Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining our Q1 2026 earnings call. Before my colleague Fabien takes you through our detailed financials, I want to spend a few minutes addressing our current standing, the progress we've achieved to date, and what we are excited about over the next two to three years.

To be direct, we are in the midst of a deliberate transformation of the business. This process involves clear trade-offs, which are visible in our reported results today, but constitute a conscious choice to allow the business to be set up for long-term success.

Over the past year, we've fundamentally overhauled our customer acquisition strategy, marketing spend, and product proposition. We've made the conscious choice to walk away from unprofitable volume, tightened our marketing ROI thresholds, and redirected capital from acquisition into product quality, while restructuring our fixed cost base.

None of this was accidental. It was a sequenced effort to fix the foundation, even if it comes with a near-term trade-off to reported growth, but will allow for better revenue quality in the long run.

The central question is whether this logic is working. I believe the evidence is clear that it is, and we've seen success in those metrics that are most associated with the long-term health of the business.

First, let's take a look at our meal kits product segment. One year ago, meal kit revenue was declining at roughly 14.5% in constant currency in Q1.

In Q1 2026, that decline narrowed to 8.5%, marking our fifth consecutive quarter of sequential improvement. The trajectory is moving clearly in the right direction.

On efficiency, we have delivered structural improvements. Fulfillment costs as a percentage of revenue improved by 0.8 percentage points year over year.

We reduced absolute marketing spend by €62 million to about 21.8% of revenue. That's not a one-time squeeze, but a permanent shift in our operating cost discipline.

Regarding the product, we've executed the most significant investment cycle in our history. Under The Refresh, we have substantially broadened menu choice, doubling the recipes we offer in markets like the US or the Nordics, while upgrading ingredient quality and expanding protein variety across all geographies.

The sum of these investments leads to a materially better product value proposition, which will only compound from here as more and more initiatives go live. That's the backbone of higher customer lifetime value.

Crucially, this means the quality of our revenue has improved. Our tenured customers are ordering more frequently, and they're ordering higher baskets.

Group-level average order value rose 4.2% in constant currency, with meal kits specifically up 4.5%. Revenue retention, and thus customer lifetime values of our tenured cohorts, have been improving and trend at the best levels ever seen in the business.

These are not temporary effects, but rather the response of a healthy customer base to a fundamentally better product and a stronger value proposition. The sum total of these changes have to date most positively affected our tenured customers, which was clearly our primary focus area.

However, it's not yet been enough to fully offset the impact of front-loaded product investments, inflation, and the volume-led operational deleveraging. We expect the trend improvement for meal kits to continue going forward, and also to see more proof of a return to eventual revenue growth by H2, when we will have the benefits of our product investments and the outstanding parts of the efficiency program materialize more forcefully in our P&L.

I also want to address ready-to-eat, and specifically Factor US directly. Again, our primary goal for 2026 is to return the RTE product segment to full-year profitability on the basis of product excellence and strong operations.

We are on a good trajectory to achieve this. The operational setbacks we faced in the US last year, which impacted customer experience and retention, are now fully resolved.

The underlying indicators have turned strongly. NPS is now trending at the highest level since 2023.

Our tenured active customers grew double digits in Q1, a direct consequence of better product excitement among them, and validation of our strategy to add more variety into the menus. RTE adjusted EBITDA losses also narrowed by about €18 million in Q1.

That's a 40% improvement year over year. This represents a very encouraging trendline in our P&L, and is the result of improving both unit economics and a more disciplined marketing investment approach.

The remaining challenge now is rebuilding the active customer base, which reduced in the last nine months due to those earlier mentioned operational issues and our subsequent response to not invest aggressively behind a product and supply chain that needed fixing. While conversions are improving, switching the acquisition engine back on does not happen overnight.

It rather requires multiple touchpoints with consumers. New customer volume in Q1 was not yet enough to fully offset the gap in active customers accumulated over the past 12 months, which has come as a result of the aforementioned weaker retention and reduced new customer volume.

However, we are now restarting the growth engine on top of operational confidence and strong ROI discipline. Outside the US, our RTE businesses in Australia and Canada continue to post healthy double-digit growth.

