Welcome to the Groupe SEB first half 2025 sales and results presentation. My name is Alan and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded, and for the duration your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you require assistance at any time, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. Today we will be joined by Stanislas de Gramont, CEO, and Olivier Casanova, Executive VP and CFO. I will now hand you over to your host, Stanislas de Gramont, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Alan. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to this first half results call. I will cover the presentation together with Olivier Casanova, our Chief Financial Officer. Of course, afterwards, as said, we will answer your questions starting with the first half highlights. It's been a pretty busy and in many terms positive quarter for us and half year. We've seen in particular in the second quarter an acceleration of our sales in Western Europe. We've seen continued growth in Asia and that's a very reassuring fact. We've seen a return to growth in the professional business in the second quarter, although half one is still negative as it was expected. All this has been pretty blurred by, let's call it, a series of uncertainties and wait-and-see attitudes related to the U.S.
tariffs and a consequence of that strong currency volatility that has impacted in parts of sales and more importantly our bottom line. During this first half we've done a few transformational things for the group. We've acquired La Brigade de Buyer in premium and professional cookware. We've issued in May a EUR 500 million bond with a five-year maturity. We've inaugurated our new European logistics platform for cookware in Burgundy, France. We've opened our first European refurbishment center in France in Is-sur-Tille. We've launched our first recycling programs for used pans using waste collection areas and lately La Poste, which is a French post office collection scheme. Now back to the numbers. For the first half we see first half sales slightly growing 0.6% like-for-like versus 2024, when Q2 is in fact growing 1.9% versus 2024.
We've seen our first half ORfA at EUR 119 million versus EUR 244 million last year, with EUR 69 million in the second quarter against EUR 133 million last year. Our net financial debt stands at EUR 2.658 billion at the end of June 2025, of which EUR 180 million is the French Competition Authority fine, which means an increase of EUR 46 million versus June 2024. Of course, we will analyze in detail all these numbers in the next few minutes, myself and Olivier, starting with the sales increase. As I said, 0.6% organic growth in half one. We have a negative currency effect of 1.7%, EUR 64 million, a scope effect of 1.3%, leading to EUR 3.748 billion in sales. The second quarter has been slightly better in organic growth, 1.9%, with a slightly worse currency effect at EUR 57 million.
- 3.1%, a scope effect of EUR 17 million, leading to EUR 1.842 billion in sales in Q2. Now, currencies have been extremely volatile during this semester in particular and also during the second quarter. In fact, the first half is impacted for EUR 64 million negative currency impact on sales with EUR 7 million in Q1 and EUR 57 million in Q2. Now that's a strong acceleration in Q2 yet pretty contained versus 2024 half one, which was EUR 127 million negative currency impact on sales. When we look at the split of the business between consumer and professional, starting with consumer, I'll go with professional straight away. We see consumer business in first half 2.2% like-for-like sales growth. When the professional business posts 0.3% reported and -9.6% like-for-like. I'd like to elaborate immediately on the professional business. Yes, first half is still -10% like-for-like.
The second quarter is 3.5% positive like-for-like, 10.7% growth in reported, which is in line with our expectations. We've said in the last four quarters that professional would be suffering comps between the last quarter of 2020 and the first two quarters in 2025. In fact, we see that as of Q2 2025 we are back to positive territory in like-for-like sales growth. This graph shows the quarterly sales growth year-on-year. It's visual that Q3, Q4 2024, Q1 2025 were negatively impacted by the base. Q2 is a positive 4% against a positive 4% last year. If we go into the details of what this is made of, I've talked about the comps. We see that excluding these large deals in China, we have approximately 10% growth year-on-year in the second quarter. That is great.
This is driven by services and new contracts with a good contribution of tea chains in China and good rollouts in Eastern Europe and in the rest of Asia. We've acquired in the end of Q1 a company called Tasty in China that allows us to expand and deepen our service offering to coffee chains and tea chains, thus increasing our customers' penetration and further enhancing loyalty of those customers. We confirm that we expect a return to growth of the coffee division and professional coffee in the second half of this year, which is going to be a key element of difference in financial performance year-on-year. This quarter, this half year has also seen the first half year of consideration of La Brigade de Buyer that was acquired in January. So far so good, sales and profit contribution are positive. Moving on to consumers.
Consumer, we started the year with a slight growth. We put a first half at 2.2% like-for-like growth, of which 1.6% in the second quarter. We see a very contrasted situation in the second quarter. Good acceleration in Europe in Q2 with markets which are still resilient. We confirmed the return to growth in Asia, especially in China. We have an unfavorable comparison base in South America that is already starting to ease at the end of the second quarter. We have big uncertainties about U.S. tariffs with a very marked wait-and-see attitude from retailers. North America, and last, high currency volatility with a negative impact on sales increased in the second quarter. Now, if I elaborate on each of those points, first graphically you see what we say, which is the Americas are in negative territory in sales.
