Good morning. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Sodexo first quarter fiscal 2022 revenues conference call. I advise you that this conference is being recorded today on Thursday, January 6, 2022. At this time, I would like now to hand the conference over to the Sodexo team. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Sharon. Good morning, everyone. Happy New Year. Welcome to our first call of the year. I have with me Marc Rolland, our Group CFO, who will go through the numbers and take your questions. We've started a new format where it will just be Marc for Q1 and Q3, their short presentations. As usual, if you haven't already done so, the slides and press releases are available at sodexo.com, and you'll be able to access this call on our website for the next 12 months. I remind you that this call is being recorded and may not be reproduced or transmitted without our consent. Please get back to me if you have any further questions after the call. I now turn you over to Marc. Thank you.
Thank you, Virginia, and good morning. Let me take this opportunity to wish you a very happy and healthy New Year. I'm pleased to be here with you this morning to cover the first quarter numbers. In slide four, you can see that the strong recovery seen in H2 fiscal 2021 has continued into the first quarter. Q1 group revenue reached EUR 5.3 billion, up 18.8% as published and +17.5% organically. I remind you that this compares to 17.1% in Q4 and 19% in Q3 last year. The scope change of -0.9% is the net of the disposals and the acquisition. This does not yet include the deconsolidation of our childcare activities because we are still waiting for the antitrust ruling.
For the first time in a long time, currencies provided a boost of 2.1% to revenues, helped by the higher dollar, sterling, and real. As far as organic growth is concerned, on-site services continued to increase significantly at 17.9%, returning to 95% of currency-adjusted fiscal 2019 levels, helped by the very strong recovery in North America, up 28.2%. Benefits and rewards returned to a high single-digit growth and is well above fiscal 2019 levels, with balanced growth in its two regions. On slide five, you can see that all the on-site segments are improving in Q1, with healthcare back over fiscal 2019 levels, helped by the rapid testing centers contract in the U.K. Education continued to recover in the first quarter with a return to school and universities this academic year in the U.S.
I remind you that in Europe, schools were already back last year. Schools are now up at 104% of pre-COVID levels, helped by the free meal programs in the U.S. and strong recovery in student numbers in India. In Europe and China, activity was already back last year, but was impacted by class closures and one less working day during the quarter in France. Universities are back up at 84% of pre-COVID levels, and while student meal plans have returned close to pre-COVID levels, there are fewer events on campus, and staff shortages are making it difficult to open all retail outlets. B&A recovered strongly up to 91%. The return to work accelerated in September, even though it remained slower in North America than in Europe.
Sports and leisure increased very substantially at 64% of pre-COVID levels in Q1 versus 43% in the fourth quarter, with stadiums, events, and large convention centers reopening and with stronger average spend per person. However, since the end of November, there have been some cancellations of year-end catering events, but I remind you there were none last year either, and we had not planned for many anyway. On slide six, you can see the difference between the performance of food and non-food services. Non-food is now well ahead of pre-COVID levels. The good news is that food services have recovered 10 points in the quarter to reach 83% in Q1. As far as benefits and rewards is concerned, revenues are now firmly back over pre-COVID levels.
Even in Latin America, which has been trailing Europe, there has been a substantial improvement in Brazil, which saw high single-digit growth for the first time in many quarters, even if there is still some way to catch up with fiscal 2019. In this heat map, we try to chart the importance of the different situations in our four major countries. Brazil has the biggest inflation in both food and labor, but it also has the strongest tradition of passing this through indexation and is quite agile in implementing operational and supply chain measures to compensate. North America is having significant food and labor inflation, and it is also more complicated because they also have additional issues with delivery fill rates and labor shortages, which in turn also have an impact on cost in some form or another.
The teams have been very actively using indexation clauses to pass through the inflation and are also actively putting in place mitigation measures in the operation and supply chain to ensure that profitability is protected. In the U.S., I remind you that we also have 40% of our contracts as cost-plus, and more than 20% of our P&L contracts is retail, where pricing adjustments are available. In France, we suffered some delivery fill issues, but inflation remained under control. This is due to our suppliers contracts, where prices were protected for a while. However, we are expecting more significant food inflation in the next quarters. Due to the increase in the minimum wage in October and then in January, as well as underlying labor pressures, we expect labor inflation to be more significant in this year than it has been in the past years.
