Good morning to our participants in Asia, and good evening to our participants joining us from the U.S.. Thank you for joining Del Monte Pacific's first quarter results ending July 2022. Representing Del Monte in this briefing are Cito Alejandro, Group COO of Del Monte Pacific and President of DMPI. Parag Sachdeva, Group CFO of DMPL. Greg Longstreet, President of Del Monte Foods in the US. I am Iggy Sison, Chief Corporate Officer of DMPL. Parag Sachdeva will now present our first quarter results.
Thank you very much, Iggy. On slide five, we'll start with the first quarter highlights. Our sales decreased marginally by 1% to $456.6 million as higher sales in the U.S.. And international markets led by S&W brand were offset by lower sales in the Philippines. Our U.S. subsidiary, DMFI, redeemed its 11.875% high yield bonds to secure a lower interest rate Term Loan B, which would give us a saving of around $20 million-$30 million annually. On the same, we incurred a one-off redemption post-tax cost of $50 million. Before this one-off cost, DMFI's net profit rose 67% to $8 million, while group net profit increased by 7% to $19.6 million.
DMPL incurred a net loss of $30.5 million, including the impact of one-off redemption costs, which were already highlighted at our last quarter's investor briefing. Group expects to generate a net profit in fiscal 2023 after one-off redemption costs and is consistent with our guidelines in the last quarter. On slide six, continuing with the outlook that we cover every quarter, our strategy continues to strengthen the core business, expand the product portfolio in line with market trends for health and wellness, and grow our branded business while reducing the non-strategic business segments, mainly in the U.S.. More product availability through better distribution and expanded sales channel is a big theme for us, not only in the U.S., but Asia as well. DMPL does expect to offset the impact of higher costs, as we have demonstrated in the first quarter.
DMPL is proactively addressing inflationary impact from commodity headwinds and increased transportation costs through revenue and cost drivers, including driving efficiencies and productivity across the operations. We have embarked on a number of cost optimization initiatives, including distribution center consolidation, increased use of rail instead of trucks in the U.S., and tin can packaging optimization in the Philippines. Barring unforeseen circumstances, the group expects to generate a net profit in 2023 after one-off redemption expenses. On slide seven, we'll again share group results summary. Sales of $456.6 was 1.2% below last year. U.S. sales were up 1.2%. Philippines was lower by 18.2% in U.S. dollar terms and 9.6% in local currency, driven by the decline in volume across core categories as consumers continue to adjust to high inflationary environment.
We'll provide more background to this in the coming slides. The S&W brand in Asia grew by 27%, driven both by fresh fruit and packaged exports, and our total international business grew by 16%. Our JV in India has rebounded and increased sales by 19% in local currency, driven by strong recovery of the B2B business. EBITDA of $70 million is down 6.6% from $75 million due to lower sales, unfavorable sales mix in the U.S. and Philippines, and also higher logistics costs. Our operating profit of $50.4 million is down by 11.2%, mainly in line with the decline in EBITDA that I have explained earlier.
Net profit though of $19.6 million before the redemption cost is up 7% from $18.3 million due to savings from interest and improved results from the joint ventures. On slide eight, we'll provide you more background on the redemption costs. In May 2022, DMFI raised $600 million through a seven year Term Loan B facility at adjusted SOFR, with a floor of 0.5% plus 4.25% per annum, which is to primarily redeem the $500 million high yield bonds, which had a very high interest rate of close to 12%. The current SOFR for everyone's benefit is around 2.3%. That's what it is at the end of August, and we are capped on the same starting April 2023 at 3%.
That's what our cap is, and it starts from April 2023. The lower interest rates that we would benefit from would give us annual impact of around $20 million-$30 million favorable as starting this fiscal year. The redemption of the notes, as you can see from the chart, does incur a one-off cost of $72 million or 50.2 post-tax and NCI, which was all booked in Q1. Out of the 71.9, 26.3 is of the redemption cost was non-cash. On slide nine, we'll take you through the results in a little bit more detail. First quarter sales at $456.6 million is 1.2% lower than last year. Higher sales in the U.S. and international markets is offsetting the lower sales in the Philippines.
Would also like to highlight here that growth from pricing and trade optimization was approximately 5.5% on a groupwide basis. This will be explained more in the turnover analysis. Our gross profit at $131.7 million is marginally lower by 1.3%, and that's driven by lower sales. Our gross margin at 28.9% is in line with last year, which is demonstrating our ability to protect margins via revenue and cost drivers, both in the U.S. and Asian operations. When it comes to gross margin for DMFI, it was at 25.9% in line with last year. Would like to highlight to everyone that it improved by 110 basis points versus Q4 of fiscal year 2022.
The pricing actions that have been taken in Q4 of fiscal 2022 in the U.S. have offset the impact from cost headwinds. Whereas the margin for the base business decreased by 50 basis points during the same period, driven by commodity headwinds such as cost of fertilizers, increased packaging costs, unfavorable impact partly on sales mix also, which was partly offset by pricing. As I explained earlier when I provided some guidance on sales, the favorable impact on revenue from pricing groupwide is approximately 5.5%, thereby reconfirming that we have our brand is nicely positioned to take the pricing which is in line with the commodity headwinds.
EBITDA of $70 million is lower by 6.6% from $75 million, mainly due to the increase of logistics costs and higher G&A, both of which are driven by inflation. Net loss of $30.5 million has been impacted by one-off redemption costs. If we exclude the one-off redemption costs, post-tax of $50 million, net profit would be $19.6 million or an increase of 7.2%. Our net debt at $1.7 billion is higher by $426 million due to additional loans that we have taken to refinance last April the redemption of DMPL Series A-1 pref shares amounting to $200 million. The second would be refinancing of the redemption of senior secured notes in the US, as explained in the previous slide.
That also increased our loans by around $50 million-$55 million to also settle the redemption costs. Our working capital loans of DMFI, as we continue deliberately increasing our inventory to stay ahead on our customer service levels and support the growth of the business as well as increased costs, that has resulted in slightly higher working capital loans. As a result of that, the gearing ratio at 4.2x has increased by 2.1x due to the reasons explained for the net debt increase. If you exclude the one-time charge related to redemption cost, the D ratio would be 3.7x or 0.5x lower on an organic basis.
We do expect to improve this during the year as we are expecting to generate net profits, which will help increase our retained earnings and bring us slightly lower than 4 times by the end of fiscal year 2023. Our net debt to adjusted EBITDA is still very healthy from a group perspective at 5 times, though 1.2 times higher against last year, mainly due to increased debt, as I've explained above. On slide ten, we'll take you through the turnover analysis. Starting with Americas, which constitutes 66% of total group sales. The increase was around 1.2% to $303.3 million, mainly driven by higher branded retail sales, which grew by 2.3%.
