Welcome to the Q1 2025 financial results of Żabka Group. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. This webcast will be recorded, and an archive of the webcast will be posted on the company website. By participating in the Zoom call, you are agreeing to the recordings made during this event, which may be shared by Żabka Group. For those of you who are joining us via Zoom, if you wish to ask a question during the Q&A, we ask that you please use the raised hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen, or if you have dialed in, please press star nine. I would now like to hand over to Filip Paszka.
Thank you very much. Hello everyone, and welcome to our Q1 earnings call. My name is Filip Paszka. I'm a company director responsible for investor relations and governance. We have about a 30-minute presentation followed by a Q&A session, and I'll now hand over to Mr. Tomasz Suchański, CEO of the Żabka Group.
Thank you. Good morning or good afternoon, and welcome at our meeting with Żabka Group, where we'll be discussing results of Q1 of 2025. My name is Tomasz Suchański. I'm CEO of Żabka Group, and I'm joined today with two of my colleagues from the board. I will ask them to present themselves.
Marta Wrochna-Łastowska, Żabka Group CFO. Very nice to meet you again.
Tomasz Blicharski, Chief Strategy and Development Officer. Great to be here as well.
Thank you. We are very pleased to say that in Q1 of 2025, Żabka Group was on track to deliver the full-year guidance that we shared with you previously. Sales to end customers increased by 15% year over year to PLN 6.6 billion, driven by the consistent performance with like-for-like growth of 6%, well above our peers. The store network expanded to 11,460 locations across Poland and Romania, with more than 1,200 gross openings year over year. I am pleased also to inform you that our pipeline of locations for opening has never been stronger than in Q1 2025, and we have very good performance of our newly opened stores. Group adjusted EBITDA increased by 15%, reaching PLN 596 million. Importantly, we report very strong growth of our adjusted EBITDA margin in our core business, Żabka Polska, which increased by as much as 0.4 percentage points over the period of one year.
Thanks to a very strong cash flow generation in the last 12 months, our leverage decreased by 0.5 times year over year, with 1.6 times at the end of Q1. We are also very proud to share with you that Żabka Group has just received its first public MSCI ESG rating of AAA, the highest rank, placing us in the top 10% of companies in the retail and staples industry researched by MSCI Universe. It is for us a great honor to receive such results, confirming our strategic importance of the ESG agenda as a value creation enabler. Żabka's strategic execution was on track to deliver the guidance for the full year, with the market being stable overall. The consumer remains supportive. However, due to geopolitical uncertainty, we observe some mixed signals coming from the market that Tomasz will discuss with you in just a minute.
Against this economic backdrop, we executed our strategy strongly with each pillar: network expansion, like-for-like growth initiatives, and focus on new growth engines. Our network reached 11,460 stores, with quarterly openings at the level of 436 stores, which is 9% more than last year. We continued our performance against the market in terms of like-for-like, and we continue to refine our customer proposition in Romania in order to evaluate the results of our tests in this country. So far, we can confirm that our format in Romania has gained strong traction with customers, especially within the QMS strategy. We also grow dynamically within the DCO segment, with 23% year-on-year sales growth. Now I will hand over to Tomasz, who will guide you through the market environment and details of our strategy.
Hello everyone. Let's just briefly go through the market section, the macro and market environment section first. Since our last meeting around two months ago, the situation remains pretty similar. The financial assessment of the financial situation of the households remains at a high level. The saving rates also remain at a high level. The real wages growth continues with stable inflation environment. Having said that, the consumer confidence in Poland has slightly deteriorated in March on the back of the geopolitical situation. Overall, however, we see this situation as relatively stable. In terms of the grocery market, in the first quarter, firstly, I have to say that this first quarter is not the easiest to analyze year on year.
The reason for that is namely a different calendar, so one day less in that period of time, given the leap year that we had last year, but also the Easter effect that has moved from Q1 to Q2. For our business, that does not have a significant impact. Having said that, for the majority of the market, it does. Notwithstanding, in the first quarter of that year, Nielsen data shows market growth of 4%, 4.1% to be precise. That was pretty much price-driven. On that backdrop, our growth of 16% plus, which includes both the like-for-like and the network expansion, has been, similarly to most other periods, much higher than the market. We increased the market share again. The market share stands at 10.3% as of the end of last quarter.
