Please welcome Shaun Fullalove.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to day two. It's got progressively more difficult to walk up the stairs after the 6 A.M. spinning class. It was great to share a beer with you yesterday. I hope you guys enjoyed the experience. I wanna take a moment before we start today just to thank the local team yesterday. It was a lot of logistics, organization behind the scenes, everyone involved, all the food, the immersion experience was fantastic. So I really appreciate everything you guys did. It was a great event. So yesterday we heard a few reflections from Michel on the journey of the company, the progress that we've made on the three global strategic pillars, from today with the growth team and Fernando and Ezgi, and how that is driving performance across our key developing markets from Lisboa and the team.
So today we're gonna turn to the Mexico business to see how the strategy is being executed here. Then later this morning, we will head to a market visit around the Polanco area to see how that strategy is coming to life with our customers and consumers. So the run of show for today, we're gonna have 45 minutes, 50 minutes here. We'll head down to the market visit in the lobby later this morning. We'll come back here and have lunch, and then we'll wrap the day up with a Q&A and a closing. I know some of you have slightly earlier flights during the day, so if you need any help with logistics and transfers, please let us know, and we'll arrange. No problem. So let's start with an overview of the Mexico business.
Let's get the Mexico section started and we'll see you afterwards.
Welcome to Mexico, a place filled with rich culture, history, and captivating stories around every corner. These traditions, mixed with Spain's colonial history, create a lively blend of cultures that enriches our lives in every way. Mexico contrasts in the trademark of a diverse cuisine, known for an explosion of flavors that nourish both body and soul. As the Mexican phrase goes, "Love enters through the belly." The immense variety of festivals and celebrations reflects its diverse culture, like the well-known altars during the Day of the Dead. Yet, what sets Mexico apart is its people. Their humor and their creativity acts as the canvas that captures every moment of their existence, shaping it into an enduring culture. When Mexican ingenuity aligns with progress, it transforms into a land of possibilities. This is where Grupo Modelo is the land of progress.
Hand in hand with Grupo Modelo, the future is bright and successful, with a culture of never stopping and always moving forward. Welcome to Mexico. Welcome home.
Please welcome Cassiano De Stefano.
Good morning! Welcome to wonderful Mexico. Welcome home. It's a pleasure to have you all here in our amazing country. As Lisboa said yesterday, we are very proud to have been chosen to host this Capital Markets event. For us, it's an opportunity to showcase the powerful results that can be driven from the consistent execution of our global ABI strategy. It's an honor to share with you how we are living this organic growth journey. Before sharing an overview of our country and explaining what you should expect from the market visit later this morning, let me give a brief introduction of, of myself. I joined the ABI family in the year 2000, back in Brazil almost 24 years ago.
During that time, I had the opportunity to hold several leadership positions in the business with a mix of local and international assignments in sales, logistics, marketing in Brazil and Russia. Since 2018, I have been the EU president for Mexico, and starting next January, I'm privileged to have the opportunity to lead our Africa zone. Taking with me the lessons learned from the successful development of the beer category in Mexico to our developing and emerging markets in Africa. Mexico is a crystal clear example of the results we can deliver when consistently executing our strategy. It's a developing market where we have been able to take advantage of untapped potential.
Our focus on expanding the beer category has allowed us to be a key contributor to the growth of ABI, and we expect this growth to continue as we continue to relentlessly execute the three pillars of our global strategy. Mexico is a very good representation of the potential of our developing markets across the world. It has a very promising demographic profile. First, it has the world's 10th largest population. Second, this population has an average age of only 29 years, compared to more developed markets or market benchmarks such as the U.S. and Germany with older populations. And third, improving socioeconomic levels over time, with growth in the upper and middle classes.
Mexico is also very attractive for investments, being the ninth largest economy in terms of direct foreign investment, boosted by multiple trade agreements with the U.S., Canada, the European Union, and over 50 more countries, and a stable currency. Our business is well positioned to benefit from Mexico's potential, given the relevance of the beer category and the strength of our portfolio. Our business in Mexico is one of the key growth countries within ABI, being the fourth largest operation by volume and net revenue, and the second largest in terms of EBITDA contribution in a still growing industry. We are the proud owners of three out of the four most valuable beer brands in the country, with Corona being number two across all categories. Corona, Victoria, and Modelo are true Mexican heritage brands, loved by our customers and also by our consumers.
Mexico is also the proud homeland of Corona, a national icon that represents the conqueror Mexican spirit, now present in more than 180 countries. As you saw yesterday in Marcel's presentation, the fastest growing global beer brand in terms of value in 2022. Grupo Modelo has a strong reputation across society, recognized by Merco as the number two most admired among all companies and the number one in the beverages sector. Our reputation is founded on 90 years of commitment to Mexico's social and economic development, being a local business with a positive impact in our communities, generating over 30,000 direct jobs, our steadfast commitment to Mexico in times of both celebration and need. Over the past years, we have committed to the mission of leading and growing our category.
From 2017- 2022, the beer industry grew volumes at a compound annual growth rate of 4%, ahead of GDP, ahead of population, and also other alcohol categories, gaining share of total alcohol. Delivering an industry consumption growth of 25 liters over the last years, with ABI being responsible for around 80% of this industry growth, with consistent market share gains. These results are a direct consequence of the relentless execution of ABI's global strategy: lead and grow the category, digitize and monetize, and optimize our business.
In a nutshell, here is our proven formula for growth: loved brands with a consistent portfolio strategy, welcoming more consumers and expanding consumption occasions, digital transformation of our business, empowering our customers and consumers, leveraged on technology, data, and analytics, all that serving as enablers to deliver strong value from top to bottom line and consistent, profitable growth. For a deeper look at how we are implementing the first pillar of our strategy, I would like to invite Felipe Ambra, our Marketing VP for Mexico.
Good morning! Thank you, Cassiano. My name is Felipe Ambra, and I'm super honored to lead our marketing team here in Mexico, excited to take you through how we are leading and growing the category. Before jumping in, I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and my career experience to date. I joined AB InBev in 2001 in Brazil, almost 23 years ago. I've held roles in marketing, sales, with several international assignments over LATAM. For the last five years, I worked as the Corona Global VP, where I had the chance to lead the expansion of our strongest global brand, like we saw some examples yesterday.
In this year, I joined the team here in Mexico as marketing VP, and I couldn't be more excited to bring this experience to the country where Corona was born, to keep developing our category and supporting our business growth. So, as Cassiano just mentioned, we challenged ourselves to deliver consistent compound growth and develop the beer category. Over the last few years, industry consumption levels confirmed that our strategy works. The POS system that Marcel mentioned yesterday helped us to identify opportunities to expand the category participation, and we made it accessible to more consumers while developing new occasions and growing the total amount of beer servings. All of this could only be delivered because we have a super strong portfolio of healthy and growing mega brands.
We see that there is still a positive industry growth trend ahead of us when comparing Mexico to more developed markets, similarly to what Lisboa showed to us yesterday on the zone. So while we are super proud of our past success, we keep challenging ourselves and opening gaps to find new opportunities. As part of our culture, we dream big. So as is being presented by Marcel, reinforced by Angélica yesterday, by Danny, we followed the exact same replicable toolkit to lead and grow our category based on the five key category expansion levers. In Mexico, we implemented the same toolkit presented yesterday that Brahma, Brazil presented yesterday, and focused on expanding beer into meal occasion, our biggest opportunity.