Revenue growth was mainly driven by pricing taken across categories in line with inflation, offsetting impact from inventory de-loading by key customers and also some supply constraints that we are facing, mainly on our food business. If you look at the 52 and 13-week EQ volume share, that continues to grow across all our major categories of canned veg, fruit, and tomato segments. New products launched in the past three years contributed robustly to 6.8% to DMFI's total sales in the first quarter. When it comes to Asia-Pacific's, sales in the first quarter decreased by 6.6% to $145.6 from $155.8 last year, mainly due to lower sales in the Philippines, which were partly offset by higher sales of S&W branded fresh and packaged pineapple.
Would like to highlight that the unfavorable impact of peso devaluation on translation of Philippine business revenue was approximately $7.8 million, which needs to also be taken into consideration. The fresh business performed very strongly and was up 19.8%, driven by additional sales from the premium pineapple variety, along with improved supply of S&W Sweet 16 pineapple. We continue to gain traction in China's retail segment with the S&W Deluxe Premium Fresh Pineapple, which continues to grow very well. In the Philippines, sales were lower by 9.7% in peso terms, and that was driven by a decline in volume across core categories. Packaged mixed fruits and beverage sales were down as consumers shifted priorities in the face of high food prices.
The first quarter also saw the temporary impact of transition to new distributors, which are expected to deliver increased reach and down the line availability across categories. Furthermore, would like to highlight that we also de-loaded inventory in the trade by three weeks, which sets up very nicely, and we are nicely poised for a stronger festive season. Would like to highlight that the sell-out growth in Philippines is at 7%, which is our sales from our distributors to their customers. When it comes to Europe sales, that increased by 19.1% to $7.6 million, mainly driven by higher sales of pineapple juice concentrate. With that, let me hand it over to Greg to provide a very good perspective on the U.S. business.
Thank you, Parag. If you turn to slide 12. We'll begin with a few slides on our first quarter performance at DMFI in the U.S., and then I'll give you some highlights on the current environment with our consumers, and then end with some comments around our recent acquisition. To begin, our quarter delivered almost just slightly over $300 million in revenue, about 66% of group turnover. Sales were up slightly 1.5%, driven by a healthy mix of branded sales. That's been our focus for the last several years, and we continue to reap the benefits of our branded sales focus. Canned vegetables, tomato broth, and our new Joyba Bubble Tea also all grew within the quarter.
As we look at our biggest contributor, Del Monte vegetable business is where we saw the most significant share increase as well, this recent quarter. Really pleased we continue to find new pockets of distribution, expanded shelf presence, more points of distribution, and an overall very healthy core business is what we're experiencing here in our US-based business. New products continue to grow, and we've now built a pipeline approaching $150 million of new product sales, or 6.8% of our total sales. Really pleased that we maintained our gross margin in the face of some very, high inflationary costs and some headwinds.
We were able to stay ahead and offset the significant increased cost to operate and cost of goods and maintain that 25.9% gross margin within the quarter. EBITDA was slightly lower, driven by the higher logistics and operating costs for the business, so we delivered $36 million in EBITDA. Before the one-off redemption cost that Parag mentioned, we had a net profit of $8 million, which is 67% higher than our $4.8 million net profit in the quarter a year ago. Pleased with that, pleased with the lower interest rates we've accomplished. We'll get these one-time re-redemption costs behind us.
As Parag mentioned, we're looking at $20 million-$30 million of savings a year in interest, and we'll be operating at a much more normal interest rate moving forward on the business. Very pleased that that's been able to help lower our leverage significantly. Next slide, 13. This is a look at our market shares. You'll see that there's very healthy growth again in the quarter. This really is the result of us executing our commercial strategies across our canned vegetable and canned fruit business, our fruit cup snacks, our tomato business and broth and stock business, all are performing well, staying at or above the category.
Continue to benefit from our focus on marketing to consumers, our focus on building new channels of growth, new distribution, and more support for these great brands. Very pleased. That's a key benchmark for us, and we are gonna continue to invest in bringing differentiated and innovative products to market, expanding these distribution channels that we sell within, and building our brands. Slide 14. On the next slide, we'll look at some of the marketing highlights. This is just a quick review of some of the things that we're doing to generate interest, trial, and awareness across our portfolio. We continue to have a lot of success across social media with our Joyba expansion, reaching a lot of younger consumers, and continue to see exceptional sales results for this product.
We're expanding this line of beverage, bubble tea beverage products now across Target stores nationally, broadening our reach, with Walmart, the club stores such as Costco, and hitting a lot of retailers throughout the country now for the first time with our increased capacity. Excited about the growth opportunities that exist for Joyba, as well as our overall fruit cup snacks business, which continues to be quite healthy. That's been one of our struggles, is to keep up with demand and try to stay ahead of demand, through the busy back-to-school season. Slide 15.
Slide 15 is. I have a few slides to just talk about what's happening in the U.S. marketplace, how consumers are thinking, how the categories are reacting, what's happening with pricing, innovation, and channels, as a result of the recessionary environment that we're facing here in the U.S. First and foremost, the consumer, who we're very focused on, we're watching closely. What we're seeing from consumers is an increased reliance on meals prepared at home. Consumers are stretching their food dollars, especially the middle class consumer, is really facing the brunt of inflation in every aspect of their life. So what they're doing is being smarter about the decisions and money they spend to feed their families. So they're moving to more at-home consumption. They're also, we're seeing a very sharp increase in center store migration.
Consumers leaving the more expensive perimeter fresh produce areas and frozen categories and coming to our products within center store. We're adding a lot of new households and seeing a lot of increased penetration and growth potential. The categories continue to perform well. If you look at the dollar growth within all of our categories, very healthy. That is consistent with history, and I'll show you a little bit about that coming up. Pricing, you know, we've continued to price. We've been very strategic in our pricing approach, and I'll talk about that in more detail. It's important to remember that over 75% of the units that we sell in the U.S. sell for less than $2.
It's not a very big out-of-pocket expense for the U.S. consumer that's looking for quality brands and quality products. We are still a relative value. I would also add that we've been able to offset a significant portion of inflation through operational efficiencies, not just via price increases. On innovation, what we've done is not just innovate in the premium spaces, we've also innovated across the value spectrum and really expanded our portfolio to offer a nice range of sort of good, better, best products that reach different types of price points and different types of consumers and different types of customer channels. That channel piece, the last piece, continues to be an avenue that we get very excited about.
If we look at our growth within the dollar and value channel, the club store channel, the mass channel, where consumers are actually migrating to find more value right now due to the recession. We're there now with branded products and really reaping the benefit of that increased consumer traffic. Slide 16. This is some research, recent research we've conducted, that looks at consumers' kind of outlook and where they're gonna be consuming product and how they're gonna consume products. We're seeing a prevalence of consumers show more interest in cooking at home. We're seeing a prevalence of consumers showing an interest in packing food from home when they travel or go out. Again, more home meal prep. We're seeing less and less interest in going out to eat and getting takeout.
