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Earnings Call: Q4 2017

Mar 21, 2018

Dominik Richter
CEO, HelloFresh

Good morning, welcome everyone to our full year 2017 earnings call. I'm joined today by our CFO, Christian Gärtner, and our President U.S., Tobi Hartmann. The three of us will take you through the slide deck and the numbers that can be downloaded from our investor relations website on hellofreshgroup.com. We'll be focusing on four main topics over the next half an hour. Number one, we wanna review our fully audited 2017 numbers with a special focus on the fourth quarter. Secondly, we wanna take a closer look on our adjusted EBITDA results after we have focused on top line developments in our pre-release in January. Thirdly, we wanna provide you with some context on the acquisition of Green Chef that we announced late last night. Fourthly, we wanna present our guidance on, and the outlook for 2018.

Let me start off on slide 3 with a review of our 2017 numbers. If you look at revenue, we've increased revenue by 52% to EUR 905 million compared to our 2016 numbers. It's even higher than that in constant currency, I'm gonna say a few words to that in a moment. Secondly, if you look at contribution margin, we've also increased contribution margin very significantly to 23%. That's an increase of 6 percentage points over the 17% in contribution margin that we had in 2016. If you look at the adjusted EBITDA numbers, we had adjusted EBITDA of minus EUR 70 million in 2017. That's EUR 13 million better than in 2016 in absolute terms.

In relative terms, we came in at - 7.7%, which is a 6 percentage point increase versus the 2016 results that we had. One thing that often gets forgotten, but we think is very important, is our cash consumption. Cash consumption for the whole year 2017 was EUR 45 million. That's EUR 31 million less than what we consumed in 2016. If you look at those four metrics all in all, we're very excited about the outcome and think 2017 was really a year where we showed very strong progress on all key operating metrics. If you look at on a fourth quarter, you'll see that we actually have increased our revenue growth in each quarter of 2017. Since we're active in a lot of different countries with different currencies, we tend to be subject to FX swings.

What we've shown on this slide here, slide 4, is our constant currency denominated growth rate over the year. We think that gives you the best perspective on our underlying core business and how we have developed over the course of the year. What you will see that in Q1 2017, we grew by 43%, increased that to 52% in Q2, to 53% in Q3. Finally, Q4 was really a breakout quarter with 69% growth in constant currency terms. In terms of group EBITDA, Q4 2017 really marked by far the best quarter that we ever had. If you look at the historic performance and the improvement over time, we were at - 32% for the quarter in 2015.

We improved to -10% last year, Q4 2016, and now for Q4 2017 came in at -2.4%. That's a year-over-year improvement of 8 percentage points and a quarter-over-quarter sequential improvement of 6 percentage points. That development was really driven by both our segments. The U.S. adjusted EBITDA margin came in at -1.2%, whereas our international business, our international segment actually showed the first quarter of full EBITDA profitability in Q4 2017, with a 2.1% adjusted EBITDA margin.

While 2017 has been really successful for us on a lot of key metrics and also in terms of the company's development, if we think about 2018 and beyond, I really want to spend the next three minutes on introducing you to how we think about our core capabilities and how we think about the infrastructure that we've built up. We think that will really help you understand why we are uniquely positioned to take advantage, not only of the Meal Kits market, but of the wider fresh food market in all the different geographies that we're in. If you think about the core capabilities, there are really four of those which we have identified and where we think that there are very, very few companies, if any, out there who have those same core capabilities and to the same degree that we have.

That's number one, the growth engine that we've built up. A couple of years ago, we really decided for ourselves that internally we want to build up our own ad tech and attribution solutions, and we believe that we have shown that we can acquire customers like no other company out there at very stable customer acquisition costs. That is mostly down to the fact that we have built up solutions in-house that allow us to deploy spend in pockets of the markets where others can't justify that. The second core capability that we have are the huge number of taste profiles that we have. We have millions of customer data, and for each of those customers, we have logged a lot of signals from them.

