Welcome, and thank you for standing by. I would like to inform all participants that this conference call is being recorded and will be available to clients of JPMorgan. Parts of this conference call may also be reproduced in JPMorgan Research. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. Press participants are not permitted on this call and should disconnect now. Unless otherwise permitted by internal JPMorgan policy, members of JPMorgan Investment and Corporate Banking are not permitted on this call and should disconnect now. I would now like to turn the call over to Philip Spain.
Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everyone. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Philip Spain, and I work in the European Staples Research team at JPMorgan, covering beverages and tobacco. Many thanks to all of you who've dialed into this session. I'm delighted to host a discussion today with Damian Gammell, who's the CEO of CCEP. Good afternoon, Damian. Thanks very much for being with us today.
Thanks, Philip. Great to be here. Thanks, everybody who's joined.
To start us off, I wanted to talk a bit how the business has changed during your tenure. Of course, when you became the CEO, the business was present only in Europe, but in recent years, you've expanded into Asia with the acquisition of Amatil in 2021, and then the Philippines as well earlier this year. I suppose, how have you found the success of the integration of these new markets to date, and what benefits do you think it's brought to the group?
Yeah, we're kind of eight years young as a company. So as you said, when I came back, our primary goal was to re-energize a fairly stagnant Western European business. We probably did that quicker than we expected, if I'm being honest, and that started to generate a lot of free cash and a bigger appetite to become a more diversified business. And as you said, you know, the first step in that was Coca-Cola Amatil, a fantastic business, great markets that we felt were just not realizing their full potential. And that really, you know, brought us to a different macro outlook in terms of demographics, GDP growth. And then obviously, that brought with it Indonesia, fantastic business, and then most recently, Philippines.
So, you know, from a business perspective, it's just allowed us to kind of diversify into markets that are quite different to Western Europe. Having said that, Western Europe is still, you know, our biggest part of our business, our most profitable, and generates that cash we need to develop, particularly markets like Philippines and Indonesia. So yeah, it's obviously given us scale. The world's largest Coca-Cola bottler, big partner with Monster Corporation as well. And, you know, and I think one of the benefits is really, as you've seen, our 2024 recent trading update, you know, despite probably a wetter and tougher summer than we all would've liked in Europe, that diversification allows us to kind of stick to that guidance on our 7% OI and our free cash flow.
So makes the business more resilient, opens it up to higher growth on the top line, and allows us to deliver on our commitments, by just having a broader footprint, Philip, to be honest. Clearly adds to the air miles a little bit. It makes us a bit more time zone dependent. But with all of those businesses we purchased, we got great talent as well, so that's really also a big, big benefit. We're a much more diverse company now as well in terms of culture, you know, backgrounds, and lots of ideas flying around the business across those markets.
Absolutely. And then, maybe, I suppose zooming in on the most recent of those acquisitions being, the Philippines, I suppose, what have been your kind of early learnings that you've taken so far since you've kind of closed the acquisition earlier this year? If, like, what have been some of the key areas that you've spotted for improvement, and what are some of the key factors you think that will kind of allow you to close the gap between the EBIT margin you're doing in the Philippines currently, compared with the, CC group overall?
Yeah. So that acquisition has gone really well. It feels like it's been part of the family a lot longer. You know, when we looked at that, you know, clearly I'd kind of describe it as a... It's more of a developing soft drinks business in an emerging market. You know, it's got reasonably high per capita. We've got a very good share position in terms of sparkling, around 70, and NARTD, around 50. It's a Coke market. It was the first market outside the U.S. where brand Coke was distributed. So when you're there, what really surprised me was, you know, I knew it was a great business. I didn't appreciate the brand love and the passion for the brands that both inside our organization and with consumers.
And it's a business that's growing and is well-positioned strategically in terms of its share positions. Multi-category: water, you know, juice, energy we've just launched. So yeah, we always knew it was well structured. When we looked at it, what surprised us was, to your point, the operating margin. So it's a big business, over 700 million unit cases, so we expected to see a business with a higher OI margin. When we got into that, you know, we felt that we could unlock margin growth. Some of that's coming on the back of productivity, so we've recently ticked up our CapEx guidance from 4% of NSR to 5%. That's a short-term move just to allow us to invest, particularly in the Philippines, to unlock some of that margin expansion.
That's in areas, as you'd expect, in terms of more modern manufacturing, consolidating plants into a greenfield, purchasing glass. One of the things which surprised us was they were operating at very low levels of inventory on glass, and 50% of our business there is refillable glass. That's led to a leaner supply chain, better customer service, and a more efficient business. You know, we see that leading to margin expansion over the next few years. First port of call will be to get to double-digit margins. When we purchased the businesses at around 6%, we'll challenge ourselves: can we get close to that 14-15% over time? Yeah, I suppose that's how we've prioritized the Philippines. The growth was there.
We've got to maintain that and accelerate it, and that's why we've launched energy and unlock some of that margin potential with a little bit of capital. And then also the benefit of bringing the Philippines in is we can kind of lift and shift some of our technology platforms out of Europe right into that business. Some of our world-class key account management, where we saw an opportunity. Modern trade is around 30% of the business there, so people tend to think of it as being a fairly fragmented trade. I mean, that's true, but there's still 30% that's very developed. So we're bringing a lot of our the work we've done out of Europe in terms of technology and approaches to modern trade as well.
