Ahold Delhaize Stock

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to the Analyst Conference Call on the Second Quarter 2026 Results of Ahold Delhaize. Please note that this call is being webcast and recorded. During this call, Ahold Delhaize anticipates making projections and forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that are difficult to predict and that may cause our actual results to differ materially from future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Therefore, you should not place undue reliance on any of these forward-looking statements. The introduction will be followed by a Q&A session.

Any views expressed by those asking questions are not necessarily the views of Ahold Delhaize. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to JP O'Meara, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, JP.

Yes. Thank you very much, Sharon, and welcome back. We missed you last quarter, and good morning to everyone joining us today. I'm delighted to welcome you to our Q2 2026 results conference call. On today's call are Frans Muller, our President and CEO; and Jolanda Poots-Bijl, our CFO. After a brief presentation, we will open the call for questions. In case you haven't seen it, the earnings release and the accompanying presentation slides can be accessed through the Investors section of our website, aholddelhaize.com, which also provides extra disclosures and details for your convenience. To ensure everyone has the opportunity to get their questions answered today, I ask that you initially limit yourself to 2 questions and not 4, 2-part questions to make sure everybody on the call would have sufficient time.

If you have further questions, then feel free to reenter the queue. To ensure ease of speaking, all growth rates mentioned in today's prepared remarks will be at constant exchange rates, unless otherwise stated. And with that, Frans, over to you.

Thank you very much, JP, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to report that we delivered a resilient second quarter. We executed well against our Grow & Together strategy, gained market share and are reiterating our full year guidance in a softer macroeconomic environment. Before I discuss the quarter in more detail, I would like to reflect on an important milestone. This summer marks the 10th anniversary of the merger between Ahold and Delhaize Group. What began as a belief that strong local brands could become even stronger through international scale has become a proven model for profitable growth and market share expansion. 10 years on, we operate from a position of strength with clear priorities and significant opportunities ahead.

Challenging markets provide the clearest test of a business. When households are under pressure and competition for every shopping trip remains intense, the strength of your brands, the relevance of your proposition and the trust you have earned become even more important. Relative market share is one of the clearest measures of whether customers continue to recognize the value you create. Market share is earned and not given. Our first half performance is a proof point that our Growing Together strategy is working. It also reinforces how we are steering the business in this difficult environment. First, we stay close to our customers and earn their trust every day through value, quality and convenience. And that means strengthening our own brand proposition, investing in price where it matters most and using customer insights to respond thoughtfully and quickly as needs evolve.

Second, we make life simpler for our associates. We are investing in technology, data and AI to reduce complexity, improve decisions and give our teams better tools. The objective is straightforward: enable our associates to work more effectively and spend more time serving customers. And third, we invest with discipline. Strong cash flow generation gives us the freedom to strengthen our brands, build future capabilities and maintain the financial resilience to invest throughout the cycle. Discipline does not come -- does not reduce our ambition. It just enables it. Steering our business in this way reflects both the simple and the complex part of retail.

We need to run great stores, provide compelling value, keep products available and serve customers well every day. At the same time, we must modernize our technology, scale omnichannel capabilities and prepare our business for the next generation of retail. We are determined to do both exceptionally well. Let me bring each of these to life in a little bit more detail. It all starts with the customer. Every decision we make is guided by how we can deliver greater value, better choices and more convenient experiences in customers' daily lives. And every week, millions of loyalty interactions help our brands understand customers in real time.

Combined with data and AI, these insights enable us to personalize experiences, make better decisions and strengthen the connection between our local brands and the communities they serve.

That local intimacy strengthened by the scale and capabilities of the group enables our brands to tailor assortments, sharpen the value proposition and respond effectively as customers' needs change. This is how trust is built through many special and small decisions and experiences delivered consistently every day. One of the most important drivers of this is through our own brand assortment. In the quarter, own brand food penetration increased by 0.7 percentage points, and this marks an important milestone with group penetration now exceeding 40%. We are particularly pleased with the continued progress across our U.S. brands, supported by the successful launch of our 200 new own brand items across 25 center store categories and selected fresh categories as well, including tomatoes and packaged salads.

As our brands prepare for the back-to-school season, they are expanding the assortment with new children's lunch products, helping parents manage the demands of a busy time of the year. Own brands is most powerful when combined with meaningful and sustained price investment. Our brands are being precise about where price distance matters most and where investments can make the greatest difference to customers. And a few examples include, for example, Stop & Shop lowered everyday prices across all 137 stores in New York and New Jersey. All Stop & Shop locations now have the price investments in place. Hannaford has priced more than 3,500 key value items in its own brand assortment at parity with leading competitors. And Albert Heijn lowered prices of more than 500 popular price favorites to further strengthen its value proposition.

And in Serbia, Maxi now offers over 600 high-quality affordable products under its new price favorites label. Across our business by providing smarter tools and simpler ways of working, our teams are focused on making life simpler for associates so they can spend more of their time serving customers and innovation. Data technology and AI are important enablers. We are investing where it can improve decisions, remove friction, strengthen productivity and create new opportunities at scale. We approach AI through 3 clear lenses: reimagining business domains, optimizing existing processes and systems and democratizing AI tools for all of our associates.

And after approving results with over 120 AI use cases, we are moving to the next level of maturity. We're now looking at end-to-end transformation across sourcing and merchandising, marketing, store operation and agentic shopping. In sourcing and merchandising, Albert Heijn is helping shape a future in which agents support better and faster decisions, helping teams get the right products onto the shelves at the right price points. In marketing, Bol has launched campaigns featuring AI-generated models. And this illustrates how AI can shift the role of marketeers from producing every element of content to directing the process, setting context and guardrails and providing human oversight.

And in agentic shopping, we are developing our own autonomous shopping agents while optimizing our interfaces with external AI agents so that our products can be found and purchased easily through third-party AI assistance. These are sophisticated capabilities, and we're approaching them thoughtfully. That means testing, learning and scaling what works with clear governance and human accountability. In parallel, we are modernizing and harmonizing our retail technology backbone. This creates the foundation for the next generation of AI-enabled capabilities and will allow us to deploy improved retail performance solutions at scale. Let me now turn to how we are investing with discipline to strengthen our brands and their omnichannel ecosystems, where online continues to show stronger customer appreciation and further growth opportunity.

At the heart of this opportunity is convenience, which remains a primary driver of online grocery adoption and retention. Convenience is not one thing. It's created through time saved, digital ease and assortment quality and reliability. First, convenience means saving customers' time and whether they choose click and collect or delivery same day or next day or even same hour, our brands are making it easier to fit grocery shopping into daily life with flexible solutions that reduce friction and support repeat engagement. In the U.S., nearly half of online sales come from Click and Collect, which continues to grow at a healthy pace. And to meet demand, our teams are using data and Prism analytical functionality to increase capacity and more effectively allocate labor.

In high-volume stores, we are introducing dedicated order picking space, reducing disruption for in-store customers while improving efficiency and capacity. At Delhaize in Belgium, Collect is the fastest-growing channel with growth of over 20% this year. And last year, Delhaize made Collect easier and more affordable by removing fees for in-store pickup. With online penetration still offering substantial room for growth, we are now expanding the network with the ambition of rolling out to all stores by 2028. Second, we are making the shopping journey simpler and more seamless. And this includes digital and agentic AI functionality that helps customers plan and complete their shopping.

In the coming quarter, Stop & Shop and the Giant Company will pilot AI-powered functionality that connects recipes with ingredients, enabling customers to find meal inspiration, personalized options based on preference and purchase history and add ingredients directly to their baskets. Albert Heijn is adding functionality to my Albert Heijn app focused on social energentic shopping, enabling customers to discover recipes through Instagram and TikTok and turn them into shopping lists. To wrap up, I'm pleased by the progress we are making with our investments and our strategy execution. And even more so, I'm proud about our teams, how they are anticipating and responding to the environment we are operating in. We are clear about our strength and determined to use this backdrop to create opportunities to ensure our relative pace of growth stays strong.

And with that, over to you to Jolanda to discuss the financials.

Thank you, Frans, and good morning to everyone. As Frans shared, we are navigating a demanding environment from a position of strength. I'm encouraged by our performance in the quarter. Our volumes are resilient, and we are winning share in most of our major markets. Energy and utility costs continue to affect household budgets and operating expenses across the value chain. At the same time, competition for every shopping trip remains high with retailers continuing to invest in price and promotions. Our response is calm, focused and disciplined. 2 years into growing together, we are seeing our growth model mature with many of the actions we identified to strengthen competitiveness now delivering tangible results. Let's have a look at the key underlying results for the quarter shown on Slide 15.

Net sales grew 1.9% to EUR 23.2 billion, and we were negatively impacted by 10 basis points from calendar shifts. Underlying operating margin was 3.9%, a decrease of 10 basis points. Improvements in Europe were offset by a modest decline in the U.S. and diluted underlying earnings per share was EUR 0.63, down 1.4% at constant rates, primarily due to higher financial expenses. Slide 16 shows our results on an IFRS reported basis for Q2. These were EUR 41 million lower than our underlying results, mainly related to impairment charges on operating stores in the U.S., the sale of investment properties and lease terminations. For your convenience, Slide 17 provides our comparable store sales trends with and without adjustments for calendar and other notable items.