We think there is hardly any other company out there, no FMCG company, no CPG company, no food delivery company that knows as well as we do what customers actually like to eat, what food trends are out there. Going forward, we think that this also positions us uniquely to really capitalize on that data. The third core capability that we have is our direct-to-consumer supply chain. It's one of the largest direct-to-consumer chilled food supply chain. If you think about our U.S. business or our U.S. segment, for example, in the U.S. alone, you will hardly find any other company that delivers to as many customers directly as we do, and that also applies to all the other geographies that we're in. We have really built up world-class teams across those supply chain functions.

Going forward, we want to leverage those teams and those capabilities to really put out new products and help us grow beyond 2018. Then finally, the fourth core capability that we have is a very likable and approachable brand. Over the last seven years that we've been around, we've built up a very high brand affinity and very high brand awareness in all the geographies that we operate in. We think that the brand that we've built up really lends itself well to being featured in related verticals, in new products, in innovations that we're gonna come up with.

If you look at those four core capabilities, and you also look at the infrastructure that we've built up at the same time, then I think you'll understand why we do believe that there is a lot of growth to come beyond 2018, 2019, 2020, and we're kickstarting a lot of those initiatives right now. When I talk about infrastructure, I'm talking mostly about three different things. That's number one, the team that we have hired in all the different geographies and where we really have managed to attract and retain top talent. Secondly, the fulfillment centers that we've built up. We've built up 8 fulfillment centers, spent about EUR 50 million in CapEx on those fulfillment centers.

At the moment, we have in our network a lot of capacity that we can fill with new products, with growing in our core functions, and with experimenting and prototyping new products that we wanna launch to our full customer base going forward. Thirdly, it's really about the tech architecture that we have. In terms of tech architecture, I think we've built up a very strong engineering team, a very agile organization, and that talent will really help us to going forward become even better in offering our customers exactly what they want and what they need. On the next page, you'll find what that really means for us. Merging those core capabilities and the infrastructure going forward, we think that allows us to really rapidly experiment with new products.

With new consumer food products, given the data that we have, given the supply chain that we have, given the brand that we have, and the fact that we know how to acquire customers at very efficient customer acquisition costs, we really think this sets us up together with our infrastructure that we can rapidly innovate. While we had, you know, a very limited product range for the first five years of the company, over the last two years, we've already kickstarted quite a few new initiatives, and a couple of those you can see on that page here. I just want to pick out two to underline how we think about that. For example, if you think about broadening our product portfolio, then we had a number of initiatives.

What we did, for example, after customer feedback, was we launched desserts in our first geography in Benelux. That's for us a way to better monetize our customers and to increase our share of market or share of mouth with those customer groups. Another example would be the smart fridges project that we launched in our German market. In our German market, we entered the B2B market, where we partner with companies where we have smart fridges, where you have a credit card for every employee registered, and they can basically take snacks, they can take lunches, and they can take other food from those fridges. It's digitally registered and directly deducted from their credit card. It's very easy, it's healthy snacks, and it helps us target different meal occasions.

Those are just two examples of many, many more examples that we have here on the page. Beyond that, of many more initiatives that we have kickstarted over the last six months and that will help us to really, in the long run, drive growth beyond the core business and venture out into new areas and really take advantage of the core capabilities and infrastructure that we have. I hope that visualizes a little bit how we think about our position in the market and how we think about the growth strategy going forward. I'm gonna turn over the word to Christian, who's gonna take a closer look with you on the financials.

That's totally.

First, we'll also briefly comment on the acquisition. Tobi, our President, U.S., is gonna take you through our rationale and some context of the Green Chef acquisition that we announced yesterday.