So, you know, all of that, I think, sets us up for a higher growth off a higher margin, and, and that's, that's really what gets us excited about the Philippines.
Great. You mentioned that you know Philippines is a faster-growing market than what you do have in particularly in Europe within your portfolio. But given I suppose this acquisition occurred after you set that target of the circa 4% sales growth for the medium term at your CMD in 2022, do you think a higher growth rate at a group level is now achievable in the medium term than that circa 4% growth?
Yeah. I mean, it's something we'll probably... We've got a Capital Markets Day coming up in May. We're gonna do a dual location. We're gonna do Jakarta and Manila, so, so two of those higher growth markets longer term. Clearly, Indonesia has been, you know, suffering from some of those geopolitical impacts, like all Western brands. You know, hopefully, that's more temporary in nature. Yeah, so we will take a chance, probably by then, to come back on our, on our outlook. If we look at it and break it down, kind of what we see is Western Europe, that 2-3% solid growth. We'd probably like to see a bit more volume in that outlook going forward. Australia, New Zealand, probably 4-5, just on the back of stronger GDP and, and macros. And then Indonesia, Philippines, probably higher single digit.
You know, our priority really has been to get the margin structure right, so when that growth comes through, you know, at a group level, it's accretive in terms of absolute profit. Yeah, but we're not changing our guidance at the moment. We're happy with the four and seven. We'll give an update on that in May, Philip, when we're in our Capital Markets Day.
Okay, that's very helpful to break that down. And then, I will come back to kind of maybe go into some of those, the moving parts of that, that guide, just a bit later on. But first, just wanted to zoom in on this year. And so obviously, for fiscal 2024, you've guided to 3.5% top-line growth. You know, the guidance implies an improvement in the fourth quarter, and there's some support from a couple of extra selling days. But do you think Q4 will also see an underlying acceleration in terms of the underlying performance? And just kind of the other question I wanted to tack on to that is: Do you think that this year you've seen kind of the European consumer kind of weaken incrementally?
If that is the case, how do you expect this to develop into next year?
Yeah, good question. So I mean, when we, when we came out with that kind of tweak on our guidance, we, we clearly saw an opportunity to accelerate the business into Q4. And, and, you know, we still have confidence in that number. We're, we're right in the middle now of our biggest month in Europe in terms of December. Christmas selling is going really well. You know, November was a better month, so, you know, that gives us confidence for the year end. And, obviously, what we're looking for is momentum into 2025. And we're seeing our businesses in Asia performing well, ops in Indonesia, which is now, I would say, cycling the beginning of those geopolitical impacts, so that's gonna be better going forward. And then Australia, New Zealand, we're, we're just getting into the middle of summer.
Yeah, nothing's really changed when we gave that outlook. I mean, the tweak really came from a poorer Q3 than we would've liked to see in Western Europe, but obviously baked in a solid recovery in Q4, and we're pretty happy with that. You know, I would say, 2023 and 2024, we've seen the consumer in Western Europe. I think it hasn't just been 2024, I think 2023 was a tough year as well. And I kind of look at it, you know, across a couple of different aspects. Our retail business has held up really well. So, you know, we're trading really well in retail. Household penetration's improving, so feel really good about that. You know, the biggest delta to our expectations has really been in on the go and away from home. And obviously, we're quite different to most CPGs.
You know, about 60% of our revenues are retail, about 40% are non-retail, which I think is the strength of our business. But clearly, you know, that's more impacted by some of those economic spending pressures. So we've seen footfall not recover in out of home yet in Europe. We've seen spending increase, but really that's been off a lot higher prices. So if you look at menu prices across most of our markets, for our consumers, not on contract, but generally the menu is up about 25% in terms of price increases over a number of years. And obviously, that's gonna have an impact. So I'm hoping footfall will start to come back in 2025. We're not planning on it.
And I think that's really where we've seen, you know, the need to support our customers a bit more in Western Europe is really, you know, in that out of home. No surprise, not gonna give you a weather report, but those of us living in Western Europe, we haven't had really any summer to talk about in 2023 or 2024. And that, on top of that economic pressure, obviously is what drives that weakness. So again, we're planning for a stronger retail going into 2025, and we're planning for, you know, a continued recovery in the out-of-home business. You know, and if that comes with a normal summer, we can look forward to a great 2025. But that's really where we've been most challenged in 2024.
No, that, that's very clear. And yeah, fingers crossed, we do finally get some summer next year. And then kind of rounding out the discussion around this year, assuming at the end of the year you do manage to achieve kind of net debt to EBITDA, your leverage at the lower end or even below kind of your target range of two and a half to three times, how would you plan to prioritize between M&A and share buyback next year? And I suppose, at what level of leverage would you see the introduction of a share buyback as possible?
Well, I think we're getting to that. I mean, we've been very consistent since we set up the company, that we're very happy with a two and a half to three. And you can take from that, with the current borrowing rates, we're happy in the midpoint, which is where we're getting to. And, you know, I think that gives us a lot of optionality in terms of how to use that great free cash flow we generate. You know, we're always open for good M&A. I think it's really helped us diversify, as we talked about at the beginning of the call. But candidly, you know, I don't see a lot in the near term, and that's really just around availability of quality assets that are for sale. It's nothing to do with our appetite.
