Bbb Foods Inc (TBBB) 2025 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good morning everyone. My name is Leonor, and I will be your conference operator. Welcome to Tiendas 3B first quarter 2025 conference call.

(Operator Instructions)

Any forward-looking statements made during this conference call are based on information that is currently available to us.

Today we're joined by Tiendas 3B Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Anthony Hatoum; and Chief Financial Officer Eduardo Pizzuto.

I will now turn the call over to Anthony. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining Tiendas 3B's first quarter 2025 earnings call. I will begin with a review of our operating results for the quarter, and we will be followed by our CFO Eduardo Pizzuto, who will provide an overview of our financial performance.

We will conclude with a Q&A session to answer any questions you may have. We are very pleased with the results of our first quarter, more so in the context of this market environment.

Our consistent execution and our attractive value proposition have allowed us to accelerate growth and to increase market share gains. We opened 117 net new stores for a total of 2,889 stores. Same store sales grew by 13.5%. Total revenues increased by 35% to MXN17 billion. EBITDA increased by over 12% to reach MXN705 million.

Cash flow generated by operating activities reached MXN1.1 billion, a 49% increase year over year. We ended with a net cash position of approximately MXN1.6 billion. In addition, we have $150 million of cash in US dollars.

We turn to operational performance and look at store openings. We have opened 117 net new stores this quarter compared to 94 stores for the first quarter of 2024. And we are accelerating our store openings.

Another way to look at this is comparing our store openings last 12 months, first quarter of this year versus last year. For this year, we have 507 stores. For last year, 416 stores. This is an increase of roughly 100 stores.

If we look at our revenues and same store sales, we continue to be one of the fastest growing retailers globally. Total revenues reached MXN17.1 billion, an increase of 35.1% year over year, very strong same store sales growth of 13.5%. Our same-store sales numbers continue to be driven by our value proposition to customers, and that value proposition continues to improve.

If we look at our same store sales versus [standard], the GAAP is notable and increasing. I will now pass the microphone to Eduardo.

Thank you, Anthony. Good morning, everyone. Sales expenses as a percentage of revenue slightly increased from 10.2% to 10.3% due to our accelerating store opening pace.

As Anthony just mentioned, we increased our pace roughly 100 stores in the last 12 months. On the matter of operating leverage, at the unit level, we continue to see a decreasing trend in cost as a percentage of sales.

This is not apparent at the consolidated level as we continue to accelerate the pace of store openings. It is important to keep in mind that we pay the full cost of new stores in regions before we see the full revenues.

Admin expenses as a percentage of revenue increased by 60 basis points from 3.5% to 4.1%. This includes incremental MXN84 million on non-cash, share-based payments of roughly 50 basis points. We're also investing for current and future growth acceleration.

Hiring key personnel for the four new regions were opening in 2025, and increasing talent density at headquarters, particularly in IT, purchasing, controls, and legal.

We posted robust growth of 12.7% in our EBITDA that reached MXN705 million. Margin decrease from 4.9% to 4.1% due to the increase in investments to support our accelerating growth. Ours is a business model that generates significant negative working capital. In turn, we generate significant cash flows from changes in negative working capital.

We can see, for example, that in March of '24, we had a negative working capital MXN4.8 billion compared to a negative working capital of MXN6.5 billion pesos in March of '25. This is roughly 10.5% of total revenue. I'd also like to highlight that our accelerating growth continues to be self-funded.

I will now turn the call back over to Anthony for final remarks.

Ours is a robust business model that is very resilient. Our value proposition continues to increase. Our competitive advantages are real and increasing.

As a result, we will see continued growth and gain in market share. We will continue to increase our investments for our future growth. It has always been our approach and it's a proven strategy. We believe that this will pay off in increasing growth rates and the creation of value for our shareholders. We continue to do the same, just faster and better.

We can now start our Q&A session, so please go ahead, operator.

(Operator Instructions)

Bob Ford.

Hey, good morning, everybody. This is Bob Ford from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Good morning, Anthony, Eduardo.

How should we think about your investments in talent, both in terms of the magnitude of the expense and as well as the capabilities and functionality that some of the additions kind of bring about?

