Welcome, and thank you for standing by. Today's conference call will begin shortly. If you'd like to register a question at any time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Alternatively, you can submit your written questions via the Q&A box found on your screen. Thank you. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AmRest FY 2025 results. My name is Elliot, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to register a question during today's event, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Alternatively, you can submit your written questions via the Q&A box found on your screen. I would now like to hand over to Łukasz Wachełko with Wood & Company. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Łukasz Wachełko . I'm representing Wood & Company, and I have again, the pleasure to moderate the call of AmRest after the quarterly results. The company is being presented by CEO, Mr. Luis Comas, CFO, Mr. Eduardo Zamarripa, and Chief of IR, Mr. Santiago Camarero Aguilera. Wwithout further ado , guys, the mic is yours.
Good afternoon, thank you for joining us. We appreciate your time and continued interest in AmRest. I'm Luis Comas, CEO of AmRest, and I'm delighted to be with you today. Joining me are our CFO, Eduardo Zamarripa, and our Head of Strategy and IR, Santiago Camarero. Today's call has two clear objectives. First, we want to give you a transparent view of the work delivered over the last 12 months, how we have executed, and what we have strengthened, and what we have learned. Second, we will share our perspective on 2026, our expectations, the main opportunities we see to accelerate performance, and obviously, the challenges we are navigating in a dynamic environment. At the heart of our message is confidence in the fundamentals we are building.
We believe we are laying the foundations for a compelling value creation story, maintaining discipline, profitable organic growth across the portfolio, and improving consistency and execution, discipline and the financial approach. With that, let's turn to the materials. Let's move, we would like to share with you today. Let's move to slide two, please. AmRest is a truly pan-European company with a broad and diversified footprint across 22 countries in Europe, China, and the Middle East. With 2,339 restaurants and a portfolio of eight brands, spanning quick service, fast casual dining, and coffee, we serve more than 30 million customers every month across multiple locations and channels, with offerings tailored to local preferences. Our scale is a clear competitive advantage. It allow us to replicate best practices across markets...
drive efficiencies, continuously enhance the guest experience, while focusing our resources where demand is strongest. What truly powers that scale is our local expertise. More than 44,000 colleagues who understand their markets and execute with discipline every day. Taken together, this combination of geographic reach, brand breadth, and operational know-how underpins our ability to identify and capture attractive growth opportunities. Moving to slide three, let me remark the most relevant milestones for 2025, that I would like to try to summarize in seven points. On a like-for-like basis, the group revenues increased by 2.4% year-on-year, reaching almost EUR 2.6 billion. The group's EBITDA generation during 2025 reached EUR 407 million, representing an EBITDA margin of 15.9%, with a clear divergence in the performance across countries.
Third, despite a challenging operating environment throughout the year, particularly in the fourth quarter, the profit of the company increased to EUR 80 million, compared to EUR 13.5 million last year, supported by lower impairments and interest charges. In addition, the company made a dividend payment in the amount of EUR 15 million, or a 7% share, which was paid on the 22nd of December 2025. In terms of new openings, during the year, we opened 92 units, and we also renovated 213 restaurants. From a leverage perspective, the group remains prudent, with a leverage at 2.3x at the year-end, within our internal target range.
Finally, during 2025, we also advanced our strategic roadmap throughout a meaningful step in our operating model, with a disposal of our 51% stake in SCM and the termination of our mutual commercial agreements and obligations. These milestones supports our ambition to strengthen value creation through a more integrated and efficient platform, enabling AmRest to conduct supply chain management and product quality assurance services internally going forward, and identify additional synergies that can support future growth, opening up a significant avenue for value creation throughout the supplies of our more than 2,000 restaurants. With this context, I invite you in the slide fourth, to review the performance in 2025 versus the expectations that we shared with you one year ago.
First, revenues grew in the low single-digit range, despite an operating environment marked by moderate growth in Europe and declining inflation, alongside elevated trade policy and geopolitical uncertainty, which continued to weigh on consumers' confidence. While easing inflation supported a gradual improvement in financing conditions, household purchasing decisions remain cautious in several markets. Second, on profitability, we experienced a decline of 0.8 percentage points in our EBITDA margin, affected by the deconsolidation of the SCM business, temporary business affection in the Czech market during the latest month of the year, and to still elevated operating cost pressures. Most notably, labor costs in certain markets, while absolute food prices remain also elevated despite lower inflation rates. With respect to CapEx, we significantly reduce our capital intensity, fully consistent with our guidance.