South America, Q1, Q2, North America, an inversion between Q1 and Q2, + 4.9% becoming - 11.5%. We see EMEA hitting + 3.5% in the first semester with a good second quarter in Western Europe, + 6.8%. That is great. I'll come to that in a second. Other EMEA countries also, we'll explain what's going on. We think it's a bit of a consensual drop in sales, but I'll explain that further. As we said, China and Asia hold good growth rates, + 3.9% in Asia, of which + 3.2% in China, consistent with a Q1 at just 3.5%. Now, moving on to consumer in Western Europe, we see a marked acceleration in growth between Q1 and Q2. Q2 is at 6.8%, half one is at + 3.4%. There is a double-digit growth in floor care, in cookware, and in linen care.
We see the effect and the impact of our marketing investments and the success of recent launches in floor washers, in garment steamers, in oil-less fryers, in blenders. We mentioned back in the end of Q1 some disalignment between sell-in and sell-out, when in fact this of course corrected compared to Q1, in particular in France, and that supports also the improvement of the sell-out in the second quarter. A pretty good first quarter driven by what is probably the bigger or the more important pillar for growth of the group, which is innovation. Other EMEA countries show a very contrasted situation. Numbers first, first half is 3.6% like-for-like growth, with the second quarter barely flat, slightly negative, and in fact we have some great and some not so great in this first half.
The first thing is the half one last year was a very high comps basis, I think half high double digit growth. The positive is a very impactful rollout of innovations and double digit growth in categories such as oil-less fryers, full auto coffee machines, or cookware. We see positive momentum in Eastern Europe and Turkey. We have suffered some political or geopolitical disturbances which have negatively impacted our Q2 business in some countries in the region. Romania, big political turmoil from April all the way through to the end of June and carries on so far. The Middle East, which no need to say, has been pretty badly impacted by the events in the Gulf and in Iran and Algeria, which has stopped allowing or reduced substantially the ability to import Groupe SEB products in this country against a pretty robust historical number last year.
Other EMEA not so great in terms of numbers, but we see that the reasons are well understood and can be recovered. North America has been bad, has been bad with sales down 11.5% in the second quarter. That was after 5% growth in Q1. We have uncertainties regarding the U.S. tariffs and much higher than expected. I remember answering a question back in April about what was our scenario and our scenario was a median scenario when in fact what we have now is we don't have a scenario yet. We have uncertainties, we have a lack of visibility of what's going on and that is much longer, that is lasting much longer and much deeper than we would ever have expected that to last. A direct consequence of that is that the selling is heavily impacted by American retailers' wait and see attitudes. That's one.
Also some turmoil in import patterns. Some customers are moving from direct imports where the sales are materialized from China and they take care of the imports into a direct selling business in the United States. That creates a lag in the selling timing, that creates uncertainty in who pays what tariffs. There's a lot of turmoil in the import patterns in North America and the U.S. in particular, which have a pretty bad effect on our sales and our performance. We don't see at this stage that these disturbances should stop in the second half. In fact, when we all read the same press articles and the same newspapers with the good news one day, bad news the next day, uncertainty anyway through the period.
In terms of our mitigation plans that we are talking and commenting, excuse me, back in April, they are currently being implemented with new pricing hitting the market. We so far contained impact on consumer demand. Bad performance in North America in the second quarter, direct negative, direct impact on the uncertainties of tariffs and probably those disturbances should carry on through Q3 at least. South America is a bit simpler to understand. It all starts and stops with the comparison base, which was still high in the second quarter. Half one sales were comparing to particularly high level of sales in 2024. We've talked at length about the El Nino climate phenomenon in 2024 where we saw sales grow or surge by 29% versus previous year.
Today we are in a La Nina phenomenon, which is a colder weather, and therefore we are comparing against a very high last year with negative weather effect. Excluding fans, we see our sales are growing nicely, particularly in Colombia, and we see that this seasonal effect on this comps effect is fading away at the end of the first half with more positive trends expected in the second half. Summary, in Europe and North America, Americas are bad, Europe is good, much better in Q2, especially in Western Europe. Now moving into a second engine of the group, which is China. China is holding up pretty well with 3.4%, 3.2% like-for-like growth in Q2, very comparable to 3.4% like-for-like growth in Q1.
