Good morning, everyone. Welcome to The Magnum Ice Cream Company's Q1 trading update webcast.

My name is Michèle Negen, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm here today with our CEO, Peter ter Kulve, and our CFO, Abhijit Bhattacharya. The press release and investor presentation were published on our Investor Relations website this morning.

The replay and full transcript of this webcast will be made available after the call. Before we start, I want to draw your attention to our cautionary statement on the screen.

You will also find this statement in the presentation published on the website. In a moment, Peter will take a few minutes to talk you through the highlights of our top-line performance during the first quarter of 2026.

After that, we will open the floor for Q&A with Peter and Abhijit. With that, Peter, over to you.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our Q1 trading update. I'm pleased to share that we had an encouraging start to 2026.

Before I get into the details, let me give you the headline. The ice cream category continues to grow.

We are executing well on our strategy. Whilst we are mindful of the heightened uncertainty in the global environment, particularly in the Middle East, we are reaffirming our full-year outlook.

In Q1, we delivered organic sales growth of 4.5% with a healthy split between volume growth of 2.9% and price growth of 1.6%. India and Portugal were not in the perimeter and paid royalties for the use of the TMICC brands.

This was recognized in revenue, OSG, and OPG. Excluding these royalties, in Q1 2026, the underlying sales growth was 4.7% with underlying price growth of 1.8%.

Our revenue came in at nearly 1.8 billion, down 1.2% versus Q1 2025. The decline was entirely driven by foreign exchange.

The strengthening of the euro created a translation headwinds of 5.5% in the quarter. I'm especially pleased with the volume contribution.

This represents the kind of quality growth we aim for and reflects the work that we have done on innovation and execution. We are seeing this working across the business with every region contributing to our growth.

In Europe and ANZ, we grew 4.6% organically excluding royalties, with positive price contribution excluding royalties of 0.3%. Volumes were up 4.3% helped by strong innovations.

Germany and the UK delivered high-single-digit growth. Italy is still a work in progress.

We are improving our distribution and point-of-sale execution there, and I'm convinced we'll get it right. In the Americas, we delivered 2.6% organic sales growth.

The US, our biggest market, delivered organic sales growth of 3.2% with a positive volume growth of 1.8%, led by Yasso and Popsicle, which both delivered double-digit organic sales growth in the quarter. Ben & Jerry's grew low-single-digit as we launched new formats.

I will come back to that. The work we have done over the last 18 months to build a truly competitive US business is showing up in the numbers.

Sales in Brazil declined in the quarter. We continue to execute our turnaround plan, focused on new innovations, more targeted promotional and pricing activities, and increased distribution.

In AMEA, we delivered our strongest regional performance at 7.9% organic sales growth, with both volume and price contributing. Turkey and Pakistan delivered double-digit growth, while China had a strong seasonal opening, driven by innovations, including our Pistachio and Blooming Magnum stick, and new Cornetto flavors, such as Sorbet Amalfi Lemon with lychee.

Doesn't it sound delicious? Our innovations are exciting and contributing to category growth.

I will come back to this to give more color through the lens of our brands. Our productivity program is on track for the full year, with good progress during the quarter.

As I've said before, productivity is a core pillar of our strategy and gives us the fuel to reinvest behind our brands. All scheduled Q1 TSA exits were concluded on time and remain on course to finalize all remaining TSA exits by the end of 2027 as planned.

I would also like to share a brief update on the separation process and the perimeter of the business. When we announced our full-year '25 results, we said we would be incorporating India and Portugal to the group in '26.

We expected this to happen in H1 '26, and I'm pleased we have already completed the acquisition of our India business on the 30th of March, and we also acquired the business in Portugal on April 1. These businesses will be reflected in our consolidated results from Q2 onwards.

On input costs, we expect the increase in the cost of energy across the supply chain, including raw materials, energy, packaging, and freight, to be offset by tailwinds from commodities, our mitigating actions, and our productivity program. Whilst we are mindful of the heightened uncertainty in the global environment, particularly in the Middle East and the associated knock-on effects to input costs, our regional direct exposure remains limited, and we're taking mitigating actions.

