Great, thanks so much, and welcome, Amit. Maybe to start off, Dirk, emerging markets again remarkably strong for the second quarter in a row this year, a trend we've seen from some other multinationals recently as well.

I was hoping you could talk briefly maybe about some of the key highlights that give you confidence in the second-half outlook in those markets.

Yep. Thank you, Andrew.

I would say at this moment, what's really driving the strong top line that we have, which was 4.4%, and then also strong volume in Q2, we feel that there's a very solid backdrop as it relates to snacking, which continues to perform well across the major emerging markets. Consumer confidence in the emerging markets, I would say, overall is stable and pretty good.

India is very strong. Mexico, Brazil, consumer is solid.

Then in China, it's softer, but we feel overall that things will gradually improve. Value growth is holding up very well, particularly in biscuits and chocolate.

If you think about what is sort of driving this, there's for sure the expansion of our distribution. We added another 100,000 stores in India.

Brazil is now at 1 million store. China keeps on building out its distribution.

In Southeast Asia, we're expanding. The categories are still very underpenetrated, we still have a long runway of more consumers consuming more every day.

We have now multi-years of sustained reinvestment. I think the mixture between global brands and local jewels is working well for us in these markets, we hit all the different price tiers.

Then we have a very good build-up in our channels and RGM, I think it's a very structural situation, it's not cyclical. I think that we will continue to see some strong growth in emerging markets for us.

Great, thanks for that. Then maybe a follow-up, I was hoping you could double-click a little bit on the improvement you're seeing in North America, really with an eye towards sort of the sustainability of the performance in this region in the back half of the year.

Thanks so much.

Yeah. I would say that consumer confidence in North America has rebounded from lows, but it remains very subdued.

There is still inflation, there's energy prices that continue to put pressure. We see this K-shaped growth where you have consumers on one hand going to value formats and channels where prices are lower, but at the same time, better-for-you and premium options are doing well.

Purchasing power is up, but consumers remain very concerned about the affordability, the economic outlook, and job security. We did well.

We had, I would say, strong net revenue growth, with a positive volume/mix. Both are positive and were accelerating sequentially versus Q1, and we think that will continue in the second half.

We gained share in all our categories in North America. Our ventures portfolio did well, Perfect Snacks, Tate's, hu.

We have very strong growth in the value channel, high single digits, with mid-single-digit growth in away-from-home. We're gaining share in crackers, particularly Ritz is doing well.

We have a good bottom line. I would say the reason why that is happening is, first of all, we have a very disciplined promotional execution.

Second, we have now innovation that's really working for us. I'm thinking about Ritz Drizzled or Sour Patch Kids chews, Oreo is starting to do well.

Like I said, Ritz, with its innovations, is doing well. Zbar is growing.

Give & Go had a good quarter also. I think another reason why we have these results is that these growth channels are really working for us.

We have good price-pack architecture with single-serve, multipacks, variety packs, the club packs. We are glue our reinvestment on A&C double-digit.

I believe this is sustainable, all these reasons, why? Because we will continue to reinvest, and in fact, we will accelerate that in the second half.

We have a very good possibility to keep on growing in the value channels. We have the innovation pipeline that will continue.

I think that at this stage, the pricing is solid, and the promotional execution that we have is working well for us. We're expecting a very strong second half in North America.

Great. Thanks so much.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks very much for taking our questions.

Wanted to start off with Amit. First, welcome.

I know it's your first call with the team here. Given that you're coming into the business with a fresh set of eyes, wondering if you could just share maybe some initial observations now that you're almost a month in about this business.

Thanks, Scott. Early days, but my initial observations reinforce my thesis on Mondelēz.

Only a few weeks into the role, but the strength of the portfolio, the strength of the team clearly stand out. We have a truly iconic brand portfolio, and I'm really encouraged by the strong innovation pipeline.

I think as Dirk mentioned, the momentum that we are seeing behind the innovation around the world. We also have a very advantaged emerging markets platform with plenty of runway for growth.

It's also been great to see the level of commitment to reinvesting back into the business to drive sustained performance. You saw that in this quarter, and we're going to continue to drive that in the rest of the year as well.

I do believe we have compelling growth opportunities. When I look at the penetration and the distribution opportunity in emerging markets, the new occasions that our brands can access through innovation, the channels that we under-index in.

