Hello and welcome everyone to the Barry Callebaut Group nine months key sales figures fiscal year 2025/2026. My name is Becky and I will be your operator today. All lines will be muted throughout the presentation portion of the call with a chance for Q&A at the end. If you wish to ask a question in this time, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to your host, Sophie Lang, Head of Investor Relations. To begin, please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Barry Callebaut nine-month key sales figures conference call for 2025/2026. I'm Sophie Lang, Head of Investor Relations, and today's meeting will be hosted by our CEO, Hein Schumacher and our CFO, Peter Vanneste. As usual at the end of our presentation, we'll have a short Q&A session for analysts and investors. Before we start, please take note of the disclaimer on slide two. I'd also like to remind you that the webcast and conference call are being recorded. With that, I'll hand over to CEO, Hein Schumacher.
Thanks, Sophie. Good morning everyone. Thank you of course for joining us for our nine-month trading update. I will start with some key messages followed by an update on our Focus for Growth Action Plan and strategic priorities. Then Peter will take you through our sales performance in more detail. I will also come back at the end of the presentation. Let me start with a brief overview of the key messages. While key sales volumes decreased for the nine months, the group has returned to positive volume growth in the third quarter for the first time in more than two years. This was supported by elevated demand in our global cocoa business following the sharp correction in cocoa product prices earlier in the year, alongside a low base of comparison.
Our global chocolate business also returned to growth in Q3, supported by strong momentum in EMEA and early progress in restoring service levels in North America. While we are encouraged by our return to growth, the chocolate market remains challenging overall, as Peter will elaborate on later in the presentation. Our improvement at Barry Callebaut will be gradual. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, that is why we have launched our Focus for Growth Action Plan last month to strengthen our fundamentals. I will come back to this in a moment. Taking all of this into account, we now expect full-year volumes to decrease by around -1% while maintaining our profitability and our leverage guidance.
Before going into the details of the nine months' performance, let me start with a reminder of our Focus for Growth Action Plan, first reiterating our ambition. At Barry Callebaut, we are already the global leader in cocoa and chocolate with a uniquely integrated business model and leading capabilities in R&D and sustainability. Our ambition is to build on a strong foundation through two clear, deliberate shifts. First, we are evolving towards a more solutions-oriented business, scaling targeted specialties in attractive, faster-growing segments where we can differentiate and create more value for our customers. Second, we are focused on protecting and strengthening our core volume base while shifting more decisively towards premium segments and accelerating the growth of our important Gourmet business. Delivering on this ambition will be underpinned by a strong customer-centric culture, the right talent, and increased empowerment of our regional teams.
Let's turn to the action plan itself. We are accelerating five key enablers that are critical to restore our fundamentals and stepping up execution across the business. The enablers span the entire value chain and are all anchored in a clear customer-centric approach and supported by digital capabilities. In parallel, we are prioritizing five selected growth priorities where we see the greatest potential for value creation. Global Accounts, Regional Food Manufacturers, Gourmet, Specialties, and Cocoa Powder. This disciplined approach ensures that we allocate our resources where they have the highest impact, ultimately driving attractive financial performance and results for our shareholders. We have significant work ahead of us to fully restore our fundamentals. I'm happy that we are starting to see early signs of progress in a number of key areas.
In footprint and quality, we are implementing selective network enhancements, importantly, we have recorded zero critical quality incidents or product recalls year to date. In planning, we are strengthening our sales and operations planning processes with new demand planning tools and with new planning forums that focus on Gourmet and specialties. Our early steps are starting to translate into improved reliability with on time in full or OTIF in North America, a key focus area, up 6 percentage points versus the same time last year. In our core customer processes, simplification efforts are underway, reflected in a meaningful improvement in customers' full sizes of close to 20% year to date. While these are encouraging early trends, I want to be very clear. This is really just the beginning. Restoring our fundamentals will require sustained execution and continued discipline for the months and year to come.
Turning to our five growth priorities, where we are taking action to drive commercial progress. First, on global accounts. We have formed a dedicated team reporting directly to me, the objective is to unlock the full potential of our largest global customers with clear growth plans for each account as we move into our new fiscal year. Second, for our regional food manufacturers. We now have a much clearer view of the growth opportunities by region, this is helping us to prioritize our commercial focus and ensure that planned investments are directly linked to the markets where we see the highest potential. Third, in Gourmet, we continue to double down and invest.
We are preparing for the launch of new innovation next fiscal year, supported by a strong commercial campaign, but also securing safety stocks for key SKUs, a key core SKU list actually, to support future growth. Fourth, in specialties. We are addressing capacity in selected focus sites and working to integrate these offerings more deeply into our core business and commercial processes. Finally, in cocoa powder, we are taking action to unlock premium powder capacity and accelerate sales efforts in higher value segments. Across all these five priorities, while still early steps, we are moving from strategy into execution, and the common denominator across the five is focus. Focused market segments and regional food manufacturers. Focused core set of SKUs, reducing complexity in gourmet. Focus in specialties with focus of around four to five core specialties by region. A focus on cocoa powder on premiumization.
Since the launch of Focus for Growth last month, we've also taken two concrete steps to move closer to our customer and strengthen execution in our regions. First, we are refining our global chocolate regional setup with the Middle East and North Africa and Southeast and West Africa clusters transitioning to the CEE or the Central and Eastern European region. Historically, these clusters were part of AMEA, and the move to CEE reflects closer geographic proximity, a stronger alignment in customer preferences and consumer habits, as well as supply chain interconnectedness and commercial go-to-market approach. This will allow us to be more responsive to local market dynamics and better serve our customers in these clusters. As a result, from the first of September 2026, our AMEA region will be renamed Asia-Pacific or APAC, and the current CEE region will become CEMEA.