And then with respect to the new distribution centers that you're planning for this year, how should we think about the split between increased density in existing trade areas versus entry into new regional markets?

Hi, Bob. Thanks for the question. Look, any investment we make is made with a simple criterion in mind, what's the return on this investment? So when we do increase talent density, and it does result in an increase in expenses as we have observed in this quarter. It is definitely because we are planning for our future growth, and it's always been our strategy to invest for future growth.

Nothing, there's nothing new in our approach, strong believers here that an increase in talent and density is one of the key competitive advantages that we will have going forward and one of the key drivers, one of the key ingredients if you want to think about it this way to create opportunities and to create growth going forward.

The second question had to do with density of distribution centers. And it's again, the same approach as always.

We are very standard in our approach of opening distribution centers. We like them to be all operating exactly the same, and it makes it very easy for us then afterwards to manage this business because they're all equal regions, equal distribution centers, and benchmarking them allows us to be very efficient thereafter. So the question is does this density impact one another? It's all driven by stores.

We open stores and based on their location, we decide where to open our next generation of distribution centers. If they happen to be close to each other, that's a -- that could be the case, but it's a very logical outcome because what you're doing is compacting distances between a distribution center and its stores and therefore increasing your logistics efficiency.

And that's the only criteria that really matters how efficient are you logistically. And if you're being more efficient, then that's the right answer.

My spin is actually very different in the sense that I really believe that you're understored in your core market right where you started in Mexico City. And I think that the opportunity to drive greater density is massive, and I think that because there's familiarity with the brand, your stores are more likely to mature faster and that that was where I was coming from.

You're absolutely correct with this statement in that there is still significant runway in the areas in which we're operating. So our strategy has been to spread out, but also to increase the density within the areas in which we operate, and we have yet to see, I would be hard pressed to tell you, we've saturated an area.

There is no more space to open a store in an area in which we currently operate. And you're absolutely right in the areas in which we currently operate, you have a tremendous leverage because your brand known, your brand is well known. People who could be your customers in a new store have probably shopped with you before and therefore you do see.

Makes sense. And then with respect to the system's investments that you mentioned in the press release, can you foreshadow maybe some of the capabilities you anticipate and some additional, I guess some incremental redundancy initially as you prepare for transition, but maybe the -- I guess the path to increase functionality, new products, and services?

We look at, absolutely, Bob, I mean, here we look at it as we look at any investment, what's the return going to be on investing in tech? And I break it down into two parts.

One, the new generation of tech is significantly more efficient than the generation on which we built our current tech, which, by the way, works perfectly well and continues to be very scalable. But why not take advantage of something that is more efficient?

And yes, there is going to be an overlap between the old tech and the new tech, and probably for a period of time, you will see an increase in expenses during that transition period. But on top of the fact that the new tech is significantly more efficient, it gives you significant -- a portfolio of new tools that the old tech simply didn't offer or offered you in a very expensive or cumbersome way.

And just think about big data. I mean this is a business that generates significant amounts of data and the way we take advantage of this data and the old tech versus the new tech has -- it's an order of magnitude more efficient, more impactful, more useful in the new technology platform.

And just think about AI. With the old tech, we can't use AI with our databases. With the new tech, we absolutely can use AI. It's as simple as that.

Very helpful. Thank you so much.

Alvaro Garcia.

Hey, Anthony, Eduardo, thanks for the space. Alberto Garcia from BTG Pactual. My first question is for Eduardo on sales expenses.

I was wondering if you could comment on the timing of, I guess certain growth investments, DCs, new stores throughout the year and the impact to one you specifically, you mentioned in the prepared remarks that it's important to keep in mind that you pay for the full cost of the store and a DC before setting up shop.

So just curious as to how we should, I see sales expenses as sort of the primary driver of leverage on the margin front going forward. So I was wondering if you can comment on timing of sales expenses. Thank you.

Hi, Alvaro. Yes, absolutely. The timing of this is because remember that we're increasing the pace of store openings. So today we're increasing from 400 to 500 stores, and what we mean by that is that we're paying off the initial investment of the stores and then revenues will come afterwards.

And that's been the case, pretty much since inception and since we've been continued to grow. And this is what we should expect this year as well, because we're increasing that pace of growth.