It is, as you see on the right-hand side, a considerable increase over the last several different quarters. It continues pretty much at a similar pace. Looking at the market itself, we see the trends that are similar to what we have seen before in terms of the channel dynamics. The discounter is growing faster and gaining market share, and other channels are reducing their market share. In terms of our actions, we would like to focus today on two items. One is the network expansion. The other one is some comments on the like-for-likes. Firstly, on the network expansion, as Tomasz mentioned, we have opened more than 400 stores in this quarter, first quarter of 2025, which is an acceleration from the first quarter of last year. We now have around 11, well, as of the end of the first quarter, close to 11,500 stores.
In the 12 months prior to that, so LTM figure, we opened on a gross basis 1,201 stores, which is the highest figure that we ever opened in a period of 12 months. Furthermore, the number of locations secured for future openings increased as well. The pipeline of locations, which we have secured, lease contracts signed, amounts to more than 1.3 thousand stores. Most of that is for the next 12 months, but also for some future period as well. This pipeline is, again, the highest we ever had. What is also important is not just the number, but also the quality of stores, which you see on the middle of the slide here, improved as well.
The stores that we opened in the last 12 months, ending end of Q1 2025, had a better performance than 12 months before, and again, that better performance than two years before that you can see here. There is a gradual improvement in the quality of the stores, which only showcases that there is ample room for us to grow and grow with good quality and good financial performance of these stores. On the right-hand side, you see the situation with respect to the franchisees. We have been able, the situation is very stable. There are enough candidates, enough candidates with good enough quality as well to open a required number of stores. The number of franchisees that joined our chain in the 12 months prior to the end of the first quarter increased more or less in line with the growth of the chain.
The situation with the churn is stable. Furthermore, in terms of the financial aspects of the cooperation with the franchisees, the right bottom part of the slide, you see that the payout to the franchisees was in 12 months at a stable level compared to last year, so 12 months before, which means that the payout for the franchisee increased in line with the revenue of the stores. Looking at the second pillar of our growth, the like-for-likes, here we continued the rollout of Merry Chef offering. We retrofitted approximately 2,000 stores in the first quarter of this year. There is only roughly 1,000 remaining, which we will retrofit during this quarter. Effectively, as of Q3, the entire chain will have the same offering of street food, the new assortment, including the pizza, including the Krug box, French fries, and many others.
QMS remains the fastest growing category and the category which has one of the highest contributions to our like-for-likes, especially if you look at the with the beverages, so cross-buying that often goes with the QMS and the hot food. What is also important is that, to reiterate, we are still in relatively early days of the development of this offering, where we still work on the product offering. There is going to be a lot of new products coming in in the coming months. Even though the awareness of the customers has increased and is increasing for this new offering, we will continue to be building, and it is still the biggest barrier for the purchase, right? As I mentioned in our prior meetings, this has to effectively be almost automatic in the heads of the customers, right?
We still are somewhat away from that automatic full awareness of this offering. We will continue to build awareness and trial with our marketing actions, with in-store actions as well. Importantly, we very much use our Żabka consumer app to drive this as well. As I mentioned, in Q4, we relaunched the completely renewed version of the app. This app has proven to be a big success, I would say, in line or even in some cases ahead of our expectations, especially linking the Merry Chef and QMS generally assortment and building this awareness and trial with the customers. On the right-hand side here, you see that the app has very high NPS. Actually, it is the highest ever that we ever measured.
Customers spend much more time in the app, and there is an increase in monthly active shoppers, as well as the increase of the app usage overall. What I can also say is that close to 2 million customers tried the new coupons, so bought in stores with new coupon offering, which is in the app, which we launched in Q1. It is proven to be an increasing driver of trial for this offering. Close to 70% of all the purchases in Żabka stores for quick meal solutions, and especially for the street food offering, is with the use of the app. It goes very well together with the strategy of driving the QMS growth. With that, I am going to pass the mic to Marta, who will give more color on the financial front. Thank you.