Furthermore, our new production facility in Germany has opened and will soon be fully operational, providing the dedicated capacity needed to scale Factor also in Europe in the second half of the year. In addition, we are excited about our product and menu expansion roadmaps, which should help to drive positive outcomes with regard to retention and order frequency of our tenured RTE customer base.

We expect the combination of all of these improvements to flow through our P&L more visibly in the second half of the year. With that, let me come to the highlights of Q1.

Revenue for the quarter was approximately €1.7 billion, a 7.7% decline in constant currency, which was in line with our expectations. Meal kit revenue trends improved for a fifth consecutive quarter in a row, while RTE revenue trends showed a stable trend versus what we saw in Q4.

Adjusted EBITDA came in at about €24 million. To put this in context, severe winter storms in the US and Europe, including a once in 75 years event in the US, disrupted our logistics and impacted adjusted EBITDA by approximately €25 million.

This is a one-off event that does not change the underlying trajectory of the operating model. Excluding this weather impact, our underlying adjusted EBITDA run rate was closer to €49 million.

This gives a much more accurate read of where the business structurally sits today. Fabien will bridge these numbers in more detail.

Contribution margin for Q1 sat at 25.6%. We saw strong operational improvements on the fulfillment side, which were offset by our investments into better product value for consumers.

That's a deliberate strategy, which will help us to divest from marketing and improve customer retention and order frequency in future quarters. Critically, we generated €49 million in positive free cash flow, our fourth consecutive quarter of positive free cash flow, despite the €25 million impact from the adverse weather events.

Finally, we're reconfirming our full year 2026 guidance: constant currency revenue decline of 3% to 6% and an adjusted EBITDA in the range of €375 million to €425 million. The delivery will be second-half weighted.

We front-loaded The Refresh investments because we saw clear evidence that they were working. These costs hit the P&L now, while the revenue benefits compound as retention and order frequency improve.

In H2, the investment drag will moderate and structural savings from our efficiency program will flow through more fully. There are also variables we do not fully control, such as consumer sentiment in North America and inflationary pressures.

However, the leading indicators we track about the health of the business and our customer base, such as customer order patterns I referenced and cohort retention, all point in the right direction. 15 years in, our mission to change the way people eat is more relevant than ever.

By focusing on product quality, customer loyalty, and cost discipline, we're building a business that creates lasting value. We're not only optimizing for the next quarter, we're building a company that earns its place on the dinner table every single week.

Thank you, I will hand over to Fabien now.

Thank you, Dominik, and good morning, everyone. Let me take you through the financial details of the quarter before we open for questions.

You would have noticed that we have only a handful of slides this quarter, but I will make sure that I bring the necessary level of detail to understand how the trends that Dominik just described are showing up in our financials. Starting with revenue.

Group net revenue was €1.68 billion in Q1, a 7.7% decrease in constant currency. If you recall in the previous quarter, Q4 2025, that figure was 9% negative in constant currency.

Definitely this represents another step in the right directions as we anticipated. As of next quarter, we will start reporting a full P&L split by product category.

Allow me to already discuss with you the drivers for each of our key product categories now. Meal kits delivered close to €1.2 billion in revenue, 8.5% lower than last year in constant currency.

As Dominik noted, this is the fifth consecutive quarter of sequential improvement in constant currency rates. The make of this number is defined by the trajectory of orders and of AOV.

Order growth in meal kits, while still negative, also improved sequentially for the fifth consecutive quarter. What we are seeing today is our tenured customer base ordering more on a per-customer basis.

On the other side, the cumulative impact of the marketing reductions over the past 18 months means that orders from recent customers are still down comparatively and more than offsetting the resilience in our tenured base. Average order value for meal kit was up 4.5% in constant currency, supported by fewer discounts and some marginal price increase and some positive mix.

Ready-to-eat delivered €466 million, which is lower than last year in constant currency by 6.9%. This is made of average order value up by 1.4% in constant currency and lower order by about 8%.

Let's pause for a second to understand the underlying drivers of order decline, which I believe is not necessarily fully understood by the market. First, and most importantly, the cumulative impact of the preceding nine months of operational issues precluded us from acquiring as many new customers as we would have liked while we were fixing those issues.

