Good morning, and thank you for standing by. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Kerry Group First Quarter 2026 Trading Update Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now turn the call over to William Lynch, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to our Q1 2026 trading update call. I'm joined on the call by our CEO, Edmond Scanlon, and our CFO, Marguerite Larkin. As usual, Edmond and Marguerite will take you through a brief presentation, after which we will open the lines up for your questions. Before we begin, please note the usual disclaimer on our Q1 presentation regarding forward-looking statements. I will now hand over to Edmond.
Thanks, William. Good morning, everyone, thank you for joining our call. Moving to slide four in my overview comments. We're pleased to report we delivered a good start to the year in Q1 with volume growth across all three regions and continued strong margin expansion. Beginning with revenue, we delivered Q1 volume growth of 3.1%, reflecting our continued strong end market outperformance. As we said at CAGNY, circa 60% of our customer activity in North America is on renovation activity at the moment. Our innovation pipeline also continues to deliver. This is what is supporting the volume growth we achieved in the Americas and APMEA, with Europe returning to growth. From a channel perspective, foodservice continued to strongly outperform the market, driven by new menu innovations, seasonal products, and continued product renovation activity across global QSRs, fast casuals, and coffee chains.
Growth in the retail channel was supported by continued product renovation activity across global customers and retailer brands, along with innovation in high-growth areas with a range of customers. By technology, we had strong growth across our savory taste and TasteSense Salt and sugar reduction technologies, and integrated solutions incorporating Kerry's botanicals and natural extracts, combined with our fermentation-derived and enzymatic biofermentation portfolio and natural clean label food protection and preservation systems. Moving to margins, we delivered strong EBITDA margin expansion of 60 basis points in the first quarter, primarily driven by Accelerate Operational Excellence. We've expanded group margins by over 300 basis points in the past four years and are well on track to achieve our 2026 target of 18%-19% EBITDA margin.
On guidance, which I'll cover off more in some detail later. While recognizing the ongoing geopolitical volatility, we remain strongly positioned for volume growth and margin expansion, are maintaining our range of 6% to 10% constant currency earnings per share growth in 2026. Strategic execution at Kerry is focused on two things. First is delivering on our highest single-digit+ earnings growth algorithm through consistent volume growth and margin expansion. Secondly is continuing to strategically develop our business. Building on the strategic developments update we gave in February, we've continued to advance this across each of our regions. Within the Americas, we've enhanced our beverage taste capacity and capability in North America, we've commenced further footprint expansion of savory taste in Mexico. In Europe, we've expanded our ProActive Health capacity and capabilities in Spain.
In APMEA, we've commenced developing our new local taste facility in Turkey. These are just a few examples of the ongoing strategic developments that will continue to support the growth of our business and the execution of our strategy. With that, I'll now hand you over to Marguerite for the business performance overview.
Thanks, Edmond, and good morning, everyone. Moving to slide five and the business review, we are pleased with the performance in the period where we delivered good volume growth and margin expansion. Volume growth in the first quarter of 3.1% was well ahead of our end markets, with good growth across both food service and retail. Pricing was 1.3% lower, reflective of overall net deflation across our basket of input costs. On the EBITDA margins, we delivered good business margin progression of 60 basis points, primarily driven by Accelerate 2.0, with additional benefits from operating leverage, product mix, net price, and disposals being partially offset by an adverse translation currency impact. Looking at our end markets, despite challenging market conditions in places, we delivered strong growth in meat, snacks, and dairy, driven by high levels of innovation and renovation activity with our customers.
In food service, we had growth of 4.6%, combined with good growth in retail. Volumes in emerging markets increased by 4.4% across the period, led by a strong performance in Africa. Turning to slide 6 now and our performance by region. Firstly, in the Americas, we delivered volume growth of 3.4% in the period, with good performances in both North America and LATAM. Within North America, we had good growth in meat, snacks, and dairy, driven by continued customer focus on improving the nutritional profiles of their products, as well as good launch activity with new signature taste profiles. We delivered strong growth in the food service channel, led by growth with quick service and fast casual restaurants, with growth in the retail channels supported by good renovation activity across both customer and retailer brands.