CapEx stood at EUR 158 million in the year, compared to EUR 194 million in 2024. While we have maintained the number of new equity stores open. T he total number of openings reached 92 restaurants in 2025 versus 109 in 2024. Finally, as agreed, as I already mentioned, the leverage continues at the low end of our internal target range. Moving to slide 5, let's now focus on what we expect for 2026. From a sales perspective, we are facing a challenging start of the year. However, we expect 2026 to be a period of progressive improvement, building momentum throughout the year with a very clear second half stronger than the first. Overall, our guidance is for mid-single digit growth.
Second, as trading momentum improves, we also expect this to translate into better profitability, supported by an ongoing discipline on cost and continuous focus on operational execution. Third, and very importantly, we expect a strong increase in free cash flow generation, driven by both higher operating cash generation and tighter control of investments levels, including continued CapEx optimization. In addition, we plan to maintain a similar level of gross openings to 2025. However, net growth is expected to remain modest as we plan to accelerate our portfolio optimization, including a higher level of closures of restaurants that are not strategically aligned or are structurally underperforming, so that they no longer dilute the group's profitability. Finally, we will continue to preserve a prudent risk profile, keeping leverage at the low end of our target range.
If we move to slide six, we would like also to share with you our mid-term expectations. Over the last few years, a combination of temporary factors has meant that the group's revenue growth, both at the sales line and across other income streams, has not progressed at the pace we believe the business is capable of delivering. Looking ahead, we see a clear path to reaccelerate our return to a high single-digit growth profile over time. That acceleration should, in turn, restore operating leverage and support a meaningful uplift in profitability, targeting around 2 percentage points-3 percentage points of margin recovery versus current levels. This, combined with a disciplined investment framework, that it will translate into a strong increase in free cash flow generation, supported by a stronger operating cash flow and continued focus on capital allocation.
Our ambition is to keep strengthening our portfolio by incorporating new concepts and brands, so we can address emerging customer needs, broaden occasions of use, and remain highly relevant to local preferences across our markets. If we move now to slide seven, I would like also to share with you some key strategy considerations. Digital transformation remains a key enabler of efficiency, engagement, and growth across AmRest. In 2025, we continued to scale a more unified and data-driven operating model centered on four pillars. AI Agent supports almost all AmRest employees in central services, streaming daily operation and improving productivity in all business areas. We have also rolled out a comprehensive customer care solution, seamlessly integrated feedback from every channel, and enabling efficient resolution of customers' inquiries and issues.
Our digital platforms are continually refined to meet changing customer expectations, offering features like personalized kiosk offers in Central Europe or table payment capabilities at La Tagliatella. Ongoing systems and standardization ensures agile and modern technology environments. Finally, we have implemented an intelligence platform that empowers daily restaurant and organizational decisions, support targeted marketing, boosts customer retention, streamlines resource management, and enhances pricing strategy, so enables self-service analytics for all teams. These initiatives improve efficiency and scalability by automating central services, unifying customer interaction across channels, and enabling faster and more accurate data-driven decisions. Very important. In summary, these initiatives are providing a tangible improvement in the quality and speed of decision making. On slide eight, we can provide some examples of how advanced analytics translate into tangible commercial outcomes, driving traffic, improving financial performance through data-driven pricing, menu simplification, and smarter promotion optimization.
Data-driven decisions based on advanced analytics allow us to drive traffic and improve financial performance across our portfolio. By applying data-driven pricing tailored to local demand and competition landscape, and so simplifying menus to strengthen margins and optimizing promotions based on the incremental impact, we are attracting more customers while improving the efficiency and returns of our commercial investments. Now, changing topics, let me take you to slide nine, where we can summarize the evolution of our restaurant portfolio for your convenience. While we have already discussed our short and midterm expectations, this slide provides a clear view of the underlying openings, closures, and the resulting net change. Finally, if we move to slide 10, our commitment to sustainability continues to be a part of a long-term value creation.
As it is stated in the headline of this slide, our sustainability agenda remains integral to how we build long-term value. In 2025, we advanced our environmental and social priorities, including a significant reduction of energy and water consumption in our restaurants by 11% and 4% comparing to last year. We also continued to embed ESG criteria into our supply chain processes, including suppliers' evaluation and tender processes. Beyond metrics, our people brought up our values to life across markets, as said in the fifth edition of the Food Sharing Day initiative, delivered across multiple brands and countries, reflecting our continued commitment and connection to the communities where we serve. Saying this, with this, Eduardo, if you can cover the main Financial Highlights, please.
