Good morning, and thank you for joining JDEEPEAT's Half Year twenty twenty one Earnings Call. My name is Nazzlin Behati, and I'll be your operator for the call. For the duration of the presentation, all participants will be in a listen only mode and the conference call is being recorded. Following the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to our first speaker, Robin Jensen, Director, Investor Relations for J.
D. Peat.
Thank you, Nadineen. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to J. D. Peat's earnings call related to the financial performance of the first half of twenty twenty one. With me are Fabienne Simon, CEO and Scott Gray, CFO.
In a moment, Fabienne will take you through the operational and financial highlights related to our first half year business performance. After that, Scott will tell you more about the financial performance in the first half. Fabienne will conclude today's presentation with our outlook for the full year. And after that, we will be happy to answer your questions. But before we begin, I'd like to direct your attention to the disclaimer regarding non IFRS measures and forward looking statements on Slide two.
We would kindly like to ask you to read this information carefully. Our press release was published at seven a. M. CET this morning. The release as well as the slide deck related to this call are also available for download from the Investor Relations section on our corporate website.
A full transcript of this conference call will also be made available in the same section of our website as soon as possible after this call. With that, let me hand over to Fabienne.
Thank you, Robin, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call today and for your interest in JDE Bits. I am pleased to share with you our results for the first half of twenty twenty one. Over the last six months, we have made good progress against the refreshed strategic framework and priority that we initiated last year and presented at the March to the community. Today, I'm not only pleased with our broad based improved performance, but as well by the quality way of its delivery. These results reflect the focus, agility, alignment and hard work of our entire organization that is fully energized by our new purposeful and disciplined growth led ambition.
And I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our teams around the world for their commitment through all the ongoing challenges and complexity that still persist and for delivering this solid set of results. Overall, our organic sales grew by 4.2. It came from ongoing momentum in e Home consumptions, partially fueled by continued lockdowns in the first part of the year, but as well by changing patterns of more work from home as the world progressively reopens. We shared at the time of our 2020 results, our view that it may well take a few years for the away from home channels to return to pre pandemic levels. It was therefore important for us to adjust our business model and we kicked off structural cost adjustment at the back end of twenty twenty.
These initiatives are paying off and the Away From Home businesses returned to profitability in H1, while the related sales base remained by and large at the same level as in the first half of last year. The combinations of operational leverage, innovation, premiumizations and disciplined cost management improved the organic gross profit margin by 26 basis points. The adjusted EBIT increased organically by 0.8% as we reinvested in marketing, innovation and digital capabilities to support and feed long term growth opportunities. I believe that the positive read of our market share developments across our categories shows that these investments are paying off. We also continue to make good progress on our sustainability agenda.
In March, we connected EUR 2,500,000,000.0 of our investment grade facilities to our sustainability ambitions. That same month, we committed to adopt a climate science based target, and we are on track to announce greenhouse gas reduction ambitions with BTI in the second half of this year. In manufacturing, our facility in Guevlo, Sweden was the first one to achieve in March the past 2,060 certifications for carbon neutrality. And in June, all our manufacturing facilities in Europe reached zero land feed status for the first time. We also significantly optimized our financial position in the first half with our strong free cash flow generation, our leverage reduced to below three times, in line with the commitment we made at the time of the IPO and repeated since then.
We also executed a successful refinancing and inaugural bond issuance that strengthen our debt profile from a diversification, maturity and cost standpoint. And our continued operational and financial discipline resulted in two additional investment grade rating from Moody's and Standard and Poor's in H1. So bottom line, all the financial achievements I've just talked about resulted in an increase in our underlying EPS of 12.9%. In a couple of minutes, I will provide you with some example of how we are gearing up on our disciplined growth ambition through portfolio management, innovations as well as disciplined capital allocation. The other thing that became a theme in the course of H1 is inflation, as many roles in packaging material, but also distribution costs started to see substantial price increases.
In a few minutes, I'll come back to this topic and explain in a bit more detail what we are seeing there and how we are managing this, especially on the coffee side. Based on the progress we've made in the first half of twenty twenty one and the current expectations we have for the remainder of the year, we are confident that we will reach our outlook for 2021. So let's now go to Slide six and take a closer look at our organic growth, starting with the total company performance and per channel. Our organic sales growth versus the same period last year, but also on a two year stack basis was ahead of our historical trend as we enjoyed continued strong performance in In Home at 4.9%, while sales in Away From Home were stable compared to H1 twenty twenty as lockdown measures remain largely unchanged in Q1 mostly. The competing growth was driven by an increase in the number of cuts of coffee and tea sold by continued premiumizations as well as by positive pricing.
So let's now zoom in on the highlights of our In Home performance on Slide seven here. The strong In Home growth of 4.9% I just referred to was supported by targeted reinvestment as anticipated and communicated earlier this year. A and P, for instance, increased by 31% from the same period last year with particular focus on consumer facing marketing investments that increased by 80% in H1 of this year. The organic growth was well diversified from a geographic standpoint as both the developed and the emerging market delivered a mid single digit growth rate. We did continue to perform strongly on the fastest growing category, single serve and beans, that increased by 11%, supported by strong momentum in our aluminum capsules in particular.
E commerce grew by 30%, above the elevated growth rate of 58% in the same period of last year already. And when we look at our performance relative to the market, on the right hand side of the slide, we are encouraged by the positive read across all categories. On the next slide, I would like to share some of the most important developments we've seen in Away From Home. So our sales level there remained largely unchanged in H1 at plus 0.7%. And this is really a tale of two quarters.
