Earnings Call: Q1 2026

Apr 30, 2026

Summary

Q1 2026 sales rose 8.4% and same-store sales grew 5.5%, with gross margin at 30.6% and EBITDA margin at 11.6%. Expansion and labor costs pressured expenses; at least 5–6 more store openings are planned for the balance of the year.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to La Comer First Quarter Results Conference Call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that the information discussed today may include forward-looking statements regarding the company's financial and operating performance. All projections are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. Please refer to the detailed note on page 2 of the presentation. With us is our CEO, Héctor de la Barreda, and our CFO, Rogelio Garza. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Héctor de la Barreda. Please go ahead, Héctor. Thank you, Joel. It's a pleasure to be with you again, as I said, along with Joel and Rogelio. As I continue in my first months in the role, I appreciate this opportunity to further engage with you and share the progress and perspective of our business. Let me start by just reinforcing a simple but very important message. Our business remains strong, our strategy is clear, and our execution continues to deliver a very solid top-line performance. I'm going to share a presentation. Just give me here a few seconds. Please let me know if it's already on the screen. Yep, very good. There we are. Excellent. As I said, during this first quarter, we definitely achieved very healthy growth in both our total sales and our same-store sales, and we continue to outperform the ANTAD figures. The performance, as I would say, it's not incidental, it's a result of a very consistent and focused strategy, built around our differentiated value proposition, and always a very deep understanding of our customer. As you will see, the results for this first quarter are driven by three key levers, which are our perishables, our e-commerce business, and the new store openings that happened throughout the last three months of the year. First, perishables, and I will explain a little bit more in a few more charts. It remains a core strength and a defining competitive advantage for us in La Comer. Secondly, our e-commerce business continues to scale and evolve as an increasing and very relevant channel for us. We are seeing strong adoption, supported by our improvements in our capabilities and also the collaboration we're having with our satellite partners. We remain focused on enhancing the customer journey and also improving the operational execution in this space. Thirdly, our store expansion strategy continues to deliver very attractive results. Our recent openings that started last December, including City Market Los Cabos, and a very successful entry into the southeast market in Mexico with La Comer in Tulum and Fresko in Mérida in early January. These three stores are performing very well, validating both our strategy on site selection and discipline and strength of our formats. As for profitability margins, these are largely explained by our growth investments in these store openings and also labor expenses, which we are actively managing through productivity, but managing it in a structured way, which includes process simplification, better workforce management, and increasing automation in certain areas. But in any case, never compromising service. Overall, our operating model continues to evolve with a clear focus, delivering both near-term performance while building our long-term value, but always with a very number one priority, which is having our customer at the center of everything that we do. Let me share a little bit more perspective about our perishable strength. Our performance in fruits and vegetables and fresh categories continues to outperform the market, strengthening our customer preference, increasing traffic, and reinforcing our differentiation with this experience that we're providing to our customer consumer. As you might have seen recently, we are committed to continue to invest behind this strength. We relaunched a new campaign for Miércoles de Plaza, which is a very good example on how do we activate this strength, and the focus that we're placing, not just in terms of having competitive pricing and value, but very importantly, our quality that differentiates us in the marketplace. This is not just a commercial lever, but it's a core part of our identity as a company, and we will continue to invest behind it. As for the store expansion performance, our recent openings, as I just mentioned, are providing very interesting results. Since December, where we opened Tulum, our first entry in the southeast, we faced record sales in terms of our recent openings. This has been a tremendous success in this marketplace. In City Market Los Cabos, a location that we're very committed to continue to invest. We are now completing our full brand format in the marketplace with City Market. It's our fifth store in this state. Most recently, in Fresko Mérida, the response from the market has been really formidable, and these stores already are number 3 position within this format. We're very happy to see these results. Also what you see is in these three examples, we are leveraging each of our three formats. We mentioned last time we met that we are now in the process of relaunching our pending format, which is Sumesa. Sumesa is now ready to become our new, I would say, investment. We're very excited about this and how we will define the new standard for what we will call the neighborhood store. Within a month, you will see the first opening of a new store in Coyoacán, which will play a key role in addressing urban proximity