Mondelez International Stock

Good morning. Welcome back, day 2. I hope everybody is properly hydrated and ready for another long day. But we're really excited to have with us Mondelez International back at our conference. So thanks so much for being here. And with us this morning, we have COO, Luca Zaramella; CFO, Amit Banati. Welcome to you both.

Thank you.

Thank you, Andrew.

Maybe we kick it off, Luca, with you. Mondelez has come through a pretty anomalous several years, extreme volatility in cocoa, which also necessitated a few years of sizable consecutive pricing, not to mention a broadly challenging consumer environment, all wrapped up in impacts from Middle East conflicts. While still a very dynamic macro theater, it seems as though perhaps we're getting closer to a more -- now I won't say normal, but maybe more stable operating environment. As you think out towards 2027 and beyond, you've continued to express confidence in the 3% to 5% organic sales algorithm and high single-digit constant currency EPS over time. I guess what gives you the most confidence today that, that algorithm is still intact? And what has changed in the business maybe the past few dynamic years that you think makes the algorithm more durable?

So yes, it has been a few years that have been quite eventful, I would say, but we learned a lot of things along the way. The first thing we learned is that we compete in categories that are very resilient. I would have never thought that we would have taken post-COVID all the pricing we took and with minimal, I would say, in the big scheme of things, volume implications. So that's really the first learning.

We continue to see snacking as a great trend in food, particularly in emerging markets. Snacking is the place to be. And within snacking, I personally believe chocolate is one of the best categories, if not the best, because I think there is a special bond between our brands and consumers in general. And it is tough to see for consumers to switch from chocolate to something else. Biscuit is another big opportunity for us. It's a great category. And when we step back and we look at both chocolate and biscuit, a, on chocolate, we have tremendous opportunities in terms of growing penetration of our brands. In emerging markets, we have clear examples of what chocolate can be, but we are not consistently developed across all emerging markets. And so when you take aside India and Brazil, you see plenty of opportunities in establishing chocolate consumer behaviors.

Biscuits on the other side, we are blessed with a brand like Oreo, which is $5 billion globally. But reality is, again, in many places, we have share opportunities that are tremendous, so ample runways. And how we do that is through the muscle of distribution in emerging markets. In developed markets, I think in places like Europe, chocolate has shown us with Biscoff that there is a space between where we play in mainstream and in upper mainstream, where we have the right to play with our brands, call it Milka or Cadbury. And so the premiumization trend is a clear one, elevating the indulgence is a clear trend that we see. And again, Mondelez has the right to play in there.

And finally, the U.S., where, yes, there are some challenges, particularly driven by the fact that there is some economic strains in the consumer environment. But reality is, again, brands like Oreo, Ritz, belVita, et cetera, we have tremendous opportunity. We are starting to play more in channels that are beyond the food and mass. And so when we put all of this together, we coupled with the fact that we are investing heavily in our brands, in capabilities, in route to market, in digital, I believe Mondelez has what it takes to really deliver that algorithm. And to complete the analysis, I would say, from a profitability standpoint, big initiatives like the supply chain program that we have for the U.S. and part of Europe will deliver incremental earnings and fuel for growth.

Great. Amit, maybe for you. The decision to raise your top line outlook while maintaining your EPS guide struck as an important signal. I think it suggests that if the business continues to outperform, your bias may be towards reinvesting behind momentum rather than harvesting all of the near-term profit. Can you talk about that philosophy a bit? Specifically, what are the opportunities you're seeing today that make reinvestment a more attractive use of the incremental profit dollars rather than simply maximizing earnings in the near term?

Yes. So we've been consistent that we are going to invest the upside back into the business into areas that are working. And we see a lot of opportunities, a number of opportunities where we can fuel more investment. I think it's also important to note that we've absorbed all the incremental costs related to the Middle East conflict within our guide, and those costs are not insignificant. So we've absorbed that. I think in terms of opportunities, we want to invest back into areas that are working. So emerging markets where we've got momentum, increase distribution, investment behind our big brands, investment in innovation in specific areas like growth channels, Luca was mentioning, we have an opportunity in growth channels in the U.S. So investing there to get the opportunity.