You see the effect on the devaluation of the Chinese, on the strengthening or weakening of the Chinese yuan against the euro with a four point difference in the reported sales between Q1 and Q2 first half. Sorry. The story is pretty much always the same. We are consolidating our market shares and our leadership both in cookware and in kitchen electrics. We've been successful in Q2 on recent product launches, oil-less fryers, some water dispensers, some blenders. We see that there is some limiting impact on our sales of the stimulus programs that are more focused on large kitchen appliances, and we maintain a positive outlook for the full year. The second growth engine of the group, China, is holding up quite well. The positive upside on this quarter, which is confirming what we had in Q1, is the positive performance of sales in other Asian countries.
With the second quarter 4.9% growth like-for-like leading to a 6.3% growth like-for-like in half one. That performance is driven mostly by almost all the markets in the region, with an acceleration of Southeast Asian countries: Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam. A strong momentum in cookware, especially in Japan and South Korea. We continuously expand our product portfolio. We are launching and expanding oil-less fryers, rice cookers, versatile containers, washers, knives. That gives us some positive outlook for the full year on the back of a pretty positive first half. Now, we thought to give a bit of color to that performance. It would be great to share with you what are the key product initiatives and how they are contributing to the performance. Starting with floor washers. Floor washers is a fast-growing market with sales doubling in Europe.
We've launched a full range of products with our master product Rovante Splintin reaching number two position in Europe. We've rolled out this product offering in over 30 countries in six months and that's a key positive contributor to the sales growth of the quarter and probably of the full year. We also mentioned back in February and April the expansion of garment steamers, with the first garment steamer that is vacuuming in a way the linen that is driving a 25% sales growth in this category in Western Europe in half one. This is expanding to 25 countries through the year. For this new Aerostin product, we expanded our product range into spot cleaners, launching in south starting countries, sold over 100,000 units in six months, expanding the range in the second half and the number of countries.
Again, it's going to be not as big as floor washers, but a nice addition to our range of growing categories. We see and we know that oil-less fryers have become very big. We are still posting double-digit sales growth in the half one with sales doubling in Eastern Europe where the category is a bit less mature than in Western Europe. We have great initiatives on that product category. Same for blenders. I mean, we have 10% sales growth on the back of a good innovation blend up. Even in cookware, which as you know is our biggest or one of our biggest categories, we see first half sales of 6% globally with growth close to 10% in Europe. Driven by innovation, we see a diversification of consumer expectations.
We see an expansion of our product offering that drives, that allows us to trade up, that allows us to bring functional innovations which are feeding that growth. Beyond that, we also have continued growth of our ingenuity innovations, stackable cookware with double-digit growth in 17 markets throughout the globe. Overall, we see that our performance in particular in Western Europe and in the developed world where we operate is driven by innovation. That growth applies to many of our categories. We have one difficult spot, which is electrical cooking, where we are suffering. We are positive, very positive on air fryers. We are suffering on some of our historical categories like electric pressure cooker and [OptiGrill], but we think we can correct that in the second half. Professional. We've commented on comfort, we've commented, this is the fans business in Latin America.
On the very positive side, we see home care, double-digit growth. We see cookware, very positive. Food preparation, beverage in positive territories, linen care. Our growth is driven by innovation. I would say the summary of the second quarter is that our growth engines, albeit not very fast yet, are all three working positively and we end the quarter with a positive view on our sales outlook for the year. Now I will hand over to Olivier Casanova to comment through the financial results and I will come back with the evolution of our guidance for the full year. Olivier.
Thank you, Stanislas. Moving on to results. As Stanislas has already indicated, we have a weak profit contribution of EUR 119 million in S1, which is down 50% on last year, as you know. However, we need to bear in mind that Q1 and Q2 generally provide a modest contribution to the profit of the full year. I think we've already mentioned earlier in the year that this seasonal bias is going to be even more the case this year. There are effectively a number of elements, some of which will reverse in the second half, which impacted our profitability in the first half. I will explain them one by one. The first element which is explaining a big swing versus last year is the lower contribution from Professional Coffee. I think we mentioned at length the drop in the big contract or the sales in China.
This is of course in a business which has a larger fixed cost base. This is explaining a EUR 40 million drop year-on-year in the first half. The second element is the situation in North America, which has unfortunately two negative effects. In the quarter, I will come back again on the situation for the second half. In the quarter, we have first the wait-and-see attitude from retailers and you saw how this translated into lower sales. We had the 4.9% growth in North America in Q1 and minus 11.5% in the second quarter. The second negative effect is the time lag between the increased tariffs which impacted from the beginning of April and the implementation of our compensatory measures. I think we discussed that during our first quarter results.
