Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Gruma's First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. During today's call, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the speaker's remarks, the conference will be open for questions. If you have a question, please press the star followed by the number one on your touch-tone phone. Please press star zero for operator assistance at any time. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before making your selection. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Adolfo Fritz, Gruma's Investor Relations Officer, who will present earnings results, and then we will open the Q&A session where Mr. Raúl Cavazos, Gruma's Chief Financial Officer and team, will be available to answer additional questions. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Fritz, IRO.
Thank you. Good morning and welcome to our First Quarter 2025 Conference Call. We're pleased to have you all on the line and thankful for the opportunity to share results with you. With me today, as always, are Mr. Raúl Cavazos Morales, Gruma's CFO, and Rogelio Sánchez Martínez, Gruma's Corporate Finance VP. To start, we'll take a few minutes to discuss the fundamentals and results from the quarter, and then we'll open it up to any questions you may have. We're very pleased with the results of the first quarter of the year as our company once again has shown its resilience and ability to deliver the desired results despite challenges in the overall market.
As you know, the start of 2025 has seen changing fundamentals and market dynamics, which has been proportional to the uncertain outlook for the U.S. e conomy and its potential effects on global trade and ultimately on the consumer. Thanks to Gruma's global footprint and geographical diversification, we feel we are in a privileged position to face the challenges that may be ahead as a result of these potential changes in the economy. In the U.S., there is clear evidence that the average consumer is more selective than a year ago. However, our better-for-you line performed very well and, in line with historic growth, remained the core driver of growth of the retail channel, as did other SKUs along the array of products we offered. In fact, when compared sequentially, our product lines experienced a slight acceleration, potentially indicating future growth despite today's economic environment.
We continue to focus on recovering volumes in the tortilla food service channel along the rest of the world to keep expanding favorably, and results in Australia supported growth in our Asia and Oceania operations, even as China continues to experience volatility in terms of fully recovering demand. With these fundamentals as context, our tortilla operation declined by 1.4% in terms of volumes and mainly on the back of the evolution of the U.S. food service channel. In terms of corn flour, GIMSA of Mexican operations saw a temporary decline in volumes on the back of a few clients starting regular operations later than expected. However, our division in Central America performed very well and in line with our expectations to the extent there is a need for future investments to that capacity.
The European corn milling business, meanwhile, threw volumes down with a tough comparative base and the now usual logistic challenges, which we hope will subside in the future. In all, consolidated volume for the first quarter of the year was 1 million metric tons, or a 1.3% decline relative to a year ago. The effects of a weaker Mexican peso and reported financial numbers, coupled with mainly a decline of corn flour volumes with GIMSA and corn milling volumes in Europe, along with lower revenues with GIMSA, resulted in a 6% decline in sales, reaching $1.5 billion. As the peso not depreciated relative to last year, sales would have been flat. Nevertheless, we achieved EBITDA of $276 million, representing 4% growth in the period, or 8% growth without the effects of the Mexican peso depreciation. This resulted in 13% higher earnings, reaching $126 million.
In terms of the balance sheet and working capital management, we increased inventories by 12% given the potential of a drier harvest with lower yields in Mexico. To mitigate this potential risk, we took an additional short-term debt and inventories grew proportionally. Nevertheless, our leverage, as measured by net debt to EBITDA, remains at very healthy levels at 1.2 x. At this point, we don't foresee any changes or meaningful shifts to our current leverage levels. This quarter, we focused our capital investments on our plans and needed capacity expansion in Central America, the replacement of manufacturing equipment, the purchase of additional land for a milling operation in the U.S., and overall global maintenance work with weight on GIMSA. We invested approximately $50 million in the quarter and in line with our budget for the period. Moving on to the performance in each one of our subsidiaries.
In the U.S., although growth has been slower, we're still seeing growth in our retail channel despite market dynamics that have changed the overall environment. We've seen a weakening in consumer sentiment and uncertainty in the economic outlook, which have further supported consumer selectivity. This has resulted in increased competition within the category among our competitors and private label as they seek to recover market share lost over the last eight months. It is important to note that this competition is more at the standard product level and not meaningful enough at this point in terms of value-added products. As a matter of fact, as I mentioned a minute ago, the performance of a better-for-you product line has been in line with our expectations, and we are very pleased not only with its current results but also with its outlook as main driver for future growth of the U.S.