Second, we are evolving selected functional capabilities and teams to be closer to regional business execution. Selected teams within functions such as customer supply and development, finance and HR that are closely linked to regional execution will start to report directly into the regions, while obviously continuing to be anchored in strong global functional expertise and alignment where that really matters. This is about empowering our regions to act faster and with greater accountability, while continuing to benefit from the global scale that we have. We're also shifting towards a more horizontal way of working and bringing teams together across regions and functions to drive impact. Now, let me hand over to Peter to talk more about the nine months performance.
Thank you, Hein, and good morning, everyone. Before turning into numbers, let me start with a brief update on the market environment. Cocoa bean prices have increased in recent weeks and especially this week, but overall remain in line with our expectations. Looking at supply, the current crop, which is now coming to an end, is expected to result in a significant surplus, marking the second consecutive year of surplus. As a result, the industry is entering the 2026- 2027 growth cycle well-stocked and with more than 10 months of price cover. At the same time, the market is closely monitoring the development of El Niño for 2026- 2027, which has been confirmed as a strong event by the UN. Typically, El Niño is associated with below-trend cocoa production, while La Niña tends to support above-trend crops.
This is not a hard rule, as the impact really depends on how El Niño influences regional weather patterns and ultimately crop development. Generally, El Niño-associated weather risks are higher than normal rainfall in Ecuador and higher than normal temperatures in West Africa. These weather dynamics are therefore key, and we're closely tracking developments with our teams on the ground. Importantly, based on what we see today, we do not expect a repeat of the extreme market conditions experienced in 2023, 2024, even in the case of a strong El Niño influence, because the context today is fundamentally different. At that time, in 2023- 2024, El Niño coincided with the main crop and marked the third consecutive year of deficit. Today, we're coming from a position of a strong surplus with ample cocoa stocks entering the new crop year.
We're significantly better positioned to manage this volatility, potential volatility at Barry Callebaut than we were two years ago. We strengthened our resilience through greater origin diversification, increased sourcing flexibility, and enhanced bean blending capabilities, as well as several financial measures, including the reserve credit and borrowing base facility that we've talked about in previous conversations. Turning to the end consumer environment. Main message is that chocolate market remains challenging. In the most recent quarter, Nielsen data showed a decline in market volumes of minus 4.4%, with a 9% year-on-year increase in pricing. While overall consumption remains under pressure, the rate of decline is easing with some early indications of stabilization. From a demand perspective, we continue to see that also through our forward bookings.
As you know, we contract several months in advance with our customers, and we've seen our customers more willing to book further in advance again, which is a positive thing. While average market pricing remains approximately 9% above last year, absolute price levels per kilogram have started to come down in recent months, as you can see on the right-hand side of this chart. Category pricing typically shows some seasonality, with higher promotional intensity around Easter, followed by a normalization after that. What we've observed this year is a more pronounced decline in net pricing over recent months, partly driven by increased Easter campaigns, with price adjustments occurring somewhat faster than a typical seasonal pattern. We are seeing early signs of moving into the right direction, but it will take time for the markets to recover progressively. Moving now to our nine-month performance.
The third quarter, BC group volumes returned to positive growth for the first time in more than two years. This was primarily driven by a strong demand in global cocoa, following the cocoa market correction earlier in the year and reduced cocoa product prices. Cocoa powder saw particularly strong momentum in Latin America and Asia, supported by some customer restocking, while the business also benefited from one-off cocoa butter opportunities. At the same time, global chocolates returned to growth in the quarter, driven by a second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth in EMEA and early progress in restoring service levels in North America. It is, however, important to put this Q3 performance into some context. As just discussed, both customer and end consumer demand are only gradually recovering and are recovering at BC, as Hein has also mentioned, will take some time.
As such, the 5.7% growth in the third quarter should not just be extrapolated. The recovery of our absolute volumes will be gradual, as we recently outlined with the Focus for Growth plan, we expect volume growth in the range of 1%-3% over the next 12 months to 18 months. Let me go into the nine-month numbers in more detail now. Overall, the group saw volume decrease for the first nine months of the year of minus 2.8%, turning positive in Q3 as just discussed. Looking at the left of this chart by segments, food manufacturers were impacted over the year by declining market dynamics, with our customers adapting behaviors in the context of high prices, we also saw supply disruption in North America earlier this year, returning to growth in Q3. Gourmet volumes were temporarily pressured by high prices in a sharply declining bean price environment.
Global cocoa over the year declined as a result of a negative market demand with a very strong bounce back in Q3 as we just discussed. Moving to the right hand of the chart, global chocolate. These volumes on global chocolate declined by 2.3% for the nine months ahead of the 5.6% decline of the market as per Nielsen. Western Europe saw 2.5% volume decline as demand continued to be impacted by market dynamics related to pricing. Central and Eastern Europe declined slightly by 0.7% over the year, significantly better than the market as local and regional accounts saw continued momentum. North America went down over the nine months by 7.6%, impacted by declining markets as well as, you know, network supply disruption in the first half of the year.
Importantly, North America turned positive in Q3 and is seeing monthly improvements as the business rebuilds inventories and meets growing customer orders. Latin America decreased by 1.2%. We were really impacted there by phasing effects in the third quarter, yet still well ahead of the market. Finally, volumes in EMEA grew by a strong +10%, driven by market share gains in China. Continued momentum with key customers in India and additional business secured in Australia. Before handing over to Hein, let me also briefly cover the recent EUR bonds buyback, which has been an important step in our ongoing journey to deleverage and reduce the financing costs. During the quarter, we completed a total bond buyback of EUR 849 million across three maturities. EUR 400 million of the 2028 bonds, EUR 99 of the 2029 bonds, and EUR 350 million of the 2031 bonds.
We are using available liquidity to reduce core debt, optimize our maturity profile, lower our finance cost in the future. This transaction comes with an upfront cost of around CHF 16 million, which will be recognized in the net financial items in this fiscal year. Importantly, of course, will reduce our cost of financing in the years to come. Taking the bond buyback into account, we now expect a net finance cost of around CHF 313 million for this fiscal year. Let me now hand back to Hein for the guidance section.
