as a percentage of total sales.

The second is we have consciously dialed back on subscriptions, we're not as actively doing what we were doing last year because last year we were in a recovery mode compared to this year. That when you're not participating in the subscriptions, that also helps you to reduce your cost.

The third is we have also done various optimizations on our last mile, which has also helped us to reduce or optimize our cost. Overall, multitude of factors which have played in, and that has helped us to reduce our cost as a percentage of sales.

Rahul, I will hand it over to you on

the second. Thanks again, Harsh.

We didn't have any significant one-offs in our H1 EBITDA margins. Our EBITDA margins in H1 reported were 25.5%.

As I mentioned, we are expecting some dilution in the balance to go as we start consuming the inventory which has been procured at a higher cost with the higher logistics. This will not be materially different from the EBITDA margins of H1.

Any guidance on the sustainable level of EBITDA margin and net profit margin?

Normalized. Ahmed, we provided the guidance on the expansion is 100 to 150 basis points is what we are expecting to deliver this year on net profit.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Okay.

Hi. Thank you so much, and congratulations on the excellent results.

I have three questions, please. My first question is on the market.

In case if you have done any studies recently, do you believe that you have substantially gained market share in H1 both from fine and casual dining and also within the QSR segment? My second question would be on lease payments.

They were broadly stable year-on-year on a per store basis in H1. How do you see that evolving into 2H and 2027?

Do you believe that your negotiating power with landlords has increased given situation? It would be great if you can remind us percentage of stores for which leases expire into 2027.

Lastly, follow-up on the margin. I think your guidance for net margin expansion implies roughly normalization of net margin from around 11% in H1 towards 9% in 2H.

Would you agree that you are rather more conservative, as opposed to there are multiple factors that should drive such a substantial decline? Thank you.

Evgenii, again, we don't have data on market share again, but given our performance, we would like to think that we are gaining share from the competitors as well as probably from casual dining and premium dining, because our brands are mass, low-price, affordability. Anecdotally, we believe we are gaining share.

Lease payments, very difficult to pin a number. Every year we renew, I would say probably a third of our leases every year, because historically the contracts were 3 to 5 years.

There's constant effort to renegotiate and at lower rates, but very difficult to put a number to that. Definitely, we take into consideration the environment and seek leverage on that.

On the net margin, I believe your assumption of 9% is slightly off. We are giving guidance of 100 to 150 basis points on net income over the previous year, which was at 8.9%, I believe, Pujeet, right?

The full year of 2025 was 8.9%. Yeah.

Hopefully, that answers your questions.

Thank you, Amar. Congratulations again.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, hello. Can you hear me?

Yes. Thanks for the opportunity.

I just wanted to ask two questions. One was around the World Cup and the impact on your sales, and how did you exactly measure it and or estimate it, given most of your portfolio is gathering food?

I'm a bit concerned that the like-for-like is not that impressive in the context of such a big event.

Go ahead, Harsh.

Mohammed, on the World Cup specifically, our expectation actually was that the World Cup would have a positive impact on the business. I would say that it was relatively muted because the timings of the match were very odd.

We didn't see any significant uplift from a World Cup standpoint. Anyway, World Cup, from a six months perspective, World Cup was merely for a week or two, it won't anyway have a tangible impact on the business.

Mostly in July.

Weeks,

yeah,

so.

Overall, like what we saw during Qatar World Cup, this World Cup, given the timing of the matches, we didn't see a big impact on the overall business.

Interesting, because other gathering food operators saw a positive tailwind. In any case, I'll go to the next question, which is the ADNOC opportunity, and how much visibility do you have on the new openings, including the potential risk of cannibalization?

Mohammed, as we shared earlier, our guidance is 120 to 130 net new openings. We've shared our payback terms, which is roughly 3 years, and we are very disciplined in how we select locations, how we approve locations, and we don't see any material impact on our return thresholds.

Sorry, this question was on ADNOC? I missed that.

It's on ADNOC. ADNOC.

Mohammed, can you repeat the question, please?

Yeah. How should I think about the ADNOC opportunity from a sizing standpoint and from also a risk of cannibalization standpoint?

Have you internally done the aggregate kind of study on the risks and the size of the opportunity?

The size of the opportunity, as we mentioned earlier, is we are looking at 200 locations over the next 5 years. ADNOC has prime real estate and they are uniquely positioned to offer drive-through locations, which are very rare in UAE.

Their portfolio currently is heavily based in the UAE. We would get first preference Americana brands in all their retail gas stations.

We are very positive about this partnership. We don't see any significant concern on cannibalization.

Again, the decision is every site has to go through the feasibility exercise to be approved. The thresholds that we apply are no different to ADNOC than any other location.

Thank you so much. If I were just to add one more follow-up, when you say preferential, do you mean rent, or do you mean access?