Now, in terms of our distribution centers, it's the same case as Anthony just explained, we open the stores first and then we open our regions will make us even more efficient once these are open. These regions, these distribution centers will be open through the year, within the next three to six months. And once we have them open, again, we will start seeing the benefits on logistics expense mainly.

But on the unit side, you mentioned also, leverage on sales expenses that you're expecting leverage on, mainly on sales expenses. What we're seeing on a unit level, Alvaro, is that we continue to see leverage as expected.

So you don't see that because it's on the consolidated basis that you're looking at right now. But if you were to look at their older stores, older vintages, we continue to see leverage on those stores, and that continues to be the case.

So, and today, by the way, the store -- the new stores that we're opening, they're pretty much on track as what we have been expecting as you saw the targets on unit economics. So we're pretty much on track based on what we have published. So that's what we should --

That's helpful. And then my second question is on share-based expenses going forward. We saw a significant uptake in the first quarter. I was wondering if you could maybe provide some color on whether this is a new normal or if this is a bulkier than usual quarter?

My sense is a new normal. You've already sort of announced issuance for this year, but any comments with regards to that line item would be very helpful. Thank you.

Thanks, Alvaro. Yes, yeah, we should think about what the number that we have today for the remainder of the year. It's about 1.2% of sales and it has to do with the options and RSUs that were granted at the end of last year. So it is not a bump in Q1. So think about this as ongoing for the rest of the year.

Again, just a reminder to all. I mean, share-based compensation has been extremely impactful in our case. It has driven the results that you see today. It has driven the entrepreneurial spirit that you see at 3B today. It has driven the can-do attitude. It has protected us from poaching talent. So we'll continue to do this because it's an excellent return on investment.

Totally. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Joseph Giordano.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. This is Joe Jordan with JP Morgan. Hi Eduardo, Anthony, thanks for taking my question. So they have like three short ones. So the first one, like when you look at the gross margin, historically, has been a little bit volatile, we know that the company's focus is to maximize the operating leverage here.

So just wanted to understand a little bit more the dynamics behind the cross margin, into the first quarter, since we have been seeing like an increased penetration of private label, in your base, so basically like and in theory, a gross margin driver for that sake.

So having that said, I mean like if you could comment a little bit more on this like weakness of the consumer environment and if you're seeing like any kind of more aggressive approach from peers and going back to the expense, I mean last year like you guys did like an amazing job in the first quarter to offset the minimum wage, so basically you mentioned that there was some fat to be cut.

So I would like you to compare a little bit your abilities this year to offset those expense pressures other than like growing sales in terms of like head count adjustments and things like that. Thank you very much.

Well, I'll break the question down and in two parts, we'll talk about gross margin, then we'll talk about personal expenses.

On the gross margin, nothing has changed, Jo. It's the same dynamic, driven by scaling up and us taking advantage of the benefits of scale, whether you're looking at commercial or private label products, both benefit from scaling.

And we will see over time, steady improvement in gross margins while we have quarter to quarter as we've said many times of changes and volatility. And it's normal because of the way we manage pricing which is on a product-by-product basis.

And then as a result, we get the gross margin that you see here this quarter. Now, if your question had to do with, do we see any pressure in dropping prices? The answer is no, because we haven't changed anything, we -- the way we've done things.

And we basically set prices based on elasticity, and that -- we're optimizing for a number of products, items sold, and the total revenues and total dollar margin. So, nothing has changed since last quarter and last year, and we don't see any.

On the question of personnel, you have to take into account two things. One, because of our accelerated, it's not only the fact that we have an increase -- we've seen increases in salaries. But also, because when you're looking at growing the rate at which you're opening stores, you need to start training your peoples ahead of time.

And so you might see that appear in the personnel numbers. In our case, these expenses are highly diluted by the growth in our sales numbers. So I'm not sure if I answered your question, but I think this is how I look at it.

You really have. Thank you very much, Anthony.

Alejandro Fuchs.

BBA, thank you for the space for questions. I have two quick ones on my end. I wanted to see maybe if you can give us some color on semester sales breakdown between traffic and take during the quarter?