The meal occasion, we're able to experience a little bit of that on how we approach it on the brand immersion that we had in the brewery with Victoria meals, Victoria tacos, and Modelo with meat. So today, I'll focus my presentation introducing the strong portfolio that we built in Mexico to help us to lead and grow the category across the remaining three levers for decades. And our strategy is very clear: to respect their legacy while keeping them relevant and vibrant. And as Marcel presented yesterday, we aim to always deliver to consumers a superior product with superior positioning, executed with superior platforms to deliver superior value. So let me share what we mean about that in the core brands with a video. Video, please.
Mexico, a global benchmark on how to keep a vibrant core with momentum. Over the past decade, Mexico's oldest and most iconic beer brands, Corona and Victoria, have learned how to stay relevant and complement each other in the market, forging deep, long-term connections with consumers by understanding their needs and the cultural moment they live in. Corona, Mexico's number one beer and the most valuable in Latin America. It was born embracing the entrepreneurial and visionary attitude of its founders, who evolved from experts in the fermentation process as bakers to build a national icon. Corona is the first Mexican to conquer the world. The brand has always pushed Mexico forward by celebrating progress and encouraging Mexicans to unlock their full potential. Corona activates consumption where Mexico's largest passion points take place: music and soccer.
It has been recruiting new consumers, broadening its pack assortment to multiple pricing offerings.
Yo mando.
Victoria. Born in 1865, Victoria is Mexico's oldest beer and a witness to its history. Mexicanizing beer for almost 160 years. Our Vienna-style beer is nor blonde, nor dark. It's what we call a proud Mestiza, just like Mexicans. Through the reinterpretation of traditions and culture, Victoria has made people in Mexico proud of who they are in the most unique, contemporary, and relevant way. By leveraging this strong connection with culture, Victoria is a natural fit in expanding the presence of beer in the Mexicans' meals occasions. It celebrates that the best Mexican ingredients and Mexican gastronomy are enjoyed at its best with the most traditional Mexican beer. Victoria exists to ignite Mexican pride. By having a healthy, consistent, and complementary core portfolio, we guarantee we have a growing category. 'Cause no core, no gain!
So what have we achieved with this core superiority strategy? We have grown volume above industry, not only gaining market share across the total market, but also within the core segment. And we do that while gaining brand power, which is the most powerful equation. And as we saw yesterday with Marcel on the category expansion framework, as the markets develop, consumers start looking for more sophisticated propositions. And to lead this development, we have a very strong premium portfolio. It's composed of local jewels, Modelo and Pacífico, and a successful international brand, Michelob ULTRA. So let's also see a video that presents this powerful portfolio.
Our premiumization strategy consists of strong local premium brands and a leading international brand. All of them contribute to boosting and advancing the beer category in Mexico. For starters, our local treasures, Modelo. This beer brand has been a source of light for Mexicans, renowned for its diverse beer styles, innovation, and impactful communication. Modelo is recognized by the high quality of its ingredients and its brewing process, which incorporates fire and toasted malts, and also known by an iconic double-label bottle with a foil on top. All this care to invite consumers to discover the pleasure for beer. Born in 1900 in Mazatlán, nestled by the Pacific Ocean along Mexico's western coast, Pacífico has secured a special place in the hearts of Mexicans. Pacífico is a very refreshing beer with a perfectly balanced flavor, very easy to drink, and as refreshing as the ocean.
By embracing the beach state of mind, it serves as a reminder of the importance of pausing and adopting the easygoing life of the Pacífico, prompting us to take a break and discover moments of tranquility amidst the turbulence of a daily routine. Just like its calm and relaxed environment, Pacífico will remind us of the value of life. Michelob ULTRA was launched in Mexico in 2017. Assuming our role as category developers, we anticipated the health and wellness trend by launching their applicable global toolkit. Superior light beer, low calories, and superior taste. Michelob ULTRA is positioned for consumers who enjoy an active lifestyle without giving up socialization. It redefines the convention of well-being. The brand rapidly conquered the heart of consumers, making Mexico the number one international market outside the U.S. Premiumization is building on category maturity, and we are ready to pave the path ahead.
We also see very positive results in the premium segment. These brands show three times more comes in brand power, with Modelo and Michelob ULTRA as their segment leaders. Last chapter, Beyond Beer. Our expansion to the Beyond Beer in Mexico started with a really strong focus on cultural understanding. This is the country of mixing food and beverages. Leveraging this, we developed an inclusive and incremental portfolio. Victoria expanded to flavor beer with Vickys, addressing the familiar flavor segment introduced by Marcel and Ian yesterday. Michelob ULTRA, always ahead of the emerging consumer trend for lower carb, less bitter offerings with Hard Seltzer, bringing a solid proposition to the light and refreshing segment. Corona, democratizing the category with Agua Rifada, bringing local flavors beloved by Mexican consumers, touching on this intersection of familiar, light, and refreshing. Let's see the portfolio.
Indulgence runs deep in the DNA of Mexicans. One of the most significant expressions of this indulgence is how we mix and match spicy tastes with the sweetest flavors. It adds an exquisite touch to both our meals and our drinks, and when it comes to beer, the story remains the same. Seven out of ten Mexicans enjoy mixing up their beers, creating unique mixes known as micheladas. Whether it's the classic Chelada, the refreshing Cubana, the fiery Gomichela, or the playful Chamoy and Mango, we are in for a treat. This fusion of flavors is a distinctive aspect of our culture, and we're only just beginning to grasp its full potential. Bringing convenience to in-home consumption is a big opportunity. Because crafting a mixed beer demands numerous ingredients and can be quite challenging to master, it's not the most convenient option for home preparation.
This is precisely why Victoria, a brand that deeply comprehends Mexican rituals and traditions, has introduced a pre-mixed beer ready to drink. Vickys, a product born to make it easier for Mexicans to enjoy their familiar flavors and rituals. As we look toward the future and evolving preferences of consumers, it becomes evident that health and wellness have become integral aspects of their life. As pioneers and category developers, we ventured into the exploration of seltzers. With the introduction of Michelob ULTRA Hard Seltzer, we embarked on a journey that aligns with the wellness aspirations of today's consumers. This isn't just about a light and refreshing beverage, it's about offering a choice that respects their lifestyle. More recently, we introduced Corona Agua Rifada. This distinctive line extension of our biggest brand not only taps into the seltzer trend, but also infuses it with a local twist.
So, as a result, with these brands, we establish ourselves as the market share leaders in the most dynamic segment, hard seltzers. So now that you know the portfolio, to close, let me recap how we deliver consistent industry growth. Strong and vibrant brands across our portfolio is the first step. With superior products, positionings, and platforms that deliver superior value and the other key components of our strategy. Thank you.