You know, we'd like to continue to buy bottling assets that create value, but it's a limited field, right? So, you know, so that's really gonna bring us to conversations with our board, probably coming into our full year results announcement in March, where we look at, you know, return options to return cash to shareholders. Prior to the Amatil acquisition, we'd already started to do that through share buybacks, and that's probably what we look at going into 2025, but more to come on that in Q1.
That's very clear. And just on CapEx, I suppose I think you already mentioned that we're gonna be closer to kind of that 5% of sales, given some of the investments you're making in the Philippines. So what maybe are those key areas of investments that you do have planned for next year and even for kind of 2026?
Yeah, so when we look at it, I mean, the Philippines is probably that delta between the 4% and the 5%, and that will come down. I mean, we're doing a greenfield there, so I'd expect our normal run rate to get back to the 4%. You know, what's also important, and I remind my team, I mean, percentages are a bit dangerous, right? Because if you look at our revenue growth, you know, that's accelerating. So 4%, you know, this year it's about EUR 1 billion already, right? So it's a lot of... it's a lot of money. So when we look at where we're gonna allocate that, there's probably, you know, about a third of it's going into supply chain optimization, productivity, better lines. We are having a within that number, a bigger focus on cold drink cooler investments.
And that comes back to my earlier point on Western Europe. You know, we really want to energize the away-from-home market with something that we can control, and one of the things we can do is really drive better availability through more cold drink equipment. So next year we'll see, we hope, a record year for that in Europe. And then the balance is really around technology. So we're going live on our S/4HANA journey in Germany at the end of 2025. You know, we have four to five legacy SAP systems in our company just built up through M&A, and we're taking the opportunity now to move to S/4HANA. Germany is our go-live market, end of 2025, and that's really gonna allow us to, you know, unlock more productivity.
And as you know, we've committed to a EUR 350 million-EUR 400 million productivity target. Part of that's gonna come from that technology footprint. It's also gonna allow us to improve customer service and also, exploit digital and AI, because we'll have everything, you know, on one common platform. So that's a big use of capital in the near term. And again, if you look midterm, that will come off. You know, so a combination of the Philippines, it's a bit of heavy lifting early on. Our technology, SAP spend will obviously tail off eventually, and that gets us back well to that 4% guidance. Yeah, so it's mainly supply chain, a lot of cold drink, in-market equipment, and technology. And it's about a EUR 1 billion, which is a big number.
Yeah. No, absolutely. And I guess, so maybe moving back away from CapEx and capital allocation back to, I suppose, the medium-term growth framework that you've spoken about already, and maybe just kind of go through the different segments of your business and discuss kind of the building parts. So starting with Europe first, I mean, firstly, kind of, I suppose, how do you view that, the growth in that, you know, that in the market overall? And I suppose, what are the key kind of volumes behind Sorry, the key kind of drivers behind volume? You know, how mature do you think your maybe your pack and channel mix opportunity is now, or is there kind of further opportunities you know, you can drive within that?
You know, is there anything more that can be done to drive, you know, more kind of occasions for consumption for your various different kind of product categories?
Yeah, so, I mean, if we look at it, if we take non-alcoholic ready-to-drink as a category, it's robust. It's growing 2% CAGR in revenue. We're growing volume this year, and we've had some one-offs in terms of exiting Capri-Sun. So when you strip that out, we're very much committed to seeing volume as part of that algorithm, including in Western Europe. So if I look at our guidance for Western Europe on a midterm, that 2%-3%, you know, ideally, we'd expect a third to come from price, a third to come on volume, and then probably a third to come on mix. And that, that's really a function of that away-from-home coming back after a couple of weak years, so we feel pretty good about that.
Pricing, we've, you know, already taken pricing for next year in GB and Germany, and we're back in the market in January with pricing, so we're pretty consistent price takers. We think that's good, obviously, for our business, it's good for our customers, and obviously we sense check that the category can take it. So, you know, and that's broadly off a sparkling footprint with energy. So if we look at, you know, what could accelerate that growth from a volume perspective, you know, clearly we've still got opportunities within the tea category. Sports category in Europe, we believe is underdeveloped. We're still figuring out how Costa, as a coffee brand, can play a bigger role in our growth algorithm. You know, but honestly, today, Philip, it's mainly off our core sparkling portfolio.
We've also got alcohol ready-to-drink coming in with Jack and Coke, Bacardi and Coke, Absolut and Sprite. Again, we haven't factored that in yet because it's honestly too early, but we're really pleased with the start we've had, particularly in GB. You know, so a combination of a really good core sparkling portfolio with some of those additions where we could probably accelerate growth if we got them right, that kind of gets us to that 2-3% CAGR. Within that, you know, there's clearly category opportunities, as I've said, alcohol ready-to-drink, sports, energy. We're still about a 20-25 share, so we have upside in energy. And then within our sparkling portfolio, I think we've done a really good job, you know, getting price pack architecture across multiple price points.
So if you go into a supermarket in the UK or France or Germany, you know, you'll probably find a Coke or a Fanta or a Sprite starting at 50 cents, all the way up to EUR 12-EUR 20 for a large multi-pack. And in between, we'll probably have 10 or 12 different SKUs, whether it's mini cans, single-serve PET, large PET. And that's really something when we created CCEP. We recognized we needed to diversify a lot faster on our pack offering in retail. And that's giving us a lot of optionality, particularly when the consumer has been under a bit of pressure in terms of cost of living and high inflation.
