Earnings Call: Q4 2025

Feb 26, 2026

Summary

Q4 sales rose 9.5%, same-store sales 6.4%, and EBITDA 18.4%, with the comparison affected by a prior-year extraordinary expense. 2026 plans include 6–8 store openings and MXN 4–5 billion in CapEx.

Good morning everyone, and welcome to La Comer fourth 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 performances. All projections are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. Please refer to the detail note on page 2 of the presentation. On this occasion, we want to introduce our new Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Héctor de la Barreda, who recently joined the company at the beginning of the year, and who will accompany us in this presentation. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Rogelio Garza, Chief Financial Officer of La Comer. Please go ahead, Rogelio. Hi. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in our conference call. We are going to present the results of the fourth quarter 2025 of La Comer. Let me first, some highlights from the results of the fourth quarter in La Comer is that we grow in same-store sales at 6.4%. We have an increase in total sales of 9.5%, a gross margin of 30.5%, and an EBITDA margin of 8.9%. These are the highlights of the results of La Comer. As we have had during almost all the quarters of La Comer, we have grown above the market in same-store sales, and there are some explanations about the behavior of the sales. We have increases in sales in all the formats and all the categories in our stores. We had a very successful Buen Fin campaign during November, that had very good results. Additional to that, we participate in La Tienda Rosa. That is a campaign that we have supporting campaigns against the breast cancer prevention, and that's during October. At the beginning of the quarter, we launched the campaign Olá, Olé. That is a campaign with products from Spain and Portugal that were products that were not sold in Mexico before, and we had very good results with that international campaign with products of Spain and Portugal. By category, we have a good increase in the category of perishables and prepared food. Our campaign, Miércoles de Plaza, has been very successful promoting fruit and vegetables during the Wednesdays in every week, and that has had very good results every time more of our customers recognize this campaign with very good results. By regions, we had the best results in the north part of the country. The stores that we have in the north has had very good results. Additional, in e-commerce, the participation of e-commerce remains very solid. It has a good percentage of the total sales of the company. It's a little bit less than 8%. In addition to that, we have 4.5% from the aggregators, that is Uber Eats, Rappi, and Didi. In total, we have 12% of participation from e-commerce from the total business or from the total of our sales. It's a good participation. We have an expansion in gross margin, a good increase in expansion in gross margin, 50 basis points. This is explained because the change in the mix of products toward more differentiation, more value-added products that usually have better margins. Additional to that, we continue having very good efficiencies in inventory management. Our shrinkage is very small, and we continue having good results there. As we have mentioned previously, we believe in long-term good relationship with suppliers. We think that the relationship with suppliers has to be a win-win relationship, looking for the long term, that strategy of negotiation with the suppliers has had very good results, and they support us very well. All these factors contribute to the increases in gross margin that we have had during the time. At the EBITDA level, we have a big increase in EBITDA, 18.4% of increase and increase in gross margin. Just reminding, that during the fourth quarter of 2024, we have an extraordinary expense of MXN 130 million that affected the comparison basis of this account. We had, during the quarter, some pressures in margins, in expenses, especially labor expenses. The changes in the labor legislation in the country has represented a big increase in our cost of labor, that has an impact in our margins, and we have a big increase in labor. This is the major factor that affect the results or the expenses. Additional to that, we have some big increases in packaging, especially because we are moving toward more sustainable packaging in all our products. We have big increases in IT, especially related to all the security that we require in our systems in order to be sure that all our systems are well-secure versus cyber attacks and all the attacks that we have in that area. We are investing in having security very well in our systems. The highlights of the whole year, we had a very good year in 2025. We have increase in same-store sales of 5.7%, well above the rest of the market. We have an increase in total sales of 10%, a gross margin for the whole year of 29.8%, an EBITDA margin a little bit below 11%, 10.9%. We had really very good results from the whole year. The projects, the expansion that we have during 2025 is that in July, we opened this new concept, the City Market Café. It's a major, mostly it's a restaurant with some parts of a store. It's a concept in which we are having good results, and in some way, we are having a better expression of our strategy of differentiation