and convenience missions with a very renewed value proposition designed around speed, accessibility, a curated assortment, and very importantly, in what we have already established as an elevated in-store experience, which is what you would expect in anything we do at La Comer. What you should expect about this relaunch of Sumesa is not just obviously new branding and new image, but we have an improved value proposition. We will have a 24-hour operation for greater convenience to our customer. Agile in a way that we will provide this urban consumer the opportunity where they will see merchandising centered around shopping experiences and missions, not just the classic category assortment. This will provide easiness for the consumer in this trip. An enhanced value proposition as we are bringing new experiences where we also have differentiated capabilities, such as our ready-to-go coffee and food, which are superior in terms of the marketplace. We are very happy to share about these developments that will continue to provide growth for the company. Let me turn this now to Rogelio so he can share a little bit more about the financials and more perspective on our results. Thank you, Héctor. Let us talk a little bit about the numbers of the first quarter of 2026. The highlights are that we are growing in same-store sales at 5.5%. Our increase in total sales is 8.4%. Our gross margin continues at very good levels in 30.6%. The EBITDA margin is 11.6%, and we are having a positive quarter. Please go ahead, Héctor. In the gross profit area, we continue having an improvement in margins and an improvement in the mix of products toward more differentiated product. That trend has helped us to increase our gross margin in the past, and it continues giving us some room to continue improving. Some of the categories that increase more in our portfolio of products is prepared food and perishables, as Héctor mentioned. It is one of our strengths, and we continue to emphasize that kind of categories. In addition to that, we continue having good efficiencies in inventory in all the logistic area and the management of the inventory. As we have mentioned in the past, we continue having very good long-term relationship with suppliers. We think that in order to be successful, we need to have win-win long-term relationship with suppliers. It is very important to maintain very good relationship with them, and that has helped us to continue improving our margin at the gross margin level. Please go ahead, Héctor. For the operating profit, we have an increase in operating profit of 1.5%. During the quarter we have some pressures in our expenses, mostly related with the opening of new stores. In 2025, we did not have any opening at the beginning of the year. All our openings were at the end of the year, and that is why we did not have any expenses related with the opening of new stores. This year we have a couple or three big projects in which we are having some expenses in those projects during the beginning of the year, since the beginning of the year. This is good for the company because we are going to continue growing, but we have this effect in our expenses. In addition to that, we have some pressures in labor expenses related with changes in the law, and those changes have increased the amount of labor expense that we have. We are taking very serious actions trying to improve and have efficiencies and improve the productivity of the people, and we expect to have some improvements in the future. Additional to that, as Héctor has mentioned, we have some advertising campaigns launched during the first quarter. We launched a new campaign for Miércoles de Plaza with a new campaign, with a new message that we think is going to have very good results. We have some additional expenses in advertising, too. I think this is more or less the summary of the results of the quarter. Go ahead, Héctor, with the plans for the future. Sure. Looking ahead for the balance of the year, I think we have very clear priorities, and those are very consistent for what you have been observing. It is critical that we keep our top-line momentum, and this is coming from the commercial strategy that has proven to be very successful, impeccable execution of our upcoming Temporada Naranja, which is a key season for us as a company. We will continue with our store expansion plan, which is an important improvement versus prior years. We are already 3 stores in, and we expect at least 5 or 6 more in the balance of the year, and the continued acceleration of our e-commerce business that, as we said, both in our direct model, but also supporting and strongly working with our partnerships with some of the satellite partners. Secondly, we are very focused on building the core capabilities that will give us the long-term, sustainable, profitable growth for the future. Everything that we are doing is always focusing on being consumer, customer-centric and enabling and being closer to that customer, both in the physical but also in the virtual scene. As for capabilities, we are end-to-end improving our supply chain capability through process optimization and automation, as we said, and bringing organization agility. This productivity that we are mentioning is how do we better leverage technology, be closer to our customer, and driving the efficiencies that we need. For that, it is a matter of technology, but also talent. We are heavily committed to developing the capabilities with our own talent and the talent that we would require for the future. I think for what we have at this moment in time, we are very confident in our ability to balance both growth and profitability so we can continue to deliver a sustainable value over time. With this, let me turn it back to Yolotl, and we can start maybe our Q&A session. Thank you, Héctor. Yes, please. We have the first question from Antonio Hernández. Please, Antonio, go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on your results. I just wanted to get a sense on Sumesa from a margin perspective, how are you seeing this format, especially now that you're re-accelerating growth in this format? I just a follow-up also regarding how are same-store sales performing from a format perspective. Thanks. The second part of the question is, yeah, so- Same-store sales. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So what we're seeing the same-store sales growth across our three formats is pretty consistent around that 5.5% that we have shared. So I think each of our formats is growing very consistently. And the margin we expect with Sumesa is also something that will be not dilutive, but in the way of being accretive to the company. So we're committed of having a solid proposition that brings value for all our stakeholders. So you will see that this first opening that we will have in Sumesa will help us also calibrate the model as we go forward to really listen to our consumer and making sure that we're bringing incremental value to their basket. Perfect. Thanks. Looking forward. Okay, Alejandro, please go ahead. Thank you, Yolotl. Hola, Héctor, Rogelio. Thank you for the space for questions. Apologies that I don't put my camera. I'm not feeling too well. I have one question for Rogelio, one question for Héctor. Maybe first Rogelio, wanted to see if maybe you could elaborate a little bit of the impact on the margin this quarter, how much of that is the pre-operative expenses on the three stores relative to just the labor pressure, right? I would assume a lot of it is pre-operative with three stores opening in one quarter. But wanted to see if you can clarify a little bit what's, let's call it extraordinary to the quarter, and how much is just the day-to-day operations. That'll be the first one. And then Héctor, you've been at the company already for, let's say, four months, right? I wanted to see maybe if you can share a little bit of your impressions on what has positively surprised you, where do you think there are opportunities, right? Maybe kind of a first 100 days, if you want to say it that way, at the company. I think that will be also very interesting. Thank you. Yes. First, most of the pressure that we have in margins is given by labor expenses. It is the biggest part. I would say that from the total pressure that we have, one-third is because of the pre-operative expenses that we have, around one-third of the total expenses related with that. The rest is the normal part of the business, but some additional expenses that we have in labor and in advertising. Go ahead, Héctor. Sure. I love the question because it is a timely question, and we have been working together as a team very recently, sharing these perspectives and building through them. First, I am very happy with being part of this great team and this great company. I would say the fundamentals of the company are very strong, and the fundamentals are always based and focused on really understanding this customer and bringing this formidable experience at the store. That is really what is making us different, with an impeccable execution. No matter where you go, and no matter what store you visit, or anyone you ask within our company, whether it is a corporate office or in any store, they will very clearly tell you, why are we so different? What makes us the best company to be in? It is because we are focused on this customer in providing the best variety, quality, and service. This is something very difficult to achieve in a company that is close to 20,000 employees, where everybody is telling you the same thing. We are very strong on that. We have a very senior and experienced team that have been working together for a long period, so they know the business better than anyone else, and that is helping us really balance how do we better understand the constant changes of the environment. We have a great team, great execution, formidable value equation, and an experience that in any format, as you will see now in Sumesa, is great. Opportunities, for sure. We are focused on growth. We are a growth company, and we will continue to make that our central strategy that drives the whole company. It is how to enable better that growth. The consumer will continue to change, so we need to stay ahead of those trends and continue to renew experiences and being ahead of the game. But also, how to enable better and provide more speed and agility in the way we operate through, as I said, process simplification, automation, and a more integrated value chain. As we continue to grow geographically and in formats, that requires an evolution also in terms of our system. How do we better enhance our e-commerce business to provide that, I would say, opportunity to growth with no limits? I would say that it is a great moment to be within in this company, and the expectations for the future are great. Thank you. Thank you, Alejandro. Now, Luis Felipe, please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thank you for the space. 