On one hand, Q1, still in lockdown is compared to a more pre pandemic Q1 of last year, while Q2 of this year witnessed very encouraging effects of reopenings in some sub channels in The U. S. And in Europe versus what was heavily affected Q2 of last year. Our Pitcher in The U. S, for example, has recorded a positive 83% same store sales growth in the last quarter with strong recovery as well as on traffic as well as increase in the average ticket size.
But yet, it is fair to say that uncertainty remains in subchannels such as offices, but as well in some geographies like Asia and Pacific, where many countries announced lately coming back to new lockdown measures. So over the last six months, we focused on what we control and what we can influence. We are adapting our business model at pace with structural cost measures that already enabled us to return to profitability this semester, but as well by stepping up and leveraging investment in our digital and consumer engagement journey. Additionally, we made good progress on another recent strategic shift being the acceleration of the rollout of the Pizzcoffees stores in China. We reached the 40 stores count mark in the course of H1 and we are well on track to deliver in the next two to three years what we originally planned to execute in the next five to six years.
Let's now switch gears and provide you with an update on the latest development in our business portfolio on Slide nine. I think it's fair to say that over the last couple of years, nothing really happened on the inorganic front. This had been another shift that we resumed at the back end of last year because we know that when it is executed with discipline, this supports further value creation. Between January and July of this year, we sold our Dutch Cafe Stores coffee company as well as our French brands Cafe Privilege. Although not that significant in size for us, these businesses were more a distraction in our portfolio.
And importantly, we were not the best home to them. So we are now pleased that they fit greatly with the business model of their new owners who do have the focus and expertise to develop them further. Next to that, we announced a partnership on liquid coffee with J. M. Schmucker's in The U.
S. And a partnership with Pret A Manger to launch a new range of premium aluminum capsule in The UK market. And in June, we announced the acquisitions of COMPOSS, the specialty coffee leader in Australia available in over 600 cafes and present in multi channels including direct to consumer, retail and its own couple of flagship cafes. Let's now move to Slide 10, where we can see a selection of our recent innovation. Innovation is another area that we are accelerating across products or packaging, but as well on coffee appliances and business model.
And here you'll see a couple of highlights. Mokona introduced, for example, our first range of plant based offering in specialty mixes for Australia. In law, we launched a bio organic range, which contains 100% organic coffee beans and carries additional certifications. Russia, another example, with Jacobs, we just launched a range of Origin and Flavor Premium Escape. On the Appliance side, which we presented as well as a further investment area, our Barista machine did win the Red Dot Design Award for machine in the kitchen appliances category.
And we launched new machines with new features for both Sensio and Tassimo. On this later one, I think these are the first new appliances launched in five years for Sensio and in three years for Tassimo. So besides those, we have as well just introduced a Tassimo subscription model in The UK, which will enable to get closer to the overall consumer journey and decision points. Finally, besides the two new partnerships we already talked about, we continue to roll out our very successful partnership model with Hilli. And again, both portfolio management and innovations will play an important role to deliver our long term ambition.
And I am encouraged with the new pace and the pipeline at which we are operating now. Now, before I hand over the call to Scott, I would like to take a couple of minutes to update you on the topic of inflation on the next two slides. So as you have seen in many charts and I've heard from many companies over the last couple of weeks and months, inflation is on the rise also for us across a broad range of raw materials, packaging materials and distribution costs. On the right hand side of this slide, we call out those inputs that are the most relevant for us in this context. And you see the magnitude of the inflation these cost buckets have witnessed.
Now let's distinguish the coffee commodity side and the non coffee side. On the later, the non coffee side, a decent part of the impact of the inflation is actually already reflected in our first half year performance. And we are taking all the necessary measures to manage the increasing part to come in H2. On coffee, it's different and there we do have some critical edging in place. But giving the very specificity of the coffee category, I would now like to move to the next slide and have a look at what happened in the past when the coffee market experienced volatility on the commodity side.
I think this chart might look complex at first sight, but they are really here to stress three key points. And we looked at the last fifteen years of coffee commodities, consumer price and consumption in retail of the most sensitive roast and grain category historically. And what does it history told us? Three key things. One, consumer prices closely follow the cyclical green coffee prices on the way up as well as on the way down.
Second, over that period of fifteen years, the coffee consumption has proven to be inelastic to the consumer price evolution. So in the year here you can see in the year twenty eleven, twenty twelve when Arabica reached the US3 dollars per pound, the consumptions of coffee in retail was not lower than in previous years despite almost 14% to 15% consumer price inflation. And similarly, the consumption was not higher in the year 2013 than in 2012 when prices went down. And I think this is because coffee in home is an affordable and deeply rooted consumption, I mean, in the daily consumer repertoire. What we know and the annual Euromonitor don't show here is there can be a short term pantry stocking effect for quarter two.
The third thing that history told us, here using more quarterly needs and data available data with history, is that the consumer price increases or decreases tend to follow with a lag of about two to three quarters of the commodity price inflation. So as a conclusion on coffee, the answer to the commodity inflation is all about mutual pricing discipline on the way down as much as on the way up. And the hedging in place is here to provide the appropriate level of visibility, timing necessary to implement these pricing actions. It is a pass through mechanism category. And therefore, the indicator that matters the most, the one we monitor is the absolute euro margin per kilo and not its percentage.