Thank you, Felipe, for the very clear message about the first pillar of our strategy. Now, let's move to the second one. Let me share what we are doing to digitize and monetize our ecosystem here in Mexico, empowering our customers and our consumers. Mexico is a great proof point of how relevant, scalable, and replicable our BEES platform can be. We reached 80% point of sale adoption in year one, and today, we may say we have a fully digital route to market, with 96% of our customers using BEES, both in our direct distribution and our wholesaler systems, representing today over 90% of our net revenue. BEES is today our single platform for business and market development, becoming an important enabler to successfully execute the first pillar of our strategy, lead and grow the category and consistently improving our service level.
Let me present one example of how we transformed and improved our core business efficiency through BEES using data and analytics. I'm talking about our innovations, aiming to develop the category, as Felipe just shared. Over the last years, we launched several new packs and identified the most likely innovations to be successful with specific customer audiences. We then used direct communication through BEES with the correct toolkit to activate each one of those innovations, and the results speak for themselves. 70% of our customers use our suggested orders. The weight of innovations in our revenue has grown 2 times since 2019, driving 6% participation growth of our category in 2022....
This started by improving our core business and now evolves to generate new growth sources, expanding to new revenue streams, bringing more opportunities to expand our customers' portfolio with the introduction of this marketplace, adopted today by almost 70% of our customers monthly and already representing around 4% of our total revenue. Enabling our commercial partners, the traditional trade, digitization journey with their consumers, unlocking new revenue streams, providing them access to new digital products like financial services, mobile data purchases, and utilities payments. Vendo is a great example to illustrate this transformation. The main gap for the traditional trade when compared to the modern, were the digital and financial products. Vendo, powered by BEES, was launched at the end of 2021, and is already present in four other markets besides Mexico.
It started by enabling our customers to sell mobile data recharges, expanding the offering to utilities payments with a very fast escalation to 90,000 points of sale, a number significantly higher than the amount of modern trade in our country. Our national sales footprint allows Vendo to be present even in the most remote areas of Mexico, reaching over 4 million consumers with a weekly retention rate of 70%. Please, keep this 4 million consumers figure in mind, because we will come back to it. Now let's check how Vendo is expanding with a recently launched consumer-facing brand to increase the awareness of our service, Modelo Pago.
[Foreign language]
Let's move now to our DTC channels. They act as insights labs for our category growth, allowing us to learn and scale up what works for our consumers. In Mexico, we have both physical and digital DTC platforms, Modelorama and TaDa. Modelorama is a very strong network of 10,000 self-owned stores, a business that allows us to deliver the best beer experience, the coldest beer, with our ideal assortment at the right price, with superior margins for our business versus any other channel, and perhaps most importantly, unlocking deep consumer insights via our sellout data. Pedro and Lucas shared yesterday the strong value proposition for TaDa, the coldest beer at supermarket price and delivered at home in less than 35 minutes.
Mexico is our leading marketing market for TaDa in the zone, and the first to implement the loyalty program to which he shared yesterday for Zé Delivery in Brazil. Club TaDa added loyalty to the platform value proposition, rewarding consumers with the redemption of benefits in our Modelorama stores, putting together digital and physical exclusive experiences in the most relevant entertainment platforms, such as tickets to Corona Capital, the best music festival in Mexico, and unique benefits to engage with the national soccer team, just to name a few. With this proposition, TaDa rapidly became the number one beer home delivery platform in our country, with around 300,000 orders per month and over 400,000 unique users. 400,000 consumers whose data can be integrated with Modelorama and unlock even deeper consumer insights.
To recap, our digitization strategy has allowed us to create a unique ecosystem of integrated tools that unlocks deep consumer understanding. Going back, Vendo has quickly impacted 4 million consumers in the traditional trade, our most important channel, while providing us with valuable data records. That was integrated with transactional information of over 400,000 users of TaDa and almost 3 million of monthly sellout data records from Modelorama stores, enriching our data lakes with consumer-driven information. Finally, all this data is integrated with our customer database and sales information in our BEES platform, enabling us to adjust our portfolio recommendation to each one of our customers, becoming our backbone to play our role as industry developers. Finally, now we move to our third and final strategic pillar: optimize our business. As a recap, here are the main messages about our Mexico business.
A relentless implementation and execution of our global AB InBev strategy, following the lead and grow category framework with a continuous mindset of category developers, with AB InBev driving 80% of the industry growth during the last five years, enabled by becoming a fully digital business, proving to drive strong and consistent compound growth. This growth has been very balanced, with a top-line CAGR of 11% from 2017- 2022... always maintaining strong financial discipline and making the right investment choices, and also delivering a double-digit bottom line CAGR. As a result, Mexico has been the biggest contributor to AB InBev's top and bottom line growth during the last five years. What come next? Now you'll be able to experience all the strategy that we just presented in action in a market visit.
But before sharing the logistics for the visit, I would like to provide a brief context of the market that we will be visiting. First, in Mexico, a point of sale is required to have a license to sell alcohol. Since licenses are controlled by the government, only around 30% of points of sale sell alcoholic beverages, which means that around 70% of them do not sell alcohol. In our visit, we will cover those allowed to sell our beers. Second, in Mexico, ABI has over 60% of market share nationally. Here in Mexico City, including the zone we will be visiting, our market share is around fifteen percentage points above our national average, which means that we will experience customers with a high presence of our portfolio.
Third, our market is composed of five main channels: the traditional trade, the biggest and most relevant channel nationally. Convenience stores and supermarkets, also known as modern trade. The owned retail stores, including our Modelorama franchise and the equivalent for our competitor. And the on-premise, composed of bars and restaurants. Another remark is that in all channels, you may find customers that would sell exclusively our brands, exclusively our competitors, and some that would sell both. In our visit, we will be able to cover a very good representation of the market of Mexico City. In that context, let me give you a quick reminder of what to look for during our market visit.
For our first pillar, our multiple pack offerings with different price propositions to make our portfolio accessible and inclusive to everyone, the strong presence and leadership of our core brands, Corona and Victoria, our portfolio approach to expand beer presence in the meals occasion, a strong execution of our premium portfolio in store, which helps them to grow ahead of the industry, and our Beyond Beer portfolio, activating both familiar tastes and light and refreshing consumer needs. In our second pillar, we suggest you ask our teams to show our digital ecosystem in action, how business is serving our core business to help us developing the category, its expansion to new digital services with Vendo and our Modelorama and TaDa businesses, where we extract the most out of our physical and digital direct interaction with our consumers. Now let's move to the logistics.
The market visit will be held in the Polanco area and adjacencies. We are here at the Hyatt Hotel, where we will also finish the morning. We are distributing 4 zones and 9 different groups. All groups will use vans. On your badge, you'll find your group definition illustrated by one of our brands. To find your group, look for the big lollipop signs with which one of our brands. Each route has a local leader who will be responsible for guiding, explaining all details of the market, characteristics of each POC to be visited, answering any questions you may have. And very important, they will be the pacers of the group, making sure we accomplish to visit all the five POCs and be back at no later than midday. Summarizing, go find your group and enjoy the ride.
During the visit, as part of our continuous improvement, please scan this QR code and give us your comments. They will be very much appreciated. Let's meet back at midday. Thank you so much for your time. Let's go for action, and see you back here.