In part, it's of course increased prices and those increased prices were passed on to our customers in the back end of May and in June and therefore they are contributing modestly to compensate the negative impact of tariffs in the quarter. The third element is unfortunately in some ways linked to the situation with tariffs, which is the strong volatility of currency, the appreciation of the euro and the strong volatility in many emerging currencies. This has two effects. In fact, on the long currencies, on emerging markets, the strong fluctuation is again creating a time lag between the devaluation of the currency which is impacting our results and our ability to compensate that by price increases. It is not done immediately and it takes some time to be implemented. The second element is on the short currency.
Normally we would expect, of course, when the euro is strengthening against the dollar and the Chinese yuan, that this would have a positive impact on our results. This will definitely be the case in the second half, but it's not the case in the first half. Why? We have, on the one hand, the negative translation effect when we convert the profits from North America or, more importantly, from China into euro. We don't have yet the positive impact on our purchases because this is, let's say, stocked into inventory during the quarter and will be released in the second half of the year. This is creating a EUR 20 million net impact in the first half. The third element, sorry, the EUR 25 million net and EUR 20 million for North America.
The fourth element is the fact that, as Stanislas de Gramont highlighted recently, just a few minutes ago, we have a rich pipeline of product launches, not only in existing categories, but with washers or spot cleaners into new categories. We wanted to support this rich product pipeline with strong investments in growth drivers in particular, because in some of these new categories we need to educate consumers and so there is an investment. We will see, of course, the growing benefits of these investments over the year with certainly an acceleration of sales growth in the second half. As we saw, it's already evident in Western Europe, for example, in the second quarter. Now let's take a moment to see how these parameters will behave in the second half. We certainly expect the negative effect to reverse on Professional Coffee.
As we said, we are coming out of this negative comparison basis and therefore we expect that the growth of the core business will translate into increased contribution in the second half. The appreciation, or let's say the compensation of currency volatility, will certainly be much better in the second half. In particular, with the benefit of the drop of the CNY and the US dollar into our purchase cost, as I mentioned, we also expect acceleration of our sales growth in the second half thanks to the investments. There will be, of course, a lower growth in our growth drivers in the second half compared to last year than in the first half compared to the first half last year.
The one element that remains unknown at this stage, of course, is the impact on North America, as Stanislas indicated at the moment, of course, we know that there is still a lot of uncertainty. We heard just a few hours ago that there is an agreement with Japan, but there is still a lot of, let's say, agreements to be struck. This will remain, unfortunately, let's say, an unknown, at least potentially a negative element, but an unknown. In a nutshell, there are many of these negative elements that impacted the first half that should reverse in the second half. Now, moving on from ORfA to net result, of course, not surprisingly, the ORfA decrease of EUR 125 million is impacting net income by a similar amount. The reason is simple. Employee profit sharing and other operating income and expenses are similar to last year.
Our finance cost are slightly increased compared to last year, reflecting in fact mostly a lower average cash balance in the semester. On the other hand, on the positive side, of course, the lower profit before tax is leading to lower income tax. All this leads to a very modest EUR 1 million net income for the first half. As we said, it is always, let's say, bias to the second half, given the seasonality of our business. Let's move on to working capital. Working capital stands at 18.6% of sales compared to 18.2%. Not very far from last year. Therefore it hides, unfortunately, a big difference in terms of inventory levels. As you can see, we are at EUR 1.9 billion compared to just under EUR 1.7 billion last year. Of course, we always have a seasonal peak of inventory at the end of June.
Given the weight of ourselves in H2, this, let's say, element is heightened this year in particular because of our expectation for sales in H2, but also because we advanced in fact supply of products in the first half. Given in particular, let's say, the uncertainty around supply chains linked to tariffs. Of course, we continue to be impacted by the Red Sea crisis. This has not changed. In fact, we have even more stock on water than last year. This, as you can see, is, let's say, within, let's say, the average of the last few years for a position at the end of the first half. Moving on to free cash flow generation. I commented on EBITDA and evolution of working capital requirements. On the CapEx, we have EUR 160 million of CapEx in the first half, which compares to roughly EUR 144 million of depreciation.
We are not very far. We are slightly above. This, of course, reflects the investments that we are making in some major projects, such as the completion of the cookware warehouse, which was inaugurated in the second quarter of this year, and the Shaoxing Professional Coffee hub, which is being built as we speak. The completion should be done in the second half. We have also some slight investment in Vietnam to expand, as we discussed, our production capacity. We are going to relocate, let's say, the bulk of what we produce in China for the U.S. market to Vietnam. On CapEx, we have a slight peak in lease renewals, but nothing to be worried about. It's linked to retail, the timing of renewal of retail shops and warehouses. Moving on to evolution of net financial debt, you can see the impact of dividends.