Investing in innovation, that's working. The Biscoff partnership is working really well, both across chocolate and biscuits. Innovation Milka Croissant in Europe, Sour Patch Chews in the U.S., Gum in Latin America. So really fueling the innovation that's working in the marketplace and scaling that up. And then finally, I think investing back in A&C behind our big brands in the big markets. So really, our view is these reinvestments will drive volume-led top line growth across multiple years.

Luca, the North America segment has gone from one of the more -- one of the larger debates around the stock to arguably one of the more encouraging parts of the story. What's changed most meaningfully over the past 12 months, whether it be promotional strategy, innovation, channels or price type architecture? And I guess why should investors believe the improvement in North America is sustainable, maybe rather than a function of easier comps or just elevated spending in the near term?

There are fundamentally four things that have changed significantly over the last, I would say, 12 months or so. The first one is we fixed our promotional strategy. We came to terms last year that investing more in promotions was not necessarily resulting in incrementality, and it was depleting the value of the category. So we decided to restage our promotional activities, both in terms of depth and frequency and be more intentional on what we do to drive incrementality. And the strategy is paying off. I think the sales team in the U.S. has done an amazing job in making sure that, that promotional strategy is executed with excellence.

The second element is we have accelerated channels growth where we have opportunities. We under share significantly in some of the channels like value clubs and I would say, in general, away-from-home and convenience. And those are opportunities for us, and the team has been very intentional in going after these opportunities, particularly with new formats, a new price point.

The third thing is, quite frankly, we have reinvested much more this year than last year. Last year, we all know we were impacted in terms of earnings because of cocoa, and we were on a much tighter rope in terms of opportunities to invest. This year, there is consistent investment with excellent media around all our core brands.

And the fourth element, it is innovation. I think the team stepping back has really seized the opportunities in places like Ritz or a brand like Ritz, whereby Ritz has been moved more towards munching and for me, consumption occasions. And the fact that we have great opportunities in that area that is quite incremental is resulting in incremental growth, incremental share. If you look closely at the share gains we had with Ritz and you realize what is really working on the core and on this incremental innovation, you really see a model that is working. And we have just started. And so I think there are plenty of opportunities to really push all the innovation harder. And it is not only Ritz, it is Oreo where Minis, again, in the area of munching is an important platform or Zero in the case of Oreo, but also in cases like Sour Patch Kids, and there is more to come. We have a full relaunch plan on some of our core brands that is coming into 2027. And so all those four things coming together have resulted in better results for North America. And I think those are sustainable things.

Maybe Amit, despite the improved results in North America, the category tailwinds still remain somewhat muted. How do you think about winning within a more sluggish category environment? That is if U.S. snacking demand remains subdued, can Mondelez still grow consistently and sustainably in North America through share gains, channel exposure and innovation? Or does the category ultimately need to improve for that to be more sustainable?

No, I think we are confident that we can continue to grow even if the category remains subdued. I think a lot of the drivers of that growth will be what Luca mentioned because a number of them are multiyear plays. So when you think about the opportunity to expand in channels that are growing, right, that's a multiyear play. When you look at out-of-home consumption, when you look at the opportunity that we have in scaling up offerings in better-for-you, Oreo Zero Sugar, Oreo Gluten-free, premium indulgence with Tate's, with Oreo Thins, the whole protein offerings in snack bars. So I think we're executing well this year, but a lot of those drivers, right, are multiyear drivers, and we have plenty of opportunity to really maximize that opportunity.