I used to be really close with, I don't see as much anymore.
Yes, there is somebody missing.
Life's busy, you know, it can-
If social media responses are an indication, many of you have noticed we've been calling it the Weiser Studio for the past week, and there's a reason for that. We're working with Budweiser to bring attention to a rather important issue. Have a look.
When was the last time you guys had a beer together?
Life's busy, you know, with family, with kids. My son graduating.
Different schedules, relationships. Can I pass you that photo?
Some of the friends that I used to be really close with, I don't see as much anymore.
Yes, there is somebody missing there.
Alex is missing in the photo, yeah.
Glen's not in this picture. That's me training with Glen for our march for Veterans Awareness. You always feel stronger when you got your friend beside you, and I wouldn't have been able to do that without him.
It's hard to find a friendship like that, and I teach my kids the same thing. You know, hold your friends close, treat them well.
Yeah, you know, with Alex, it was really great having a friend where we could sit down and jam, forget about things.
When was the last time you and Glen had a beer together?
We all get older, we move away, we change jobs. We, you know, grow apart. It's, it's sad, really.
I feel a little lost without him. He's my closest friend. All right.
Oh, my God!
Hey, buddy.
Oh, no way!
What's up, buddy?
How are you? Good to see you, buddy.
The older you get, the more you value friendships. It's a lifetime bond.
I haven't seen you in so long.
Please welcome back, Shaun Fullilove.
Hey, welcome back from the market visit. I hope the traffic wasn't too bad for everyone, and you managed to make it back in time for some lunch. I know from my van in particular, we had some interesting conversations. At least 175 questions from Sanjeet to Credit Suisse. So it was a very engaging, I think, market visit for most people. So I hope you guys took a lot out of it. Thanks very much to the market visit leaders for facilitating the routes, to everyone that organized the vans and logistics. It was a big effort from the local team here, so we really appreciate the effort that went into that. Thank you very much. I would also like to welcome back anyone on the webcast audience that happened to be patient enough to sustain a 4-hour break.
So if you're still with us, then great to have you back with us. We have two more sessions before we let you leave to catch your, your flights home this evening, or I think in the case of many of the South Africans and the Irish, continuing the diligence efforts in France for the Rugby World Cup over the weekend. So we're gonna start with the second Q&A panel session to wrap up what we've seen today and yesterday evening. So we have the chairs on stage already. I'd like to invite Michel, Tadeu, David, Fernando, Ezgi, Nick, Lucas, Marcel, and Lisboa, if you're still with us, please join us on stage, and we'll have one final Q&A session. So in terms of the logistics, we're gonna do the same as we did yesterday.
We'll start by taking a couple of the questions from here in the room. Those that are on the webcast stream are also able to submit questions, if I can make it work like we did yesterday, by the Q&A functionality on the webcast platform. So we have the mics around the room here. So if you'd like to ask a question, same as before, please raise your hand. Any of you, if you raise your hand, we'll get the mics across to you. And same as yesterday, try and stick to one question as much as possible, so we can get to as many in the room as we'd like. So we have 45 minutes, I think, so let's kick it off. If anyone has questions left from the market visit, let's take them.
Simon in the back.
Yes, yeah. Can you hear me? Yeah, thanks. Simon Hales from Citi. I just had a question around just the Mexican market, particularly Modelorama. Can you just talk a little bit about how that store, how the store footprint has grown over the years? I think you said this morning, it's 10,000 stores at the moment. What's the outlook from here? And associated with that, how much of your volume is going through that channel, and how much of your volume is now going through OXXO post-exclusively? I know it's still rolling through this year, but where we are now.
The question was, if I understood correctly, about Modelorama and OXXO-
And OXXO.
The relevance for our business
Yes.
-in Mexico.
I'm trying to link the two together as one question, because that's what sorts that I do. Cheeky, but okay, well done.
First and foremost, Modelorama is around 10,000 stores, pretty much spread around the country. Beforehand, we used to depend a lot on Modelorama, especially in the north side of the country, because you have a lower density of parks there. But now that we have OXXO, right, we are in a way stronger position. So, we are reassessing the way we're gonna, you know, place the stores, again, as a second phase or our next phase of our, you know, expansion with Modeloramas. It's the most profitable channel we have in Mexico. Pretty strong sales per park. We use Modeloramas a lot to evolve with category development. I don't know if you noticed, but we have a pretty interesting assortment in terms of brands and SKUs.
It's a very relevant channel for us in terms of, you know, returnability, development, and sustainability, right? And this is exactly the point of difference about Modelorama. You must see the Modelorama store almost like a hybrid, kind of, you know, format between a traditional and a modern, right? There, you're gonna find a good balance between one-way formats and returnable formats, but the main point of difference, the competitive advantage of a Modelorama against other channels, will be almost, you know, relying a lot on the returnability side of the business, right? Around 20% of our... 18% of our volume flow flows through this channel today. Comparing to OXXO. OXXO, we are now present in around 20,000 stores across the country. Fifteen percent, if I'm not mistaken, of our total volume flow through the...
Is that correct, Cassiano?
Yeah, it's low teens.
Yes, exactly. You know, different from Modeloramas, OXXO is a chain that relies way more on one-way formats, especially in cans, right? But it's interesting as well in terms of category development. We have been, you know, working together with them, building plans together to really make the category even stronger than it is today. OXXO is one of the channels growing the most in Mexico, and that happened after our entrance, because the category gained a completely different kind of, you know, expression within the chain, right? And now consumers have, you know, pretty much availability for, you know, everything they want in terms of beer category. Any other question? I don't know if I answered all your questions.
I think you addressed four of his three questions. It was okay. It's a very good answer as well. Appreciate it, thank you-
You can't stop me, I have it.
No, it was perfect.
Sorry about that.
Edward Mundy from Jefferies.
Thanks. I'm Ed Mundy, Jefferies. Michel, probably a question for you or, or maybe one for, for Cassiano. So Cassiano is moving from, from Mexico to, to Africa. You know, clearly, a lot of the, the best practices that you're trying to roll out from a growth standpoint, category expansion model and also digitals really working very well in, in Mexico. Can you talk about the opportunities in Africa? You know, what, what are the... You know, what is the vision for Africa in terms of that, that move, and, and then what you're hoping to bring through that?
Yeah. Can you hear me all right?
Yeah.
I think that there are two things that are on this question that are very interesting. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about that. One, David covered this during his presentation on the strategy. I really think that we have the privilege of being able to learn from our footprint, right? The idea that we are in very developed, developing, and emerging markets, this allows us not only to exchange best practices across our own geographies, but also making the expansion model better because we have more data points. Given the practices that we are implementing around the five platforms, we've been able to bend the model, right? To accelerate what was the natural growth of the category. The gift that we have on our portfolio is this idea of this incredible area like mass-...
where we are with the category vibrant, growing, and we can develop the category in the right way, and we have the future opportunity of a footprint like Africa, right? So population is huge. The growth is happening. We have very strong positions in our footprint, and we believe that a lot of the next wave of growth, will come from this cluster that has India plus Africa, and this will be very sizable for the future. And when you think about the way that we develop our people, so Cassiano experienced for many, many years our operations in Brazil when we were emerging and developing, had the opportunity to be in different areas from logistics to the high-end company, to then in sales, and be for five years here in Mexico, experiencing a market that is in the top end of the developing markets.