with this concept. In addition to that, we have two new stores in December, at the end of the year. We have our first store in Tulum, in the southwest part of the country. In Tulum, we open a new store, La Comer, with very good results. We open a new City Market in San José del Cabo. That is a market in which we have already presence, but we think that the features of a City Market in that market could be very successful, and we are having very good results, too. Talking about sustainability and social responsibility, as we mentioned, during October, we participated in the campaign of La Tienda Rosa, the Pink Stores, in which we support some breast cancer campaigns, with some donations to organizations that are focused in the prevention of breast cancer. Additional to that, we offer to some of our customers checking of breast cancer in some of our stores. Additional to that, we have a contribution to the poor people with food, in Banco de Alimentos in Mexico and Un Kilo de Ayuda. That are organization that support poor people with food. Additional, we continue moving all our packaging toward more sustainable materials. We have a contribution to Bosque de Chapultepec, supporting a big park in Mexico City. It's our most important market for us, and the contribution to the society in that way within that is important. Now we are moving toward the Héctor de la Barreda remarks in how he is receiving the company and plans for the future. Thank you, Héctor. Go ahead. Very good. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm really happy to meet each and every one of you today. I'm also glad to join the call with Yolotl and Rogelio, and please expect going forward to see us together, sharing perspectives and performance about our business. Today, I would say that just being slightly short of 60 days in the role, I would like to provide you some early impressions of what I observed, learned, and also share you a glimpse of what's coming ahead for 2026. I'm also expecting that whatever you're hearing right now as my early impressions is not coming as a surprise, as you very well know our company, and I also believe you very well understand our successful value proposition. But it's important, I would say, to remind ourselves where we're coming from and where is our strong foundation. Let me start by saying how honored I am to join a Mexican company led by Mexican leaders and joining at a moment of strength that consistently continues to perform ahead of the sector, as you have just recently heard from Rogelio a moment ago. I wouldn't say it's a surprise because performance is grounded on a very strong foundation, starting from a very clear definition of what I would call success and where to play, and very clear and distinctive competitive advantages, and everything is supported in a very strong, solid culture. I can tell you that you don't see in many places around the world of what Grupo La Comer has done and has been able to seed across all of our operational and management team. We're slightly over 19,000 people, and it's this clarity of purpose of always providing a customer this superb experience around quality, variety, and service. If you have the chance to visit any of our formats and stores, I believe you have felt this experience. Transmitting these consistently to every individual in the organization is a very successful formula for success. We believe we are continuing to build very strong equities behind La Comer, Fresko, and City Market formats. We have, as I said, a rooted culture and passion for service and execution, coupled with, I would call a differentiated portfolio assortment that just continues to build preference and loyalty among our customers. In these early stages, what I'm making sure I'm doing in these early days is ensuring continuity and that there's no disruption through this recent leadership transition. We're winning, and yes, we have a lot of work to do ahead of us, as you will see, but we need to make sure that this business continues to thrive as it is doing right now. What I'm doing, and I will continue to do, is spend amount of time closely connecting with our people, our operations, listening to them, listening from our customers, learning what I would call our ways of working or our secret sauce, but also identifying opportunities, right? Where are the white spaces and particularly where are the capabilities needed for the next chapter of accelerated, sustainable, profitable growth. With that, let me just provide you a little bit perspective of what we're doing and where we're going. In a moment of strength where we are today, I think is the best place to be to continue in this path of raising the bar. As a leadership team, we are highly committed and clearly understanding we have two very important priorities we need to deliver today, every day, every month, every quarter. But at the same time, we are evolving a multi-year roadmap for what will be our continued future success, building the future. We're also very clear that our number one priorities continue to be centered around our customer, making sure we understand their needs, their constant habit changes, and making sure that we're every day continue to surprise them and to conquer them in a positive way. We are also continue to be committed to deliver this sustainable, profitable growth, building scale and presence, performing ahead of the market. When we think about raising