Even though we have indexation clauses in France is a country where it is more difficult to pass through the real inflation in pricing. It is due to some disconnect between indexes in contracts and perceived inflation. The teams are active on this as we speak. In France, we've also been putting in place a lot of mitigation plans to offset the cost increases going forward. In the U.K., what will probably surprise you is that our inflation is actually very contained for the moment. We are benefiting from protected purchasing prices negotiated before inflation picked up. Our challenge will come in the second half as its purchasing prices get reviewed and labor cost increases. We are well-armed in the U.K. with a good level of cost-plus contract, and we have strong indexation mechanism which are embedded in our big contracts.
Overall, the inflation in the numbers in the first quarter's revenues was about 2%. This quarter we have positive net new wins. In slide nine, you can see a few example of what we have signed. For Salesforce, we have signed a multi-year contract using The Good Eating Company for coffee and barista services in their offices in San Francisco and New York. We have signed with Simpson Senior Services communities in the U.S. to provide dining services for residents at Simpson Senior Services community locations. BRS has also won a two-year contract with French UCANSS, the Union of National Social Security Funds, for 85,000 employees. This will make it our number one digital client in France. As far as retention is concerned, we have renewed the Capital Health contract in New Jersey for a further 10 years.
This comes after having proven for the last 20 years that we can deliver a range of services that contribute to patient and staff wellbeing. This time around, we've added healthcare technology management to the portfolio. We have also renewed our partnership with Saint Barnabas Medical Center and Norwich University in the U.S. In terms of extension, we have signed with Diageo in the U.K. for soft FM services on a new site. Diageo has been a client since 2014, and Sodexo delivers a full range of hard and soft services across 70 sites, from Diageo's global headquarters in London to manufacturing plants and distilleries. We have also extended our service for Ausenco in Chile and Orange in France. Now let's move on to review of operations, and let's start with onsite.
You can see strong recovery in G&A with organic growth of 19.5%, accelerating from the 14.6% in H2 last year. The 48.6% growth in North America is a result of, on the one hand, ongoing growth in G&A and also in E&R, which benefited from some new contract startups as well as a return to work of support staff. On the other hand, very strong rebound in sports and leisure as stadiums and convention centers reopen. Finally, a slow but progressive return to work in corporate services. Q1 was 10 points up from the second half of last year relative to fiscal 2019. In Europe, the organic growth was more modest at 13.5%, but Europe is already much closer to pre-COVID levels.
There has been a progressive return to the office up to the end of the quarter. Sports and leisure was also up strongly with sites reopening and more events than usual. E&R and G&A segments were slower than usual with a lack of new ramp ups to compensate the full impact of the loss of the Transforming Rehabilitation contract in the U.K. In Asia, APAC, LATAM, Middle East and Africa, activity levels are well above pre-COVID levels. Corporate services and energy and resources account for the vast majority of the activity in the region. The 11.3% organic growth was driven by a rapid recovery in India and solid growth in China in corporate services. There were several significant startups in Latin America in energy and resources, which more than compensated the ramp down of the extra COVID-related FM services in the APAC region.
Now let's turn to healthcare and seniors, which was up 7.4% during the quarter. In North America, the 4.2% reflect mostly growing hospital volume, some inflation pass-through, even though retail sales remain disappointing at only 70% of pre-COVID levels. Occupancy in senior homes is growing again. Healthcare North America is still only at 89% of FY 2019 levels. This is linked predominantly to the contract losses in FY 2019 and FY 2020, and also the low level of retail sales since COVID. In Europe, organic growth was 11.3%, and thanks to the very large rapid testing centers contract in the U.K., activity is now well above pre-COVID levels. Demand for beds in senior homes has also continued to pick up progressively during the second half, and new contracts have started. It's actually during the Q1, sorry.
In Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa, organic revenue growth was 10.1% due to solid volumes in China and Brazil. Education was up 28.7% in Q1 as North American schools and universities reopened fully. North America was up 39.9%. The volume of university board plan is very close to pre-COVID levels. However, university are still suffering from a lower level of events and retail sales affected by staff shortages, lower footfall due to the persistence of some hybrid learning and strict sanitary protocols. Schools activities has also picked up significantly in terms of attendance and has been boosted by the free meal programs and despite the end of CEP. In Europe, like last year, all schools were open. Activity picked up strongly in the U.K., but was offset by class closures in November and one less working day in France.
