Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome to the investor conference of President Chain Store Corp. Today's session is hosted by PCSC's IR team and divided in two parts: a briefing on recent business operations and results, followed by a Q&A session. Let's get started. Thank you. Dear investors, good afternoon. Let's share our presentation deck. First, a look at PCSC's historical financial performance. Revenue has grown steadily year- after- year, driven by ongoing store expansion and product mix optimization. On profitability, it should be noted that 2024 included one-time gains from asset disposals and income tax reversals. Excluding these one-off items, profit continued to grow in 2025. Looking at consolidated results, PCSC and its subsidiaries ended 2025 with a total of 13,866 stores. Consolidated revenue grew 3.8%, led by 7-Eleven Taiwan, COSMED, and Starbucks.
Consolidated gross margin in 2025 improved 0.21% year-over-year, driven by product mix optimization and economies of scale. Consolidated operating profit edged down slightly, reflecting higher long-term investment in store expansion, logistics, an d digitalization. Net profit fell by about 3% year-over-year, primarily due to one-time gains in 2024 from the disposal of Shan Dong President Yinzuo and tax reversals. Excluding these, consolidated profit grew approximately 1%. Turning to 7-Eleven Taiwan's standalone results, sales grew 4.4%, driven by continued store expansion and steady PSD sales growth. 7-Eleven Taiwan ended 2025 with 7,248 stores, a net increase of 171 stores year-over-year, while focusing on enhancing store quality and operational efficiency. Revenue growth was led by fresh food, CITY CAFE, and beverages, which also drove gross profit higher. Both operating profit and pre-tax income continued to grow.
2024 included gains from the disposal of Shan Dong President Yinzuo and income tax reversals, making for a tough comparison. Excluding these one-off items, net profit was up by about 1% year- over- year. This slide shows our revenue and pre-tax income breakdowns for 2025. 7-Eleven Taiwan accounted for 62% of consolidated revenue and 49% of pre-tax income. Retail business, including 7-Eleven Philippines, COSMED, and Transnet contributed 30% of revenue and 32% of pre-tax income. The rest is contributed by other businesses such as Logistics, Food and Beverage, and China operations. This slide shows return on investment. 2025 consolidated and company ROE ranged between 25% and 27%. ROA were between 5% and 7%. On dividends, the Board approved a cash dividend of NT$9 per share in February, representing a payout ratio of 83%. The proposal will be decided in the AGM in May.
Let's now turn to our medium to long-term outlook. As consumer behavior continues to evolve, the competitive landscape is intensifying. At the same time, digital technology is advancing rapidly. Our core strategy is to evolve continuously and invest ahead of the curve. On infrastructure, it's about integrating the supply chain and logistics, whether online or offline. The key is efficient product delivery, especially amid labor shortages. We're also accelerating AI adoption and systems upgrades to sharpen efficiency and consumer insight. At the same time, we are fine-tuning our HR practices to keep the organization agile and adaptive. Building on this solid foundation, our growth will be driven by four pillars. First, continued store expansion, stronger store-level performance, and a more robust franchise system. Second, developing our premium lifestyle platform with more differentiated products and services that bring stores closer to our customers' daily lives.
Third, advancing our digital strategy by deepening OMO integration and member engagement while developing new revenue streams through digital media. Fourth, capitalizing on regional growth opportunities by focusing on key Asian markets. Our vision is building an ever-evolving President Chain Store Corp., reinforcing our market leadership, a nd developing the most comprehensive retail ecosystem. For 2026, 7-Eleven Taiwan targets a net increase of 150 to 200 stores. Alongside steady store expansion, we are enhancing store quality and scaling digital operations to drive sustained PSD sales and revenue growth. With higher operational efficiency, we expect operating profit to maintain a consistent upward trajectory. On store expansion strategy, beyond growing store count, we are enhancing store quality by developing diverse formats featuring IP characters, entertainment, brand collectives, and fresh produce. Each can be tailored to meet the needs of different shopping districts and customer segments.
These diverse store formats enhance individual location appeal and competitiveness, thereby boosting store-level productivity and optimizing capital efficiency. This, in turn, will drive overall profitability. On franchise development, we continue to promote the multi-store model, with franchisees currently operating an average of two to three locations. This model provides the scale necessary for long-term commitment. By managing multiple stores, operators can optimize labor allocation, reduce overhead, and improve overall operational efficiency. Notably, multi-store franchisees achieve 1.5x to 2x the cumulative profit of single-store operators, fostering a more robust and resilient franchise ecosystem. Moving on to product mix. First on fresh food. In recent years, fresh food has grown consistently, both in terms of absolute sales and category contribution. Notably, fresh food revenue grew by TWD 10 billion over the past two years, with its share of total sales now surpassing 25%.