Thanks, Peter. Moving on to the outlook for this fiscal year. Following a stronger than expected Q3, we have updated our volume outlook for the year. We expect around a -1% decrease, this is at the upper end of the -1% to -3% range that we have previously guided for. At the same time, we are maintaining our guidance for a mid-teens decrease in EBIT on a recurring basis in local currencies, I will talk more about that on the next slide. Given the CHF 15 million expected upfront cost from the recent bond buyback that Peter just shared, we now expect to recover around half of the absolute decrease in EBIT at the PBT level. We also reiterated our deleverage ambition on net debt over EBITDA recurring to be below 3 x. This assumes a GBP 3,000 cocoa bean price.
Today, as you may have noted, prices are more around the GBP 4,000 level, assuming stable bean prices from at this level where we are today, we expect leverage to be around 3 x. We are maintaining our profit guidance, as the stronger volume development in Q3 is offset by a number of headwinds. Let me share three. First, as we shared at the half year, we are taking short-term actions to prioritize growth and market share, this is particularly relevant for Gourmet. Where we are making commercial investments as we work through the temporary dynamics created by our own cocoa position. We talked about that in particular at the end of Q2. Second, we indicated at the half year as well, that cocoa profitability would normalize in the second half, following an exceptionally strong first half.
While cocoa business delivered strong volume growth in the third quarter, supported by elevated demand, following the cocoa market correction, the profit contribution from these additional volumes is not expected to increase at the same rate given that normalization. Third, as Peter outlined, the recent bond buyback will result in an incremental cost of around CHF 15 million in PBT this year, while generating benefits, obviously, through lower financing costs in the future. We have incorporated these headwinds into our guidance. At the same time, we see a few additional risks, which we are monitoring very closely. The geopolitical situation in the Middle East remains uncertain, as we've seen this morning, could result in additional costs for oil or supply chain disruptions, that takes time to price through.
While market conditions overall are gradually improving, the operating environment does remain challenging, we see signs of financial pressure across parts of the European customer base. In addition, in Turkey, an important market for us and a priority market for us, we are closely monitoring developments in hyperinflationary environments, potential implications for us going forward. Overall, we reiterate our guidance while recognizing that the external environment remains dynamic with some uncertainties. With that, thanks for listening, I will now hand back to the moderator for the Q&A.
Thank you. We will now begin our Q&A session. We ask today that you limit yourself with two questions. If you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you feel your question has been answered or for any reason you would like to remove yourself from the queue, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Joern Iffert from UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, thanks for taking my questions.
Good morning.
The first one would be, please, taking an early view into 2027, what do you currently observe, or what do you expect from your customers? Do you expect customers to lower price points to materialize step up promotions, or do you expect customers to use the lower bean price to repair margins just because the retail would be so important for your volume prospects? This would be question number one. Question number two is, I might zoom in a little in gourmet. Can you tell us what is happening currently on the market shares on competitive dynamics? Also, if you're still pursuing your own direct online shop initiatives. Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Joern. Let me talk a little bit about the customer behavior, particularly around pricing. What we're seeing globally is that, in the third quarter, generally, we've seen prices come down in the market, with the exception of North America, where prices have still increased. That's, of course, a very important market for us. What you may have seen or spotted is that with increasing prices in North America, the chocolate confectionery market, volume-wise, in North America, is under more pressure than what we would see elsewhere in the world. In general, there is a correlation, obviously, between pricing and volume developments, and that's what we're seeing in the third quarter, even stronger than probably before.
With these decreasing prices that we're seeing across the globe, we have, as you can see in our revenue, our prices have gone down double digits, this is something that we expect as well for Q4. We expect that reduction in pricing for the fourth quarter, that could probably roll into the next fiscal year as well. With those developments, we would expect volumes to recover a bit. The current market is still single-digit down overall. There is still definitely room for improvement. At this point, we see customers investing in innovation. We see customers investing in media. We see customers investing in promotion overall. That's a good development, we've highlighted that as well during the Focus for Growth presentation. We're seeing that from important big customers, whether it's Mars, whether it's Hershey.
They are coming out with new things, exciting things that will help the category, I think, to grow, that's a positive sign. We're also seeing that around our future bookings portfolio, by the end of Q3, is 30% higher than what we saw last year at the same time of year. Just for your information, by February, that was only 17% higher. There is increasing confidence. From that number, you can see increasing confidence from customers that volumes might recover in the future. Yeah, it's a bit of a longer explanation, hopefully that paints the landscape a bit for you. Look, yeah, maybe one more remark, by the way. It's important that I think we talked about this with Focus for Growth. The total confectionery category, as we mentioned, measured by Nielsen, is down.
As a company, Barry Callebaut, we're also increasingly exposed to adjacent categories. Think of categories like ice cream. There, we're seeing more positive developments, right? It's very important not just to look at the chocolate confectionery markets. You need to get a feel for where we operate, also our volumes. It's important to look at the biscuit category, the ice cream category, total chocolate categories. I think that probably gives a better reflection. Let me leave it there. On gourmet. As we've said before, we had a long position. That has, of course, had an impact on our profitability, also kept pricing at a relatively high level. We have invested in that in the first quarter, only towards the end.
We feel that with changed price lists, which tend for us to be collected every half year, we've just issued the new prices for the first of July, we believe there's a lot of reason besides excellent taste, of course, for customers now to start stocking a bit. We're seeing some early indications on that. Therefore, overall, we're quite confident on our projected growth in fourth quarter that you can calculate given the guidance of high as 1% for the year and the growth we've made in the third quarter, that should be around 4.5% or so in terms of volume. Gourmet should play a good role. Coming from a decline, we expect the fourth quarter to be slightly positive there.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Sloane from Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Morning, all. Thanks for taking the questions. The first one would just be around the cocoa bean price and the leverage guidance. Obviously, if I understood correctly, you're not changing the leverage guidance for the year. You're still working off kind of the medium-term assumption of GBP 3,000 per ton bean price. Obviously, we are above that level today. Does that imply that you don't necessarily see the current cocoa bean price as sustainable, or is there kind of more balance sheet flexibility to kind of absorb this higher price? Is that sustainable also into next year? If prices stay here, does the kind of normal rule of thumb still apply? That would be the first one, please. Then the second one, just actually to go back to gourmet, if that's all right.