Tobi Hartmann
President of North America, HelloFresh

Thank you, Dominik. Hello, everybody. Joining you today from Colorado, and as we had shared with the public yesterday, we have acquired Green Chef, which is the only true organic meal kit player in the U.S. Green Chef was founded in 2014 and offers a variety of specialty and dietary meal plans that are really truly complementary to HelloFresh's current offerings. What's important to know is that the company has been the first meal kit provider that is fully USDA certified for organic and gluten-free meals, and has thus pioneered its market with a focus on organic, vegan, and gluten-free menus. We're very excited to welcome about 600 employees from Green Chef to the HelloFresh Group. We're also adding two state-of-the-art food manufacturing sites to our existing network.

The sites are located in Colorado and also in New Jersey, where we already have another operating site. In terms of financials, we believe that the impact will be approximately $15 million to our revenue per quarter, starting in Q2 2018, as well as about negative 2 percentage points margin impact each quarter, starting in Q2 to Q4 2018. However, broadly margin neutral in 2019. In summary, we believe this is a great addition to what you heard Dominik explain as part of our strategy, because it is absolutely complementary in terms of meal plans. It's a complementary footprint, which gives us access to complementary assets, and it's leveraging our strong operations, logistics, and culinary platform over here in the U.S. Lastly, what's important, it really offers us and allows us to provide the customers with maximum choice and win new customers in those segments.

We are very excited, and we'll start integrating the company today. With that, I'll hand it over to Christian Gaertner.

Christian Gärtner
CFO, HelloFresh

Hi, everyone. It's Christian. I would like to spend a few minutes now to discuss in a bit more detail the development of our margin profile and talk about our outlook for 2018. First, let's have a look at the development of our contribution margin. We are very proud that we have managed to further expand our contribution margin in Q4 to a level of 25.7%. That represents a 8 percentage points increase versus the same period last year and a full 2.5 percentage points increase versus the Q3 2017 on a sequential basis. We're very well on track versus our internal plans with that development.

With that, when you think about Q1 2018 now, you should expect from us that we will manage to stabilize the margin on this very attractive level of 25%-26% in Q1 2018. Now let's have a look how that strong performance on contribution margin has actually translated into expansion on our EBITDA margin. There you see on page 10, and Dominik has alluded to that earlier already. We effectively saw the same trend on the EBITDA level, i.e., a year-on-year improvement of a full 8 percentage points to 2.4% negative EBITDA margin in Q4 2018. That's the best quarter ever, from EBITDA margin perspective that we've delivered.

You look at our underlying segments, it's also the first quarter where our international business as a whole is EBITDA positive with a margin of around 2% in that quarter. From my perspective, that's even more remarkable if you keep in mind that that business grew by north of 30% in the same quarter. Super robust top line growth in combination with profitability. Also, our U.S. business has expanded its EBITDA margin very respectively in that period with a margin of around negative 1% in Q4 2017. You think about Q1 this year, obviously you have to keep in mind the seasonality that we have in our business.

As you know, Q1 is a great period for us to bring in a lot of new customers, i.e., that's the period when we invest quite robustly on marketing. The benchmark for our Q1 2018 adjusted EBITDA should be basically the value of the same period in the previous year, the -14.4%. We're confident that we will continue the trend that we've delivered on over the last two years, i.e., expanding from that level by another 5 to 6 points in Q1 this year. With that, let me now talk about our overall outlook for 2018. Here we are happy that we can confirm to you the outlook that we have discussed over the previous quarters as it concerns 2018.

From a revenue perspective, as a group, we're targeting growth of 25% to 30%. We're targeting growth in the US somewhat above that range. We're targeting our international business to grow at 20% plus in 2018. We're targeting growth in the first quarter somewhat above that range for the group. On a contribution margin level, we are targeting to improve that contribution margin versus the 23% in 2017 to north of 25% in 2018. On the adjusted EBITDA level, unchanged to what we had discussed previously. Pre any acquisition, which would also include Green Chef. We're targeting adjusted EBITDA break even in Q4 this year. With that, I would pause here and would ask the operator to open up for questions.

