Ambev SA (ABEV) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon and thank you for waiting. We would like to welcome everyone to Ambev’s 2025 fourth quarter and full year results conference call. Today with us, we have Mr. Carlos Lisboa, Ambev CEO; and Mr. Guilherme Fleury, CFO and Investor Relations Officer.

As a reminder, this conference presentation is available for download on our website, ir.ambev.com.br, as well as through the webcast link. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded. (Operator Instructions)

Before proceeding, let me mention that forward looking statements are being made under the Safe Harbor of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1996. Forward looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of Ambev’s management and on information currently available to the company. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions because they relate to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future.

Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors could also affect the future results of Ambev and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward looking statements.

I would also like to remind everyone that, as usual, the percentage changes that will be discussed during today’s call are both organic and normalized in nature, and unless otherwise stated, percentage changes refer to comparison with 2024 fourth quarter and full year results. Normalized figures refer to performance measures before exceptional items, which are either income or expenses that do not occur regularly as part of Ambev normal activities.

As normalized figures are non-GAAP measures, the company discloses consolidated profit, EPS, operating profit and EBITDA on a fully reported basis in the earnings release.

Now I will turn the conference over to Mr. Carlos Lisboa. Mr. Lisboa, you may begin your conference.

Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. As we close the year, here is the message I hope you will take away today. We made meaningful progress on the mission we set from day one, even in a dynamic context that stress tested our strategy.

Here is how we progressed. First, avoiding disruptions. We built on a strong foundation and maintained execution consistency across the company. Through active listening, we protected what was working and implemented improvements without destabilizing the organization.

Second, keeping momentum. Over the course of the year, we advanced quarter by quarter on different fronts, finishing the year with a better performance for 2026. Third, building a stronger company. We avoided changing directions with the context. We advanced simultaneously on the three pillars of our strategy because that is where our differentiation comes from. This is what we mean by being ambidextrous, and it is building a flywheel that strengthens each year and sustains our performance over time.

As a result, we ended 2025 stronger than we started. We strengthened our portfolio, got closer to our customers and consumers, and advanced profitability. Volumes, however, were pressured by the environment, and that matters because it frames our ambition for what comes next. To use a simple analogy, 2025 was a tough season to play. With a wet beach, cold weather and a game that kept changing. It forced us to build muscle, resilience and adaptability, and it strengthened our collective ownership as a team.

And just as important, that strengthening showed up in our people. In a demanding year, employees’ confidence in our future increased, driving engagement indicators to all time highs, back to post pandemic peak levels, and reinforcing that our culture truly stands out in challenging moments. All that means we are coming out better prepared for the next season, which in 2026 happens to be the FIFA World Cup, a big passion point in our markets.

So let me touch on another passion: beer. What we saw in 2025 reinforces our view that the headwinds were primarily cyclical and occasion driven, not a sudden change in beer fundamentals. A strong proof point is this: the most engaged consumers, our beer lovers, got closer to the category, and the category equity strengthened over the year. In other words, beer continues to be loved, culturally relevant and deeply connected to socialization across our markets, where it holds a high share of alcoholic beverages.

And we continue to see meaningful runway ahead. The category has room to expand, supported by favorable demographics in Latin America, and grow through occasion development, both out of home and at home, and through a broader portfolio that addresses trends and needs, recruiting new consumers. Simply put, what changed in 2025 was not whether consumers want beer, but how often the right moments happen.

Now let me connect that to our strategy. On the Pillar 1: as the category captain, our job is to bridge the gap between beer’s potential and actual consumption, fostering category growth. In 2025, we led where the category expanded the most: premium, Balanced Choices and non-alcohol. We elevated the core segment through innovation and investments while building adjacencies like flavored beers in the Beats portfolio.

And that leeds us to our Pillar 2 where we are using data and technology to shape our own future and stay ahead of the curve, strengthening the core business while building new growth engines. On the B2B side, our priority is to go deep with BEES Marketplace as an enabler to make the core business stronger, helping us win through better execution at the point of sale. Our ecosystem is built on the idea that the better our [cosmos] perform, the better we perform. That is why we are embedding digital sell-out activation tools powered by our data and insights, benchmarking what works across points-of-sale and translating it into sharper activation and portfolio recommendations.

