Spinneys 1961 Holding plc (DFM:SPINNEYS)
United Arab Emirates flag United Arab Emirates · Delayed Price · Currency is AED
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Apr 24, 2026, 2:55 PM GST
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Earnings Call: Q4 2025

Feb 13, 2026

Jean-Jacques van Zyl
Head of Investor Relations, Spinneys 1961

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Spinneys Q4 and full year 2025 earnings call. My name Jean-Jacques van Zyl, Investor Relations Officer for Spinneys. With me today is our CEO, Sunil Kumar, and CFO, Mukesh Agarwal. It is our pleasure to be with you today. Thank you for joining us, and our thanks to Klaus for hosting today's call. Before we begin, I'd like to direct your attention to the disclaimer on slide 2, which contains important information regarding today's presentation and discussion, particularly concerning any forward-looking statements. We will follow the same structure as our previous earnings calls, with Sunil taking you through the business overview and execution of our strategy, whereafter Mukesh will discuss financial highlights. Sunil will then conclude with strategic focus and the 2026 guidance, whereafter we will open the floor to a Q&A session. I will now pass to Sunil Kumar.

Sunil Kumar
CEO, Spinneys 1961

Hello, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our 2025 earnings result today. If I look at the performance of 2025, you have seen these numbers, but for just the clarifications, I will just go through those numbers again. 13.1% percentage growth year-over-year 2024, so almost AED 3.6 billion. And we have opened 13 stores last year. Important thing is to see that 10.7% like-for-like growth, and e-commerce grew almost from 14% to 17% participation with a 37% growth. Profit after tax, AED 332 million, which is a 14.5%, and profit margin good at 9.1%.

We have board recommendations, and the recommended dividend is AED 129.6 million, equivalent to 3.60 fils per share, which will result in full-year dividend at 75% of the profit of the year. To give you a little more broader perspective, transaction apart from the two elements, I should say, which actually which I'm very happy. One, the transaction growth from AED 37 million -AED 42 million, so customers keep on coming. It's a very resilient demand from our customers and brand, brand loyalty. And other thing I wanted to mention of the transaction growth is the fascias, which we implemented from our smaller stores, Kitchen by Spinneys, coffee-

Spinneys Cafés and Grocerants, which has helped us to get more transactions because customers come to our stores for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and therefore, the basket also have reduced from 87- 85. But we maintained the profit as, growth profit as 42%. And other two areas of the improvement, fresh food, fresh food sales from 63 became 64, almost 90 basis points, and private participation to 210 basis points. So I will give to Mukesh, to go through the numbers, then we will, answer the question and answers. I would like to give you guys more time for question and answers because you have gone through the numbers already, I believe. So it will be ideal to answer your questions. Mukesh, can you take us through this?

Mukesh Agarwal
CFO, Spinneys 1961

Yeah. Thank you, Sunil. Great to meet all of you investors again after a brief period. We met in the last quarter, and you can see, quarter-on-quarter basis, our numbers have are going up going up significantly more than your and our expectations. And more than pleased to present the results, and Sunil gave you the financial highlights, and you look at the number of the revenue and how it translates in terms of the contribution from the new stores as well as the stores the new stores we added and the existing stores. So we added 13 stores this year.

We closed 3 stores, and all the stores we closed were technically not closures, but were a migration to a bigger store, and which resulted in the bigger, bigger supermarket, for example, Arabian Ranches 3, another Sheba mall. So we replaced the larger store, smaller store with a larger store. So we ended up in 90 stores post-year, and also we have opened 2 more stores now, one in Twin Towers in-

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, please stand by. We are reestablishing the line with the Spinneys team. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, please stand by. We are reconnecting with the Spinneys team. Thank you.

Jean-Jacques van Zyl
Head of Investor Relations, Spinneys 1961

I thought, there was a connection issue, and if you can raise your hand, you can, you can hear us now, it will be helpful. We saw-

Operator

We can hear now.