Our focus is on executing our growth strategy and productivity program, and we are reaffirming our full-year outlook. We expect organic sales growth for '26 to be between 3% to 5% and an adjusted EBITDA margin improvement of 40 to 60 bps on a comparable perimeter basis with 2025.

The reported improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be between 0 and 20 bps, primarily due to the impact of the acquisition of the India business. As communicated earlier, we expect the improvements in the year to be weighted more in the second half of '26 due to the phasing of TSAs and the benefits of cocoa pricing.

Now let me take a moment to share with you some more color about our brands, the innovations that are driving our growth. Magnum delivered mid-single-digit organic sales growth, supported by the launch of Magnum Pistachio and Peach across the EU and Turkey.

We also continued the rollout of the BonBons format across Europe and the cone. These are fantastic examples of what we mean by taking a premium brand into new formats to unlock occasions.

Ben & Jerry's was overall flat in Q1. Americas delivered low-single-digit growth, while Europe and ANZ, lapping double-digit growth in Q1 last year, declined.

I mentioned earlier the launch of new formats in the US and Europe. The new Ben & Jerry's sandwich and bar formats have been well received, and we expect momentum to build.

In the US, Ben & Jerry's innovations are ranking in the top 10 SKUs, with four of the top 10 super-premium, a strong signal that the brand is continuing to resonate with consumers. Cornetto delivered low-single-digit growth, supported by the launch of Pistachio Max in Europe and Turkey, and new flavors that supported a strong seasonal opening in China.

The Heart brand delivered high-single-digit growth driven by Twister Freeze, the Minecraft stick, Volcanics, the five-layer chocolate ice cream stick, and Solero BonBons rolling out across multiple European markets, alongside the strong performance of Grape Ice Balls in Southeast Asia. I also want to call out Yasso pints specifically.

Yasso is another great example of what we mean by format innovation that expands the category, moving from sticks to pints, unlocking new consumption occasions and new shelf space. It's the kind of thinking we are applying systematically across the portfolio.

For those of you based in the US, do look out for them. They're delicious.

Before we go to Q&A, let me close with a few thoughts that I would like you to take away from our performance this quarter. The ice cream category continues to grow around the world.

Consumer demand for our category is good and we are well placed to capture this. Our growth this quarter has been broad-based, with a good balance of volume and price, and growth across all regions.

On execution, the investments we have made in our frontline-first model are delivering results. We are improving brand availability across our three channels, growing distribution points, and deploying more freezers in high-growth markets.

As I shared in the previous slide, innovation is driving our performance, helping us to win with consumers. We are well set up for the summer season, with better customer engagement, our outlets activating earlier, and innovation rollout, showing the frontline-first model is working.

We are on track with separation and pleased to have India and Portugal as part of the total group. Finally, we will remain operationally agile as we continue to watch the external environment carefully, and we are taking mitigating actions.

In summary, an encouraging start of the year built on sound execution as we prepare for the season ahead. We continue to execute on strategy, driving growth through innovation and availability, delivering our productivity program, and reinvesting behind our brands.

With that, let me head back to Michèle to take your questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Peter. As we move to questions, I would like to ask you to be mindful and ask your questions in relation to this trading update, while limiting it to one question each so we can get around as many of you as possible.

With that, I hand over to the operator for instructions on how to ask your questions. Thank you.

Good morning, Peter and Abhijit, and well done on the update. I just had a question around commodity costs.

You flagged a tailwind from commodity costs through the rest of the year, notably cocoa, but perhaps could you just talk a bit about how you're thinking about dairy and sugar inflation into the second half? Will this be a net sort of headwind and tailwind?

Can you just remind me how much of your dairy exposure is to liquid milk versus milk powder? Thank you very much.

Hi, David. This is Abhijit.

Good morning. Thanks for the question.

When we did our year-end call, we were not fully covered or hedged for the year. You do that progressively.

I think the way the cocoa prices have developed give us a little bit of tailwind. Similarly, on dairy, a little bit of tailwind as well.