Access,

access.

Okay. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you so much for the opportunity to ask the question, and congratulations.

A couple of questions on my side. The first one is on the performance in Saudi, and we saw some acceleration.

Do you see that momentum continuing and being maintained in July so far? Also in the UAE, conversely, we saw some slowdown.

Can you comment on the kind of developments in the UAE, whether you see any improvements in recent weeks or any changes? Finally, just overall, in terms of your guidance, in the full-year outlook, does your guidance assume any significant improvement in the geopolitical situation, or that would be, let's say, an upside risk to your guidance?

Thank you.

Maxim, both on UAE, KSA, July is outperforming the first half. The uncertainty is already baked into our forecast for the balance of the year.

If things improve drastically, which everybody is hoping for, that would be an upside.

Got it. Thank you so much.

The impact of that upside would be limited mostly to UAE, though.

Understood. Thank you.

Yep.

Yes. Hi.

Good afternoon, gents. Again, congrats on a very solid set of results.

I have maybe two questions, because a lot has been answered. Maybe if I look at it by revenue by country, and specifically into Q2, Amar, UAE is up 7%, which is quite impressive given the geopolitical development, I think the hit to traffic trends, tourism.

I just want to understand within this performance, has there been anything to highlight, is it Abu Dhabi, Northern Emirates, I think you've mentioned that in the Q1 call, doing quite well versus maybe the touristic hotspots in Dubai? I think that would be the first question.

Have you seen any improvement in trends in UAE, for example, June versus May, April? Are things actually trending in the right direction?

Then on the other countries, I notice that Kuwait and Egypt has been quite strong year-over-year in Q2 2026. Maybe if you can share some highlights there.

That would be my first question. Maybe the second question is just on the net margin.

I know you've talked about it a lot, but if I just look at H1, you're up around 320 basis points in terms of margins, and for the full year, you're talking about 100 to 150. There seems to be a very good buffer going into H2.

I just want to understand you seem pretty comfortable with the guidance. Is it fair to assume that this is more of a conservative guidance, because I think the CFO did mention that you don't expect significant dilution in margins going into the second half?

Maybe just some visibility there would be helpful.

Taher, always good to hear from you, and I must say I'm disappointed that you waited too long to ask your questions.

I was still in the queue. I don't know why.

On performance in UAE, we are seeing improvement. Yes, you mentioned 7%, solid.

July is even better than that. It is primarily driven by, again, the campaigns that are very focused on either value, innovation, right?

Our R&D pipeline is quite robust now with development engine. Also, I think the other thing I want to highlight is that we have a lot more media muscle across all the countries since the beginning of this year.

This was a result of the renegotiation and RFP that we did to select a new media agency, and they've delivered significant efficiency. As you may be aware that we have required spending based on agreements with the brands.

We are getting a lot more media for that money now as compared to previous years. If you are driving in Dubai, I'm sure you're seeing the huge billboards for our brands, so that helps a lot.

When you combine value, strong innovation pipeline, and on top of that, great media execution, that is what is contributing to the growth in UAE. Similarly, all that applies to the other markets as well.

Kuwait has been very strong, very strong execution at the local level in Kuwait, and we are very pleased with the performance. Egypt also, we made a lot of investments in operations and in the team, in leadership changes over the last, I would say 18 months, and that is all paying off.

Across the board, these three are pretty strong markets for us. I think your other question was on 100 100 to 150 basis points.

I'm going to turn it over to my CFO to defend that.

Thanks, Amar. Taher, last year in 2025, there was a marked improvement in the net income margin from H1 to H2.

The net income in H1 was 7.5%, in H2 was 9.8%. As Amar mentioned earlier, there were also some one-off benefits in this number in H2 of 2025.

Now while for 2026, we are expecting the margins to be only marginally dilutive in the second half of the year versus first half, but purely by the sheer comp of having a much higher base in the second half of the year, we shouldn't expect the similar level of margin expansion. Therefore, we believe that the full-year guidance of 100 to 100 100 to 150 is a balanced view.

Of course, if the business momentum continues and there's upside on the top line, again, through leverage, there could be further upside. At the same time, there is volatility in the overall situation, and therefore the view that we've given, we believe, is a balanced one.

Taher,

we

will be all happy if we exceed the guidance we provided. Of course, we'll be the happiest people, right?

All right. Perfect.

Just maybe a follow-up, Amar. We've seen some news headline about the Yum!

Brands selling some parts of the portfolio. I think some went to a private equity and the others, the China business was also sold.

I just want to understand, I don't know if you have more visibility, how does this impact Americana, given that you are one of the big franchisees of Yum! Brands in the Middle East, North Africa region?

Do you expect any changes to the terms, conditions? Is it business as usual?