Thank you, Luis, for your insights. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. It is a pleasure to be with you again to share a summary of the results delivered by AmRest team during the last year. 2025 was marked by ongoing geopolitical uncertainty and a consumer backdrop shaped by persistent cost of living pressures. Against this backdrop, AmRest once again demonstrated the resilience of its business model, supported by disciplined execution across markets and brands. Throughout the year, we continued to adapt to a more precise, conscious consumer, delivering a compelling and consistent value proposition across brands and geographies that remained central to sustaining traffic and protecting profitability. At the same time, technology and digitalizations have become increasingly important enablers of this ambition, enhancing convenience for guests while supporting operational execution and data-driven decisions making at scale. Luis already covered the key full-year highlights.
I will skip slide two and move directly to slide 13 to walk you through the main Financial Highlights for the fourth quarter. Turning to the fourth quarter, revenues amounted EUR 636 million, representing a 1% increase versus the fourth quarter of 2024, and the same-store sales index stood at 96. We have already discussed the temporary factors behind this performance, in addition to the underlying macro backdrop. We also face an external headwinds. We are not satisfied with this. We want to be clear that we are taking decisive actions to improve, and we are already seeing the situation improve progressively. It is also important to highlight the divergence we continue to see across markets.
Most of our core markets deliver solid progress, most notably Poland, where quarterly revenues increased by almost 6% year-on-year in the fourth quarter, or by 9% in a full year basis. On profitability, the sales evolution meant that we kept the EBITDA margin close to 17% in the quarter, resilient, but still clearly below the group's potential and objective. We continue to view the drivers of largely temporarily, as we expect a gradual improvement in profitability as sales trends recover and operating cost pressures eases over time, both on food and labor. As you can see on the slide, fourth quarter EBITDA amounted to EUR 106 million, while EBITDA non-IFRS 16 was almost EUR 58 million, implying a margin of over 9%. On the other hand, the operative profit for the quarter reached EUR 26 million. Finally, cash generation remained strong.
Operating cash flow in the quarter was EUR 109 million, while investing cash flow was below EUR 46 million, reflecting the continued decline of investment intensity and our disciplined approach to capital allocation. Moving to slide 14, please. On this slide, you can see the evolution of the group's quarterly revenues over time, reflecting the natural seasonality of our business. At the same time, digital sales gain relevance, particularly in the QSR segment. Excluding our casual dining brands, digital sales represented a primary route to market in 2025, reaching around 62% of total sales. We see this as a very exciting opportunity. It strengthens the way we interact with our guests, enhances convenience, and give us additional levers to build loyalty and improve our commercial effectiveness through a more personalized and data-driven consumer engagement.
With that backdrop on revenues and the growing weight of digital channels, let me move to slide 15, where we summarize the evolution of our profitability, tracking EBITDA and EBIT and how margins progress through the year. As discussed, EBITDA in the fourth quarter was over EUR 106 million, with almost 17% margin, broadly stable versus the recent quarters. In terms of EBIT, the generation was EUR 26 million, with a 4.1% margin. The key message from my side is the resilience of profitability, with our focus now on gradually restoring operation leverage. Moving to slide 16, let's look at our cash and debt evolution, and more broadly, our liquidity and leverage position. At year-end, AmRest's net financial debt stood at EUR 518 million.
Leverage increased to 2.3x as expected, sitting at the low end of our internal target range, an area where they're expected to operate over the coming quarters. The group's liquidity at year-end was over EUR 146 million, a decrease of EUR 7 million versus the prior year. This reflects an efficient liquidity position, supported by the additional unused committed lines in more than EUR 140 million. This financial risk profile provides a prudent use of resources and a solid liquidity that we consider to be efficient, fully aligned with the group's operating needs. In summary, keeps us well positioned to support the business while maintaining disciplined capital allocation. With this balance sheet context, let me now turn to the operating view by geography. Turning to slide 17, you can see the breakdown of revenue, EBITDA, and restaurant count across our segments.
These segments span our footprints across 22 countries. After several years of broadly synchronized trends, we are seeing a more differentiated set of dynamics across markets. In other words, performance is increasingly driven by local market dynamics, which also creates opportunities to allocate resources more selectively and accelerate improvement where the upside is the strongest. Turning to slide 18 and slide 19, we present the key metrics of Central and Eastern Europe, our largest segment. In 2025, annual sales in this segment amounted to EUR 1.6 billion, representing a year-on-year growth of 6.5%. At country level, Hungary posted double-digit growth of 10.2%, while Poland also achieved a strong performance with almost 9% increase in revenues. EBITDA generated reached EUR 306 million, representing an EBITDA margin of over 19%.