It's the SEB dividend for EUR 159 million, but it's also the dividend which is paid to the Supor minorities for just under EUR 50 million. We continue, year after year, to repatriate a large portion of the results made and the cash generated by Supor to the rest of the group. We had some acquisitions, of course, La Brigade de Buyer and some minor investment on the SEB Alliance. All this led to a subtotal of EUR 2.468 billion, which, on a comparable basis to last year, was just marginally EUR 46 million higher. To this subtotal, we need to add EUR 190 million, which was paid in relation to the fine from the French Competition Authority. This was paid in May, despite the fact that we have lodged an appeal in the court. We had to pay this amount.
As we indicated before, we are asking for an annulment of this decision and hoping to be reimbursed in due course. Finally, to conclude on our financial structure, we continue to have a very healthy balance sheet with just under EUR 700 million of cash at the end of June, to which we can add EUR 1.5 billion of committed but undrawn backup facilities. As Stanislas indicated in his introduction, we have further improved our financing structure and lengthened our average maturity in the second quarter with a successful EUR 500 million, five-year bond issue, which was done at a competitive coupon of 3.625%. This is a very satisfactory cost of financing. We have today an average maturity of long-term drawn debt which is above four years. With this I hand over to you, Stanislas, to cover the prospects.
Merci. Thank you very much. Sorry, my mic was off. Thank you, Olivier. We look at the outlook for starting with the sales and we revised our outlook considering maybe two adverse factors. The first one is our second quarter has been negatively impacted by a very unfavorable economic environment in North America, and we see that those disturbances are persistent. The percentage of these disturbances is expected through all or part of second half. As I said, the scenario, the current scenario is that there is no firm scenario, and that absence of firm scenario hinders our customers and our own ability to stabilize the business. We see, however, that our sales forecast can be fueled by an improvement in overall organic performance. In H2, we see good momentum and we expect good momentum in EMEA. We see continued growth in China and the rest of Asia.
We see a return to growth in South America, and we see the confirmation of the return to growth in Professional, which already began in the second quarter. That leads us to a full year and sales growth guidance between 2% and 4% versus around 5% previously as guided at the end of April. When it comes to the ORfA guidance, that revision includes, of course, the decline in half one results versus 2024, which weren't expected as difficult as turned out. It also includes this persistent uncertainty related to tariffs. Of course, we are implementing some margin protection measures in the USA that we do and we've done. Yet the general wait and see attitude has impacted sales in North America. We see other indirect effects on the rest of the group, and that will have a negative net impact on ORfA.
Yet we see again some positive reasons for a return to growth of our profit in the second half. We expect our profits to return to growth in the second half, driven first by the growth in the consumer activities, the accretive effect on margins of the return to growth in the professional business, strict discipline in managing operating expenses, and the higher offsetting of currency effects than we've been able to do in the first half of the year. Thus, we expect an ORfA between EUR 700 million and EUR 750 million in 2025, where we were planning an increase of the ORfA previously. In fact, we see that half two, after negative half one, should go back to the trajectory of the group's midterm ambition.
We have not commented, as you will have noticed, the classical bridge, because we thought sharing with you a bridge with the key building blocks of the ORfA between last year half one and this year half one was more clear and more relevant. This bridge is in appendix. The classical bridge is in appendix in the presentation. Feel free to ask questions on that if you feel the need or the wish to. We are now done with our presentation. Let's now move to your questions and I hand it over back to you, Alan.
Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star two. You will be advised when to ask your question. We will take our first question from Louise Wiseur, UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good evening. Thanks for taking that question. Firstly, on your new guidance, it implies strong growth in ORfA in H2. Could you give some more color on what are your assumptions behind your new guidance? I understand that you discussed about the increased contribution from professional, some acceleration in sales growth, but I wondered what tariff scenario are you including in there? Although I appreciate that, you know, just the wait and see attitude and the uncertainty obviously is impacting the business. The second question is with regards to North America, it was strongly challenged in Q2. Could you give more color on this with regards to kind of like how much volumes were impacted and how much prices were up and how do you think about this for the rest of the year in North America as maybe you will get more price increases in H2?
The last question is with regards to professional, the good news is that the professional business is back to growth in Q2. Do you have more visibility on large deals now? How do you think about the growth for that part of the business in H2, please.