And now he moves to Africa with this vision of knowing how the future look like and having the opportunity and time to build the category in the right way in Africa. So I could not be more excited with having Cassiano there. I think that the work that he, Lisboa, and the team did in Mexico is a great work that we shared with you over the last two days, and now he's gonna have the chance and opportunity to do more on his own in Africa, and enjoy Africa, which is an incredible opportunity.
What about the gaps, digital?
No, I think that what I was trying to explain, Ed asked about the gaps, right? I think that's less about the gap and is more about the development stage of the markets. So Mexico is more advanced on the development stage. South Africa is well advanced as well. Many countries in Africa are at early stage. So what we need to do is making sure that as we develop these markets, we develop them in the right way. Strong brands, vibrant category, premium products, good market share position, good brand power, right portfolio, and the technology. For example, if you go to South Africa, this is the operating model there as it is here, and we are rolling out in other countries in Africa as well. So it's a building market. It's not a market that is as built as the Mexican market is.
It's a little bit... He's gonna have the chance to recreate the history. We hope that is similar to the one in Mexico. Of course, the expectation for Cassiano is better.
I'm gonna take one from the web, and then we'll come back to the room. I think, Trevor, you had one. So, Marcel, one for you. Question of, you spoke a little bit about the mega brands approach, and the question is: How do you balance this approach and focus in mega brands with the need to continue to innovate across the category to stay relevant?
Great question. Thanks for the question. Mega brands are a great opportunity because they have size, they have great brand power, therefore, they represent a massive opportunity for scale, and this is what really builds and delivers value to the business. So the first part of the answer is that, as I showed, we have three steps when you talk about innovation. The first thing is to make sure that we remove from the market everything that is not adding value. Usually, when you talk about innovation, we just talk about adding more things. So in our process, first, we start by simplifying the propositions we have. The second step is to make sure that the mega brands we have remain differentiated and highly competitive.
So every year, we run a superiority analysis with our mega brands in the key markets, exactly to make sure that we are always with the pulse on the competitive advantage of our brands. If there's anything to be adjusted, this is when we trigger the projects to make sure that these brands are always at the edge, delivering against the consumer needs and with a clear competitive advantage on their key attributes. Then, we talk about new launches whenever we find a new opportunity. So this is, I think, the healthy balance we are finding, where we first focus on what we have to make sure it keeps working, it drives scale, we keep expanding, we use our reach as a competitive advantage, and then we find very specific opportunities when it really makes sense to add something on top.
As we do that, by removing what doesn't work at the same time, we keep a very good balance. And I really believe that on the mega brands part now, I'll do like Lisboa, I will say a little bit more maybe on the... It's just because, Lisboa, this is also for you. I think this, it's very good for us to be here because it's a great way to experience the love and the passion for the brands and for the consumers we spoke about in the beginning, and the mega brands are anchored on that. You heard from Lisboa and from his whole team, the amount of times they spoke about the strong portfolio. It all starts with the brands.
I feel very impressed about the clarity on the brand positioning, which are the consumers they're serving, the key occasions that they're there to add value for, and the key platforms you use, and this whole combination of mega brands behaving like this with our teams being passionate about it, plus the selective innovation driving scale, is what brings the magic that we're seeing in real life here in Mexico.
Thanks. Thanks, Marcel. Back to the room, Trevor?
Trevor Stirling, AllianceBernstein. Two quick ones on Mexico, guys, for Cassiano and Lisboa. The first one is, you mentioned per cap consumption 77, but I guess there are huge regional variations between the south and the north. So is that like 50-90, if you look at it on a state-by-state basis?
It's pretty relevant, the difference, being the north, the region with the highest per capita in the country, okay? Which is interesting, because people usually come to us with the same kind of question about how far can we go, continue, you know, growing the category here in Mexico, and the north is here to, you know, to show that still, there is still room ahead. It's spot on.
I guess the second one, you mentioned that, you had 80% of the industry growth accrued to Modelo in the last five years.
Yeah, exactly.
Are you able to say roughly the split between what came from the OXXO distribution gains in OXXO-
Yes.
What was truly organic?
Yeah, I would say that I think the best answer for you is the following: we gain share within and out of the category, out of the channel, in both, along the years.
Great. Thanks very much.
You're welcome. Let me just take it, the figure that was asked about OXXO. OXXO today is around 10% of our volume, but as OXXO, we use as a portfolio developer, and you see a much higher above core weight. It represents more for our top line. Okay?
Thanks, Cassiano. Carlos Laboy from HSBC.
Yes. Thank you. Ricardo, can you please follow up on and explain a concept you mentioned earlier, loop, on how you track and follow through on key initiatives?
Yep. Thanks, Carlos. Just putting everybody in the context, before going to the market visit, we were discussing about an internal concept that we have with the marketing team, which is called Close the Loop. Close the Loop is an internal process that we have for our marketeers to first determine a job to be done for a certain brand, select the brand, the occasion, how to communicate it, and the Close the Loop is the conversion into a transaction, right? And we implement the Close the Loop process. So we bring more marketeers to really go end to end in the process of advertising.
Again, some of the elements that we've been highlighting through D2C, and we hope that it was very clear, the message here, that it's not only about being able to analyze data and gather consumer data points, it's also not only about being able to have a new channel to consumers, but it's actually the ability that we have now to create a new media channel to consumers and customers. Because the same way that third-party platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, these are the well-known digital platforms that became like present in media, we now have our own platforms. So a TaDa! screen is a screen that our consumers are using frequently. The more we add elements like the rewards program, like Zé Compensa or Club TaDa!, more time they spend with us and more open they are to receive our message.
We can start creating opportunities like we saw presented by Dani Vax in the case of Brahma Soccer or the relaxation moments with Corona Sunsets. We start identifying, you know, from the data, what's, you know, the opportunities we have, the brands that can attach, and then we start the campaigns. That Close the Loop is seeing how much of that is actually being converted, right? Generating transactions for us, which is something that honestly, I don't know many companies that can go through this end-to-end process, and we are very proud, you know, of having that embedded in our marketing model this way. The same Close the Loop applies also in BEES, because also our marketeers have to think that our customers, they're actually our salespeople. They're the ambassadors of our brands to billions of consumers around the world.
So we use BEES as well to like, to teach them about our brands, which occasions they are best used for, I mean, type of consumers. We have our own YouTube channels of BEES, where we can educate them on our brands. So today, our ability to create consumer touch points and what we would call like media advertising through our own digital media channels is huge, and it's just growing by the day as we add more consumers in Zé and TaDa platforms and more customers in BEES. So that's a very important element, and we are very proud to have this process from understanding the opportunities, the brands to tackle, you know, the occasion, you know, the pack, the type of promotion or communication that we want to do.
It's always reinforcing because we can test different messages, different tones, different images, and then we are always refining to get the ones that are more powerful. Right? Thanks for the question.
Thanks, Leo. Brett first, and then we'll come to Laurence after that. Brett? Okay.