the bar, our big bets would be around these few topics. Definitely, we have a great opportunity to continue to evolve and renovate our end-to-end supply chain capability. This is fundamental to support our accelerated growth across not only geographies, omnichannel, providing capacity, flexibility, visibility, and very importantly, the effectiveness and efficiency to continue to drive the healthy margins that you're seeing. We need to grow, and to grow is coming from customer expansion and building these loyalty relevance, rooted and behind very strong insights, driving our omnichannel strategy, and as you have observed, our speed and contribution of growth of what e-commerce is providing the company is very significant relative even to the size of the business. And yes, we will continue to expand our footprint. We are planning to double at least the speed in terms of what we have been doing in recent years, and we will be opening this year between 6 to 8 new stores. Innovation, fundamental for conquering and growing with our customers, and it's all about innovation also in how do we elevate our store experience. When we think about a store experience, it's not just the physical store, but also I would call the virtual store and how we are always providing this superb experience to the customer. Within innovation, you will see that we are relaunching Sumesa. There will be not just only renovation about the format, but also there will be some expansion behind this format. Superior execution and value proposition. This is one of our strong, I would say, pieces of our algorithm on the way we operate, the way we execute, and we present ourselves into our customers. But nothing happens without an empowered and agile organization. The level of focus that we will continue to put our customer at the center and do anything we have and we can to enable that experience. We will continue to work acceleration in terms of simplifying our processes and building technology to drive speed and agility that will help also offset some of the headwinds that we're seeing in terms of cost in our business. This is just a very early glimpse of where are the priorities and where we will be focusing and looking forward to continue to see you in the next calls. Maybe at this time, I would like to pass it back to Yolotl. Maybe she can coordinate our Q&A at this moment. Thank you very much. Thank you, Héctor. Thank you very much. Well, we are ready for your questions. If you want to do a question for Rogelio or Héctor, please raise your hand or if you are to send me your question. Okay, we have one from Antonio. Hello, Antonio. Please. Antonio, please open your microphone. There you are. We don't hear. Antonio. Okay. Shall we go to Froylán then, Antonio, meanwhile? Oh, there he is. I hear. There you are, Antonio. Sorry, Antonio. Go ahead, man. Go ahead. Can you hear me? No? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Now you can hear me. Go ahead. Sorry. Okay. Sorry for that technical issue. Just a quick one regarding the six to eight new stores by format that you're planning to open this year. Is there any format breakdown, and also how did you close last year from a same-store sales perspective, also by format? Thanks. Héctor, really all the formats have Maybe you want to first tell us about 2025. Yes. Let's start with the question about the growth by format in 2025, and Héctor could talk about the plans for 2025. I think all the formats have a positive number in growth, and all of them were almost exactly the same. The Sumesa we have had good results in Sumesa, a little bit higher the average of the company. But it's not something about the features specific of that format. All of them have had good results in general. Héctor, if you want to talk about the plans for growth by format. Yes, I would say that what you will observe is a spread among our not just three formats that you have seen in the past, but this year, we will be for relaunching Sumesa format and also most likely seeing some expansion, starting to see that as a new channel for development for us in terms of this neighborhood store format. That neighborhood store format, is that closer to any format that you have right now? Sorry if I'm asking SUMESA. The SUMESA format, yeah, which is our smaller format, that currently is basically within Mexico City. Okay, perfect. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you, Héctor. Froylán, please go ahead with your question. Thank you. Héctor, thank you so much for being here, Rogelio and Yolotl. Héctor, maybe a more strategic question for you. One of the things that we usually observe on La Comer is a very strong gross margin, but then, a very high SG&A ratio, many times offsetting the gross margin gains, which are unique in the industry. Given the doubling of the pace of openings, do you see anything changing in that SG&A ratio, let's say that heavy SG&A ratio, which many times is driven by the opening pace? Now in your early days, is there anything to be done on being more efficient on the pre and operating expenses or maybe in the CapEx of the new stores, or what is fueling your view on expansion, balancing the margin impact that this can have? Thank you. Yes. When you see overall profitability, which is kind of the goal that we want to continue driving and value creation, and you make a very great point, right? Because when you are expanding and accelerating your