Operator

Sure. Thank you. We will now begin our question and answer session. We've received a first question. It comes from Robert Berg. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Speaker 7

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Two of them from me. The first is just a quick one on Green Chef, just how you're thinking about M&A versus organic growth. Obviously, chosen to buy a competitor versus kind of replicating what they're doing. I'm just interested to know is it speed to market, the relationships, the operations they have, certification? I'm just wondering how you choose whether to do something yourself or to make an acquisition. The second is on segmentation of customers and further developments there. You know, this Green Chef deal is, you know, targeting organic, perhaps higher-end customers. You know, are you doing anything in terms of targeting the lower end, much like some of your competitors? Thank you.

Christian Gärtner
CFO, HelloFresh

Maybe I'll start by answering the second question first. In terms of segmentation, you're absolutely right. We do believe that Green Chef's customer base is very different from our customer base. We've obviously looked at that in due diligence in great detail, and we do think that this opens ourselves up to a larger target market than what we've been serving previously. Going forward, we're definitely always looking at additional avenues to increase our target market, whether that be on a sort of like, other niche segments, whether that be on a different price level, et cetera. I think generally there's a lot of things that given our core capabilities and our infrastructure, we'd be perfectly set up to do. As to this date, we haven't made any sort of like decision or investment into other segments or M&A.

Right now, I'll leave you with the sort of like theoretic observation or theoretic approach that we have when it comes to customer segmentation and how we think about our target market. When it comes to M&A, what we have definitely seen is that there are a lot of players out on the market. For ourselves, so far, we have been very successful in building up businesses. If we were to do M&A, there's definitely a lot of different variables that need to be fulfilled. What we particularly liked about this opportunity was the very strong manufacturing footprint that they had, the difference in customer groups that they had. We really think that we can add to the capabilities that we already have built up in-house by doing that M&A transaction.

Going forward, we will always look at things on a case-by-case basis. I think generally speaking, you should expect from us that we are definitely rather builders than financial engineers, hence, we'll be focusing mostly on increasing the penetration in our core markets. If a good opportunity comes our way, then we certainly have a deeper look and look at that from all different angles.

Speaker 7

Thanks. I just have one quick follow-up in terms of valuation in M&A and how you think about that. Is there anything you can say on this transaction or any transactions you might do going forward? How you think about what to pay?

Christian Gärtner
CFO, HelloFresh

On this transaction, we've agreed basically with the parties involved to not disclose the purchase price. What you should assume is, as you know at the end of 2017, our cash level was around about EUR 340 million. You should expect for the end of the first quarter of 2018, that cash level is still north of EUR 300 million, including this acquisition, plus including any cash consumption that we have in the first quarter. It will not meaningfully impact our liquidity situation and balance sheets.

Overall, when we look at the transaction, we think the, let's say the opportunities that it gives us versus the consideration that we paid is quite attractive for us.

Speaker 7

Great. Perfectly clear. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Andrea Ferraz of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Andrea Ferraz
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Hi, good morning, guys. I have two questions, please. I wanted to check on the Q1 guidance for somewhat above the 25%-30% range. I just wanna make sure it's not lost in translation, what level you're thinking of, because going to, say, 30%-35% growth in Q1 would still be a really sharp deceleration from 59%. Are you thinking about sort of that type of range, or are we talking higher? And then the second question is, you've clearly done tremendous progress operationally on driving up that contribution margin. But marketing costs have remained broadly unchanged on a year-on-year basis.

I'm wondering if you feel like, you know, going into the next years and moving into the sort of EBITDA profitable level, if you can sort of maintain the growth rates that you want with lower marketing spend as a percentage of sales? Thanks.

Christian Gärtner
CFO, HelloFresh

Andrea, on the top-line growth for Q1, we would overall stick to what we've said. That's gonna be north of 30%. It will probably be north of 31%, let's keep it until we are fully through that quarter to show you what exactly that is. We see a very robust trend across both of our segments. In terms of marketing, spends unchanged to what we had discussed in the past. From absolute perspective, you should expect that versus last year, our marketing spend is going up. As a percentage of revenue for 2018, you should assume that it's gonna come down slightly versus 2017.

