Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Coca-Cola Q1 2023 financial results conference call. I will now hand over to your host, Mrs. Çiçek Uşaklıgil Özgüneş, Investor Relations and Treasury Director. Please, ma'am, go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our 1st quarter 2023 results webcast. I'm here with Burak Başarır, our Chief Executive Officer, and Andriy Avramenko, our Chief Financial Officer. Following Mr. Başarır and Mr. Avramenko's presentation, we will turn the call over for your questions. Before we begin, please kindly be advised of our cautionary statements. The conference call may contain forward-looking management comments, including projections. This should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary language contained in our earnings release. A copy of our earnings release and financials are available on our website. Let me turn the call over to Mr. Burak Başarır. Sir.
Thank you, Çiçek. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be speaking with you today. Thank you for joining our webcast. Andriy and I will take you over through our Q1 operating highlights, and then we will turn into a Q&A session at the end of the presentations. As you would remember, we announced our 2023 guidance early in the year, which included certain assumptions and accounted for many risks. However, a lot of changed since then. Turkey was hit by one of the country's most catastrophic earthquakes in early February that displaced over 5 million people. The macroeconomic situation in Pakistan got more challenging with the government taking additional fiscal measures, including tax increases to comply with the IMF program, which is still being negotiated.
Access to hard currency remains limited in the country, and the inflation hits 50-year high while the currency devalued by 25% since the Q1. As CCI, rather than using our energy 100% on the existing challenges with an agile mindset and decades of experience managing volatility, we are well equipped to respond and adapt our business quickly to new operating conditions and pursue opportunities. That is what we need and what we did in the Q1s. We modified our plans to sustain our profitable growth under the current environment. Benefiting from the geographic diversification of our business, we are confident that we can deliver in line with our earlier expectations and reaffirm our full year guidance. We are pleased with our performance for the Q1, delivering in line with our business plan, given all additional headwinds we had to face.
Consolidated sales volume grew by 6% on year-on-year basis. Solid growth in Central Asia and Pakistan offset the softer volumes in Turkey and the Middle East. We are happy to see energy drinks gaining scale, a category where we still need to be more indexed and see a lot of growth potential. Despite cycling a very high base, Monster Energy continues its positive momentum with more than 80% growth. The share of IC in the total mix was 24%, around 1.8% lower than the last year. High growth in international operations, where the share of IC is lower in the package mix, resulting in a negative geographical mix impacting for the consolidated IC share. We delivered 80% organic growth in the Q1, primarily driven by pricing actions across markets and revenue growth management initiatives.
As a result of our focus and discipline to grow our business sustainably, we have achieved organic EBIT growth of 76% and limited the EBIT margin contraction to less than 30 basis points despite increased sales and marketing expenses and higher operating costs in the inflationary environment. Net income grew by 64%, reaching TRY 1 billion in our smallest quarter. We keep increasing our investments in digital capabilities. With our integrated digital supply chain planning platform, we continue to improve forecast security, decrease out of stock, and increase efficiencies throughout our operations. In this respect, we decreased our out of stock by 300 basis points versus last year on a consolidated basis. In Turkey, online sales through CCINEXT, our digital B2B platform, increased by 20% from previous year.
Building on the growth in comparable EPS last year and our solid liquidity position, our general assembly approved the board's dividend distribution proposal. We will pay 2 TL and 90 kuruş per share from May 22nd. On April 26th, we completed the acquisition of Etab İçecek, and now we own 80% of this juice concentrate business, which will open new possibilities for growing our business to create incremental value. Moving into next slide, please. Talking about the consolidated volume, our core sparkling category grew by 10%, increasing to 82% in the total mix from 80% a year ago. Stills grew by 6%, having a flat share in the mix.