Turning to our regional performance. U.S. net sales were EUR 13 billion. Comparable sales, excluding gas, increased 0.8%. Top line performance was negatively impacted by a mix of factors, calendar shifts of 10 basis points, pharmacy sales impacted by the Inflation Reduction Act resulting in 70 basis points, deflation in ag prices of 50 basis points and the reduction in SNAP benefits from eligibility changes of 40 basis points. Together, these factors reduced our growth rate by 1.7 percentage points. In the second half of the year, we expect to see a similar impact in pharmacy and a lower impact from deflation in ag prices as we cycle last year's price spike. For SNAP, we expect some minor variability between the quarters due to the complexity of the program and the timing of benefits.

For the full year, we expect an impact of around 60 to 80 basis points. Underneath these factors, our competitive position remains strong. We gained market share across most of our U.S. brands, demonstrating the resilience of our growth model and the relevance of our customer propositions. Underlying operating margin in the U.S. was 4.2%, down 20 basis points. A favorable mix in pharmacy was offset by price investments, higher utility costs and the absorption of indirect costs from higher energy prices. Our U.S. omnichannel strategy remains an important driver of growth and a source of differentiation. Online sales increased by 14.5% in the quarter with Food Lion growing by over 20%. This demonstrates the strength of our omnichannel model in expanding reach, improving convenience and attracting new customers into our ecosystem.

We also continue to strengthen the local market positions at the heart of our growth model. Our U.S. remodel program is delivering encouraging results with completed projects consistently performing above baseline expectations. At Food Lion, we are currently remodeling 93 stores in the Greensboro market with launches planned for the end of the year. Preparations are already underway for the next round of remodels in the Richmond and [the local] markets. Turning now to Europe. Sales were EUR 10.2 billion. Comparable sales increased 1.8%, excluding the impact of calendar shifts. Underlying operating margin in Europe was 3.9%, up 10 basis points. The realization of synergies in Romania, lower turnover tax rate or IMCA and labor productivity improvements were partially offset by lower performance in Serbia versus last year following the government decree on grocery pricing and by the absorption of indirect costs from higher energy prices.

In Belgium, we are building on encouraging momentum, supported by strong operational discipline and the continued success of our localization and franchising strategy. Since the beginning of the year, we have strengthened our position by opening up 7 new Delhaize stores and 2 Albert Heijn stores and by adding 300 convenience style locations through the Delfood acquisition. We've also continued to enhance the customer proposition. The successful Little Lions campaigns are delivering tangible improvements in price perception. Both Albert Heijn and Delhaize continue to gain market share in Belgium, reflecting the strength of their complementary propositions and the trust that customers place in the brands.

At Bol, performance was solid, affected by the comparison with a strong prior year and by continued consumer pressure, which contributed to down trading parts of the assortment. In a highly competitive market and evolving online shopping behavior, Bol remains focused on strengthening its platform through productivity initiatives, enhanced advertising monetization and the thoughtful deployment of AI. Customer loyalty remains an important differentiator, reinforced by the successful Customer loyalty remains an important differentiator, reinforced by the successful Customer loyalty remains an important differentiator, reinforced by the successful Effe bollen campaign, which stresses both the convenience and trustworthiness of Bol.

Moving on to free cash flow. Q2 free cash flow was EUR 632 million. Year-to-date free cash flow was EUR 302 million, which is EUR 430 million lower than last year. The year-on-year movement was driven by net working capital, reflecting calendar effects and seasonal phasing related to the strong year-end in 2025. This is largely a matter of timing and our full year 2026 guidance remains unchanged. Our strong cash generation over time gives us the capacity to invest in customers, associates, stores, technology and future capabilities while maintaining disciplined shareholding returns. We remain thoughtful about capital allocation and are focused on converting performance into cash. I would also like to highlight the progress we're making toward our ambition to increase healthy food sales.

Our brands are committed to make healthier and more sustainable choices affordable and accessible, helping customers and communities make positive choices and live healthier lives. A good example is Delhead's expansion of the SuperPlus loyalty program through SuperPlus families. For only EUR 1 a month, SuperPlus families combine structural benefits on a wider range of healthy and plant-based own branded products with volume discounts on family purchases. Recent customer research indicates that 60% of SuperPlus customers say the program helps them to live healthier lives. At Albert Heijn, product reformulations, the launch of new healthy snacks and the new product line focused entirely on fiber contributed to steady year-on-year improvements in healthy food sales.

In the U.S., our brands continued to respond to healthy eating trends, including strong growth in yogurt and high-protein products. Our brands are at the heart of their communities. Health is, therefore, not a separate agenda. It's part of how we build a relevant customer proposition and support the long-term well-being of the communities we serve. This brings me to our outlook. Our teams delivered a resilient first half of the year, and our performance so far in the third quarter is demonstrating the same level of resilience. We, therefore, reiterate our full year guidance, which this year is based on a 53-week basis. Underlying operating margin of around 4%, free cash flow of at least EUR 2.3 billion, gross capital expenditures of around EUR 2.7 billion and diluted underlying earnings per share growth at mid- to high single digit based on a constant exchange rate.

As we look to the coming months, we expect the operating environment to remain dynamic and demanding. Households are value conscious, volumes are subdued in several of our markets, and there's plenty of competition for every shopping trip. These conditions sharpen our focus. They make it even more important to stay close to our customers, act decisively and direct our investment to the areas that visibly strengthen our competitive position. Our brands are well prepared as we enter the back-to-school and holiday periods with relevant campaigns, strong assortments and compelling value supported by targeted price investments and increasingly convenient omnichannel propositions.

At the same time, we remain disciplined on the fundamentals, running great stores, improving productivity, managing cash and capital carefully and executing consistently. That balance supporting customers today while investing in future capabilities to drive growth is central in our strategy. With clear priorities and the confidence based on our great local brands track record and execution, we build on the positive momentum and further progress towards our Growing Together ambitions. With that, I thank you for joining us. And Sharon, please open the lines for questions.

[Operator Instructions]

And our first question today comes from the line of Frederick Wild from Jefferies.

They're both on the U.S., please. So first of all, I didn't suppose you could give us some of the margin moving parts in the U.S. in half 2 and how to think about the development from here because I realize there are obviously quite a few different moving parts within that. Second, I don't suppose you could give us your sense of how the competitive environment in the U.S. is changing. Obviously, there have been lots of comments from competitors. over the last few weeks about maybe changing investment programs. So if you could give us a sense of what you're seeing changing on the ground and how that's impacting your food inflation expectations for this year, that would be super helpful.

And thank you, Freddie, for those questions. As you know, we don't guide on a regional basis, but I'll try to shed a bit of light on those U.S. margins. As stated, there were, as always, quite a few elements impacting that margin. On the first element, I would like to guide, of course, price investments. We are investing in prices to drive growth and to support our customers. We also had some upside through the pharmacy mix, and we expect that to continue in the following quarters. And we also, of course, see higher utility rates that are impacting our margins. I think the negative impact from other elements are offset by positive impact. So the most important ones are the ones that I just called out. If I look at the development in the next few quarters, I would say, as a group, we are confident that the margin prediction that we've given in our guidance is feasible for us.

And I don't see a lot for the group, a lot of downside into that margin guidance that we've given.

And Frederick, on the competitive element, first of all, I think we all know that we have #1 and #2 positions on 90% of our total sales on the East Coast. So we have strong market positions with strong relative market shares and brand strength. Having said that, we see a rather rational pricing environment at the moment. between communication and reality, there's sometimes a gap, what competitors tell us. But we are very much on the front foot. We have by brand, our competitive set of competitors, and that differs between the South and the North and the Mid-Atlantic. And we are in line with our pricing strategy. Jolanda mentioned already our price investments, the EUR 250 million for the full year, that's 1/4 of the EUR 1 billion for the total strategy period.

So we use those instruments to make sure that we stay competitive. And if you then look at Stop & Shop, for example, which is a high attention point, fully invested in price now. But with Stop & Shop, we gain market share, we gain sales and we gained volume. And we have an NPS at an all-time high of 79%. So far away, Frederick, from arrogant and overconfident, very focused. Wwe look exactly what's happening both in the categories, but also offline and online. And at the moment, I think we're doing the right thing. And that is, of course, for the second half, also super important. We follow very precisely everybody, image items, KPIs, foreground, background and market by market, which is a different competitive set for Hannaford compared to the giant company or to Stop & Shop. So we follow very precisely, and we measure the prices on a daily basis.

Your next question today comes from the line of Izabel Dobreva from Morgan Stanley.

So following up the question on the U.S. competitive environment and your price investments. Could you spend a little bit of time discussing the timing of those price investments this quarter and why the margin was down? Was there an element of putting through more price investments in Q2 than you did last year? So it was kind of the seasonal mix and timing impact of having more investments year-on-year? Or is it a case that you're actually accelerating the price investments compared to the pace at which you were putting through a year ago, which should also continue into the back half? And then my second question is around your EUR 1 billion price investment budget. If the environment evolves in such a way that you reach the conclusion at some point that you need to upsize this program, how quickly would you be able to find additional cost savings in order to potentially offset a larger price investment budget?

Izabel, good to have you back on the call, by the way. And thank you for the question. welcome. Our price investments are executed as we planned for, as we shared earlier, we have EUR 1 billion over 4 years, and they are not exactly equally spread over the 4 years. And we phase them through the quarters as we see opportunities. And if we see results from small pilots that we do that are positive, then we continue. So it's not something you can mathematically upfront plan on a period-by-period basis. So in this year, we are up to speed. We have executed according to the plan that I referred to, and we have our biggest DMAs done at this point in time. If you would ask us how fast can we upscale our cost savings, we are on a trajectory to deliver on the EUR 1.25 billion cost savings for this year and also that is in line with plan.