A big part of our modernization of the supply chain is to create the flexibility to allow us to access those opportunities across channels and occasions. So I think that will be an important driver across -- for growth across multiple years. Obviously, innovation is always going to be important. Consumers want bold differentiated innovation. And I think when you think about brands like Oreo or Sour Patch Kids, right, they absolutely have the right to win there. I think we've learned a lot with some of the activations that we've done. I think we've got an opportunity to continue to excite consumers, surprise them with partnerships, with cultural icons or different brands. And I think we've learned that consumers love that. They love these different combinations. And I think we have the brand that can really activate against those.

And then finally, as Luca was mentioning, right, we are back in terms of investing behind our big brands. So continuing to scale awareness and that, along with big differentiated in-store activations, I think, will allow us to win a bigger share of the basket. So we feel that we have a number of growth drivers that will allow us to continue to drive growth despite the category being subdued.

Luca, maybe shifting to Europe. You've pointed to improving volume trends, improving share trends and better execution across the region. Beyond simply lapping some of the pricing actions, I guess, what are the structural drivers that give you confidence Europe can become a more balanced volume and profit growth story again?

So when we look at the European performance over a prolonged period of time, particularly before the material price increases we took last year, Europe was a good business in terms of both growth in terms of top line and bottom line. And fundamentally, despite the fact that there has been a restage of chocolate volume because of the material pricing we took, those fundamentals are still intact.

Again, we are very proud of the business that we have in the U.K. We're very proud of the business we have in the emerging part, emerging market parts of Europe, the likes of Poland. We are very proud of all the other businesses we have. And yes, there are some challenges, particularly with some of the retailers that we all know. But when you step back and you look at the fundamentals of chocolate, those are still intact. What Biscoff with our chocolate brands of Cadbury and Milka is showing us is that we have the right to win in a space that is more elevated than the regular Milka and Cadbury propositions that we have, which are great. We still have ample opportunities in seasonal. We don't play consistently across all the countries in seasonal. We have opportunities in terms of choco-bakery, for instance, mixing our chocolate brands with our biscuits brand. I mean we created massive businesses in places like Germany by being deliberate on what we wanted to do with Milka Choco & Bakery. And that's a model that we haven't replicated yet in places like the U.K.

Biscuits is another big opportunity. In terms of share, we have some stronghold, the likes of France, the likes of Belgium, reality is in most of the places in Europe in biscuits, we don't have a share that crosses the 10% or 15% threshold. And so being more deliberate as to what we do with Oreo or some of our other brands that we have, I think, still is a great opportunity. And then the adjacencies, the Chipita acquisition is something that has shown us that we have the right to play in cakes and pastries. And Milk Croissant is one example. It is a meaningful business. It is growing, and we are about to roll it out in more places in Europe. And bars is the other one. Grenade was a great acquisition. But again, we kept it for the time being only to the U.K.

So when you look at the opportunities we have and the muscle we have in sales and marketing specifically to really develop further our categories and our brands. Europe is clearly a place that can deliver growth. I mentioned briefly before that the supply chain is improvable. And we are about to take a look at some of our big plants and big lines to modernize them and provide better costs and better profitability to some of our brands to be able to reinvest.

Great. Luca, staying with you. What have you seen more recently in terms of competitive behavior in Europe, chocolate specifically? That was one of the initial watchouts, right, heading into this year, given how precipitously cocoa costs dropped following all the pricing that was taken in the past sort of year plus. And how should we think about the cocoa dynamic now versus where we were just a couple of years back?

So in terms of pricing, there is nothing really unexpected. And one of the things that we called out as a potential risk, which was private label lowering prices in some of the markets like Germany. We haven't seen that. And I think that is a clear outcome of the volatility we have seen as of late in the cocoa market. And so we have seen from private labels a promotional strategy or pricing that is very much in line with what has been, I would say, in the last 6 months to 12 months.

Likewise, for branded competitors, behaviors have been rational. And I would say we made some adjustments that were minor all in all, last year to some of our pricing, and so did competitors. But in the big scheme of things, I would say pricing is holding up well. It is in line with what we expected. And certainly, with cocoa where it is these days, I think the level of pricing that we see is adequate in line with the pricing that we see.