In line with our value-based strategy, we continue to focus on smaller profitable packs, resulting in water volumes declined by 15%. The brand Coca-Cola grew by 14% in the Q1 of 2023, mainly on the strong double-digit growth recorded in Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The double-digit performance of iced tea and energy drinks led the growth in the stills category. As I said, the Monster Energy grew by more than 80%, while the total energy category grew by more than 40% on a year-on-year basis. Next slide, please. On Turkey, cycling a solid base and impacted by the devastating earthquake. As we all know, the sales volume of Turkey operations declined by 8% in the Q1s. Following some stocking at the year-end ahead of the price increases, January was flattish as expected.
February, however, was severely impacted by the devastating earthquake which happened in February 6th. The earthquake region accounts roughly around 10% of our Turkey volume, while the highest impacted three cities account for about 2% of our business. The initial impact was quite severe. The week of the earthquake and the following week, sales volume in the three cities was down almost 100% and we had no business, and nearly 70% in the rest of the eight cities. Naturally, the disaster impacted the whole country's consumption pattern. We saw a double-digit decline in the rest of the country in these two weeks. In the following weeks, the operating environment started to recover gradually and we achieved modest growth in the month of March. The sparkling and the still categories declined by 9% in the Q1s. Within Stills, energy drinks were the sound volume driver.
The water category was down by 5% despite the strong growth of more profitable IC packs in line with our value generation focus. Strength at the on-premise channel, which recorded its highest Q1 performance, created a tailwind. As a result, the share of IC packages in the Q1 of 23 was realized at 35%, up by more than 300 basis points on a year ago, for 2023. In the Q1s, we continued to navigate historical high levels of inflation that affected consumers' real disposable income. Nevertheless, we maintained our pricing discipline. As a result of our timely price adjustments, effective discount management and favorable mix, NSR per case grew by 109% year-on-year. Lower volumes, higher energy prices and weaker Turkish lira created additional headwinds in Turkey.
With the low cost base of the Q1s of the last year, the EBITDA margin was impacted negatively. We expect to see normalization in the second half of the year due to base effects. Let me move to international business on the next page, please. International operations volume grew by 15% with a solid performance in Pakistan and Central Asia, thanks to increased penetration and strong execution in the marketplace. The core sparkling category grew by 18% despite cycling a strong base. The Coca-Cola brand led this growth. The stills category grew by 31% despite cycling at 27% of growth last year. Energy drinks volume increased 3-folds. Having a low base and cycling 31% growth a year ago, the water category contracted by 30% in the Q1 of the year.
Supported by the solid volume momentum, pricing adjustments in line with inflation and improving channel mix, NSR grew by 73% year-on-year. Price increases, scale efficiencies and disciplined cost controls resulted in 163 basis points EBITDA margin expansion in our international operations. Let me touch base on our three critical international markets. Our top three international markets reported double-digit growth in the Q1s. Pakistan grew by 14% despite a high base, ongoing macroeconomic challenges, and increase in consumer inflation. The growth come from new outlet additions, continued distributor warehouse capacity expansion, and regional marketing focus. Coca-Cola grew by 24% in Pakistan, the main driver of the sparkling category growth. Coke Studio, a successful initiative by the Coca-Cola Company featuring studio recorded music performances by the established and emerging artists, continued to be highly acclaimed with the latest season streamed over a billion times.
Cycling more than 60% growth a year ago, the stills category expanded further by 2%. The water category declined by 55% while cycling at 25% growth of the last year. The year started with severe weather conditions in Uzbekistan, this also caused energy shortages and even production delays for a certain period of time. Despite this, Uzbekistan continued its healthy growth, recording 21% volume growth in the Q1s. This performance was supported by improved distributor structure, focused execution excellence, and continuing cooler investments to the market, via being available and visible and being cold. Sparkling grew 18% while iced tea drove the growth of the stills by doubling in the volumes. Kazakhstan was the highest growing country in our international operations. In the Q1, we registered 26% growth despite cycling 16% growth a year ago.
The demand in the at-home channel was resilient, while the on-premise channel recorded a double-digit performance. Sparkling and stills categories grew strongly, recording 36% and 24% respectively. I will leave the floor to Andriy for our financials review. Andriy?