Within LATAM, we had strong growth in Mexico, most notably within the snacks and beverage end markets. Moving to Europe, which delivered volume growth of 0.4%. Good growth was achieved in beverage through new refreshing beverage innovations, incorporating Kerry's integrated taste technologies, botanicals, and taste and sugar reduction technologies. Growth in dairy was supported by protein taste solutions, while category volumes in bakery were challenged in the period. Retail channel volumes returned to growth in the first quarter, with performance in food service led by quick service restaurants and coffee chains. Finally, to APMEA, where we delivered volume growth of 4.6%, led by strong growth in Africa. China returned to growth, and we had solid performances in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Performance by channel was led by good growth in retail and by end markets.
Growth was led by meat, bakery, and snacks through savory taste, texture, and enzyme technologies, in particular. Turning to slide seven, outlining the constituent parts of the Q1 reported revenue movements. Taking each of these in turn. Beginning with volume, we delivered growth of 3.1%, as I mentioned, and pricing was 1.3% lower, reflecting overall input cost deflation in the 1st quarter. The organic growth delivered in Q1 was more than offset by adverse translation currency of 7.9%, given the significant movement in the US dollar versus the euro. This effect is most pronounced in the 1st quarter and expected to reduce across the rest of the year. Disposals net of acquisitions had a revenue impact of 1.2%, which are enabling the execution of our Accelerate 2.0 footprint optimization strategy and supporting the margin expansion I referenced earlier.
Finally, moving to other matters on slide eight. Net debt at the end of the period was EUR 2.2 billion and reflects cash generation, capital investment, and the share buyback program. On Accelerate 2.0, we continue to progress as planned with footprint optimization in both North America and Europe, and the expansion of our digital initiatives across manufacturing, commercial, and global business services. On the input costs, we are currently looking at overall deflation in the first half of the year, with variation within our input cost basket, turning to some level of inflation in the second half. We will continue to update you as we progress through the year. On currency, based on prevailing rates, we are now forecasting a translation currency headwind of circa 3% of earnings per share in the full year compared to 4% at year-end.
To summarize, we delivered a good financial performance with good volume growth along with continued margin expansion. With that, I'll pass you back to Edmond.
Thanks, Marguerite. Before we move to Q&A, I'd like to close out with our full year outlook. Our continued strong end market outperformance highlights the strength and relevance of our strategic positioning across our markets, channels, and customer base. We will continue to further strategically develop our business while supporting our customers as their innovation and renovation partner. Our extensive local footprint, unique technology capability, and the strength of our business model positions us well to navigate through this period of geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty. While recognizing the uncertainty around the ongoing geopolitical volatility, we remain strongly positioned for volume growth and margin expansion with a good innovation pipeline. We're maintaining our full-year constant currency earnings per share guidance of 6%-10% growth. With that, I'll hand you back to the operator, and we look forward to taking your questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you want to ask a question and are dialed in, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Our first question comes from the line of Alexander Dodd with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Morning, all. Thanks for taking the questions. I've got two, please. Firstly, just on the volume growth outlook, obviously you're reiterating being strongly positioned for volume growth for the year. You do note some input cost inflation, you know, returning in the second half. I appreciate it's a challenge given the level of volatility, but can I ask what your base case end market volume assumptions are for the balance of the year as inflation, you know, feeds through to consumers later in the year. Sort of put another way, are you confident in sustaining, you know, around 3% volume growth for the full year in this backdrop as it stands? That's the first one. Secondly, on APMEA, you delivered, you know, solid growth there in the first quarter.
No obvious Middle East disruption apparent. How have you mitigated that this time when it was maybe more of a challenge in June of 2023? Also just on APMEA, nice to see China back into growth. Can you maybe talk to the durability of the recovery there over the next few quarters? Thank you.
Thanks Alex, good morning. Maybe on the guidance first and the outlook for the year. We haven't changed the overall guidance. We're expecting volume growth to be similar to 2025. We're not calling out any material change to either our retail outlook or our food service outlook. We do continue to expect food service to outperform retail. From a regional perspective, one should assume a full year outlook similar to what we just posted there for Q1. Lots of moving parts as you said there, Alex. You know, let's see how inflation plays out. I also have to say that the quality of our pipeline, the scale of our pipeline is very solid as we look out into the remainder of the year.