I think that's why our retail business has held up well, because we have been able to get those magic price points and not lose opportunities for premium packs as well. Because despite it maybe being a tougher economic outlook in Europe recently, there's still a lot of money, and there's still a lot of people who want to buy premium, whether it's glass or single-serve packaging. So from that perspective, we feel pretty good about where we are, and then in away from home, it's really more about driving that distribution and getting, you know, more of our portfolio in away from home, and that links back to why we're pushing those coolers next year. You know, that's a surefire way of creating the space to get your sports in, get your energy in, get tea in. Obviously, sparkling's there.
Yeah, so that's kind of how we look at it, at the moment. So third price, third volume, a bit of mix, you get to that 2-3%.
Okay, that's very clear for Europe, and clearly still a lot of opportunities there to underpin that growth in that region. Maybe moving then to within, you know, within kind of the CCEP, the Asian business, and focusing maybe on Australia and New Zealand, as you know, maybe more developed or mature markets. I think you mentioned it in the call, you expect them to kind of grow at, like, a 4-5% rate. So why are you confident that these can grow faster than Europe, even though it is also kind of developed markets? And is some of that some upside from still taking some of your learnings, you know, some of the lessons from how you operate in Europe and taking that into those markets as well?
Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of elements. I think, one, you know, GDP is just structurally a bit higher in those markets. You know, they're both benefiting from much stronger population growth in Europe, and a lot of net immigration, right? So when we just look at the consumer, the size of the consumer opportunity there grows every year much faster than it does in Western Europe, and that's just, as I said, immigration demographics. So you're kind of playing in a bigger field anyway, or a faster-growing field. And then on top of that, we just see much better alignment of our brand portfolio since we bought those businesses. Next year, mid-year, we'll exit our Beam Suntory relationship, which we've had for a while in alcohol ready-to-drink.
That'll be a short-term headwind, but it's the right decision to align ourselves longer term. That will allow us to bring in the KO portfolio of alcohol ready-to-drink, and, you know, we think that's gonna set us up for growth in that segment going forward. Yeah, and I think we're still deploying a lot of the revenue growth management kind of strategies out of Europe, particularly on promotion. Australia's a very promo-sensitive market in retail. You know, usually it's 50% off. That's the way it works. We've been testing that to get it to 30%-40%, and we'll continue to look at that as well. Yeah, there's elements we're bringing but, you know, fundamentally, the category, with or without CCEP, is just structurally growing at a higher rate.
Clearly, we want to outgrow the category, and that kind of gets you to that 4% type of goal.
That, that's very clear. And then, I mean, we've already spoken about the Philippines, and I suppose the, the higher growth opportunity there, but the other kind of, I suppose, faster growth market would be Indonesia. So I guess, what do you see as the, as the mid-term growth rate here, and maybe some of the drivers behind it? And you've mentioned you kind of touched on already that there's been some headwinds and kind of you've experienced this year
When would you kind of expect them to subside? And kind of one final part of the question would just be, I mean, you've obviously demonstrated in Europe of kind of a very strong track record of the value that you create for, you know, retailers compared to some of your FMCG peers. Do you think that that is very helpful when you're, you know, having these conversations with your customers in markets like Indonesia?
Yeah. So I mean, that to your last point, that's like a principle or a value that we cherish a lot at CCEP. You know, if you look at retailer margins on our brands in Europe, they're considerably higher than they were when we created CCEP. You know, that was a conscious decision. We know that if our customers are making more money on our brands, we get more relevance, we get more space, we get more alignment. So when we look at pricing, we always assume our retailers will take a little bit more. It's up to them, but we assume that, and we're applying the exact same model in Australia, New Zealand, and we benchmark ourselves obviously to our nearest competitors, but in a lot of our markets, that's not as relevant.
We benchmark ourselves to the P&G, Unilever, Nestlé, and we're doing the same in Indonesia. So that strong commitment to grow our customers' profit, I think has been a big unlocker of success and clearly make some of those pricing discussions... I would never say easier, because my key account team would kill me, but you know, it certainly gives you a platform of much more relevance. If you're the fastest growing supplier and you're expanding margins, and you're the biggest in terms of absolute revenue, you know, we think that's a very healthy position to be in, and we're very... We treat that very precious, and we'll do the same in Indo. I mean, Indonesia, if you were to design, Philip, the perfect soft drink market, it's Indonesia. It's pretty much it's hot every day of the year.
You know, it's young population. It's large, 300 million plus consumers. You know, non-alcoholic beverages are by far and away the biggest category. So we're still super excited about it. You know, we have had a really tough 12 months, which we're probably gonna start cycling out of now, you know, as have many Western European countries. And clearly, you know, our hope is that, you know, the underlying cause of that finishes quickly, particularly from a humanitarian point of view, never mind a business point of view. And then we can kind of get back to a more normal growth rate in Indonesia.
It's fair to say the work we've done in the last two years, you know, our declines in Indonesia are much lower than what we're seeing with other brands, so that's giving certainly my team confidence that, you know, while we're not where we wanna be, we're actually performing slightly, well, a good bit better than the rest. And ultimately, the strategy hasn't changed. So, you know, we've got to remain very affordable in Indonesia. We've reset our pack pricing. I think that's helping. You know, to afford that pricing, we've got to be a more efficient business, so we've been restructuring, and we're in the middle of the biggest part of that restructuring, which is changing our route to market.