Good to hear it's coming back to volume growth in Q4 on these new prices. Are the new prices kind of in line with what you were expecting and thinking about back in April, just thinking about kind of the potential recovery and profitability in Gourmet next year, which I think you had kind of talked about, like you framed the sort of issues in Gourmet profitability being temporary in nature. Is that still the case? Can we still assume Gourmet profitability recovers next year as sort of price and COGS better align? Thank you.
Thanks a lot, Alex. Let me probably start with question two, and then I'll hand over for the bean price and the impact on leverage to Peter. Coming on Gourmet and the new prices. Yeah, I would say the new price list does reflect what we had in mind. It will, given the length of the long position, it will result in a higher profitability for us. That's all factored in, by the way, in our guidance, and therefore that will also have a positive impact as expected in the new fiscal year, of course, without further external disturbances and so forth. In itself, yes, that should return to levels that we feel is more in line with historic averages. At the same time, as I said before, we're not doing this for volume.
Where we lost some share and where we feel that we need to make a step in Gourmet to create customer intimacy, but also to start selling solutions, including specialties and so forth, we will, of course, be competitive. We're not alone in the market. Yeah, we want to make sure that we are the supplier of choice. With that said, the overall answer is yes. We do see improvement in the fourth quarter, volume-wise, profitability-wise, and we expect that to roll in the next year as well. On leverage and bean price, I hand it over to Peter.
Yeah. Leverage and bean price, let me go one by one. On leverage, we're indeed confirming our guidance for August around three. There's a few points to mention there. First of all, we're in a low harvest cycle, so there's no lot of bean buying going on. Secondly, the rule of thumb is likely still valid, as we said before, 60- 70. Of course, there's a short-term and a midterm effect. We are protected somewhat more in the short term because of our letter of credit, for instance, as an example. That's one reason why we are not going to see immediately that impact.
Overall, as we discussed in previous calls, we have a better protection, not only because of the financing that we've done, but also because of our procurement agility, buying from different sources, buying at different moments, and being able to keep especially our open futures lower, which means that we're less impacted unless there's some increase in the bean price. On the bean price itself. Net, yes, we stay around CHF 3 at even today's bean prices for August.
On grind price itself, we've seen quite a spike linked and driven by some speculative activity around the El Niño potential impact on the sector and some articles that have appeared over the course of the last weeks. We are in the low part of the crop season, and that's often where we see a lot of market volatility and market moving fast in function of one or the other direction. We are, in that context, also carefully watching the Q2 2026 grinding data coming out soon, where expectation is that will increase, but that demand is going to take time to recover. That's something to keep an eye on. As I mentioned in my part of the presentation, we do not expect a repeat of the extreme market conditions we've seen in 2023/2024. Industry global covers. We have strong surplus. Everybody's well-stocked.
That's why we believe we're in a very different situation than previous Gourmet.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Edward Hockin from JP Morgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Morning, all. Thank you for taking my questions. My first question, in the press release, you noted on restocking in cocoa. Are you seeing restocking more broadly in chocolate as well? Conscious that it's been a period of quite low cocoa prices during the quarter. Have you been seeing customers taking the opportunity to restock on chocolate at lower price points? Whether more broadly you could help quantify what magnitude of support to your group volumes in the quarter restocking may have contributed. My second question, please. It may be a bit premature, you've given already guardrails on 2027. I wanted to come back on those guardrails for 2027. Clearly still pointing to 1%-3% volumes over the next 12- 18 months, wanted to come back on EBIT and PBT.
The magnitude of some of the blocks that we should be considering in the EBIT bridge for 2027 as gourmet profitability recovers. You've had supply disruption costs over the last couple of years, disruption costs in your OpEx that should be fading out. Is there any more clarity on how we should be thinking about the quantum of EBIT and PBT improvement in fiscal year 2027, please?
Thanks, Ed. I'll do the first question and hand over to Peter for the second question. On restocking, just a few words. First of all, I want to dissect it a little bit. You talk about chocolate, we just give a bit the landscape. The overall growth in Q3 was, of course, primarily driven by an elevated demand in global cocoa, that's 18% up as the cocoa market correction earlier in the year, we reduced the cocoa product prices. Cocoa powder saw particularly strong momentum in the quarter in Latin America and Asia, that was supported, we believe, by some customer restocking. That's happening in cocoa to some extent and in some regions. The power business overall also benefited from one-off cocoa butter opportunities. As I said before, the base of comparison on cocoa was a bit lower for this particular quarter.
That's cocoa. There might be some restocking taking place in certain regions, but I wouldn't want to make it too big of a theme. On chocolate, the growth in the quarter, 3.2%. Also here, I think we need to go a little bit in detail. We saw a second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth in EMEA. That was 14% in Q3, and that is as a result of higher demand in China for us, market share gains in India, where the business continues to drive double-digit growth for already quite a long time. Really strong business overall there. We secured some additional business in Australia because of just a more commercial drive there. That's an important part of the overall growth. I also talked about improved service levels in North America.
Just by stepping up service levels, and I talked about 6% earlier on, that interest helped us to get back to levels where we need to be. In fact, it's still not where I want to be. I think there's more for us to do. Overall, that helps us in driving a positive volume. We are increasingly exposed to some categories outside of chocolate that are, I would say, better placed. We saw an enhanced demand in ice cream overall, at least better than what I would say in chocolate compression area. Will not give particular numbers on ice cream, but it was certainly a better picture and that benefits our specialties and some of our business there. Then finally, as I mentioned, by the end of May, our future booking portfolio was at a level around 30% higher than at the same time last year.