And congratulations on the very impressive and strong print. And the second one in terms of free cash flow generation, I think the quarter was quite strong. I wanted to see if you expect this trend to continue or maybe we have, we could have some cash usage due to more openings throughout the year. Thank you.

The first part we're seeing solid growth in both tickets and ticket size. So let's say I'd say fifty-fifty and on our cash flow generation abilities.

I'll take that question, Alejandro. No, I mean, this is, again, this is negative working capital, changes in working capital. This is something that we need to look on a not necessarily in a quarter by quarter, but on a longer-term range.

But yes, we did generate significant cash in this quarter and it's really business as usual because we're not -- the fundamentals of those key metrics have not changed. So payables and inventories continue to be pretty much the same, although inventories are slightly coming down and that's the reason that we generate so much cash.

And we have always been balancing the cash generated and we invest that back into CapEx for new stores and more growth. So this is something that we should expect. I mean some quarters will be up, some quarters will be down, but overall the trend will continue to be upwards as we've seen in the past, and that's why we continue to be self-funded since many years now.

Thank you, Eduardo and Anthony, very clear.

Ulises Argote.

Hi, thanks so much for those space for questions. This is Ulises Argote from Santander. Wanted to get your thoughts on potential impacts and also maybe how you could offset the pressure of operating stores under this assumption of the gradual reduction of the working week in Mexico that was announced a couple of days back?

Maybe Anthony, it goes in line with the answer you provided to Joe's earlier question, but it would be interesting to get your thoughts on that. And then afterwards I have another follow-up question.

Hi, Ulises. Thank you. Yeah, we -- I mean as we've explained before, even if it's gradual or a full impact and which they've announced is going to be gradual, as we've explained before, we have some wiggle room in the sense that we have part-times at the store and we will shuffle those and we will be able to comply when whatever this is said and done.

I think we need to get the clear rules on how that will impact. This is something that we've been looking into and also preparing for whenever that happens. So whenever that happens, it will happen and we will comply with it.

We might see a small bump in the in the initial stages, but all as on our labor cost, as we continue to increase our sales, this is something that will eventually stabilize and actually decrease as a percentage of sales. So that's the way we're looking at it at least.

Thank you very much for that, Eduardo. The other question that I had was more on the strategic side of things. I was actually driving by your headquarters the other day and saw the [Yema] sign there next to 3B, right?

So I was just wondering what the strategy is with the brand. Should we -- can expect some roll out of stand-alone Yema stores on top of the additional current couple of ones that are already out there, or is kind of the strategy there for this to serve more as a differentiator in some stores there with assortment, maybe just to get some sense of where you see this part of the business going.

Thank you.

I think Yema has been a very successful concept. And we will very likely roll it out. The pace of it would be at a different pace than what we roll out 3B stores, but it will expand.

Perfect. Great. Thanks for that, Anthony.

Andrew Ruben.

Hi, Andrew Ruben at Morgan Stanley, thanks very much for the question. Maybe just a bit of a broader one, but you showed the chart that essentially implied that your comp spread versus ANTAD widened and widened pretty meaningfully sequentially, so I know there's not kind of one single item.

But just I'm curious your perspectives, any thoughts of 3B's trace bay versus the market, what might have changed between 4Q and the even more favorable result in 1Q? Thank you.

And I mean, I think the only way to answer this is that our clients are choosing us because we are offering a better value proposition. And we know internally that we're continuously improving our portfolio of products and increasing what we offer to our clients.

That's the only explanation I can give you to why we see our same-store sales at the level they are versus what ANTAD is experiencing. I mean the only other maybe fine-tuning to this answer would be, we continue to offer basic goods. I mean these are the things you consume most frequently.

And therefore, you're not going to cut down on these in when it's time, when you decide you want to cut down on your budget of spending. Our portfolio is the one that is going to be the least affected, if at all, so again, our business model because of that is extremely resilient.

We are also extremely efficient because we have a limited assortment of 800 SKUs. And these are real and sustainable competitive advantages that we've always had and that continue to improve over time.

Great. That all makes sense. I appreciate it.

Pablo Valles.

This is Pablo Valles from Summit Management. Thanks for taking my question.