We're also seeing increased interest in terms of shopping, in the likelihood of shopping canned fruit, canned vegetables, canned tomato, and our broth and stock categories. Again, points to the kind of business that we're seeing, the trends we're seeing has definitely come true in our consumer insight work and research. Slide 17. Slide 17 is a look at history. We went back to the last time we had a significant recessionary environment in the U.S. marketplace back in 2009. In that period, our categories performed quite well. We saw a nice spike in consumption, a nice spike in sales. Consumers trying to stretch their food dollars, looking for quality and value from brands they trust, buying more products in grocery stores, buying more center store products.
This is a trend that's kind of repeating itself right now, but we're stronger than we were back in 2009. We're better positioned, a broader portfolio of products and broader distribution to be where this consumer is looking for product and looking for value. Slide 18. Just one more slide on sort of just recessionary behavior. You know, there's some things that we intuitively know. There's increased concern with our consumers about financial security, increased interest in minimizing food waste, a focus on immunity and strong mind and bodies. Food safety continues to be important. I think coming out of COVID, what we're seeing is there's this increased desire to be prepared for anything. Our consumers want their pantry stocked.
They want food stocks at home on-hand and readily available, so they're building up more inventory and keeping that at home, and that's where our products really fit in. What we saw during COVID was that there was an increased interest in trusted brands that provide quality and value, less of an interest in brands that they did not know, and even less of an interest in private label during those last three years. We are, you know, really positioned well against each one of these consumer behaviors to thrive and win in this marketplace. We have the right portfolio at the right time, and we keep evolving to meet these changing needs of our consumers in the U.S. market. Slide 19. This is a look at that portfolio that I discussed.
This looks dramatically different than it did back in 2009. It's really been in the last couple of years where we fortified our portfolio from a good, better, best strategy around price points and value offerings 'cause we have a lot of consumers that look for value at that good kinda price point and that $1-$1.50 price range. We also have a lot of consumers that are eating more at home but want more premium ingredients to conduct home meal preparation. We're seeing an interest in organics and more premium products. I'll mention that our Deluxe Gold pineapple has really been a success story for us. It's bringing in a new consumer, a different consumer than our traditional base pineapple consumer, and it's allowing us to reach new households and grow the business.
We're seeing this happen across each segment of our portfolio. At the very bottom, what you'll see is multi-packs. Multi-packs have been probably our biggest area of growth as a company. We're seeing more and more interest. As I mentioned, consumers wanna stock up on staples. They wanna buy four cans, not one can. They wanna buy 12 fruit cups, not four. What we're doing is really meeting those needs, and we've added a lot of capacity within our manufacturing sites to produce these multi-packs that we're selling both in the retail grocery environment and the club store environment and are very optimistic about the outlook over the next 12-24 months with these multi-pack offerings. Slide 20. Slide 20 is just a highlight on our pricing strategy.
We have just actually in September, early September, executed and went live with our third price increase since May of 2021. We've been very methodical. We've offset inflation through a number of our operational efficiencies, but we've been also very cautious to raise prices to our customers and consumers, monitoring velocities and share performance to make sure that we are managing price gaps, managing elasticity, not losing any share to either brands or private label and have been quite successful with this phased approach. It's allowed us to protect the business, be responsive to our customer needs and still reach our consumers to find pockets of growth. We're gonna keep monitoring all this pricing activity. It has not slowed down demand for us. As you saw, it has not slowed down market share growth.
We feel optimistic about this September pricing really continuing to aid the overall business and help us mitigate some of the impact of inflation. Next slide, 21. To kinda wrap up that discussion, you know, our business in the U.S. has been resilient. We're now on our third year of record growth, both top and bottom line growth. We've built a trusted portfolio that's on point with consumer behavior. We have this white space for growth that was previously underdeveloped. We previously did not have branded products in the club stores, the discount channel. We weren't as significant as we are now in mass, and we're not even present in the natural channel. We have a very aggressive pipeline of new products and new brands to support the tiered portfolio, and I mentioned the pricing impact.
Cost management now is in year four. You've heard me talk about asset-light for several years. That continues. Now we're on to, you know, looking at our deployment, our warehousing, our logistics, finding ways to consolidate, centralize, and find savings and efficiencies. There's more and more savings coming that we'll bring to the bottom line, and we have a detailed playbook in terms of how we're gonna cut costs. A lot of work in terms of increasing automation, lowering areas like maintenance expense, and driving overall plant-level efficiency. Feel good about the progress we're making against our supply chain, and we have several more years of work to do to keep trying to optimize that, and that's gonna continue to benefit the company. The next slide.
Just wanted to highlight this acquisition. We're very excited about this Kitchen Basics acquisition. This is a brand that we have admired for several years. It was owned by McCormick. The brand is really an innovator and is the original liquid stock brand. Consumers love and trust this brand. It's a national brand with a very strong base of customer loyalty across items like chicken, seafood and beef stock. But what they also have nationally is a very impressive portfolio of organic products and products in some up-and-coming areas like bone broth. This complements the College Inn business. College Inn, as you know, is a regional business. It's an East Coast brand, very strong in broth, not as strong in stock.
Now we have with all of our, you know, insights into the consumer and the category and our knowledge of how we can grow this business, we now have a dual platform. We now have a national presence, where we'll be able to sell broth and stock in 75% of the U.S. that we previously did not sell into. This was a profitable business. It is a profitable business. It's margin accretive, both in gross margin and EBITDA margin, and we think it was underdeveloped and undersupported. We're confident with our pricing and go-to-market strategies and promotional strategies that we can grow this business. We've built a 5% top line CAGR. We think we can do much better than that over the next three-five years. Really pleased with how the integration has been working.
We're now in charge of this brand. We're essentially representing the brand in front of customers and officially cross over in terms of managing the inventory and the fulfillment process in October. Pleased with this, and hopefully when we prove this to be successful, we'll have an opportunity to increase that M&A path along health and wellness and really leveraging our scale and our expertise in the U.S. market. We think there's a nice runway of further organic growth to complement all the organic growth that we've achieved. With this, I'll now pass the presentation over to Mr. Cito Alejandro.
Thank you, Greg, and good morning to everybody. I shall now start the discussion on Del Monte Pacific, which consists of the Philippine market and our international operations. Sales of $174 million was down 5%, and the higher international sales was offset by the lower sales in the Philippine market. Our international business did very well, growing 16%. This growth was driven by fresh at 20%, packaged goods at 12%, with S&W packaged goods growing at a healthy 49%. Pleased to report that S&W innovations in the deluxe line, frozen products and juices are well on track. They now account for 15% of total sales, and these products have a future potential revenue of about $100 million annually. In the Philippine market, sales were off 10%.