Maybe if you share just some color, cuz I want to assume that if a private equity is coming in, clearly these guys are going to tend to be greedy, try to extract maybe more juice, optimize margins, try to push a lot of maybe the franchisees, and so on. Maybe your thoughts on that would be very helpful.

Taher, great question. We've been in very close contact with Yum!

on this. You're referring to the sale of Pizza Hut to Longreach Capital and the China business to Yum China.

There's been a lot of transparency, communication. We've also met the acquiring owners of Pizza Hut.

They're very reasonable people, very excited about the brand, very supportive of the franchise community, and they understand the success has to be shared, right? There will be no contractual changes, but more importantly, we believe that they will bring more focus to the brand, and this is a positive.

It's a positive for Yum!, it's a positive for the brand, and it's a positive for Americana.

Okay. All right, clear.

Just maybe one final question, sorry. Just on Malak Al Tawook, I know it's still early, but now that you've completed UAE and Saudi acquisitions, and you're looking at integration, and so on, but just in terms of the opportunity, because when we looked at the numbers initially, the revenue per store looked quite elevated and superior.

Clearly, 7 stores for a country like UAE is quite small, clearly, you have maybe more room to expand. I just want to understand just the unit economics for Malak Al Tawook, and how big could this brand be, at least in UAE and Saudi?

Should we expect you guys to be going all in, aggressive to try to expand this portfolio? Do you have any numbers in mind that you can share in terms of how big the platform can be for Malak Al Tawook, at least in UAE and Saudi, at this stage?

Taher, it's difficult to share numbers at this stage. Of course, we've done our internal scenario planning.

We're very excited about the brand, and we are building a very solid pipeline both in UAE, Saudi, and also launch plan in Kuwait. We already have sites signed in Kuwait as well for the launch.

Let's wait. We want to see how, let's say, the next 10, 15, 20 Malak Al Tawooks perform, and we continue to have a view on what the scalability is, what the holding capacity is, how the consumers react.

The AUVs currently of a limited number of restaurants is quite high. Obviously, as we expand the portfolio, there'll be some dilution.

At the same time, there are a lot of synergies Americana's value chain will bring to the brand as well. Net-net, this will be value accretive for Americana.

Let's have this conversation maybe early next year. We'll be in a better position to answer your question on what the future potential is.

We are super excited about the brand.

Perfect. Congrats again.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you very much.

I just had one question. Most of the questions obviously have been answered.

Just on Saudi, I remember in the previous call, you'd mentioned that you're kind of relooking in terms of your expansion plans in Saudi. Obviously, it's a bit more cautious in terms of your approach given how the macro was kind of weighing on consumer spend.

With the recent results, has there been kind of a rethinking about that strategy? Should we expect some more aggressive openings over there over the next 12 months?

How is the thinking kind of looking at the Saudi opportunity? Thank you.

Harsh, I'll turn this over to your namesake, Harsh, to answer.

Thank you, Amar. Good to hear your voice, Harsh.

On Saudi, while there have been an improvement in performance, but we still want to build on the margin profile we have in Saudi. We don't think it would be indexing the same numbers in terms of share like it was in 2022, 2023.

Having said that, yes, Saudi will still continue to grow and will have a reasonable contribution in terms of growth. We are growing and we'll continue to grow in terms of new store openings, but we don't think it will reach to the levels what it was in 2022, 2023.

Yet.

At least not yet. It's picking up pace, though.

Yes.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. Hi.

I have a question regarding the growth in sales in Saudi. If we look at what's happening in Kuwait, we've seen double-digit growth, UAE double-digit growth, while Saudi, it's single digit, given it was one of the biggest markets that you're going to expand in.

Thank you, Fatema, for your question. See, I would say that, yeah, Saudi is a market which is super competitive and very value-sensitive market.

We at least have been able to progress in terms of like-for-like growth as well as margin profile. As I said earlier, we are not saying that Saudi is there where we want Saudi to be for us as a business.

Kuwait has very different dynamics as a business, as well as UAE. We continue to build on Saudi.

At the same time, we'll continue to make sure we grow in UAE as well as Kuwait in terms of new store openings as well as like-for-like growth. The dynamics at play are very different in all three markets you're talking about.

Hi, can you hear me? I'm connected.

Yeah.

I think we can conclude, Rafal.

Thanks, Rafal, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's call and for your continued interest in Americana Restaurants. We hope the discussion gave you a clear view of our first half performance and our priorities for the remainder of the year.

In case there are any additional questions, we would be happy to answer. Please feel free to reach out to us at [email protected].

I would also encourage you to download the Americana Restaurants Investor Relations mobile application, where you can access our disclosures, financial results, presentations, and stay up to date with all our investor communications in one place. We look forward to continuing the dialogue with you in the months ahead.

Thank you again.