Again, we saw that in the quarter, the growth in the value channels in the U.S. Some compelling growth opportunities.

I also see opportunities on the productivity side, whether it's in the supply chain or in AI-enabled efficiency across the P&L. That's going to create the fuel for us to continue to reinvest behind growth.

It's been a busy few weeks. I've already been through a board meeting, operating reviews, and into my first earnings.

Obviously, some things are new for me, but some things are familiar. I've been in CPG now for over three decades, and in snacking and food categories for over two decades.

The categories, the brands, the underlying dynamics are very, very familiar. I'm really looking forward in the coming weeks and months to diving deeper into the business, getting to know the teams, and getting into the markets.

Appreciate the thoughts there. Then maybe just as we think about the outlook for the remainder of the year, obviously took up the top-line guide, but held EPS.

Wondering if you can help us understand any puts and takes as it relates to phasing for the back half of the year on the top line, inflation, brand reinvestment, or anything else you might flag for us as we think about the rest of the year. Thanks.

We feel good about the top line. I think you've seen us take the top line to at least +2%.

Emerging markets, strong volume-led growth, we expect that to continue. North America, improving execution, and again, despite a soft consumer, we expect to continue to grow both share and top line in North America.

Then in Europe, we're seeing signs of improvement as the volume trajectory improves and as we start lapping some of the pricing from last year. I'd say the shape of the top-line growth is balanced between the two quarters.

We'd expect to see similar levels of growth across the rest of the year, across the quarters. From an EPS standpoint, we are maintaining outlook.

I think we've been consistent that we'll invest any upside back and reinvest back into the areas where we're seeing momentum. Emerging markets, some of the innovation like Biscoff, driving distribution.

We do have incremental costs from the Middle East conflict, which we've managed and which we are digesting, so that's included in the outlook as well. Then I think from a phasing standpoint between quarter three and quarter four, it'll be a little bit more quarter four back-weighted on the below the line, on the earnings, but it'd really be driven by some phasing on cocoa.

We'll still see some phasing in on cocoa in quarter three, which will reverse out in quarter four. Then we are lapping a couple of interest and tax items in quarter three.

It will be back-weighted in quarter four, but that's largely mechanical.

Understood. Thanks very much.

Pass it on.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for the question.

Amit, nice to speak with you again. Dirk, I was hoping to click in on Europe.

Your prepared remarks talk about signs of progress there, and specifically, I think, mentioned volumes kind of turning positive come the second half. Just maybe you could kind of put that in context for us in terms of the timing, and in particular, just given the heat wave that's kind of continued so far through Q3, how you see that volume improvement in Europe particularly of all things in the second half?

Yeah. We're three today, I'm going to put Luca to work a little bit, too, and let him answer the European question.

Hi, Peter. Thank you for your question.

As we said, the European chocolate business is on a positive volume/mix trajectory. That's really what you're going to see in the second part of the year.

Volumes are improving, and we see that continuing through the second half, particularly as we start lapping prior-year pricing. You might have seen a little bit of a negative pricing in Q2 in Europe.

That is the result of pricing adjustments that we made already in the second part of last year to adjust some specific price gaps, but really nothing to worry about. Share particularly has been moving in the right direction in the last several months, both in volume and value.

Importantly, past the heat wave, I think you're going to see more execution and more activation, particularly around Biscoff. We have another brand that is Milka croissant that is doing very, very well.

We feel confident about the improved trajectory in Europe the second part of the year. We're also leaning into new channel and pursuing incremental growth, and then clearly, we are investing much more A&C.

Q2 is a little bit below where we have expected it to be, quite frankly, but it is mostly because we kept trade stock in control given the heat wave that came and impacted particularly chocolate consumption. I feel optimistic about the second part of the year in Europe.

I think you are going to see much better top line. We are happy with the share numbers, and importantly, you're going to see a rebound in profitability as well, and that really sets the stage for continued growth top and bottom into 2027.

Great. No, thanks for that, Luca.

Maybe as a follow-up, Luca, just your perspective with cocoa at these levels, obviously, there's been a lot of movement in kind of the futures market over the past few months. Just how you're viewing the environment from a environmental discipline perspective amongst the players, maybe any color on coverage into next year, and then just how you're thinking about Super El Niño, at least at this point, as it relates to cocoa.