As far as it goes in terms of the cocoa market, look, the cocoa market is fairly nervous. I think there is an overreaction based on what happened a couple of years back. But fundamentally, there are a few things that are very clear. The first and the most important thing is that there is excess supply for the last couple of years, and it is not inconsequential in terms of the amount of it. So the market is oversupplied. And if you look at the last 5 years, what got made in the last couple of years is more than sufficient to cover the deficit that caused a stock depletion in the years before. Chocolate again, is a great category. And before the pricing spikes, it was a category that used to grow volume 2%, 3% [ at least ]. So fundamentally, the market is in a different place. I think there is obviously a concern about El Nino that is factored into the pricing of cocoa at this point in time. But again, if we look at what happened with the mid-crop that was fairly late last year or this year and the impact that it has on the main crop, again, the evolution of the main crop for the new season is pretty much in line with what we would expect it.

I think the -- all competitors are covered for at least 10 months or plus, which is something that we haven't seen in a while. So branded competitors have taken the opportunity to cover themselves up as we did in line with more on historical norm. And so the market is in a very different place in terms of cocoa. Fundamentally, when you look at supply and demand and you also consider the fact that outside of Africa, many countries are growing double digit their supply, I think cocoa in terms of supply and demand for the years to come is in a much different situation and a much better one.

Thank you for that. Amit, turning to emerging markets. They now represent roughly 40% of the business, continue to be one of Mondelez's strongest growth engines. In your view, what is still -- what is still, I guess, relatively in early innings and what has already matured and what's already matured across key markets such as India, Brazil, Mexico and China?

So we've got good momentum in our emerging markets. We grew 4.4% in the quarter. Importantly, it was volume-led. And so I think when you look at our emerging markets portfolio, we have plenty of runway for growth, both in the big 4 markets, China, India, Brazil and Mexico, which is roughly half of our emerging markets as well as the other emerging markets. So we've got a lot of markets, right, in terms of growth opportunity. I think we've got a very strong competitive moat in our emerging markets. When you look at our portfolio of iconic brands, the scale in our RTM, in our route to market, the strong empowered local teams that we have and the supply chain, the local supply chain as well as R&D. So a very, very strong moat across our emerging market businesses.

I think our categories are still very under-penetrated. So when you look at our core categories, we have significant headroom from a penetration standpoint, obviously, opportunity to drive frequency, opportunity to premiumize the categories. So I think if you look at what we're doing with Cadbury Silk in India, for example, as we're leading the premiumization of the category. So you've got a number of avenues for multiyear growth on our categories.

I think then from a distribution standpoint, also significant headroom. So even in China, we've -- biscuits, we are probably in 3 million stores out of a universe of 6 million. In gum, a significant opportunity for distribution growth as well. And likewise, in India, we're probably reaching about 3 million out of a universe of 9 million to 10 million. Visi Coolers, the units that we put, the chillers that we put in has been a significant driver of growth. And I think we have plenty of headroom. We've done a remarkable job in driving the Visi Coolers, but we still have a lot of headroom to continue to drive that. And we know that, that's a proven success model. It's a proven category builder.

Similar opportunities in route-to-market in Brazil and Mexico, where we can leverage the Ricolino acquisition in traditional trade. So I think when you look at our big 4 markets, plenty of opportunities. We're going to continue to invest behind our brands, both in scaling up global brands like Oreo and Cadbury, but as well as investing behind the local jewels. And I think we're going to continue to invest in high-growth channels, whether it's snack stores in China, quick commerce in India. So -- and then I think from our focus on the next set of markets, Southeast Asia, we see opportunity there, Middle East and Africa, Andean and Central America as well as South Central Europe. So those are the next set of emerging markets that we feel offer a significant opportunity. So I think when you put all of that together, emerging markets, already a significant part of the company, but plenty of runway for growth across multiple years.