As a result, activity was stable for the quarter. Now let's turn to benefits and rewards, which I remind you was up 7% in this quarter. You can see that employee benefits were up 9.6% on issue volume growth of 9% as the revenues benefit from the ongoing catch-up of reimbursement volumes. Employee benefits are now well above pre-COVID levels. Issue volumes are also now back over pre-COVID levels. Services diversification was down 1.7% organically. This decline reflects, on the one hand, strong growth in the fuel and mobility card, offset by the end of the exceptionally strong public benefits activity related to COVID. The growth remained very solid in Europe, Asia, and USA at 6.9%, thanks to strong new development and some further catch-up in reimbursement volumes.
In Europe, there were no currency or M&A impact this quarter as Wedoogift offset the disposal of Rydoo, and the weakness of the Turkish lira was offset by stronger currencies elsewhere. In Latin America, the 7.3% organic growth reflects a return to high single digit growth in Brazil. The rest of the region continued to grow, but at a slightly lower pace due to the decline in COVID related public benefits that I already mentioned. Operating revenues increased 7%, which I have already covered in the two preceding slides. I would like to highlight that this has been done with more and more digitalization, which is currently 6 points ahead of the levels in Q1 last year. The quarter is also boosted by the seasonality of Wedoogift consolidated from the beginning of the quarter. Financial revenues were up 7.2%.
The Brazilian interest rate started to rise from March. It is now at 9.25% versus circa 2% one year ago. Now let's turn to our FY 2022 guidance. The first quarter organic growth was strong in the upper end of the range. The recovery is solid. I remind you, we were already up at 95% of pre-COVID levels when we thought that this will come as an average for the full year. We are managing the inflation efficiently so far. The real question is whether the Omicron and the recent related measures taken by governments will have a significant impact on our activity or not. It is just too early to say.
However, I can assure you that our experience over the last two years has meant that the teams on the ground have reacted very fast to this new wave in all our countries. At this stage, we maintain our annual guidance for fiscal 2022 of an organic growth between +15% and +18% and an underlying operating profit margin close to 5% at constant rates. Looking further out, I confirm that we expect on-site services to rapidly exceed pre-COVID levels and the performance of benefits and rewards to accelerate out of the crisis. Our aim is that the group returns to regular and sustained growth with, as a first step, a return to the pre-COVID underlying operating margin, and then as a second step, a margin that is back over 6%.
The structural reduction in SG&A, a more effective organization, enhanced execution on the U.S. turnaround, accelerated deployment of the new food model, and a more active portfolio management will all contribute. I thank you all for your attention, and now I'm available to answer your questions. Operator, can you please launch the Q&A?
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound hash key. Once again, as a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star and one. Your first question comes from the line ofJames Ainley from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. Three, please. The first one, Marc, on the guidance, obviously maintained, but where do you see the pinch points? Where is it education? Is it corporate services that you see the downside risks? Can you elaborate a bit on that? Secondly, there's been some discussion in North America particularly about delayed returns to in-person learning in some U.S. school districts and at some universities. What's your understanding of the situation? How widespread are those delays? Then the third question is, back in October, I think you indicated that you're perhaps seeing some easing in the labor pressures in North America. Just wondering how that's evolved in recent weeks, especially given increased sickness rates. Could you just elaborate on that, please? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, James, for your question. On guidance, talking about where could the pinch come, clearly, I mean, the news we have in Europe on education is that the schools will vastly reopen. It's the case in France, it's the case in the U.K. We will see some disturbance in volumes, but we've already seen them in November, you know, with class closures and because of COVID and so forth. So far, I mean, the news on education is not too disturbing. On corporate services, the work from home is taking people, but it's mostly white collar. It's taking the white collar out of the office where they were going back to the office.
Clearly, I mean, we will see a drop in food services in a white collar environment. For instance, in France, in La Défense, we already feel it. I remind you that in corporate services, we have a great activity in non-food services and FM. Also, what we said earlier is that we have a good split between blue collar and white collar, so blue collar are not affected. Yes, we are expecting a drop in volume in corporate services. We're clearly counting the weeks of if it's two, three weeks, fair enough. If it was dragging into February, that will be a different impact. The daily return delay in returns in universities, yes, we've heard the same.