2017, it was around about 26% of revenues. For this year, we come down by 1 to 2 points. Within that area, goes hand in hand with the robust growth that we're seeing in our business. As we look towards 2019 onwards, it will then more migrate towards around about 20% level in 2019 and then bit below that level in the subsequent period.

Andrea Ferraz
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Great. Thank you very much.

Christian Gärtner
CFO, HelloFresh

Sorry, just one addition. When we look at our CACs, we see a very constant level to what we've shown you in the past. We continue to bring in great new customers at effectively the same cost to us as we did last year, the year before.

Andrea Ferraz
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from [Georges Flakitos] of Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Morning, guys. First one is just on you kind of saw improving marketing efficiency through the year, whether you can add any reasons to why you saw that. Was that due to issues going on with competitors or was that due to kind of the concept resonating with consumers? Secondly, on the contribution margin, could you give us any color on some of the drivers? Amongst that, was that just natural leverage? Was that some of the early benefits starting to come through from some of those product extensions that you've kindly given us some examples of? Thirdly, just plans on the Green Chef integration. Is that something that you're gonna keep the Green Chef brand? Are you gonna roll that out to new geographies? Thank you.

Dominik Richter
CEO, HelloFresh

First on marketing efficiency. Marketing efficiency, I think, was mostly driven by two trends. Number 1, what I alluded to before, we have deployed a lot of technology over the past year that allows us to much better analyze spend in the different pockets of the market, much better make sense where we actually targeting customers, how often we target customers, whether we need that incremental impression or not. That is something where we have deployed the technology that we've built in-house to our marketing efforts that has shown very good efficiency gains for us. Secondly, it's definitely also been a favorable trading environment. If you look, for example, at the U.S. market, we have massively increased our share of voice in the category.

If you look at Google Trends, if you look at Facebook share of voice, et cetera, there is definitely, you can definitely see that while we have spent very efficiently on the category, a few of our competitors have pulled back in spend, and that has certainly helped us to deliver that very good quarter. When it comes to contribution margin, the improvement, the sequential improvement was partly down to ingredients where we have onboarded more and more suppliers from who we source directly. Once again, that's something that we have kicked off probably like 12 months ago. Over time, it always takes us three months, six months, sometimes nine months until we have some of the merchants online onto our tech platform until they can start delivering to us.

Some of those new suppliers came through in Q4. We've also benefited from lower fulfillment costs

Those were mostly economies of scale, where we had a slightly better fixed cost absorption and where we also benefited from the renegotiation of some of our key supplier contracts that we had. Really, those were just some of the examples that I gave you, some of the main drivers. As we gain scale, you can definitely see us incrementally improve that contribution margin going forward.

Speaker 9

In terms of the benefit of some of the range extensions, you still think it's quite early days and that's still another lever to come?

Dominik Richter
CEO, HelloFresh

Range extension is something that we do step by step. I think it's important to understand that this is not something where you can, for example, scale from 12 meals to 20 meals to 25 meals on the menu or to launching a lot of new add-on products. Given where we are right now with our product portfolio, we see us definitely as market leading and having a very attractive consumer proposition. We think it's gonna be very, very hard for other companies to mirror the proposition that we have when they don't have the scale or when they're just starting out. Definitely expect some more to shine through going forward. We're consistently investing in making our customer proposition more attractive. Some of that has come through, some of that will come through over the course of the year.

Some of that will also take longer to come through and will be more an impact for 2019 and beyond.

Operator

Has your question been answered?

Speaker 9

I mean, it was just on the Green Chef brand. Is that going to be integrated into? Are you going to keep that brand? Are you going to roll out into new geographies?

Dominik Richter
CEO, HelloFresh

Toby, you wanna take the question?