Jean-Jacques van Zyl
Head of Investor Relations, Spinneys 1961

I can you can hear now?

Operator

Yes. Yes.

Jean-Jacques van Zyl
Head of Investor Relations, Spinneys 1961

Uh-

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, please stand by. Thank you very much.

Continue.

Hello, hello, Jean?

Jean-Jacques van Zyl
Head of Investor Relations, Spinneys 1961

Hello. Yes, we'll continue now. Sorry, there's a connection issue. We have rejoined, and we'll continue the presentation now.

Sunil Kumar
CEO, Spinneys 1961

So if you look at the rollout of store opening, we opened 13 stores. So we had three stores in the neighborhoods, which was a smaller versions, Nad Al Sheba , Barsha Heights, and one more store. And we closed those stores, and the intention was actually when we get a bigger site, we will close the smaller stores and move into there. And that has helped us to get into 90 stores. And other element of the business, if I'm looking at the sq ft, we have done consistently better on per sq ft revenue from AED 3,802 in 2023, now we have reached AED 3,961.

So the smaller stores, whichever the stores we open, it is more efficient in terms of the product assortment deployment, and it has helped us to achieve the numbers, the square feet sales. Now, we still getting to UAE market much as possible because this is our territory, which we see a huge potential to get into the neighborhoods are developed, and we are consistently in discussion with the property developers. Fortunately, we are also getting quite a lot of positive feedback from the developers. They want us to be their anchor tenant for a food solution provider.

So we are looking at UAE as well as The Kitchen and the other fascias, which we have defined, based on customers' mission, whether it is a kitchen by Spinneys or Grocerant or Spinneys Cafés, or the largest format of the stores, which we are enhancing, and still we are looking at the opportunities of getting it better. KSA, we opened three stores. By the way, I was in KSA yesterday. We opened Jeddah yesterday. The result and the performance of one day is extremely good, and that is a, that is actually a success, and the customers were appreciating we opened Jeddah. And the e-commerce is growing, as I said, 33%+, and it's almost on 17% of participation, which also has helped us.

We never had in some of the existing supermarkets, we never had our e-commerce solution for customers, and now it has helped us to serve those customers, never had that opportunity. We are also looking at the brand presence to the other region, Kuwait. We, as we had mentioned it in the past, we have assigned with Alshaya, and we are looking at opening the stores on last quarter. We have identified a couple of sites already. One site is already signed, and the other locations will be probably on 2027, second quarter or the third quarter. Philippines, we have already incorporated the JV. We built the system requirement and the process in place, and first and second store planned in quarter four, which will be on December first week.

We aim to open 2 stores probably together, and we have committed AED 18 million by the group. We are looking at embedding our culture. One of the biggest challenges any retailers face when they expand faster. You guys asked me the question last call, what we should do if you are growing faster, what will happen to the culture and the people who are skilled to look after this business? We are actually building that team. We are development for the team of the people who matters for us to deliver the result, and we are looking at giving and training and nurturing thing, nurturing them to be better people. And now, Mukesh, do I ask you to come earlier? Now you can start your financial numbers.

Mukesh Agarwal
CFO, Spinneys 1961

Good afternoon again. Okay, I'll not again dwell upon the same thing I discussed last time on revenue, but okay. I'll reiterate the financial highlights. More than happy to present to our investors, and the numbers are increasing, quarter on quarter, year-on-year. You can see our revenue has grown from AED 3.2 percent billion in the last year to AED 3.6 billion this year, a growth of 13.1%. Our GP has grown from AED 1.36 billion to AED 1.5 billion, a growth of 14.7%. Our adjusted EBITDA, which is our cash profit, has grown from almost by 100 million, from AED 631 million last year, to 731 almost 16% year-on-year growth. Our profit before tax has grown by 22.4%. It was AED 323 million last year.