We're particularly excited about our business in the Americas. Renovation, you know, is really delivering for us. Wellness reformulation continues to increase. We believe we have, let's say, leading capabilities in that space. On top of that, you know, let's see how things play out. We are seeing some momentum around front-of-pack labeling in the Americas as well. We have to see exactly, you know, how that translates to the front of the pack. It, you know, there is potential momentum there towards the back end of the year.
We, you know, we've taken all these things into account as we've looked at the guidance and that's kind of why, you know, there are some of the puts and takes as we kind of reiterate the guidance for the full year. In terms of, let's say, how we're positioned for the Middle East. Look, the reality of the situation is that we believe we're best positioned to be able to deal with the volatility. Like I've said previously, versus where we were a year ago, we've taken a, you know, a position to de-risk the overall supply chain. There were some learnings from a year ago around inventory levels, around where, you know, certain routes that raw materials were being routed through. We made some changes around that.
I think at a higher level, I think from our overall footprint perspective, the investments we've made around, you know, Oman, around Saudi, around Egypt in terms of having that local footprint and all the support capabilities that we have with that, we're able to give customers a lot of confidence around our ability to be able to respond, our ability to remain agile, our ability to be able to support them, whether it's on the retail channel or the food service channel. I feel quite confident around our ability to be able to, you know, be very agile and be very proactive. There's a high level of engagement with customers and overall, I think we're well positioned as we engage with customers in that region. Lastly, on China.
We're pleased to be back into growth in China. You know, I wouldn't be calling out any kind of significant kick on in the remainder of the year or anything like that. Retail was, you know, improved throughout the course of the quarter. We would expect China to kind of remain more or less in the same zone for the remainder of the year.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Patrick Higgins with Goodbody. Please go ahead.
Thanks, good morning, everyone. Maybe my first question is around private label retailer brands in the U.S. I guess given I know you called out in your prepared remarks, continued strong momentum there, just an extra bit of color there, I guess, given the signs of more promotional activity and innovation from the brand owners. Do you see any kind of shifts in terms of momentum in own label in the U.S. or how is engagements, I guess, more generally? I guess my other question is on the reformulation or renovation activity. Edmond, just a little bit more color. Obviously, clearly a key underpin to growth currently in the U.S.
Do you see more of a federal level kind of regulation coming through to drive a step up in that renovation? Or is it customers are actually just proactively looking at, you know, ways to reformulate to get ahead of any possible changes in terms of labeling laws, et cetera?
Good morning, Patrick. I'll take that. I mean, look, I mean, we've been very consistent around our narrative around the Americas. I mean, it's a market that continues to deliver for Kerry. You know, despite some of the maybe, you know, macro numbers or macro narrative that sometimes are discussed around, let's say the underlying market conditions within the Americas, there continues to be good pockets of opportunity right across the board. Look, on the renovation side. You know, it just, this is something we flagged 18 months ago. It is really delivering for us. We continue to see, I would say, an elevated level of engagement from customers around renovation.
Consumers continue to demand products that are healthier, that are better, that are clean label. These all feed into our best-in-class capabilities around all those particular areas. We are seeing some momentum at a federal level around some regulatory intervention around front-of-pack labeling. It's not exactly clear how it will actually land into the market. That is something that seems to be gaining momentum at a federal level, and obviously that's something that we would welcome and would see as being a real positive for our business. Look on the food service side, food service, we continue to outperform there. We believe we have a structural tailwind in the channel, and frankly, we only see this increasing.
Food service activity, launch activity is very high at the moment. Food service operators look, you know, are looking at LTOs to drive traffic into their stores. On, you know, back then maybe on the retail side, again, we are seeing some early positive signs in certain categories around price promotions. That is, while it's early days, we have seen some green shoots. Then I guess from an overall innovation perspective, we are seeing areas like high protein, poultry, ready-to-drink coffee, cold coffee, supplements. All these areas are providing opportunities for us in North America.