Our beverage, juice declined as consumers shifted to other formats, even if our multi-flavored juices have been growing. Mixed fruits was also impacted by a decline in the desserts category, with consumers prioritizing basic foodstuffs in the face of inflation. We were also impacted by the transition to new distributors that Parag mentioned earlier, but, this should lead to better results in the very immediate future. Good to note our business progress in innovation as well as food service and convenience stores. Going now to market shares. Next chart, please. We maintained, our leadership position across four categories. In packaged pineapple, we even managed to increase market share.
On beverage, although we have maintained leadership, our key priority now is to regain the market share we lost to PET bottled brands and low-priced competitors, and I'll talk more about this in the latter chart. Next chart. Just wanted to give this reassurance to all of you in the call. As you know, you know, August is the start of our second quarter period, and I just wanted to report to you, and as you can see on the chart, that all business units, especially the Philippine market, excuse me, delivered better than planned as well as year ago. Fresh had a terrific month, shipping 44% higher than last year.
also wanted to report to you that, as far as September is concerned, both for Del Monte Foods and Del Monte Pacific, our shipments are well on track to meet our goals. We look forward to extending this momentum, particularly in the critical October to December holiday season. Next slide. Our beverage plan consists of several components. In our most challenged 100% pineapple juice, we aired new compelling advertising featuring new benefits, very unique to pineapple, bromelain being one of them, that helps promote health and well-being. We believe that this is going to get traction, and it will enable us to win back our lapsed users.
In Fit 'n Right, due to popular demand, we reintroduced the original classic line, which we discontinued when we relaunched our advanced formula products last year. This product we introduced in August, and the shipments came in at 30% above our goal. All well and good here, and we think that this is going to be a great help in further expanding our Fit 'n Right portfolio. Another key initiative is expanding distribution in the growing grocery and sari-sari store segment. As you can see on the chart, you know, significant improvements are headed our way this entire fiscal year. This is a key driver of renewed growth for the beverage category.
With our one-liter format, which has been growing, because of its perceived high value for money, we aim to further accelerate it by encouraging consumption in meal occasions. You know, via advertising, both TV and digital, and also increasing purchase per shopping trip by way of bundle pack promotions in the stores. Next slide, please. Excuse me. We have found in our markets, including the U.S., that a combination of offering affordable low cash outlay units, as you will see now, along with discounted multi-packs, is one proven way to address the impact of shrinking consumer budget due to inflation. At the left side, you will see the low cash outlay packs across the categories, and these are very affordable.
The pricing ranges from as low as $0.21 to as high as $0.55. Okay. These packs are doing very well right now. On the right side is our assortment of bundle packs, also multi-category, all offering some price incentive to entice consumers to load them up in their shopping basket. This now accounts for an average of about 20%-30% of our portfolio in the categories where we are running these bundle packs. Very successful. Next chart. Talk about food service. Very good results. You know, this business accounts for 10%-15% of our portfolio, and it has sustained momentum. This is because of increased consumer traffic and dining out.
Sales grew 20%, operating income up 27%, and we're now serving accounts at 82% of pre-pandemic levels. Very encouraging results, and we look forward to further improvements in the coming months. Next chart. Convenience stores are also up. With the reopening of more outlets, we are now at about 90% of pre-pandemic outlets being open. Our sales grew by 39%, and we have also managed to introduce more products in the stores now. In the Philippines, the convenience segment is led by 7-Eleven, and far second is Ministop. Next slide. We continue to progress on our new products in dairy and snacks. You will see these products on the screen. They now account for a combined 8% of total sales, and they continue to grow.
Just to note that the addressable market of these categories is huge, about $3.5 billion. Lots of opportunities and upsides for these products as we progress them this year and the years to come. Next chart. International also have their own innovation. Total sales potential of these products, as I said earlier, is about $100 million, and we have built this into our long range plan. You will see that our Nice Fruit frozen sticks at the top of the page, Nice Fruit, are now sold in more than 8 geographies worldwide. I would like to call your attention to the lower right of the page where we have our Deluxe line. This is the naturally extra sweet variant of our regular S&W pineapple, mostly sold in North Asia.
We also have a version packed in a can. This one is sold mostly in the U.S. Through Del Monte Foods and has been very successful in reinvigorating our pineapple business. Next slide. You know, I decided to talk about this because we missed this in previous reports, but pleased to report to you that under the leadership of our new CEO and CFO, our India business has regained vitality. First quarter sales are up 19%. B2B channel grew 66%. Our retail sales likewise healthy, up 19%, with modern trade and general trade both gaining momentum. Our gross margin has significantly improved, and EBITDA and net income are now positive. Just wanted to go back again to Fresh to close the presentation. Okay.
Going back to Fresh, we are now the largest pineapple exporter to China, and we have 53% market share of this significant market. We are also among the top three biggest exporters to Japan, Korea, and the Middle East. Below is our Deluxe variant, which I talked about earlier. To the right of that is the chart that shows how we intend to build Deluxe in the coming years to become a significant contributor to our Fresh portfolio. In fact, we're eyeing it to at least contribute 1/3 to the total business of Fresh. We'd just like to end for your better appreciation of Deluxe, let me show you this video. Thank you.
Around the world, on the best occasions, in any season, the S&W Deluxe Fresh Pineapple is a likely favorite. It's no ordinary fruit. It's a fruit of superior quality. Superior in sweetness, taste, color and texture. Grown with a lot of help from Mother Nature. We grow the S&W Deluxe Fresh Pineapple on fertile land, on a mountain plateau with lots of sunlight, just enough rainfall. We work with farmers who till the land and grow our fruits with tender care. Picking sun-ripened fruits one by one by hand, capping 400 days of growth from seed to fruit. Only our best fruits carry the premium S&W Deluxe label. With fields evaluated prior to harvest, only pre-selected fruits are handpicked. Right after harvest, selected fruits take the journey to our fresh fruit packing house where they are washed, sorted, tagged, and cased for shipment.
The fruit we ship to the global market is superior in every way. It is deliciously sweet with higher Brix. The fruit is golden yellow inside out at full ripeness, bringing out the fruit's best flavor and texture. We have full capability to deliver the best fruits anytime. Our operations are massive in scope, and our facilities operate on new technologies. Our plantation is one of the world's largest, spanning some 20,000 hectares of fertile land. Our supply is stable. We operate round the clock with some 5,000 people working together. Our quality is uncompromised.
Our growing and packing processes abide by the highest international standards on food safety and food quality. Certifications and accreditations are issued by third-party organizations and by regulatory agencies of countries of destination. Foremost, we have the best people working hard to deliver best quality fruit to keep us competitive. The future holds even greater promise. For the sweetest of pineapples, the journey has just started, and the best is yet to come.