Thank you, Burak. While navigating a challenge in 2023, we concluded the Q1 with sound results in line with our business plan at the consolidated level. Net sales revenue increased by 80% in the Q1. Excluding the favorable currency conversion impact, FX neutral net sales revenue increase was also strong at 61%. This was primarily driven by solid volume performance of international operations, pricing actions across markets, proactive revenue growth management initiatives, improving channel mix, and higher IC mix in Turkey. In the Q1, we cycled a very low cost base in Turkey, thanks to successful sugar pre-buys and hedging initiatives executed last year. Since then, sugar prices more than tripled. As we guided before, the first half of the year is more challenging compared to the second half due to this base effect.
The soft volume performance following devastating earthquake created additional headwinds. We saw contractions in the gross profit margin in Turkey. This was more than offset by the higher gross profitability of international operations, which was due to strong volumes, successful hedging, disciplined cost controls, and price adjustments early in the year. On a consolidated basis, our gross margin expanded by 35 basis points. OpEx as a percentage of net sales revenue increased by 62 basis points due to weaker at-operating environment in Turkey and increase in sales and marketing expenses across the markets, although overhead savings partly mitigated the impact. We generated an operating income of TRY 2.3 billion with an EBIT margin of 15.1%. We had higher interest expenses incurred mainly from Turkish lira borrowings. Net financial expenses were higher compared to the last year.
Despite that, our net income grew by 64% to TRY 1 billion in this small quarter. Next page, please. We closely watch the per unit case metrics as a key driver of real value generation. In the Q1 of 2023, consolidated Net Sales Revenue per unit case increased by 51% on a FX neutral basis. Despite being off-peak levels, cost inflation continued to be high in our key markets. In this environment, we managed to contain COGS per unit case increase to 52%, with volume momentum in international markets having positive mix effect and marginally improving the economy of scale in these markets. Successful hedging and pre-buying of packaging materials such as aluminum and resin also made positive contribution to managing COGS per unit case in the quarter.
Currency neutral EBIT per unit case growth realized at 38% thanks to disciplined OpEx management despite higher selling and marketing expenses in the Q1. Next slide, please. In the Q1, operating profit followed a healthy trend and was up by 76% compared to the same quarter last year. The main contribution to EBIT growth came from disciplined and timely pricing across all markets. The robust volume growth of key international markets helped to offset the softer volume performance in Turkey and supported EBIT generation as well. IC mix was favorable in Turkey, the future consumption package's higher share in international markets neutralized the favorable package mix effect on a consolidated level.
The higher commodity cost pressures, fueled mostly by sugar prices in Turkey and basic effect of key raw material costs, created a drag on the margins since we are cycling extremely low base in the Q1 of 2022. We managed to navigate these challenges with strong operational performance, timely price initiatives, and better channel mix. We also benefited from a favorable currency conversion. We reported $2.3 billion EBIT in Q1 2023 with 15.1% margin. Let's move to the next slide, please. Our balance sheet health is intact despite the challenging operational conditions. We have only $423 million of net debt, which is 0.7x of our EBITDA. Our balance sheet is fit to support our growth agenda.
Even considering the planned cash outflows related to the acquisition of Anadolu Etap and Pakistan minority buyout, we expect net leverage to stay below one times with positive free cash flow generations throughout the year. Our short FX position before net investment hedge is $400 million, which is only 0.6 times of our 12 months rolling international EBITDA. We feel comfortable as long as that short position stays around one time. The benchmark to international EBITDA is relevant since international operations are constant dividend payers to our Turkey legal entities that carries the majority of the debt. If we also take into account the net investment hedge, our short FX position is only $51 million. Therefore, our P&L is quite resilient to the impact of TL devaluations throughout FX gains and losses.