A little bit on palm oil as well. Overall on all these three elements, we've got a little bit of tailwind compared to the place where we started off the year.

That's helping, of course, to partially offset the headwinds that we get from the whole fuel situation with the crisis in the Middle East.

Thank you.

Good morning. Warren here at Barclays.

Hard when you ask one question, but I'm going to give it a go. Can you maybe, Peter, kind of sort of dive into a couple of the kind of geographies in a bit more detail?

Brazil and India both being in turnaround mode, India obviously coming into perimeter, how should we think about those two big ones in the balance of the year? Then maybe just related on North America, does seem like things are picking up a little bit.

Can you maybe kind of go into a little bit more detail what you're seeing in terms of market trends, categories, etc., and brands? Thanks.

Good morning, Warren. Let me start with the US.

The ice cream market continues to grow with approximately 3% latest readings, and that is driven by consumers moving out of bulk ice cream into handheld ice cream, better quality, higher price, or more healthy. As we discussed before, GLP-1 strengthens this trend.

American market is solid. We look at weekly shares, monthly shares, but when you look at the last couple of trend lines, our share is good in these markets, driven by some really successful innovation like the Bluey Paddle Pop, like the Yasso pints, which now are taking really serious share.

Innovation and execution grows in the States on the back of a good market. Then when you look at India, last year, we basically changed everything in India.

We moved from vegetable fat ice cream, which made us a frozen dessert, to dairy ice cream. We are progressively changing the portfolio, doing a major step-up of quality, re-price corrected, and brought us the portfolio in line with core snacking price points.

We basically built a completely new team, and this is literally completely. We changed our distribution approach.

Unilever traditionally did not invest in cabinets, nor in distributors with cold stores. We basically brought our classic Turkish distribution model to India, and we started to invest behind it.

We now see volume picking up. As I said before, India is the largest dairy market in the world.

In time, it will also be the largest ice cream in the market in the world, and we will work very hard to take our fair share there. Profitability is still not very good, huh?

We're investing behind the business, but especially need to make a supply chain intervention because historically we had one factory and with our current growth rates, we need four factories. When we do that and we get the growth and get the premium brands growing, Magnum is growing plus 50% at the moment, at a certain moment, profitability will come.

That is two good stories. In Brazil, we changed all management because I believed we had an execution problem, and we did have an execution problem, but it's slightly more so.

Our pricing is not correct. We're not in line with core snacking price points and I need to do a portfolio adjustment, which will take time, just like it took time in India.

Fundamentally, Brazil is a very good, fast-growing ice cream market.

Thank you.

Yes, hi. Good morning, all.

Thanks for taking my question. I thought that your aide-mémoire had a bit more cautious tone about trading than the solid growth that you reported this morning.

Is it fair to assume that growth accelerated in March and related to this, did this momentum continue in April? Thank you.

It is the beginning of the year and we stand firm with the guidance that we have given last year, the 3% to 5% growth, the 40 to 60 bps underlying margin improvement. What is really pleasing that operational rigor is improving in this business.

That was the core problem, whether that was channel and customer execution, marketing and innovation execution, our demand creation programs. We also seem to have more grip on cost and productivity.

That is basically driving the results.

Thank you. Morning, all.

My question's just on the Asia risk in terms of out-of-home behaviors changing and I guess in terms of energy use is freezer usage. In some of these markets in Southeast Asia they can't use air conditioning, we're thinking is that a risk for using freezers in store outlets.

Just wondering, A, is that a dynamic that you're seeing, markets like the Philippines, Indonesia, and what the percentage of sales exposure would be to those kind of markets, that kind of dynamic? Thank you.

Thank you, David. As some Asian markets have subsidized energy markets like Indonesia.

They don't have that in Philippines. I think we see a little bit the same as we saw during COVID, that when it hasn't happened yet, but it could happen, when consumers go under stress, they go less on trips, they don't take the car anymore, but stay around their houses, which tends to be a good thing for us because we have very fine-meshed distribution.