Second, some underperformance in conversion in Q1 this year, as we start to ramp up quality conversions and we optimize our channel, our product, and our marketing messages. Nevertheless, the tenured customer for ready-to-eat in Q1 displayed double-digit revenue growth, which is a great trajectory.

Basically, because the category is in early stage, the conversion still represent an outsized part of the revenue dynamics. The takeaway on revenue is that the direction of travel on meal kits is improving as anticipated.

On ready-to-eat, the slope of improvement is not yet visible in the revenue because the customer base entering this year was smaller than a year ago. The improvement will materialize progressively through the second half of the year as we rebuild the customer base on top of improving profitability.

For contribution margin now. The contribution margin, excluding impairment and share-based compensation, was 25.6%, down 1.4 percentage points year on year.

I want to be specific about what drove that decline because the composition matters to understand how our strategy is being implemented. The first factor is the severe winter storms: €25 million of non-recurring disruptions that hit primarily in North America.

I don't need to remind anyone, certainly not our US listeners, that the winter storm Fern in the US was widely reported to be the heaviest winter storm in 75 years. This event affected ingredient delivery, wastage, increased credit and refund cost, and disrupted last-mile delivery operation.

This is a weather event that has no bearing on the underlying structural margin trajectory. The second factor is deliberate.

We have accelerated product investment ahead of the revenue curve. Investment in higher quality protein, expanded meal choice significantly, or onboarding of new ingredients have been rolled out across countries.

Just to give an example, our customer in the Nordics can now have 100 different recipes in their weekly menu, roughly doubling the size of the menu in six months. These are recipes that now for the most part have a minimum of 200 g of vegetables or fruits, and better quality and better variety in their protein source.

These investments increase gross costs in near term. The returns come through higher retention, better frequency of orders, and larger basket, i.e., better customer lifetime in subsequent period, especially as some of these investments compound and turned HelloFresh meals into being perceived as a higher value options.

In this particular case of the Nordics I explained before, we registered a very encouraging positive total revenue growth in Q1 already. Overall, we still expect the impact of the product investment cycle in 2026 to take up approximately 150 basis points of gross margin, net of the impact of price increases.

On the positive side, our efficiency program continued to deliver. Fulfillment costs declined 0.8 percentage points as a share of revenue when you exclude the impact of impairment and share-based compensation.

This is a direct output of the network optimizations and productivity improvements we have been embedded into the operating model. These savings are structural in nature.

Marketing spend came in at 21.8% of revenue in Q1, down 30 basis points year on year, with absolute spend reduced by €62 million, but only 8% reduction in relative term in constant currency. The marketing efficiency model we established in mid-2024 with tighter ROI thresholds, the elimination of unprofitable acquisition channels, and a more discipline and product-led approach to acquiring high-quality customers is now the baseline, and it is embedded in how we operate.

We do not expect to revert to prior spending levels, but we also do not expect to reduce marketing in 2026 in the same way we did in 2025. This dynamic is particularly clear when you look at the meal kit product category, where absolute spend was down only slightly year on year and as roughly flat as a percentage of revenue.

What is critical now from a marketing perspective is that the value of the product investment land well. This is not an overnight type of occurrence, as word of mouth, public reviews, top of funnels, and performance marketing all need to work in unison to crystallize those advantages and become top of mind for new consumers.

On ready-to-eat, spend was down. It was down substantially year on year in both absolute and relative terms, and this reflects two things.

First, we are lapping an elevated Q1 2025 in terms of investment, when we were running significant brand campaigns for Factor. Second, we have been deliberately conservative on acquisition spend while rebuilding the operational foundation.

Now that the operational issues are behind, and we were able to also invest in the product propositions, we will lean back into acquisitions progressively, but we will do so from the position of disciplined ROI, not volume at any cost. Remember, our primary goal for 2026 is to drive ready-to-eat back to sustainable profitability and establish the right foundations for long-term profitable growth.

Group EBITDA was €23.6 million, absorbing, as I mentioned, €25 million of weather-related disruption. Stripped of that non-recurring item, the underlying group adjusted EBITDA run rate was €49 million.

By product category, meal kit adjusted EBITDA was €105 million, representing a margin of 9%. This reflects the weather impact, which fell disproportionately on North America, and the front-loaded product investment costs.