So I don't see any big deviations at this point in time. I do see that the price investments that we make, not only for Stop & Shop, but also for the other brands are paying off because if you look at our volumes overall for the group positive, also very competitive in the U.S. because the U.S. shows negative volumes. I think Nielsen stated 1.2 -- 2.6% negative in the quarter. And our market share growing in most of the brands in the U.S. indicates that what we're doing is paying off. And we also see that, as Frans referred to, in Net Promoter Scores. So for now, the trajectory is one that we have confidence in and will continue. If we see opportunities or if the market warrants, we will have the flexibility to go after those opportunities and deepen price investments, but we don't see the necessity at this point in time.

And Izabel, it's quite an understatement, interesting environment at the moment where we trade, right? So with raw materials, energy prices, geopolitics and consumer sentiment. And in that environment, we are trading very well. So if energy prices come down, if raw materials are more normalized when conflicts aren't conflicts and these kind of things, hopefully, once get over with might give us a little bit more space also to reinvest. And then at the moment, in this difficult environment, we find the reinvestments in our pricing as per strategy. So I'm pretty proud of what the team did so far.

Your next question today comes from the line of Robert Jan Vos from ABN AMRO ODDO BHF.

Coming back to the U.S., you showed that underlying, so corrected for the pharmacy impact and also weather, there was a small decrease in comparable sales growth in Q2 versus Q1. However, at the same time, food inflation increased, I think, by almost 100 basis points. So is this a reflection of deteriorating consumer sentiment? And more specifically, did you see that more towards the end of the quarter? Or was it more evenly through the quarter? And then my second question is on free cash flow. Very clear comments that you still expect the EUR 2.3 billion goal to be achieved. and we already saw a recovery in Q2 versus Q1, but there's still -- you're still trending below quite materially.

So should we expect most of that recovery to come in Q3? Or maybe we have to wait until the very end of the quarter -- the year in Q4? Those were my questions.

Thank you, Rob Jan. Jolanda will come back to the cash flow question on pricing and inflation. We just talked also together with Izabel about pricing and price investments to stay on line with our strategy. That's what we have done also in this quarter. Where you could argue that the out-of-home statistics on CPI food at home is 2.7% in the quarter in June. Our own internal inflation was much lower. If I would indicate that's roughly about 1% our internal inflation. And that has to do, of course, with our price investments at the same time. So don't compare external total market inflation with our inflation because, yes, we would like to be priced competitively, and we invested in our pricing as we were the EUR 250 million per year.

So that's one thing. The second thing is that if you look at our total composition of the sales, that composition is also changing. If you look at the mix of own brands and national brands, also the benefit of our own brand development as well also there in the U.S., 70 basis points growth in the own brands assortment. So that means also that gives you also a different mix. And that mix is a beneficial mix, which comes to customers, and that's exactly why customers love our own brands. And that's why this is also an instrument to be priced right or priced even better. On cash flow?

Yes, Robert Jan, on cash flow. So yes, as you stated, the trend in Q2 is improving versus Q1. So we're happy with that development. And -- as you know, Q1 was subdued because of the overdelivery year-end 2025. And with working capital, it's always the same thing to bear in mind. If you have an overdelivery in a certain period, the next period, you need to cover for that. So we are recovering and with confidence, we reiterated our guidance for the full year. Will it be Q3 or Q4? We never guide on quarterly phasings, certainly not for free cash flow. But as you know, the season is in Q4 and cash flow is always heavily focused on Q4.

Our focus on working capital remains, and we do see that we are trending well and are recovering from that overdelivery or outperformance in Q4 last year. So that, in a nutshell, is how we look at our free cash flow guidance.

Your next question today comes from the line of Sreedhar Mahamkali from UBS.

Maybe a couple again, please. Is -- I guess there's a broader concern, if you could address that, that would be amazingly helpful because I think there's quite a lot of noises out of your peer group. I think you've already mentioned there's a bit of a gap between communication from peers and reality. If you can flesh that out in the markets that you're operating, particularly East Coast and Virginia and North Carolinas, are you seeing anything actually change on the ground? I mean with your years of experience, is this a noisy period? Or do you think this is the beginning of a new wave of price-based competition. That would be incredibly helpful if you could help us understand a little bit better.

Secondly, I think on the Q1 call, you talked about minimum wage changes in Netherlands from Jan 27. Quarter on, do you have any further insights into how we should be thinking about the potential impact coming from there into next year and thereof your ability to take that realizing it's an industry-wide pressure now [indiscernible]..

Thank you, Sreedhar. I hope you're doing well. On the peer group and the announcements people make, I think you guys have very good data, which of the major players are in our markets and which are less in our markets and our market shares and our relative market shares. And that is already quite a difference from those operating national play and are not that strong in our East Coast markets. And we talked quite a couple of times about our market positioning in the North, in the South and the Mid-Atlantic. And I think what is fair to say and that also what we see in our numbers that if you look at online, I think that is an important part where we will grow more and where we also see a little bit more activity by 2 larger operators. But on the ground, on store level, a nice proof point is the Stop & Shop investment in New Jersey and New York, where we see those price investments do work and do yield volume and sales growth.

So not all our -- not all the big competitors in the U.S. are also active in our markets, nor do they have big shares. But market by market, we look at this. So I think there's not a new phenomenon to identify to indicate here, Sreedhar. But what is also clear is that we have an opportunity here to grow our online growth more.

And Sreedhar, on the minimum wages, there are still some decisions to be made by the Dutch government on this topic. So it's still -- the big changes are still out there. If I look at the current changes in minimum wages and in wages in general, as always, we strive to offset them with our save for our customer program, productivity improvements, AI, et cetera. That is the continuous, one could say, balancing act we're in.

And the next question comes from the line of Monique Pollard from Citi.

I've got 2 as well, if I can. The first question was just on the backdrop in Europe in terms of inflation. So I think a number of your markets, you're now seeing some level of disinflation. Just wanted to understand whether that is a negative or a positive to the top line when you think about sort of the dual impact of both pricing and volume on the consumer? And then the second question I had was on the private label penetration. which is looking really good, obviously, this period. Just trying to get a sense, if I can from you of how much you think the higher penetration is a function of a sort of more cautious consumer and the more volatile and weaker macro versus how much you think is the internal work you're doing in terms of realigning the stores and the product portfolio?

Let me -- thank you for the question, first of all.

Let me answer the second one. And Jolanda, can you take the first? Is it okay for you?

Yes. The first question, can you reiterate that one for me? The Europe inflation?

Positive or negative. Sorry. I don't have the best days in the world. Ultimately, I follow impact our customers. So a negative inflation in an environment where prices have been increasing quite substantially, I would call out as a positive because it supports our customers and will, in the end, might take a bit of time, so there might be a lag, but it will, in the end, drive positive volumes as well. In general, but that's on the long run, inflation of around 2% is, I think, healthy. So you wouldn't want to have deflation for a longer period of time. But at this point, I would say, helping customers, helping our volumes. So that is how I would depict that.

And net sales in Europe, 1.6% comp sales in Europe, 1.7%, a very different inflationary environment in the Benelux versus the CSE countries, the Eastern part. So that's also a mix we should see -- but I agree to that. I mean, also there to be priced right is also super important here, and that will gain loyalty and that will gain sales in the end. And also what we said earlier, the own brand mix might also play an important role here, even more important than in the U.S. The second thing question was about?

Own brands.

Own brands and...

Whether or not it's more of a cut.

Yes. Sorry about it. Sorry. So own brands, yes, we have with own brands, a very clear strategy. This is meant to differentiate ourselves to have a unique set of brands, own brands items, which serve not only value in a number of instances with our price favorites, but also serve better ingredients serving healthier choices. And you see, for example, if it's Hannaford or if it's Food Lion or if it's Albert Heijn or Delhaize or Mega Image in Romania, that customers are focused on brands which have a better formulation, which have better ingredients, which have less additives, which are healthier for their own diet. So that's part of one thing. On the other thing, as we know that a lot of household budgets are challenged, the component of value and price is also important.

That's why the price favorites are there. So in our total own brand category, own brand portfolio, we have different roles, what own brands play. And for us, it's important to make sure that own brands are the right answer for our customers for the various angles of interest they have and that is both for an affluent customer can be different than for a challenged household customer. And that is how we construe that. And we do this because we think that customers are looking for these kind of solutions. And we see also very nice upticks in our own brand shares. And if you look at the vegan assortment at Albert Heijn, we see very beautiful upticks and all over fair share -- over fair market share participations at our end. And you see at Stop & Shop when they work on their price positioning in own brands, but also customers react to this for those elements where budgets are challenged.

So Own brands strategically for us are important, 45% 2028 is our target. Breakthrough just made with 40%. So we're on the right trajectory. And you see that customers love it. They love that the different roles and the total portfolio of brands and customers come with different demands in our stores. The variety of groups is quite high. So that's the beauty of own brands that can serve different customer groups for different purposes.

And I think, Frans, also in an era maybe of agentic AI ahead of us that having that loyalty, which is always very important, might become even more important than it was in the past. So double down on unbranded sales. That's the strategy.