Luca, one innovation you've consistently highlighted recently is the partnership with Biscoff, which I have to admit was one of those ideas that -- look I got a lot of things wrong. This one I felt like was a winner at the moment we first heard about it. So I'm happy that's working out. What strikes us is that the conversation increasingly sounds like this is a successful new platform that's really been a benefit for both parties. How do you think about the long-term opportunity for the partnership? And what characteristics, I guess, have convinced you this will become something materially larger than sort of a typical brand collaboration?

So first of all, this year alone, the Biscoff platform, both in chocolate and biscuit is going to exceed $300 million in revenue. So I think you were right in saying it was...

Once it was.

More than once, you have been in our interactions, but -- so you called it right. Look, it is a great brand. It is a brand that is uniquely positioned. So it has a very crisp marketing proposition. It is a brand that stands out in its uniqueness. And the combination of Biscoff with our chocolate brands is really something that consumers love. I was pleased to see that Cadbury &More has been quickly consumed out there. So unlike others that are out there. So it is clearly something that is unique in terms of a consumer proposition. And we have learned over time that the combination of big brands that are top of mind for consumers is something that really hits the mark.

So we see still plenty of opportunities because we are treating our chocolate propositions with Biscoff as not a line extension, as a new brand. And so we want to support it. We want to have the right promotional elements. We want to have the right visibility. And importantly, we are pacing ourselves because we have a pipeline of innovation that spans across three stages already. And so we know what we're going to do now, what we're going to do in a couple of years and what we will do beyond that. And still, there is something that is to come that is going to be delicious for our consumers.

In terms of biscuit itself, we are very pleased with what the Indian team has done and the partnership is, again, is working well. We sold out the line that we put down in record time in literally 6 months. We're about to put down another line. And so the brand recognition is quite high. The fact that it is complementary to our existing portfolio of biscuits, clearly, it's something that we like because it goes with incrementality. And importantly, this is a win-win collaboration for both us and Lotus. And so we are very pleased. And look, like India, there might be other markets where we have the route-to-market muscle and the ability to develop biscuits.

Importantly, in our chocolate markets, there are some where we haven't launched yet. And so we are going to be seeing Lacta and Biscoff in Brazil beginning of next year, and we will make a big splash for the Easter season with something that is, again, delicious and remarkable for our consumers. So off to a great start. I don't think there are many platforms out there that can deliver $300 million of incremental revenue. And there is some cannibalization of the base. But clearly, the vast majority of Biscoff is resulting in elevated penetration, particularly among the young cohorts. And so we like it for so many reasons, and so does Biscoff because obviously, there is a benefit for them, too.

Great. Amit, as we think about '27, the company has been consistent about its confidence in delivering strong earnings growth. When you think about what ultimately drives that confidence, is it primarily a commodity story, a volume story, one of productivity or something else entirely? So in other words, is it simply hedging? Or are you also doing more work on the cost side and the demand generation side as well to ensure that sort of regardless of where cocoa lands, you're well positioned to achieve the strong EPS growth you've previously discussed?

Yes. So we continue to believe we can drive strong EPS growth in '27. We've got good line of sight into our costs across our commodity baskets. But it's not just only about commodities, right? So I think we've been talking a lot about the reinvestments we are making in things that are working. So -- and we're very focused in executing with excellence, reinvesting in what's working to build the momentum for volume-led top line growth in '27.

I think from a supply chain, productivity standpoint, a lot of focus on that. I think the supply chain modernization program in the U.S., we should start seeing benefits of that in '27. So that's going to be a driver. We're going to continue to be very disciplined from an overhead standpoint. And I think we're going to continue to reinvest back in our brands, back in digital capabilities, back in the route-to-market opportunities that we have because we continue to see plenty of growth opportunities across a number of platforms. So overall, I think we're working across all levers to drive both the top line as well as the bottom line. And I think we feel confident about delivering strong EPS growth in '27.

Luca, Oreo remains one of the most iconic brands in packaged food. You've discussed a broader Oreo relaunch initiative next year. What do you believe is the largest untapped growth opportunity for the brand today? Is there any way to frame what the size of the prize could ultimately look like around this coming relaunch?