Also, BEES Marketplace continues to scale, with full year GMV growing 70%, driven by [3P] expansion and gross margin up 3.5 percentage points versus last year, reinforcing both relevance and improving economics.

On the consumer side, Zé Delivery closed 2025 with all time high performance, delivering BRL4.7 billion in GMV, up 13% versus last year, 67 million orders and 27 million yearly active users, up 11% versus last year, consolidating its position as one of the major convenience platforms in Brazil. Strategically, that puts us close to young adult consumers, with nearly 80% of buyers either Gen Z or millennials, and it accelerates both, execution and our test-and-learn innovation loop. It is our foot in the future.

And this bring us to our third pillar, the muscle that makes the other two pillars scalable. In 2025, we set a clear ambition to expand Ambev’s consolidated EBITDA margin again. Despite industry softness and FX and commodity headwinds, we delivered a meaningful evolution from top to bottom line. That came from thoughtful choices on resource allocation, revenue management, productivity and expense governance, while sustaining brand investment.

That discipline translated into delivery. At the consolidated level, we expanded organic EBITDA margin by 50 basis points, marking our third consecutive year of margin expansion, and by 110 basis points in Brazil Beer. And that reinforced our confidence in capital allocation. Consistent with our commitment to return excess cash to shareholders over time, we announced approximately BRL20 billion in shareholder returns in 2025, the highest in our history, through BRL13.2 billion in dividends, BRL4.2 billion in interest on capital, and a new BRL2.5 billion in share buyback program. And we are starting the year paying the first BRL1.2 billion tranche of the IOC declared by year end.

Now, let me give a quick overview across our footprint. In 2025, we grew EBITDA across all our business units and expanded EBITDA margin in four out of five. In Brazil Beer, full year volumes were in line with the soft industry, and our performance reflected two different halves. Our revenue management initiatives weighed on share in the first half. As conditions improved in the second half, market share expanded meaningfully.

In Q4, as weather sequentially recovered, so did our volumes. October was the main drag, and we returned to growth in December. For the quarter, we delivered a low single digit market share gain in using sellout. We continued to lead where the category is expanding most: premium and super premium volumes increased high teens, and we closed the year as leaders in the segment, reflecting stronger portfolio brand equity.

Our Balanced Choices brands grew high 60s, and no alcohol grew around 30% as we continued to expand leadership and unlock incremental occasions. In the quarter, we delivered 100% of the Brazilian Beer industry’s growth in premium and non alcohol, according to our estimates and Nielsen sell-out data. In the core segment, softness was more pronounced given its higher reliance on out-of-home socialization. We are sustaining its recovery through stronger trade activation, marketing campaigns and continued innovation, and we started to see progress with market share gains in Q4.

Brazil NAB, during 2025, the disciplined execution of our strategy and resource allocation supported EBITDA growth with margin expansion. At the same time, Guaraná Antarctica’s equity improved, showcasing the strength of the brand. In the first half, volume momentum and commercial execution supported market share gains despite margin pressure given higher costs. In the second half, the CSD industry decelerated amid the same cyclical drivers that impacted beer, and price relativity became less favorable following our revenue management decisions, resulting in market share pressure while delivering a better profitability profile.

In Argentina, the macro environment continued to improve with lower inflation and less FX volatility. The consumption recovery, however, is taking longer than expected and continued to weigh on results in 2025. Still, performance improved sequentially throughout the year, with a more balanced dynamic between top line and bottom line in the fourth quarter, supported by tighter execution and revenue management.

Looking ahead, we remain constructive on a gradual recovery as the consumption environment improves. In Dominican Republic, the consumption environment also improved sequentially throughout the year despite weather related disruption in Q4. In this context, beer gained share of alcoholic beverages in full year, supported by a healthier dynamic between categories, while Presidente’s brand health reached all time highs.

In Canada, we outperformed both beer and beyond-beer industries, supported by our beer megabrands and continued beyond-beer momentum, while maintaining disciplined cost execution and delivering EBITDA margin expansion.

With that, I will now turn it over to Fleury.