Your next question today comes from the line of Bob Joyce from BNP Paribas.

So the first one, just on the U.S. It looks like grocery sales tracking reasonably below overall consumer spending. Can you just give us a bit more detail as to the kind of changes or weaknesses you might be seeing in the U.S. consumer and whether we'd expect any of those to change in the second half? Maybe giving us a bit of clarification on the expected impact of SNAP in the second half would be great. And then the second one, again, on the U.S. I appreciate you're not that keen on giving color on the individual segments, but I think there was quite a bit of concern in the market about the tough margin comps in the second half in the U.S. versus second half last year.

Do we think the second quarter of '26 at 15 bps down is a reasonable read for the second half? of '26 in terms of that U.S. margin? Any color you can give us on that would be much appreciated.

Thank you, Rob. I think it's fair to say in the present environment, we talked about the macro environment as well and what does it does to consumers and sentiment and household budgets. I think sales overall are softer, both in the U.S. and in Europe. I think we have to live with that. So there's a relative view we need to have. And I already indicated earlier that through our price investments, we see a different type of inflation than maybe the CPI at the Northeast would tell us. So I also expect this to be rather stable environment on sentiment as such. And we might see some changes then geopolitically, there are some breakthroughs there, but that is not for us as a retailer to forecast.

But a softer sales environment in which we do very well, I think, and competing. Most of our brands are gaining market share. We showed you the results, both on margin and on sales. And that also despite all the investments we have made in a higher participation online, the investments we made in digital and technology, all geared for the future and the 40% own brand participation. So a softer sales environment, which I think will stay for the rest of the year in which we do pretty well.

Yes, Rob. And your question on the U.S. margin. As we stated indeed, we don't go into regional guidances and certainly not on a quarter basis. But the full year guidance of around 4%, as I stated, we don't see a lot of downside in that guidance. And for us, it's not just margin. It's the combination of margin with growth, market share, hence, competitive strength. And that together will allow us to reiterate our guidance not only for this year, but also for the going together period in which we aim for high single-digit growth on EPS. And that's the guidance that I can give you at this point in time.

Maybe for Rob, maybe some.

Are you making an exception for Rob, Frans?

An extra nugget, maybe. I think if we look at the start of the third quarter, the month of July, fresh from the press with a strong start in July in our results in the U.S. So I think there's also just give us an extra support for our confidence in our total guidance for the year.

Okay. Just on the SNAP bit. On SNAP in the second half, have you given a guide on the expectations there?

SNAP, we guided, Rob, we -- it's difficult to exactly predict, of course, but we guided for the full year on 60 to 80 basis points.

And our SNAP participation, what is it? 5.5%, right?

Yes, just below 5.5%.

I rounded this for you, Robert.

Yes, yes.

So our SNAP shares went down, of course, after COVID, but our comparable shares from.

5.3%...

5.3% total SNAP share in our total U.S. business.

At this point in time.

Your next question today comes from the line of Xavier Lene from Bank of America.

Hopefully, you can hear me well. Two questions then. The first one on the price investments, the EUR 1 billion that you've got over the full year. So you're almost halfway there. So how comfortable do you feel with that EUR 1 billion number? Do you think opportunity potentially to go faster to increase it? Or do you think that's still the right number? That would be the first question. And the second one is, can you comment a bit more Romania and the improvement that you've seen there, especially with the synergies and how the -- also the macro environment in Romania? And what was potentially the kind of positive contribution you had from Romania in Q2?

Yes. On the price investments, as we shared when we launched our strategy, it doesn't always work to speed up your price investments. We really do this on a batch by batch or cluster of stores by cluster of stores kind of basis. So you invest in price, you see the response of customers and competitive set around you and then you take the next step. So we're not going to speed it up with the information we have at this point in time, but we allow ourselves the flexibility to take the opportunities we see there or to -- if the market warrants to speed up in certain smaller parts within the brands. if that's necessary. But with all the experience up to this point in time, we are trending well. We're in line with strategy, and there's no need for adjustments so far. And I would also like to point out, it's not just price.

If I take the Stop & Shop example, we're tracking well against our strategic price investments. But the fact that the Net Promoter Score is now at 79%, which is an all-time high, really also helps to drive that price perception, and that supports the market share of -- in Q1, it was 70 basis points for Stop & Shop. based on Nielsen data. And to reach that, it's more than just that price investment. It's the relevance of your assortment, but it's also down to old-fashioned things like the cleanliness, the friendliness of your staff, et cetera. So it's all that together that combines -- that drives results. So we don't want to be owner focused on price as well. We just want to make sure that our price distance versus our chosen competitive sets, it's there where we need it to drive growth, and that is working out well this far.

I fully agreement with Jolanda, Xavier. Our customer value proposition is much richer and broader than price only. It's also about to mention the things Jolanda mentioned. We talk about healthier products. We talk about convenience, product development. Last week, I was visiting a Food Lion in a giant company in both in the Carolinas and in Pennsylvania. And if you see what all kind of things they do to understand customers even better to be super competitive and not only in-store but also online on promotions, but also on assortment and on own brands and on store execution and to make those shopping journeys more convenient, more interesting and also give customers more ideas through their digital apps on recipes, on solutions to manage budgets, but also to get another surprising meal on the table for the family.

It's amazing what the company, what the brands do and that customer value proposition, I think, is the most striking element in our differentiation. Price is, of course, an important element there, but it's not the only one. When we then go to Romania, the question was where are we cruising in our present situation. I think we made good progress in integration of the brands of Mega Image and Profi. So we see now that also the synergies of this merger are now starting to flow in the purchasing synergies we already have dealt with, and they were better than expected. But we also see now the other synergies coming in and you look at store network, you look at the logistics, look at the propositions. You look at mutual learnings, both towards Profi and towards Mega Image. I think we learned from both brands. So I'm positive about that trajectory of integration, and it will give more benefits there to get into our business case.

Our next question comes from the line of Maxime Stranart from ING Bank.

2 questions from my side, if I may. First of all, I think you mentioned previously that you see internal inflation around 1%. Is it the level you are confident with for the remainder of the year? Or do you see some evolution in there? Obviously, egg deflation being one of the major impacts in H2? And secondly, looking at Europe, actually quite an impressive margin improvement compared to the first quarter of the year. Can you maybe elaborate a bit on what was the main driver, obviously, understanding that Romania was better than expected, but anything else you want to highlight there? That would be very helpful.

Yes. On that inflation, I indicated this our net inflation. We see pretty consistent second half of this year. It's very difficult to forecast all these kind of things. These kind of things are a result area of being priced right, and that's a target for our company. So there's not so much to add to that statement for the second half of this year and will be in the composition of mix and the composition of areas and brands and composition of to make sure that we stay competitive in the markets where we are. And like we heard earlier, if most of our markets gain share, then I think we do quite a bit of things right.

On Europe and the margins, yes, we are cruising towards that 4% for Europe that we've guided for in the past, right, where we stated that Europe should recover to that level. What is supporting in that area is, of course, Romanian synergies, as Frans indicated. I in Serbia, of course, we have a downside because of the decree that has now ended. And to recover from that will take a few quarters going forward, but we will see improvements if you compare quarter-to-quarter. Next to that, of course, also Europe has to face wage increases and the indirect consequences of energy prices being elevated. So it's a mixed bag as usual, but we are confident with the development in the European margin.

Maybe one highlight. We have the Delhaize transformation in the last few years, and Delhaize is progressing really well, both on market share, sales growth, but also on their margin trajectory.

And I'm not an expert on eggs necessarily, Maxime. But on the U.S. egg prices, I do not see a further deflation there. I think...

Recycled it, right?

Yes, recycled it, but it came down a lot of those prices already and I think the present levels are the levels we forecast for the future, although also there, don't ask me to forecast avian flu and these kind of things. That is beyond my competence.

Your next question today comes from the line of Maj Dhar from RBC.

I also had 2, if I may. My first question is on the online. I think you mentioned that you see further opportunity there in the U.S. I was just wondering if you could give some color on how you're driving or going to drive further growth in U.S. online and maybe how that impacts the margin there? And then my second question is just a follow-up on European deflation. Could you just give some color on how you sort of see the exit rate there and when you expect potentially some change in European deflation?

Yes, the first one, and thank you for that question. So how we drive growth online. For me, the most important element in driving online is -- starts with our assortment because we have a huge assortment, which is localized. So if you order -- I take you as an example, via your local Food Lion store, you get the assortment you know, which is broad and which is good, which is localized, and it also gives you the trust in what you get delivered. Next to that, we also work with partners of choice. We just added Uber Eats to DoorDash and Instacart. So if the customer prefers to use those channels, we also offer them. And I would also say that together with the assortment, the localization, the trust, we also have that speed of delivery that is very convenient for our customers.

And we are expanding also our personalized offerings online. So all in all, we have a good offer. We follow the customers where they want to go, and we get a lot of appreciation. This was our sixth or seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit online growth. I'm looking at my colleagues. it's the ninth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth at the U.S. So I think we're on a good trajectory, and we do see further opportunities going forward. And as CFO of the company, I'm also pleased that on a fully allocated basis, we now achieved profitability on online. So we have both the growth profitability improving, and we doubled down on it going forward.