So Oreo is the star brand, I would say, across our portfolio. It is a brand that is reaching $5 billion in revenue. It is a brand that is growing mid-single digit this year. It is a brand that over a prolonged period of time, say, the last 5 years to 10 years has grown high single digit in terms of revenue. And it is a brand that has a unique positioning. And importantly, it has avenues of growth because from the core proposition of the Oreo Cookie, we have been able to establish businesses in terms of new flavors. We have been able to establish businesses like Minis or Thins or now Zero or Gluten-free. So when you look at the full array of opportunities of Oreo and the maturity curve of Oreo across all the markets, there is plenty of opportunity in expanding the portfolio distribution, et cetera.

It is a brand that we want to relaunch in 2027, and it is a 360-degree relaunch. It is more than logo change. We are going to improve the packaging of Oreo. We are going to have extensive PPA changes to hit more price points and to be able to provide access to the brand through different channels. We're going to have quality improvements. There is going to be, in some cases, new formulas that will result in better labels, but I don't want to spoil it because I think it will be a big splash in the marketplace. And the teams around the world are thinking of activating the full relaunch in 2027 in a way that is going to really make a difference for the brand itself and for Mondelez.

In terms of opportunities, what we are finding out, particularly in the market where there is a high maturity level and penetration of Oreo, it is that propositions like Oreo Minis, Oreo Thins or Oreo Zero Sugar they are really incremental and they tailor to a different cohort of consumers from where the brand is usually accessed. And so we really like all of these. And reality is we haven't done necessarily the best possible job consistently across the board in terms of developing all these propositions that are highly incremental.

I think in terms of PPA, it is something that we have an opportunity. And again, when you look across the board, you span from markets that have a high penetration, a high share of Oreo. The best one is clearly China, where share is around about 20% for Oreo. Then you go to the U.S., we have a 10% share of the market, but the overwhelming majority of the market Oreo has a share that is below 5%. And that's really a clear opportunity that points in the direction of the potential of the brand, particularly if we improve the formulation, if we improve the packaging, if we improve PPA. And certainly, if we go back to the roots of Oreo, and we continue to establish it as a brand where the ritual of twisting, licking and dunk is something that consumers love.

Good. All right. I'm going to squeeze in two last ones. Amit, Mondelez has spent years reshaping the portfolio around chocolate biscuits and baked snacks. When you think about strategic M&A today, what would have to be true for a deal to be compelling enough to compete with reinvesting behind the existing business?

Yes. So we have a lot of runway for growth in our existing categories. I think we have opportunities from a productivity standpoint as well, particularly in the supply chain. So that's obviously going to be top priority, right? I think from an M&A standpoint, I think we'll continue to invest behind high-growth platforms and capabilities in segments like better-for-you, protein, premium indulgence, I think expanding into adjacencies, cakes and pastries, for example, snack bars. And then I think from a geography standpoint, white spaces where we can buy scale and a platform that we can leverage to drive our categories and our brands. So that's going to be the focus from an M&A standpoint. I think we run a very disciplined process, with a tight criteria, again, strategic fit and value creation potential. We've got a pretty good integration playbook in integrating these acquisitions and driving the synergy value capture. So that's going to be the focus from an M&A standpoint.

Okay. Got about a minute left. Luca, maybe we wrap it up here. If you could leave investors with sort of one reason why you're more optimistic about Mondelez's future today than, let's say, you were 18 months ago, what would it be?

Look, I think we went through quite a turbulent time in the last 18 months, but things are, I would say, stabilizing. I think Mondelez as a company, if you look at our historical track record, it is when big challenges come up, we have what it takes to overcome them and get at the end stronger, at the end of the spectrum. And I think the #1 opportunity we have, it is to invest in our brands, to have our teams executing well day in, day out. I believe we have the right strategy. We have what it takes in terms of capabilities, and we are putting the right investment for the long term into the system. And so many of the things we are investing today, they are going to bear fruits, I think, for the years to come. And I'm really positive about the future of Mondelez. And again, time will tell if we are right, but I believe we are.