So we had a very cost-intensive route to market that actually wasn't very effective, so it was the, it was the worst of both worlds. We're now transitioning to a distributor model exactly the same as we operate in, Philippines. By the end of the year, we'll be about 50% through that transition, and by the middle of 2025, we'll be complete. And I think that sets us up then to try and unlock what, what we think is a great opportunity. But it's very low per capita, right? So the soft drinks per capita in Indonesia is about four. You know, Philippines, it's 30, you know, so we've a long way to go, but ultimately, that kind of sets us up for growth. So in some ways, as long as we can generate the right returns, which is our priority, that growth will be fantastic.
But, fair to say, the last year in particular has been more challenging.
Yeah, and actually, that leads quite nicely into my next question, because thinking a bit about per capita consumption, I mean, yes, you, I suppose you've alluded to the opportunity there in Indonesia and Philippines, but, you know, Western Europe, the per capita consumption, you know, it's obviously still well below the U.S., but it's nonetheless, you know, one of the highest across the regions globally. So overall, do you think that, you know, Europe can return to per capita consumption growth of soft drinks in the medium term?
I'm particularly thinking about maybe some headwinds from, you know, consumer health consciousness and, you know, sometimes soft drinks being bucketed in a, you know, in a, in, you know, as, as a something that's less healthy to consume or, you know, maybe potential headwinds from GLP-1, some of the weight loss drugs, and if so that's for the market overall, but then even if the market is kind of flattish still in the medium term, do you think that you can grow kind of, you know, your share within that, given your portfolio, to allow you to drive, you know, per capita consumption of your products, you know, even, even in a flattish market?
Yeah. So we, you know, believe, and I think it's up to us being the market leader, that sparkling per capita can grow in Europe, and it's obviously different by country, but you know. And I think a couple of things that are unlocking that. I think to your question on health, I think, you know, Atlanta has done a really good job on the formulation now of all their sugar-free products. So you know, they continually reformulate, and I think a few years ago, if you wanted to move from a, you know, a classic Coke or Fanta or Sprite to a zero variant, there was a big trade-off in taste. And I think, you know, that's now really diminished, and I think that's why you'll see in markets like the U.K., about 60% of our portfolio now is low or no sugar.
So I think that's allowing people to enjoy the category, and obviously, you know, make their own choices around calories and diet. So I think that will help. I think also we haven't seen anything. I was just back from the U.S. last week where I, you know, was inquiring about the GLP impact. So far, that hasn't impacted our category in the U.S., but we'll keep a close eye on that. You know, so we feel pretty good about the category. But obviously, let's say, you know, the category stays flat. What's it mean for CCEP? Well, if you look at our relative share, we're about 20-25% of the category in NA RTD. So we still see massive headroom for growth. And that kind of comes back to what I talked about earlier.
Beyond that soft drinks portfolio, energy is still a big growth category, which we're participating in and leading in many markets. We have a great Fuze Tea platform, we've got a sports platform, we've got coffee that we haven't cracked yet, we've got access to a lot of products like BODYARMOR out of the U.S. or fairlife. So even within the category, we still see a massive opportunity for us to become a broader beverage player. And then even if within soft drinks, which is clearly our core, our share in cola is 60-70%. You know, that drops to 20-30% when you look at flavors. So even with brands like Fanta and Sprite, we still see a lot of opportunity to get our fair share within that segment.
So, you know, obviously the easiest path is the whole category continues to grow in soft drinks, and we grow per capita, and we kind of take that responsibility on. You know, if that, for some reason, starts to get more challenging, then we've got to just continue to pivot to growth across the other segments. But, you know, whatever way I look at it, I feel pretty comfortable that both get us to that 2 or 3%. And obviously, with our board, we are looking at, well, if we do both really well, then you can beat that 2-3% guidance, which would be the best outcome. So get your sparkling per caps growing and, you know, broaden your revenue footprint in categories where you're underrepresented.
Yeah, I'm not going to take our guidance for Western Europe, but I mean, clearly that gets you to a higher percentage, and that's the way we're looking at it.
Okay, that's very clear, and so maybe moving just to talk about pricing itself. I mean, some beverages peers have commented recently, you know, some of their conversations with customers have been a bit more kind of difficult, particularly in the second half of 2024. So how are you thinking about pricing into next year? I know you've obviously recently taken pricing in the U.K. and Germany, but maybe in some of your other markets, in particular, in the early part of 2025. And are you planning any changes to promo intensity? And how valuable is... I mean, we've touched on already, but the kind of, I suppose, the strong value you create for your customers, how valuable is that when you're going into these kind of tougher pricing negotiations?
Yeah, it's invaluable because, you know, ultimately, if you're generating incremental profit for your customer at scale, which is what we do, and clearly retailing has had a tough couple of years, particularly with macro high inflation. For example, GB is also going to get hit with the minimum wage and some of the added costs. So we know they're struggling, and then therefore, being a growth category with margin expansion and scalable profit, I think is really important. And typically, our customers, you know, pay, you know, after eight times when a Coke is sold, right? So the turn and the cash generation is fantastic. But we, I mean, we don't take it for granted, so we're also investing, you know, so in marketing and capital.