Again, here, I'm not trying to say that this is an easy exercise to put pricing through. But coffee roasters and retailers have proven to be long term and disciplined in the past, both on the price increase and the price reductions. This is our intention this time again, as we have been over the last few years, for instance, passing through all the tailwind to the customers. And while pricing actions could potentially lead to some short term challenges for a quarter or two, Historically, the innovation power and strong brand equity of the market leaders have enabled to secure market shares over time. With that, I will hand the call over to Scott, and I will be back to discuss the outlook before we go to the Q and A.
Thank you, Fabienne, and good morning to all of you. Let's go to Slide 14 to take you through a few of the most important financial highlights of this semester. And after that, I'll provide a bit more detail on the segment performance as well as first half year developments related to profit, cash and our financial position. Then I'll finish with a quick reminder of our capital allocation priorities. As mentioned earlier by Fabienne, our overall organic sales growth of 4.2% was driven by an organic sales growth of 4.9% in In Home and 0.7% in Away From Home.
In terms of profitability, our adjusted EBIT grew by 0.8% versus H1 twenty twenty or 5.5% on a two year CAGR and our underlying earnings per share increased by 12.9%. When it comes to cash and debt, one of our top financial priorities since the IPO has been to reduce leverage to below three times, which we achieved this semester on the back of strong free cash flow generation of €553,000,000 in the first half of the year. Let's now move to Slide 15 to take a closer look at sales. Our organic sales growth of 4.2% was predominantly driven by a combination of volume and mix, but with 40 basis points coming from pricing. The negative foreign exchange impact of 3.5% was mainly driven by the appreciation of the euro against and the Russian ruble.
And this together with a minor change in scope increased our sales by 0.5% to €3,254,000,000 on a reported basis. Let's now move to Slide 16 to look in more detail at our adjusted EBIT performance. The 0.8% organic growth of our adjusted EBIT that I just called out was driven by an increase in gross profit, of which we reinvested a meaningful part back into A and P and other SG and A to support our brands and build other capabilities to fuel growth. Fluctuations in foreign exchange decreased adjusted EBIT by 2.3%. On the next slide, Slide 17, you will see an overview of the organic sales and adjusted EBIT performance by segment.
Looking at the top line performance per segment, you can see that CPG Europe and CPG LARMAYA continued to benefit from the continued strong momentum in in home consumption and that Pete's top line benefited from continued strong in home performance as well as from the positive effects the reopening of The U. S. Had on its coffee store network. The slight organic sales declines in CPG APAC and out of home are a reflection of the impact the restrictions continue to have on their sales performances. In CPG Europe, sales growth was broad based across countries with particularly strong contributions coming from countries like France, The UK and Germany and continued momentum in premium categories like beans, aluminum capsules and other single serve offerings like Tassimo T Discs.
And despite a strong double digit increase in investments in A and P and other investments for growth, the organic adjusted EBIT increased by 1.9% resulting in a two year CAGR of 8.9%. Within the organic sales growth level of 5.4%, CPG LARMEA delivered a similar organic growth level as in 2020, with particularly strong performance coming from countries like South Africa and Brazil. From a category perspective, growth was driven by roast and ground, instant and single serve offerings. Organic adjusted EBIT decreased organically by 19.2% in H1, driven by higher A and P spend and other operating expenses. However, on a two year CAGR, the organic adjusted EBIT growth was 4.2%.
In CPG APAC, various markets entered into new lockdowns in the course of H1 'twenty one, which in many cases were stricter than the initial restrictions in 2020, thereby further impacting the away from home business. As a result, organic sales performance in various markets in Southeast Asia were also in decline. China, on the other hand, delivered strong double digit performance. The adjusted EBIT decreased organically by minus 14.8% in H1, driven by higher A and P spend to support innovations. On a two year CAGR, the organic adjusted EBIT growth was 18.9%.
At Pete's, the CPG business continued to deliver solid single digit organic sales growth, resulting in a two year CAGR of 18.1%. On the away from home side, Pete's Coffee stores started to see very encouraging same store sales growth as The U. S. Started to reopen, which resulted in an 83% increase in same store sales growth in Q2, as Fabien mentioned in his opening remarks, while the non coffee store away from home businesses were still impacted by low returns to offices and universities. Adjusted EBIT increased organically by 10.8% in H1, largely driven by the recovery in away from home, which was partly offset by incremental investments to increase household penetration in CPG.
Based on the two year CAGR, the organic adjusted EBIT growth was 14.5%. And as mentioned before, in most of our out of home markets, lockdown restrictions remained in place, which prevented the segment from meaningfully growing its sales base in H1. The good news this semester was that although the sales base was by and large the same as the comparable period last year, the out of home segment was able to return to profitability as a result of various structural cost measures that had been implemented since the start of the pandemic to reduce fixed operating costs. Now let's take a look at our underlying profit in absolute terms and per share on the next slide, Slide 18. Our underlying earnings per share increased by 12.9% or €0.10 to €0.89 in the first half of twenty twenty one.
As you can see on this slide, the majority of the increase was driven by operational improvements, which can be split between the increase in organic adjusted EBIT and the structural decrease of our adjusted net financing costs as a result of our deleveraging deleveraging and the substantial reduction of our average cost of debt following the refinancing and bond issuance we completed in H1. I will come back to our debt structure in a minute. Next to these operational improvements, our underlying profit also benefited from fair value changes of derivatives, which were partly offset by FX losses and by slightly higher underlying taxes. Let me now share a bit more detail on our free cash flow and net debt developments. In the first half of twenty twenty one, our business delivered a total free cash flow of €553,000,000 which is almost €120,000,000 more than in the same period last year, even after adding back €34,000,000 of nonrecurring payments related to the IPO to the free cash flow in H1 twenty twenty to provide an appropriate comparison.