It has grown, grown to AED 395 million this year, which is a phenomenal increase if you look at the overall number that we have achieved this year. Our profit after tax, despite the impact of corporate Pillar Two taxation, has grown by 14.5% year-on-year. It was AED 329 million last year. This year it is AED 332 million. So whatever cash we generate, we have been able to successfully convert 93.6% of that cash into real cash from business perspective. So the free cash flow that we have generated is around AED 463 million. The net debt on the balance sheet is nothing but the lease liabilities.

If you remove the cash balance from the lease liabilities of AED 1.03 billion and remove AED 776 million of cash, the net debt is only AED 82 million-AED 59 million. No real debt on the balance sheet other than AED 6 million balance we have on our London, JHF, Spinneys Sourcing Limited. We have renamed our JHF offices in, in our overseas, sourcing offices to Spinneys Sourcing Limited. So other than 6 million that we have, in our, London subsidiary, there is no other debt, giving us a total cash position of AED 776 million on the balance sheet. We propose to pay a dividend of 3.6 fils per share, amounting to AED 129.6 million.

Now, this dividend, if you add the first half dividend of AED 0.0332 per share, will give a total dividend of AED 0.0692 per share. That equates to 4.52% if you take the IPO price of AED 1.53, and if you take the current price, which is today's price of around AED 1.60, the total dividend yield from shareholders' perspective is around 4.35%. If I would dissect the revenue further, you can see the growth is mainly coming from the LFL growth of 10.7%. As we said, it's coming mainly from the transaction growth of around 13.1%. We were serving, if you just look at.

Totally, we were serving almost 115 customers per day. If you just divide the transactions by 365. Last year, we were serving 102,000 customers, or you can say 115,000 on a daily basis, we generate the invoices. FY 2024, if you look at the year-on-year, the growth is 10.7%, which is equal to our LFL growth, and the growth is 13.2%. If you dissect the revenue from contribution perspective, 10% of the growth came from the existing stores, amounting to AED 331 million.

Almost, almost, between 3%-4% growth came from the new stores, around 4%, and some loss, which we had to suffer because of the stores that we closed this year as well as in the previous year. Most of the growth is driven by LFL growth, as well as also an online sales contribution, which has increased by 37%. The penetration has gone to 17%. That has also helped us in increase in the overall revenue. You see the like-for-like growth, this is all for the last eight quarters, you'll be happy to know that we have consistently exceeded. The like-for-like growth for Q4 2025 was 10.7%, and same for the entire year.

The definition, as it say, that we include the stores even they were, they only existed in the partial period in the previous year. So as a result, you can see in some of the quarters there is a higher, higher number because of the way the LFL is calculated. If you just, if you just calculate the LFL on twelve-month-to-twelve-month basis, it will be around 8.4% for, for the year 2025. If you look at the GP, our GP has gone up, from 41.4% - 42%. You may ask the question, how the GP has gone up to 42.9% from 41.8% last year? One good thing is, last year we had Saudi, which was the first year of operation for us, six months.

So we had initial hiccup in terms of the inventory provisioning and, of course, the margin. We're trying to achieve our desired set of margin in Saudi. We have been able to achieve that margin. And also overall, the margin, both in Oman and as well as Saudi, have grown up from last year because of the realignment of the assortment that both in Oman as in Saudi. So we have not achieved that level of alignment, which is directly in similar to what we sell in UAE. As a result, the margins have gone up on a quarter-on-quarter basis.

Even on a year-on-year basis, you can see 41.4% has become 42%, and mainly driven by increased fresh and private label participation, and partly offset by the fact that there, there's an event wastage which happens when we increase the number of store openings. Our adjusted EBITDA is 21.7% for the quarter and 20% for the year, for the entire year, from increase of 17%, 16% from AED 631 million - AED 731 million. Despite the fact, there was a one-off IPO cost in the previous year, amounting to AED 4 million, and we had pre-opening expenses in Saudi Arabia, amounting to AED 10 million, we have been able to increase our EBITDA.