So we demonstrate that we, you know, we want this category to be a healthy, growing category. I think they respect that. It doesn't always make the conversations around pricing easy. I think we've looked consistently at a rolling three-year pricing strategy. And, you know, if you go back to our pricing in 2023 and 2022, we were probably way behind a lot of other FMCG players in terms of absolute percentage. We took a bit of criticism for that. But we felt like pricing high single or double digit, on the back of inflation, you know, might be logical in one year, but you massively risk pushing your shoppers into private label or out of the category, and you massively risk having big fallouts with your customers. So we did take above average pricing for us.
In those years, we were probably closer to 5-6% or 4-5%, you know, and then we see a normal cadence of 2-3%, kind of on average, and again, you know, we price with a view to the consumer first, category health, and then retailer margin expectation. Yeah, I mean, as I said, my key account team wouldn't talk to me if I say it. It's never easy, but I think if you're consistent, if you're fair, and if you're investing, you have a better chance, and this year, we touch wood, we didn't have any major fallouts with our retailers. In previous years, we have. You know, even with that strategy, we've had challenges. So there's nothing to say we may not have a challenge next year, Philip.
But, you know, I think our biggest retailer consolidated maybe 4% of our revenue or 5%. So that diversification I spoke to at the very beginning, you know, not only geographic, but with that comes a lot of customer diversification. And because of the size of Away From Home, when you look at a, you know, a tough conversation with a retailer as a percentage of our revenue, it's probably a lot smaller than most CPGs.
... No, that, that's very clear. That makes a lot of sense. And I guess, so maybe moving on, we've obviously spoken a lot about about I suppose on a market level, and I just wanted to talk a bit more maybe about some of your specific categories. So maybe the first one being energy, which is obviously being one of, I suppose, the fastest growing category in recent years. So I suppose, how do you view the momentum of this category into, you know, into the medium term? And what are some of kind of the things that can fuel the growth in terms of, I don't know, new flavors, demographic trends, you know, new consumption occasions for energy?
And then just out of that, I mean, we've seen countries, some countries in Europe, start to kind of introduce more minimum age laws for energy drinks. In the U.K., obviously, there's been talk of that with the new Labour government. So how do you see kind of the impact of restriction of you know these age restrictions on growth for the category?
Yeah, maybe just to kind of step back a bit. I think if you're looking, and it's the same for Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe, if we went to visit supermarkets ten years ago, you would have soft drinks, being a category that people were questioning, will it grow or not grow? You would have juice being a big, big category, and you would have had a massive water category, and you might have had a shelf of energy. If you walk around today, the soft drink category is bigger 'cause it's growing, and the next biggest category is energy. So it's completely repositioned itself into a, I'd say, mainstream, 'cause it's got a lot of edginess to it, but a, you know, a main category player in soft drinks.
You know, the growth will probably come down a little bit, just mathematically. I mean, it was growing 20 25, you know, 2015. This year's been a bit slower. Generally, I think that's on the back of some of those macro, weather and pricing pressure. But as we look at that category, we still see it as a high single-digit contributor to our growth. We've a share of 2025, so we can take more share, but the category's growing anyway. What's fueling that is it's really moved beyond, you know, Monster, Green, Red Bull into a lot of variety, a lot of sugar-free platforms, which are, again, coming a lot later to energy than they did to our regular soft drinks portfolio, so that's fueling growth, and a massive amount of innovation on juiced, et cetera.
You're also seeing it, you know, starting to develop some of the more longer-term trends, like multi-packs. So traditionally, it was a very single-serve business. Now, about 10-15% of the category is multi-pack, but still in single-serve, so very profitable. And then you're getting kind of new variants, whether it's PRIME coming in or whether it's Celsius in the U.S., which we've had in Europe for quite a while. We've just launched Reign Storm, which is... I'm not sure this is the right language, but a cleaner energy platform, with more value added in terms of just ingredients for working out or for a healthy lifestyle, low sugar. So all of that's fueling the growth, and I don't see that, you know, slowing it down. Will it be a 25 ? Probably not, but it'll definitely be high single digit.
What's interesting about energy is the demographics are nearly 50-50 in terms of male-female consumption. The age profile goes from late teens well over fifty, so it's a much more diverse consumer platform than people realize. And you're right. I mean, that also helps us mitigate. In some countries, we already have some age guidelines around consumption, you know, eighteen or over. Yeah, so that, you know, given the breadth of the category, that's not really gonna impact too much, to be honest, and we haven't seen that where it has been implemented. Yeah.
No, that, that's very reassuring. And okay, so I guess we focused a lot on a lot of the top-line drivers, and I think it's quite clear that that, you know, the 4% midterm guide is very well underpinned. I mean, you've... Your, your midterm guide also has a 7% EBIT growth, in which I suppose implies kind of a margin expansion of kind of 30-40 basis points annually. So what do you think, I suppose, is the balance of driving that in terms of kind of, you know, your mix that you've spoken about, maybe, you know, operating leverage, some efficiency opportunities, you know, that you have?
And how much of the, that margin kind of margin opportunity will be driven by your kind of more mature markets versus, you know, maybe some of the less mature markets, including, like, the Philippines, you know, catching up to the group?
Yeah, so I mean, we've been pretty consistent on our OI margin delivery, and I think that's baked into that guidance. Probably what you'll see is a continued improvement in our gross margin, particularly in Western Europe. So we've seen commodities come off a bit, which is great, after a couple of years of very high inflation, particularly, and also on energy. We're hedged about 70-75% going into 2025 already, so we've got good line of sight. So, you know, that's certainly getting back to more normal levels, and that's gonna allow us to, you know, get a bit more gross margin expansion. Our gross margins in Europe are still not back to 19%, so that's a point of frustration for us. And you guys are, you know, how to do it.