Thank you, Lisboa, and hello everyone. As we entered 2025, we made it clear that this would be another year focused on long term value creation through disciplined execution of our capital allocation framework. In a dynamic operating environment, we focused on what we can control and delivered another year of normalized EBITDA growth with margin expansion, EPS growth, resilient cash generation and higher capital return to our shareholders.

Let me walk you through our financial performance for the year, starting with margin improvement dynamics. We closed 2025 delivering consolidated normalized EBITDA margin expansion of 50 bps, reaching 33.4%, mainly driven by three factors. First, net revenue per hectoliter growth of 7.5%, supported by stronger brands, revenue management strategy and continued premiumization across our portfolio, leading to net revenue per hectoliter growth across all business units.

Second, financial discipline. Consolidated cash COGS per hectoliter performance benefited from productivity initiatives and operational efficiencies across our industrial and logistics operations. Brazil Beer is a clear proof point. Despite the cost headwinds anticipated at the beginning of the year and operational deleveraging associated with lower volumes, our cash COGS per hectoliter, excluding non-Ambev marketplace products, increased by 6.1% in 2025, at the lowest quartile of our guidance.

And third, efficient resource allocation. In SG&A, we continued to invest behind our brands while keeping total cash SG&A growth under control.

Now, moving to below EBITDA lines, we closed the year with almost BRL4 billion in net financial expenses, mainly explained by FX variation losses related to foreign currency denominated assets, and the BRL appreciation, coupled with expenses related to sourcing US dollars in Bolivia.

In terms of income taxes, our effective tax rate for the year was 17.7%, reflecting some one-off effects mainly from Q3, such as the Barbados divestment, the partial reversal of tax liabilities associated with the 2017 Brazilian tax amnesty program, and effects related to tax credits.

Absent such one offs, our consolidated effective tax rate would have been approximately 20% for the year. As a result, stated net income reached almost BRL16 billion, with stated EPS increasing 8.2% year over year, while normalized EPS increased by 2% in the year.

Now turning to cash flow. Cash flow from operating activities remained solid and totaled BRL24.5 billion, BRL1.6 billion lower than last year, mainly due to softer volumes that impacted working capital. Cash flow consumed in investing activities totaled approximately BRL5 billion, driven by CapEx investments broadly in line with last year.

Cash flow consumed in financing activities amounted to BRL26.8 billion, driven by shareholder payouts and the completion of our 2024 share buyback program. In total, we returned BRL21.7 billion to shareholders on a cash basis, meaning that approximately 90% of our operating cash flow was returned to shareholders in 2025.

And reinforcing our commitment to sustainable long term value creation, our return on invested capital continue to be meaningfully above our weighted average cost of capital and improved in 2025 driven by [no-bev] margin. For 2026, we remain consistent towards our capital allocation priorities: one, reinvesting in organic growth to support Pillar 1 and 2 of our strategy; two, maintaining a disciplined approach toward M&A opportunities; and three, consistently return excess cash to shareholders over time.

In terms of costs in 2026, we expect Brazil Beer cash COGS per hectoliter, excluding non Ambev marketplace products, to increase between 4.5% and 7.5%, driven primarily by commodity prices, aluminum in particular, and portfolio mix, with higher cost pressures anticipated in the first half of the year. At the same time, we remain focused on identifying opportunities and enhancing efficiency as we continue pursue our ambition of expanding consolidated margin over time.

And before handing it back to Lisboa, I want to share a team update. Patrick Conrad, a seasoned finance professional, is joining our Investor Relations team, succeeding Guilherme Yokaichiya. Yokaichiya in turn will transition to a fully dedicated position leading Ambev’s Treasury team. I would like to thank Yokaichiya for the outstanding work he has done leading Ambev's Investor Relations over the past five years and wish both continued success in their new roles.

Now, back to you Lisboa.

Thank you, Fleury. As I reflect on 2025, it was another year marked by a very dynamic operating environment, and that strengthened our ability to read and adapt to market changes. 2026 will certainly bring its own dynamics, but it is also shaping up to be a promising year for socialization, and those moments have already started. Carnival is underway not only in Brazil but across several of our Latin American markets. From there, we begin to warm up for the FIFA World Cup, the biggest audience event and at favorable time zones for our footprint, creating another interesting backdrop for people to come together.

