Strauss Group Ltd.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Welcome to Strauss Group First Quarter 2026 Results Earnings Call.

On our call today, management will provide a review of the results followed by a questions-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this earnings call is being recorded Wednesday, May 20, 2026.

A recording of this call will be available on the company's website a few hours after the call. With me today are Mr.

Shai Babad, Strauss Group's President and CEO; and Mr. Toby Fishbein, the Group CFO; and myself, Avshalom Shimi, Head of Investor Relations.

I would like to remind everyone that this online webinar may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future performance of the company. These statements are only predictions and may change as time passes.

Strauss Group does not assume any obligation to update this information, and actual events or results may differ materially from those projected, including as a result of changing industry and market trends, reduced demand for our products, the timely development of new products and their adoption by the market, increased competition in the industry and price reductions as well as due to risks identified in the documents filed by the company with the Israeli Securities Authority. Shai, the floor now is yours.

Thank you very much, Avshi. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you very much for joining us for our earnings call.

Just to quickly summarize the highlights of this quarter. So as you can see in our financial reports, there is a substantial increase in our EBIT.

We rose by 58% from last year, reaching ILS 360 million. And for the first time in 5 years, we got back to double-digit margins of 10.5% in EBIT.

In addition, there is also a net sales growth, excluding foreign currency of 3.3%. But more interesting to note is that we grew volume-wise by 3.5%, whereas other international food companies today are struggling to increase volumes and most companies are not decreasing volumes, we managed to actually increase our volumes this quarter by 3.5%.

Yet the increase in revenue was lower than we saw in the past, and I'll talk a little bit about that later. Net income also was improved.

And here, you can see a very good translation of EBIT to net profit with net profit rising by 126%, reaching ILS 181 million and also a substantial improvement in the cash flow, almost ILS 450 million improvement in cash flow due to the improvement in activity and improvement in working capital. We continue to focus on our strategy implementation, specifically in Brazil, the nonorganic growth of our business in Brazil, transforming the company from a coffee company to a dry food company, increasing the non R&G activity.

And here, the acquisition of Yoki, we signed the deal in April, and we are -- hopefully, we will close the deal by July. and we will have a substantial increase of our sales there in our categories in Brazil.

And we also expect the turnover of the Yoki to be within 18 months and even less. We already saw that the projection for Yoki this year results are much better than the one we reported when we did the deal of a loss BRL 200 million loss, and we are looking forward to all the synergies that we'll implement there.

In addition, we continue to accelerate our investments in core brands, portfolio optimization, putting double down on innovation, and I'll talk about that a little bit later. And of course, last but not least, the turnaround of the confectionery business.

For the first time also in 4 years, the confectionery business is getting back on track and our Fun & [ Indulgence ] segment has reached an EBIT margin of 9.5%, very close to the 10%. So here, you can see just a summary of the results.

I'll just say one word. I talked about everything.

I'll just say 2 words, one regarding the EBIT margin and the other regarding the net sales. Although net sales here are 0.4% growth, we have to understand that there was a correction in Brazil.

We talked about that last quarter that the increasing prices is not sustainable and why green coffee prices are decreasing, we are adjusting the price accordingly. The good news are -- is that with the adjustment of price in Brazil, we managed to keep the margins in Brazil high.

We have a new platform in Brazil. We've already seen that since the end of second quarter last year, third quarter, fourth quarter and now first quarter as well is that though now prices are decreasing, whereas last year, they were increasing, we have managed to reach a BRL 10 gross profit per kilo, which is the margin that we want to keep in order to make sure that the platform in Brazil is profitable.

So there was a correction in price. And because there was a correction in price due to last year, I think we -- the business in Brazil increased by 30%, 35% in net revenue.

That's not sustainable. And the reason it's increased by 35% was due to the increase in green coffee prices.