Tobi Hartmann
President of North America, HelloFresh

Sure. We have not made a decision in terms of branding when it comes to how we're going to roll this out to the market. As Dominik had shared, there's lots of other things, how we are thinking about the value proposition going forward and the offerings. That's part of our integration work. The integration work will start effective today. We think there's a number of opportunities how we can market that going forward. One thing that was for sure, you should expect that we will offer over time the offering of the Green Chef meal plans also to the customers that we have currently under the existing HelloFresh brand.

Speaker 9

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Nizla Naizer of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Nizla Naizer
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I just have two questions. I guess each question has a few elements. My first is revolving around Green Chef. Could you perhaps give us some idea as to how fast the company is growing in terms of its year-over-year growth? When you talk about the 2% impact on margins, is that the underlying losses of the company itself, or does that also include the integration related expenses that you foresee for 2018? My final question around Green Chef is including it in the financials, could we still expect HelloFresh to break even on a group level in Q4 2018? My second question revolves around margins in general.

When you talk about the marketing expenses having benefited from the competitors pulling back a bit in Q4, has that trend continued in Q1 from what you've seen? We've seen a lot of news around new entrants entering the market. Just wanted to get an understanding about how the competitive environment may have changed for you in terms of the marketing side. Also, Christian, if you can tell us the Q1 guidance for revenue growth, what sort of a Forex impact can we expect on top of the organic growth from what you've seen thus far? Thank you.

Christian Gärtner
CFO, HelloFresh

It's Christian. I tried to answer it in that order. Nizla, if I forget anything, please remind me. In terms of revenue impact in 2018 of Green Chef, you should basically expect them to contribute as of the second quarter around about $15 million. In 2019, as respect to their growth, you should expect that Green Chef is growing broadly in line with the growth that you also assume for our overall U.S. business. To your second point on impact on our break-even timing. The guidance that we've given is pre any acquisition, especially pre-Green Chef, both from a top line as well as from a margin perspective.

We still strive to achieve EBITDA break-even in the fourth quarter of this year, including Green Chef, but it will somewhat depend on basically the timing of the synergies that we are planning to realize how quickly they come through. On the synergy side, we feel quite robust that there are a number of quite attractive synergies across procurement, logistic services, some other functions that we will realize over time. The timing of those we need to work out as we, as it's day one now of the acquisition that will impact somewhat basically the overall impact on our near-term margin profile. Midterm, we feel very robustly and are convinced this is an attractive move.

Sorry, Nizla, what was your third point that you had?

Nizla Naizer
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

On Green Chef, just wanted to understand if the 2% impact to margins included just the underlying losses or just also the integration related expenses for HelloFresh to sort of bring it into the group.

Christian Gärtner
CFO, HelloFresh

Yeah. That's all in. Yeah.

Nizla Naizer
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Great. My next question, Christian, was on the Q1 guidance, the Forex impact and whether the marketing expenses have changed somewhat in 2018 with a step up in competition, for example.

Christian Gärtner
CFO, HelloFresh

On the Forex, like for like, especially from the weakening dollar, there's about a 10 percentage points headwind because of that weaker dollar versus the same period last year. Still incorporating that, we feel good about the guidance that we will be above the 25%-30% top-line growth range in Q1.

Dominik Richter
CEO, HelloFresh

Competition, we don't really think that will impact our marketing efficiency. If you look at our customer acquisition costs and how we spend against that target that we have defined internally, how much we want to spend on the incremental customer, then that doesn't change with the additional competition. To be fair, we still see a very favorable trading environment. We haven't seen the entrance of any big players that will market online against us. Again, to be fair, it's not so much that we are in direct competition with other meal kit players. When we think about how we deploy our marketing spend, it's much more that you're up against other e-commerce categories, et cetera. Just thinking about the technology that we have deployed, we're very confident that we can continue to perform very well when it comes to marketing efficiency.