Changing food consumption patterns in recent years are driving increased demand for convenience, quality, and wellness. Our fresh food strategy is therefore built on three pillars. First, premium value, upgrading ingredients to develop more compelling products and drive overall sales growth. Second, strong value for money, including portion upgrades that strike a better balance between price and satisfaction for our customers. Third, on-trend products, expanding our offerings, especially in the health and wellness category, to provide reassuring options that meet customers' needs. With these three pillars, we're capturing evolving consumer trends, optimizing product mix, and growing the fresh food category year-over-year. Moving on to CITY CAFE. CITY CAFE was launched in 2004 and has grown steadily for over 20 years. The full-year revenue in 2025 was close to TWD 20 billion. We continue to increase customer stickiness through product diversification and flavor innovation.
We also launched CITY PRIMA, our premium coffee line, a few years ago. The strategy is to reduce promotion activity. Instead, we offer upgraded gifts to enhance value perception, supported by brand collaborations and product upgrades to attract a more diverse customer base. Looking ahead, alongside continued growth in coffee, we are actively developing CITY TEA, focusing on freshly brewed tea and innovative services such as Tea Bar as our next growth engine. With these product lines, we are building a comprehensive beverage platform that expands market reach, drives traffic, and improves profitability, thereby strengthening our overall operations. On services, we leverage our 7,200-store network and integrated logistics to scale commission revenue via our lifestyle platform, optimizing our overall profit mix. Strategically, we are deepening payment platform integration to drive user stickiness and transaction volume, and broadening cross-border and cross-industry partnerships to bring in more services to drive growth.
As a result, service revenue continues its steady growth trajectory. On our Digital and Lifestyle platform, our membership base has grown to over 19 million, with members accounting for 55% of revenue. Membership management has become a core growth engine. Our group co-branded credit card, launched last year, removed traditional membership barriers by allowing seamless point accrual and redemption. The high reward point scheme stimulates spending and point circulation, further enhancing our ecosystem's overall value. We are also connecting points across platforms and diverse spending scenarios to boost member stickiness and usage frequency. Capitalizing on this vast scale and our proprietary data assets, we are refining targeted marketing and membership engagement to solidify the foundation for long-term growth and profitability. On AI applications, we're advancing on three fronts.
For the customer experience, we open one new unmanned store each year to test the latest retail and AI technologies and identify models replicable in regular stores. Take our ninth unmanned store as an example. Beyond the grab-and-go model, we are also piloting a micro-fulfillment center for e-commerce parcel self-pickups. Furthermore, we leverage data analytics to sharpen targeted marketing, driving both average ticket size and repurchase rates. At the store level, operations optimization and AI energy monitoring systems are enhancing efficiency and store-level profitability. For our staff, we have implemented self-checkout and FAQ chatbot tools to simplify workflows and boost productivity and service quality. Collectively, these AI initiatives and unmanned store trials are optimizing operational efficiency and preparing us for future spending patterns. On our logistics network, we continue to strengthen our footprint. The Xinshi Logistics Park in Tainan began operations in 2025.
Parks in central and northern Taiwan will come online in phases, forming a more comprehensive delivery network. On growth drivers, enhanced logistics capabilities will support both physical store expansion and e-commerce growth internally. Externally, we're also pursuing third-party demand to scale up warehousing and distribution. Our warehousing space will continue to expand accordingly. On operational efficiency, through the introduction of automation and ongoing process optimization, we are systematically reducing reliance on manual labor and improving overall operational efficiency. We are also lowering transportation and warehousing costs through energy management initiatives and green logistics. Taken together, our logistics investments are designed to support future growth, deliver sustained gains in efficiency and cost optimization, and build a scalable operational foundation for the long- term. That covers 7-Eleven Taiwan. Moving on to 7-Eleven Philippines, one of our growth engines. 7-Eleven Philippines ended 2025 with about 4,491 stores.
Our medium to long-term target is 7,000 stores. The business remains in a phase of rapid growth with significant expansion potential. Our store strategy is actively broadening our footprint, moving into diverse shopping areas, and introduce various store formats to accelerate expansion and improve efficiency. On product strategy, we continue to strengthen our differentiated product mix, including food and beverage, and CITY CAFE, CITY PRIMA lines to drive PSD sales. On services, our CLiQQ platform will expand service coverage and integrate online and offline capabilities. We plan to complete the full rollout of cashless payment tools in 2026 to further improve convenience and average ticket size. 7-Eleven Philippines is positioned to be one of the most significant growth engines for the group, with a clear runway to drive both revenue and profit growth.