A weather-adjusted meal kit adjusted EBITDA margin would be closer to 10.3%, still below last year 11.4%, primarily due to the deliberate product investment pull-forward and the impact of volume-led operational deleverage. That, as Dominik said, that is the trade we have made.

Q1 is typically the quarter with the lowest margin, we are confident we can finish the year with double-digit adjusted EBITDA margin for this product category. On ready-to-eat, the adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to 26 to €27.6 million from €45.9 million in Q1 2025.

This is €18 million improvement, or a 40% reduction of the loss. This is, in my view, the most compelling trend in the P&L right now.

The improvement has come from marketing efficiency, operational cost recovery, and the resilient economics on the active customer base. Obviously, we want to maintain this momentum in the subsequent quarters.

Holding costs of €48 million are up modestly year on year, reflecting continued investment in IT and tech inflation, while personnel expenses has gone down. Free cash flow for Q1 was €49 million.

It reduced by €18.8 million year on year, which is entirely explained by two items: lower adjusted EBITDA, primarily weather-driven, and higher capex. Q1 capex was €44 million, up from €34 million a year ago.

The majority of that increase reflects the Factor Europe facility investment in Germany. This is a gross capex with a clearly identified strategic return.

Going forward, we expect capex to normalize within our full-year guidance range as the year progresses. The free cash flow this quarter was also supported by the positive inflow of operating working capital, which was approximately €30 million better than last year, of which 1/3 is structural and 2/3 is phasing and therefore will be unwound later in the year.

On the outlook, I want to reconfirm what we had previously communicated for the group for 2026, which is constant currency revenue growth of -3% to -6%, adjusted EBITDA in constant currency of €375 million to €425 million. I also acknowledge that if you take into consideration the results we are presenting today and the directional guidance I will communicate for Q2, we are looking at a second-half weighted delivery, and I will explain that.

Q2 still has 2 months to go, obviously, but for now, we expect the top line for the group to remain relatively stable in terms of rate of decline, driven by some underperformance in Q1 conversion, which impact Q2. The impact of the product investment in top line is also expected to be more tangible in the second half of the year.

On bottom line, we expect Q2 to be between €30 million to €40 million below Q2 2025. This is driven by primarily the fact that investment in product have been accelerated between H2 2025 and H1 2026.

With the data we are seeing in terms of how product investment are resonating with existing customers, and the learning from the peak period, we are expecting to hit the guidance for 2026. With that, I will open the line for questions.

Thank you.

Hi there, are you guys able to hear me?

Yes.

Excellent, thank you very much. A couple of questions from me, please.

You reference pricing a few times in the release. I'm interested if you could give us some more color on what's driving the uptick in pricing.

Is it just reduced discounting, pricing up as a response to inflation, or some form of pivot in underlying approach to pricing? Then maybe a second question.

You sort of reference no improvement in underlying trends year on year in Q2. I'm interested as to why that's the case.

You reference that the benefits of investment will kick in more in H2 than in H1, but regardless of investment, if you didn't have investment, comps are getting easier. Would you not expect the underlying trend to be improving, regardless of the timing and benefits of your investment program?

I'm just interested as to why things are not getting better in Q2 versus Q1. Thank you.

Dominik maybe can answer on pricing, or otherwise I will. On Q2, I understand your question was more what is the fabric of our Q2 year on year.

What I would say is most of what I've been describing for Q2 is something that we have been already anticipated where we gave the guidance for the full year. It's not totally a surprise.

What you see year on year is I would say three key components. You have the efficiency program, which are exactly on track as we expected, which we see the impact on the P&L.

On the other side, you see investment in product to increase the value propositions to our customer, which is hitting the P&L as we have been scaling that up from H2 to H1, which of course is giving a negative comparison to last year. We still have deleverage, especially on meal kit.

I would say last year we were having a very meaningful reduction of marketing to offset that, which we don't want to do this year. It is a choice we have been making for supporting long-term growth.

As a reminder, total company last year we have been reducing marketing spend by more than €200 million, with an increase in ready-to-eat, you can imagine the magnitude of the reductions we have had in meal kit, which is not happening this year, which is why you have an optic of a lower EBITDA, but on a like-for-like basis it is roughly where we expect it to be, which means that from Q3 already we are expecting a year-on-year improvement on our adjusted EBITDA trajectory. What's important to notice as well, despite the numbers that I have just been talking about, we are expecting in Q2 on ready-to-eat most likely to be already on a positive trajectory as we continue to improve, and on meal kit on a very solid double-digit adjusted EBITDA margin.