On top of that, in Brazil, a holiday-rich calendar adds several long weekends throughout the year, creating additional occasions for socialization. In this context, I want to leave you with three reminders. First, beer is a loved category in Latin America with strong fundamentals, and that strength comes with headroom for growth, given its versatility to address consumer trends and needs.

Second, we as a company are advancing simultaneously on our three strategic pillars, strengthening a flywheel we can compound year after year. Third, we enter 2026 as a stronger company with momentum carryover. And how we navigated 2025 was another proof point that our culture stands out in moments like this.

And none of this happens without our people. I want to close by thanking our teams across all markets for their ownership, adaptability and execution through a very demanding year, and for the energy they are bringing into 2026.

With that, let me hand it over to the operator.

(Operator Instructions)

Nadine Sarwat, Bernstein.

Yes, hello everybody. I’d like to double click on Brazil. So, firstly, great seeing that commentary about December beer volumes being in growth. Can you unpack that a little bit, the magnitude, factors behind that? Was it all weather, or were there any other favorable shifts? And are you able to comment on any trends in January?

Following up to that, secondly, Brazil NAB -- I know you called out your revenue management strategy as a reason behind the volume decline. Can you add some color as to what exact decisions resulted in that decline, and then what we can expect for volumes in 2026? Thank you.

Hey, Nadine, nice to talk to you again. Lisboa here. Look I’ll follow protocol and take the first answer. Regarding Brazil Beer, to your point about the drivers -- quickly, a reminder of what happened last year made 2025 like an outlier year for the beer industry in Brazil. Prior to that, ten years’ time, five years’ time, three years’ time, there was consistent growth, pretty much driven by favorable demographics and disposable income increase.

Last year, and we mentioned this during results announcements, what we saw was unseasonable weather impacting mostly wintertime, boosted by the La Niña phenomenon that made the winter deeper and longer in the second half. And that created an unfavorable type of situation for beer because it impacted the most on occasion and out-of-home occasions, where beer category volume resides. So that is why we saw the impact.

Obviously, it was not an easy situation for us to manage. As I said before, it was the first time we saw such a strong impact in our industry. But I think the team put all emphasis behind things we could control, and by doing so, we kept evolving quarter by quarter. And when the weather changed during the last quarter of the year, we were ready to ride together with the more favorable weather impacting demand again.

And this is exactly how the situation went through. In October, pretty much the month represented the vast majority of our decline in the quarter. We got to a better position in November; and then in December, when you combine the better weather with the market share gain in the final quarter of the year -- which represents a low single digit sell-out data growth -- that explains the [positive] territory we landed in.

I won’t go into details about the first quarter of this year, but what I can say, Nadine, is the following. Actually, bad weather came into the first round of this year, the first month of this year, what puts a year over year comparison the weather impact as neutral, which is important for us.

Thank you.

Henrique Brustolin, Bradesco BBI.

Hello Lisboa, Fleury. Thanks for taking my question. My question is about margins into 2026. You were very vocal at the beginning of last year about the intention of sustaining and even improving profitability in 2025. You ended up doing that. There was an impressive performance on SG&A, especially distribution costs. I would like to get your thoughts on how you’re thinking about this going into 2026, when you consider hedging that you have for Brazil Beer, as well as room for additional efficiencies. How do you see that shaping up for the year? Thank you.

Hi, thank you. Fleury here. Can you hear me well?

Yes, I can.

Great. Let me start. How we put your question. I think 2025, just to recap, was a year in which we saw important cash COGS pressure, especially in Brazil Beer. That’s why we gave a guidance last year of 5.5% to 8.5%. Across the year, we executed a series of projects across different lines of our P&L. As I said in my speech, we focused on the industrial side, the distribution side, always privileging investment behind our brands, because that is what we need to continue to focus to make Pillar 1 and 2 work better.

By a series of implemention of these strategies, we are happy that we landed at 6.1%, which was the first quartile of our guidance. Now, looking into 2026, I think there're two things remain the same. One is, we need to continue working very hard on initiatives. We need to continue to make it very focus on our side with our ambition of coming with another year of margin expansion, and we are already doing that as we started the year.