We've heard that some universities will probably either delay a return or start you know with a hybrid model. We're talking here so far a couple of weeks so this is what we've heard. When we factor all this and assuming those measures are short in time the teams have demonstrated a great agility to adapt our business model to the demand. You know we are at the end of a Q1 in the higher range of the guidance at 17.5%. It's slightly more than what we were expecting.
You know, the range is wide, so we are so far. I mean, we're happy to say that it's within the guidance. Easing of labor pressure, I would say gently. I mean, it's not easing substantially. There are still pressure on, you know, shortage of staff. I think we got better organized. We have a better access to the labor market. We've improved the reach and the speed at which we could hire people. As we explained also, we were paying some joining bonuses and so forth, so I think those are practices in very tight market that we continue. We are managing, you know, with the resources we have.
What I said, though, is that in some cases, like, in retail, in universities, the fact that we are short of staff obliges us to shut some retail outlets and therefore it had a small impact on the revenues. I would say it's not easing a lot, but we are getting better at managing under the pressure.
Okay. Very good. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question today, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Star and one to ask a question. There are currently no further phone questions. I will hand the call back.
Hello, are you sure there are no questions?
We have just had one come in, and your next question is from Bilal Aziz from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, everyone, and Happy New Year. Just two from my side, please. You've clearly seen a consistent acceleration of 4%-7% since the recovery took place. You've already talked us through the moving pieces you've seen in education and corporate services. It feels like you're suggesting it might be manageable so far, particularly if it's short-term in nature. Given everything you've seen in December and so far, what's your best feel for the Q2 reversal, potentially so far? Separately, you've highlighted some new contract wins, again. Can you perhaps provide some quantification on the size of those fees potentially and the net new win rate? Thank you.
I'm not sure I have understood properly the first question. Can you?
Sure.
Can you rephrase it?
Best feel for Q2 so far in a potential deceleration, if at all?
Yeah. The Omicron measures are going to have an impact, principally, I would say, on January's number. On December number, it started to have one, but you know, with the holiday season, the schools were shut. You know, the catering events, we checked the catering events. Yeah, there was a lot of cancellation, but we're not talking big numbers. I'm expecting a relatively mild impact in December because of the holiday season. In corporate services, you know, past the 15th or 20th of December, there is nobody in the office anymore. Given the working from home also, people, you know, from almost mid-December started to stay home. But those were expected.
It's more in January, because in January, clearly, in France here we are three to four days work from home. I mean, we can see here even the office is emptying out. We're talking, the measures are for a few weeks, two, three weeks. It seems that it could last only two to three weeks. What we heard from Boris Johnson yesterday was very encouraging too. We know we're leaving the U.K. in Plan B. I think a lot of governments do not want to impact the economy vastly. We are expecting a weaker Q2. Yes. January will be our weakest month. Again, I mean, those winter months are not our strongest months.
I think what was very important is that we did a good growth on the first quarter, which is usually our strongest quarter in revenue. As I said, we are in the higher range of the guidance. Yeah, you can expect a weaker Q2. The net new wins, I think we, you know, we don't comment the KPIs or at Q1, but we just give you an indication that the net new win is positive, encouraging. There is a lot more work to be done. I would say the Q1 results is decent in retention and in development, but we need to push harder. I'm sure Sophie will tell us that we need to push harder.
Brilliant. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Karl Green from RBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, thank you very much. It's Karl Green from RBC. Just a couple of questions on the inflation comments. You've made some very helpful observations there. Just in terms of, first of all, your anticipation of inflationary pressures in the second half of the fiscal year. Are they more conservative now than they were three months ago? Specifically just in terms of the U.K., you did mention those purchasing agreements which are gonna roll off and need reviewing. What's your sort of best sense as to the mark-to-market impact on prevailing food prices at the moment in terms of how that's likely to flow through to the U.K. margin, please? Thank you.
As I said, you know, the inflation we've observed in Q1 on our CAGR or revenue is about 2%. I would expect that from the Q1 2%, the full year will accelerate to something more between 4% and 5%. You know, I keep on reading that the predictions on inflation are very changing from one month to another. I'm hearing now or reading that inflation could reduce in the coming quarters. I would say from the start base and what we've observed, we have a start in Q1 about 2%, and for the full year we would be expecting 4%-5%.