Great. Luca, Amit, thanks for being with us here today. Appreciate it.

Thank you..

Thank you, Andrew.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Mondelez International Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Question-and-Answer Session. [Operator Instructions]

On today's call are Dirk Van de Put, Chairman and CEO; Luca Zaramella, COO; Amit Banati, CFO; and Shep Dunlap, SVP of Investor Relations. Earlier this afternoon, the company posted a press release and prepared remarks, both of which are available on its website.

During this call, the company will make forward-looking statements about performance. These statements are based on how the company sees things today. Actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in the company's 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K filings for more details on forward-looking statements. As the company discusses results today, unless noted as reported, it will be referencing non-GAAP financial measures, which adjust for certain items included in the company's GAAP results.

In addition, the company provides year-over-year growth on a constant currency basis unless otherwise noted. You can find the comparable GAAP measures and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations within the company's earnings release and at the back of the slide presentation.

We will now move to our first question. Our first question comes from Andrew Lazar of Barclays.

Welcome, Amit. Maybe to start off, Dirk, emerging markets, again, remarkably strong for the second quarter in a row this year, a trend we've seen from some other multinationals recently as well. I was hoping you could talk briefly maybe about some of the key highlights that give you confidence in the second half outlook in those markets?

Yes. Thank you, Andrew. I would say at this moment, what's really driving the strong top line that we have, which was 4.4% and then also strong volume in Q2. We feel that there's a very solid backdrop as it relates to snacking, which continues to perform well across the major emerging markets. Consumer confidence in the emerging markets, I would say, overall is still pretty good. India is very strong. Mexico, Brazil, consumer is solid. And then in China, it's softer, but we feel overall that things will gradually improve.

Value growth is holding up very well, particularly in biscuits and chocolate. And if you think about what is sort of driving this is, for sure, the expansion of our distribution, we added another 100,000 stores in India. Brazil is now at 1 million stores. China keeps on building out its distribution. In Southeast Asia, we're expanding. The categories are still pretty underpenetrated. So we still have a long runway of more consumers consuming more every day. We have now multi years of sustained reinvestment. I think the mixture between global brands and local jewels is working well for us in these markets. So we hit all the different price tiers.

And then we have a very good buildup in our channels and RGM. So I think it's a very structural situation. It's not cyclical. And I think that we will continue to see some strong growth in emerging markets for us.

Great. And then maybe a follow-up. I was hoping you could double-click a little bit on the improvement you're seeing in North America, really with an eye towards sort of the sustainability of the performance in this region in the back half of the year.

Yes. Yes. Well, I would say the consumer confidence in North America has rebounded from lows, but it remains very subdued. There is still inflation, there's energy prices that continue to put pressure. We see this K-shaped growth where you have consumers on one hand, going to value formats and channels where the prices are lower, but at the same time, better-for-you and premium options are doing well.

Purchasing power is up, but consumers remain very concerned about affordability, the economic outlook and job security. So we did well. We had, I would say, strong net revenue growth. We had a positive volume mix. Both are positive and we're accelerating sequentially versus Q1, and we think that will continue in the second half. We gained share in all our categories in North America. Our Ventures portfolio, the well. Perfect Snacks, States [indiscernible]. We have very strong growth in the value channel, high single digits. We had mid-single-digit growth in away from home. We're gaining share in crackers, particularly Ritz is doing well. And so we -- and we have a good bottom line.

I would say the reason why that is happening is, first of all, we have a very disciplined promotional execution. Second, we have now innovation that's really working for us. I'm thinking about Ritz, [indiscernible] or Sour Patch Kids choose. Oreo is starting to do well. Like I said, Ritz with its innovations is doing well. Zbar is growing, given go at a good quarter also. I think another reason why we have these results is that these growth channels are really working for us. We have good price pack architecture with single-serve, multi-packs, variety packs, the club packs, and we are -- grew our reinvestment on A&C double-digit.