And we do our analysis, when look into the cost, our hedging, which is non-speculative, when we look at the [commodities], so on and so forth, we had given guidance of 4.5% to 7.5%for the full year 2026, which is broadly in line with what we have done in 2025. And that is pressured as I said in my speech from commodities -- aluminum in particular -- and portfolio mix. But be in mind that we will continue work very hard. It's our job here to do the work and probably throughout the year come nearing or coming with news on here. So far that is the guidance that we have.

Lisboa here. Just to compliment, Fleury. You can imagine that nobody here, we were not expecting such a challenging context in terms of volume drop for the industry, especially here in Brazil, right? So that put a lot of stress on our ambition to protect margins, right, for Ambev again.

And I think last year was -- that is the reason why we said it was a stress-test for us, right, because if we could somehow overcome the FX, overcome commodities, and on top of that, overcome the lack of our capacity to dilute costs without having the volumes, that gives us confidence. Somehow I think the obstacle made us develop internally the right muscles to be prepared for another round, but in a way better shape, in my point of view, right.

So, again, it was not a training season for us, it was already a hard game last year. And I think it was good, you are right, to test and be prepared for what is coming.

Thank you very much.

Gustavo Troyano from Itaú BBA. Please, Mr. Troyano, your microphone is open.

Hello everyone, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. And my question relates to capital allocation and how should we think about your approach towards dividends throughout the year. Last year you paid interim dividends on a quarterly basis, but just wanted to touch base on how you are thinking about the policy for this year, not only in terms of the final payout target, but also on the timing of the distributions throughout the year.

So it would be nice to understand if we should expect dividends being concentrated towards the end of the year as we were used to see until 2024, or if there is something new towards this discussion. Thank you very much.

Thank you for the question. Let me just start highlighting again what we have done in '25. I think you have seen a very proactive discussion that we have had with Lisboa and our board here to make sure that we are able to change the payout or return to shareholders on a consistent basis quarter after quarter of last year.

On this quarter, or the beginning of this quarter, Lisboa just mentioned in his beginning introduction that we are also paying part of the IOC that we have approved with the board at the end of 2025. I cannot, this is not a guidance. I cannot tell you how that will come over the year, but what I can say as a CFO is that we continue to have every quarter discussions. We continue to look into our cash position, the cash generation on our side, taking into consideration always the three points of our capital allocation, invest in organic growth, looking to selective M&A, and deliver sustainable shareholder return over time.

Thank you.

Thiago Duarte from BTG Pactual.

Yeah, hello Lisboa, Fleury. In my question, I wanted to circle back to some of the topics I think we discussed a year ago, right after the return of both of you to Ambev, and things that are related to the strategic vision that you shared with us at the time, and I wanted to comment, if possible, in light of not only the quarter but I think 2025 results as a whole.

The first one is to you, Lisboa, and you referred to making, I remember a year ago, bigger investments in the core brands as part of your analogy of making the company more ambidextrous and fostering the category growth, you mentioned briefly about elevating the core in your initial remarks, but when you look at the portfolio and the way it performed throughout the year, it appears that it was premium, not the core, that really stood out.

So I wanted to hear how you think core stands a year later in terms of potential, or whether you think it will continue to be gradually eclipsed by the premium brands and the portfolio will be somewhat transitioning more into premium and core losing relevance. So that would be the first of the topics we discussed a year ago.

And the second one is related to the portfolio itself. In the past, I do not know, five or six years, Ambev made lots of investments in innovation, introduced many new brands, repositioned the pricing, and obviously I think this led to higher costs and expenses to support that expansion, right? And I remember a year ago you mentioning that you believed the portfolio was stronger and it was time to reap the benefits of these investments.

So, on the question of the SG&A dilution, whether you think what we saw this year is really related to that, and obviously the sustainability of that going forward, which you mentioned a little bit before in a previous question. So those would be the points. Thank you.