If I could just follow up on the...

I can answer the question on pricing.

Oh, sorry, go on, Dominik.

On pricing, I wouldn't say there's a massive shift in strategy. There's two things that I would like to call out.

Number one, yes, we have reduced some of the incentives, so that is then coming through in higher net AOVs. Secondly, we've taken sort of some pricing action, but mostly in line with inflation, sometimes a little bit over inflation, but also giving more value to customers.

You see the net impact in our COGS line, but the gross impact of investments has actually been higher than what you see in the COGS line, because we've also done some small pricing changes, but not across all geographies, etc. That's not the hugest impact of what you see.

The incentives definitely play a part here.

Excellent, thank you for those answers. If I could have a quick follow-up, Fabien, on your point about Q2.

You were breaking up a little bit, but it sounded to me like you were basically saying that it's due to sort of a progressive reduction in marketing leading to a compounding effect on your cohorts, effectively. Firstly, is that what you were saying?

Then secondarily, given the product investment, I would imagine that your lifetime value of your customers would be going up, and as such, I'm not entirely sure why marketing continues to reduce. Is it because you're seeing CACs trending up, and as such, you're progressively reducing marketing further to compensate for that, to get your CAC versus LTV lining up, or is there another driver behind that that I'm not quite understanding?

Thank you.

Hey, Joe, I apologize if I was not clear or breaking up on my earlier comment. I was referring to still the dynamic of operational deleverage we still have on meal kit, because we are still on negative orders year on year.

Last year, some of this decline were offset by a very meaningful reduction of marketing spend. I was reminding how much we reduced overall marketing spend last year, by about €200 million, and even more than that if we take meal kit alone, which we do not have this year, because we want to ensure we can support long-term conversion momentum.

On product investment, it is clear that today what we see is already a positive trajectory on tenured customer, which are ordering more than before, which is a very good news. What we don't see yet is the impact on ability to drive new conversions, because we know this will take time.

That's why we believe that we probably need still few quarters to be able to show that into the P&L, and it's what we are anticipated from Q3 onward.

Thanks very much.

Great. I have two questions as well, please.

First, just to clarify, Dominik, did you mention in your comments that you would expect a return to overall revenue growth for meal kits in H2, based on the trends you're seeing, or just would that still be more of a 2027 type of outlook? Any color on that return to growth trajectory based on the trends you're seeing, whether it was for meal kits or for the group, in H2 would be great.

Second, one of the questions we are getting is on the health of the consumer, particularly in the US, with the worries around energy prices and cost of living going up. Just wanted to understand how you all are seeing an impact on that, whether you're offsetting it by other means, and if all of this is now baked into the outlook that you reconfirmed today.

Some color on that would be great. Thank you.

Sure, Nizla. Let me be clear.

What I said is that in H2, you should you should see evidence more clearly for an eventual return to growth, also in line with Fabian's answer just now. Given sort of like the massive year-over-year reduction in marketing in Q1, some of that carries over into Q2.

That's why you don't see sort of like the revenue growth inflecting in Q2, but you should see more evidence for an eventual return to growth in the second half of the year. That's what I was referencing.

On your question with regard to consumer health in the US, yeah, with regard to consumer health in the US, I would say it's definitely not the the sort of like best environment that we've that we've been in. There's obviously definitely also on the part of consumers, like a lot of fear of inflation coming back and other things.

That's also why we want to be very strict in our ROI thresholds that we target with new customers, and not overshoot, especially when, a lot of the impact of our strategy is basically for consumers to order more over time. We want to make sure that as we switch back on the acquisition engine, that we are cautious and do not invest aggressively into a consumer sentiment that is very much weakening, when a lot of the return should come from better lifetime retention, better frequency, higher AOVs, etc.

I would say, we don't see it massively right now, but we definitely see some of the indicators, we see a lot of the research, etc. coming, and we want to be cautious in that environment.