Thanks very much.

I think look, on cocoa, despite the most recent run-ups in cocoa prices, the market fundamentally is in a very different place versus what drove the crisis, I would say, in 2024. Predominantly, I would say the current reaction in the market price of cocoa is due to three elements.

It is the pod counts that is a little bit below the average, but quite frankly, that is driven by what happened to the mid-crop that was exceptionally good. There is a short squeeze, specs covering their positions, and that drove again support to the price.

Clearly, El Niño. Though, from a fundamental standpoint, I think we all need to realize that the surplus in between demand and supply in cocoa is at historical high.

I think for this year, we're going to have at least half a million metric tons of surplus, and that is the equivalent of 10% of the total demand for cocoa, not inconsequential. The industry coverage is at 10 months, very different place compared to what happened in '24, when the industry was covered just 7 months.

Then as I said, I think the early pod counts suggest that this is not going to be a great crop, but there is still opportunity for the crop to develop and catch up with the historical norms. Finally, the specs are now short only, in inverted commas, less than 200,000 metric tons.

The market is already pricing some downside risks. I would say structurally, the market is in a very different position.

To your question about 2027, look, I don't want to make this necessarily how well or how bad are we covered into 2027. The reality is that, as we mentioned few times, '27 earnings are expected to be strong, and quite frankly, earnings are insulated from commodity volatility for us at least.

We are using multiple levers into 2027. We still believe this company can deliver positive volume/mix and differentiated volume/mix compared to many others.

As we said many times, we are full steam into delivering elevated productivities, particularly in supply chain in places like Europe and the U.S. We have interesting programs in terms of AI efficiencies that will drive overheads down.

Then even our portfolio strategy to become a less cocoa-reliant company and so pushing portfolio solutions that are less cocoa-intense, I think continues to make strides. Even acknowledging the uncertainty around cocoa for 2027, pod counts, and Niño, etc., I think the structural position in cocoa is much better than 2024, and our '27 earnings is around execution and levers that I just mentioned.

I feel quite good about 2027, and look, as we exit the year with momentum, we're going to see continuation into 2027 of top and bottom.

Great. Thanks very much.

Thank you, Peter.

Great. Thank you everyone.

I was hoping to get some just perspective on gross margin, specifically kind of in cadence from here. The 34% in Q2 was a bit better than I think we and others have modeled.

Just curious if you can unpack how that came in relative to your expectations.

Then

you mentioned some cocoa phasing impacting the back half of earnings guidance, maybe just frame how to think about gross margin in the back half relative to the 34% in this quarter. Thanks.

The line was quite disturbed, but I got the gist of your question, which I think is around gross margin. Look, I think we moved away from guiding to gross margin percentage.

We were very happy with the +3% in gross profit dollar terms that we saw in Q2. You are going to see an acceleration of the gross profit dollar number, particularly in Q3, but also in Q4.

The EBIT in absolute dollar terms is going to be up in both Q3 and Q4, more in Q4, quite frankly, for a series of reasons. We feel very good about the guidance we gave you for EPS for the full year, recognizing that there are a couple of items below the line in Q3 that are going to cause a little bit of a hiatus between EBIT and EPS, but really nothing structural, nothing to worry about.

Top line is coming, volume/mix is coming, gross profit dollar is coming, and so despite the material investments we're going to have in A&C, you're going to see EBIT growth in both Q3 and Q4. EPS, as I said, is a little bit pressured in Q3.

We're happy with the gross profit dollar. The outcome of the gross profit dollar is us holding prices in chocolate, given also the fact that the environment is fairly rational across the board.

It is the result of volume/mix leverage. It is the result of the incredible amount of work our supply chain, both procurement and manufacturing, are doing in terms of productivities.

As I said, hopefully, we're going to see a continuation of this throughout 2027.

Great. Thank you.

Hopefully, this is a little bit better. Then just clarification.

A little better, all right, great. All right.

Sorry about that, guys. Just one clarification.

I think in reference to I think it was Andrew question, you talked about positive volume/mix in North America and how it improved sequentially versus 1Q, and that you expect that to continue. Just as one to clarify, should we expect volume/mix to accelerate relative to the 1.2% that you delivered in 2Q in the back half of the year?