You literally find us at arms length of desire in Asia, and maybe you can't afford to go to a restaurant anymore, but you can still afford to have a nice ice cream after your nasi rames. In general, we don't see anything yet, but when people stay more around their houses, that tends to be a tailwind instead of working against us.

Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning.

My question is on the growth and the balance of the year. Basically, you started very strong Q1 with the growth at the top end of your 3% to 5% range.

Obviously, we know there is a timing of Easter, which we've seen in other companies, like in other segments, like soft drinks and beer, for instance. Would you agree that and can you quantify to which extent that has helped?

Then obviously we are mindful there is a tough comp in the second quarter. If you could give us a bit of color on that.

I presume the other one on Q2 is the impact on Middle East on Turkey, which is one of your big markets. Are you expecting a low incidence of tourism to have an impact?

I know it's a broad market share you have there, it's not just tourists, but if you could give us a bit of an overview of your thinking around that big and profitable market. Thank you.

Let me start with Turkey. Turkey had a very strong start of the year.

Approximately 5% of our sales goes to tourists, it's not a big impact. Assume, because one of you guys wrote an article on tourism in Turkey, but assume that 20% of the tourists are down, that's 20% of 5%, not assuming that the cheap rooms would go to Turkish tourists.

This is not going to have a really big impact on the business. Then when I go to Q1, our most important festival this quarter is actually Ramadan, because as we know as part of our occasion-based growth model, we activate all these festivals.

We had a really good Ramadan this year in Indonesia, Pakistan. We had a good Chinese New Year, which is a large one as well.

Easter was a little bit earlier in April than last year, and that will have a marginal impact on our Q1 sales. Just a little bit, nothing meaningful.

Hi, good morning. Just a point of clarification on the commodities.

You said compared with where you were at the start of the year, dairy and palm oil are now more of a tailwind. Yet when I look at any price index for dairy powders or palm oil, they've increased quite markedly.

If you could just elaborate why those are now more of a tailwind and that's so much at odds with what's happened to market prices? Thank you.

Hi, Jeff. We actually covered pretty early in the year and basically the prices that we covered for the full year are better than the prices that we had assumed.

The assumptions that were there were slightly higher. That gives us, too, in our model a bit of a tailwind to partly offset the headwinds that we talked about earlier.

Thank you. Hi, Peter, Abhijit, and Michèle.

My question, wanted to dive a bit more on the Europe and Australia, very good volume mix there. Could you unpack a bit the drivers here, especially because it's significantly better than what I can see on scanner data?

Anything to flag here? Could you quantify, you said Easter is not big, but I guess it is some benefit into Europe.

Any quantification of the impact for this year on Q1? Thank you.

What we said when we presented ice cream for the first time last year is that what the business really needs is operational rigor, and our operational rigor is improving. We were earlier with our innovation this year.

They were ready in time. We were earlier with activation of outlets.

We have better customer programs. That's in Europe, because in in in Australia, we obviously in in core summer.

That is basically driving this extra little bit of growth. That's why we're also confident to reaffirm our guidance for the year.

The impact of Easter 10 day earlier in April, as I said to Celine, is really marginal. Doesn't have a really big impact.

Our business in Australia, we don't often discuss Australia, had been struggling for a number of year years, but our Minto factory performance has really come back after many years of struggle, which helps. We have supply, our innovation programs are good, and in generally, we have a good run in Australia with good shares for the first time in in many, many years.

Very clear. Thank you.

Hi, Peter, Abhijit, and Michèle. Thank you for taking my question.

I think when in the capital markets day, you've outlined a target to grow the cabinet freezer number by 2% per year over the next five years. Can you share the progress, which regions or market we will see the most addition?

Of course, the freezer number is not just about numbers. Can you also talk about what you're doing to enhance the freezer deployment or maybe raise the return on investment on your existing freezers, just getting ready ahead of the summer season?

Thank you.

Bingqing, this is a very good question. When I talk about operational rigor, obviously the cabinet system is really important.

It's not just buying the cabinets, but having the distributors, the IT systems, the replenishment, the maintenance in order. It's very operational intense and we make really good progress, hence we can start outlets earlier.