Thank you very much. That's all I have, and I shall now turn you over to Ignacio Sison.
Thank you, Cito. We'll now proceed with slide 34.
Hold on, Iggy.
Sustainability is one of our five strategic pillars supporting our vision, nourishing families and reaching lives every day in Del Monte Pacific. Last month, we published our fifth sustainability report and articulated our five key sustainability goals on better nutrition, ESG ethos, waste reduction, net zero emissions, and responsible sourcing. On better nutrition, close to 80% of Del Monte Philippines products provide better nutrition based on a global nutrition profiling system, and we continue to add positive nutrients to our product portfolio. On waste reduction, we continue to reduce material usage of PET bottles and caps, stand-up pouches and tin cans. Good for reducing our carbon footprint, as well as managing our cost. On net zero emissions, we're pleased to report that Del Monte Philippines pineapple operations were independently verified as carbon negative for Scope 1, 2, and partial Scope 3 by the British Standards Institution.
On slide 35, on nourishing employees, we've increased the percentage of women and BIPOC in senior management and higher roles by 7% in the U.S. On nourishing growers, we developed Grow Collaborative to bring organic produce growers together to enrich the community farming practices and the planet. On nourishing the planet, we've maximized packaging lines to enable multi-pack optimization, as Greg referred to earlier, and reduce fiber usage content, improve transport and fuel efficiency, and support our carbon footprint goals. Finally, on nourishing communities, we continue to provide food to organizations such as Convoy of Hope, Feeding America, as well as many non-government organizations in the Philippines.
To recap our outlook on slide 36, DMPL Group will continue to strengthen our core business, expand our product portfolio in response to consumer preference for health and wellness, and grow our branded business as we reduce our non-strategic unbranded business within the group. We'll improve product availability through a more efficient supply chain, better distribution, and expanded sales channels, including e-commerce, as referred to by both Cito and Greg earlier across our markets. We will continue to proactively address inflationary impact from commodity headwinds and increased transportation costs, as Parag referred to earlier, through revenue and cost drivers, including driving efficiencies and productivity across our operations. DMPL has embarked on a number of cost optimization initiatives, such as you will note here on distribution center consolidation, increased use of rail instead of trucks to save on fuel, and tin can packaging optimization.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, Del Monte Group expects to generate a net profit this fiscal year, 2023, after one-off redemption expenses. With that, we would now like to open the floor to questions. You can click the Raise Hand icon at the bottom of your screen or continue to post your questions in the Q&A box, as we have seen some of you already have started to do. Jennifer Luy will now moderate the Q&A. Thank you.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. We have a number of questions. I'm gonna start off with the Philippines. From Ramesh: I was surprised by the first quarter drop in sales revenue on DMPI. Can you elaborate, was it competition taking away sales or market shrinkage? Please talk about competitive landscape as Del Monte has dominance in several categories in the Philippines.
Okay. I'm not surprised that you're surprised about the drop, but let me tell you what happened, and I also want to reassure you that whatever issues and opportunities we have uncovered, we are executing the proper plans right now, starting Q2, and that's the reason why I showed you the August results because I'm sure that there will be a lot of questions. Couple of things happened. Number one, in the beverage category, you know. Also because of the inflationary environment, there's been shifting to the lower costing PET branded juices, no? As well as low price competitors that have expanded, particularly in the Visayas, the central part of the region.
In mixed fruits, that was affected primarily by a consumption decline, and that is because mixed fruits is actually classified as desserts in the desserts category, and that has gone down because the consumers have started prioritizing the basic food stuffs, no? You will note that the inflation hit here is quite big, no? It is really driven by the very high fuel costs, no? So we believe that we have the marketing programs that will reinvigorate the mixed fruits category this Q2 and also going into the critical October to December period. That's the situation in mixed fruits. In fact, also, there has been inventory deloading, as mentioned earlier, no?
We came out of our ending April with unexpectedly higher fruit inventory, and we had to sort that out in the May and June period, no? The last thing I wanted to tell you is we had to change several distributors, and we had to do it immediately, no? That also impacted our performance. That is for the better because it will result to better reach, better performance, and more sustainable growth. Those were the factors that affected the performance, no? It's a combination of operational, also some category consumption decline in mixed fruits, no? The market share that we lost in beverage, even though we have maintained our leadership position in that category.
Thank you, Cito. Continuing on with Philippines, can you share more about the price hikes for the Philippine products? What is your strategy for your business in the Philippines to mitigate the cost inflation?
If you take a look at the price hikes of other commodities, you know, they range from 50% to as much as 100%, no? That is the trend of these basic commodities. As far as our products are concerned, our pricing strategy has been one of smaller increments, but more frequent, as opposed to the one-time big time strategy, no? We started our pricing moves as early as last year, no? For this fiscal year, we are only taking one price, that's about 3.5%, and that will implement in October. Okay. We are making sure that our portfolio is very competitive, no? As I showed you earlier, no?
The way to counter the inflationary environment and the impact on that is number one, you must have low cash outlay products, which we have. That is the one that offers better value to the consumers, because if the budget shrinks and therefore they have to go down in terms of grammage or content or cash, then we have that portfolio. On the other hand, we also have what we call bundle packs, no? These bundle packs provide a pricing incentive, and it encourages loading up. As you know, if the consumers will get better value, they would usually go for these packs. With regards to pricing versus competition, right now, competition has also followed our pricing, and as usual, the way we have priced our products is really between a premium of about 5%-10% versus competition.
On average, just to build on what Cito said, the price increase in Q1 that we took is around 8.2% versus last year.
Yeah. Okay.
Thanks, Cito. Thanks, Parag. It would be interesting to understand more about how Minute Maid gaining market share in the Philippines, and what actions Del Monte think is appropriate in responding to Minute Maid?
Yeah. First of all, Minute Maid is a PHP 10 product, okay? It is a belly wash, no? They competed in the Visayas region, no? They are a low price competitor. If you take a look at the structure of the Philippine market, no? Okay. You divide what is the ready-to-drink beverage, 70% are what I would call the premium segment, and premium segment are those priced PHP 20 and above, and that is where we compete. If you take a look at that segment, we have 50%-55% of that segment. At the lower end of the spectrum, the 30% is where Minute Maid is competing, no? That's value share.
To us, our strategy has always been to continue to expand our position in the premium segment, because going down to the lower end segment of the market, no? Is not really going to be profitable. We don't think Minute Maid is making any profit at PHP 10 now with their portfolio. You know, they're getting new sales, no? And that actually expanded the volume of the category and resulted to the denominator expanded, so therefore you get hit, no, on the share. Our strategy is to stay committed to our value-adding juices, no, because that one is more preferred by consumers, that is our target market, and we make profit on that portfolio.