I would say from a segmentation standpoint, we have a huge breadth of customer base and a huge breadth of customer engagement right across the Americas, whether that's with globals, you know, locals, the emerging brands, or retailers that are targeting to grow their private label offerings. Right across the board, we feel we're very well positioned and feel positive about the go forward in the Americas overall.
Thank you. Fair clear. Our next question comes from the line of Charles Eden with UBS.
Hi, good morning. Just one for me, please. There's been a lot of focus on the potential of demand pull forward in, into March, I guess, given the context of the Middle East conflict. Could you comment on whether you believe that might be something that Kerry has seen in Q1? I guess also related to that, perhaps you could give a comment on whether there's been any material change in trends in April across the various geographies and channels. Thank you.
Thanks, Charles. Good morning. I wouldn't be calling out any material change from a trending standpoint, nor would I be flagging anything in terms of anything unusual from an order pattern perspective between March or April or anything like that. I think that goes back to the fact, Charles, that we're, you know, we have a very, very strong local footprint in the Middle East. We, you know, we can give assurance to customers that we are, you know, we're there. We have the, the raw materials in place. Of course, there has been disruption on the supply side, but the teams have done amazing work to de-risk that, the supply side as much as we possibly can.
And I think that in combination with where we are from that local footprint standpoint, I think is giving customers a lot of confidence in our ability to deliver. There, you know, really, there's no need for them to pull forward orders is the reality of the situation.
Perfect. That's very clear. I could just sneak a follow-up in. Is there any inputs that are primarily sourced from the Middle East that are used elsewhere? Is there any sort of supply constraints for any inputs, or is that not really a factor either?
Let's say when we've looked at that, Charles, it's some of those kind of unique raw materials that are sourced in that region are for that region, actually, and typically don't necessarily find their way into other regions. It's kind of different to, let's say, China and India, which, you know, are more of a kind of a global supply base. The Middle East is more of a local supply base, as is obviously, you know, China and India back into the Middle East. It's not really, I would say, a feature of note.
Very clear. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Nicola Tang with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Maybe I'll start by sticking to the topic of inputs. I mean, I think you're mainly or more exposed to naturals than synthetics, and it seems to be no more on the synthetic side. You still have the deflation. When you talked about the potential inflation in the second half of the year, are there specific raw materials or specific inputs that you would call out? Perhaps you could also, within that, talk about, you know, how you deal with potentially higher energy costs or logistics costs and so on. The second question, coming back to APMEA, I think at CAGNY you gave us a helpful split of, you know, APMEA and across the different regions. I was wondering if you could share more color on how those different regions had performed through Q1.
I guess sort of tagged in with the very first question from Alex around the potential impact of inflation on the end consumer. I was wondering about in Southeast Asia in particular, where, I don't know, you know, it seems like there's obviously higher energy costs, there's some work from home mandates and this kind of stuff. I was wondering whether you had seen or expect to see any impact on the end consumer in that region. Thanks.
Thanks, Nicola. I might kick off here and Marguerite then will jump in. Maybe on the last part of your question first. We have seen some slight softness in market conditions in Southeast Asia, and we have, you know, taken that into account in our, let's say, overall perspective on the go forward. We do see somewhat of an offset in China versus Southeast Asia, but we have seen some slight softness in that market. That said, I mean, I think from a, you know, from a customer engagement standpoint and just activity standpoint, we would still, you know, follow that our performance in Southeast Asia will be quite solid and we'll continue to outperform the market in Southeast Asia.
Maybe taking a step back, and looking at the overall APMEA region. Firstly, to say that, you know, performance in the quarter was in line with our overall expectation. Look, the standout for us in terms of performance in the region was that our Africa business, which is now about 2% of the total company, 10% of APMEA approximately, grew at strong double digits. That was a really, you know, positive development, you know, given the level of investment we have put into that region over the last several years. Again, I think it's our local strategy and our local focus bearing fruit for us.
We expect that strategy to continue to bear fruit for us out into the future with the elevated level of geopolitical volatility that is out there. Our Middle East region, like we said, have, you know, continued to have solid performance as did the rest of the MESA region, which includes, you know, India and Southwest Asia. North Asia, which is primarily China, back into growth, primarily driven by retail. Southeast Asia, again, you know, a solid performance overall.