2 quick ones from my side here. The first one would be if you can give additional color on the breakdown between pricing and traffic and the same-store sales, and also what are your expectations going forward? The second one would be on the 5 to 6 store openings for the remainder of the year, if you could bring additional color to the formats that you are willing to open. Thank you. On the first question, in terms of the balance, in terms of pricing and growth on same-store sales, if I understood correctly, our pricing strategy continues to be very competitive. We're committed to making sure that we are bringing the best value equation to our customer. In terms of the breakdown for that, I would say we're growing pretty much in terms of our units and our revenues in a balanced way. As for the expansion for the rest of the year, you will continue to see openings across the formats, both in remodeling but also in incremental stores on Fresko, on La Comer, which are pretty much the core areas for the balance of the year. Just a quick addition. Most of our growing same-store sales is coming from the increase in the average ticket, Luis Felipe, and we have a stable number of customers in the stores, or number of tickets in the stores, but most of our growth is coming from the increase in the average ticket. That's great. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you, Luis Felipe. Miguel Ulloa is sending us some questions. I am going to read them for you. Do you have any specific actions and targets in order to accelerate e-commerce in the short term? That is the first one. We have the other one. Yeah. We see the e-commerce strategy as a journey, and definitely a core part of our growth strategy, as they continue to contribute very strongly to the overall growth of the company. There are both improvements in the customer experience, both electronically in the way we face our customer. We are also increasing our reach and availability through not only our direct model, as I said, but also expanding through our collaboration with our satellite partners that are helping us, particularly in that last mile, in providing immediateness but also very planned baskets. I would say very importantly this year is continue to enable operational excellence to ensure that we have the infrastructure required to continue the growth at the pace that we are growing. Okay, and the second question is about the same, specific actions and targets in the case of Sumesa, five years targets. I would say we have a tremendous opportunity still to first continue to remodel the stores that we have in Mexico City. So we are starting with this store, and that will, as I said, provide us a lot of light ahead in terms of the way we want to focus this market. We see tremendous opportunity in what we would say urban cities, where this type of lifestyle requires for something that is more focused on proximity. So it will be targeted more in the urban locations within the country. Okay. Thank you. Well, I hope, Miguel Ulloa, it's okay. Let me see, but I think I have another. Oh, thanks a lot. That's what he says. Okay, well, if you wish to ask a question, please let us know. Anyone? Yes. Hi. Oh. Hi, Sarah. Hi, everyone. Thank you for the space for question. Maybe a follow-up in Alejandro's question about the margin and how can we think about the margin for the rest of the year, because for us, as you mentioned, two-thirds, maybe it's related with labor, but you mentioned efficiencies and taking actions to mitigate this. For the other part, we have a plan for the opening of more aggressive maybe, compared with the other year. So maybe this cause also other pressure. So if I can have an imagine of the margin during these years, how can I think it? It's a year of pressures because more openings and on this efficiencies will take more time, or how can I think about the margin? Let me give a first perspective and maybe Rogelio can add some color to it. I would say that we need to think about margin and productivity in a way that it is more structurally thought so. Now first, we're committed for growth, and growth requires investment, and part of our investment strategy is built behind expansion. That is something that we're committed to, and you will continue to see that throughout the year. As for how do we then continue to build a more agile and nimble and focused company and organization, this is something that will require capabilities that are built through time, and we're committed for doing that starting this year. A lot of focus, as I said, in the end-to-end supply chain and how do we bring optimization to that. It is something that will be a consistent focus for the company for the next few years. I don't know, Rogelio, you want to add? Yes. No, I think yes. We are going to have some this year, if it is a good year of expansion as we expect, of course, we're going to have pre-operative expenses that are higher than the previous years, and we have plans in order to that to happen. Additional to that, there are some projects that could improve our efficiencies and try to diminish the pressures, especially in labor cost, but in other areas too, that could help us to diminish the pressures in expenses that we have. Then with all that, yes, we could expect that combination of factors, and we are going to continue having these extra expenses because of the opening of new stores. Yeah. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you, Sarah. Well, at this time, there are no more questions. First, Héctor and then Rogelio, please continue for closing remarks. Héctor. We appreciate, obviously, the participation and interest. As I said, we are very happy with the progress that we are making, and myself on joining this great team. We see a bright future going forward in terms of how we are going to continue to balance, as I said, growth and profitability and be always the best alternative for our customer in the experience we provide to them. Thank you everybody for your participation. If you have additional question, please contact Yolotl that can help you. Thank you. Well, thank you very much for your participation in this conference. You may now disconnect. Good day. Bye. Thank you.