Our profit before tax, as a percentage of sales, is 10.8% for the entire year, which has gone up by 22.4%, which is AED 323 million from AED 323 million to AED 395 million. Our selling, general and administration, I mean, expenses. We've been able to keep them consistent in the range of 22.3%, similar to last year. This gives an indication, despite the fact that we are growing our business, not only organically in UAE, but also expanding outside in Saudi as well as other countries, we are able to maintain our level of efficiency. We had a 6% additional tax we provided this year on Pillar Two, and due to that, our profit after tax has slightly diluted.

Despite that, you can, you can see in the numbers that our profit after tax, we have achieved a phenomenal 9.1% of overall revenue, which equates to AED 332 million, a growth of 14.5% from last year. I will discuss this free cash slide on the within the first slide. The message is at 776. It gives a very strong footing in terms of self-funding our growth, whether it's the Foodtech Valley, which will come in the next two years, or whether it is funding of Philippines and Kuwait expansion, as well as funding our, funding our growth in UAE and KSA. So I pass on to Sunil to discuss the strategic focus for 2026. Thank you.

Sunil Kumar
CEO, Spinneys 1961

Thank you, Mukesh. As you see, UAE is our focus still, and the wide opportunity for different fascias to be in UAE is huge, and we are focusing on expanding further to UAE wherever it is possible, including the existing neighborhoods, and which has proven the existing neighborhoods we never had an opportunity in the past, and we opened up four stores we never attempted, I should say, 3-4 years back, to go and open a store on those neighborhoods. But we saw, we opened the stores in Dausa, we opened a store in Bay Square, we opened a store in Twin Towers, TECOM, like Mukesh mentioned, and one in Media City.

These are existing neighborhoods, very matured, but what we saw, the value proposition, what we have built recently, I should say, since last 3, 4 years, which has been accepted very well by our customers, and it gives us a huge confidence to open more stores on the existing neighborhoods. So Dubai, UAE, is a huge opportunity still for us. We have to start working on Foodtech Valley. Initial plans are in place. We are working to get a handover from the developer, and we should start our initial work in progress probably this quarter. In KSA, we opened our fourth store yesterday, and we will be opening 2 more stores this year. One is Roshn, and the other one is Jawharat.

The other areas of improvement we are keenly watching, observing, is how Spinneys Swift, which is our own platform, which we last year we launched it. We can see that growth of the e-commerce almost in 45%, and we are considering to get more share from the marketplaces on e-commerce platform. We have to give the same brick-and-mortar digital experience. We are spending money and efforts and resources behind it to enhance that experience. And of course, the regional and international expansion through Kuwait and Philippines. Yeah, Mukesh, you can give the guidelines.

Mukesh Agarwal
CFO, Spinneys 1961

I'll just briefly, briefly take you through the guidance. This time we have tried to give a range because, especially in case of Saudi, we have suffered in the past when it comes to the handover of the sites from the landlord. So the store openings, depending on how the handover from the landlord pans out, we are confident that we'll be at least, we'll be able to give 6 stores this year, but it can probably go up to 10. So this is our assessment of from 6-10 stores, against 13 stores that we opened this year.

Store closures, one, we have planned that there's a challenge in terms of the issue, the landlord asks us to vacate, but if we succeed in continuing with that location, then probably there will not be any store closures. The revenue growth is the same range which we guided last year, even though we grew 13.11%, and we expect that with the LFL growth of around 6%-8%, now, depending how the growth moderation happens in UAE, if we are able to achieve this 6%-7% range of LFL growth and addition 3%-4% growth that comes from new store, we are confident that we're able to achieve a revenue growth of 9%-11% in the year 2026.

Our EBITDA margin is between 18%-20%. Again, the slight dilution we have given because the fact that we are growing in Saudi, and any store takes a bit longer, there's a decision cycle for a store to become profitable. And when we go to Philippines and Kuwait, there are initial pre-operating expenses that we have to incur. So as a result, we have, a s also during my two times, we have given that there could be a 1% erosion due to that fact. So that's the reason we have guided our EBITDA in the range of 18%-20%. Our CapEx, slightly higher from this year because of the fact that Foodtech Valley is coming, and we'll be incurring some costs in that aspect. So as a result, the CapEx is 3.5%-4% of revenues.