Now that green coffee prices are going down, there is an adjustment, and this will follow us for -- ahead of the year for the next quarters for quarter 2, quarter 3 and quarter 4. So we will see volume growth, but we will see a more moderate revenue growth due to the correction of green coffee prices, but we will continue to grow.

With theYoki implementation, hopefully, in the second half of the year, it will help us continue to grow also in revenues and in quantities in addition to -- in spite of the price adjustment. And the last one I would like to say is on the EBIT.

EBIT margin was 10.5%. This quarter, we see that there are no one-timers in profit.

So there was -- there's no onetime events in our profits, neither in the EBIT or in the net. And this is more of like a platform quarter that we hope to see ahead.

Our expectations are that we will continue to see those -- the 10% margin in the next quarters in quarter 2 and ahead so that we will reach the target that we put ourselves and we set ourselves within the strategy to reach double-digit margin by the end of this year. When we look at Israel and drill a little bit about Israel.

So you can see Health & Wellness, there is a nice growth. The growth here would have been bigger if we haven't divested some of the distribution activity that we used to do with chilled drinks and some other products.

Those were there last year. This year, they are not.

So there's growth there. The EBIT grew less.

The reason -- and of course, part of the growth in sales is also the alternative milk drinks factory that we opened in the north. So it affected well on -- we had a good effect on sales.

But on the other hand, when it comes to EBIT, we see that the growth in EBIT was smaller. The reason for the small growth in EBIT is that the first -- the alternative milk factory has still -- it takes time, there will be a ramp-up period until we'll get all the quantities that we can get out of this factory being sold in the market.

So for the first year, there's going to be a stomach there. So it does affect a little bit the results.

And also, we had a lot of marketing efforts expenses that were done in the first quarter in the dairies in general, but specifically in the alternative milks. And compared to last quarter, this is what a little bit affected down.

But yet, you still see the growth and you still see the improvement in Health & Wellness. When we look at Fun & Indulgence so here is the major improvement.

There's the onetime derivatives that we can [indiscernible] that we cn take up that happened last year, but also an improvement in the activity itself, reaching 9.5%. Looking ahead to quarter 2, quarter 3, quarter 4, we actually see an improvement.

We -- since we have a hedging policy and we are hedged when it comes to cocoa prices, so looking in the next, we still haven't reached the lowest bottom of the prices of cocoa that we anticipate. So -- and actually, if we look compared to last quarter, the first quarter of 2025, there is an increase in cocoa prices that we encountered this quarter compared to last quarter last year.

Going forward and looking forward into Q2, Q3 and Q4, we are expected to see and to encounter lower cocoa prices, which will have even improve the results that you see here. When it comes to coffee, again, an improvement there.

And with coffee prices continuing to drop, we also think that or expecting to see even further improvement in coffee as well. And here, you can see there's a 4.5% growth in total revenues in Israel, but there's also a growth in volume, which is similar to that in Israel.

And if we take out the divestment activities that were done or we add in the divestment activities that were done and we do apples-to-apples comparison, then the growth in volumes is actually -- in volume and revenue is much bigger. This is just a little bit part of the innovation that we are doing in order to generate that growth, in order to make sure that as a food company, we will be able to grow volumes as we did in this quarter.

So this is just examples of innovations that we did in Israel, which helped us to reach those 4%, 5% growth in volumes. Our innovation is divided into 4 different categories.

There's a diversified innovation, improving innovation, distinctive innovation and disruptive innovation. And when we talk about diversification, it's just giving different flavors to the same product.

When we talk about improving innovation, it's how do we add protein, how do we supplement vitamins, how do we reduce sugar or salt. When we talk about distinctive innovation, we're talking about a product, for instance, a dessert that has 3 layers, which is very distinct to what we have in the market today.

It's still a dessert, still similar, but it's distinct to what the market is producing today. And when we talk about disruptive innovation, it's bringing a product that is not there, such as carb-free that we launched last year or Shabbat water purification system that we launched last year in Q4.