Yeah, as Tomasz already mentioned, our performance in the first quarter of 2025 was strong, delivering across all key targets outlined during our previous meetings. We delivered solid sales growth. We had a stable EBITDA margin on the group level, and we had increased adjusted net profit margin. Sales to end customers reached PLN 6.6 billion, representing a 15% year-over-year increase. Like-for-like growth came in at 6%, fully in line with our mid-single-digit guidance for this quarter. This was supported by both positive volume growth and positive pricing. It was also supported by continued success of our new product offering. Top-performing categories in the first quarter were QMS, including our new street food offering, as well as beverages. Both categories delivered double-digit like-for-like in the first quarter. In the first quarter, we also maintained a fast pace of our expansion.
We opened 407 new stores in Poland and 29 new stores in Romania. As Tomasz mentioned, the new stores' performance remained very strong, and we have built a robust pipeline of high-quality locations for 2025 and for the following years. Looking at our full year 2025 guidance and based on the solid Q1 performance and current trading trends, we remain confident in achieving mid-to-high single-digit like-for-like growth and in opening over 1,100 new stores across Poland and Romania for the full 2025. Group's adjusted EBITDA reached PLN 596 million, a solid 15% year-over-year increase. In line with our guidance, Żabka Group's EBITDA margin remained stable year-over-year. This strong performance was driven by the strong performance of our Polish store business, where the EBITDA margin was 38 basis points above last year, and increasing and positive EBITDA for our digital convenience ecosystem.
Those two positive effects were partially offset by continued investment in the development of our Romanian business, in line with our expectation. Given our first quarter results and the continued strong performance of our core business, we remain very confident in delivering on our full-year adjusted EBITDA margin guidance. Adjusted net profit was negative, was PLN 77 million, fully in line with our expectation and consistent with our typical seasonality. This represents a PLN 19 million improvement compared to the first quarter of 2024. Net profit margin improved by 50 basis points year-over-year, supported by lower depreciation, as well as a decline in financing costs as a percentage of sales. Finally, thanks to strong operational momentum over the last 12 months, working capital release, and disciplined capital expenditure, we significantly reduced our leverage profile to 1.6 times EBITDA, down from 2.1 a year ago.
Before I go into the details of our financial performance, let me start by addressing the seasonality of our sales, EBITDA, and net profit. As we have discussed in our previous meetings, our sales performance is seasonal and largely influenced by footfall and weather conditions throughout the year. Unlike some large-format retailers, peak trading periods for us, such as Christmas and Easter, are not the strongest for our business. The highest levels of sales are typically recorded during the summer months at Żabka, especially in July and in August, while the lowest levels occur in January and February. Warm weather in summer encourages outdoor activity, which leads to more spontaneous store visits and a greater share of impulse purchases. In contrast, during the first quarter, colder weather results in reduced customer mobility, lower footfall, and consequently leads to lower sales.
Historically, when you look on this graph, it is very visible. The third quarter has been the most significant contributor to annual revenue, accounting for approximately 28% of sales to end customers. When we look at quarter-to-quarter trends in EBITDA and in net profit, the seasonality effect becomes even more pronounced. This is driven not only by the uplift in high-margin impulse categories during the summer months, but also by the relatively fixed nature of some cost components, including depreciation, financial costs, some store expenditure, and franchisee costs. As I mentioned, Żabka store sales are typically lower in winter than in summer. Since many franchisee costs, like, for example, cashier wages, do not decrease proportionally, we have built-in protections to help maintain franchisee profitability during the slower season.
As a result, when comparing franchisee margin across the year, they tend to be higher in winter, so approximately 18% of sales in the first quarter, and they are lower in summer. For the third quarter, the franchisee margin is usually approximately 15%. It is one of the reasons for EBITDA margin being lower in the first quarter and net profit being negative. Looking right now on our profit and loss, Żabka's robust sales to end customer growth in the first quarter of 2025 was driven by a healthy mix of organic growth, as well as store expansion and increased contributions from new growth engines. Franchisee margin, as you see, remained stable as a percentage of sales to end customers in both the first quarter of 2025 and 2024.
The company delivered a strong 15% increase in adjusted EBITDA on the back of direct margin improvement, efficiency gains, as well as positive EBITDA for our digital convenience offering. The adjusted net profit margin increased by 50 basis points, supported by lower depreciation and amortization and lower leverage, resulting in lower financial costs as a percentage of sales. Reported EBITDA and reported net profit, when you look at those numbers, they were adversely impacted by the recognition of the non-cash IPO award, which will be granted to the franchisees, employees, and contractors, as well as the non-cash LTIP costs. Looking at the EBITDA bridge, Żabka's adjusted EBITDA increased by 15%, as I mentioned, year-over-year, rising from PLN 518 million in the first quarter of 2024 to PLN 596 million in the first quarter of 2025.