Sunil Kumar
CEO, Spinneys 1961

Thank you, Mukesh. We will now hand over to Klaus, who will moderate the Q&A session for us.

Operator

Thank you very much. Can you hear me, Jean?

Jean-Jacques van Zyl
Head of Investor Relations, Spinneys 1961

Yes, we can hear you.

Operator

Okay, one moment, please. Okay, here it is. Sorry, I had an issue here on my end. Apologies. So, thank you very much. We'll now move to the Q&A part of the call. Just before we begin, we'll be displaying a quick survey on your screen. Your feedback will be greatly appreciated. So without further ado, if you'd like to ask a question and you're connected from the phone, please press star two. And if you're connected from the web, you can also ask a voice or text question.

W e'll just give it a few moments for the questions to come in. Okay, so our first question is from Emad, from Pharos. "Thanks for taking my question. If I'm not wrong, the full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA margin was 20%, and the full year 2026 guidance is 18%-20%. What are the main reasons it could drop? And how much is coming from, one, the KSA new store ramp and, two, e-commerce in-house delivery? What has to happen to stay near the 20% rather than 18%?"

Mukesh Agarwal
CFO, Spinneys 1961

Thank you. Thank you, Emad, for your question. I knew it was coming. So see, what if you, if you look at overall, store rollout plan in Saudi, and then if Kuwait comes up, we have to have the pre-opening expenses, in Kuwait. In Saudi, also, see, the margins have gone up, as per expectations, whatever were desired margins, then we're able to achieve that. But still, the margins are slightly lower than what we achieve in UAE. So as and when the Saudi becomes a larger, larger pie of the pie from on the overall business, then that there will be a slight erosion.

Now, having said that, the e-commerce, e-commerce delivery, I mean, we're able to recoup significant portion from the cost that we pay to our aggregators by charging additional additional price price on the product that we sell through e-commerce channel. So that, that may have a slight erosion, but not to the extent that that should really worry us. So we are confident that whatever we have guided, we'll be able to achieve. But, but evidently, but without any doubt, there would be additional costs coming in Kuwait, which will, which will coming in, come in SG&A, and the pre-opening cost, there is a staff cost or whether it is opening, setting up new office, registering the product in, in Kuwait. Those costs will be reflected next year, which will erode our EBITDA. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you very much. Just a reminder, if you're connected from the phone, it's star two. Star two to ask a question if you're connected from the phone. If you're connected from the web, you can ask a voice or send a text question. We will give it a few more moments for any further questions to come in. Okay, our next question is from Rahul Shah from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hello, Rahul, your line is now open. Please go ahead. We cannot hear you.

Rahul Shah
Head of MENA Institutional Equity Research, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay, is that better? Sorry.

Operator

Yes.

Rahul Shah
Head of MENA Institutional Equity Research, Kepler Cheuvreux

Can you hear me now?

Operator

Now we can hear you.

Rahul Shah
Head of MENA Institutional Equity Research, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay. Okay, good.

Uh, yeah.

Operator

Go ahead.

Rahul Shah
Head of MENA Institutional Equity Research, Kepler Cheuvreux

Thank you very much for the opportunity. Two questions, if I may. Firstly, on the revenue growth guidance, given that you're expecting like-for-like revenue growth of 6%-8%, and you did a lot of store openings in 2025 and planning for quite a few in 2026, it seems like the sort of 3% delta above the LFL growth is quite small. Do you have any comments around that? So that's the first question, and the second one, just on Spinneys Swift, it'd be interesting to get your thoughts on what proportion of your sales do you think that could grow to and whether there'll be cannibalization of third-party sales or where that growth actually is coming from? Thank you.

Mukesh Agarwal
CFO, Spinneys 1961

Okay, Sunil, what do you say?