While my earlier expectation three to four months ago was more like three plus. Clearly there will be more inflation than what we had expected. UK purchasing contracts. The fact is that the supply chain in the U.K. did pretty well in locking those prices. While those prices are locked, we're still passing inflation as per indexation. We are ahead of the curve in the U.K., contrary to some other countries where we are behind the curves, we are passing the inflation after we suffered it. In the U.K., we tend to pass it now while we will suffer it only in February, March. We are ahead of the curve in the U.K. You know that in the U.K. also there is a social levy, National Living Wage and so forth.
In April, there will be a hike in salaries. All this has been factored in and the actions are taking place at you know at commercial level to adjust. We have large contracts in the U.K. It's really the country where we have the largest contracts. Those contracts are very sophisticated in terms of indexation. They have a labor index, a food index, and you know social charges index and so forth. Every blip we observe in inflation is passed to clients. I am not worried about the U.K. margins. They have an action plan. They are ahead of the curve, and they have good contracts. They also have post-COVID a bit more customers than they had pre-COVID.
That's really helpful. Thank you very much for that. Just a quick unrelated follow-on question, if I can, just around the IFRIC accounting change that you flagged. I know it's very early, you're still working on it. Is there any kind of broad magnitude you can indicate around the potential impact on margin, please?
I'm not expecting it to be very significant. The thing is that it's so vague what we have to apply and the discussion with the auditors and the financial communities, even for the year-end closing on thirty-first of December, some have done the calculations, some are delaying it. It's just that it's very fluid at the moment. We're not expecting it to be massive, but we just wanted to flag it that there is these things that we're working on. I'm sure by Q2, we will be able to tell you what's going on.
Great.
Don't expect any massive adjustments, you know.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Simon Lechipre from Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, good morning. Three questions, please. First of all, on margin, any comments you can share on the phasing between H1 and H2, and if you could also give us some details on the phasing of the incremental cost savings that you expect to generate this year. Thirdly, on benefits and rewards, you mentioned strong new development in Europe. Could you be a bit more specific which countries are driving that? Would be particularly interested by any comment on France, given the recent news on trends. Lastly, still on benefits and rewards, any update on the take-up rate in Brazil, which was under pressure in previous quarter in inflation seen recently? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Simon. In terms of phasing, as you remember, last year, we had an unusual phasing because there was actually no phasing between H1 and H2. We are expecting to return to phasing. Maybe not a phasing as wide as it used to be, but in our models, we have a phasing with a stronger H1 and a weaker H2. Reduced from what we had, the 100 basis points we had historically. Obviously, the cost savings are, you know, very strong in H1, and they will start to phase out the impact. The marginal impact will start to phase out, you know, as we progress through the year, Q3 and Q4. I would say BRS is having a strong quarter.
It's not specifically one country or another. I think, I mean, they are doing good in Europe, in many countries. You know, I think they are doing good in France. They are doing good in Belgium. No, I think their performance in Europe is really, I will say broadly even, between the countries. It's a performance while they had already recovered pre-COVID or they were about to recover pre-COVID levels, the previous period. I think it's really, a good performance. In terms of BRS in Brazil, BRS in Brazil is high single digit growth in revenues, high growth in business volume.
I think, you know, double-digit growth in business volume actually in Q1. Clearly, I mean, it's helped by inflation. The good issuing volumes in Q1 will turn, you know, into reimbursement in the months to come. We are expecting a much stronger performance in Brazil at the beginning of fiscal year 2022. Not just due to inflation, but also due to commercial reasons, commercial focus and so I think it's going to be a lot better for Brazil this year, which is also combined to a better exchange rates in Brazil, because I think we have an increase on the average rate by 3.7% in Brazil, if I'm not mistaken. This is quite new for us.
This is very new.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Kean Marden from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks, morning. Karl actually asked my IFRIC question, and I've been trying to get out of the queue and failed. Just while I'm here, just a few other ones. Just to be clear, I presume the IFRIC development relates to the capitalization policy of customization and configuration costs for cloud computing. I don't know, Marc, whether you have to hand sort of how much you capitalize there. I appreciate it's a small number, but just to check. Secondly, I presume there's no sort of formal
Any detail or update that you can provide regarding the chief executive search, or the strategic options for BRS. If there's any additional background that you'd like to provide, that would be helpful. Thank you.