Thanks.

I stay disciplined in not guiding too many variables. What I said is that we are happy with the volume/mix momentum we see in emerging markets, that we see in North America.

Europe, I think, was pressure, but you're going to see a sequential improvement. Now, I wouldn't guide you necessarily to volume/mix for the second part of the year, but it will be positive.

I think in terms of top line, what we said, at least 2%, reflects positive volume/mix and a modest contribution from pricing.

Great. Thank you so much.

I'll pass it on.

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome, Amit.

Just wanted to follow up on a comment from the prepared remarks, just talking about expecting strong 2027 EPS growth. Any key levers you're watching for how that unfolds, or maybe any way you could maybe elaborate on how you define strong, or put that in a little bit more context?

Look, I think it is really premature to give you more color than what we said consistently, I would say, in the last three earnings calls in terms of 2027. I said for a previous question that, again, earnings are expected to be strong and insulated somewhat from commodity volatility.

You are going to see into 2027 volume/mix positive, continuous momentum in emerging markets. I think you're going to see a European situation that is stabilized, and North America continuing, particularly around us going after incremental opportunities both in terms of channels, alternate channels, innovation, and strength of our brand.

I think Dirk mentioned a few times in one of the past calls that we're going to have a full relaunch for Oreo, and that I believe is going to make a splash into North America and volume/mix. You are going to see accelerated productivity and cost savings.

We mentioned a few times the supply chain program in the U.S., but there are cost opportunities that are meaningful in Europe, too. Then from an overhead standpoint, we are accelerating overhead saving and driving efficiencies, particularly through AI.

When you put all these things together, we feel quite confident in telling you today that earnings for 2027 is going to be strong.

No, that's great color, very helpful. Just on innovation, could you elaborate there a little bit more, maybe point to some of what's really working or key focus areas?

Maybe specifically, would love if you could elaborate on Biscoff in particular, and how that's playing out. I know there's several layers to that.

Yes. One of the things we're doing is reduce our innovation portfolio, going for bigger and fewer bets, and make sure that those are based on platforms that we can prove.

Of course, sort of the breakthrough innovation, we have to combine that still with renovation, flavors, PPA, seasonals, and so on. This year, we're seeing particularly good traction on some of those innovations, particularly in, for instance, health and wellness and functional.

Our snack bar portfolio, driven by the protein trends, of course, is doing well. Gluten-free is working well for us, zero sugar also.

We see good traction in cakes and pastries with Give & Go and Evre in China. Then we have particularly Ritz, as I mentioned, as an example, as it relates into salty.

Then in premium and indulgent, we have Toblerone pralines, we have the Cadbury and Milka range that we are launching around the world, and in the U.S., the bites are doing well. Very good in well-being, cakes and pastries, premium and indulgent chocolate.

As it relates to Biscoff, there's three layers to the Biscoff collaboration. The first one is that we are launching in our chocolate range a special Biscoff range.

Basically, it is tablets in the first place filled with different forms of Biscoff, could be sprinkles of Biscoff or the Biscoff cream, or even a full Biscoff cookie. We then bring that into other formats like, for instance, the Cadbury Eggs.

We go around the world. We just launched in Scandinavia, for instance, where this new range took 7% market share just in the first month that we launched it.

In Australia, the chocolate range added 3% growth to the chocolate category on a year basis. Very very strong reaction to this.

We step it up, it's not like we launch once. We continue bringing new innovations every six months or so under this Biscoff range, and we think we have a runway for a number of years to keep on doing that.

The second part is that we are starting to represent with a license Biscoff in certain markets around the world. We launched in India with great success.

In fact, we built one line and we sold out that line from the first month, we're hurrying up the building of the second line. We see Biscoff really becoming an important biscuit brand in India.

We're preparing a launch in Brazil, where we're going to launch in the beginning of next year, and so on. It's largely going to be in emerging markets, but the idea is that we keep on adding emerging markets where we build up the Biscoff presence as a biscuit.

Then the third part of this collaboration is basically that we have developed a range of ice cream products for Biscoff, which we are also representing for them. We're starting to explore a fourth leg, we haven't done anything yet, but we are thinking about our other product categories, what can we do with Biscoff?