Retail channel. Our philosophy and strategy have not changed, but we will be ready to address the situation should it further escalate during the upcoming quarters. All in, the retail channel thus far is performing according to budget. Our expectation is still to deliver growth on an annual comparative basis and even more so on a sequential basis. In the food service channel, however, on a yearly comparison basis, the decline in volumes that took place in previous quarters is still dragging the revenue and volume results for the business unit. However, we see encouraging recovery on a sequential basis as we have been able to recover important accounts since the start of the year. In the U.S. division as a whole, volume and sales declined by 2% and 3% respectively, while EBITDA still grew by 6% and EBITDA margins stood at 22% for the quarter.
In Mexico, the overall picture of the subsidiary is that the environment is stable and the operation is yielding stable results as it always done in the past. That said, during the quarter, some of our clients delayed their usual start of operations in addition to volumes sold last year as part of governmental humanitarian programs related with the aftermath of Hurricane Otis in Acapulco. Therefore, we saw volumes decline by 2%. Notwithstanding this setback, demand for our product continues to be very favorable from tortilla makers and wholesalers alike, which we expect to continue over the course of the year. Revenues contracted by 2% and EBITDA declined by 1%. Our European division continues with its promising expansion into the retail channel as it keeps adding more distribution across the continent.
The single-digit growth achieved at this channel was overshadowed by the performance of the corn milling business, where the marginal decline in sales volume reflects ongoing logistic challenges, and in this quarter specifically had a much tougher base of comparison relative to 1Q24, given extraordinary corn volumes sold last year that did not take place during the quarter. Had we not sold this corn volume, the subsidiary would have grown by 4%. With these fundamentals, volumes decreased 3% as a result of the corn milling operation's performance. Sales grew by 7% and EBITDA expanded by 20% supported by the results of the tortilla operation in this division. Central America demand for our product continues to be buoyant as we keep expanding innovative product offerings across the market the subsidiary serves.
We have seen cost inflation in certain items such as fuel, freights, labor, and some manufacturer expenses, which has increased our usual costs, but nothing that kept this division from outperforming the first quarter of 2024 and delivering historic performance altogether. We're excited about the potential and outlook for this subsidiary, and in order to reach our goals, we will need to add capacity during the year to cope with the strong demand that has been accelerating as we expand our product offerings in this market. At the end of the first quarter of the year, volumes grew by 2% and sales increased 1%, with EBITDA growth of 5%. EBITDA margin was 16.8%. Asia and Oceania continued with the same trend we saw in previous quarters, with Australia and Malaysia outperforming China's lackluster commercial activity.
At this point, we're assuming a similar performance from China for the rest of the year, but just as it happened this quarter, we're confident about the outperformance from our other two operations in this division. The growth in costs we experienced in the quarter was due to indirect manufacturing costs, which we believe will subside into future quarters, and higher labor costs. The costs will be absorbed once the full operation in China starts ramping up to normalized levels. Given these factors, the subsidiary experienced 2% growth both in volume and sales, but the rising costs offset this growth, resulting in an 11% decline in EBITDA. In all, we're pleased with the results for the first quarter of 2025, and we remain in line with our original budget and expectations for the year.
As you know, there is a significant number of variables in the global economy today, some of which are far beyond what anyone would have expected in 2025. As we communicated in our last conference call, our guidance was crafted with challenges in the horizon during the year, and we're not new to operating with the challenging environments, knowing that they also create opportunities. We have a defensive business model and product line and the best team to execute our strategy and find opportunities in this market. This is why we feel confident about overcoming the obstacles that may or may not come our way during the year and our ability to deliver solid results for our shareholders. With that, I'd like to open the call for questions from listeners today. Can you help with that, please, operators?
Thank you, sir. We'll now begin the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, if you have a question, please press the star followed by one on your touch-tone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star followed by the number two. If you're using speaker equipment, you will need to lift your handset before making your selection. One moment while we pull for questions. Our first question is from the line of Ben Theurer with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah, good morning and thank you very much for taking my question. Two quick ones. Number one, as we look into the U.S. business for now, I just wanted to understand if you can dig maybe a little bit more into some of the volume performance, the declines. You've highlighted the better-for-you line, but can you give us a little bit of a sense of what is volume performance and better-for-you? What is customer repeat rates in that line? Just a little bit more granularity as to the actual performance in the different categories. That would be my first question, and then I have a quick follow-up on the U.S. as well.