Our cash conversion was 71%. And as you can see on the right hand side of the chart, it enabled us to reduce our net debt by €430,000,000 as we maintain discipline across all the lines. And on the next slide, Slide 20, you see an overview of our debt evolution and how we have now reduced it by almost €2,000,000,000 since the combination with Pietz as our consistently strong free cash flow generation has enabled us to continue our debt reduction post the IPO. In turn, we were able to deliver on the commitment made to reduce our leverage to below three times as we reached our target by the June with leverage up 2.98 times. Next to that, as you can see on Slide 21, in the first half of twenty twenty one, we have substantially transformed structure by successfully refinancing €6,500,000,000 of new credit agreements and by successfully executing a €2,000,000,000 inaugural bond issuance, both at very compelling terms, as you can see on this slide.
Our 2026 bond at a 0% coupon is a testament of the quality of our credit profile. And these two corporate actions have resulted in an attractive new debt structure as you can see on Slide 22. Our average cost of debt reduced from 2.4% before we executed the refinancing and bond issuance to around 1.5% now. We extended our weighted average maturity to about five years, and we have no debt maturing before the end of twenty twenty three. Next to that, we have doubled our total liquidity to €2,000,000,000 as compared to the end of twenty twenty, and we have further diversified our funding sources and instruments.
Before handing back to Fabienne, I'd like to briefly remind you of our capital allocation priorities as first shared with you during our strategic update meeting at the March. Our capital allocation framework guides us as we create long term value. Our first capital allocation priority is to reinvest in our brands and the growth opportunities within our business. Our second priority is deleveraging as we target an optimal leverage of around 2.5 times. Our third priority is to continue to pursue inorganic growth opportunities, but always in line with our highly selective business and financial criteria.
Our fourth priority is to use excess cash to contribute to shareholder remuneration through stable dividend flows that we expect to sustainably grow over time. And while our leverage is above our optimal leverage of 2.5x, 2.5x, we do not prioritize share repurchases. If you look at the actions we have taken recently, you will see that they are very consistent with our capital allocation priorities.
Let me now hand back to Fabien for the outlook before we open the call for Q and A. Thanks, Scott. And let's now turn to Slide 25 to remind you of our outlook for full year 2021. I think we've made good progress in H1. And although uncertainty and volatility around us are not going to go away, we are confident to deliver the full year outlook that we communicated earlier.
I mean these are organic sales goals of 3% to 5%, organic adjusted EBIT to grow in the low single digit range as we continue to step up our investment for growth, while being intentional on managing inflations and navigating the enduring uncertainty of the pandemic. Our commitment to reduce our leverage to below three times net debt to EBITDA has already been achieved by the June. With that, I will now turn it over to the operator to start the Q and A.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we're now ready to take your questions. Our first question comes from the line of Jon Cox from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, guys. Fabian, Scott, Robin, congratulations on a very solid print there. I've only got one question, but I'm actually going to probably sneak in two. The first one is just on the pricing. When I use sort of like a coffee model, looking at coffee prices with the lag, etcetera, etcetera, it looks to me that you're going to need to increase prices by about five percent next year, maybe even higher depending on where the coffee price settles.
Are you confident in the portfolio and your position to be able to do that? That's the first question. Second question, just on A and P. It's a pretty hot topic within the market. I see that your adjusted SG and A costs were up EUR61 million.
Can we assume most of that is A and P? Or even can you just give us an absolute increase A and P figure? Very much.
Yes. Good morning, John. Let me give it a try and Scott can build. So let's start with your first point on pricing. As you might understand, we are mindful of not signaling our pricing strategy to competitions.
And we want as well to, I think, respect the negotiation which are ongoing with our retail partners actually now. But to your point, we are confident that the category has been really having a specific pass through mechanism that we have been able over the years to exactly match that. And we believe it's going to continue to be the case this time around. And I want to remind maybe a good opportunity here. So we talked about the non coffee and the coffee inflations.
And I know there is a lot of attention now on the recent spike on green coffee. But I think maybe they had been forgotten a bit that if I look at what was the price of Arabica in the summer last year, think it was around $100 per pound. But in December of last year, it was already $1.2 So we already witnessed about 20% of inflation of Arabica, which is something that is, I would say, reaching our P and L in the second part of this year. And we have been taking all the appropriate actions. And despite these inflations, despite the incremental inflation, which has been coming through the non coffee side, we are very comfortable, very confident that we'll deliver our outlook.
I think that probably give you a good hint on our level of confidence on how we are managing with strong discipline on the pricing side, but as well on the hedging side, our specific coffee commodity inflation. On your second question on the investment side. So we have been indeed communicating during, I would say, our 2020 result as well as during the Capital Market Day that we intend to step up our growth investment level. First, to return to sufficiency level of our existing portfolio, but as well to seed incremental growth opportunities. And this to ensure we are going to get long term growth momentum.
And we shared that the ambition was to focus mainly on working media, on coffee appliances, but as well as digital U. S. And China capabilities. At the end of H1, we are well on track on our investment level. And you quoted our absolute organic SG and A by €61,000,000 and the vast majority of that is really on the increase of the investment against our refreshed strategic priorities.