Thanks, Cito. Another one on Philippines. With the decline in both revenue and profitability, wouldn't it be better to focus more on exports?
As I said in my report, if you're talking about exports is really our international market, and that is growing healthily today, no. But if it's a question of exporting our Philippine products, no, we do that, but if you're referring to further building our business, then the international market is what we have, and it has been growing behind packaged pineapple products and other packaged goods and the fresh pineapple portfolio.
I mean, just to build on it. As you all know, we are very uniquely placed with a very balanced portfolio. Our focus would continue both. Just to remind everyone, even though Philippines had a tough economic situation last year, our overall growth of our Philippine operations grew by 6%. That was obviously behind the growth that we saw on the international business. The same trend has continued in Q1 with our international business growing by 16%, really recovering a large part of decline that we saw in Philmarket. Philmarket, let's reiterate that GT business, which is 55%, though declined in shipments, the sellout grew by 7%, which is a very important barometer. The trends are encouraging. We will bring it back, and as Cito said, absolutely feel good about driving growth in both international and Phil business.
Thank you, Parag. Thank you, Cito. There is an anti-junk food bill filed in the Senate in the Philippines. How can DMPI position to benefit from this? Anti-junk food bill.
I'm not familiar with the anti-junk food bill, but you know, if it is discouraging junk food, then I must tell you that we're well-positioned on that one because our portfolios are well-positioned on the health and wellness platform.
It's basically natural juices, less sugar.
Yeah.
We will be able to use that to really promote that we are mainly playing in the health and wellness segment. We would be nicely positioned.
Thank you. Let's move on to the States for Greg. Does Del Monte fall into the preparation category?
Yeah. There are parts of our portfolio that are clearly considered preparation items that are part of ingredients and dishes that are prepared at home. The College Inn broth and now the Kitchen Basics stock business are certainly ingredient businesses or preparation products, as are our tomato products. Our tomato products are used commonly across Italian dishes and many different forms of recipe usage. But you know that. That's important, but what's also important is the trends are about at home meal consumption. Our products are uniquely positioned across fruit and veg to be consumed at home as side dishes or main dishes. We really cover the gamut of where consumer trends are leading and whether they're gonna prepare an item or simply need a side dish to consume at home.
Thank you, Greg. Moving on to China. What's the impact of drought and COVID on fresh sales?
So far, the impact was more in the first two months of our fiscal year, May and June, slight more on May, you know. Right now, we have recovered, and we actually met our goals for the first quarter. We have more orders right now than our supply situation. We are observing this carefully. We're checking it carefully. The only impact was in May, and we were able to ship the orders and achieve and delivered on our goals from June onwards up until August. As you can see, I pointed out earlier, even in August, our performance on fresh that was a strong 44% above a year ago. At least 65% of that goes to the China market.
Just to build on that, our revenue for China fresh grew by 6% in Q1, and we are nicely poised to grow very strongly. Can't share the exact details with you, but by almost 30%-40% in Q2.
Thank you, Parag.
Nicely. Thanks.
Can you share more about the margin of fresh, the normal fresh versus the deluxe variant? Can you also share more details about the growth of S&W, especially in China? You mentioned before that you are expanding into other tier two and three cities in China with new distributors. What's the progress now?
Um-
Let's first.
You wanna take the margin, Parag, you know?
Let me take the margin one.
Yeah.
I think that's a little bit confidential to share exact details, but we can tell you fresh is our most profitable segment, and we make more than 40% of gross margin on the same. The premium deluxe that Cito took you through does command a premium, does command a increased profit of almost 25% than the standard Sweet 16.
Okay. Thank you, Parag. On the distribution side, just to let you know how we have progressed there. Over the past years, we have expanded our distribution in Tier 1 and Tier 2, and some of the Tier 3 cities. Right now, we are going into the balance of the Tier 3 and the Tier 4 cities now. In addition to expanding into the number of stores now, which we are now at about 18,000, we will move to 22,500 this year. We have also expanded our channels now. From the traditional fruit stores, we are also selling our pineapple to fruit tea shops now. This has provided significant added value to the product now, and it provided us a new revenue stream now to work on the China market. We're very bullish with the China market. We expect this year to be another stellar performance now for China.
Okay, thanks, Cito and Parag. For China, South Korea, and Japan, what are the revenues against addressable market? How much will this be by the end of the year based on plan? Why are there few or no canned food sales?
This is on China and Japan?
China, Korea and Japan.
Okay. The market share, when you look at fresh, we are talking about more than 50% when it comes to China specifically. When it comes to Korea, we are fast catching up, and our market share is more than 30%. When it comes to Japan, it's close to 20%. We are a strong number three in Japan.
Now, as far as China not having canned pineapple, that is correct now. Because in China, the preference is for fresh. You will seldom find a canned pineapple in retail. However, we have a very strong canned pineapple business in China, and that is because of the bakery business. They use a lot of pineapple for their pastry and we sell canned pineapple to that segment.
Our sales to North Asia of canned pineapple was roughly around $8 million-$10 million in the first quarter.
Okay.
Okay, thank you. We have Paul Chew who wants to ask his question live. Joanne, can you unmute Paul?
Thanks for the presentation. Sorry, I just had too many questions to type down. My first question is just on the inventories. Could you explain a little bit on the nature of the spike?
Well, we have a seasonal business. As you know, when you look at our inventories, we start building them from July onwards when it comes to the U.S. operations. That would be largely applicable to almost all the categories. It would be applicable to veg, fruits, as well as tomatoes. We build the inventories for the entire year from July onwards to October. In four months we are doing that. As a result of that, our inventories are on the lower side when it comes to April, at the end of the year, and it would grow back again from Q1 onwards. Second thing is, obviously the cost of inventory has started to go up, significantly driven by inflation.
On average, the increase in cost of our inventory is around 15%. These two factors are resulting to increased inventory. Thirdly, to support the growth which you are seeing in the last couple of years, and we are very bullish about our continued growth in fiscal year 2023, we are taking measures last year and this year to build inventory so that we can really stay ahead of the competition in servicing our customers, which does allow us and set us up very well when it comes to our future growth plans with those retailers.
Yeah. Thanks for that. Just a year ago, the inventory peaked in the second quarter. I'm just wondering, will we see a similar spike in inventory, I guess, in the second quarter? Or like you said, it's in part due to, you know, cost inflation and you're just stocking up.
No, we will see more spike in the second quarter.
Okay.
Because by October we would have finished the pack across all our major segments.
Okay, great. Thanks for that.
That trend will continue. You're absolutely right.