Sure. Thanks for your question, Ben. In the U.S., really the one factor driving our performance, as I mentioned, is the food service channel. Volumes there probably have contracted on a year-to-year comparison close to 20%, so it's something that has been significant, and we're trying to recover them gradually. That being said, better-for-you has actually expanded quite favorably with the usual annual growth rate that we've been able to provide, which has been around 15% per year. We haven't seen any slowdown there. As a matter of fact, the composition that we have right now in terms of retail sales coming from these products is around 33%, and in terms of volumes, it's close to 13% now. The evolution of better-for-you has been very favorable.
Right now, the hurdle that we have in front of us is really the competition that there is between private label and our own competitors in the sense that, as you probably recall, private label was growing very rapidly last year about this time of the year to the extent that they almost reached their historic market share of 13%, and all that market share was taken away from our competitors, who was around 300 basis points more or less. Our competitors today are trying to get that back, and they're being very aggressive in doing so, pricing some of their items even below private label levels. That part of the portfolio, as I mentioned, is part of our standard product lines, which are products that have been slowing down, obviously, because of this dynamic, but it's something that we're prepared to defend if need be in future quarters.
We're still waiting on the sidelines to see if it's necessary, but if it's necessary, we're more than ready to do so. In regards to the retail performance, just as a whole, taking into consideration the growth that I just mentioned in better-for-you in addition to the performance in the other products, growth there has been in low single digits. It's been slowing down relative to last year, obviously, but it's still experiencing growth that we believe is going to be accelerating because of the sequential performance that we've seen over the next few quarters. We are quite optimistic because of that. I know that on a year-to-year comparison, it still looks a little bit of a slowdown, but hopefully, with the measures that we're ready to take, that will change in the upcoming quarters.
Okay. Perfect. And then just real quick, following up on some of those increments of costs that you had, first marketing and then everything logistic and distribution costs related. In the U.S., because there was no commentary around that as to what to think about this going forward, is that something that you're going to continue to be investing into marketing and some of the distribution capabilities? Is it fair to assume that that is probably going to continue to be somewhat of a headwind in coming quarters from a cost perspective?
Yeah, I would say that from an SG&A perspective, you can count on probably similar dynamics and similar strategy. For obvious reasons, we are being a little bit more aggressive than we normally are in terms of marketing. I would say that we will be engaging in more aggressive marketing during the next few quarters relative to other years, that is. Relative to this quarter, I think that it would be about the same level of investment or expense that is in marketing. Freights are also an issue as they've been for quite a while now, but that is totally economy dependent based on the supply there is of employees in terms of the logistic companies that we use, and that's something that we've had to live with. We've had to live with it for quite a while now.
I would say that the only newer factor today in terms of additional expenses that we didn't have before would be the more aggressive marketing that we're doing.
Okay. Got it. Thank you very much, Adolfo . Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Antonio Hernandez with Actinver. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on those results in the U.S., you reached quite solid margin levels. Just wanted to ask what's next after this. What should we expect going forward? You previously provided some guidance for the year, but in terms of the long-term perspective, what is the target profitability and what can take us there? Thanks.
Thank you for your question. In terms of long-term strategy, I think this company has been characterized by leveraging the existing opportunities at hand. We started with efficientizing our SKU line for almost seven years. Then we've leveraged efficiencies across the cost structure very effectively depending on how the market is. I think that at a certain level of profitability, we will have to, given today's context, we will have to increase probably our strategy related to volume pressure rather than profitability so that we can have a balance between the profitability that we have been able to create thus far and probably the volumes that are still needed for us to defend the brand itself and to penetrate the market further. I would say that in the long term, the picture does not change really that much.
You can expect probably volumes in the low single digits, revenues mid-single digits, and EBITDA growth probably high single digits as a result of that. I would say that's the 50-foot overlook at what we are trying to accomplish in the future. As you can probably infer, we have our hands full with the demand that we're seeing in this strategy that we're implementing today in addition to the competition that we're facing that I just described.
Okay. Thanks for the time. Have a great day.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Henrique Morello with Morgan Stanley.
Thank you. Hi, Adolfo. Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. Just quickly on the gross margins in Mexico, the margins are still spending a lot on a year-on-year basis, but we've noticed some decline on a quarter-on-quarter basis compared to the previous quarter's levels. I just wanted to explore if you could provide some breakdowns of sectors that contribute to that sequential slowdown on margins, like if there were some pressures from the raw material standpoints or other COGS components, for instance, and how do you expect the gross margins to shape as we move forward in the year? Thank you very much.