This strong growth was driven by excellent results of our core business, Ultimate Convenience in Poland. It is very visible on the bridge. We've seen incremental sales from both like-for-like and new store opening, as well as a significant 38 basis points improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin. The margin improvement was driven by better terms of trade with our suppliers based on higher volumes and growth in our key strategic categories, including QMS and beverages, supported by the expansion of new product offering, store remodeling, and the installation of the street food ovens. These developments were further reinforced by our cost-conscious approach and efficiency gains, which are also visible on the bridge.
When you look on the central costs, including tech and SG&A expenses adjusted for non-cash IPO award and LTIP costs, the central cost remained stable in both the first quarter of 2024 and 2025, representing approximately 2.5% of sales to end customers. The increase in absolute terms between the quarters was primarily attributable to the acquisition of DREAM, so the entity in Romania, and the establishment of the new international structure. When we look on our core business in Poland, Żabka Polska, central costs grew at a slower pace compared to sales and decreased as a percentage of sales. When you look on the breach, it is also visible that reported EBITDA includes non-cash costs of IPO award of approximately PLN 16 million, which will be granted to employees, coworkers, and franchisees at the first anniversary of our IPO, and LTIP costs of PLN 30 million.
The details of the LTIP costs expected in the following quarters, as well as the accounting recognition of those costs, are available in the appendix to the presentation. We may also discuss it further if you have questions in the Q&A session. When you look at the bridge, the new growth engines, they include, as you recall, digital convenience offering and Romania. The DCO segment achieved an EBITDA break even in 2024, with additional increases in the first quarter of 2025, positively affecting year-over-year profitability dynamics. As illustrated on the bridge, this gain was balanced by investment related to the development of Romanian business and the expansion of new stores in this market. As you may recall, we acquired the business in Romania only on the last days of February 2024.
When we look on the cash flows, in the first quarter of 2025, the company generated very positive cash flow at PLN 91 million compared to a very strong result of the first quarter of 2024, which was driven by the calendar effect. As a result, this year, we are seeing a return to more typical free cash flow performance for this part of the year. As you may recall, we discussed that the payables, there was an effect of payables at the end of 2023. We repaid our payables to the suppliers earlier at the end of 2023, and therefore, there was a timing shift of certain cash flows between the last quarter of 2023 into the first quarter of 2024, boosting the base for comparison in the first quarter of 2025.
The free cash flow result in the first quarter of 2025 was supported by growth in adjusted EBITDA and partially offset by higher capital expenditure, primarily related to network expansion and the rollout of street food ovens. Looking at our net debt, the positive cash flow performance continued to support the deleveraging trend, with the net leverage ratio, excluding leases, at 1.6 times EBITDA, down from 2.1 a year ago. As per our guidance, we will continue on our deleveraging path, aiming at a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, excluding leases, of below 1 times EBITDA in the midterm. Before closing our presentation, I would like to draw your attention on a key milestone in the evolution of our capital structure. A few days ago, Żabka Group successfully completed its first bond issuance, raising approximately PLN 1 billion.
The bonds have a five-year maturity, are sustainability-linked, and carry a floating interest rate of 6 months plus 150 basis points. The transaction was met with very strong interest from the investors. The order book was strongly oversubscribed, allowing us to secure a highly competitive margin and fully execute on a PLN 1 billion insurance program. In line with our commitment, the bond insurance will not lead to an increase in the group's overall debt level. In mid-May, we prepaid our primary debt facility in the amount of approximately PLN 600 million, and additionally, we plan to prepay a further PLN 400 million in the second quarter of this year. These actions will enhance the diversification of our capital structure and strengthen our financial flexibility.