I see at the same amount of time last year, our A and P was reduced by 32% or 33%, if my memory is correct. And you've seen that we have increased to 31% already in H1 of this year. For H2, we plan to stay the course, and we expect to continue to increase, and we believe we'll reach to the level that we have been communicating in the past, which is the one we feel appropriate to support our amazing portfolio of brand and appliances.
Thanks for that. I wonder if I can just sneak one in. An effective tax rate for this year and effective tax rate going forward, Scott?
Yes. Our effective tax rate, we do expect to be a little bit lower now for 2021, and we would expect it to be closer to 20% for the year.
Thank you.
And the next question comes from the line of David Hayes from Sachin. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning all. If I can just follow-up on that question, first of all, John on the A and P spend. So just help me with the math a little bit. 31% up, I know it's in home, but if I assume most of the A and P spend is in home, then I guess that's about a $40,000,000 increase.
So I guess the question is, to your point just then about the target, I think you were talking about sort of towards $100,000,000 up year on year this year following the lower spend last year. Should we be thinking about sort of $60,000,000 up on in the second half, which will be sort of a $250,000,000 A and P spend number in the second half? Is that kind of the broad math logic? And then secondly, still related, I guess, some ways, as you've mentioned a couple of times, you've obviously developed these new machines and I think look to be a little bit more aggressive with subsidies on the machines. What sort of effect is that having?
Is there any kind of metrics you can give us in terms of Tazemos, SENSAO or L'Olo Barista machine purchases this time this first half versus first half of last year? Yes.
So just a follow-up on the overall investment. It's true that we have been quoting a number which was around the 100,000,000 last year, which was towards really advertising promotions, including the appliance investment you are quoting about, but as well other growth opportunities such as capability built on digital, such as footprint of store in China, and this was the overall amount which we quoted. We believe we are going to be at the end of this year really within the same range. And of course, we're always learning as we put some investment what is working a bit more versus what is working a bit less. But we are going to remain in the same ballpark.
And I think the overall amount was pretty well distributed across, I would say, H1 and H2 overall. On your second question on the matching development. So what I can say here and without signaling too much information, as you can imagine from a competitive standpoint, is we are clear that as the category got more complicated because consumer are more demanding in particular to get better coffee, to get more convenient and more individuals coffee, appliance is playing a bigger role. And we have seen in 2020, the sales of appliance the growth of the sale appliance have been almost doubling in 2020, in particular on single serve and full automatic machine. And we see actually on the latest read that we see the same momentum.
And it really suggests to get a continued level of appetite for consumer on that level. We do have great appliance park we can leverage on. We have Sanseo, which is the largest used park in Europe, which is the most affordable and the most sustainable offer we can provide to consumer. We do have as well Tassimo and we have our Express for Appliance Barista. And we can as well leverage in The U.
S. Market on the Keurig system with K Cup. You have seen that we are intentional on launching new appliance. We have a meaningful part of our SG and A increase, which has been to see more appliances. I don't want to quote number, but we feel that we really have, in our hands, all the assets necessary between the brand, but as well as the appliance to be successful on the long term to capture this disproportionate growth we see on senior sales.
Thank you.
And the next question comes from the line of Faham Baig from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for the question.
Could I start by asking you to potentially
discuss the latest developments in the Nespresso compatible capsules category, in terms of what maybe loss growth was in H1 and maybe where, loss share, reached, in the half as well, particularly that particularly given that Nestle, continues to stress, share gains in this in this segment. So I just wanted to see how law is, fairing up. And also given, Nespresso's pivot towards, the Virtuo system, what impact has this had on the Nespresso compatible growth rate, given given there are currently no compatibles for the Virtuo machine?
Good morning, Faham. So let me try to you have a couple of points. I can try to answer all of them. So we see a continued appetite from consumer on the Nespresso compatible category. Although we are comparing ourselves to already a heavy I mean, highly elevated number last year, we don't see a slowdown.
And we really believe in the long term of what I would call the classic aluminum capsules that consumers keep asking at a double digit rate if we look at the beginning of this year. And that's why it's not surprisingly, you might have noticed that the two largest player on coffee globally have been announcing meaningful capacity increase over the last ten months to be able to fulfill this consumer demand. You had a particular question on share. So we know we don't disclose our share. We have disclosed our share on capsules.
Just to give you a hint or to ease some of the concerns sometimes we hear here and there. If I look at our year to date share in the first part of the year, I mean, Nielsen related shares. To see an impact a potential impact on the share, you have to look after the comma. So I think it tells you that we do participate and take our fair share of the fastest growing part of Capsule in a very meaningful way. And we are very, very pleased with that.
Then you had a particular question on Virtu. So I think, again, I'm probably going to be consistent with what I have been saying in the past is, first, I do have a lot of respect for the company that you are quoting behind this coffee appliance. And I deeply believe that only two companies do have globally at scale what is now necessary to answer the increasing complexity from the consumer on coffee in the home, and we are one of them. And on the I'm not going to comment on an appliance that is not ours. I think it's for your question, you should ask to the owner of this appliance.
But we believe consumer wants choice. They want choice in the type of coffee they want. They want choice in the various brands and appliances. And we feel very comfortable with the plan we have in place with our cathode capsules, with our barista machine to secure this growth on the long run.