So if you model that, that's a massive amount of incremental value that we've left on the table that we want to get back. Underpinning that is our productivity goal, so we've got a EUR 350 million-EUR 400 million productivity goal. We've just recently announced a number of closures in Germany, large manufacturing site in Cologne, a number of logistics centers. You know, so part of that delta between revenue and OI growth is definitely those hard productivity savings. You know, we're an asset-heavy business. So on the growth side, we do get great leverage on our P&L, and that contributes. So and obviously, I talked about pricing earlier, so price, productivity, leverage kind of gets us from the four to the seven. And I think we feel pretty comfortable with that.
We do want to see our gross margins in Europe continue to expand. OI margin's always been expanding, and it's a pretty much similar story, Philip, across all the markets. So you might see the rate of margin expansion on the OI line in the Philippines move a lot faster because of what we talked about. But pretty much across all of our markets, you know, we expect OI margin improvement year on year, gross margin improvement. And those productivity measures will also come to a market like the Philippines now that we're nearly a year in. You know, we've got a shared services center there with about 200 people that we feel we can leverage more. That will drive incremental productivity, maybe out of Australia and New Zealand from a time zone perspective. Obviously, high labor cost markets, high cost of doing business.
We'll continue to push ourselves on the productivity goal, and you know, candidly, we need it to get the four to the seven, right? I mean, that you know, particularly on a consistent basis. Yeah, so that's kind of how we get there.
Great. That's very clear, and just on... I mean, you've spoken already about some of the investments you're making in kind of technology. Could you maybe just talk a bit more about some of the investments that you are making, you know, with the S/4HANA investment, maybe a bit more detail around that, and maybe some of the other tools that you might be building in the business around, you know, RGM, you know, driving other efficiencies, promo optimization. I think you spoke about a bit in Australia-
Yeah
-the work you've done around there. And maybe, I suppose, if you could give kind of an overview of where those tools are already rolled out across the business and where they will be kind of being rolled out to over the next couple of years.
Yeah, so probably our most exciting tool is our myCCEP.com platform, which is our B2B platform. So we're doing over EUR 2 billion of revenue through that. And that's something that we're bringing obviously to the Philippines. We've brought it to Australia and New Zealand, and we continue to invest in that capability. It's a great tool, but when I look potentially how AI could play a role in that, you know, there's a lot more we can do with that platform. So it's big, it's working, but I think we can continue to develop it. Beyond that, we've got about 160 data scientists and analytics out of our shared services center in Bulgaria. They're primarily focused on that revenue growth management, but we call it revenue and margin growth management.
So we deliberately changed that acronym to include margin because we just feel passionate that you've got to grow revenue and margin at the same time. You know, you can't separate them. We're using a lot of data analytics to do that. So you talked earlier about promo intensity. Yeah, I think we're fully funded on a promo level in Europe in particular, and probably in Australia. So now it's really about spending it smarter and using some of those shopper tools to understand really what moves the needle in terms of household penetration or market share. And we're running that through a number of both analytic and robotic tools out of Sofia, so that's a primary goal. We've moved all of our planning from a supply chain perspective above market in Europe.
And that's been a long journey, but we're there now, and that really allows us to optimize our asset utilization. Looking at our Western European footprint as kind of one large factory opportunity, rather than traditionally, as you'd expect, you know, we've about a hundred factories. So a lot of them were run in country, which made sense, but more and more now we need to optimize our asset utilization across markets. So technology is a big part of that. So our kind of mid and long-term planning is now done above market on a technology platform, which is great. All of our reps are operating on the Salesforce platform, which we've lifted and shifted to Australia and New Zealand, where we will bring that to the Philippines.
Again, that just allows us from a customer relationship perspective, you know, use one platform across CCEP. Yeah, so they're the main areas that we're looking at. You know, we've got some good analytic tools in procurement, which have highlighted a lot of opportunities from our contracts, which is kind of something new for me. I didn't expect that when we ran that project, but effectively, it runs through all your contracts and points out where you're not getting what you paid for. Yeah, so you could pick a lot of different areas. But we've kind of pivoted our investment more towards growth revenue on the commercial side, and then obviously against margin on supply chain, and that's really planning and asset utilization.
Very clear. So, yeah, so, there's a lot going on in the business already, even, you know, consolidating all of that and, you know, implementing all those changes. But you did mention earlier that, you know, you would be keen to, you know, acquire bottling businesses where they became available. Now, you mentioned obviously near term, there isn't kind of that much available. But maybe looking beyond the next couple of years, which kind of markets or, you know, geographic areas would you be kind of keeping your eye kind of most keenly on? And I suppose, you know, this year we've seen kind of Carlsberg start to develop a close relationship with Pepsi in some markets. Do you see an opportunity to take over the markets that it bottles currently in Europe?
We'd definitely be interested. I mean, they're adjacent territories. We already bottle in Norway and Sweden. I mean, that impact of that deal between their relationship with Atlanta is obviously something we're not party to, but we're curious about. You know, if that was to happen, it's probably a couple of years out, but we're definitely interested. I think what's most surprising, I think for me, Philip, having you know previously worked with CCI and Efes on the beer side, if someone had told me a big brewer was gonna be paying that much money to get into bottling, I think that I think demonstrates the attractiveness of our of our category and of our segment.