It was also higher than what we saw by the end of February. That suggests there could be some customer restocking. I'm a bit elaborate, the reason I am is because I don't want to point it all to restocking. It's not. It's a much more nuanced view. There might be some of that happening, but certainly not the overall driver of the chocolate growth.
All right. Your second question, Ed, on 2027 profit. Obviously, we will come back on that as per the right timing when we announce the full year results.
That's obviously a good question. Main message I want to bring is, we need to be a bit balanced on that because there are different components playing in different directions. First of all, the volume that we talked about already that we expect to be modestly between 1% and 3% links to, obviously, the market, which today still is at -4.4%. Secondly, also the service levels for us are improving, but still have some way to go. With that or next to that, we will see some of those things that you're mentioning in chocolate, especially some margin recovery on the group end side after the investments we had to make and we made this year. Not expecting a full repeat of that. Some of the disruption costs as we improve service levels and stabilize should also get better.
On the other hand, we have talked about it before, we've seen exceptional results in cocoa, linked to depressing margins and supported by the absolutely crazy volatility that we've seen into the markets. There will be some normalization. We're seeing it happening already right now, in this half year and in Q4. You have to balance that out versus the chocolate margin side with the normalization on the cocoa side. The final, also important element is on the deleveraging agenda and therefore the reduction of the financing costs. We do expect a significant reduction of the financing costs also next year, which is great. That also means that there's less pass on supporting EBIT. EBIT will mechanically go down because of the reduction of the financing cost next year.
That obviously does not make a negative on the profit before tax, but it's something to keep into account when you look at your EBIT line. There's a mechanical negative impact of the lower refinancing cost. I hope that clarifies a bit, and obviously we'll come back with a lot more detail in due course.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jon Cox from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys, and congratulations for the figures, which everybody thought that that business would remain under pressure, with your big customers maybe still having to refill their own factories because of lower capacity utilization. It looks like maybe some other players are coming in and already ordering. Why shouldn't we expect top line growth next year to actually be 3% and maybe more, in terms of volume? What do you see that maybe we don't? Any sort of color you can provide on that would be useful. Then just to come back to Profit Before Tax this year. You were mentioning that there's an extra CHF 15 million on the financing.
It will be about CHF 330 million this year, that net financials line. You're also saying at the PBT line, it wouldn't be as bad as that mid-teen decline you're going to see in your EBIT recurring in constant currencies. I struggle to get there. When I'm mucking around with my figures, I still see a pretty substantial decline in PBT because of that financing line. Maybe as an add, if I can, any early indication what that net financial line will look like in FY 2027? Thank you.
Thank you, Jon. I'll go for the first question and hand over to Peter for the second one. And probably have some comments there. First of all, you're right. What we've indicated for 12 months- 18 months was a volume of around one to three that is slightly below the medium-term guidance of 2%-4% in the Focus for Growth plan. Yeah, we're obviously happy that we have a return to growth right now. That's good and that's for all the reasons that I just mentioned on the previous question. I will not go back onto that. What it leads to, the growth in Q3 as well as the implied growth for Q4, is a higher base from where to grow.
If you take that higher base and if you then think about the overall chocolate confection category, which is still negative, mid-single digits. North America around -7%. That means we really, again, we're offsetting that with growth in adjacent categories that are looking better, but they're not in growth yet. It means for us better service levels. It means for us taking back market share gains, and it means for us some effect of, as I said, on restocking because of the future portfolio increase. Look, I definitely don't want to give the rosy view here, but I'm very keen or very clear about overall to set realistic expectations.
I feel that the guidance that we've given there for the next year, I think in combination with the higher base that we will be getting to towards the end of this year, is the right guidance for us to play with. In addition, as I said, we will continue to and that's a bit of a basic boring message, but I think it's super important for us that we continue to focus on making the company better. Laser focus on restoring fundamentals
Making sure that I'm happy with the progress we've made in North America, but there's absolutely more to do. Making sure that quality remains at the level where we are, and in fact, that we truly embed it in our operations much more sustainably than what we did. Continuing with the approach of more differentiated and sourcing, not just for West Africa, but as you know, we're creating flexibility there also that comes with investments and R&D and so forth. We really need to make this a better company. I'm super excited about that, and I think the opportunity out there is very significant for us. I want to be quite realistic about the sequential progress that we're making, and therefore the volume outlook for next year.
Jon, on your second part on the EBIT and then PBT and how it relates. Yeah, well, let's start with EBIT.
We are, as you heard Hein say, we are maintaining our linking down EBIT guidance for the full year because of the short-term impact of some of those actions to prioritize growth and stabilize because of the mix, because of the cocoa normalization, and because of some additional risks that we're still facing regarding Middle East and hyperinflation. That's how we maintain the EBIT guidance. PBT for this year will also still be declining, however, less. The recovery on PBT depends on maybe that's why your question is coming from. If you look at absolute level, the decline on PBT will be significantly lower, about half versus what you see in absolute decline in EBIT, simply because our finance costs will go down significantly year-on-year.
It does not necessarily mean that percentage-wise it's a slower decline because, of course, you're looking at it as an absolute amount of a smaller base. Essentially, we will be recovering about half of the absolute loss of EBIT on the PBT line. For next year, I'm not going to guide very specifically on PBT. Obviously, we'll come back to that. The only thing I can say beyond what I gave in the answer to Ed about the moving parts on EBIT is that we will be reducing further our finance costs for next year. It will go below CHF 300 for the full year, but we'll come back to that at a later stage.
I want to maybe just add a little add. You talk about how actually other categories are doing better than chocolate. Can you just give us a rough split? Is it still something like 70% chocolate, 30% other confectionery, whether it's biscuits, ice cream, you'd use it in other applications as well?
No, I can't give you an exact split here, to be very honest, between the different categories. I think for us, adjacent categories, as I said, ice cream, biscuit categories, bakery overall is larger than what you just suggested. That's not 20% or 30%. That would definitely be more.