Thanks. Can you benchmark your success with innovation or SKU reduction, having these and the information contained in it versus when you didn't have that?
I think that's the SKU reduction, if I can answer it, is also part of the philosophy of the mega brands and the simplification. I think that one of the elements that we are trying to refine year over year is now that we've made this transition from, like, inorganic growth to organic growth, is what are the most effective ways to achieve the organic growth? And because we've seen through data that you don't have, like, a multitude of SKUs to actually drive growth, you have to really identify what are the right ones, in specific brands and specific packs. One of the challenges that we have internally within our marketing teams is, okay, and as Marcel wants, I mean, we want to continue driving innovation and innovative mindset into the organization, but the portfolio has to be managed.
So it's like a garden. We always try to refer to that example. Sometimes you have to, like, remove some elements of the garden, so the garden can flourish even more, so it's the portfolio of the company. So what I think that we are seeing, year over year, is that the more we collect, you know, data from customers and consumers, and more we have people trained on using that data, and with free access to that data and connecting the dots, more precise we can be in our portfolio choices, we need for resource allocation and investment, or also, you know, removing from portfolio products or SKUs that we believe that we can easily transfer to, to brands that have more room to grow.
Can just add on the point before we move to the next question. I think that the exact number we can give you now, but the main transformation that BEES brings to this equation is that before, we had this massive sales force with the job of selling in. And because everybody is incentivized in the selling in, you have many times false winners. So SKUs or products that you are targeting and the team is selling, but they are not really making a ton of difference to the point of sales. Now that you decentralize it, this task of selling, because now the point of sales buys in with this, most of the job of the sales team is sell out. So what are the right promotions, the right execution, so we can sell out more?
And this, in a way, is already making a natural selection of the portfolio that should exist versus the portfolio that's not as efficient as it should be. So this adds value on the SKU rationalization by focusing the team more on selling out than selling, so the false positives don't live in the system.
That's great. We'll go to Laurence, and then we'll come back to this side of the room. I might take one from the way across before you, Chris.
Thanks. This is Laurence Whyatt at Barclays. Following on from the last few questions around data, I guess ABI has become a much more data-driven company over the past five or so years. And you've got lots of different data sets you can draw from BEES to your customers and Zé Delivery and Tada from your consumers, and PerfectDraft the same. If you could wave a magic wand and look sort of five, 10 years in the future, what are the additional data sets you'd love to add to what you already have? What would you love to know about either your customers or your consumers, that you think could be possible in the future?
I can answer that, and I hope it's less than 10 years by then.
Yeah.
There's so much more that we can add in the next two, three years, and then maybe we have a better vision for what's the next 10. For us, the journey is what we call the omni-channel, right? I know sometimes we throw words like ecosystem, omni-channel, and this sounds like crap, right? What does that mean? Through Zé and Zé Compensa, today, we tackle one type of occasion, and we are very successful on this. We can tag the consumers and know exactly when they're consuming in home, and they're buying from Zé. This consumer, because of BEES, the presence of BEES, we can connect them everywhere they purchase.
We expect this consumer to go to a restaurant, to go to a bar, to eventually they will be shopping for their groceries, and they will get some beer in a supermarket nearby, or got a car and got to a hard discounter and bought beer, too. What we intend to do is to convert Zé into also an engagement platform with consumers, and by giving them points for consumption of our products in any other category. We can tag them because we have BEES. This is why the word ecosystem is important for us. Also, when you think about Vendo, which I hope you guys got a good idea of what Vendo is. Vendo is also another opportunity of data points that we can connect lots of consumers from where they buy because they do their phone recharges.
So the more we evolve, the more we'll be like creating this, this very clear profile for our consumer of what are their passion points, what are their interests... how they drink our category, and eventually, what other categories they consume as well. So this is something that is, there is a journey that we think we're in the early stages, too.
If I could just add as well, I think, beyond the kind of the breadth of the data, right? So you're thinking latitudinally, more, adding more data. We've transformed over the past few years. So let's say we have in the company today, 500, 600 data scientists, where, you know, five years ago, we had zero. What we're also doing is making sure that they can work as easily as possible, so they can be as effective as possible as other kind of tech companies. So that involves having, for example, a data layer. If you look at the different, the disparate systems we have, ERPs, B's data, all those things. How can we make that data easily accessible for all of the data scientists in the companies that can use that? How can we have an ML platform?
So as they build algorithms, they build it using the same components, so they can travel more easily. As we try to measure the effectiveness of the things we're implementing, how do we have the right test ops tools to show that this thing is effectively working, right? So while we're also acquiring more data, we're also investing to make sure we have the right infrastructure so that we can really be experts at kind of managing data and driving value with it.
If I can add something as well. Sorry, this is a very exciting question. Very exciting territory. Usually, when we talk about data, the first approach is on transactional data, because we start knowing when people buy, what people buy. I would say that the next step we're working to take is also to get behavioral data. So if you pay attention to what we spoke about, we start by selling products, but then we talk about the tickets to the event, to the concert, to the game, and we start bringing more elements into the platform. So you start knowing not only when and how they buy, but what they do and what they like. You start understanding how they behave, and this is a big, big, big thing.
I got a few feedbacks that some of the presentations were good here because we were very tangible on examples. Let me give you a few very specific ex-examples. Question yesterday about investments, effectiveness, share of voice. We know, for example, that whenever there's a soccer game, usually 2 hours before the game is when people order the beers, because this is when they say, "Okay, I need to get ready." Not as a coincidence, our media happens usually two hours before the game, and we focus our investments there because we know that this is what accelerates, conversion. We didn't talk about it here because we didn't have time, but there's another very good platform that we're working with barbecue.
We also learned from the behavioral part that there's a great huge correlation between the access on, on, on TaDa and Zé with the barbecue occasion. Not as a coincidence, if you go to the supermarket, you see that in the barbecue section, we start to execute those brands that consumers prefer for that occasion there, and so on and so forth. We also spoke about the insights from Corona yesterday on the happy hour. There is the sunset hour that triggers a whole brand platform. So the more we learn from transactional and evolve from behavioral data, the more complete our actions can be to really step change on how we interact with consumers and drive conversion.
Great. Long answer, but good, good answer from everyone. So I think I'm going to take one from here, and we'll come back to the room. So I'm not sure this is for Michel or for David, but the question's from Robert at Evercore, asking: Can you talk more about the development of the beer market in India, and whether there are any specific regulatory changes or changes in industry structure which might be help the growth of beer going forward?
Yeah. Robert, et cetera?
Yeah.
Yeah, Robert, thank you for the question. A couple of people asked the question here as well. I think that everybody understands the size and how meaningful India will be in the future of many, many categories, and categories have been developing slightly different in India, right? And specifically, in alcohol and in beer, there were very meaningful changes in the last few years that are very promising to the direction of the category in the future. I think that number one was almost like if the beer category in India was built in the past by hard liquor companies, right? So a lot of legislation, taxation, they were more into reducing or containing the size of the beer category rather than developing the beer category.