Sunil Kumar
CEO, Spinneys 1961

Yeah, see, on the revenue growth guidance, see, our like, like-for-like has been, say, around 10.7, 10.7%, the way we calculate LFL. But you look at the, when you look at l ike-for-like growth on existing stores on 12 month -1 2 month basis, is around 8.4, and that's where we have given the guidance. But at the same time, economically, we cannot predict the real growth of population when it comes to the overall stores, store maturity or how the occupancy of the villa is surrounding our neighborhood. Like, for example, we have two new stores. Classic example is Arabian Ranches and the store in Layan. Those stores are new stores. Population is still growing.

Now, then, growth also depends on the, how the occupancy evolves in the next, 1 or 2 years. So we have, we have been conservative in that because, we can't expect the country to grow at the same rate for the last—the way it has been growing in the last 5 years. So we have moderated our LFL, LFL expectations from that perspective between 6%-8% and over and above that, whatever new stores we add. Now, if it is 6 stores, then of course we'll be on the lower end of the range.

But if we, if we go on the higher side, say, around 9 stores - 10 stores, then probably we'll have a high range of growth. So we're just trying to keep the expectations in terms of more realistic rather than being more on the aggressive side. Now, when it comes to e-commerce, for example, the main reason why we grew in e-commerce this year is because Deliveroo was not on our Spinneys platform. We started giving them more stores in our Spinneys platform this year, and until last year, they were only on our Waitrose platform. Now, Deliveroo has a specific set of customers, and a specific set of customers which they cater to, and that has really added our growth in terms of revenue, and that will continue to grow.

When it comes to e-commerce stores, like we are—we don't have a dark store, but all our stores are serving as e-commerce stores for all our customers around. So we are able to tap into those customers who want to go for convenient shopping and want to order online. So we're able to add those customers, but very difficult for us to say to what extent it is cannibalizing. But if you look at the overall numbers, both physically our stores are growing, as well as the in-store sales are growing, as well as our online sales are growing. So we are, there's no concern as far as, you know, overall sales growth trend is concerned. So we are not too much really not really concerned about that.

Rahul Shah
Head of MENA Institutional Equity Research, Kepler Cheuvreux

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you very much. Our next question is from Harry Whelpton, from Vergent Asset Management. "Can you provide an update on the consumer demand environment in KSA, and what kind of sales growth expected there? What kind of growth and EBITDA margins are you expecting in KSA right now? Please, can you break down store opening targets by country?" And, Harry also asked, "Can you share what your market share is currently and how that looks relative to 2024? And are you seeing commission rates to e-commerce partners coming down with the increased competitive environment?"

Sunil Kumar
CEO, Spinneys 1961

Hi, Harry. Quite a lot of questions, and some of the questions we're not able to give you explicit answer, but I will give you a generic answer of KSA and e-commerce. In KSA, if you look at the, our revenue growth, as I mentioned earlier, two pillars consistently delivered revenue growth, margin, therefore the EBITDA growth as well as net profit, which is our fresh food participation, which moved from, 90 basis point, from 63 - 64, 63.- 64.1, and private label moved from 43 - 44 percentage. Now, these are the two biggest elements for a retailer, why customers are coming in, and we saw the same trend in Saudi Arabia, particularly imported range of products.

And that has given us a better margin than what we anticipated, which I've been telling in the last many earnings calls. So we are happy with the KSA trend. It is more or less similar to Spinneys, what I have seen the trend. The two, three categories, in fact, which is doing extremely well since last five years, I should say, one is the meat solution deli, the product range, which is consume now, consume later, and take home. That kind of range, which is a direct competition with Spinneys food services, and also very competitively priced with a very lucrative margin. The efforts for the margin, of course, that efforts which we do, whether it is from the factories or from the store level. Those products consume now products range.

Also, there is a high possibility of a circular economic model, which means instead of throwing it the near expiry date for whether it is a fruits or vegetables, before its shelf life, we actually convert those into a finished product, which will give us an economies of scale in wastage as well as the margin, which helps us. And we have seen that product range and category range are actually moving faster than what we expected. That trend also is visible in KSA, and we are very happy for that. We will be opening two more stores in KSA next year. As I said, one is in Jawharat, which I think it is called, Whitefield.