Great, thank you. Thank you

Morning, guys, a couple from me, please. First one is to come back on the Q2 guidance where, to be clear, I think you're guiding to revenue declining in constant FX similar to what it did in Q1, and to be clear, are you saying that meal kits should also decline at a similar cadence in Q2 to what they did in Q1?

If that is the case, can you just remind us again why is there no sequential improvement in meal kits in Q2? I hear you in terms of having had less marketing last year, maybe that's flowing through in cohorts, but historically you've always pointed to each quarter that year-on-year trajectory for meal kits gets a couple of points better, and you'd always kind of pointed to that continuing sequentially to improve this year.

Why is meal kits not improving in Q2, is my question. Then the follow-up to that is, you said on the Q2 guidance that most of the softer outlook was anticipated when you reported the Q4, what was not anticipated, and can you give us some sense as to what's happening in April?

Thank you.

Hey Andrew. On the outlook, you have two questions: one was more around top line, the other one was more around the bottom line.

I think on the bottom line I've I've answered already the questions, which is we are expecting, as I've said, a double-digit adjusted EBITDA for meal kit, but lower than last year because of the phasing of product investment and the continuing deleverage where we don't have a similar level of of marketing reductions than than last year. I think it's pretty it's pretty simple here.

On on the top line, indeed, we are expecting a similar rate than what we have seen in Q1, with meal kit, and it's probably similar across category, with meal kit around the same level, maybe slightly better because if you strip out the fact that we're going to stop delivering to Italy and Spain in Q2, they were still in our Q1 numbers, but they will not be in Q2. If you factor that, we might have another slight improvement, which of course I would like, because then we'll be able to say six quarters, six consecutive quarters of improvement.

It's not always completely linear every quarter, but it's what we are expecting for for Q2, while on ready-to-eat, we know it's going to take a bit more time, as Dominik described, and we think Q3, Q4 will be more defining trajectory for our ready-to-eat segment.

That's helpful. Then on the second question in terms of what you had not anticipated in terms of the Q2 outlook when you reported the Q4 results?

I think what I was answering to Nizla's question before, obviously since we've reported that, everything going on in the Middle East, sort of inflation, customer sentiment, those were things that I think at that time were not sort of as clear. I think there's still obviously a lot of wide distribution of outcomes over the course of the year, but those are definitely things that let us also take a somewhat more conservative stance, and making sure that we only invest behind strict ROI discipline as we restart the acquisition engine.

You are seeing some softening in trends on the back of Middle East conflict, or it's more in anticipation, but you could see some softening?

That's not something that we see right now, but also in anticipation obviously if sort of inflationary pressures kick in or not. I think if you have sort of more uncertainty, then obviously it's the prudent approach to take a more conservative stance.

Even though right now in the business I don't really see it, I do see it in leading indicators from consumer research, etc. I don't see it in the data right now, but against that environment, we feel it's prudent to have a strict and disciplined ROI approach.

Cool. One more follow-up, and I really do apologize, but just on this Q2 outlook for meal kits not being better than Q1.

I hear you on the impact of shutting down Italy and Spain, but didn't Q1 also have the negative impact from weather? Appreciate those are not necessarily the same magnitude, but I still would have expected that Q2 would improve, and this is obviously a very important number for investors who are looking for stabilization in trends in the meal kit business, that fact that it's not continuing to improve, I guess, is a big focus.

I just want to make sure we're 100% clear on this.

Let's be clear, Andrew, on meal kit, we are expecting further improvement as the year pass. Of course the improvement is not always linear, and I don't want to come to too much detail, but sometimes you have one big quarter versus another where you have Easter not fully on the same month as once you've had.

Today we are on track with what we were expecting, and that's for me the most important message.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for attending our call. I think to sum up, we feel that the primary objectives that we're focused on, making sure that our tenured customers are happy, that they're ordering more, that we can basically price better with them because they get more value in the product, I think all of those metrics are pointing in the right direction.

We obviously still need to work hard now to get the acquisition engine back on. We will do that with a strict ROI focus, especially given the environment that we're in, and some of the uncertainty over the course of the year when it comes to macroeconomic environment, consumer sentiment, etc.

We do feel that those metrics that we're focused on that are the defining metrics for a long-term healthy business are very much trending in the right direction, and we look forward to updating you in August about the progress that we will achieve in Q2. Thanks a lot.