As a result, we expect recurring annual cash benefits of approximately PLN 15 million, driven primarily by lower interest expenses and a more efficient tax position. It's also important to note that in the second quarter of 2025, we will see a temporary non-cash impact on financial costs due to IFRS accounting for early debt repayment. This includes the recognition of our historical loan arrangement fees, which were paid in 2023, and the partial recognition of the IRR associated with the valuation of the repaid debt. Important that this is purely an accounting effect, amending the timing of the recognition of these costs and has no impact on the cash generation. It will lead, as you may imagine, however, to a financial cost increase in the second quarter of 2025 and a decrease in the following quarters.
With that, I would like to hand over to Tomasz for the concluding remarks.
Thank you, Marta. In conclusion, Żabka continues to deliver consistently strong results and remains confident in the medium-term outlook shared during the IPO guidance. In the first quarter of 2025, we noted an attractive top-line performance in a seasonally slower quarter, driven by a healthy mix of like-for-like growth and store expansion. Our store business in Poland achieved a 0.4 percentage point margin improvement on an adjusted EBITDA basis, while the group adjusted EBITDA margin remained at a stable 9%, reflecting investments in Romania and DCO improving profitability. Żabka remains committed to delivering on growth initiatives, including the pace of store openings, rolling out street food across the network, and seeing positive traction from the digital consumer offering.
In terms of guidance for 2025, we remained confident in delivering mid to high single-digit like-for-like for the year, opening more than 1,100 stores in Poland and Romania, delivering adjusted EBITDA margins towards the top end of our 12%-13% range in the near and midterm, and continued improvement in adjusted net profit margin to 3% in the near term. Actually, this is the end of our presentation, and now we are ready to answer your questions. Thank you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, we ask that you please use the raised hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen, or if you've dialed in, please press star nine. We'll pause for a moment to allow the questioners to enter the queue. Our first question comes from Michał Potyra from UBS. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Hi, good morning, everyone.
Thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple, but they're quite short and simple. Maybe I'll go one by one then, please. The first question, perhaps you could comment on the like-for-like sales pattern during the months, and also perhaps maybe provide some color on the second quarter trading, please. Thank you.
Yeah. Hello, Michał. The story is a little bit similar to prior quarters, so we didn't have very significant deviation between the quarters. Having said that, what we can see is in a relatively warmer January, we had slightly higher like-for-likes. February, which was significantly colder than the five-year average, even not even counting the last year, was a slightly lower month. We see that March ended as one of the best months in the quarter, if I recall correctly.
Of course, in terms of Q2, these are relatively early days, but we see that performance in April is positive. We see positive dynamics in the month.
Okay, thank you. Now, maybe a little bit more tricky question. I'm trying to understand kind of how the franchisee margin works, so please correct me if I'm wrong here. So the franchisee margin was flat versus last year. So that implies that the revenue per franchisee increased in line with like-for-like sales, so say 6%. So I'm wondering, considering that the minimum wage increased by 10% and also other costs are growing as well, I'm wondering, do you think franchisees are happy with this sort of margin, and do you think it is sustainable? Will there be a need to increase that further?
Perhaps maybe you can add a little bit more on kind of churn figures and NPS score level and the dynamics for the franchisees. Thank you.
Yeah, maybe I'll start, ask Marta to add some other details. Firstly, we did not see the churn levels in Q1 as relatively stable compared to prior quarters. On the NPS front, the last measurement was at the end of last year, which was one of the highest readings that we had. The next one is going to be later in this year. Having said that, we had meetings with franchisees throughout the last month, actually. We had meetings with all the franchisees, conferences throughout Poland, and we see that morale, anecdotally, obviously is high. You are right in your calculation that the average stores, sorry, the average franchisees, assuming he or she has one store, payout increased with like-for-likes.
Having said that, what you do not take into account is that, as in all the years, and especially in the last few years, we're improving the operations and processes to reduce the workload of the franchisees. It was also the case this quarter. Last quarter, we have introduced over the last 12 months significant savings through improved processes, through apps and additional features in the apps, which saved time of the franchisee as well as the employees of the franchisees. Therefore, we passed them on to the franchisees. Effectively, the efficiency of each store has increased, improved, which offsets the cost of the wage increase. Of course, we do not have the exact details as the employees are of the salaries because the employees of the franchisees are employed directly by the franchisee. We do not have the details on what it is.