Looking back to fiscal year 2024, we saw a slight uptick in your cash conversion cycle, which seemed partly due to a decrease in days payable. Now that we are a few months into 2025, do you expect this trend to continue? And could you expand a bit on how you're seeing your relationship with your suppliers and how that's evolved over the years? Thank you.

Yeah, I don't -- I think that payables and inventories are stable for the foreseeable future. And if you see small variations quarter to quarter, that's completely normal, but I wouldn't read more into it.

And the best assumption is to assume they're stable for the foreseeable future. And our relationship with suppliers has always been extremely strong and only gets stronger as you scale. But if your question is, do we try to extract from our suppliers better terms and conditions on this front, the answer is I don't see anything happening there.

Thank you very much.

James Luther.

Good afternoon, Anthony and team. Thank you for taking our questions. This is James Luther. I'm a shareholder representing myself. Here's my question. You mentioned in your release that you're operating in a challenging consumer environment. Can you expand on what you mean by that and expected trends in the future?

And in addition, if Mexico doesn't work out a trade agreement with the US in the near term, will that have any impact from your perspective on Mexican domestic consumption? Thank you.

Hi James, good to hear from you, and James is one of our very early shareholders through his father, so it's great to hear from you.

As you've heard, analysts opine Mexican consumers are under pressure and have cut down their spending. But as you've heard us say, we haven't seen the impact of that in what we sell. And we don't expect that to change much because again, what we offer to the customer is a very high value proposition.

And therefore, if anything, we benefit in environments where, a customer is basically trying to save money. We also sell the basic assortment of goods which you consume on a very regular basis and therefore, when you cut, this is the product that you're least, you cut the last, and so very unlikely that we see an impact when things get tight.

Now, on the second part of your question had to do with what happens in our US versus Mexico tariffs, trade relations, et cetera. We have looked at all sorts of scenarios of what might happen, and we are usually coming out winning in every single one of the scenarios you can think of.

So a scenario that increases, for example, inflation because prices of goods become higher, we're a business model that tends to benefit from inflation, given that we work with significant negative working capital.

If people are feeling tighter and we go into a recession, people tend to -- we have tended in previous recessions to gain significant new customers. And when things get better, customers are sticky. We don't lose them. So, net net, I think this is the business model that is most resilient and resistant to these kinds of things and actually benefits from these turbulent environments.

Great, Anthony. Thank you so much.

Hector Maya.

Thank you very much. Hector Maya from Scotiabank. Thank you, Anthony and Eduardo for taking my questions. Just wanted to know how your conversations have been evolving with suppliers, with the consumer and tariff context that we are seeing.

Just to understand what kind of scenarios you're maybe discussing with them, if there are some efficiency initiatives being considered or on negotiations with them? And what's the view on how to split potential savings, if any, in the case that you find further efficiencies down the road?

Just to understand how much space or opportunities in margins that there could be for the industries under the current consumer environment from a supplier perspective? Thank you.

Yeah, and I'm assuming here, Hector, and good to talk to you, that we're focusing more on our private label suppliers and not on our commercial brand suppliers.

If that's the case, then let me step back by giving some context that we work very closely with our suppliers and we work long term. I mean, honestly, 2025 was planned three years ago.

And so what we do today is thinking with our suppliers and our partners, what are we going to be doing in '27, '28. How are we going to ensure that we have supply, how we're going to ensure that the supply is going to be extremely efficient in terms of manufacturing and distribution, and the matters that you put on the table about, how do we get efficiencies have already been discussed and planned for a long time ago.

So, when it comes to saying, okay, how do we divide the pie, it's already been divided and there's no, there's nothing new that's happening right now because of the current environment.

This builds a lot of trust, and this allows us to operate very closely and together look for win-win solutions. And believe me, there is a lot of benefits to working like this very closely with your supplier. Fundamentally, if you look at it, what's driving the benefits is scaling. So as you scale everything becomes significantly more efficient and these efficiencies are split fairly between us and our suppliers.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Anthony. And now that you mention it, is there any change on how you've been talking to your other suppliers?

Our even our commercial brand suppliers are very important to us and with whom we have excellent relationships, and again, the benefits of scale come into play here, but perhaps, the planning is not as long term as we do with our private label suppliers.