Given that overall market penetration remains relatively low, we're highly confident in the long-term growth potential of the Philippine market. On ESG performance, President Chain Store Corp. continues to receive recognition from leading international rating agencies, including inclusion in Dow Jones Best-in-Class World Index , where we rank fourth globally in our sector, and MSCI ESG rating of A and a CDP score of B. We remain committed to strengthening our risk management capabilities and international competitiveness across all three ESG dimensions. On governance and management, we have established a sustainability governance framework under direct board oversight, with all functional committee seats held by independent directors. ESG indicators are embedded in operational decisioning and executive performance management to ensure sustainability is tightly aligned with business strategy. On disclosure, we are adopting the IFRS S1 and S2 frameworks to progressively strengthen our sustainability and climate-related financial reporting.
Looking ahead, we will focus on increasing the share of renewable energy in our consumption and further enhancing supply chain management. ESG represents a long-term investment in value creation, mitigating operational risk, improving capital efficiency, and building enduring trust. We expect these efforts to be increasingly reflected in the company's long-term value proposition. That concludes our presentation. Thank you. Thank you for the detailed presentation. We will now proceed to the Q&A. I will be reading questions collected from investors in advance. Question 1, competition in Taiwan's e-commerce space continues to intensify, while in physical retail space, Simple Mart recently acquired OKmart. How do you view the changes in Taiwan's retail landscape? On physical retail, Taiwan's demographic shifts, specifically an aging population and smaller households, are fueling a rise in demand for local convenience.
Our convenience stores are perfectly positioned to capture this growth. We will maintain a steady pace of store expansion while optimizing our product mix and service offerings to drive store-level performance and gain further market share. Online, we observe that younger consumers are increasingly reliant on digital channels and e-commerce. This represents a significant secular trend. Our group is investing in this space, integrating stores and logistics to advance our OMO strategy. Since online and offline operations differ and integration is a complex undertaking, we're adopting a prudent approach. Nevertheless, we continue to accumulate experience and develop new business models with strong potential. Ultimately, competitive advantage will be determined by scale and integration capability. Large operators will realize clear synergies in supply chain efficiency, product development, member management, and OMO deployment. We're confident that our foundation and continued investment will further solidify our leadership as the industry restructures. Thank you.
Question two. COSMED has grown rapidly in recent years, PSD sales have started to soften due to fast expansion. How do you balance store-level performance with overall scale at COSMED? Taiwan's beauty and pharmacy market presents robust long-term prospects. Aging demographics are driving structural growth in healthcare and beauty spending. As customers' activity radius shrinks, store density and convenience will become ever more important. We're simultaneously pursuing store expansion and store-level performance optimization while maintaining steady growth to enhance scale and market coverage. We are also upgrading store quality through a richer product mix, improved margins, and differentiated services to drive store-level revenue growth. COSMED's competitive advantage is rooted in its diverse product mix, spanning pharmaceuticals, healthcare, beauty, and daily essentials, which facilitates agile adjustments across diverse locations. Leveraging member data insights, we can precisely tailor assortments and services to local demographic profiles, enhancing store relevance within each community.
Thank you. Question three. Operations at 7-Eleven Shanghai and Zhejiang remain challenging. Looking three to five years ahead, what are your plans for the China business? Also, regarding the rise of mass merchandisers in China, how do you assess its impact on the retail landscape there? Competition in China has been intense indeed during the past year. Over the medium to long term, the market is expected to revert to a more normal and sustainable competitive environment. Against this backdrop, we remain disciplined in our operations, monitoring market trends, spending behavior, and store-level performance, and dynamically adjusting our expansion pace and product mix to ensure quality operations. On execution, we're more selective in choosing store locations. We're enhancing store-level efficiency by promoting franchise and adopting an asset-light approach.
Our product strategy continues l o focus on strengthening fresh food, CITY CAFE, and other differentiated items, and developing products better suited to local customer preferences. Overall, we remain committed to achieving scale by prioritizing regional density through concentrated store networks. At the same time, we're focused on enhancing store-level performance to improve operational results and return our China business to a healthier growth trajectory. Question four. 7-Eleven Philippines faced significant external headwinds last year. What is management's outlook for operations this year, and when can we expect revenue and profit to return to double-digit growth? Although 7-Eleven Philippines faced multiple headwinds in 2025, the short-term impact has been easing. Operations have returned to positive growth since Q4 last year. We remain confident in 2026.
We will continue with our rapid store expansion, strengthen fresh food, coffee, and daily essentials, grow commission revenue, and drive PSD sales and average ticket size through cashless payment rollout. Overall, we are keeping a close watch on the external economic environment and market dynamics to ensure 7-Eleven Philippines provide consistent growth and long-term value to the group. Thank you tp the IR team at President Chain Store Corp. for the detailed presentation and responses. That concludes today's investor conference. Thank you to the speakers and attendees. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye-bye.