Whitefield now, not Jawharat, but it was called as Jawharat in the past, and one is Roshn Development in PAF community. These two stores, we should be opening next year. And in UAE, one of the challenges we face, though we have signed and agreed upon an opening date with the property developers, a timeline, unfortunately, many of the developments, whether it is Emaar, the Dubai Properties, or Nakheel, or any other single individual developers, sometimes there is a critical issue that they are not in a position to open those community centers. And we take the previous question when Mukesh was answering, the larger stores normally take and the larger stores, we will be getting an opportunity to have larger stores only for the newer community neighborhoods, which is not necessarily already occupied.

So we will be the first mover, and our job is to ensure that we add value to that community, and that's why we are preferred retailer to be there. And that normally takes a maturity time, but in the existing neighborhoods, we get an opportunity only for the smaller fascia stores, whether it is kitchen or whether it is grocery, but that immediately gives us a return on investment. But the larger stores, it takes time normally once the community get established. And the third question is the e-commerce commissions. Now, if I analyze last year's e-commerce, whether it is marketplaces or our own, and the fastest growth we have seen is from our own platforms in the Spinneys Swift and spinneys.com.

One of the objectives we have is to ensure that we give most of the customers that opportunity to go to our own Spinneys. And Deliveroo, of course, as Mukesh mentioned earlier, was not there. Most of the stores, most of the Spinneys stores last year, we have added due to the request from the customers, where we were not in a position to give Spinneys Swift. But our objective going forward is to ensure that we cover most of the stores through our Spinneys Swift, because we wanted to give a Spinneys experience, whether it is in digital or brick-and-mortar. And thank you for your question.

Operator

Thank you very much. Our next question is from Mohammed Al-Talib from Ajeej Capital. "How is the Kuwait consumer doing?"

Sunil Kumar
CEO, Spinneys 1961

When we looked at the analysis of Kuwait, and it is one of the important factors we noticed, is the customer base is more affluent as well as certain customers. Of course, it is a premium segment of customers where we cater, we wanted to cater, we have been catering in UAE. And those customers are there, and they are their desire is to have a healthy option eating propensity for Kuwait, particularly in Kuwait City, I should say. So we are going to open our first store in Kuwait City. The segment. There are, of course, there are two different. Maybe the majority of the customers are not Spinneys customers, maybe it is a value-focused customers.

But our focus is to ensure that we deliver fresh food credentials and private labels, and what are our strength, we wanted to give that option for Kuwait City. And since we expressed and when we told in public, the JV with Alshaya, we have been getting a lot of comments: When is the opening date? So we are very confident that the Kuwaiti customers will respond to the value proposition we are going to deliver to them. Thank you for the question.

Operator

Thank you very much. We'll just give a few more moments for any further questions. Okay, looks like we have no further questions. I will now hand it back to the Spinneys team for the closing remarks.

Sunil Kumar
CEO, Spinneys 1961

We really appreciate, and we had a remarkable 2025. We ensure that we will continue that momentum for 2026. All the deliverables which we are focusing, which matters for the customers and the stakeholders, we are critically looking at enhancement of those areas and looking at the new markets, with the efficiency, what we can achieve, focusing on the product assortment, what worked last year, what didn't work last year, how can we navigate around the products listing and getting to Saudi Arabia? We are working on daily basis, and we are hopeful that we will have a good result going forward, 2026, based on the momentum what we have got in 2025. We really thank you for attending this earnings call, and once again, thank you very much and good evening.

Jean-Jacques van Zyl
Head of Investor Relations, Spinneys 1961

Thank you, everyone. Very good talking to all of you. Hope to see you soon in our one-to-one presentations or otherwise, in the next quarterly earnings call. Thank you.

Operator

We'll now be closing all the lines. Thank you, and have a nice day.

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