store expansion, there is an initial cost year 1 where you will see that as something to understand that will be reflected obviously in the cost. But then on your main base of business, where we are looking forward and we already started, I would say, driving some initiatives, is how do we continue to simplify our business, right? How do we continue to optimize our processes and provide agility to enable. Anything we do won't be at all at the expense of what's our unique value proposition about service at the store, right? Our focus is how do we simplify our model, simplify our business to enable superb store execution, continue to expand our footprint, and through time, you will see that that will start to release some of the pressure in terms of the cost. Rogelio mentioned we already have, I would say, margin expansion. We believe we have a healthy margin, and we still believe that there's opportunity to continue to expand those, and that's why we're also working behind, I would call it, end-to-end supply chain model that will help eventually release and provide some additional resources for the business. Maybe if I can have a follow-up. The trends in the industry are to grow in smaller formats, more proximity formats. There is a lot of excitement around hard discounts, of discount going to the lower part of the pyramid. Is that part of your new vision of Sumesa, or you will maintain the approach, let's say, more middle high-income class approach that you have had? Yeah, I think we have a very clear definition of success and where do we play, as we said, within this top of the pyramid at the upper high end. I think that's where we can continue to present differentiated propositions and that there's still a lot of room in, yes, there's a high concentration urban cities where this proximity in terms of neighborhood store, there will be some opportunities. Also remember that we have a very solid foundation and strategy behind accelerating our e-commerce business. That also provides a significant source of growth and profitability for our business. While we understand that there is this strong presence and impact in the lower base of the pyramid and hard discounts is something important and value that is impacting a big part of our population in Mexico, we do believe that our place to win and be continues to be in that top of the pyramid. Thank you so much. Okay. If anybody has any other questions. Miguel, please go ahead. Hi there. Just a quick one regarding the supply chain capabilities. Could you provide some additional color of what the plans are in that side of the business? Like any other business that is accelerating growth, that supply chain needs to become more flexible to respond to omnichannel opportunities. We have a footprint expansion, geographic expansion, and that requires for us to also being nimble and agile and cost-effective, right? We do need to expand, I would say, end-to-end capabilities, from improved demand planning capabilities to logistics capacity and flexibility, better technology to ensure our on-shelf availability, which is also one of our things that is an impactful presence in every store that we are in, continues to be managed at the best effectiveness and efficiency. I would say it would be an end-to-end work, and as you know, this is a multi-year journey, right? As we continue to see our path for growth in the next few years, we just need to be prepared to have that chain responding to that growth. Okay. In terms of distribution centers and the use of artificial intelligence or other tools, is there plans specifically on that side? Yes, definitely. This is something that is not necessarily new on the way we have continued to evolve. Our business is based on variety and not necessarily as much volume as you will see in other type of retail businesses. So the ability we need to have to be effective and efficient will require the use not only of that super portfolio, but very agile technology that can help us plan better and make sure we have the right fulfillment in our stores. So there has been a lot of work, and will continue to be around leveraging technology as a capability for us with growth. The final question would be regarding the CapEx in this side of the business. Is this something that you have already managed to have a number on that? Rogelio would like to take that one? Yes. As always, we have a lot of variability, depending on the specific projects that finally are actually open during the year. But we estimate a good year for CapEx. It could be between MXN 4 billion and MXN 5 billion. It's an amount. We expect an amount above the previous years. We have a good portfolio of projects for this year. Thank you very much. Thank you, Miguel. Well, at this time, we don't have any more questions. Please, Héctor, do you want to proceed with closing remarks first, and then Rogelio? Well, as Rogelio mentioned at the beginning, thank you very much for spending some time and having the interest to stay close to our company. We feel very good and positive about what we've done, where we're heading, and we have a great company, and looking forward to see you soon in the next calls. Thank you, Héctor. Thank you. If you have any additional question, please contact Yolotl, as you know. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for your participation in this conference. This concludes the presentation. Now disconnect. Good day. Bye.