Hey Thiago, nice to connect to you again. Look, one of the feedbacks we got from you all was about following the protocol, one answer only, so I am going to get the first one. Okay, the first question. So, based on the core question, what is the core role here for us, and I understand your point is more related to Brazil, given the fast growth rate we are delivering with the premium, right?

I continue with my point of view, Thiago, regarding us being a company capable of managing ends, not only one side of the portfolio partition, especially because the part that you are alluding to, the core, it is the stronger part of the industry. And when you take into consideration the majority of the population in Brazil still rely pretty much on one minimum salary. The core has a meaningful play to gain in the game because it promotes accessibility to the category.

On top of that, Brazil is composed of different regions. Those regions, it is very interesting, I think I never told you that, but one of the things that caught my attention is how cyclical the portfolio is per region. Some places in Brazil that used to be a Brahma place, today is an Antarctica place. Another one is a Skol place.

And at a point in time, I told you guys Skol is still a very relevant brand in several states of Brazil, here in São Paulo for instance. So it is critical for us to protect that strength that our company has, the category has, because somehow these brands represent the category. And there is plenty of room for us to make these brands very relevant in the future.

How? As an example, what we are doing as we speak with Skol. We just brought to the game a new brand variant which is Skol 0.0. We are not just following the zero trend, we are doing so with novelty because this brand extension brings something different from the others, zero alcohol, zero sugar, and this is the way, one of the ways, we keep these brands relevant for our consumers in the future.

And it is interesting because when you do so, when you find a way to be really ambidextrous, is when you see the full potential coming to life. I am going to give one example which is the last quarter of last year, right, this is when we saw the full potential for our portfolio coming into play. Because the share gain not only came from the new partitions being premium, being no alcohol or being Balanced Choices, it came from the core as well.

And coincidentally or not, this was the time when we started to see Skol also stabilizing, gaining momentum, especially in those states where we put more emphasis behind the brand. So, and as a consequence, our share improved not only through the segments, but also through the channels and also through regions in Brazil. And this is what we want. Because we believe that our strength relies on the portfolio strength, and this is the game we want to play. And the core side of the business plays a very meaningful role there.

And as well, if you can just add like one thing here Thiago quickly, it is, I think, connected with the strength of our portfolio. Core was more impacted by, I would say, weather‑impacted occasions, which were not fundamentally impacting the category, and with the other side of the portfolio we led where the category expanded and that is where we came with the bulk of the growth in premium and zero in Brazil.

That is clear. Thank you.

Renata Cabral, Citi.

Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for taking my question. My question is related to GLP1 drugs and the potential impact on the company's portfolio. We are seeing the discussion a lot developed in the US, of course the penetration of the drug has been much higher than in Brazil.

So my question for you is, the weakness of the portfolio this year somehow can be attributed to that? And more than that, since in March one of the patents will expire in Brazil, so the usage can extend in 2026 or maybe 2027. What is the expectation of impact in the portfolio and what the company is working to mitigate that and offering other options to consumers not only in the beer but also in the portfolio. Thank you.

Hey Renata, thank you for the question. I think it is always important to go back to '25 in order to really understand what happened. There are two different kinds of impact. One is attitudinal change, the other one is behavioral change, right. What happened last year was a change on the behavioral side due to the weather mostly, okay?

When you have bad weather, when you have colder and longer winter time, the most important drinking occasion in Brazil, which is the out-of-home among friends sharing beer, is the one most impacted. And this is what explains the majority of the drop that we saw last year. And by the way, as explained by Fleury, the brands that depend the most on this occasion are core brands, and that is the reason why you saw the core brands somehow following what happened with the industry.

So what is good about that is the fact that even with such a challenging circumstance, context, we measure the attitudinal side of our consumers regarding the category constantly, and we see not only protection of the relationship between consumers and the category, but with those that are more, that are closer to the category, we saw a strength.

Which does not mean that those that are more infrequent consumers, sporadic consumers, do not fluctuate, and for those consumers we are working with a very versatile category to attend more needs and trends. That is the reason why you see us developing zero‑alcohol beer, right. We are developing functional beers like gluten‑free, lower calories, and we are also attending those consumers with more sweet flavored beers like Flying Fish that we introduced last year.