Yes. And Jolanda assortment is absolutely the right and one of the right differentiators in online. I think 2 things. If you look at our produce, fresh, meat and fish assortments with all the 5 brands in the U.S., we have really a very compelling assortment, not in number of items, but also in availability, also in freshness. And if you then compare that to a number of our competitors, I would not arrogantly, but proudly say the teams do an excellent job in our total fresh proposition, which are up to 40% of our sales in the U.S., and that is also where we excel and where we differentiate a lot. And that is not only in the national brands, but for sure, also a big share in own brands too in the produce and the fresh areas. I think that is an important differentiator for customers.

And the second thing is, we beefed up our capacity quite a bit for online. So we have more room to grow with our pick from store and the partners Jolanda just mentioned. So we increased our capacity. So we can grow that double digit online also for the future. We prepared for that, both with PRISM, our software for in-store pick and pick from store, but also with our partners. So I'm optimistic there that we will get there and that it's not only a target for the U.S., by the way, double digit, but also remains the same target for Europe. And then on the European question on inflation, yes, it will oscillate. Is that the right word? I think this word will oscillate a little bit for the rest of the year. We monitor this very carefully ourselves. And that has also to do with a number of things on the macros.

The macros is difficult to influence. We negotiate sharply with the positions in the market where we have. We work with customers on a good own brand national brand composition. So a little bit difficult to forecast there, but it will be -- yes, it will be oscillating a little bit for the second half of the year.

So Sharon, we have time for one very quick question, and then we can close it.

We will now take your final question -- and the final question comes from the line of François Digard from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Maybe you have given some details, but I missed that. You highlight private label penetration, but can you also share the underlying private label growth rate in Q2, both in value and volume terms? And how did that compare with national brands growth? And what contribution do you expect private labels to make to medium-term top line growth?

Thank you, Francois, for that question. It's a pretty precise question you have, which is not reporting, but check in with the IR department later on to get that answer more precisely. But what I can give you is that we grow faster with our own brands overall than with our national brands, differs by category, by the way, and not only between fresh and center store when we talk about the U.S., but different by category. If we look at our value own brand labels, so the more price-sensitive labels, there, we grow faster than the rest of the own brand categories, and we also grow there faster than the national brand categories as such. So within the own brand portfolio, that is different.

But overall, as we're gaining share, it's a good assumption that we grow faster with our own brand assortments than with our national brands, but it might differ by category too. But phone in and call into the IR department if they have more color for you that is at the moment. In the way you ask the questions of that position at the moment, too complex.

That was our final question for today. I will now hand the call back for closing remarks.

Yes, Sharon, thank you very much, and thank you all for joining today. We will be available, of course, for the rest of the day for anything we haven't covered, own brand being one of them. And I look forward to seeing you all on the road tomorrow and obviously, in September when we're back to the heavy conference season again. But enjoy the rest of your summers.

Thank you for joining. See you next time.

And enjoy the extended families, too, I heard. So that's also good news.

Yes. All the best.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to the analyst conference call on the First Quarter 2026 Results of Ahold Delhaize. Please note that this call is being webcast and recorded.

During this call, Ahold Delhaize anticipates making projections and forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that are difficult to predict and that may cause our actual results to differ materially from future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Therefore, you should not place undue reliance on any of these forward-looking statements.

The introduction will be followed by a Q&A session. Any views expressed by those asking questions are not necessarily the views of Ahold Delhaize.

At this time, I would like to hand the call over to JP O'Meara, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, JP.

Thank you very much, Heidi, and good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to welcome you today to our Q1 2026 results conference call. On today's call are Frans Muller, our President and CEO; and Jolanda Poots-Bijl, our CFO.

After a brief presentation, we will open the call for questions. In case you haven't seen it, the earnings release and the accompanying presentation slides can be accessed through the Investors section of our website, aholdelhaize.com, which also provides extra disclosure and details for your convenience.

To ensure everyone has the opportunity to get their questions answered today, I ask that you initially limit yourself to queue. To ensure ease of speaking, all growth rates mentioned in today's prepared remarks will be at constant exchange rates unless otherwise stated.

And with that, I hand over to you, Frans.

Thank you very much, JP, and good morning, everyone. We had a solid start to the year. Our Q1 performance reflects the strength of the foundation we have built with our Growing Together strategy, focused on delivering value for customers, associates and all our stakeholders and this every day. This is underpinned by clear choices, investing in our customer value proposition, strengthening our portfolio and expanding our footprint while maintaining discipline in how we allocate capital. We continue to operate in a dynamic and at times more demanding environment. Food inflation was more moderate in this quarter with year-over-year deflation in several categories, which has been helpful to consumers. At the same time, geopolitical tensions, including the recent conflict in the Middle East, are contributing to uncertainty.

Energy prices are elevated, putting further pressure on household budgets. This is not necessarily new for us. We have managed through similar conditions before, and we are applying those learnings today. For example, customer value remains at the heart of everything we do. Across our brands, we continue to invest in price, in quality and in relevance. -- whether through our own brands or fresh offering or the experience in our stores and digital platforms. In an environment like this, consistency builds trust and trust drives share. Secondly, we remain disciplined in how we run the business. We focused on cost, on productivity and on simplifying how we operate, but always with the flexibility to support our brands locally. We have strengthened our energy position by moving to longer-term contracts and increasing the use of renewable energy sources. And we are further embedding shoot cost models to ensure cost increases from suppliers are proportional, transparent and well managed.

And lastly, we continue to invest in the future. We are sharply focused on our growth model, combining scale, relevance and execution. And whether in digital, in data or in omnichannel capabilities, we are building a platform that allows us to serve customers in more relevant and more personal ways. These factors gelling well together enable our strong financial performance and our ability to deliver consistent and attractive returns for our shareholders. Looking at the quarter. Net sales and comparable sales, excluding gasoline, increased 2% at constant exchange rates. We delivered an underlying operating margin of 4% and diluted underlying EPS increased 8.9%. When we launched our strategy together -- when we launched our strategy going together, I talked about quality. It's a defining characteristic of the culture of how we operate our company, the quality of our sales, the quality of our brands, the quality of our execution and foremost, the quality of our people. And that's the lens I would like to use as we look at our results today.

Customers continue to navigate the environment carefully, making deliberate choices and seeking value. Our response is clear, strong, consistent customer value. Across our U.S. brands, excluding some technical and macro factors, Jolanda will go through in more detail, our first quarter sales performance kept a similar pace to the trends we have seen last year. And inside this growth, we are enhancing own brand assortments, executing our second full year of on top price investments and optimizing personalized offerings. Own brands continue to outpace the rest of the store in both sales and volume, supporting price perception and margin quality. And at the entry level, we are playing into the growing demand from customers who are looking for high-quality products at affordable prices.

Examples for the U.S. includes Stop & Shop lowering everyday prices across key states, Hannaford introducing refreshed own brand packaging to improve navigation and value perception and the Giant Company launching its Simply low campaign. At Stop & Shop, Roger and the team are leveraging strong local knowledge. Volumes are trending positively. Online penetration is at record levels and own brand growth is strong. Customer response to price investments remains encouraging, and NPS continues to reflect strong engagement by customers to the actions we are taking in the day-to-day quality of our execution.

As we have now seen several quarters of consistent improvement at Stop & Shop, we will accelerate our store remodel program and expand our price investment across the full fleet by the end of 2026, with over 40 targeted store remodels planned for '26 to further improve the in-store experience. Staying with quality sales growth. In Europe, performance was a little ahead of where we had anticipated. Our brands continue to strengthen their positions through relevance and execution. And the key developments here include the Del Food acquisition, adding over 300 convenience stores in Belgium, continued rollout of Delhaize affiliate model to 7 new locations, offering customers the best Delhaize standards with appealing assortments, the latest digital experiences and great local customer service. And we made progress in Serbia following the end of government pricing measures.

Simultaneously, our European brands are using their own brand propositions to play a leading role in innovation across our store. Recent success stories include, for example, Albert Heijn's recently renewed barbecue assortment with over 80 new products right on time for the sunny weather. Alfa Beta's award-winning own brand range called AB close to the Greek Land, highlighting their commitment to high-quality products inspired by the richness of the Greek gastronomy and local production. And to support customers who have faced ongoing pressure on their household budgets, Maxi Serbia significantly stepped up their own brand offering.

Switching gears now, and let's talk about the quality of execution. Our omnichannel proposition continues to scale. And for example, in the U.S., online sales grew 14.3% at constant exchange rates, marketing the eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Over 90% of customers have access to online shopping and more than 90% of online sales are fulfilled through same-day services. At Ball, where consumer discretionary spending in general is less robust than last year, we are on top of the rapid changes in customer behavior with AI and social commerce reshaping how customers shop. Maite and her team are expanding Ball's suite of AI-powered tools, including the soon-to-launch shopper agent, ensuring customers have the support they need throughout their total shopping journey.

In Romania, we have merged [indiscernible] into one legal entity under the leadership of Xavier. Xavier, who has an extensive track record at [indiscernible] Ma, recently served as Brand President at Delhaize Belgium and brings deep expertise in driving change. The synergy capture from the integration is progressing well, which will provide fuel as we speed up space expansion in the quarter ahead. As we focus on the quality of execution, technology helps us secure it for the future, bringing greater consistency, efficiency and precision at scale. And with technology and innovation, we stay curious and disciplined, exploring early and scaling only when our customers are ready and it fits our business.