Over the last few years, given changes in the market, changes in the players, today, you have pure players in the beer category that have a real interest in developing the category in India, and this development is happening. You see the category is very healthy, is growing, and many, many other things can happen. The second is a very complex set of state and federal laws that we've been seeing. Last year was a very interesting year. This year has been very interesting. Many, many states revising many of their laws, including laws related to alcohol consumption, production, and with beer, in which there is taxes being revised, rights to sell, licenses, and all of that unleashes further the potential of the category. In one hand, you have the economic growth, which we know that has huge correlation with the beer industry.
Second, a young, well-educated, more and more urban population, which you know, that correlates a lot with the beer industry as well. Then you have the third element, which is an incredible flexibilization or normalization, better saying, of what the business environment is, which will help to unleash the category. When we think about us, we've been working in India for a while. You can say like more than 10 years in the making, and we are very well positioned in the premium and super premium segments. Budweiser is growing, very healthy brand there. Today, India is the third largest market already for Budweiser, and we continue to grow on a very fast pace. Corona, very well positioned in the super premium.
When you combine premium, super premium, we have 70% market share in India, and the prospects for growth in India, I think that for many categories, including beer, are very positive. We are optimistic with the business we have there, with how much the category will continue to develop, but even more with most of this development coming across urban centers, LEDA, but very well-educated, growing income population and in the premium segment. Thank you for the question. We didn't talk a lot about India here, but it was a good opportunity just to highlight the potential of India for the future.
Thanks, João. Chris, then we'll go to Mitch at the back and then Olivia.
Thank you. There's obviously been a renewed confidence in your mega brand and the belief in your mega brands. How important has been the fact that demand for craft and those sort of styles of beers have sort of plateaued out in the United States? I was encouraged to hear from Marcel that you're regularly testing the superiority of your brands around the world. Do you see the opportunity for a craft style segment to build up in lots of your markets? Would you actively target that, or within the mega brands, I mean, Modelo last night, you had lots of different varieties. How do you see the craft threat? Is it abated now globally, do you think, or is it more an opportunity for you guys?
Yeah, I can answer a little bit. You can complement if you want on that. But the craft segment and different styles of beer, they are happening and will continue to happen across the globe. We see everywhere different styles growing and existing in the market. But the reality is that for many categories, the structure of the U.S. market and the economy allows for this massive proliferation, right? And then you can think about craft beer, but you can think about root beer or cider or seltzers. That is this good product that becomes just too big in terms of proliferation of brands and shelves, and then there is an adjustment. So what we see today with craft beers in the U.S. is just like a natural adjustment.
When people asking some of these questions on why it's happening or why this is part of the industry in the US, and I kind of bring for a very simple example. Like, imagine that you are a IPA drinker and you really like IPA, right? When you go to a market that has 11,000 microbreweries, each microbrewery has at least 10 styles of IPA, and you are a die-hard IPA drinker. Not even if you live 100 years and you drink an IPA every day, you're gonna drink all that exists. So it's overproliferated. So I think that what is happening is sizing to the right size, right? And globally, it's a little bit healthier because it never got to this large size that you see in the US, and it is much more premium, because craft breweries are small brews.
The small brews are much more expensive for you to make, and therefore, they need to be much more premium. So when they come in a much more premium way, they are actually very healthy for penetration in new occasions, bringing more consumers. The mega brands is a little bit the opposite of that, right? Because if the small batch, very craft, are for specific things, the mega brands are an idea of invest to create efficient growth. Because you have the right consumer target, you understand the right occasions, and then you build that brand to fit that consumer, that occasion, at a scale that is efficient for the company.
We are very focused on this large portfolio of brands that we have globally, but going back to this concept that between four and six or seven brands per market can command the growth that we need in a very efficient way. I think that they need to be superior in liquid, packaging, advertisement. They need to deliver on the value proposition, and they need to have the right investments behind, which, given the size and the scale that we have, we do have the capacity to invest and grow these brands.
Okay, Mitch at the back?
Thanks. I'd like to come back to the question of data and closing the loops. You've talked a bit, Marcel, about how having data about your consumers through TaDa and Modelorama allows you to manage your marketing better. Is there a way of quantifying the ROI improvement you get from adjusting the way you market to consumers using that data? Can you talk about how that feeds into your in-house agency, draftLine? Given that there are some markets where you're never gonna be able to have the same richness of data, how do you manage that challenge? Does it make you think, as a group, that maybe there are markets where you'd benefit from having direct sales like you have here in Mexico?
Okay, so let me start, and for sure, more people will jump in here with the answer. I think, that enables us to have an impact on ROI for sure, because all those insights, they allow us to do personalization at scale. So this is what actually led to the creation of the in-house agency, because it's all about having a structure to be able to connect all those insights and those data points, to have multiple, multiple different interactions of the same campaign, the same approach. Like, the brand positioning is a non-negotiable, but we can flex that approach to be more relevant, to be more specific to different consumer groups in different places, to better connect the right brands to the right occasions.
This is what we refer to as personalization at scale, and this is actually why we created draftLine, so that we can have all the team bringing it to life every day. Because we can do that, we start buying media in a different way, and then we rely much more on programmatic, because then we go on a one-by-one basis, and we expand to a one-to-many approach. And this is a much more effective way to buy media, which then leads into a direct impact on ROI. So that's sort of the, the chain on how things happen. So the more we scale, the data collection, the more effective this whole process becomes.
So moving to the other part of your question, where we have some restrictions to operate like that, what we do first and foremost is to go to the next layer, which is to move from first-party data to the third-party data, and then we have to partner very closely with retailers, because then they provide their data points to us, and we partner together to understand the data, create insights, and the right and best media opportunities everywhere, but including on a retail level, to make sure that we will maximize the opportunity. It's a different model, but it's the second layer that we can access, and then maybe-
I think, as well said.
Yeah.
The only thing to add on that is, in a way, you can think that you never have 100% of the data. On the other extreme, that by having data, you can clusterize and then make the best practices travel. So when you have no data, you are blind. When you have 5%-10% of the consumer's data, you see very far away, and then you can elaborate on this data that you have and amplify the executions much, much better than by not having data, right? So remember that if you go years ago, we would test all things that we do on a consumer group of 20 people in a room, and the average of what that people say would become somehow the truth for marketing.
Today, when you go on Zé Delivery in Brazil or in TaDa, here in Mexico, you have an interaction with 400,000 consumers, not 20 people, 400,000, and they more than tell something, they buy with their credit card. So it's more than declaring something, is actually behaving and purchasing something. So your ability to test and learn is exponential with this data. And then based on this data, then you craft better your insights and your campaigns for the overall population.
Building on what Marcel and Michel was just saying, I want to bring two examples, for example, in UK, before we launched Stella Artois Unfiltered, before going to, which is a big innovation, that was successful in UK, we launched it via PerfectDraft. So we tested the liquid with our community of consumers. We tested our communication with those consumers, testing different iterations of key messages, and those learnings, they gave us the insights to then decide how to scale it to the rest of the market in a more successful way. And then, another—and that's an example of TaDa, PerfectDraft. In the case of TaDa in Mexico, we have hundreds of thousands of consumers that we've engaged via TaDa, and then we're using those consumers to be able to create our own focus groups.