Having said that, we know in terms of the hours and minutes of time of both franchisee and the employees of the franchisee that were saved year on year, and these offset the increase in the costs. That makes sense. Thanks very much. Just two very technical elements. Maybe you could provide the new growth engine sales for the quarter. I was not able to find that figure. Also just to clarify, because in your presentation, sometimes you talk about store openings, sometimes about net openings. Just to make sure I understand correctly that the full-year guidance, 1.1 thousand, this is net store openings. Thank you.
The guidance in terms of new openings, we said that we will open above 1,100 new stores, and these are the gross openings. Usually, we do not usually close approximately 100 stores per annum.
The net openings, of course, will be lower compared to the gross openings. We guide for gross openings, which will be 1,100. In terms of the split, we will share with you the split between the sales for the six months. We have not shared that for the first quarter. What I can say is that we see, given that we acquire all the business in Romania only in late February, as I mentioned, there is a significant growth for Romania and also the growth for the new growth for the digital convenience offering is above the average growth for the company. It was 23% for the first quarter.
Okay, thank you. All right. I mean, just maybe a question from the analyst community, if you could consider then guiding net store openings. It's always easier. The same with the new growth engine.
I mean, I understand you do not want to divulge too much every quarter, but I think it is kind of very useful data, and it is nice to have it quarterly rather than every six months. Thank you.
Maybe I will answer that. We are very focused on openings, right? When we say that we will have more than 1,100 stores opened, it will happen. It is quite difficult, especially when you have 11,000 or 12,000 stores, as we will this year, to guide you whether we will close 80 or 90 stores, right? As we said, I can tell you that every year we are closing between 70-100 stores, not more than that. This is like a standard figure for the last, I do not know, four years, right?
I mean, it's difficult to guide you that it will be 85 or 83, but I think it's enough to tell you it's between 70 and 100, and we will open new stores more than 100, 1,000.
I think what we shared also during the IPO, as Tomasz mentioned, we shared that we will close not more than 1% of the store network per annum, which implied the figures which Tomasz just mentioned. For us, the gross openings are also important from the CapEx perspective. Therefore, I think we give more precise guidance if we split it between the gross openings and the store closure, which should not exceed, as I mentioned, 1% of the network, Michał. I hope it's helpful.
All clear.
Just maybe just to follow up, it kind of then implies that the openings should slow down in the following quarters, right, given you opened more than 400 in the first quarter?
Sorry, we typically have front loading of openings in a year, unlike many other bigger box retailers that tend to kind of open in the last quarter a lot. We historically have been opening more stores in the first part of the year and have a bit less, especially in Q4, where there is some weather impact, some holiday impact that creates some additional kind of challenges.
This pattern was visible in 2024. You can see that on the graph here, and I think it will be visible also for 2025.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question will come from Elena Jouronova from JP Morgan. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Hello, thank you so much. I had a question about like-for-like sales growth. To be clear, when you report 6% like-for-like sales growth, is this not adjusted for leap year and any other seasonality effects? It's just that we're looking at the definition of your like-for-like as if it's daily sales rather than monthly. Making sure that 6% is not adjusted for the leap year. The second question is, what would be the drivers of acceleration of your like-for-like sales growth in subsequent quarters? Because if we look at your full-year guidance, you do expect that like-for-like is going up from where it is in Q1. Thank you.
Elena, thank you for the question.
Yeah, you are right that we calculate like-for-like based on the daily basis, which implied that the like-for-like is the daily sales of this year compared to daily sales in a given store in the previous year. This 6% assumes the same number of days. If we adjust that for the leap year last year, the like-for-like would be lower last year, right? It would be higher last year, sorry, and it will be lower this year.
It is a consistent methodology we used for a number of years. Effectively, for us, it would not be like-for-like if you have one more day or one less day.
Yeah, we believe that it just better shows the performance of our stores because for us, the important is to have more transactions, more volume of sales when you compare daily sales. Yeah. Yes. One other follow-up.
The Sunday sales are still all the open Sundays are basically in the base. You do not adjust for Sundays.
Yeah, we do not.
Okay.
We do not.
And the base of the openings is for all stores that is more than 12 months, right? Yeah. We do not adjust for stores that are in different conditions, like road closed or open or stuff like this. We do not close. It is a big, well, vast majority of the chain that we include in like-for-likes. Cannot recall exactly the percentage at the moment. Coming back to your second point, as I mentioned in the first, and it is actually good to have this slide here as well while we answer this question. One of the key drivers that we see, can we go back, sorry, to the one that I had before?