Our approach to AI is a good example. Under the leadership of Jan Brecht, we have brought 30 experts together in a group focus area to speed up execution and learning and the power of our portfolio is we can trial and learn a lot quicker than a single operator, and this is similar to what we did with things like retail media or mechanization. As you see with outcomes like EDGE, our European -- U.S., European retail media application and our fully mechanized e-commerce fulfillment centers in the Netherlands, we test and learn quickly and scale what works. For AI, we concentrate on 4 domains: sourcing and merchandising, marketing, store operations and agentic shopping. And with more than 100 active use cases, we are already capturing value by improving availability and freshness, optimizing pricing and assortment decisions and increasing operational efficiency in stores. And again, we can integrate these across the system.

We really see compounding effects. As we build on our existing AI-supported store associate app in Albert Heijn, we are moving towards a self-optimizing store. Here, AI serves as the store's brain, reading every signal and orchestrating work across people, systems and devices, including electronic shelf labels. And lastly, before I hand over to Jolanda, I'd like to spend a few moments on the quality of our people and the strength of our distributed operating model. What continues to set us apart is the strength, experience and passion of our local teams. They are closest to the customer, owning the business in real time and making decisions every day that truly count. And around them, our support functions continuously improve, simplify and strengthen the system so that our brands can perform at their best.

As you will have seen from this morning's announcement, the Supervisory Board has completed a thorough process to identify Thierry Garnier as my successor. And in the meantime, I remain fully committed. We have a clear strategy that is focus and is delivering results. My priority over the coming periods is exactly where it should be. strengthening the foundations for the long term and deliver on our promises in the short term, but also working with our teams, keeping the business on track and continuing to execute with discipline and consistency.

Now over to you, Jolanda, to talk more about the financials.

Well, thank you, JP, and thank you, Frans, and good morning to everyone. Reflecting on the current market environment, customers remain both resilient and selective. They are adapting, seeking value, making deliberate choices and increasingly rewarding consistency and trust. Picking up from Frans, staying closely in sync with the environment and being closely connected to customers with our local teams is a strength. Our proximity to customers and strong footprint of stores are an asset. With 77 million customers shopping with us every week, our primary data gives us insight into changing needs. from price sensitivity to convenience and seasonal trends.

It allows us to respond locally at speed and execute our strategy at a cadence that we carefully adjust as conditions evolve. I'm pleased with our Q1 performance as it reflects discipline in action and the solid start to the year provides us with space to be agile as we trade through the coming quarters and continue to invest in prices to support our customers and drive growth. Let's have a look at the key underlying numbers for the quarter.

Net sales grew 2% to EUR 22.3 billion. While the sales growth rate was less robust than in prior quarters, our sales were resilient. We are pleased with overall positive volumes, which underscores that our strategy is fit for purpose as we are relatively outperforming the market. Health continues to be a key differentiator. As demand grows for high protein and healthier options, products like our high-protein yogurt and cottage cheese are among our best sellers with around 30 new high-protein items planned for this year. Over 50% of own brand sales already come from healthier products. We are now expanding our ambition across the full store, making healthier choices more accessible, more affordable and more relevant. Our underlying operating margin was 4%.

Strong performance in the U.S. and an increase in insurance results at Ahold Delhaize Group more than offset the effect of the governmental decree and intervention on grocery industry prices in Serbia. Diluted underlying earnings per share was EUR 0.62, up 8.9%, primarily driven by higher underlying operating profit and the impact from the share buyback program, partially offset by higher financial expenses and income taxes. Slide 18 shows our results on an IFRS reported basis for Q1, which were in line with our underlying performance.

For your convenience, Slide 19 provides our comparable store sales trends with and without adjustments for weather, calendar and other notable items. Looking at the regional performance in more detail. U.S. net sales were EUR 12.7 billion. Comparable sales, excluding gas, increased 1.5%. Top line performance reflected a mix of factors. Weather and calendar with a positive impact of 40 basis points. Pharmacy sales were impacted by the Inflation Reduction Act with a negative impact of 70 basis points, Ag prices normalizing sharply versus last year, a negative impact of 65 basis points and the SNAP program changes reduced the benefits available to lower-income customers with a negative impact of 55 basis points. Together, these factors reduced our growth rate by 1.5 percentage points. Underneath this, volumes remained stable and our competitive position is strong, demonstrating the resilience of our model.

To help with your modeling for the coming periods, here are a few things to remember. We now expect an approximate $450 million impact on U.S. reported and comparable sales for the year from pharmacy pricing. EX will impact Q2 top line, but to a lesser extent as market prices stabilized gradually as we moved into the second half of the prior year and reduced SNAP benefits to continue to put pressure on our lower income customer with uncertainty around the exact magnitude and trajectory of these changes. We will closely monitor the impact throughout the rest of the year as changes in the program are deployed. Underlying operating margin in the U.S. was 4.6%, up 20 basis points from the prior year. Higher sales leverage and a favorable mix from winter storms, the positive margin effect from cost deflation in and the favorable mix in pharmacy more than offset price investments and additional costs related to the winter storms.

In the U.S., our omnichannel proposition continues to be a strong growth engine and one of our key competitive advantages. We finished Q1 with a record high penetration level of 10%, with some of the brands already above 11%. Our customers value our partnerships with third parties as our network allows to further expand the accessibility and convenience of our online services to existing and new customers. In Q1, online sales through these channels grew by over 20%. We recently welcomed Uber Eats to our network. We are excited about the growth opportunities ahead, especially given Uber Eats strong urban presence and membership program, allowing us to tap into new audiences.

Turning to Europe. Sales were EUR 9.6 billion. Comparable sales grew 2.7%, excluding the net impact from calendar shifts at the end and the end of tobacco sales in Belgium. We have now fully cycled the impact of tobacco sales. Online sales grew 3.3%, while online grocery sales grew 7.4%. Albert Heijn performance was negatively impacted by severe winter conditions, which disrupted delivery capabilities in January. Adjusted for this, Albert Heijn online sales grew by double digits. Performance at Ball was impacted by the cycling of a strong prior year and increased consumer pressures, contributing to down trading within Ball's assortment. Underlying operating margin in Europe was 3.4%, down 10 basis points from the prior year.

The realization of synergies and a lower turnover tax rate or IMCA in Romania, partially offset the impact from the governmental decree in Serbia, which was in effect through February. Now that the degree has ended, our teams are executing recovery plans as we rebuild our position in the market. We are assessing the impact of the new law on unfair trade practices or UTP, which was adopted in April in Serbia. New rules on temporary labor in the Netherlands are coming through and planned increases to the used minimum wage take effect from 2027. We are addressing the high cost pressures through tight cost control, productivity improvements and operational efficiencies.

Moving on to Slide 22. Q1 free cash flow was a negative EUR 330 million, driven by net working capital due to the calendar and seasonal phasing between the quarters and year-on-year. This is largely timing and our 2026 guidance for the full year remains unchanged. We invested EUR 600 million in growth capital expenditure. Our brands are well on track with our store remodeling program, elevating our store fleet and integrating the latest innovations to offer our customers a seamless shopping experience while growing our complementary business models. We also opened 41 new stores, including 2 new Food Lion stores. And in February, the giant company announced the acquisition of 2 family-owned stores in Pennsylvania, which will open later this year.

That wraps up my financial review of Q1 and brings me to our outlook. Given the solid start of the year, we reconfirm our guidance. While external rigs have increased, we remain confident in our plan. This summer period, we have strong activation plans in place to drive volumes and market share. We will also step more aggressively into price investments as we time our activities to capture the big moments of the summer period. Although we do not provide specific quarterly guidance, phasing effects in and between the quarters are to be expected as we flow investments in line with real-time trading conditions, allowing us to stay sharp and calibrate actions while always keeping an eye on our full year goals. In closing, we build our growth model not just to navigate challenging conditions, but to perform through them and to grow with them.

In times like these, performance isn't driven by big statements. It shows up in those everyday moments when customers choose our brands because they trust the value we offer. This is in our culture, the strength of our local teams, their know-how and their passion to serve their customers in real time, supported by systems and central skilled competencies, which continue to improve and simplify how we work. Together, this gives our business model a lasting edge and gives us the confidence in delivering sustainable long-term value. And with that, I thank you for tuning in. And Heidi, please open the lines for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The question comes from Will Woods from Bernstein.

Congratulations, Frans, on a long and impressive tenure at Ahold Delhaize. I'm sure we'll be speaking on the next few earnings calls. But my first question is about management change. You obviously are obviously experiencing a lot of management change at the moment with you, JJ and Claude leaving your respective CEO positions. I think many investors are worried about an exodus of management only a few years into the Growing Together strategy. How can you give confidence to investors in the continuity of the business strategy and its performance? And then the second question is on U.S. margins. You've obviously seen strong expansion year-over-year. How much of this is driven by the favorable mix effect versus underlying business trends like gaining share? And how sustainable do you think it is?

Thank you very much, Will. On the U.S. margins, Jolanda will give a few comments. On the management change, I will. It's, of course, a sad thing that we see both JJ and Claude decided to leave the company, especially also JJ with 36 years in the company and a big contributor to the success of our company and a Growing Together strategy. And the same for Claude, who did a lot of very good work in Europe on the sourcing, on the digital piece, on the own brands piece and also strengthening the organization in itself. But again, it's also up to them to make those decisions to leave and to adopt another proposition out there.