Thanks to the proactive debt management, the average maturity of our debt was 3.4 years. Close to 45% of our current debt is scheduled to be paid between 2026 and 2029. This creates an additional comfort zone to manage debt and liquidity in the globally tight liquidity conditions. Prudent financial management, protection of healthy balance sheet, and strong liquidity position will continue to be our priorities going forward. Let's move to the next slide. Finally, a brief overview of our commodity hedging initiatives for the current year and 2024. In the context of persistent cost inflation, we mitigate this pressure by dynamic RGM actions and also proactive timely bid physical and financial hedges, including pre-buys and long-term procurement contracts. On the sugar, we cycled an extremely low base in Turkey operation in the Q1.
Its price more than tripled in the last 12 months in Türkiye. We don't expect an uptrend in prices as severe as last year, we mostly completed our sugar procurement for 2023 for our better visibility and planning purposes. On a consolidated basis, we have almost 90% price visibility for 2023. In markets where the sugar can be hedged, namely Iraq and Jordan, we also covered 75% for 2024 calendar year. On the aluminum, 2023 hedges give us 100% visibility, and we started looking beyond 2023 to lock in from favorable pricing levels for 2024. The aluminum hedge level for 2024 is around 15% at the moment. On the resin, our 2023 hedge coverage is around 65%.
We are comfortable with this level for the moment, as resin is closely related to oil prices globally, and we do not expect a major change there. We are also hedged around 10% for 2024 resin exposure. In total, the relatively flattish pricing trends of packaging materials in US dollar terms year-over-year helps to cycle low base of sugar cost and to mitigate margin pressures to some extent in Türkiye as well. Back to Burak for his closing remarks.
Thank you, Andriy. CCI is an emerging and frontier market bottler, and we operate in a volatile geography with tremendous growth potential. While we are keen on delivering successful results today and navigating challenges carefully, we are also focused on achieving our vision to be the best FMCG company across all of our markets. To achieve our vision and serve our purpose of creating value for all of our stakeholders by delivering sustainable long-term growth, we leverage our main growth pillars. We always put our customers at the center of everything we do. Execution capabilities are a proven strength. We continuously invest in our commercial capabilities to support our customers and expand our digital reach. On the people side, we are the proud and well organized and recognized employer in 11 diverse countries in our region.
Our values of passion, integrity, teamwork, and accountability are shared throughout our organization. We continuously try to improve ourselves to become an even better inclusive, diverse, and inspiring workplace. Our diverse brand portfolio includes some of the world's best-known brands. We offer our consumers a wide range of products for every lifestyle and occasion. Sustainability is a fundamental and indispensable aspect of our business, and it is embedded in our vision and goals. We integrate sustainability principles into all of our operations and activities and are committed to achieving our 2030 sustainability pledge, which we announced last year. Our balance sheet is quite flexible, with sufficient liquidity. We remain focused on driving profitable revenue growth and free cash flow generation while investing ahead of the curve to prepare to capture tomorrow's opportunities.
I think now we can take your questions and leave the floor for Q&A. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Q&A session starts now. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Thank you for holding until we have the first question. Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, in order to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We have a question from Charlie Higgs from Redburn. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks for the question. I've got one on Pakistan, please. I think the volume growth 13.6% is actually very solid. Can you just comment on what you're seeing in the market in Pakistan from the consumer and the customer standpoint? Did the volume growth benefit at all from the timing of Ramadan this year? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. Pakistan volume growth. I think there is a lot of sort of pressure from different sides on the consumer and customer and the economy right now in Pakistan, right? The currency level is difficult to sort of understand whether it's an artificial or real rate because there is a shortage of FX in the country. In these conditions, we see that as long as we are able to provide sustainability of our raw materials, there is a demand in the market. The market will continue to grow. We, we really improved our RTM and our reach, and profitability of entire value chain for customers and distributors and so on over the last few years.