To give you an idea, starting to think in the 7Days range, croissants with Biscoff filling it, we're thinking about a launch of an Oreo with a Biscoff cream inside and things like that. There's another leg that we are developing.

If you look at that, this will take a magnitude that is going to be in the several hundreds of millions of dollars, and I personally believe, if you look at it on also on their side, because they are starting to do a number of innovations on their side, think about a Biscoff which has a layer of Cadbury or a layer of Milka on top, but that's going to be sold by Lotus Bakeries. If you add that all up, I think this is a collaboration that in the coming years will be worth $500 million to about a billion.

Great color, very helpful. Thank you.

Thanks.

thanks. Just hearing all this talk about different growth stuff, innovation, your double-digit investment in A&C.

Just wondering maybe, sort of a big picture, as you're thinking about this, A&C has been higher in the past, I wonder as we're skating through what we're going to see in terms of cocoa over the next couple years, would you see A&C reaching past peak levels in the percent of sales? Then, and certainly with that ability to spend, you're going to want to do that well.

I'm wondering how are you spending that A&C, if seeing how sometimes when you take things on and take things off, you're beginning to see what works and what doesn't, plus you've mentioned a lot of innovation. I'm wondering how your priorities in terms of A&C are shifting as you're going through that ramp.

I'll have a quick follow-up.

Look, I think again, we think in dollar terms in the company, and I can assure you that even despite the cuts that we made last year that were for the most part in the non-working media, if you look consistently over the last few years, A&C is the line on the P&L that is really growing the most. We have consistently invested.

We are investing in our brands, and we have the strong belief that reinvesting in our brands is really the best thing. I would also say that the quality of how we spend has improved dramatically.

We give clear guidelines in terms of what we expect the A&C investments to be by main bucket. We expect communication, we expect a certain amount of digital, we expect a certain amount of activation at point of sales through material that drives consumption and quality of execution and consumption of our brands and category consumption.

We have tightened up the screws quite a bit in terms of guidelines. I think there is now an important frontier, which is what AI can do, particularly to creative media and I think there is going to be important steps in terms of how efficiently we are going to spend.

Now, I would be lying if I would say A&C and the amount of money we spend is consistently high across the board. We know there are situations where quality of media can improve, and particularly targeting specific cohorts and going after incremental opportunities, and so tailoring communication to consumer cohorts is really something that we are trying to do more and more.

Expect better spending going forward, higher spending, but also expect better execution on how we spend the A&C. Having said that, I think we should be happy with the amount of work the marketing teams have done around the world to ensure that we spend, and we spend well to support our brands.

Just a quick follow-up on that. You've talked about some innovation, you mentioned some Biscoff innovation before.

Is there any way to roll up the scale of innovation this year, percent of sales that you anticipate from new ideas? Then to what degree are you spending money advertising on hey, some of your increases allocated to that?

Then if you had to isolate distribution gains, typically in a given year might be two points of distribution gains just in a typical amount of revenue lift from distribution. How would you characterize distribution as a lift?

Then I'll pass it on.

Go ahead. No,

no, you go ahead.

I think it's going a little bit too deep if we have to sort of separate out how much we are doing in innovation, but in a typical thinking about innovation, I think you're performing well as a company, and we are at that level, even slightly below, is that 10% of your net revenue is coming from innovations that were launched in the last three years. That we're there, slightly above.

That's typically what we're aiming at. We would like to see that go up going forward to potentially more like 15%, but that is sort of the benchmark that we have in mind.

The way things are going this year, I feel that that part that innovation represents in our net revenue will continue to go up. The second part of the question was about distribution.

I'm difficult to put an exact number on our global distribution gains, how much that represents in our net revenue gains, but in a market like India or China, whatever our net revenue growth is, usually 50% is an increase in same-store sales and 50% of that net revenue growth is extra stores that we open. We're continuing at the same rhythm.

As I mentioned before, we are now in a million stores in Brazil, we've added 100,000 stores in India. We see a runway in most emerging markets to continue to do that, and at the same time, even in developed markets, like I was explaining, in North America, the value chain, away-from-home, convenience, still are channels where we can gain significant distribution.

That runway of distribution that we have almost in every market around the world is one of the reasons that we believe we can perform quite well in top-line growth.