Okay. Yeah. Thanks so much for that. My next question is just on the US, just a couple if I could. Firstly, now as we approach Christmas, I'm just wondering what the conversations are like with customers? That's number one. Number two, what categories declined, I just wondered, for this first quarter? My third question, just a topical question. I just wondered during such inflation periods, I would I mean, just curiosity, I thought that private labels would be the typical option. So I just wondering, but this time now, like you say, your products are gaining more traction. Yeah. Thanks so much.
Okay. Yeah. I'll start with just the question around the outlook for holiday. We feel it's gonna be a big holiday, and we've gotten those signals from our customers. We're actually seeing our customers also signal they wanna take inventory a little bit early like they did last year because there's enough just supply chain disruption still out there, you know, among various, you know, food products and various supply chains that our customers wanna get their stocks, their key holiday merchandising items in their stores, in their warehouses in October and November to be ready. We feel very good about the holidays. Your second question was around?
Which category declined this quarter?
You know, the data we showed, the categories overall, especially if you look at revenue right now, we're seeing very strong growth across our core platforms. Our packaged fruits, packaged vegetables, packaged tomatoes, and our broth and stock categories all up. You know, we're actually the only brand that's seeing aggregate share growth in all those places.
Oh, okay. No, just I wonder on the year-on-year basis, sales was up 1%, so I'm just wondering were there any certain category, or it was quite evenly? I mean that 1% is quite even. Okay.
Yeah. What Parag mentioned earlier is we had some deloading happen. You know, there was a big movement across the U.S. customer base to sort of deload inventory. They had, as you probably read about Target and Walmart and several of the biggest retailers, they just had too much inventory and they said, "We're gonna stop ordering for a while to get caught up." Consumption data, what we're seeing scan to the stores and our market share data continues to be stronger, much stronger than 1.5%. What we're seeing now, and we're seeing it in August and September outlook, as you think about October, we've seen sales pick up again. It just got off to a slow start for the year in May and June. That's all that you're seeing there. That 1.5% really doesn't reflect what's occurring with consumer behavior in store.
Yeah. Thanks. Just my last one. Probably just a topical question.
Sure.
Thanks.
We absolutely have seen private labels start to grow again. As you look across our categories, I'll give you some examples. Fruit. Private labels gained four share points. Dole has lost four share points. We have gained share. As you look across tomatoes, private label has gained several points. The Hunt's brand by Conagra has lost several share points. We've gained share. If you look at broth and stock, private labels gained several share points. Campbell's and Swanson's have lost several share points. We have not. We've held our share. What we're seeing is some brands are not combating private label effectively. The consumer's making choices to leave their brands and buy private label, but that's not happening to our portfolio brands. We're not seeing that either through August. Our August data is actually stronger than our first quarter data.
Yeah. Thanks, Greg Longstreet, for taking my questions. My last one just on the Philippines. Just wondered what the figures were for the rebound in August for Philippines? Yeah, just my last question. Thanks again.
Yeah.
Sorry about that.
Go ahead.
Yeah. You must understand also that a lot of the improvements that we have done or the improvements that we have identified, we have started implementing that as early as June. The deloading already are settled down. You're now looking at shipments that are more in line with the growth in the channel, particularly in the general trade, which Parag mentioned earlier, that one grew by 6%. That one was a good trigger, no? As far as products are concerned, no? A certain portion also of the volume are preparations of the trade for the holiday season that's coming up, no? Although not yet as big, we will see most of that in the coming months.
Usually in October, that will start, and also in November, no? We have also implemented a lot of promotions in store, no? To stimulate consumption and generate higher market share, particularly in the beverage front, no? Again, it is a combination of what we have been trying to fix for months on the operational issues that we've had. We now have new distributors that have come into play, no? That is all working right now.
The inventory is now being deloaded, and you will see growth right now happening more in line with the sell out data that we have. Advertising has commenced also as early as July in some of those categories. We are well-placed, and we think that we have a stronger marketing plan going into Q2 that will deliver a very high growth expectation on our part for Q2. Parag, you wanted to say something? Go ahead, please.
Yeah, no, I think, Cito, building on it, we are looking at a strong quarter for our base business. That includes both international and Philippines, expecting a double-digit growth, barring some exchange impact that we will see on translation on Philippines business. The same would apply to a good trajectory that we are expecting on our branded business when it comes to the US.
Yeah.
Just a follow-up. Has it in part to do with a better macro or like they say, it's in part loading some restructuring of the distribution or is it a little bit of a reflection of macro improving for consumption?
Yeah, there is also a macro. I just wanted to share that with you. If you take a look at the macro side, the GDP growth of late is between 5.5%-6%. The unemployment is starting to ease up right now based on the report that I saw this morning. On the categories that we have, the category consumption is actually up. Beverage is up. All the other cooking categories for our cooking products are all up. That's also helping, partly helping, our solid business and our good performance in August.
Okay. Thanks, thanks again for taking my questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, Paul. Some of this you might have answered. I'm gonna lump a number of questions related to Philippines from Hannah and Wei Bunn. Hannah's asking, with a big expansion and distribution in the Philippines, how should we think about the sales and the margin in Philippines in FY 2023? From Wai Bunn, it's expectations for the coming quarters with the possible recessionary conditions looming with slowing sales in the Philippines. On the profit target for the MPI, is it gonna be intact in peso terms, or will there be adjustments following the weaker performance clocked in the first quarter?
You wanna answer the financial parts? Go ahead, Parag. Yeah.
I think so, Cito. I think just to be providing some guidance on projections, right? We would like to limit talking about Q2 because obviously we have to go quarter by quarter in a very volatile environment. When you look at projections, as I said, we are looking at a high single-digit growth in our base business. That applies both to Philippines and our international business put together. When it comes to the US, again, we are looking at a strong play on the branded side, and are expecting overall that the group would grow on revenue by a high single-digit, driven both by the U.S. and the base business.
Profitability-wise as well, that will reflect the improvements both on gross margin and EBITDA, considering the increase in branded sales that we are seeing and the impact of pricing that we continue to take, which allows us to stay ahead of the cost headwinds, particularly in the U.S. On the Philippines side, our margins would be under pressure in Q2 because in Q2, our production for pineapple products would be on the lower side as compared to Q1. Due to lower volume, we would see some impact on cost structure that would put some pressure on margins. Overall, group wide, we would be positive when it comes to our margin story versus last year, and which will allow us to have a double-digit growth on EBITDA and also on net income. That's. Go ahead, Cito. Sorry.
No, go ahead, Parag. Finish up. Yeah.
That's a pretty much overview that we are contemplating on Q2 for Philippines, for international business, as well as the U.S.