60/40, say?
No, I think it's around half.
Oh, okay. Thanks.
I can come back later on with a more precise number. Let's hold this. Again, sometimes the category lines are blurring a bit, but we're definitely more exposed to other categories than chocolate confectionery. Again, I'm going to let you with your statement.
Thank you. Our next question comes from David Roux from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Morning, Hein and Peter. Two questions from my side. Just coming back to the guidance, at the risk of laboring on the point. Could you perhaps unpack in more detail why the upgrade to volume guide for FY 2026 did not drop through to an EBIT upgrade? Given the fact that Barry runs a cost-plus model, this would suggest there's additional price investment somewhere in the business that you had not anticipated, I guess, in June when you last confirmed the guidance, or there's some under recovery of costs. Any additional color on those contributing factors would be appreciated. Just a more sort of broader question. If we look at the business on a PBT per ton basis, I think we're probably sort of 30%-40% below 2019.
Do you think we are now in an environment where profitability per ton for the business will be structurally lower than it was prior to the pandemic? Or are you fairly confident that you can return to those levels, if not exceed those in coming years? Thanks very much.
Thanks, David. A few comments on the guidance overall. Let me start. Peter will add where he sees fit. We are maintaining our profit guidance indeed for mid-teen decrease in EBIT. The volume development that we've seen in Q3 is actually offset by a number of headwinds. It might be a bit repetitive because we talked about it before. First of all, as we shared at the half year, we are taking some short-term actions to prioritize our growth and our market share. That's mainly relevant for gourmet, where we are making some commercial investments as we work through the temporary dynamics that are created by the low cocoa position. You may have noticed, gourmet overall is not yet into growth. We expect that to happen in Q4.
What it means is that the overall mix in sales is not yet contributing to the extent that we would like. That's something that will evolve and that will improve, for sure, over time. It's not yet at the historic average. Secondly, we indicated that the half year, the cocoa profitability would normalize in the second half. That's actually what's happening. As I mentioned, yes, we had significant cocoa volumes. They do not provide that same level of profitability. Very important on processing margins, et cetera, where we have seen a very significant profitability in the first half as well as in the second half of 2025. We're not seeing that anniversary in the second half of this year. Third, we talked about this, the recent Buyback. I'm not going to repeat that one.
Fourth, we did incur significant extra fuel cost in the last months. We saw it easing again. Obviously very curious to see what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks. In some European countries, I saw this morning, the latest in Northern Europe, for example, prices are up again for at least up to 2.5 EUR levels. That of course leads for us to quite some additional costs. Even if we would pass on some of that, as you call out, some of that will come with a time lag, because you have existing contracts. The situation is so volatile that we would have to swallow part of that for the short term. Obviously that, again, on the longer term, I feel that we're well protected there. I also talked about Turkey.
We're seeing an important market for us, although volume wise, it's probably around 2% of our total. An important market for us overall, and with strong hyperinflationary environment there, it means that we need to apply hyperinflation accounting, and that leads to charges in the P&L. That would continue at a very high level that we've seen in some parts in Q3. We want to be realistic here. We want to make sure that we do the right thing for the company and strengthen the company overall. That leads me to the second question that you asked, which is the profitability per ton in the longer term. There I'm much more optimistic. I feel that with the measures that we are taking, first of all, to drive the mix much more positively and do that really intentional. That for me is super important.
We talked about Focus for Growth and about premiumization and a determined shift in that direction. If I now look at the capital expenditure program, if I look at the resource program, digital investments to connect to chefs and buyers. All of that, I'm very convinced that we have a very clear prioritization on the gourmet and on the most profitable areas. Secondly, we talked about top 10 countries. We didn't only choose the top 10 countries and the priority countries based on volume alone. We had profitability considerations in there as well. Finally, it's the investments behind specialties and so forth. I feel that, whilst it has to go quarter by quarter, I'm optimistic on the return to much higher profitability levels that could be there, the same level as Pico and Peter.
Maybe just to complement on that. When we look back at some of the drivers of why we saw this depressing or lowering net PBT before per ton. Obviously, there's a volume element and a market element impact on cost absorption. We talked about that. We expect the market to gradually go back to growth. Our own volumes to go back to growth next year. That of course is going to help that. We've also been making some both commercial investments but also some cost investments to stabilize the network, which again, is not a miracle thing that suddenly by August that will turn around, but it will gradually improve. That's another reason why this is not going to be sticky over the midterm. There's a few other elements there.
We've been talking about the Middle East impact, some of the financing costs that were mostly passed on, but not 100% now that we'll be reversing. All of that, together with what Hein said about the progress we have with Focus for Growth will bring those PBT per ton levels back up.
That's very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Matteo Lindauer from Vontobel. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I've got two. Could you remind us quickly of your net working capital sensitivity to a GBP 100 change in bean price? Second on outsourcing and your customer relationships, do you have any update on your key account relationships? Is there any large contract at risk in the short term?
I'll start with the second one, and then Peter will turn to working capital in relation to the bean price. On outsourcing, I just want to reiterate what we said before. We feel that overall, that will bottom out for our largest accounts in next year. We've seen insourcing over the last years, and again, we are quite confident that after 2027, that we will go back to a growth pattern here. Some of them have made those insourcing decisions, obviously created by category declines, and therefore utilization of factories and so forth. It's a fairly logical response. At the same time, A, what we're doing is we're innovating fast at the moment.
As I come back to that previous question from David, our plan with innovation, with all the things that we're doing, we feel that we could reverse that trend, and my conversations with customers confirm that. Again, I want to be realistic for this year as well as next year. We don't comment on particular individual deals, Matteo. I want to be careful there. I would say I'm very satisfied with the recent progress that we are making, not only with our global accounts, but actually also with the large regional accounts. Yeah, which you find we're seeing in volume growth, right? I can definitely see an increased confidence with our larger customers in our performance, in our quality performance, I think in our service. Those are the best indicators for future success. That's where the focus is.