So regarding the point about the GLP1. We have not observed any meaningful impact on our business, but like any other emerging trend, it requires time, more evidence. And as a consequence, I just want to say that we are going to keep monitoring and acting accordingly.

Thank you so much, Lisboa.

You are welcome.

Isabella Simonato, Bank of America.

Isabella Simonato^ Thank you. Hi Lisboa, hi Fleury. My question is about 2026 for Brazil. As you mentioned, last year was quite challenging in terms of weather and occasions, and you highlighted several tailwinds this year, especially regarding that, the World Cup and more holidays, as you mentioned in the past. But at the same time, your guidance probably shows that costs will grow above general inflation, and you are coming off from a base of SG&A that seems tough in the sense that it was a very good performance in the last year.

So when you balance things between maybe a more favorable backdrop and what you are facing internally, I wanted to hear your thoughts on your pricing strategy for 2026, and also if you could give us a little bit of color on how should we think about mix, especially during the World Cup? And among those variables, across those variables, what do you think should be more relevant when we are thinking about volume growth for the year? Thank you.

Isabella, it is a long question, right. So let me take the point about pricing, which is very sensitive, so I am going to try to answer without going to any territory that we do not want, right.

So our pricing as a mission is composed by twofold. One side of the pricing story is keep our industry accessible. And the reason why for that is what I mentioned before, the majority of the population in Brazil still depend a lot on accessibility to be close to the category, so we must keep an eye on it.

That is the reason why core has a role to play. That is the reason why packaging assortment has a role to play, because we want to give them accessibility alternatives. If we rely only on premium, we are going to make their lives even harder.

On the other side of the story, pricing has the role to protect our profitability moving forward, as we have an ambition to continue expanding margins in the ambition, the same way we anticipated to you in the beginning of last year. We keep this ambition alive and Fleury mentioned that in the beginning of the session, right. So we need to be always balancing the two sides of the story. So it is not an or, but it is an and game, right.

The beauty about our situation today is when you look to our flywheel, first and foremost, our portfolio is more complete today, and it is complete regionally speaking, so it gives us alternatives to move forward with our revenue management strategy for the year.

On the second side of the story, the second pillar of our strategy, you find the digital ecosystem. And I already mentioned to you how this is enabling us to strengthen our core business while creating new growth engines.

On the first side of the story, go deeper on the core business. We are using technology to go more granular, to execute a revenue management strategy in a different way than we used to do before. We are more effective today than before in terms of dollar invested in promotions and so on and so forth. Our algorithms help us to recommend the right portfolio of brands for each type of point of sale, and so on and so forth.

By doing so, we not only improve our capacity to execute the pricing per se, but we also bring together a very interesting mix impact for the game, and the two together should be enough to offset what kind of impact we see on the COGS side as we did last year.

That is pretty much the balance we have to keep in place every single day, and I must confess that the more we do it, the better we get. So again, similar to what I said before, I feel like last year was a very good acid test, stress test for us to be ready for the year to come.

And Lisboa, Fleury here. Just to add one thing here Isabella, when you look into our cost, another way of thinking about that cost and expenses, you look at it in a holistic way. You always do the resource allocation over and over, as Lisboa was mentioning, measuring returns from market promotions, from everything that we do.

And it is also fair to say that as Lisboa mentioned, over time we want to increase -- we have the ambition of increasing our margin. But most likely we are not going to be able to do that every quarter, because when you look into Pillar 1, 2, and 3, those will be maximized over time. But that is our long‑term ambition, looking into our costs, taking out of the equation what did not make sense, and refuel and reinvesting behind our brands. And that is what Lisboa mentioned as a flywheel. So that is what we want to continue to gain momentum over and over.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

This thus concludes the Q&A section. I will now hand the floor back to Lisboa for any closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you for joining our call. Today. I would like to close reinforcing some messages. Our mission is to always strive for our better version. And we will do that by leading and shaping a loved category with clear headroom for growth. Advancing simultaneously on the three pillars of our strategy is what sets us apart. 2025 stress tested our strategy, and we closed the year stronger and better prepared for what comes next.

Thank you and hope to see you soon. Enjoy Carnival.

This does concludes today’s presentation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.