One of the key drivers that we see is obviously QMS of the growth. We see the momentum. There is going to be additional actions aimed at once we kind of complete the remodeling aims at increasing the sales of QMS and especially the street food, but overall, as I mentioned, it's already one of the biggest contributors to like-for-likes. That is one kind of driver for the like-for-like growth in the remaining part of the year, which will be increasingly important because this category is growing the faster of all the categories. I would say the impact on like-for-like continuously increase.
The second one, as you see here on the slide that I wanted to share, is that in the first quarter of last year, especially, but also in the second quarter to a certain extent, the base compared to the was a bit higher than in the second part of the year. That should have an impact as well. Thirdly, in our guidance, we do not assume, I would say, we do not assume significant improvement on the market, as we discussed quite a few times already. What we know is that always the summer months bring, I would say, more impact for the actions that we prepared during the year than the winter months. That has been visible in most of the quarters. We believe that this should be the case in hotter months that are incoming in front of us.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question will come from Isabel Dobrev from JP Morgan. Sorry, Morgan Stanley. Will you please unmute yourself and ask your question?
Hello there. Yes, I have three questions. I am going to ask them one by one just to make it a bit simpler. My first question is on the like-for-like. On one of the slides, you mentioned 5.2% price contribution to total sales. Could you just clarify, is that also the same contribution to the like-for-like when it comes to price?
No, this data is Nielsen data. You may keep in mind that this is kind of approximation based on what Nielsen shows, right? Therefore, when you see the 16% growth for Żabka , the figure is different compared to 15% growth, which we show for our within our numbers.
I would say that the impact of price is not materially different, but it is not the same.
I guess what I'm trying to understand is, of your 6% like-for-like, how much is price and how much is volume? I'm still not following. Why would the price impact be different for total sales growth than like-for-like growth?
I think it's not that it is different within total and like-for-like. It's that the Nielsen data is based on some, it is an approximation based on what Nielsen sees on the market. We have the exact data, very precise data, right? They are similar. What I mentioned is that they are not the same, right? What we've also shared during the presentation, we shared that the like-for-like was 6%, and there was positive price and positive volume effect.
We do not usually share the details in terms of how much exactly was coming from price and how much from volume.
Okay. On the like-for-like, if I assume it is broadly similar, then that would suggest the volumes or mix were about 1%. That is a slowdown in the two-year stack versus the exit rate of last quarter. Could you just explain what is causing that? At first, I thought it was the calendar impact, but you have just clarified that you report ex-calendar. Could you explain why the two-year stacks are showing, given that should be evening out the comps from last year on weather, etc.?
The weather is not exactly the same as last year, to be honest. I mentioned that we had quite negative weather, for example, in February. That impacts the like-for-like.
This like-for-like kind of Q1 like-for-like to some extent, I would call it this way. Now, we do not see this as a significant slowdown. I mean, there is maybe a very small effect excluding calendar, but I would not say that this is something that we see as kind of important or significant for our business at this stage.
Okay. Thank you. My second question is on Romania. In this slide, there is an increase in the losses on new growth engines of PLN 22 million. Could you explain of that how much is coming from Romania? Also, what do you expect the total losses to be? Because we are basically one quarter in, and PLN 22 million is a quite high number.
I think at the time of the IPO, you were mentioning that the profitability from DREAM should be more than enough to cushion the losses from the stores in Romania. Has that changed? How do we think about the total losses coming from Romania?
Yeah. Isabel, what we disclose also in our selected financial information is that for last year, the first quarter loss on the new growth engine was PLN 3 million. For this year, it is PLN 25 million. Given that we acquired the business only in the last days of February last year, there was a very small impact of Romania in the first quarter of 2024. When we mentioned also that within this PLN 25 million of negative impact in 2025, there is some positive EBITDA coming from this year.
What we can say, as we mentioned a few times, it is too early for us to precisely discuss Romania, given that we will only decide on the pace of rollout of stores in Romania when we complete the test, which we are running currently. Right now, we see very good traction with the customers. We see good results of the stores in Romania. However, it is too early to say what will be the pace of rollout in this country. This, as you can imagine, may have impact on the annual investment, which we will have in 2025. What I can say is that we do not plan for 2025.