Thank you.

Hi. Good afternoon, good evening, everybody.

I wanted to follow up on this line of thinking actually around distribution with a focus on North America. Last quarter, you talked about growing under-indexed channels, namely in the U.S.

This quarter, you're flagging high single-digit growth in value channels, and away-from-home is up mid-single digits. Can you expand on I don't know, the history, if you will, of what brought us to this point that such a scaled company still has such opportunity from a distribution standpoint in a market as seemingly developed and mature as North America?

What are you doing specifically to accelerate your distribution in these channels? When do you think that inflection point in distribution came?

Is it specifically this year versus perhaps consumers just seeking value? Then just maybe you've touched on it a bit, but just the concept of durability of expanding distribution.

Again, all of this is specific to the North America business. I would just appreciate additional context there.

I would say that historically, these channels have not been a priority in the sense that usually the growth that we could get in the food channel, for instance, was already quite substantial. As a company and from a history perspective, that's the channels where we were always big in.

I would say the value channel, yes, in theory, the value channel in the past was a channel that we didn't focus that much on because of margins. Now we see the consumer is really migrating there, we are developing special pack and working on the margin structure in those channels.

We feel that we can push much harder. I believe that still is going to be quite a runway for us.

Convenience has always been a bit of an opportunity for us. It might seem very logic, but in convenience, you need to have the right product range.

While Oreo and our biscuit range are, of course, very successful, they are a little bit more of a home consumption, and consumers walking into a convenience store tend to go more for a drink or a coffee or a cake and pastry, and it's not that obvious. Now recently with things such as Clif and some of the other bars that we have, we believe that there's an opportunity.

We've also historically covered that channel through brokers. We've started to do more directly in a number of cities and we're seeing some significant growth there, we believe we still have a good growth rate for a few years in convenience.

Then away-from-home, a bit the same story. It wasn't really something that we were focused on because we felt that we had to prioritize our growth in the other channels.

Now in the days that we see food not necessarily growing as fast, we're starting to focus more and more on away-from-home, and I believe that there is a big opportunity for us. Away-from-home is quite particular in the sense that you need to develop products and innovations together with the client often.

I'm thinking about McDonald's here, or some of the other QSRs, or a range for company cafeterias and things like that. You need to really put in place an infrastructure to make that happen.

We're now doing that on a global basis, and I think the opportunity for us there is going to be quite substantial in the years to come. I would focus a little bit more on what it could represent for us than why we are not yet as developed as we should be.

I think at this stage, it really gives us a significant opportunity to grow more than you would expect with the normal channels.

Great context. Then just as a second question, the organic sales growth in the front half of the year is already tracking well, I suppose, in line with at least 2% for the full year, obviously a bit better than 2%.

Into the back half of the year, I mostly see easier volume compares in most of your regions globally. I realize there'll be some normalization of pricing.

If you look into the back half of the year, just kind of sticking around that 2% range and not being a bit more forthright about a bit more upside, is that just uncertainty in the global macros, which, by the way, makes total sense, are you seeing things in the business that you would just flag for us, maybe globally, that would cause you some concern about potential deceleration, just any context for what is now going to be a potentially wide range for back-half top-line outcomes? Thanks so much.

We don't see any major concerns. Clearly, we told you already that the Middle East crisis is causing us some headaches on top and bottom, more to the bottom line, quite frankly, but we still lost quite a bit of revenue in the first half.

That's factored into the first half, and it is in our guidance for the second part of the year. Other than that, I would say what we said about continuous momentum in emerging markets, in North America, and Europe rebound, particularly on the volume/mix line, still stands valid.

That's also why we say at least 2%. Look, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves.

Let's see how Q3 pans out. In Q3, there is still an element in Europe that is related to the unprecedented heat wave, and we see some markets in chocolate specifically being quite impacted.

Look, I think there might be more upside than the 2%, but that's why we say at least 2%. I wouldn't get to a number that is necessarily much higher than 2%, 2.5% in the second part of the year.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

I think that's it, that was the last question. Want to thank you for connecting to the call.

We are very satisfied with our results. We have a good view on the second half, we think it's going to be a strong second half for the company.

We'll see you during the next earnings call, or hear you during the next earnings call. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.