Having said that, we have a strong company on talent and succession planning. We have already catered for the right processes. Myself, together with the Supervisory Board, are working on the succession planning for both JJ and Claude. That is progressing well. And the other thing is one thing we should not forget is that we have super strong brands operating locally in the market with their own teams with very good functions and very good officers also dealing with those functions. So we have a very robust and strong organization in general. And that's also what we have dealt with in the past when we had management changes that robust organization, well-trained, experienced, knowing the markets very well was a very good catalyst to run these kind of transitions and making sure that we stay in the safe waters of delivering on our Growing Together strategy.

And that's exactly our plan, not only for this year, Will, but also for fulfilling the coming years of Growing Together, which so far has been a successful plan. So that on management change, U.S. margins, Jolanda?

Yes. And thank you for the question, Will. We indeed do not guide on margin, as you're aware, on the regional level and the guidance of around 4% was reiterated with confidence. If I look at the U.S. margin, there are many levers, as always, to be mindful of. There's indeed whether the calendar impact that we disclosed. which is incidental. We have some upside from the deflation as we call it. So the egg prices went down, which negatively impacted our sales but had a slight uptick in our margin, which will phase out in the coming quarters. We had a slight uptick from pharmacy in our margin, but also our structural profitability of our online business, which is improving, contributes to the positive result. And also, we see a slowly but surely improvement in shrink level. And that, of course, combined with price investments that we're making and that will continue in the quarters to come. So I hope that this gives some background on the buildup of our U.S. margin.

The next question comes from Xavier Le Mene from Bank of America Securities.

Two, if I may. The first one, can you please comment the food inflation you're seeing and potentially across region with the kind of exit rate you've seen in Q1? And maybe if you can comment on April, just to understand if you've seen any change given the Middle East crisis, that would be the first question. The second one is about the consumer behavior. So do you have any concern going forward? And where are your expectation or has it changed from what you said back to February and what you've seen right now? So do you see consumer behavior changing? And do you have any concern going forward?

Thank you for your questions, Xavier. I'll start with the consumer behavior question. if you look at our strategy, which was launched in 2024, it was centered around the customer and the customer being, one could say, on the hunt for value. We see that customer value focus intensifying in a way. But our strategy ties into that. We disclosed at the launch of the strategy that we were stepping down on our own brand penetration, and we aim at 45% for the group, offering consumers those own branded products at low prices and high quality levels. So that is a part that ties into that consumer behavior trend.

The second part, of course, relates to our price investments, EUR 1 billion additional price investments in the U.S. alone, and we are well on track to execute them, and we also see the positive response in, for example, in our volumes because our volumes in the U.S. were stable, whereas market data indicates that the overall market was highly negative. So the initiatives we took to support consumer trends and the hunt for value are playing out. In general, we see consumers seeking for convenience. So our online step down ties into that. We see that ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat solution are gaining traction, and we see that healthy options, as I referred to also in my short introduction, is also gaining traction. But it all ties down to our Growing Together strategy. So we're quite well prepared to respond to that. Maybe, Frans, you want to allude on the first question?

Xavier, on inflation. When we look at the U.S., we always work at this food at home Northeast inflation level. That was for us 2.1% in the first quarter, coming down from 2.4% in the Q4. That is for the U.S. And that differs, of course, by category. We see some elevated categories like cereals and bakery, but also we also see a big category like dairy coming down and the same for the eggs, as Jolanda already mentioned before. When we look at Europe, the food at home in the Dutch market, 1.7%, coming down from 3.7% in the fourth quarter. So that's a full -- 2 full percentage down. And in Belgium, almost flat with 0.1% coming down from 2.9% in the fourth quarter, just to give you an idea about the biggest market we have. And there's a little bit of mixed bag in the CSE countries but also their inflation, for example, in the Czech Republic and Serbia came down quite a bit.

The next question comes from Sreedhar Mahamkali from UBS.

First of all, Frans, really many congratulations on the update on your retirement next year. I think your achievements really speak for themselves that Ahold Delhaize and Delhaize prior to that over the last decade plus. So I think a super clear transition plan with a long period of gestation that you put in place, all very appreciated. Thank you for all this over the years. And maybe just a couple of questions. Firstly, I think you've just referred, Yolanda, I think, to some phasing in the U.S. margins. In the release, you talked about accelerating Stop & Shop investments in the U.S. by the end of 2026. How much of the change is it versus your prior plans? And does that mean we should be a little bit more so to expect on the U.S. margin outperformance that we've seen perhaps in the last couple of quarters or so?

So that's the first question. Secondly, also, I think, Yolanda, you've talked about a couple of regulatory changes you are assessing in Serbia and the Netherlands. would be amazingly helpful if you could talk through what is changing and how we should think about it maybe at all for the rest of the year or into 2027, that would be very helpful.

Thank you, Sreedhar, and also thank you, Will, for the good wishes. I take them on board, but to be honest, you have to work for. We are in full flow for delivering on '26 and teams are ratio sharp focused in a dynamic time as we have now. So you can count on me for the full year to make sure that we deliver. But on a few questions, Sreedhar, Stop & Shop and pricing or U.S. in overall. You know that we said earlier for our 4 years strategy, $1 billion on price investments in U.S. spread equally over the years. And so also within the year, intra-year, it's spread equally over the quarters. And we had earlier the question already, does Stop & Shop get a much higher proportion of that piece. And we also said also Stop & Shop gets its proportional part of the pricing.

But we will see a second round of pricing in the U.S. as we promised and as we also can afford because we have a delivered higher margin in the U.S., as you can see. So there's some space and some room to invest there, and we have a growing Together strategy. So we go for sales and volume growth in the U.S. And we already shared with you some very good news on Stop & Shop, if it's NPS, if it's market share, if it's volume growth. And there also for Stop & Shop, you will see quite some good investments on pricing coming in the coming weeks and throughout this quarter as well. I'm very proud about Roger and the team. They understand now where elasticity is, and we see good uptakes there. And also that's together with our own brand proposition for Stop & Shop. We are getting in the right space of getting Stop & Shop back on its feet. Too early to call victory, of course, but happy with the investments we're going to make regulations.

Regulations. Yes, if we look at the 2 ones I highlighted, and Sreedhar, thank you for your questions. The 2 that I highlighted was the first one around Serbia. So indeed, the governmental decree and intervention on grocery industry pricing has ended, but it did impact our Q1 results, both in top line and in UOP. So that will phase out as we rebuild our market position in the quarters to come. What I also referred to in Serbia was the so-called UTP that will not impact sales nor our margin. It could impact our free cash flow directly, of course, because it impacts the payment terms that we have. We are assessing that impact. Overall, as we said earlier, we reiterated our guidance also on free cash flow.

So we think we can manage around that one. Then the last one I shared was on the wage inflation in the Netherlands, which is quite substantial also going forward. So we need to offset that where we can with productivity improvements, increased efficiencies, et cetera. And as you are aware, we also have a steep cost reduction program, again in place of EUR 1.25 billion, and we're well on track to deliver on that, which then supports us again.

The next question comes from Rob Joyce from BNP Paribas.

Yes, I just want to echo Sreedhar's comment about Frans. I wish you all the best, but it was a year to go. Questions. So U.S., I guess, can we -- are we isolating a sort of consumer slowdown purely to SNAP customers? Or are we seeing a more broader slowdown? And should we read those price investments as broader reaction to what's happening in the market at the moment? Or are they purely proactive? And then the second one is just Frans. I'm guessing you're going to have some kind of handover period with Thierry at some point. Just to understand what you think he should be focusing on and where you'll be directing his attentions as he takes the role.

Thank you for the questions. I'll take the first one, and Frans will talk about your handover question. we are phasing our price investments in an optimal way to drive growth with a sharp eye on the results that we promised to the market. We're not responding to the immediate changes that we see because, as you know, we already disclosed that we would invest heavily in prices at the start of our strategy.

Yes. And I would dare to add to that story, Jolanda, also that we're seeing quite positive momentum at the moment in the U.S. We -- relative to our competition, we have better volume numbers. We see sales picking up. We see a number brand reacting very positively to our price investment, own brand propositions and the improvement of our execution. So that momentum we will use through the summer to make the right price investments and to see where we can find some acceleration. On the handover, I think that is much -- is it too early -- much too early again. I think what we have to do ourselves in this year and in this 12 months out, we have a strategy which you know.

We have a market which is dynamic. So we will make some intelligent tweaks to our strategy to find the right proposition for our customers in a sentiment where they are. We have Jan Brecht on board, our new CTO, quite a lot of energy on looking at our technology, digital, loyalty, AI agenda and we make very good progress on that also with the U.S. and the European teams. So that does -- that means that we will have a stronger tech background in the investments we make, making sure that we are getting better seamless proposition for our customers.

So that development you also will see in 2026. And I'm pretty sure that with the plans we have now, with the delivery, the foundation we have, we'll give a very good set of ingredients also for my successor to build on this and to have, of course, also from his view, a fresh look and perspectives as well, which we all would appreciate. So solid foundation, a lot of things happening. And I think in the coming quarters, you will hear more about the new elements of how we're going to tweak our Growing Together strategy to serve our customers even better.

Just sorry, to follow back on that SNAP customer. Is it really only the SNAP customers you're seeing sort of change in behavior in? Or are you starting to see a more broader change in U.S. customer behavior?