Thank you for your question, Henrique. Yes, definitely. Gross profit margin, if you look at it on a sequential basis, will have an effect of the layering of inventories that we're using depending on the average cost of the corn that we're using at a particular point in time, so you will see fluctuations there. I would encourage you to look at it more. When it comes to COGS, sequential analysis might be misleading because of this, but it's part of the business. We use inventories in different layers in different plants around the world, so that is bound to happen not only in Mexico but also in other operations. That is really the reason why. When you see that, please keep that in mind.
There is no other point along the COGS structure that I can point out now that would be hampering our gross profit in the future. It's just that volatility that may or may not come depending on the inventories that we're using.
That's clear, Adolfo. Thank you.
Thank you for your question.
Our next question comes from the line of Alejandro Fuchs with Itaú. Please proceed with your question.
Hello. Thank you, operator. Hello. Thank you for the questions. I have two quick ones on my end. The first one related to the U.S. business. I wanted to see if you can comment maybe on some of the competitive dynamics that you are seeing in the region, anything that caught your attention on the different categories. What do you expect maybe after the quarter? I know that better-for-you is doing very well. Anything that the competitors are doing that may be a little more aggressive going forward? The second one, very quickly, in terms of guidance, you got it for a consolidated margin expansion of 20-40 basis points. Obviously, this quarter was materially more. Maybe some upside risk there. Any plans of maybe updating the guidance or you think maybe we can have some more volatility in the next couple of quarters? Thank you.
Thank you for your question, Alejandro. In terms of the competitive landscape, right now, really, the highlight here is the competition between private label and our competitors and the pricing dynamics around those products that are being competed for additional market share. That is probably bound to keep happening throughout the year. If that continues, probably we'll have to engage in discounts and promotions along the way to defend those products that are within that segment of the market that we're trying to defend. It's really standard products that are both corn and wheat alike, but from the standard nature, not from the value-added product lines that we have. I think that along the way in the year, you can expect, I mean, we're not 100% sold on the strategy yet.
As I mentioned, we're still on the sidelines, but we're prepared to engage in discount and the discount strategy as well as the promotion strategy we go forward if need be. Right now, the category as a whole, I mean, our main concern is the effects that this will have on the category and the perception of the consumer on the category as a whole, not necessarily our market share in specific, given the substantial difference in market share between ourselves and the rest of the competition. We are ready to defend that at any point in time, and you can expect that from the pricing point of view. In terms of guidance, so far, normally, we adjust guidance during our second quarter conference call. So far, we remain firm with the guidance we provided to the market. We don't see any changes at this point.
We need to have more data to come to a conclusion of changing or adjusting guidance accordingly. However, so far, with the data we have and the way the operation's been and looking in terms of its response to both the competition and the uncertainty overall in the U.S. economy, we still feel confident with the guidance that we provided to the market, and that's what we're operating under.
Super. Thank you very much.
No, thank you for your question.
Our next question comes from the line of Tiago Hardium with Citibank.
Hello. Good morning, Adolfo. Thank you very much for taking my question. I would like to explore two points here. The first one is, what would you say are the main risks and impacts for Gruma coming from the whole U.S. tariff discussion, right? I understand this is a very volatile and multi-layered discussion, but it would be very interesting to pick your brain to see what we should track for Gruma. The next question is, looking into your operations here for Europe, very interesting, strong results. We saw a positive mix, right, coming from tortilla over corn milling. Just wondering if we could hear a bit more on what's behind this, the sustainability going forward for the rest of 2025. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your question, Tiago. In regards to your first question in terms of risks because of the tariffs, we've analyzed this back and forth, and we really don't have meaningful impact on that. I mean, we opportunistically have exported product to the U.S., of course, but it is not something that's really that meaningful. Of all the scenarios we've looked at, probably 1% of concluded sales would be a bad situation in terms of tariffs. If it gets to that, we really don't see it getting to that point. The operation as a whole is very independent, as you well know, globally, not just in the U.S. We feel pretty sheltered, if you will, relative to tariffs in this regard. Your second question, you caught up on my end. Could you repeat that, please?