We don't use research agencies anymore for many things that we could be testing real time with them and validating things through them, through surveys with them. That's two concrete examples on what Michel was just saying, of how we're changing the way we do, we approach insights and how we apply that for the rest of the business. Okay. Thanks, Mitch.
Thank you.
We're almost at 45 minutes, so we make this the last question. So Olivia, be kind.
I was going to ask about excise duty, but maybe I will refrain from that. Just in Mexico, you've seen an increase of 25 liters of per capita consumption over the last decade. Colombia and Peru, as you've seen on the chart, is much, much lower. Is there any... How do you explain the difference, essentially? Is it a question of affordability just to close the gap? Is it even possible to close the gap to the level of Mexico? Also, is there any excise duty difference between the countries?
No, I would say that, you know, took us longer to start, you know, accelerating the development of the category in those markets. You know, when I look to the short-term view, Colombia is evolving really fast. We grew... or the category gained per capita consumption around 10 liters in 5 years, so it's almost the same Mexico grew, right? You know, Peru, it's very interesting to see what is happening there because, you know, Peru is also composed... the category is also almost like living a different kind of reality by region. Lima, who is the most important, you know, city in the country, the category was pretty much plateau for many, many years, and now is growing way ahead of all other regions in the country.
That, coincidentally or not, and it is not a coincidence, it is the region where we evolved the, you know, the fastest, doing exactly the same we are doing here in Colombia, right? So you clearly see the combination of the three pillars of our global strategy impacting the market simultaneously and creating a very positive momentum for our category. So, and Peru is pretty much side by side in terms of relevance with Colombia, right? So it's another pretty interesting market for us in terms of growth.
Okay. I'll answer your excise duty question separately at the end. So thanks very much. I think we're at the 45-minute mark here, so we'll make that the last question. Thanks to everyone in the room for participating, those in the webcast as well, and to Lisboa, the global team. Appreciate you guys. You can head back to your seats, except for Michelle. You can stay here with me while we remove the chairs, given you're gonna be wrapping us up.
So listen.
So listen, I think that we are on time, and between the flights that you need to take, other appointments and meetings that people have, for those that are joining us by Zoom, I'll try just to wrap us up here. I would like to start by thanking people, everybody that participated here on these two days. We had a lot of people working with us, so people working on the presentation, our team from the zone. Big thank you for all the preparation, Lisboa team, Mexico, Cassiano, the people from the IR team, ABI. A lot of people asking how much time we spend working on that.
I can tell you that they spent a lot of time working on that, preparing for you and making sure that you'd have not only good information, but a good time as well while you're here. And then we have our partners, Switch, B Ferraz and Hyatt. So thank you, everybody. I think that I listened from a lot of people that was very organized, very good today, so I would like to ask a round of applause for the organization team. I know that was everybody. I felt very well treated while in Mexico, so thank you. Thank you very much for the, the effort. I would like to thank you all as well for coming. I know that for many of you, it was not a, an easy trip, and you worked very hard on the spinning classes, on this drink and food at the brewery.
So I know that you're gonna have a lot of notes to bring home, but we tried to balance as much as we could the information, the content, the market visit, and a time for you to also catch up with everything from physical activities to the time with the friends. So I hope that you have enjoyed that, and again, the team worked very hard to make this a full experience here in Mexico to you. I laid out these three objectives when we started the day yesterday, and they were simple objectives, but we thought that would be very important to concentrate our time and our message around these topics. So talking about how we are positioned and uniquely positioned to lead and grow the beer category. How our strategy, yet simple, is being executed with relentless focus across the globe.
We brought many examples to you so you could understand more than when we quickly chat on our Q&As and on our conversations. More importantly, how can we get this large and big footprint that we have and execute across the globe with very big consistency, with very clear priorities, and with a very big alignment across the globe, with all our management team speaking one language? ... using the same tools and aiming to deliver the same objectives. Of course, nothing of this would happen only by having the strategy, only by having the will to do that, but this is really, really powered by our culture and our people.
I was talking in one of our side conversations here today about something that I told you last time that we met, which was a very simple strategy, a very ambitious objective of redirecting the company from this beautiful, inorganic strategy history to a phase now in which we maximize the potential of our platform. Shifting the company from an inorganic history to organic history will not be easy, but I was very confident on the ability of our team. If not, because we had an impressive strategy, that was never the intention, it's a very simple one, but by the determination of our team in executing. The team showed here during these two days how fast we are moving and how much we are concentrating efforts on executing this strategy. Our culture is a culture of dreams, big ambitions.
is a culture that prioritizes consumers and solving problems for our consumers and our customers, and it is behind everything that we do, right? This is the glue that gets this team to work together and to work hard, so we can create the value that we are aiming to create. We invest a lot of time here on detailing the execution of this strategy. I hope that you are clear on what we are trying to achieve, on the simplicity of what we want to execute, but more than convinced on our ability to deliver on this dream and this ambition for the next 10 years. We also brought forward here, and I think that this is always very important, every time that I have a meeting with my team, I talk about our results, but I also talk about what I've been learning, right?
We brought this forward, so the resilience of our category and our ability to grow, the strategy that is consistent, is clear, how dynamic the environment is, and how important our consumers are in this journey. One of the big learnings on this, if I talk to you about our execution capacity last time, I want to leave you with one more thing that's very important on our culture, and this is resilience. Right, I know that we have a lot of engineers around. You're gonna remember your time in college. Resilience is this ability of a material to absorb shocks and go back to the original state. Our culture is one that is built for resilience. Our footprint is resilient, our brands are resilient, our people is resilient.
So we have a simple strategy, we have an obsession for executing and deliver excellence, and we have a very resilient company. Made by people, but very resilient and driven by this culture of excellence. So we provide to you our beer coaster; it's at your tables. We can try to make this reach our colleagues on Zoom, and this is really my final message. So we operate in an incredible, vibrant, large, and growing category. We have leadership advantages, that we work very hard to earn them and to maintain them. We have replicable growth drivers that we are deploying at scale to create superior profitability. So once again, thank you very much.
I enjoyed a lot our conversations here in these two days, and I want to thank you again for all the attention, for the questions, for the feedbacks, for being here with us physically and virtually over the last two days. I wish you a safe travel home. Thank you again, and we'll see each other on our quarterly calls. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you.
Is there something else?
Yes.
So thanks to Michel, thanks to you all for joining, and thanks to the people on the webcast for being extremely patient at various times today. So we're gonna end it there. I think people on the live stream, enjoy your mornings, your afternoons, your evenings, wherever you are tuning in from. For those that are heading to the airport today and requested an arranged transfer, they should be scheduled to leave from the hotel around three hours before, but just check in with the concierge desk to make sure. Again, we really appreciate all of you that were able to to travel and join us in person. We don't take for granted your participation and support for the company. So safe travels to you all. Speak soon. My final message is that in our company, we always say feedback is a gift.
We will be sharing with you a survey on the event. Please share with us all the constructive feedback, the positives and negatives. We really do take it into account, and we'll see you again, hopefully soon, but certainly another Capital Markets Day, sometime in the not-too-near future. All right. Have safe travels, everyone.