Overall, the SNAP impact is the most visible one. And we have been talking about the customer being on the hunt for value for quite a while. If you look at the general context in the world, of course, there is a lot of uncertainty and there is the risk of inflation getting higher, and that will impact the markets that we're operating in at large. And that is the information that we have at this point in time.

The next question comes from Fernand de Boer from Degroof Petercam.

Actually, one follow-up question and one other question is on the follow-up on the price investments you're making or going to make in the U.S., this comes on top of -- to be clear, is this on top of the EUR 1 billion? Or is it part of the EUR 1 billion? That's the first question. And then on Europe, could you say a little bit on the market share trends for Albert Heijn and Delhaize in Belgium and Albert Heijn, of course, in the Netherlands?

Yes. Thank you for your questions, Fernand. No, the price investments we talk about are part of the EUR 1 billion that we disclosed when we had our Strategy Day. So it's deploying the announced EUR 1 billion. in a certain phasing to optimize growth versus the UOP that we get back for it.

And then, in our Dutch and Belgium markets, we're seeing continuation of the trend. That means Albert Heijn is gaining further market share. Albert Heijn in Belgium is gaining further market share. Delhaize in Belgium is gaining further market share and Ball is very stable on its market share. So very content with the developments in the Benelux. And it's nice to see that our Delhaize colleagues in Belgium after the big operation, they are really trending better than original business plan. And that is nice to see and that is the situation on the market shares in the Netherlands and in Belgium.

Maybe one follow-up on Jolanda, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned something -- is the quarterly performance going to be more volatile, but full year performance should be still in line with guidance? Is that the way we should read it?

Yes, that's more referring to the cadence that we choose because we are phasing to optimize also, for example, in view of the summer period ahead, where to deploy, which price investment to get the biggest return for that investment. So that is just the phasing throughout the year.

The next question comes from Francois Digard from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Two questions on my side. First, on online sales. They remain quite impressive in the U.S. Could you help us understand what is attributable to new partnership on one hand and the higher demand on the other end? Given the timing of the partnership secured in '25, should we expect this growth rate to moderate over the course of the year? And my second question is on group margin. What is the main reason for maintaining the guidance despite a stronger-than-expected Q1? Is it the intention to accelerate at Stop & Shop, geopolitical concerns, something else?

Jolanda volunteered to give an answer on the group margin.

I always like that topic, Frans.

And I will talk a little bit more about the online sales growth. It's quite impressive, 14.3% in the quarter. We have a record high 10% penetration of online sales in the U.S., the eighth consecutive quarter, as Jolanda already mentioned, on double-digit online. Where is that coming from? It's coming, first of all, from all the brands. Food Lion stepped in a little bit lower, so they have higher -- even higher growth rate than the 14%. But Stop & Shop is still the company in our total network with the highest online penetration.

We work with the Click & Collect system where -- through which 90% of our customers have access to our online proposition and more than 90% is access to online same-day proposition. And the other thing is that we also work with those partners. So if you -- if we would give you a little bit of idea, roughly 60% of our total sales, online sales is coming through the Click & Collect proposition, which is our own facility and our own sweating the stores and network. We made quite some adjustments in reducing our assets in the last 2 years. So it's really sweating our own stores. And the other 40% is coming through marketplaces, where we started with Instacart, successful with DoorDash and now we added also Uber Eats.

The beauty of those 3 marketplace partners with whom we are very happy in the way we communicate, and they are very happy with our $60 billion food sales on the East Coast and strong #1 and #2 positions is that they have different customer journeys and serve different customer attributes and different customer needs. So there's quite a high level of complementarity. The other good thing is that through those partners, we also get new customers. And that is also a great thing and will also contribute to the sales growth numbers.

And if you look at those sales growth numbers and you compare us with quite some other players in our market, we also gain online sales there -- online sales share there with most of them. So this is a little bit more color on the online, what's going on in the U.S.

And then your question on the margin, why we reiterate our guidance was over delivering in Q1. I hope that you would be very pleased with us reiterating our guidance, but let's dive a little bit deeper. There are some one-offs impacting Q1 that will phase out as we referred to. And we also alluded on the phasing of price investments that will have an impact on the quarterly margins going forward. And last but not least, although the direct impact of the Middle East conflict are limited, there are still -- because we're largely hedged on, for example, diesel and energy, there are still some impacts that we need to mitigate and that has been taken on in this guidance.

And also the SNAP impact on sales that we alluded to that although the sales impact, we have disclosed the number, there is also an impact, of course, of that sales not flowing through to our margin. So it's, as always, many levers to look at. We are confident that we can deliver on the plans that we disclosed and on the results that we included in our guidance, even with the slightly increased risk profile that is related to the Middle East and SNAP.

That's very clear. Just if you could follow up on the first question on online sales. Could you help us understand the shape of growth you expect for the year because Uber is pretty new. So does it help to have to maintain this circa 14%, 15% growth over the next quarters?

There's an item with high interest, I understand that, but we don't guide on full year online sales shares and also not this over the quarters. We're very happy with online double digit this quarter, and we think that online is a substantial part of our proposition in an omnichannel world and it depends also on customer demand. And it is, of course, also different brand by brand and region by region and higher and lower penetrated brands so far.

And it has our utmost focus. So we are focusing on it as it is part of that growth engine that we're feeding.

And it's getting more profitable at the same time. We have total allocated profitability, but the probability is growing.

The next question comes from Maxime Stranart from ING Bank.

Just one question on my side, if I may. Looking at working capital in Q1, obviously, quite a sizable outflow, especially related to payables, if I'm not mistaken. So I understand that part of this is due to timing and the timing of Easter, especially. But could you maybe a bit quantify what was actually the impact of that earlier -- that later Easter this year? That would be very helpful.

Well, thank you for the question. And indeed, has, of course, all our attention. We're very working capital focused. You are right, the working capital created that negative free cash flow impact in the first quarter and was mainly related indeed to payables. And also for the rest in the call, our payable position trends around EUR 9 billion. So a few percent of deviation in timing already has quite an impact. We're used to managing that over time and the deviation that you've seen in Q1 was mainly related to the outperformance of last year at the end of the year, and then you take that onwards in the first quarter. And this is as much detail that I could share. I think what helps is the reiterating of our guidance also on free cash flow. So we do expect that to phase out going forward.

Congrats again to Frans for his retirement.

We will now take our final question for today. Your final question comes from the line of Matthew Clements from Barclays.

Frans, congratulations. First question on inflationary pressure for this year. In your results, you talk about differences in your position in recent history. But perhaps you could just talk generally about what you're seeing in supply chain, how that compares to '22, '23 and how you think about some of these pressures working their way through supply chain through this year? And the second question would be on quick commerce. We're seeing some of your peers, particularly in the U.K. talking about rapid growth in quick commerce. How are you positioned in that channel? What's the scale? What's the profitability profile at the moment? And how do you think about things like retail media and data ownership in that context?

Thank you and thanks for the good wishes a year out. But...

I keep [indiscernible], you have to work for the next 12 months.

That's what I intend to there. I'm fully energized by that for sure. So forward-looking inflation, that's more or less what you asked. I understood your question. We have economists working on all these kind of topics and follow commodity prices and follow energy prices and follow packaging prices and these kind of things. If we then look a little bit at the Middle East, then the conflict there could give all reasons to believe that energy prices are going up.

But as Jolanda already mentioned, for 2026, we are largely hedged both for electricity and diesel in both the U.S. and in Europe. But if you look at raw materials and commodities, if they go up, then we know that these kind of things always come in when they come with a sort of delay. And we have to manage this. It's not unusual these kind of situations. We have seen more delays. A couple of quarters years ago, we talked about cocoa and coffee and all these kind of things. So we know how that works. And therefore, also the relationship and the understanding with our vendors is important here that we make sure that with our shoot cost models, that we negotiate these kind of things that we bring this down to what is real and what is transparent and that we fight for our customers to make sure that we can avoid as much as we can food inflation because that is part of our mission.

So let's see how that goes. Energy, Middle East, raw materials, commodities, of course, I'm concerned that this might cause food inflation, but we work to the max to do the best with our cost saving cost for our save our customer programs, the EUR 1.25 billion every year in our plants. And this is not completely new. This is not a completely new phenomenon in general. So this is a little bit what I see. For the moment, we do not see big upticks in inflation, but there's quite some uncertainty in markets, and we have to deal with this.

And then, Matthew, your second question on quick commerce. We are closely monitoring the fast delivery market. And we, for example, conducted pilots in the Netherlands in a few stores. But in the Netherlands, we see that this market is not yet very large. And the disadvantage of this market is that the demand for fast delivery is largely concentrated in those areas where the floor pressure in our stores is already high. So we will continue to monitor and conduct tests where necessary. And if we see that our customers are seeking for that quick delivery in those areas, we will respond to that accordingly.

So everybody, thank you for joining our call today. For those on the line, you didn't have an issue. For those on the webcast, apologies for that, and we will have it fixed on the replay later this morning.

What was exactly the fix? To be very clear, JP. We -- the text is available. The recording will be available.

Exactly.

The PowerPoints are available for everybody who can review later on. Is that the fix?

That's correct.

All right. Just to make sure that everybody has full access to our comments and data. Okay. Thank you very much.

And we'll see you guys on the road and many more road shows, Frans.

I will.

Thank you for joining.

We see a few people tomorrow in London as usual. Take care. Bye-bye.