Yes, absolutely. It was regarding Europe. We saw very interesting, strong results here, positive mix coming from tortillas over corn milling. Just wondering what's behind this, if it's sustainable for the rest of 2025, just whatever additional information you can give for us to try to better grasp the potential for the segment. Thank you.
Yes, definitely. I mean, Europe's been doing extremely well. We started a strategy a few quarters ago of expanding our distribution across Europe. That's been very successful. As a whole, we've been successful at aiming the strategy more towards tortillas rather than corn flour and specifically retail tortillas. By doing so and expanding the composition of retail relative to food service tortillas, we've been able to expand the profitability there proportionally. If you recall, a few years back, we had probably a 20% composition in terms of retail relative to food service. Right now, it's closer to 50%. Already over 50%. That will continue growing as we continue adding distributors across the continent. Our goal is to hopefully reach a composition that is similar to the U.S., where it's 80% retail and 20% food service.
It is probably a very aggressive goal, but definitely anything that we can do to expand our composition from its current levels to be closer to that composition will be accretive in our profitability over time. The results you're seeing, I think, have been consistent with the past few quarters, and that is because of that, and you can probably expect a similar performance throughout the year, by all means.
This is fantastic. Thank you very much, Adolfo.
Oh, thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Felipe Ucros with Scotiabank.
Thanks operator. Good morning, Raúl, Adolfo. First of all, a question on Mexico pricing. It looks like we saw some price stability after some quarters that were about two out of the last four quarters saw declines in local currency in Mexico. Just wondering if you feel like you have reached a bottom on the pricing cycle there. Also wondering if you could give us an update on hedging for 2026. Thank you.
Thank you, Felipe, for your question. In Mexico, as you know, we're pretty in line and dependent on the traditional method. We really have, at this point, no outlook in terms of pricing. It's just obviously 100% depending on what they do and how the market is at a particular point in time. It relates also to your second question, which is our hedging in Mexico. The reports so far have not a very solid outlook. They forecast a dry harvest, probably with lower yields. We will need to see how the price of corn reacts to this, at least here locally in Mexico, to have a more solid base to our foundation to start a strategy around pricing relative to whatever the or react to whatever the traditional method does in terms of these costs.
So far, we're not inclined to move any pricing moving forward, and we're just here as well on the sidelines to see if the traditional method reacts a certain way based on whatever the harvest is like in the summer. We'll have to wait to the summer to decide what we'll do.
Perfect. That is very clear on the pricing front. For hedging, I was thinking more globally rather than just Mexico alone. Just wondering if you have started hedging 2026 or you are still waiting. I am asking because of the context of corn rising from the middle of last year from $4 to about $5 on spot. Just wondering if you have moved on this front.
No, we haven't started hedging at all. There are a lot of moving parts that have made the price of corn, I'm not going to call it a spike, but increase over time. All reports point out to a good harvest in November, and it is worth our while waiting a little longer until we start strategizing whether we're hedging or not. Right now, with the current price levels, we feel that they are representative of the fundamentals that we're seeing and the fundamentals that we have reports on for the year. We've opted to wait and see how the harvest pans out with further reports of updates of the harvest in November. Depending on that, we'll engage in our usual hedging strategy, or we might just keep all our costs based on spot prices, depending on what happens with that.
We are aware of the increase in the cost, obviously, in the cost of corn, but there are a lot of variables that are outside from solid fundamentals for that to happen.
Okay. Understood. Maybe if I can do a follow-up on Central America, it seems the demand has been very solid, right? It's good enough that you're going to have to extend capacity. Two questions here. What percentage of capacity expansion are you guys thinking about for Central America? Also, do you think there will be some disruptions to growth in the time being? If you've sort of reached your maximum utilization, does that mean that the growth is going to slow down while the new capacity comes in? Thank you.
Sure. Thanks. In terms of capacity in Central America, we're probably forecasting to invest around $20 million along the year to add that capacity. We're probably going to increase with that, we're increasing capacity around between 10% and 13% in Central America alone. That will provide us with enough leeway for us to keep expanding. As you very well mentioned, actually, the numbers that you see this quarter and last quarter were limited by the capacity that we have existing today. With that, that will give us a lot of breathing room to increase our volumes further and to increase the brand further along the region that's a feeder reserve. We're looking forward to that, and we're looking forward to finishing the project as soon as possible. In terms of global capacity utilization, we're currently at an average of 84% capacity or utilization, sorry.