So here is just a little bit part of some of our diversification and improving innovation that we've done as a company in Israel, I think as a percentage of revenues, we are the most innovative company in Israel today with the most innovation as a percent of revenue. And this is part of what we put a lot of emphasis on, but only on our core categories, only on the categories after portfolio optimization that we decided to stay with and doing innovation in those, this is what helps us actually grow.

When we look at our coffee international company, then here, there are good news from Brazil and also from CEE. So in CEE we reached a new platform in Brazil with tripling our profit from BRL 30 million to BRL 92 million, but you can also see the decrease in revenues from ILS 1.014 billion to ILS 970 million.

The reason for the decrease is, again, the correction in prices. Recycled prices dropped, we corrected the prices but we kept a high profit of gross profit per kilo, in every kilo that we are selling today in order to reach the EBIT of ILS 92 million.

And you can see the percentage of EBIT has also grown from 3% to 10%. And looking ahead, again, we are expecting and we are working very hard to maintain this level of performance to maintain this level of profit.

When we look at the total numbers of our coffee, you can see we increased from ILS 55 million to ILS 132 million. And the additional increase in EBIT is, of course, attributed to our CEE, to our Central Eastern Europe coffee activity, which has also done well in revenues, but also in profit and is improving according to the strategy we set for them.

When we look at our Strauss Water company, one last word that I'll talk about the coffee is that we do need to make sure that in the next quarters, we'll do a correct implementation of the Yoki business and make sure that we utilize all the synergies that they are. We reached today 400,000 points of sales in Brazil, whereas Yoki before through third party did 80,000 to 100,000 points.

And we believe that through this distribution, through the synergies that we have, through the headquarters that we can reduce and many other synergies, we'll be able to turn around the business fast. We can already say today that we're expecting to have better results, as I mentioned before, for Yoki this year than the much better results than we were last year when -- the ones we reported when we signed the deal.

And with the turnaround, we believe that this will be a very crucial part of our portfolio in Brazil. In our [ water ] business is where we had the hiccup.

Due to the war in Israel, as you all know, the whole of March was an intense -- Israel has been in the war for the past 2.5 years, which never stopped, but it was very intense with the war would be run during March. And here is a place to stop and to say really a big thank you and inspiration to all our front liners in the North and also in the South that continue to make sure that we have business continuity and make sure that all our factories are working and are reaching everything that we need to do so that the Israeli citizens will find the products on the shelves.

We don't take that for granted and a big thank you for that. But when it comes to our Water business, consumers were not buying our machines during that month.

So those sales increased by 6.4%, which is an amazing achievement, we were supposed to grow much more than that due to the launch of all the new products that we launched, especially the Shabbat, the water purification for Shabbat we launched for that [indiscernible] community. And because of the war, we sold much less machines that we can, although the cost structure that was supposed to -- that we added in order to support that growth was there already, and therefore, EBIT declined a little bit.

Also in China, we see that we have managed to get back our market shares and to become again #1, between #1 and 2. And Xiaomi, who was our big competitor, who distorted this market got back to being #4, #5.

But on the other hand, the profitability levels that we used to see before, we are not there yet. And it will take time.

It will take another 2, 3 to 4 quarters in order to get back to the same level of profitability that we had before. We do see that we gained back the market share.

We grew in sales by more than 9% this quarter in China in local currency, which is a very, very positive sign for us that we are in the right way. And the next phase in the upcoming quarters will be to continue to improve the profitability.

So overall, the reduction that you see is because Xiaomi wasn't there in China in the total EBIT is that Xiaomi wasn't there in China in the first quarter last year and also the war in Israel had an impact on the sales. This is just a quick word on the strategy.

So -- and this year, by the end of the year, we will launch the new strategy for 2027, 2030. This strategy is going to end by 2026.

Many of the strategy talked about double down on core with putting an emphasis on our 3 engines of growth: Israel optimizing the portfolio and putting a very big emphasis on productivity in Israel, on snacking in Israel, on alternative milks, the plant that we've built and on protein products that we've done in Israel, and we've put a lot of emphasis on that to grow. And you can see with the turnaround of the confectionery, the business today is much healthier than when we started.