Thanks. And if I could ask a follow-up, not to my question, but to a question asked earlier with regards to raw material and pricing. I just want to maybe better understand the low single digit guidance that you retained for organic EBIT. So I guess at the time when you set this guidance in March, you anticipated a certain, sales growth trajectory that you've kept, as well as the A and P reinvestment of around 100,000,000 But but but since then, clearly since then, there there has been increased raw material pressure, be it in coffee where I I presume, you're likely to be hedged this year. But but but but also as you suggest and put a chart in the presentation in in the sort of non coffee raw mats as well and and quite significantly so.
So which which you said has already begun to hit your p and l, and I'm sure the impact will be greater in h two as other consumer companies have suggested as well. So I guess the question is, what is the offsetting factor to this COGS inflation that allows you to maintain the low single digit increase in EBIT that you're guiding for?
So we have had, I would say, some anticipation already at the end of last year on some of the inflation. I've been talking earlier about coffee, which has been already increasing by 20% during that time horizon with some lag in our P and L because we have some good hedging in place. But we anticipated some inflations, not to the extent of what had been happening. And it is we have been doing last year a couple of changes. You might have seen beyond, I would say, the underlying strategic shift.
We as well have some short term program in place to be, I would say, a bit more aggressive on resetting our cost structure on auto room, but as well to launch a more disciplined approach to our cost management. And this is paying off in the first half of this year already. You saw that despite all these inflations, we have more than offset the input cost with cost management, with operational leverage from mix and with pricing. We will continue to do that in the second part of the year. If I look at our away from home business, for instance, we have been unfortunately had to make redundant a couple of hundreds associates.
So all the measures we have been taking are really structural. And we know we still have some opportunities and we have already well activated quite a broad based cost agenda program.
Thanks, Fabien.
And the next question comes from the line of Jeremy from HSBC.
Jeremy Fialko, HSBC here. Just a follow-up question on the single serve question. When your main competitor was asked about this on their conference call last week, they said that the growth had been driven more by usage rather than machine penetration. So I just wanted to get your perspective on the growth that you're seeing from from single serve. So, you know, the degree to which the the machine, you know, the the machine penetration has gone up, which sounds like it's been pretty good from from what you're saying, the degree to which growth has come from usage, and then how happy you are that the usage numbers could be maintained or whether they might sort of fall off a little bit as people go back to the offices.
And then there's a follow-up question on the single serve part of your business. Is the extent to which your H1 numbers were sort of limited due to capacity constraints. So whether actually as some of the new capacity comes online, that can give you a further leg of growth because of the fact that actually you're not able to keep up with the demand at the moment. Thanks.
Yes. Thank you, Jeremy, for your question. So let me start with the first one on the appliance part. So the data we have, I think on the latest one, we have from Konta or other in home panel data, showed actually a combination of both. One, meaningful increase on single serve appliances, and I've been quoting a bit earlier.
We have been seeing double digit growth rate of the appliance sale. Now the question is it all about incremental consumers? Sometimes it can mean what we hear from consumer having now two appliances at home, one on office side, one on the main kitchen. Sometimes it's about replacement of machines. But when you reach that level of magnitude, it's for sure an overall increase of Hidden Penetration.
It is fair that we have seen as well on what we track on the key appliances about a 10% increase on the usage per appliance. So it's clearly the combination of both at least on what the data tell us. And it's true that we have been announcing very quickly at the end of last year a significant capacity increase because we were taken a bit by surprise, actually during the pandemic about the surge of the consumer demand for aluminum capsules. And actually, we've been very pleased that we have been taking these decisions, because the momentum has not slowed down in H1. And now in July, as we talk now, I'm very, very happy that half of the incremental capacity that we have been talking about is already commissioned.
And I think the team has been doing a spectacular job to operate that at a faster pace than historical level. And this was really in the middle of a pandemic crisis, which was not easy to get either the supplier or the engineer really on-site. But despite these constraints, we've been able to be even slightly ahead what we thought on this capacity increase. And we do have the remaining part to come in the next six to eight months. So which means now we are very pleased that we are unconstrained from capacity standpoint.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
And the next question comes from the line of John Ennis from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. I've got another question on coffee pricing. So I appreciate it's, as a whole, not a very elastic category. But I guess by nature of guiding for organic sales growth to be in the range of 3% to 5% medium term, you will be assuming that volume mix dips if pricing has to step up into a mid single digit range to mitigate inflation.
I guess is that a fair conclusion to jump to? Or would you expect growth to overshoot in high inflationary periods? And then related to that, where do you think the elasticity is highest by region even if it is inelastic as a whole? And then my second question is on the NAMI or APAC regions. I just wondered if you could explain the margin movement in NAMI or APAC in a bit more detail as they obviously fell quite a bit year on year.
How should we think about the phasing of investments into the second half? Was the reinvestment, for instance, skewed to the first half in these regions? Or was it overly representative for the full year? Any share you could give there would be helpful. Thank you.
Yes, let me give a crack at it, and Scott will probably take the second point. On elasticity, so we have been sharing how I would say on an annual basis, we don't see any impact really on inflation on consumptions. But we said as well, it can well take sometimes couple of quarters to adjust either because equity is on pantry loading or there are some negotiations on pricing. But then why no change on the top line outlook? I think there is a couple of reasons.
First, we should not forget we are still into an uncertain moment on the away from home business. I am of the opinion that September will be a moment we are going to have a better read on this channel post vaccinations as well post summer and how people travel around as well as kids returning to school, people are coming to office and what will be some of the steer from large company. So this is the first one. On the second point, I talked about the inflation, which we have already seen since end of last year on Arabica, this was already built in on our original organic growth target for the year, which we see happening in the second part of the year. As far as the further spike on coffee price is happening or will be happening, This always happened with a lead time of two to three quarters, so not much really of an impact for this year.