I mean, we're fine in terms of utilization globally speaking. It was just Central America that was giving us a little bit of limitations because of the demand that we were seeing that was over the demand, over and above the demand that we were expecting. That's thankfully so. Because of that, we reacted accordingly, and that's why we were focusing our investments there.
Great. No, that's always good news. Thanks for the color there.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Froylan Mendez with JP Morgan.
Hello. Thank you very much for taking my question. This is Froylan Mendez from JP Morgan. I wanted to understand a little bit how are you thinking into this sequential recovery in the U.S. on volumes. Is this coming exclusively from the food service channel? If so, is that only because you are seeing better or you're grabbing incremental contracts, or is this a recovery in the industry? If there is something beyond that, could you give us more granularity on what you're seeing in the rest of the channels to give you confidence to keep the guidance given these sequential improvements?
Sure. Thank you for your question. Yeah. As I mentioned a minute ago, retail has been still growing. I mean, it's been slowing down, but still growing at low single digits if you look at it on an annual comparison basis. However, if you look at it on a sequential basis, you can see high single-digit growth. That is the retail portion. If you look at food service, as I mentioned, our volumes decline on a year-to-year comparison of close to 20%. If you look at it on a sequential basis, that is in the low-digit territory already. It is two factors affecting each one of those channels or benefiting one of those channels, should I say.
In the retail space, the marketing that we've done in the U.S., the expansion of Better-for-you along with other value-added items outside from the ones that are being competed for between private label and our competitors have allowed us to grow sequentially in that respect relative to the general comparison. In food service, throughout the year, as we communicated to the market, we've been working very diligently and hard to recuperate our volumes, and we've been able to recover some of the clients that left. They've come back because of quality concerns that they've had with other suppliers, and they decided to come back to our roster of clients.
We initially thought it would be quicker than how it's happening right now just because the economy outlook that we had when we forecasted the recovery of the channel was different than the one that we have today. It's going to take a little bit longer, but we're already in low single digits. We're almost there, and we're hoping that hopefully by the end of this year, we'll be able to recover the volumes in the channel fully. Things, as I mentioned, are looking quite solid on a sequential basis. It remains to be seen all these variables that are taking place at potential pressures on the consumer and the consumer sentiment overall, how that translates into staple foods and into future consumption over the year. That is the one variable that is still out there.
So far, given the indicators that we have on a sequential basis, I would say that things are looking good.
From what I understand on your comments, would it be fair to assume that it's more related to market share gains, these sequential improvements, rather than, let's say, the consumer is shifting towards the product, like the industry is growing? From what I understand, it's a little bit more exclusive to your case, to Gruma. Is that fair to say?
That's correct. That's more exclusive to Gruma specific. Correct.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
Oh, thank you.
Our next question comes from Fernando Olvera with Bank of America.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just to follow up regarding the question on Central America, Adolfo, is this additional capacity already considered in your CapEx guidance for the year?
Hey, Fernando. Yes, it is included. I mean, in the guidance that we provided of $320 million, all investments related to Central America, as well as maintenance work, water treatment plants, capacity expansion in Europe, as well as in Australia, is already part of that. It is already included there. There is no change in that guidance at all.
Okay. Thank you. My second question is related to the strong increase in administrative and corporate expenses in Mexico. If you can give us more details on that and if such pressures can continue going forward. Thank you.
Yeah. I mean, it's, I would say, a bulk of items there. Overall, it's just administrative expenses that the subsidiary incurred in the corporate as well. Some of them are legal fees. I would say that at least for the next few quarters, just to be on the conservative side, I would include them in your models. We hope they will subside in the future. Just to be on the safe side, I would just continue assuming the same level of SG&A, just as I mentioned in regards to the U.S. Yeah, it was just a bulk of a lot of items embedded there.
Okay. Those legal fees, to what are related?
Oh, legal fees. Some of them are related to the work that we had to do related to the COFECE, for example. Some of them, it's just, again, it's just a whole bunch of list of administrative and corporate expenses that they incurred in. That's why, for the sake of conservatism, just assume the same level going forward.
Okay. Do you have any update regarding the COFECE issue?
No updates. We're still waiting for their response. As soon as we get an update from their end, we'll make sure to update the market accordingly.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you, Adolfo.
Thank you for your question.
Okay. With that, there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Fritz for closing comments.
Thank you again, guys, for being here with us this morning, and we look forward to seeing you in future market events. Take care. Have a good day.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude Gruma's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.