Nicola, on your question on the input costs, as you referenced, we are expecting to see deflation in the first half with some level of inflation in the second half. Right now, we're still probably looking at very limited deflation for the full year. There are variations across the basket, as you'd expect. We're probably seeing some level of inflation coming through on spices and natural oils, but we will update as the year progresses. Clearly we're seeing some increases on distribution costs, energy costs also, but that varies very much by geography, the level of cover we have in place. We manage that very closely. As you know, we have a very well-established pricing model.
It has served us very well over the years in terms of managing significant input cost inflation. It's, again, we plan to manage input cost inflations in a very similar way this time around, with any inflation coming through on oil related input costs, through that pricing model and through surcharges as appropriate. Working very closely with our suppliers and our customers.
Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Edward Hockin with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I've got two, please. one is on Europe. Encouraging to see a return to volumes growth in the region in Q1. I was wondering if you could help dissect that a little bit for us, whether there was some improvement in the end market or whether the end market was reasonably unchanged, and this is the result of some stepped up execution in the region. Then my 2nd question, please, is just on the brief pipeline outlook. Is there any material phasing in that outlook through the year in terms of how you see planned LTOs with customers or new product launches that we should consider? Thank you.
Good morning, Ed, and thanks for the question. Nothing notable we would call out on the overall phasing. I would say, look, there is some LTO activity around the World Cup. That's kind of typical. But overall, I would say World Cup or no World Cup, there is an overall elevated level of LTOs, even versus last year and even versus the year before. Customers in the food service channel are really seeing LTOs delivering for them. On top of that, we're seeing the food operators and food service really double down on value and really double down their value offerings. That drives traffic into the stores, and that's good for Kerry.
It's something we saw towards the end of 2025, and that promotional activity and food service has continued into 2026. From what we can see, it's a winning proposition for customers. We expect customers only to continue to double down on that strategy, which is good for us overall. In terms of any other phasing, there's nothing of note that we would call out. Sorry, just then on Europe. The first point I'd make is that, look, Q4 elements of our Q4 performance, we would refer to as being an outlier. That's probably more of a feature in our Q1 versus Q4.
We are seeing some progress in the retail channel overall. And our outlook for Europe for the remainder of the year is similar to Q1. You know, modest growth in Europe over the course of the year in line with what we laid out at the beginning of the year.
Thanks a lot.
Our last question comes from the line of Cathal Kenny with Davy. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Two quick questions. Firstly, on the end use markets, I noticed dairy's been elevated both the, in the Americas and Europe. Just interested to know what sits behind that. Secondly, do you see any tailwind from your business in Mexico from the World Cup?
Maybe the second part of your question first, Cathal, and good morning. For sure, in Mexico, there seems to be a lot more excitement in Mexico around the World Cup than there is in the U.S., frankly. A lot of excitement there. I think for many people in the U.S., they don't know the World Cup is going on, to be very truthful about it. Yes, we have seen a lot of activity, particularly in the food service side in Mexico particularly, but not a major feature in North America or within North America, unfortunately.
Then on dairy, I think the two points I call out on dairy is firstly, you know, low-lactose dairy. No-lactose dairy. Lactose-free dairy is a feature that continues to grow in the industry. We're very well positioned to enable customers to bring those types of products to market. There's also obviously a significant push around reduction of sugar reduction and sweetness reduction. The combination of, let's say, our lactase enzymes and on top of our TasteSense technology are giving us a synergistic benefit when it comes to helping customers reduce the amount of sweetness and reduce the amount of sugar in dairy applications.
We're also seeing scenarios where, you know, customers want to put more protein into dairy products, that can give taste and texture impacts. Again, we're well positioned to be able to help customers to, you know, to rectify those issues and ultimately improve the nutritional profile while also maintaining the taste and texture of the product. I think you're gonna see more of that as the year progresses.
Thank you.
That is all the questions that we have for today. I will now turn the call back over to Edmond for closing remarks.
Thank you. We just want to say thank you for everyone for taking the time to join us on the call today. If you do have any follow-up questions, please do reach out to us, and we just want to wish you a good day. Thank you very much.