On the net working capital, so the impact, the rule of thumb that we talked about is CHF 60 million-CHF 70 million impact on working capital up and down for every 100 pounds change in the bean price. It's somewhat lower than some of the numbers that we called for the midterm earlier in these results, simply because we have gotten better in flexible blending, flexible sourcing, lower inventories, which allow us to have less open futures structurally. Especially also, as I mentioned earlier, in the short term, it doesn't mean the CHF 60 million-CHF 70 million, because we are protected, for instance, by the level of credits or sometimes our tail inverse.
Okay, perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Antoine Prevot from Bank of America. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Morning, Hein. Morning, Peter. Two question for me, please. First, in global cocoa, last year you discontinued some contracts, liquor and butter. Had to focus more on powder because it was a better return, better use of your balance sheet. Now, it's sounded you did some butter again. First, could you split up maybe the growth for powder versus butter, please? Why are you going back into butter? Was this bit of a one-off or is it a bit like a changing trend? Is it because you have less pressure on your balance sheet? I mean-
Yeah.
Just trying to understand a bit more clear. The second question, on the Gourmet pricing investment, considering cocoa prices are going up again, was this really needed to do some, let's say, bigger investment into July and so on to be more competitive, or by nature of cocoa pricing up again, you would already somewhat be more competitive, et cetera?
Thanks, Antoine. On the powder growth versus butter growth, I'll hand over to Peter first, and then I'll add some words to that, as well as on the prices.
Yeah. The growth in cocoa, first of all, has been exceptional for the quarter. We talked about that at length. Both for the quarter and structurally, the growth in cocoa is driven mainly by powder. It's also the strategic priority that we have, and that will continue like that. Liquor butter is more opportunistic, and we did last year to cut back. Essentially, it's a margin question, right? If we can do profitable good deals, we will not step away from it. As you see the market environment changing, the pricing going up, we have seen some one-off opportunities this quarter, which has helped also the quarter sales for cocoa. We continue to look at it in the same way. It's not as strategic as powder, but we look at the margin, and also we take into account working capital impact.
Agreed. I think I wanted to add, Antoine, that in the Focus for Growth plan, we talked about cocoa powders and about premiumization opportunities, investments that we're doing in that space. That's not in the butter area as such, and we've seen that come down over the last couple of years. We will continue on that strategic shift. Just to amplify what Peter says. On the Gourmet, Peter?
You were talking about the investment, right?
Sorry. Antoine, it was only because I wasn't sure I fully got the question on the prices, but maybe you can ask me the question once again?
Yeah. No, it's just like you were doing price reinvestments for Gourmet as you flagged for July and so on. Considering recent months, cocoa prices been going up a lot again.
Yeah.
How needed was this price reinvestment compared to just by nature the markets, probably with prices going up there?
I see what you mean. Yes. Look, we've seen a sharp, obviously, decline in cocoa prices. As I said, we tend to, on the price listed business in our Gourmet, we have price lists approximately every half year, at least for our main markets, North America, Europe. There's new price list as for the 1st of July that reflects the market reality. When we set the prices for a number of countries one or two months ago. Please remember, we contract that business already quite a bit before that. The very latest moves in the cocoa market are not always immediately reflected in these prices. That shouldn't also impact us financially to that extent, because again, these are very long contracting periods.
We are actually flexing our hedging there to avoid the situations that we've had this year with very long positions where we need to compete with companies that are much shorter. I think, we've become more flexible, but I want to caution a bit that on Gourmet in itself, that our pricing to customers will reflect the daily reality of the cocoa market. That wouldn't happen.
Understood. Thanks, both.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Samantha Darbyshire from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Just want to say thank you for the detail around the cocoa market and underlying retail market trends as well. That's super helpful for us. I have two questions, like everyone else. The first is, we touched on the non-chocolate confectionery categories that you sell into. I think what we started to see as cocoa prices were going up was that, some customers were maybe choosing other flavors beyond chocolate that were perhaps cheaper for them to use. I'm just curious to see whether you've seen any shift in demands there with people coming back to chocolate flavors and pursuing that chocolate innovation again, now that it's potentially a better return for them. The second question is, you've mentioned the improving service levels in North America, and you've quantified that. Can you give a bit more color about the other regions as well?
I think Western Europe was an issue as well, it would be good to get an update there. Thank you.
Thanks, Sam. First of all, on chocolate as a flavor, actually, we're very bullish about that. We're not seeing that effect as you mentioned. We're not seeing consumers moving away from that flavor. The interesting thing is, if you take a little bit of distance from it, there's already quite a bit of flex, right? That our customers can offer. We have, of course, the traditional cocoa butter solutions. At the same time, there are compound solutions that have grown substantially also for us. Within the compound solutions or the cocoa coating solutions, we have offered a real premium solution there. A Cacao Max innovation is on the way there. Super coating solutions are on the way. Customers can play with that. Importantly, that is not a negative in our profitability mix.
As you may recall from the Focus for Growth program, as I said, what we want to offer is everything chocolatey. We're saying cocoa butter, yeah, that may be traditional, but we also want to be the absolute leader in cocoa coating solutions in both the premium side as well as what the customer needs, as well as in cocoa replacement opportunities. We see in particular, positive response to our ChoViva solution that is a replacement based on sunflower. That's small in itself, but the increase, I would say, is meaningful. That's particularly happening in Western Europe. We will keep you, of course, updated on that as soon as when it becomes much more meaningful for the total portfolio. This is something that we're absolutely pursuing.
If you look at all of that, it comes at different price points, and therefore, we feel that chocolate is as relevant overall as ever. It is the preferred flavor for consumers, whether that's in ice cream, whether that's in fillings and so forth, and inclusions in bakery. I'm very positive about that. I got actually very excited, so I forgot your second question. Yes. On Western Europe. Look, I think as I said, North America was under pressure. We saw increasing prices still in North America, and that was the question on the market, or was the question on our performance on service levels?