You know, so I suppose strategically we were surprised that they saw that much value in what we do, because I think traditionally it was always the other way around, right? Yeah, so we keep an eye. I mean, there are definitely markets that are adjacent and, you know, would make sense from our view. It's obviously got to be something that Carlsberg decide to do. They operate and own those franchises today, and it's got to do with Atlanta. But we'll continue to look broadly. You know, I probably said the same thing after we did Amatil There's limited bottling franchises, and when you land on one, you should probably take it, like we did with Amatil
Yeah. Okay. No, that, that's very clear. And I guess, I mean, you do have a very strong relationship with The Coca-Cola Company, which, you know, should help maybe, you know, in those conversations. But I guess maybe just taking a step back, the relationship you have at the moment, do you think there's a limit to the margins that CCEP can achieve given the relationship with Coca-Cola? And are there any risks, do you think, that KO could, you know, change some contract terms, you know, increase concentrate pricing, you know, that might, you know, put that limit on the margins that you can achieve as a business?
Yeah. No, I don't see any limit because I think the biggest change structurally in the bottling, Coke bottling world was the move to Incidence Pricing from volume pricing. So in effect, the Coke company's value chain is linked to our NSL per case, and that rate's solid. So as we grow, they grow, and therefore, that dependency on mutual growth is so strong that, you know, if you look at the valuation of the Coke company, it's very built in on growth, right? If you look at their valuation, and hopefully we re-rate a bit, it'll be built in on growth. So I think that fundamental alignment is so strong, and it works, right? So if you look at the bottling value creation over the last 10 years, it's been fantastic.
The company's a shareholder as well, 19% of our shares. So I don't see any risk to that. You know, and I think it's a healthy financial model, which, you know, I've been in the business quite a while. I think that's... If I was to look over the last 10, 15 years, what's been the biggest driver of value in the Coca-Cola system, it's been underpinned by that financial model. So I don't see any risk. I think margin expansion is clearly a goal for both of us. I think, you know, also pushing the boundaries, like alcohol, ready to drink, you know, Jack Daniel's and Coca-Cola. I think a lot of people would never have expected that to happen.
So I think also the company is recognizing that that growth is gonna have to come from different platforms. And I think that's gonna be the focus rather than, you know, trying to take one profit pool and split it differently. That's really not gonna help anybody. It's got to be about, how do you grow that profit pool? And I think that's been working. And I suppose, Philip, for me, if that was ever gonna break, it would have broke during the pandemic. So I think if people were sitting there ever thinking that, you know, something could fundamentally change, if it was ever, it would've been then.
Given the pressures that everybody was under, the easiest decision would've been for the company to say, "Right, we're taking up incidence levels by 10% to cover our short." So that gives me a lot of confidence.
No, that's certainly very reassuring. And so maybe just one final one, just to... Before we wrap up, I just wanted to touch on, you know, obviously you've had the transfer to the equity shares category, and that's been completed for your U.K. listing last month. Could you just remind us... I mean, it's obviously quite topical at the moment with the potential for FTSE inclusion. Could you just remind us of the thresholds that you're required to be considered for that FTSE index inclusion, the timeframe that's tested over-
Yeah
... and I suppose anything that shareholders can do to support the meeting of, you know, of those thresholds?
Yeah. So I'm gonna put a bit of disclaimer. I'm not the expert, 'cause these rules are kind of a little bit funky from time to time, but we know they're clear. So the good news is, we've got to do point zero two five of our volume through our London listing. We've done that in November, so we're one month down, and we've got to get that through to March, which will be the first test point. And if we achieve that volume, that's the biggest hurdle that we have to get inclusion onto the FTSE. If we don't, there'll be another testing period in June. You know, so we feel, at least we feel good after November, that we're hitting the numbers.
I haven't looked at today's volume, but I'm sure someone's gonna send me a message saying that we hit it today as well. Yeah, and that's the biggest step in the process to getting to get that FTSE listing. So we're excited about it. As a percentage of our volume, it's quite small, but clearly it's got to come. And obviously, we're a NASDAQ-listed business, so the spreads and the liquidity there are very attractive, right? So it's not something that we take for granted. It's requiring a lot of conversations in London. I've been road showing the... A lot of people, because they couldn't own us, they didn't know us.
So we're spending a lot of time with our IR team, you know, telling the CCEP story to a group of investors that track the FTSE or are, you know, mandated to buy in Europe. And I think long term or midterm, that's gonna be great for the company. But it's a balance and it's a challenge when you've got, you know, that NASDAQ spreads and liquidity. But, but so far, so good. So that- so it'll be March, will be the earliest. If it's not March, it could be June, and then I think it moves to a six-month or annual review of our volume. So that's the key trigger.
Great. Well, clearly lots of exciting things going on, you know, for the business and for your shareholders as well. So, busy period coming up. But look, I think we're pretty much at the hour now, so thank you, you know, very much for taking the time to be with us today, Damian, and to share all of your insights.
Great. Thanks, Philip. Enjoyed it. And again, thanks for everybody joining, and if it's not too early, I wish everybody a great end of year and a happy Christmas, so thank you.
Yeah, and from my side as well, thank you very much everyone for dialing in, and Happy Christmas, Happy New Year, and wish you a good rest of your day.