Thank you, Louise. Thank you for your questions. I'll take one to three and Olivier will cover number two. The new guidance growth is based on three or four assumptions. The first one is China and Asia are pretty constant and we see no reason why that current trend would change. Half one, half two versus half one. We've invested substantially in marketing expenses in the first half, in Western Europe in particular. We see that there is an acceleration of the growth momentum and we expect that growth momentum to hold on in Europe in the second half. We see the professional business that has confirmed that it is more or less on track with what we're expecting.
Q1, Q2 and we have no reason to believe we should go off track, which means net growth of the professional sales in the second half of the year not particularly driven by more large deals. It's more a recurring business that is feeding this growth. We think that we have in our second quarter a lot of the reasons to believe the sales growth guidance in the second half of the year. Of course, I'm sorry, I forgot Latin America, which is a direct mechanical impact. I mean here it's almost graphical impact, but it's not so big. We see in our first half, in our first quarter and second quarter a trajectory that allows us to believe that the second half sales growth, including professional, is credible and feasible.
Okay, so on North America, as we said, we have implemented our price increases to compensate for the tariff impact gradually over, let's say, end of May and June for some of it. It's still early days. Of course, the price increase on a pan which is sold at $19.99 is a relatively modest dent on the consumer purchasing power. We will have to see the lingering effect over a longer period of time. Today, what we note is that we don't see a big impact on our sales sell-out over the last few weeks. Again, it's still early days and it's difficult to have a firm view on the evolution. It will also depend, of course, on the ultimate level of all the tariffs that are currently being contemplated. We don't have a view at this stage. What gives us confidence is that we have strong market positions.
We are leadership in cookware and linen care, which are our two biggest categories. We have, of course, very strong brands with T-fal and All-Clad, and we have long-standing relationships with our customers. All of this puts us in a good position to weather the uncertain situations. At the moment, we are more impacted by the wait-and-see attitude and the uncertainty which is surrounding the level of tariffs.
Does that answer your questions, Louise?
Yeah, I was just wondering within the guidance also, is there a specific tariff scenario you put in there? It's just about, you know, whatever the scenario, anyway, you're impacted by the wait and see attitude because it does feel like a lot is going to depend also on what happens with the U.S. and the rest of the business performing very well in order to achieve the strong growth in offer. Just wanted to know about that.
Yes.
Yes, we don't expect a worsening impact of the tariffs.
Yes.
We don't expect a worsening impact of the uncertainties linked to tariffs.
Yes. We had in one quarter a negative impact of EUR 20 million in our, let's say, best scenario. Today we are expecting a continuation of the situation for part of H2, which gives you some idea of the order of magnitude of the impact, the lingering impact that we have taken into account in our revised guidance. Of course, it's one of the reasons, one of the big reasons for the revised guidance compared to earlier in the year.
Thanks.
Thank you, Luisa.
We will take our next question from Mary Ford, Bernstein. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes, good evening. I just want to come back on the Forex impact on the second half because if I'm right, you should start to benefit from better Forex. What did you factor in your projections for 2025 and what do you foresee for 2026?
2026, Marilyn, you are testing my ability to project FX at 12 months horizon. You have, let's say, high opinion of my abilities.
It's just regarding the edging that you've got.
No, no, of course
I'm at the same level. Next is just the sense of my questions. It's not about projection, about Forex.
Okay, for H2 you're right. We expect, let's say, to go back to our historic ability to compensate currency depreciation in emerging markets. We said consistently that we are able to increase prices. Generally, it doesn't happen from one day to another, but over a period of time we can compensate this. We don't compensate 100%, but we compensate a large part of the negative effect. We expect to be in that situation in the second half for emerging market currencies. Of course, there is a slight, let's say, additional difficulty this year, which is that some of these currencies have not depreciated against the dollar, but they have depreciated against the euro. We have to manage that on the short currencies. Absolutely, we should see a benefit, a net benefit in the second half because, as you know very well, we are very short of US dollar and CNY.
If the US dollar and the CNY remain very weak in the second half, we will definitely have a positive impact in our results. Of course, we don't have 100% of the benefit because we have hedges which are not at 1.18 for the dollar and 8.40 for the CNY. We will have nevertheless net positive impact in the second half.
In fact, if I may, what supports the guidance for the full year profit and therefore the second half profit is a Professional Coffee turnaround in terms of sales trend, much better if not positive, impact management of the forex, and further dynamic activity on the consumer business in Europe, APAC, and Latam. These are the three key things that explain a guidance that can seem a bit ambitious on the second half.
Thank you.