Profitability remains solid and broadly consistent across regions, with Hungary posting the highest margin at almost 21%, while other markets deliver comparable levels. Looking at the fourth quarter, revenues totaled EUR 394 million, 1.2% higher than in the same quarter of 2024. EBITDA was over EUR 78 million, representing an EBITDA margin of almost 20%, broadly flat year-on-year. The restaurant portfolio in the region reached 1,283 units after increasing by 55 restaurants, with the opening 28 units during the last quarter of the year. With this, let's now move to Western Europe in slide two0 and 21 to discuss the performance and key dynamics of that region. Revenues in this segment amounted to EUR 870 million for full year 2025. This represents a 3% year-on-year decline.
EBITDA generated amounted to EUR 121 million, resulting in an EBITDA margin of 14.8%, 0.3 percentage points lower than the prior year. Performance diverged significantly by country. Spain, AmRest's second-largest market, delivered flat sales versus last year, while Germany recorded almost 5% growth, supported by continued momentum in the market. By contrast, France experienced a 13% decline, reflecting a more challenging trading environment and weaker consumer confidence. In the fourth quarter, sales reached EUR 221 million, a decrease of 4%, which represents to the same period of 2024. EBITDA stood at EUR 33.5 million. This is an EBITDA margin of 15%, more than 1 percentage point below the prior year. Finally, the total number of restaurants in the region stood at 771 units, after 19 openings and 32 closures.
Approximately half of the closures occurred in France, reflecting ongoing portfolio optimization efforts and a focus on improving the quality and profitability of the market. With that, let me move to the next slide and briefly comment on China, where we operate the Blue Frog portfolio. This segment is smaller in scale but strategically important, and we remain focused on protecting relevance and profitability while navigating a more volatile consumer backdrop. Revenues generating during the year stood at EUR 85 million, which is 8% lower than in 2024. The depreciations of the Chinese yuan against the euro was the key headwind. In local currency, sales decreased by 4%. Despite the softer top line, EBITDA amounted over EUR 16 million, implying a solid EBITDA margin of over 19%. In the fourth quarter, revenues were EUR 20 million, and EBITDA reached almost EUR 4 million.
With this, the EBITDA margin improved to over 18%, almost half a percentage point higher than one year ago, reflecting ongoing cost discipline and operational focus despite the more challenging trading environment. The restaurant portfolio closed 2025, with 85 restaurants in the region after no openings during the last quarter of the year. With this, Luis, I believe we are ready to take questions from the audience. Many thanks.
Thank you, Eduardo.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally, and alternatively, you can submit your written questions via the Q&A box found on your screen. We'll pause for a moment to allow questions to register.
Well, we're gonna start perhaps with some questions that we have received in the box. The first one is asking about the situation in Hungary during the fourth Q of the year. If the performance that we have seen in the market and the strong revenue growth is coming from any one-off in this market?
No, Hungary, it has been last year, previous years as well, a growing market. I think we have been very pleased with the performance, customer confidence and traffic has been growing. It has been one of the best years, as we have seen in the percentage of margin that Eduardo just mentioned, reaching to almost 21%. It was a great one, and nothing as one-off. It was a continuous operation.
Many thanks, Luis. We have the next question referring to Czechia, it states: Do you see already the normalization observed in Czechia following the allegations about food safety?
Yes, Santiago. Let me be very transparent on this issue. AmRest's sales in Czechia were negatively affected in the final months of 2025, following misleading allegations about food safety spread through social media. We at AmRest take food safety very seriously, and always we are fully committed to rigorous food safety standards, and we conduct comprehensive reviews across our network. We do combined robust internal controls and also independent third-party audits. Saying that in this context, AmRest has also submitted itself to hundreds of additional audits and inspections conducted by both the respective brand owner and the competent health and hygiene authorities. Gladly, the results of these audits identified no systemic issues, and all restaurants continue operating normally. After this event, I think we are observing now a progressive recovery, Santiago.
Thank you. It's a very, very detailed answer for this issue.
Yeah.
The next question is related to CapEx, it says, what capital CapEx levels do you expect to reach in 2026 and 2027?
In terms of CapEx, we address the topic during the call, and we expect similar levels to the ones that we had in the previous year. We want to be very objective on this and focus on two main topics: openings, and we are doing a very detailed procedure in terms of making sure that those openings give the returns that are expected by the company. On the second topic is very important, the renovations that we are doing across the organization. This is very important to us because it's part of the service level that we give to our consumers, so it's important to have updated the restaurants, to have a very good experience in our consumers. Also, this drives additional transactions and sales during the reopening of those restaurants.