In Brazil, the strategy was fix the R&G, fix the coffee platform and also increase the non-R&G through organic and nonorganic growth. And also there, you can see that, that new platform in Brazil is doing quite well.

And with the acquisition of Yoki and the organic increase of the non-R&G, we also track there. And with the Water business, we talked about making the company multiproduct, increasing our activity in China.

We are now building a second plant that will launch in August this year will help us reduce our costs and also increase our sales. We also did a turnaround in the U.K.

And with the multiproduct, we believe that we'll be able to think about how we can continue international expansion. And when it comes to future ready and resilience, we talk -- we did a lot of productivity.

We set an aim and also showed in the next slide to reach a productivity goal, which we are going to reach, changing all the processes that we are doing, bringing automation, investing in CapEx, changing the processes and the skills of our people. And on the other hand, we had to deal with the health, with the culture of the organization, with the leadership of the organization.

And there was a lot of work done with that bottom strip, which all the growth engines are sitting on, Israel coffee and water, which is the basic infrastructure of the company, which has substantially improved during the past 3 years and helped us to reach the results that we are showing today. And last but not least, when we look at top line growth, when we went out with the strategy in the beginning of 2024, there were 5 indicators that we gave to the market.

The first one was regarding growth of top line, a 5% CAGR. We believe that taking out the foreign exchange effect, and of course, if we look at organic growth, platform growth without the divestments, we will definitely reach much more than 5%.

But even with the divestments, we believe we will reach the 5%. And expanding the margin to 12% -- 10% to 12%.

So we've been talking about this quarter-by-quarter saying we believe we might -- we'll be able to reach it by the end of 2026 and there are some concerns because we were around between 6% last year first quarter to 8% and 9% by the end of the year, and we did reach the 10.5% already in the first quarter. And here is a place to say that we do believe that we'll be able to maintain the margin of EBIT until the end of this year and of course, also going forward.

We talked about productivity, changing the productivity structure and having productivity between ILS 300 million and ILS 400 million platform savings. We believe that also this will be reached on the higher spectrum of the target that we gave.

And this -- you can see already in the results, it helps us a lot that what we already achieved helps us a lot to improve our results. Investing in our future, we do invest almost double than what we used to invest in the past in the years '24, '25, '26, whether it's increasing our capacity, pulling in new lines, whether it's maintenance, whether it's quality, whether it's digitization and technology we are bringing into the company.

And this, of course, helps us improve the infrastructure and get better productivity and better utilization of the equipment that we have. And last but not least, we gave an indicator that from 67% of core activity that we used to have in the company, we define core activity as categories that are growing 5%, at least -- that can grow at least 5%.

They are -- they have an EBIT of 10% to 12% -- more than 10%, and we are either #1 or #2 in that category in the market in which we are playing. We -- 67% of the activity when we started the strategy actually met those definitions.

I can say that already now around 85% are already reaching this definition, and we believe that until the end of the year, we will also reach this goal as well. So overall, just doing a recap, we are meeting the goals that we set in the strategy, and we are looking forward if the strategy till now talks a lot about double down on the core and making the most of the current activities and current categories and kind of fixing and building the infrastructure for the next phase.

The next strategy we will talk a lot about growth and where do we want to expand on the very good foundations that we have built, mainly in the international arena. And with that, I'm done.

So thank you. Tobi, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Shai. Let me now move to our financial results for Q1 of 2026, starting with the group level performance, and then I'll drill down into each business segment.

On Slide 13, group sales reached ILS 3 billion, reflecting a 0.4% increase year-on-year or 2.5% growth, excluding the impact of foreign exchange. Strauss Israel delivered a solid 4.5% sales growth driven by volume, mix and pricing.