On the Philippines, as far as the commercial side is concerned, I just mentioned, number one is, we have not lost our market leadership. We are still strong. Number two is we're very much positioned well inside the stores, where it really matters to the consumers. Third is, we have a full lineup of advertising and promotion support, marketing plans starting in this August all the way to December. I think fourth is, if you take a look at the categories, the consumption is up. They're favorable. One would worry if the categories are down, but they have recovered, no? We think that there will still be difficulties, but as long as we keep faithful to our marketing plans, I think we should be okay, and we should be able to weather the whatever will come because of the inflationary environment. Okay.
Thanks, Cito. Thanks, Parag. Moving on to Kitchen Basics and the stake. You mentioned that it is a margin accretive acquisition. Can you share anything about the margins of Kitchen Basics and the sales of Kitchen Basics?
Yeah. As we look at the business on an annual basis, it brings gross margins that are north of 30%, and it brings revenue that will be north of $50 million a year, and we intend to grow from that base.
Thanks, Greg. Is the deal already concluded? What would be the synergy with the existing business of Del Monte in the States?
Yes, the deal has concluded. There's a great deal of synergy. It's a nice acquisition in that we didn't acquire any sort of people assets or plant assets. It's intellectual property. We bought the brand and its base of distribution, along with a healthy amount of quality inventory with a strong market value. We share the same co-packer that we use for our collagen business. A lot of synergy there with logistics, warehousing, our customer profile, and we think there's several areas that Parag and I have identified that we can actually find more synergy and savings that will further enhance margins.
Including go-to-market model.
Right. Exactly. Yeah. We have a direct selling force. They were using a broker. That can go away. A lot of layers of distributors involved that we think we can be more efficient with. There's several things that Parag and I feel are real opportunities that we've already embarked on.
Thanks, Parag. Thanks, Greg. How will this acquisition be funded? If by debt, will it stretch the available credit lines of the group?
No, we are increasing our credit lines in the U.S., and obviously, initially, it would be funded through debt, but with the increased credit lines, we would be fine.
Thank you, Parag. For Iggy, will we be in a position to sell carbon credit?
While we have a negative carbon footprint in the Philippines, which is about 500,000 metric tons, in the U.S. we do have a carbon footprint of about 1.8 million tons. Actually we need the negative footprint to offset the carbon footprint in the US, because our goal is not just to be net zero in the U.S. or net zero in the Philippines, but to be net zero as a group. That's the target. We're not in a position yet to sell it outside the group.
Okay. Thanks, Iggy. For Parag, DMFI's $8 million profit without one-off would be around $1 million-$2 million only if we deduct the savings resulting from the reduced interest expenses. That means assuming there was no redemption. DMFI's performance declined versus prior year. Is that correct?
Yeah. On an operating basis, as I said, sales was up $4 million. Margin was the same as last year at 25.9%. Our EBITDA was marginally lower by almost $1.5 million. That would accordingly mean that if you take out the benefit from the lower interest savings, our overall net income would be also marginally lower in line with the reduction that I mentioned on EBITDA. I can confirm based on our plans for Q2, we will have a very strong quarter, both from a branded retail sales perspective and profitability perspective.
Thank you. Thank you, Parag. From George. Del Monte Pacific's common shares is listed under SGX and Philippine Stock Exchange. Can your reports show EPS in Sing dollar and Philippine peso?
I think we can look at that. Our overall results are dollar-denominated, and that's why we follow that. If the conversion would help, we can look at providing that. The exchange rates for Singapore dollar are definitely mentioned in the notes.
Yeah.
If it would help further, we can check if we can provide multiple currencies in terms of earnings per share.
Thank you, Parag. Moving on to India, what are the JV revenues versus the addressable market, and how much will this be by end of year based on plan?
I mean, if you look at the India business, our total retail business, which is B2C, is roughly around INR 2.3-2.4 billion. That's what we are expecting. Which is expected to grow by 15%-20% year-on-year. If you look at the addressable spend of some of the major categories, like ketchup and sauces in B2C, it's around INR 9.6 billion, which is $120 million-$130 million. Mayo, which is again growing by 12%, the addressable spend is around INR 2.2 billion, which is around $30 million.
Overall, the categories where we play, the total addressable spend currently in B2C only is around $400 million, $300 million-$400 million, and these categories are growing at 8%-10%. Against that, as I mentioned, our revenue today is INR 2.3 billion or roughly around $30 million-$35 million, which makes it around 10% share. That tells you the size of the pie of the categories that we are present in today and does not include food service.
Thanks, Parag. IPO questions. Can we have updates on the potential IPOs of DMPI and DMFI? The book value for DMFI is $800 million. How much would this be valued using Fresh Del Monte P/E multiple as listed today?
I think on that.
Yeah. Go ahead, Parag. I'll help.
No, please.
Well, I was just gonna, you know, mention that, first and foremost, you know, we wouldn't be valued at a similar multiple to Fresh Del Monte. Being a much higher margin for a packaged foods company that's strongly branded, it's a different type of multiple that they'd be compared to. If you look at our outlook for profit this year, and you look at a conservative multiple for a packaged food company that's growing like us, our value is north of $3 billion. Anything to add, Parag?
No, that's very well put, Greg. Definitely the multiples are very different and in line with our peer FMCG companies like P&G and others. Those are definitely north of 10-12x EBITDA. That's what we are working towards with our investment bankers. When it comes to IPO timings, difficult to sort of confirm it, but we have started work on it as a team, both in the U.S. and at some stage we will also take up Philippines.
Okay. Thanks, Parag. Thank you, Greg. We have four more questions. Last two questions are on debt. What are the covenants? Then on the high yield bonds in the States, these have been redeemed, so are we still gonna have a briefing in the States for lenders?
Yes. The briefing to the lenders continues on a quarterly basis. That's definitely there.
That's tomorrow morning.
Yes, exactly. When it comes to covenants, particularly at the group level, we do have one covenant on debt equity that has to be at four times. We have a waiver to support the 4.2 that we have in Q1, which is obviously because of the redemption cost being booked in the first quarter in one go. But as I said, by the end of the year, we will be less than four times.
Okay. We have a question from Oma of the Business Times. Could you please specify the price hikes in terms of percentage increase in October for all markets? Can we expect further price increases for the rest of the year, given the volatile business environment?
Selectively. We will take pricing selectively on categories where we think there is an opportunity, and we are seeing margin pressure. Very mindful, but selectively we would do that in line with inflation, and that would be true both for Philippines and the U.S.
Okay. Thanks, Parag. Our last question is: What level of free cash flows are we expecting in the peak second and third quarters with the high inventory levels?
In Q2, all I would say is it's generally an outflow. That would sort of continue because we would build inventories in Q2. Our debt generally goes up by $200 million as we are building inventory. We expect that to continue.
Okay. We don't have any more questions.
Okay. Thank you very much.
We've concluded our briefing, yeah.
Thank you for joining us today.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Cito. Thank you, Parag.
Thank you.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks to our investors for joining.
Thank you.
The recording has stopped.