We see that our products go to the end sale point through a fairly healthy and robust value chain despite of the current instability, and consumer remains fairly strong. Now, we believe that the further test later this year will be in terms of how much rupee will continue to devalue or not, and what kind of inflation will be there, and what kind of further price increases we need to take. This may impact demand in the future, that equation of volume and price nobody denies. So far the demand was fairly strong and the pricing levels we maintained.
As I said, the main issue for Pakistan remains sort of securing the sustainability of raw materials, because some of them are imported, rather than having a sort of front end, on demand issues. Again, it may change as we go through the year as price volume equation, we monitor very carefully to make sure that we continue to grow.
Thank you. Then just to follow up on the energy drinks opportunity. I mean, where do you think it's biggest across your markets? Is it more angled towards Predator and the more affordable range and expanding that? Is there you're also seeing good growth at the more premium end with Monster? Thank you.
We see energy drinks in one of our strategic categories for growth. Base is very small. Our presence is minimal still in the markets, and we see it as a very long-term growth opportunity. Therefore, we see it as a multi-layered portfolio. We experience significant growth at the top end with the Monster brand, particularly in Türkiye. Predator is a more mass mainstream brand, and we are actively growing. We've started launches both in Türkiye and some of the international markets. That this expansion proven to be successful. At this moment, I think one of the large markets where we are not present is Pakistan, and this economic conditions need to solve itself for us to decide for the launch or not.
Second one, I think, Uzbekistan has a very small footprint because we are focusing on the basics of the business and primarily sparkling and so on. As a long term, we see growth of energy drinks as a strategic category for us, along with sparkling beverages and iced tea, because of its economics and of its growth potential in terms of the consumption. We see it as a multi-layered portfolio. So we see continued growth on both premium side with Monster and as well as the Predator. We also maintain a small Burn portfolio, Burn brand portfolio in Türkiye, which proven to be quite resilient, with very strong niche following and very good economics for the business.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We have another question from the line of Hanzade Kiliçkiran from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Excuse me. Actually, I was also going to ask about Pakistan, and my question is answered. But maybe I can ask about and make a follow-up on the margin side. You highlighted that the margin performance is softer than your expectations, actually, currently. I do think that the current issue in Pakistan may also put some margin pressure and eventually impact your guidance.
I think we are, we actually reiterated the guidance and, if we look forward, we see the second half of the year relatively easier than the first half of the year in terms of the margin performance. Many things may change, but that's our current view. Put in perspective, Pakistan has a margin lower than our average. Overall, even some deterioration there would not have such a significant effect on the total portfolio as long as we continue to perform in Central Asia and Türkiye. I hope this answers your question, but, in short, we reiterated the guidance for the year.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Including margin.
Okay. Andriy, and also on Uzbekistan, you have been building up some margins in Uzbekistan after the product mix change. I mean, is Uzbekistan still diluting your margins or it starts to positively affect your margin performance?
Uzbekistan is still marginally dilutive. Not a significant difference of the average. Yes, it's lower than average. I mean, taking into account the growth opportunity, we obviously are trying to improve, and we will continue to focus on the margin in all our markets. With the growth opportunities there, we focus the first and foremost on the growth. Uzbekistan grew 20%, 21% year-on-year in the Q1. This is the quarter where they had a historical freeze. One week, at least there was no electricity or any other energy to run the facilities. There was a stoppage. We still managed to grow 21%. The growth opportunity essentially unlimited for the next few years.
We are really focused first and foremost to build capacity, reach, more customers and consumers, and on the secondary also focusing on maintaining and improving margins. The growth is very critical in Uzbekistan. It's a huge opportunity.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder. In order to ask question, please press star one, one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions. Dear speakers, back to you.
Well, thank you very much. Thank you all for attending our call today, and thank you, your interest in our company. We know we are going through some challenging times and we've, I think, you know, proved again, once again that CCI is a very resilient and agile and adaptive company into any kind of challenges that are ahead of us. We believe we're gonna be able to deliver our commitments to the investors and those who believe in our company. Thanks a lot for joining our call today, hope to see you next time. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.