Yes, you're right. The IFRIC reference I was making was on the SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, you know, all the cloud computing terms that we've been working on. We're not capitalizing massive amounts, okay? Still, I mean, the question is we have to put them into the right bucket, whether it's SaaS, IaaS and PaaS and depending on which bucket they are, they can be capitalized or not. I think this is what we are trying to work out with our teams and navigating the very vague instructions we get and feedback we have from auditors.
That's why we need to observe what's happening on the market with 31st of December issue to see, because it's really a moving topic which is not well documented. Again, I mean, there could be an impact, but don't expect a massive impact. On the CEO search, the progress is advancing. Clearly there is a shortlist. The board is meeting regularly on this. We know it's a priority for the board. I think we are taking the right time to find the right person. No, we don't have a name, and we don't have a date yet. It's being worked on. On BRS strategic moves, I will tend to say same answer. I mean, we've been actively working at options.
There was communication with the board. You know, we do work, we have advisors and but yet we have not come to a conclusion. We can't tell you more as to what will be the next steps, but we are working on it.
Thanks, Marc. Very helpful.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Geoffrey d'Halluin from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Good morning, everyone, and happy New Year to you. Most of my questions have been answered, but maybe, you know, just one quick follow-up on the net new win. I appreciate, you know, you are not giving, you know, details, you know, on a quarterly basis. Could you share with us, you know, any comments you know, on first time outsourcing opportunities, you know, which kind of opportunities you are seeing there, please? Thank you.
Well, I'll be very careful at drawing statistics only of three months of activities because, you know, cut-off signing, timing of signing. On first time outsourcing, our signing of first time outsourcing in Q1 was weak but weaker than the year before. It's just a quarter. I mean, you should not draw conclusions on this. We have a fair amount of first time outsourcing in the pipeline being worked on. I think that's the difficulty with KPI over three months is, you know, they're not necessarily meaningful. I will assume we'll give you better information on this with the H1. At least we will have a longer period to discuss.
Medium term, are you seeing opportunities for increasing your first time outsourcing, even, you know, all COVID-19 issues for clients?
It is clearly a focus. Within our pipeline, it's a particular section that we are looking at. The teams are focusing on this. Yes, we are expecting to sign more out of first time outsourcing in the future. Definitely.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Star and one to ask a question. Your next question comes from the line of André Juillard from DB. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, good morning and happy New Year. Just one question on inflation. You are mentioning that you are now expecting 4%-5% inflation on the fiscal year. Could you split that between the food cost and the labor cost? Just to give us some more color about the different component of the inflation you are expecting. Thank you.
Yes, I could, but it's a lot of details. When I was mentioning 4-5%, it was the impact on the revenue. As I said, in Q1, we have 2% impact on revenue. We were expecting to be slightly above 3%, 3% when we started the year. Now I said it's more 4%-5%. When I refer to 4%-5% is what we will be passing to clients on average. Internally, between food and labor, it's very different from geographies. If I were taking the Brazilian market, the food inflation will be higher than the labor inflation.
If I take the French market, I will say at the end of the year, the labor inflation will be higher than the food inflation. In the U.K. market, given the good H1 we are going to have, I would say labor will be higher than food. In the U.S., I will say it's equal. Labor and food will be at the similar level. It's a color I can give you. I think it's,
Okay.
A fair representation of what we know today.
Any quantification possible at this stage, or it's too early?
I don't think I want to get into that level of details with you.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Bilal Aziz from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, Marc, again. Just a quick follow-up, please. Any update, timeline rather, on the appointment of the new CEO, please? I know you're targeting towards the end of last year, but perhaps an update there, please. Thank you.
The update on new CEO, I think we had a very similar question a little while ago. As I said, the processing is advancing. A shortlist exists. It's a top priority for the board and Sophie. They're working on it. It's just that we don't have a name, and I can't give you a date, but it's being worked on. The profile is still the same. That's it.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. There are currently no further questions. I will hand back the call.
If there are no more questions, thank you for being on the line today, and I wish you, again, a Happy New Year and especially a healthy new year, and talk to you soon.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.