It was the service levels.
The reason for calling out North America on service levels, was mainly because that's where we had seen the biggest decline, and also because North America is at a single market. The U.S. is at a single market. It's our most important market, and therefore, it was absolutely critical to restore service levels there first. We were also reading for some quality incidents in the Saint-Hyacinthe Factory that happened by the end of last year. Again, I was very keen to prioritize and put focus, and therefore, we talked about North America. If you look in Europe, service levels there are also at a higher level than what they were before. We wouldn't talk about the same level of improvement, but again, it wasn't as bad as North America was.
Our service levels in Asia-Pacific, what we call the new region, are at a significantly higher level. I feel much more positive there. Again, Europe is improving, but overall at a higher level than North America. I'm very encouraged by the way on the progress that we're making in the focus on our gourmet business. The core range of SKUs, reducing some of that complexity. Our gourmet business being produced primarily in Belgium under the Callebaut brand, and in France under the Cacao Barry proposition. If we focus there on the high runners, bring that clarity on what is really important for us.
I see the organization responding to that very fast, and therefore, inventory levels that were at a very low point by the end of last fiscal year will be at a much more healthy level towards the end of this fiscal year. I'm really encouraged by that progress.
That's really helpful caller . Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Tom Sykes from Deutsche Bank. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, everybody, and thanks again for the detail. Probably the longest Q3 call you'll ever want to give. Just firstly, it's a little bit difficult to disaggregate perhaps what you're saying to the organization versus saying to the market. Appreciate that volumes have improved, but you're trying to push through some fundamental changes to the business, so you're sounding cautious. If we take it from the point that you last spoke, would you say that your caution over market growth, has it all changed either for the better or worse? Maybe it's possible to disaggregate a little bit the growth outlook in gourmet by sort of type of customer or region. Is it the smallest customers that you're having the most problems with? Because you obviously say there's some contract backing there. Is that in any particular region at all?
Just finally, quickly, you did mention something about EBIT down. It wasn't clear whether that was meant to be an intentional forecast or not. If you did grow volumes at 1%-3%, knowing what you know about your finance costs, appreciate it's the focus on PBT, but do you think at 1%-3% your EBIT would be down, or is that just not something to read into, please? Thank you.
Thanks a lot, Tom. Interestingly, as you say, this is a long Q3 call, but with three of your questions, you're adding quite a bit of that time to it. A slight pleasure, of course. Tom, as you said, since the last time I spoke, I guess that was really our fireside chat that we had at the first round conference, so thank you, by the way, still for that one. Hey, a few things. First of all, have we changed our view on the category overall and with the volume growth that we're now seeing, are we more bullish on the overall growth of the category? The answer is, I haven't changed. As I said, we were mid-single digit decline, I think when we spoke last, that's really still where we are.
What is relatively new or latest information, that's why I talked about it today, was that prices were still increasing in the U.S. overall, we saw a higher than global average volume decline in North America, which we were able to withstand. That is something that I was keen to get across today. That's a result of, again, higher service levels, us playing in other categories than chocolate confectionary alone. In the U.S., we're particularly exposed to ice cream, for example, we're having a very healthy specialties business there. I feel that's a positive that's instead I want to give, but there's no change to our perception on the global market. It is what it is. That's number one. Secondly, on gourmet.
I talked about insourcing and outsourcing, but in general, we see that regional customers as well as private label are growing faster in developed regions, so in Europe as in North America. I don't think that's a surprise for you, but I just want to call it out. Our focus, as you know, the market sectors that we've chosen and in Focus for Growth, I feel that we are well-positioned to benefit from that. At the same time, we believe that in the medium term, working with our global accounts more intensively on innovation, working together on consumer insights and driving the right platform, something that I particularly enjoy, by the way, that will give us a longer term base that I'm very excited about. I subdued on the volume developments on those accounts for the near future for us in particular.
On the region, we saw very healthy growth in APAC. Whilst the category in APAC is actually down, so it's not up, but I think we are positioned in a couple of markets where we're also putting priority. There are some exceptions. I feel good about India. I feel good about our China business at the moment. I think that will continue to grow for a bit. That's partially because of the comparable, but also how we're positioned. That's good. We are playing increasingly in that premium sector, and within the country, the premiumization is still happening. While the overall category is having some headwind, premiumization is helping us. Finally, on your question on EBIT, Tom, you asked it a few times in different ways during the fireside chat on guidance for 2027 on EBIT.
I have to be honest, I'm not yet in a position to provide guidance on EBIT for 2027. We talked about a volume growth of 1% to 3%. We will come back with guidance, of course, at the beginning of September. That's what we will do. I just want to leave it at the moment where we are. I feel that we will continue to deleverage, and that will, as Peter talked about, that will lead to reduction in financing costs. That will, of course, help our PBT overall versus the EBIT equation. Maybe, Peter, you want to add a few words to that?
Just to complete, we are confirming indeed or talking still about 1%- 3% volume growth. It does not mean that EBIT will go down next year, because that was part of the question. I just mentioned in my answer a little bit that there is a balanced mix of elements with a global normalization and a finance cost impact, EBIT negative impact. Of course, volume and chocolate margin and some cost softening will help on the other way.
Yeah. Tom, I don't want to point towards an EBIT increase, though. Absolutely not. I just want to say, I'll stick to what Peter said in his bridge earlier, but a precise guidance, I don't want to get into the number today.
Of course. Thank you very much. Thanks for all your answers. Much appreciated.
All right. Thanks a lot, Tom. I think that concludes.
Thanks
overall. We may have Luc in here. Yep. Thanks, everyone, for joining. As said, it was a basic call, but thanks a lot for your interest in the company. It's always much appreciated. I look forward to engage with you in a number of sessions in the weeks and months to come. For those I won't speak to, I wish you a very good summer holiday. Thank you. Bye.
Thank you all. This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.