Nizla Naizer
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from [Isa Zimzig]. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hi, good morning. It's Isa [Zimzig from the German magazine, Gründerszene]. I've got a question particular concerning Germany. Could you tell us about any developments in Germany, the loss and growth maybe? Second, I didn't understand, Christian, if you said that you wanna roll out the Green Chef boxes in Europe as well or not? Thank you.

Dominik Richter
CEO, HelloFresh

We have two segments that we disclose separately. That's our U.S. segment and the international segment. For the international segment, we have, as we had alluded to, for the first time, reached EBITDA profitability. Within that segment, we have businesses at very different stages. Some very early stage that we only entered in the last two years. Others that we have been active in over five or six years already, and those businesses are at different profitability stages. We don't make any comments as to any individual country within those segments. I think it's important to understand that within the international segments, we also have geographies that are at very different growth stages. Some of them very profitable, others around break even, others still in their early days.

The number that you can see is obviously the sort of like weighted average across all those, all those countries. When it comes to Green Chef, it's day one of integration today. We have spent significant time in our due diligence, and we have identified a number of areas for large synergies between the two different businesses. Definitely on the operation side. Definitely, by rolling them over to our more favorable framework contracts that we have by giving them access to prices that benefit from much bigger scale than what they had before. When it comes to marketing efficiency, deploying the technology that we've built up around marketing, around procurement, we do think there's quite a bit of synergies that the brand can benefit from.

When it comes to international rollouts, we're certainly thinking about how to target those segments in international context as well. Again, since it's day one of the integration, it's too early to tell whether we're gonna be rolling that out over the next 12 months to any other geographies or whether that's gonna take a little longer. First, we wanna realize the synergies, get the business in line with all the metrics that we have for our core business, and then we think about international expansion.

Speaker 8

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We've received one follow-up question of Robert Berg. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. You can ask your question now.

Speaker 7

Hi. Yes. Thank you. just a quick clarification on whether I heard correctly on two questions ago. The 10 percentage point headwind in Q1, but you'll be above the revenue guidance of 25%-30% even incorporating that. Are you saying you'll be at least 35%-40% like for like, or did I misunderstand what you were saying?

Christian Gärtner
CFO, HelloFresh

The 10% headwind, was referring to the US dollar. Yeah, our U.S. business is roughly.

Speaker 7

Okay. Copy.

Christian Gärtner
CFO, HelloFresh

is roughly 60% of our business. If you look at it on a group level, it's a 6% headwind. Yes, you could add that on top of that to come for like for like. Yeah. We'll have to dash unfortunately. If there's one final question.

Operator

yes, there's one final question of Andrea Ferraz of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, your line is now open

Andrea Ferraz
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Thanks for taking the extra question. Just one more. Dominik, you've mentioned that some geographies in the international segment are already very profitable. Could you give us maybe, without giving us maybe the name of the country or whatever you feel comfortable with, what the highest sort of EBITDA margin is for one of your individual geographies? Thanks.

Dominik Richter
CEO, HelloFresh

Given that the 2% EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin was the weighted average for all geographies, you can assume that the best geographies are meaningfully above that, but we don't go into more detail here. I think, you know, it's still early days for our business and hence, I think reporting on two segments is the right level of detail that we want to provide here.

Andrea Ferraz
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

All right, thanks.

Operator

Thank you. As there are no further questions, I would hand back to you, gentlemen.

Dominik Richter
CEO, HelloFresh

Thank you everyone for attending our 2017 full year earnings call. I hope we could shed some light on not only the 2017 performance, but also the outlook for 2018 and how we think about our growth strategy over the course of the year and beyond. One of the things that you also heard about was the Green Chef integration. I think we answered quite a few questions around that. Going forward, I think, we're still in high growth mode. I think, definitely expect from us that you'll see more and more initiatives that will continue to drive really long-term growth and long-term profitability. We're very excited for what 2018 will bring and look forward to welcoming you on the next quarterly earnings call then for the Q1 results. Thank you, everyone.

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