Eduardo, let me jump in because I think it's also significant that the usage of CapEx this year has been outstanding and greater to previous years. I would like to highlight the efforts made by the teams into how to improve the efficiency of the jobs, of the construction, of the supply. Everything, all the parts related to CapEx investment has really saw an improvement. I think the efficiency that we are observing will stay, even improve for longer. Those are good signs and good data that really allow us to be more positive about. We're flying in the same level of CapEx, being more effective on the usage of the capital.
Great. Thank you very much, gents. The next question that we have is related to the dividends. We are asking if AmRest is planning to establish an official dividend policy. We can expect or we have any guidelines with respect to next year's dividends.
We are focusing on the cash flow of the company, mainly enhancing the operating part of it. At this moment, the results are the one that mark the dividend that we can share. Our focus right now is on cash flow, and the board of directors will take the decision depending on the level that we generate as a company.
Thank you very much. I don't know if we have any further questions or comments?
Maybe I will take the privilege of moderator and ask a couple of follow-up questions. First of all, I would like to ask about Czechia. You said that you are seeing gradual improvement. Can you share with us what kind of trends or sales are you observing in Czech Republic in the first quarter of this year?
As I said, after this impact on the last months of last year, and let's say the customers has been more aware of the real status of our safety and our conditions in the restaurants, the trust is recovering and the granted operation trust and confidence is showing back. The performance is gradually recovering. It may take some time. We don't have a clear vision on that, but definitely we see just positive week on week, this is good news.
Okay. Thank you. In the presentation, you also shared with us that you are considering new brands and new concepts. Can you shed more light to that? What kind of a brands, what kind of a concepts, just even the direction, where are you going?
Sure. Sure, Lucas. The company has been always evaluating, assessing different perspectives of how to improve and grow our portfolio. In that regard, we continue doing that. Obviously, we are looking forward to onboard brands that increase our reach through different business proposals, and that's an important thing because I think the diversified portfolio of brands that we operate is one of the strengths of AmRest. We want to keep expanding that, and from there, looking forward. When? I cannot disclose that, but we are seriously working on that topic.
Okay, thank you. On the flip side, you are still in a clean up mode, closing down the less efficient parts of your network. As I understand, that's also the plan for 2026. Can you tell us which restaurants, which markets are under your consideration now?
Yes, this is also as well, a dynamic exercise and a dynamic assessment. As you can imagine, there are brands and territories and customer dynamics that are changing in the years. We expect to keep running in the same level of closures as we saw in the last years. This is a discipline that we are taking to really be present where the consumer occasions are now, and also to be sure that our profitability is not dragged out by underperforming stores. Probably the same level. I expect that for a couple of years, we'll still have some areas to keep working on, and that will be the reference, as same as we did this and past year.
Can you give us any details on the markets or brands, or you would like to stay as you are now?
Well, probably, this is a variety of actions because not all markets do have a continuous trend. Saying that, what one market was the target one year, another one will be next. This is on many occasions, also related to leases, agreement with landlords, so it's not geographically driven, in some occasions are regulated by contracts, disposals, and so on.
Okay, thank you.
We have received in our box an additional question that is asking about the evolution of the EBITDA margin in Germany during the fourth quarter of the year. I don't know if perhaps, Eduardo, you can answer this.
Yes. Thank you, Santiago. There's an important extraordinary element in there. We registered a fire, and we needed to make some bookings in the fourth quarter of 2024. The good news on that topic is that now that is normalized and the market is recovering.
Mm-hmm. Thank you very much, Eduardo.
As another quick reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad, or alternatively, submit your written questions via the Q&A box found on your screen. We'll pause for a moment.
Okay. There is no further questions. I don't know if...
No, thank you, thank you for joining the call today. I think it has been a challenging year, no doubt, as in the markets across the different geographies we are facing are in different momentums of their evolutions. Gladly, AmRest diversity in brands and geographies allow us to compete heavily where we have backwinds. The good thing is, I think the company has gone through a very selective exercise of how to fine-tuning our processes. We have kept investing in good systems. Our profitability keeps moving up, and the margins are also solid.
I have good feelings, and I think this is a topic, Santiago, no one mentioned, but I think second half of the year, there are forecasts in this industry about some commodity or goods prices that are looking to go down as chicken, beef, and coffee, that as you know very well, these three in the last two or three years, were very volatile. I think we are observing potential decreases in prices, especially on the coffee side, because great harvest in different territories, but also beef, that we name internally, beeflation, seems to be now stabilizing. Those 3 things have no more than positive forecast outcomes to our business. I'm also expecting those to land in reality somewhere in the second half of the year.
Saying that, thank you very much for the coordination of the call, on the other end, and looking forward to share with you more news in very short. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, today's call is now concluded. We'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.