When I look at India, I believe in India we have placed 50,000 cabinets and activated them over a two-months period, we really develop a muscle to do this really well. Then when you have a portfolio that rotates with brands that are attractive, at attractive price points, you relatively quickly get volume going through these assets.

Then, as we have said before, in two, three years' time, you have your payback on a new cabinet. It's all about operational rigor, and it's not perfect yet.

It's never perfect, I suppose, as a CEO, but we are getting better.

Thank you.

Yes, good morning. Good morning, all.

Thanks for taking the question. I have a question on the Americas.

In the US market, you do 2% volumes, even better on top-line growth, but Americas in total is down. Can you speak a bit about the other markets, for example, Mexico, LatAm?

Related to that, what can we expect around World Cup activation? Is that going to be potentially a trigger for the category as well?

Thank you.

Goedemorgen, Karel. World Cup activation, events are for us an opportunity to draw people to the cabinets and to the retailer shelves.

In different countries, we have activations, whether that is special ice creams or promotions. It is one, just like America 250, is one of these occasions that you can make the category relevant, especially when lots of people come together in their houses.

Ice cream is a fantastic way to celebrate. Going back to your first question, yeah, the United States had a very strong start of the year on the back of a strong ice cream market.

Volume-wise, South America was weaker. Main culprit, Brazil, where we had declining volumes as we haven't got the core price positioning of the category right.

We're working on that, but it always takes time before you have relaunched most of your portfolio at different price points with a different executions.

Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you.

My question is kind of more around the mechanics of how you actually sell in your products in Q1. I'm just thinking about this because in Q4, you bought back some stock from the freezer cabinets.

As we come into Q1, does that impact selling back in? Do you have any kind of retailer buy-in ahead of the weather getting better, not just thinking about Easter, but do you have any material impact there?

Just trying to understand because we're not quite as familiar with the mechanics of how this business works yet. Thank you.

Good question, Sam. We have in-home channels, grocery channel, and we have cabinets channel.

In grocery, retailers have winter assortments and summer assortments. Our job is to get as large a possible share of the shelf and then later, share of promotion.

I think this year, we were across the world very successful with our shelf programs, which will definitely have helped in Q1. Then when it comes to cabinets, yeah, cabinets get activated at the beginning of the seasons.

Sometimes retailers don't have a lot of stock in their cabinets anymore, and then you basically replenish these cabinets to be ready for when the sun is there. You place new cabinets, or you reallocate cabinets from poor locations to better location.

That is the sort of work that happens in Q1 and still also in Q2.

Maybe [let me?] clarify, Sam.

You mentioned about taking cabinets back in Q4. Just want to clarify that that was nothing out of the ordinary.

In the Q4 call, Peter was just explaining that's how normal business works. We take cabinets back, refurbish them, and put them out in the trade.

There is no impact of taking stock back and then giving it back in the Q1 numbers.

Very clear. Thank you.

really run, and this is our deep, deep belief, we run the business on fundamentals and operational rigor. That is, in the complexity of an ice cream business, that's the only sensible thing to do.

Hi, good morning. Hope you can hear me this time.

One question on my end. We have talked a lot about innovation in this quarter.

Could you maybe elaborate on the contribution of those new products you have launched over the last 12 months on top-line growth and how the older portfolio has performed as well? That would be all for me.

Thank you.

It's still early days to see what's going to be the big winner of our innovation, but we have, as presented also at the CMD, changed our innovation strategy. Historically, this business did a lot of flavor rotation innovation.

Although that's important to activate the brands, it doesn't tend to drive growth. When you really structurally want to drive growth, you need to make your brands relevant in different occasions.

Moving from a Ben & Jerry's pint to a Ben & Jerry's sandwich is a really good example of that. It's very difficult to eat a Ben & Jerry pint when you're driving a car.

The sandwich is made for on-the-go consumption. It's by the way also incredibly addictive and delicious.

Our innovation is shifting to occasions and formats. I believe, next to the operational rigor in execution in sales, that will also help to drive that category growth.