When you look on the annualized data and compare it to 2024 and 2025, what I can say is that we do not plan to have higher investment in Romania on the annualized basis compared to last year. I hope that, yeah, that it helps.
Maybe to add a little bit, during the IPO guidance, what we said, to be very precise, is that Romania will not dilute the group's margin overall. As you see, the additional investment in Romania has been offset by higher profitability of the core business that Tomasz mentioned at the beginning.
Yeah. It is very visible when you look on this data for the first quarter, right? We improved the profitability of Żabka Polska, and therefore, we were able to keep the margin stable on the group level. We will continue doing that in line with our guidance, Isabel, right?
Because we said that we expect the EBITDA margin to be stable for the whole year compared to the last year.
Yes, I understand the point around the group total margin, but as we're trying to assess whether investment in Romania is a good capital allocation, could you just clarify? So PLN 22 million of losses on just under 90 stores, is that a run rate? So near one, you expect to be losing about PLN 250,000 per store. Is that the run rate, or there was any front-loading?
No, I think, Isabel, it's too simple to calculate that way.
Yeah. Just bear in mind that during that process, we also have been investing in some logistical infrastructure.
We've mentioned before that we have set up certain own supply chain, made additional investments there, which is not only CapEx, but also recurring operating costs, which will be effectively the capacity of the supply chain is vastly above the current number of stores. Once we kind of open more stores, the cost should remain the same effectively. Therefore, what Amanda mentioned, it is not representative at this stage. We can only reiterate that later this year, we'll come back with more details around Romania, as I mentioned, and we mentioned many times. It's still under the test phase. Once we completed that phase, we will share more details on the relevant aspects, including the plans and the other items.
Thank you. Then just my last question. It's a quick one. On the gross financial debt, I saw that it increased PLN 4.7 billion from PLN 4.5 billion.
Is that timing related? Can you confirm whether you expect to bring it back down?
Yeah. What we will see within the financial costs, this is seasonality purely, right? We mentioned, described the seasonality of our business. Most of the cash flow also is generated in the third quarter of the year. The first quarter, usually from the cash flow perspective, if you look on the usual seasonality, is the weakest. Therefore, you see that it is only temporary. I confirm that we will decline the net debt to EBITDA ratio in the near and in the medium term.
Thank you. Understood on the net debt, but what about the gross debt? Do you plan to bring down the stock of gross debt?
Yeah. Yeah.
Isabel, as we said, we are not going to increase the gross debt. We are planning to decrease that. Yeah.
Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raised hand feature. If you've dialed in, please press star nine. Once you've been invited to ask your question, please unmute and ask your question. We'll just pause for a moment to allow any more questioners to form the queue. Okay. Our next question will come from Janusz Pięta from MBANK. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I've got two. The first one. On your digital customer offering. In Q1, we saw some deterioration in sales dynamic compared to what we saw in full 2024 year. So to get to your IPO target, we should see some acceleration here.
Do you expect some acceleration in that respect in the next quarters? The second question, could you disclose the amount of minorities in your net profit line? Thank you.
On the first question, I can say that in the first quarter, there was some seasonality as well as the movement of calendar effects. These businesses have stronger or much stronger calendar effect and Easter impact than our core business. There was a little bit of that. The expectation, which we kind of already see, is that the next quarters will come back to the levels that are in line with the IPO guidance.
Secondly, there are still, on top of it, there are still relatively young businesses within that mix that effectively should have, over time, and I'm not talking specifically about 2025, but over time, a stronger impact because they're starting from a much lower base. That would contribute to this IPO guidance that we gave.
Yeah. In terms of the minority line, this relates mostly to Romania. As you may recall from our previous discussion, we acquired a majority stake in the Romanian business. Currently, we have approximately 70%, and the other 30% is owned by the founders. Therefore, you can see the minority line within the financial statement.
Could you disclose what was the amount of minorities?
Yeah. 30% belongs still to the founder and 70% for us.
Impact on net profit line. We could calculate the net profit attributable to parent company. Yeah.
Okay.
I think it's better, Janusz. We will come back after the call to you, okay, with the answer to make sure that we will be precise.
There are no further questions, so that concludes today's call. Thank you, everyone, for joining. You may now disconnect.