Yeah, I understand. I mean, it's particularly important under the current tariff scenario, right? So --

Yeah, I mean, again, if part of the question is what happens to prices, because if there are tariffs, we can expect that some raw materials might increase in price, et cetera. And you know whether it's due to tariffs or a devaluation because when you look at inputs, they're very dollar priced. What we've seen in the past is that they get passed on to the consumer over time.

And the impact of passing on this increase in price to the consumer has an impact, elasticity of products depends on the product, but we just happen to be offering to the client products where, you have to, you will buy them and you don't necessarily substitute significantly when you see an increase in price.

But again, this is just very theoretical and in general, and I can only point to what's happened in the past and what we've observed in the past. [Trust Bay] doesn't get impacted on the country. I see Trust Bay benefiting from scenarios like this.

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you very much, Anthony.

[Javier Perez Alvarez].

Hi, Anthony, Eduardo. This is [Javier Perez] from [1C] in Switzerland. Congrats on the strong execution and expansion. I wanted to touch basic and on to the base comp.

The way we think about it is, in a tough, low margin business like yours, profitability is always a trade-off, no? And assuming the mature model runs on thin margins. It's quite unusual, or at least for us to see meaningful stock-based compensation programs in retail companies.

Yet in Q1, I think the stock-based comp reached nearly 8% of the gross profit, which surprised us a bit. How should we think about it, not just in the next year as you have already answered, but over the long term?

And what I'm asking this is because the case of Tiendas 3B is starting to gain visibility in public forums. And some potential investors have raised some concerns both around the future delusion implied by some old outstanding stock options plans.

But also the recent sizable stake that you, Anthony sold in the secondary offering. It would be helpful to hear your perspective on how you are thinking about this going forward?

Thank you for the questions, and I'll try to break them down as there are several embedded in there. Let me start by stock-based compensation from the get-go. We're firm believers that stock-based compensation is an investment with a very high return.

And therefore, we will continue to do that irrespective because this is what has brought us to where we are and explains the phenomenal growth rates that we've been seeing and the fact that we operate faster and more efficiently today than we did yesterday.

So when you have a company where the entrepreneurial spirit is strong, you do have very strong benefits in being able to maintain very high growth rate paces and no hiccups. This is a company that's been able to grow now for over 10 years at these rates you're seeing with no hiccups.

Part of this is given the spirit of the people that we attract to this company, the talent that we attract, and we attract them with stock-based compensation. And of course, a lot of you are aware that stock-based compensation is non-cash, and it does appear as an expense, but it's a non-cash expense. So when you are modeling, you either model this but don't dilute.

In the share count, or you don't take it into account and dilute in the share count doing both would be double counting.

Javier, you also asked the question on dilution, et cetera. What I would encourage you, I'm not sure if you had the chance to look at it is prior to our follow on, we published an example, an illustrative example of dilution, and it's on our website, if not, you can download it from there.

Okay, so it gives you a pretty good idea of what dilution means. So it's roughly about 160 million shares, which is already everything is already accounted for. So, there is, so I just want to touch on the point about the future dilution that you refer to. So I think it's pretty clear on that example.

There was a question about my selling a stake in the secondary offering. I would basically say it's a very small stake in the total, and as conservatively I've been allocated, the whole stake of Bolton Partners. The main reason for selling has been fiscal, taking care of fiscal obligations.

Okay. Guys, thank you for the explanations.

Thank you, Javier.

That's all the time we have for the Q&A session. I would like to hand the call back to Anthony for his closing remarks.

Ours is a robust business model that is very resilient. Our value proposition continues to increase. Our competitive advantages are real and increasing. As a result, we will see continued growth and gain in market share.

We'll continue to increase our investments in our future growth. It has always been our approach and is a proven strategy. We believe that this will pay off in increasing growth rates and in the creation of value for our shareholders. We will continue to do the same, just faster and better.

Thank you all. Thank you to our investors and to the analysts that are covering us for your continued support and confidence in our strategy. And if you have any questions, you can reach us directly, Eduardo and I. We're very happy to talk to you and to answer your questions. Thank you again.

Thank you. That concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.