But then when you are right is at the moment we are, I would say, being exposed to much higher inflation as a normal run rate. It is not abnormal to see during this moment of time, a bit of a higher hold of pricing is playing on the growth equations. But I don't see that being beyond what we have been talking about for H2 of this year. And as far as next year is concerned, I think we'll first focus on this year and we'll see when it's going be the good time to have a bit more read and sharing on the various components of our future growth outlook.
Yes. And in regards to your second question in terms of the margins on APAC and LARMIA, of course, it's snapshot in a moment in time. APAC is one of the regions and notably we've talked about in terms of our strategic priorities being China, but also as a focus region overall. And in the period with our step up in terms of total SG and A across A and P, but also other areas within SG and A to build capabilities and to support the innovation, we had increases there in the period versus the prior year. So that's on APAC.
On LARMIA, we also had higher A and P and also an increase in other operating expenses in the period. And that is also a market where we talked about that we also had taken some pricing in the period as well. And we continue to be very price disciplined as well. And sometimes the input cost lags a little bit of the timing on pricing, but we continue to take price there. But in the period on Snapshot, we had a margin decrease in LARMIA.
So that's the main drivers between those two regional evolutions of the P and L.
Okay, understood. Thank you both.
And the next question comes from the line of Tom Sykes from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes. Morning, everybody. Just first to further the point on price elasticity and the pricing potential. Is there a little bit more pricing power in the tail of the business in the smaller brands than we may expect? Or is it just is it better in the larger brands?
Or in some of the smaller regional specialist brands, is there a bit more pricing power there, please? And then just on the out of home or away from home as that is recovering and what's happening to the at home consumption. Do you have the right geographic overlap at the moment between those countries where you are seeing a reopening and therefore maybe a little bit of a headwind in some of the at home consumption? Is that something that you said you get a better read in September, but is it something that affected Q2 and you're then expecting that gap to narrow a bit in the second half of the year? Or should we think of that as a little bit of a headwind to volume growth, which is, as you said, maybe offset a little bit by pricing, please?
Tom, thank you for the two questions. So the first one on the pricing elasticity. So is it the same level of pricing power across portfolio of brands? I think it's not a one size fits all answer, I believe. And you have multiple angle of it.
So first, obviously, the more you go into the premium territory, the least the brand usually are exposed to community inflation because you have more added value. So of course, there is a bit less usually requirement to do some pricing. And you might argue is it pricing pricing power? I don't know how to qualify that best. But for sure, they are usually a bit less expert on a short term basis.
But on the other side, when you are confronted with big inflations, we should not underestimate that for a lot of geography, price point matters a lot. I'm thinking about emerging markets in particular. And it's where sometimes you would see that getting really a portfolio of brands with entry price point is very important and it's where
you
see overall a much more pricing power than what you could think originally. And I would say at the end, where we feel we are in a very good position, it's at the heart of our strategic belief is to answer the broad based consumer needs, you need to have a portfolio of brands. If things came to work and consumer things, okay, the overall price point of coffee at home is zero seven, so it's very affordable, but maybe the more premium one is a bit more expensive. If they would decide to track down on which type of product they will consume, we are in a fortunate position as we have a portfolio of offer across price point. Worst case, there could be some reallocation of consumer within our portfolio, while a lot of other players are positioned in one area of the business.
So we feel we are in a pretty good place with very, very strong premium offer where there is very big productions, but as well portfolio and some very affordable product. On the second question on the Autumn and Away From I think if I look at where the center of gravity of our Away From Home business is, it's mostly in Europe and in U. S. And it is where, I would say, there is from the read of Q2 at least, a much better, I would say, level of optimism of what the reopening effect could look like. So I would tend to conclude indeed that I believe we are well positioned with reopening when it's going to happen in these two territories.
At the same time, because we have a higher market share even on this geography in home than away from home, when consumer will still spend a bit more time than pre pandemic to work from home, we'll benefit from that as well. So all in all, I feel we are in a pretty good pace indeed.
Thank you. Maybe just a quick follow-up. I wasn't didn't perhaps quite understand from previous answers on what the level of operational leverage you saw actually was within the away from home business at the moment. What sort of incremental margins and conversion could we perhaps expect in the away from home business as that recovers over the next twelve months, please?
Yes. What we have been communicating on that one is because we believe there will be some enduring effect on the away from home side that we had to work on our cost structure structure a little bit deeper than what was originally worked on. And our agenda is based on the ambitions to recover our absolute profitability that we had pre pandemic on the away from home. Although with possibly a slightly lower revenue. And we give us 2023 as a target to bridge that.
So which could leave indeed a bit of some operational leverage in the meantime. But again, here we want to be cautious. I think nobody knows what will be the pace of recovery. I recall well when we communicated our result last year, we were seen as a bit conservative. Today, we see is actually our assumptions for H1 has been proving pretty accurate.
And we want to remain a bit cautious on that area, which is still uncertain.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
And the next question comes from the line of Reg Watson from ING. Please go ahead.
Good morning all. I'd like to touch on this elasticity of demand issue because when I look at CPG LaMea, clearly, you had good organic growth, but you didn't feel confident enough in the elasticity of demand to push pricing up to compensate for, the depreciation of the currencies in La Mer? So that's the first question. And then the second question is, given that this is the last official opportunity we have to communicate with you until March, could you please give us some indication on what kind of operating leverage you expect in 2022? Because clearly this year you've highlighted highlighted the increase in investment behind the brands and that is why your EBIT growth is slower than your anticipated top line growth.