When you are the one who drives category growth, it tends all to be good for your shares.

Good morning and thank you, Peter, Abhijit, and Michèle. One for me, please, on your margin guidance.

Obviously, you've already spoken about your costs increasing as a result of the crisis in the Middle East, with one of the offsets being commodity tailwinds from cocoa, dairy, and palm oil. However, could we see your gross margins essentially expand less over the full year as a result of these, with SG&A being used more as a source of savings?

Within that, will you still seek to grow your A&P this year versus last? Thank you.

Hi, Andrei. Let me give you some color on that.

As the situation with inflation especially related to oil is quite fluid, we work a number of scenarios to see what mitigating actions we trigger at what point of time. Let me give you three big buckets.

The first one is on revenue growth management, where we look at our discounts, etc. That we expect to recover about one-fourth of our headwinds through better and more rigorous revenue growth management.

About a quarter of the headwinds will be mitigated through what I spoke about earlier, the tailwinds that we have on commodities compared to the start of the year. The remaining half will come to a certain acceleration of productivity measures that were in the pipeline, but we have quickly kind of underpinned them and made the investments necessary to get them.

Now regarding advertising and promotion, we continue to spend what we need to on advertising. We're not going to cut advertising to make the targets.

Having said that, I think Peter mentioned in our Q4 call, we have shifted agencies. We are moving to much more digital content creation, and some of those productivity measures will come.

In terms of working media and what is visible to our consumers, we continue to invest what we need to and no cuts there.

Thank you very much.

Morning. Thank you.

Just a follow-up on this sell-in commentary that you've given. You've historically made 70% of your EBIT in H1.

Just to clarify some of the things you've said, did you say you started a little bit earlier? Does that mean that there's a bit of extra sell-in, if you like, ahead of consumption rates?

Is the actual cabinet square footage higher, and do you expect therefore the sell-in ahead of the season in the Northern Hemisphere to be higher? Given your cost commentary, isn't that all largely H2?

Your costs must be covered and largely sort of sorted for H1. Maybe there's a bit of inflation.

Doesn't that mean you will largely know your EBIT for H1, which is your highest semester?

Thank you, Tom. As we said in our last call, we were largely covered for H1 with most of our costs, including energy, you're right.

That bought us a little bit of time to do all the mitigating actions for H2. Last year, we had 380 bps cost inflation, which was, of course, quite a shock to the system.

We developed a real muscle to develop with cost shocks, so that was the advantage of this unfortunate cocoa spike. We built a muscle to deal with shocks.

Then coming to cabinets, we have said at the Capital Markets Day that growing our cabinet fleet and distribution versus declining, what happened in the Unilever days, actually will give 0.5% to a 1% of additional growth, and that is coming through. Activation of the fleet always happens in Q1 and early Q2.

Maybe we do it now with a little bit more discipline, but that's not the big change. We're actually growing distribution, whether that is shelf positions in grocery or whether that is out of home, and you're right, that's helping to drive growth in line with plan, I have to say, also no surprises there.

Thank you.

Hi, good morning. My question is on the Ben & Jerry's brand.

Growth there slowed in the first quarter, it was flat overall and declined in Europe and ANZ. I'm just curious about how we should think about the trajectory for that brand for the rest of '26 and if you're seeing any impact from ongoing brand reputation concerns in certain markets?

Brand health of Ben & Jerry is really solid. You could even argue noise, more noise is good for the brand.

Momentum of the brand, shares of the brands are very solid. Last year, we had 14% growth in Europe, ANZ in the first quarter.

Was very difficult to beat that. We had a different trading strategy for this year.

The real big news is that we take Ben & Jerry now very forcefully and rigorously out of the pints in other formats that unlock new occasions. I'm convinced Ben & Jerry will have a very good growth trajectory in 2026 on the back of innovation and strong demand creation programs.

Thanks.

Yes, thank you, Razia. Thanks everyone for joining the call today.

Much appreciated. Any follow-up questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us.

Have a nice day for now.

Bye-bye.

Bye.