Coffee International revenues declined 4.7%, led by lower sales due to pricing adjustments in Brazil, although we saw volume growth overall and decent revenue growth in Central and Eastern Europe. Strauss Water grew 6.4%, supported by the expansion of the installed base and an improved mix in Israel.

FX was a headwind for the translation of our group sales in Q1, given the stronger shekel versus most of our foreign activities operating currencies. Moving to Slide 14.

Group EBIT reached a Q1 record of ILS 316 million, up approximately 68% year-on-year on an improved EBIT margin of 10.5%. This improvement was mainly driven by strong performance in our Coffee International and Strauss Israel segment, offset by lower EBIT and EBIT margin in Strauss Water, mainly due to the impact of the war in Israel and increased competition in China.

Moving to Slide 15 for an overview of net income and free cash flow. Net income increased to ILS 181 million, up 126% year-on-year, driven mainly by EBIT growth and a lower effective tax rate and partially offset by higher financing expenses.

Free cash flow improved significantly with an approximately ILS 450 million year-on-year uplift, driven mainly by stronger EBITDA and a much lower working capital seasonal increase. Moving to Slide 16 for a view on our net debt and coverage ratio.

Net debt declined 11% year-on-year to ILS 2.35 billion, and the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio improved to 1.5x from 1.6x in Q4 of 2025 and from 2.3x a year ago. This improvement was driven by robust EBITDA over the last 12 months and lower working capital requirements than at the beginning of last year.

Overall, our balance sheet remains strong and well within our target leverage range. I will now turn to Strauss Israel results.

On Slide 18, Strauss Israel posted solid sales growth of 4.5% year-on-year to ILS 1.46 billion. Health & Wellness sales grew 4.4% on volume and pricing, adjusting for regulated meal price update.

Fun & Indulgence delivered 8.5% sales growth, driven by pricing adjustments made in the second half of 2026 as well as seasonal volume growth. Coffee Israel sales declined 1.2% year-on-year and was impacted by the Coffee-To-Go retail chain divestment last year, but on an apples-to-apples basis, saw volume and net sales growth.

Overall, our Strauss Israel business growth remains broad-based across the portfolio. On Slide 19, Strauss Israel EBIT increased significantly with strong EBIT margin of 12%, up from 8.1% in Q1 of 2025.

Health & Wellness EBIT increased over 2% to ILS 90 million, driven by volume growth and productivity and they're on slightly lower EBIT margin due to the addition of our new [indiscernible] plant-based facility. Fun & Indulgence EBIT improved materially given the ILS 49 million onetime derivative loss recorded in Q1 of 2025 and also benefited from higher volumes pricing and a stronger shekel.

Coffee Israel delivered EBIT growth and EBIT margin expansion, supported by mix and favorable FX. This reflects strong operational execution across all segments.

Let's now move to Coffee International. Moving to Slide 21 for an overview of the Coffee International financial highlights.

Coffee International delivered record profitability, supported by higher gross margins, resulting mainly from lower green coffee costs and offset by lower pricing, mainly in Três Corações, our 50% owned joint venture in Brazil. Sales declined 4.7% year-on-year for the whole Coffee International segment to ILS 1.32 billion, mainly due to lower green coffee prices.

Excluding FX impact, sales were roughly flat year-on-year, combining lower sales in Brazil with volume and revenue growth in Central and Eastern Europe. Profitability improved significantly on the back of successful execution of our new platform in Três Corações.

Segment EBIT increased to ILS 132 million, up 142% year-on-year, and the EBIT margin reached 10%. This reflects strong commercial execution as well as productivity gains across our Coffee International markets.

On Slide 22, looking at our coffee geographies. In Brazil, Três Corações sales, as mentioned before, declined due mainly to R&G pricing adjustments, partially offset by decent growth in non-R&G categories.

In CEE, we saw strong growth driven by pricing, volume as well as market share gains in key markets such as Poland and Russia. On Slide 23, the Três Corações results, we saw that this JV delivered strong profitability despite lower selling prices.