But should we anticipate that for 2022, we could see EBIT growth in line with organic top line growth? Thank you.
So let me first start, Reg, thank you for your question on the Emerging Markets side. I think the point we are trying to make was really a question of time on your questions. But maybe I can take a bit the opportunity to share a bit what we see on Emerging Market. So I think overall, if I look at the first part of the year, I think they have been proving quite resilient, and you've seen the mid single digit growth rate. And it was on the back of modest volume growth, but with more pricing and mix as Scott has been talking about.
But again, there are like always some differences in this part of the world. I think we see you are quoting Larmia. We see Latin America, Middle East, Eastern Europe are performing pretty well, getting close to historical level with a bit more pricing playing a role. But it's really a question of time and we are very, very comfortable there. In Asia, we're still to be very optimistic on China and it continues on a nice trajectory, in particular when we see on the trend which is happening online and on the premium side.
But for other part of Asia, Southeast Asia in particular, it's a bit more difficult. And I think we talked about it last time, it's an area where coffee is not an essential good. And it is a place which is quite hit now by the global pandemic crisis. Plays there is a bit of a different level of infrastructure support. And we have been in slight decline in this part of the year.
I think it's going to take a bit of time before it's recovering. But I know it's a part of the world, which I think have been used to go through crisis and with which we recover which we recover over time. On your second question, I think you are talking around probably a frequency of our communication as much as some guidelines. On the frequency of the communications, we've been very disciplined on communicating on a two year basis, I would say, because there is, in particular, the specificity on COFI and you can't have much read on the quarter on quarter basis. But it doesn't mean that we remain silent to give update on the business.
We have been proving that in March, where we have been communicating in between, I would say, semester some updates on our strategic progress and priorities, and we'll continue to do similar exercises in the futures. You asked a question specifically about future outlook. We remain committed to our mid- to long term guidance that we have been communicating. As far as H2 in particular on all the detail of it, I think it's a bit too early to talk about it. As I've said, we first have to focus on managing well the second part of the year, see how the away from home business recover, and we'll get a better read over the next couple of months than what we could do now.
And as we've said, we have a good visibility, good level of security in front of us with some of the hedging we have in particular. And due course, we'll communicate and articulate more the detail of our expectations for 2022. Okay. Thank you, Fabienne. Can I
just come back to your observations about the emerging markets where you're confident and where to quote you that it's a question of time? Are you implying then that any currency depreciation that you're suffering now can be earned back through price increases just in a more steady fashion than the immediate depreciation of the currency that you suffered?
Yes. I think you're probably quoting it right. Yes, we are confident that and actually, I even believe that pricing will probably come faster than the pace of the volume mix recovery. And we feel comfortable there. And it's what the story has been telling us on the emerging market.
Okay. Thank you very much.
We're now approaching the end of the call. So we'll take the last question from the line of Martin from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yes. Morning, everybody, and thanks for taking the question. It's Martin Debeau at Jefferies. I'll try and keep it brief. Fabienne, on Slide 11, you've made some useful comments on hedging, which I didn't quite understand.
What can you say about your current hedge position in coffee? Are your hedges running out, such you need to move into the market to take pricing? Or are they more long lasting? And I suppose the related question is, is your philosophy of pricing in H2 that you will look for price alone to recover inflation? Or are you expecting to recover inflation through a combination of pricing and offsetting cost savings?
And one quick question of clarification on what you said to David Hayes. Did I hear you say you expect to increase A and P this year by about €100,000,000
Those are the questions. Thanks.
Good morning, Martin. So let me give a crack at the various questions. So somewhere about hedging and the committee. On the development of green coffee price depend on a wide range I mean, whether micro development or even market speculations.
And that's why our goal is not to predict how the coffee market may or may not develop, but to manage the volatility with great discipline and good protection with our hedging. We are not intending to create shareholder value from speculating of coffee, getting it right, one out of two or never, but really by driving sustainable growth from underlying quality demand and innovations propositions to customer and to consumer. That's why we do have good hedging in place, and we are very disciplined. We are well hedged for this year. It's something we've not maybe have not communicated, but we are disciplined to the extent to which we need time to be able to get the pricing through, which is a specificity of the coffee industry.
I take a good note on the comment you made on the from as a follow-up question from David. And I believe I've well answered to that questions, which we will keep the course on investing behind A and P as well as some other capabilities such as digital or emerging market and the overall investment on the year across all of these buckets, including appliances, I forgot, sorry, will really we believe will be around this $100,000,000 marks investment. So suppose the last question. So what I would like to conclude by reiterating that I believe we have made good progress against our refreshed strategic framework as well as against our financial outlook and commitment for 2021 by delivering a solid set of results, which show improved performance across all our key metrics, but have importantly been delivered in a quality way. And the volatility, the uncertainty and the ambiguity that the world is confronted with needs us to stay humble and nimble.
But it reminds us as well that we are fortunate to operate in the coffee and tea category, which is resilient with many possibilities ahead. And at GDP, we are committed to play our part into these possibilities and deliver a quality and sustainable long term growth. And we know this is what creates predictable and higher shareholders returns over time. So thanks again for joining us today. And Scott, Robin and I look forward to speaking with you in the next day ahead.
So stay well, stay safe and have a great rest of the day.
This concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.