We will take our next question from Alessandro Cecchini. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hello everybody and thank you for taking my questions. The first one actually is on Europe. I would like to understand what is the current business climate, consumer climate in major countries. You had a very good performance in Western Europe, while Eastern Europe was strangely, I would say, flattish. I would like to understand your current dynamics. My second question is a follow up on the U.S. impact that you factor in. You had - 20%, roughly speaking, of negative in the second quarter. I didn't understand your building blocks for the second half in North America and the potential impact that you are incorporating. Thank you.
I'll take the first one. Olivier will take the second one. Thank you. Alessandro, good evening to you. The European climate. You see that first Western Europe is at 6.8% growth. The climate isn't particularly positive. I think the current promotional periods are not delivering great results. I think there is some uncertainties in consumers. Traffic in store is not remarkably high. The climate's not very good. What helps us in our sales is a strong push behind new product initiatives and innovations. It's a lot dependent on our actions and our activities. You're right that the performance in other EMEA markets is odd or strange. I mean we're more used to see + 15%, + 25%, + 30%. I think that flat sales is again suppressed 29% last year. The comps was particularly high in half one last year. Second, we have some, I would say, spot geopolitical challenges.
Spot, I don't know, you never know if a geopolitical challenge is spot or not. There's clearly an impact in the Gulf and in the Middle East of what happened in May June between Iran, Israel and the United States. There is clearly an impact on imports authorization in Algeria. I mean if you don't have currencies or if you're not allowed to import, you don't make any sales. There has been a nagging effect in Romania of this political president or this presidential election which has been lasting since the beginning of April through May and June. The market there is pretty much flat or negative, unlike what it was in the last three, five years. All in all we do expect better performance in the second half in other EMEA markets.
Difficult to point to this or that market that is doing bad now that would do better then. Overall I think we net net the business climate in Western Europe isn't particularly great. There isn't particularly good traffic in stores, there isn't particularly good morale for consumers. If anything, French and Germans would be a bit more than others. That's, I would say, the way I would describe the business climate in Europe. Olivier.
As we said, we have a negative impact from the situation in North America of $20 million in the second quarter, and our scenario for the second half or for the full year is based on a continuation of, let's say, the wait and see attitude from retailers for part of the second half. It doesn't include, it's not estimating that this will last until the end of the year, but it will continue for a little while, and therefore we have, let's say, a lingering negative impact in the second half.
Okay, probably not 2020. 2020, so not additional $40 million, no, lower.
That's what I said. We are not, let's say at this stage, we are not as pessimistic as that. We are not expecting the situation to continue until the end of the year, but we can see that it is continuing for part of the second half, which was not our expectation back in April.
I think the point of giving a number for the first half or second quarter impact is to precisely frame and understand the magnitude of the impact. Because if we say, conversely, we have an impact, but we don't give a number, you can work out you don't know if it's $10 million or $30 million. It's better to tell you that's what it is. That's what we assume it could be in terms of magnitude in the second half. It's more difficult for us to point precisely to a given number.
Okay, thank you. Last question is on the organic top line growth that the midpoint is basically to assume mid single digit organic growth. The second half, considering price increases, you expect, I mean, still volumes to be positive or to have the vast majority, I mean, driven by price mix in the second half or a mix of these three elements. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll take that. That's a very good question because that allows to lift an ambiguity. We haven't raised our prices. We've raised our prices in the U.S. We don't see price increases outside of the U.S. We've raised our prices in the U.S. as a mitigation measure against tariffs to mitigate or to protect our gross margin. Apart from the U.S., there is no price increase in the group plan in the second half. Now, that said, of course, the U.S. will have some impact on the overall price mix of the group, but the U.S., as you know, is 10% of the group. The impact will be contained in terms of its impact on the full year total group bridge. Thanks for the question.
Okay, so basically, if I understood correctly, even in emerging markets, so in Brazil, where you are not raising prices.
Thank you, Alessandro. We are not. We are raising price. Thank you. I'm sorry if I was too short or quick. We raised price in the U.S. to address tariffs. That's a one shot price increase. We routinely raise prices in emerging markets when we are up against devaluation, and we do that in the second half as we did it in the first half and in the last 10 or 15 years and probably in the next five and 10 years. We don't raise prices otherwise.
Maybe in conclusion, we continue to see a positive volume increase, and this will accelerate in the second half. We will see a greater contribution from price mix in the second half than we've seen in the first half.
Okay, thank you.
Sorry, Alessandro , for the confusion. I was too fast and too focused on the U.S. My fault.
Thank you.
Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Now we will take our next question from Geoffrey d'Halluin, BNP Paribas. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes, good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. I will have two questions, please. Just getting back to North America and the EUR 20 million impact you mentioned for Q2, I'm just wondering if it's driven by a decline in terms of top line growth, or have you also seen an increase in terms of cost of goods sold due to the tariffs in Q2? I just want to get a sense on your H2 comments in North America. My second question is related to China. You reported growth rate of 3% in Q2, which is largely in line with Q1. I'm just wondering what's driven the growth. Is it volumes, is it price? Have you seen any impact from the incentive measures from the China government? Any thoughts regarding the second half of the year would be helpful, please. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Geoffrey. I'll take the second one. Olivier, cover the first one. On China, we are operating in a lot of product families and in other categories we see that some categories are up, some are down. The main answer or the core of the answer is we are able through mix and product family management to gain market share overall, driven by some winning categories and some less winning categories. What we can say is that the impact, and that can be different between Q1 and Q2. I think we had a better Q2 in woks and in blenders than Q1, but it doesn't mean anything. The other thing that we can see is that the impact on tariffs, on subsidies or government helps, on our business is minimal. These impacts weigh more on large kitchen appliances than on a small domestic appliance.
Now there's a bit of a confusion maybe nowadays in China that some local governments have kept the subsidies, some others have dropped them. It's creating some price disturbances, but nothing to be commented at the level of this performance. We see China as very strong, as a strong contributor to growth driven by innovation, driven by market share gains. What we see in Q1 we see in Q2, and what we see in Q2, we have no reason not to expect it in the second half of the year. Olivier.
Okay, so on North America, just to clarify, you have two effects on the top line as well. As we said, we moved from +4.9% to -11.5%. It's the wait and see attitude. The fact that customers, not knowing what would be the applicable tariffs, decided to delay decisions on selling. It's also the change of supply chains. You know, if you move from direct import, when we sell direct import, we sell ex China. When we have to go bring the goods to the U.S. and go through customs ourselves, it's a three, four months delay in the same sale. It's impacting, let's say, our selling in the quarter. In terms of results, we have of course the first element, which is the drop in sales.
The second element that we have as well is the delay between the negative impact from tariffs and the implementation of tariff increase, which as I said was largely towards the end of the quarter. That's why for a few months it is creating an imbalance between the additional cost and the implementation of the price compensation.
Does that clarify your question?
Just maybe a very last follow up. That means, in your H2 scenario you broadly expect the price increase to offset the U.S. tariff impact. Given you said you should have a lower impact than the EUR 20 million numbers you saw in Q2. Is that a fair comment?
Yes. The price increase has been, let's say, sized to compensate for the majority of the negative impact. Of course, what we don't know at this stage is the impact on the selling on the one hand and the impact on consumption and therefore volumes on the other hand. It's too early to say. That's why there is a net negative if you want.
Okay, thank you very much.
Otherwise, you could say if you are compensating. At the end of the day, it's a zero sum game, but it's not a completely zero sum game.
That's why we
hence the uncertainty.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
We will take our next question from Christophe Chaput of BHF. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes, good evening gentlemen. Just a quick follow-up from my side coming back to the direct import in the U.S. If I understand correctly, the client, let's say, doesn't take the products in China but in the U.S., and you have a lag effect from three weeks to four weeks. At the end of the day, the level of inventories of the clients is decreasing. Is there a chance that at some point you will, let's say, benefit from reversals or catch-up effect on inventories because they are going to be very minimal, let's say, if we consider that the demand is not changing.
It's a very smart analysis and this can happen. What we don't know is first, when you have double-digit price increase, which we had, there is a direct impact on volume inventories in terms of coverage. I mean, we see sales in dollars, we see inventory in volume. We need to stabilize. First, in theory, you are absolutely right. What we lose in the lag of moving from direct imports to local sales, if they go back to direct imports, we should win back that lag. That's absolutely true. What remains to be seen is how inventories in volumes will behave during that move. You may lose. If you lose volume sales because you've increased your price and your value sales are flat, then you may gain that lag back but lose the overall volume inventory levels. Does that make any sense?
Okay. We have to think about it. Okay, that's clear for me. Thank you. You say that the sellout is nevertheless at a good level. Let's say in the U.S.
Sellout s o far, holds in dollars, prices have increased, which suggests that sellout in volume is behind. Right.
Okay, thank you for the question. Thank you.
We have no further questions on the line. I will now hand you back to your host for closing remarks.
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your question. Thank you very much for your interest. We will be meeting many of you in roadshows in the next couple of days, so we'll have opportunities to cover these points. Our next appointment will be on the 22nd of October to cover the nine month sales and financial data. In the meanwhile, for those who are seeing the roadshows, I'll see you. We'll speak tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or next week. For the other ones, if you take some holidays, enjoy your holidays and thank you for your continued support and interest in our company. Good evening.
Thank you. Bye bye.
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