The sales decline reflects pass-through of lower green coffee costs. At the same time, we achieved much higher gross profit through effective procurement with gross margins moving from 15% a year ago to 24.1% in Q1 of 2026.

This resulted in record Q1 EBIT of BRL 310 million, up 221% year-on-year and an EBIT margin of 10% for Três Corações versus 2.9% in Q1 of 2025. This highlights the strength of the Três Corações JV platform in Brazil, which was able also to maintain its market leadership.

Turning now to Strauss Water. On Slide 25, Water revenues grew 6.4% year-on-year to ILS 220 million, supported by a higher installed base, particularly in Israel and in the U.K.

and improved sales mix. However, EBIT declined 33% year-on-year to ILS 17 million, mainly due to the impact of the war in Israel as well as lower contribution from our Chinese 49% owned JV with Haier Strauss Water, driven by increased marketing investments to confront increased competition in China.

At the same time, we are progressing with our capacity expansion plans in China and our previously announced second manufacturing facility build is on track to open in the second half of 2026 and support growth. Thank you, and I will now turn the call back to Avshi for Q&A.

Thank you, Toby. We will now move on to the questions you have sent.

So our first question is regarding the confectionery business. Your confectionery business reached a good margin.

Is that sustainable? Was Passover holiday timing part of that improvement?

So yes, as I mentioned in the presentation, since the cocoa prices that we see today are still not at the level of the decrease that we are going to see and meet in the next quarters, in quarter 2 and quarter 3, we are expecting to see lower cocoa prices, which will help us even improve the margins that we have today even further. So our expectation is that not only we can expect this quarter to move forward, we actually expect an improvement until the end of the year.

We also said last year, I want to remind everybody that we said last year that the improvement will be gradual and that through the year, we'll see continuous improvement because our hedging policy is set in such a way that we don't see all the cocoa reduction price immediately, but we see it over time. And with that, the results will improve.

Thank you, Shai. And our next question regarding the coffee business.

If green coffee prices will continue to decline, how will that affect your business -- overall coffee business?

So the effect on the overall coffee business will be that there will be a continued correction in price. So as there was a correction in price this quarter, and we have seen revenues top line reducing in our coffee business, mainly in Brazil, we -- that will further happen.

What we will try to make sure is that the new platform of profit that we have managed to gain, that will remain. So one of the major indicators that we look today is at gross profit per kilo.

And we are aiming to sustain the same level of gross profit per kilo that we have today even when prices decrease. So green prices will reduce.

We will also probably adjust some of our selling prices with that. But at the end of the day, we will try to maintain the same gross profit per kilo in reals as we have done so far.

So our expectations regarding profit and margin is that the profit probably will stay the same. Margins might improve because revenue will go a little bit down, but volume should continue to grow.

One of the emphasis that we are pushing it -- on is that even if we'll have a little bit of correction of price, the volumes should continue to grow and the company should continue to grow as we have done this quarter when we grew 3.5%.

Thank you, Shai. I see that we don't have any further questions.

So I will now return the call to Shai for closing remarks.

Thank you, Avshi, and thank you all of you for joining us today. So just to summarize, I think it's a solid and good quarter.

It's a quarter where we don't have onetime events, which is also very good because you can actually examine and see what the activity is about. It was a quarter where our translation from EBIT to net profit has substantially improved.

It was a quarter which we still managed to gain volume growth, whereas most international companies are struggling to do so of 3.3%, 3.5%. And it was a quarter where we reached our goal of double-digit margin of 10.5% in EBIT.

So overall, I think the results are good. We also done a turnaround to our confectionery business.

Today, all our businesses are in line with our core activities and are in good shape for continued growth. And we are all looking towards the end of the year when we will publish our strategy for year 2027, 2030, which will take us to the next step of exciting journey of growth for our company.

So thank you very much for joining.

Thank you for joining Strauss Group First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. So this concludes our call for today.

Thank you.