So I believe this is sustainable, all these reasons. Why? Because we will continue to reinvest and in fact, we will accelerate that in the second half. We have a very good possibility to keep on growing in the value channels. We have the innovation pipeline that will continue. And I think that at this stage, the pricing is solid and the promotional execution that we have is working well for us. So we're expecting a very strong second half in North America.

We'll move on to Scott Marks with Jefferies.

I wanted to start off with Amit first, welcome. I know it's your first call with the team here. Given that you're coming into the business with a fresh set of eyes, I wondering if you could just share maybe some initial observations now that you're almost a month in about this business.

Thanks, Scott. Holidays, but my natural observations reinforce my thesis on Mondelez. It's only a few weeks into the role, but the strength of the portfolio, the strength of the team clearly stand out.

We have a truly iconic brand portfolio, and I'm really encouraged by the strong innovation pipeline. And I think, as Dirk mentioned, the momentum that we are seeing behind the innovation around the world. We also have a very advantaged emerging markets platform with plenty of runway for growth. It's also been great to see the level of commitment to reinvesting back into the business to drive sustained performance and we saw that in this quarter, and we're going to continue to drive that in the rest of the year as well.

I do believe we have compelling growth opportunities. When I look at the penetration and the distribution opportunity emerging markets, the new occasions that our brands can access through innovation, the channels that we under-index in. And again, we saw that in the quarter, the growth in the value in the U.S. So some compelling growth opportunities. We also see -- I also see opportunities on the productivity side, whether it's in the supply chain or in AI-enabled efficiency across the P&L. And that's going to create the fuel for us to continue to reinvest behind growth. So it's been a busy few weeks.

I've already been through a Board meeting, operating reviews and into my first earnings. Obviously, some things are new for me, but some things are familiar. I mean I've been in CPG now for over 3 decades and in snacking and food categories for over 2 decades. So the categories, the brands, the underlying dynamics are very, very familiar. And I'm really looking forward in the coming weeks and months to diving deeper into the business, getting to know the teams and getting into the markets.

Appreciate the thoughts there. And then maybe just as we think about the outlook for the remainder of the year, obviously, took up the top line guide but held EPS. Wondering if you can help us understand any puts and takes as it relates to phasing for the back half of the year on the top line inflation, brand reinvestment or anything else you might flag for us as we think about the rest of the year?

Yes. So we feel good about the top line. And I think you've seen us take the top line to at least plus 2%. Emerging markets, strong volume-led growth. We expect that to continue. North America, improving execution. And again, despite a soft consumer, we expect to continue to grow both share and top line in North America. And then in Europe, we're seeing signs of improvement as the volume trajectory improves and as we start lapping some of the pricing from last year. I'd say the shape of the top line growth would be -- is balanced between the 2 quarters. So we'd expect to see similar levels of growth across both -- across the rest of the year, across the quarters.

From an EPS standpoint, we are maintaining outlook. I think we've been consistent that we'll invest any upside back and reinvest back into the areas where we are seeing momentum. So emerging markets, some of the innovation like Biscoff, driving distribution. And we do have incremental costs from the Middle East conflict, which we've managed and which we are digesting. So that's included in the outlook as well. And then I think from a phasing standpoint between quarter 3 and quarter 4, it will be a little bit more quarter 4 back weighted on the -- below the line on the earnings, but it will really be driven by some phasing on Cocoa. We'll still see some phasing on cocoa in quarter 3, which will reverse out in quarter 4. And then we are lapping up a couple of interest and tax items in quarter 3. So it will be back weighted in quarter 4, but that's largely mechanical.

We'll move on now to Peter Galbo with Bank of America.

Amit, nice to speak with you again. Dirk, I was hoping to click in on Europe. Your prepared remarks talked about signs of progress there and specifically, I think, mentioned volumes kind of turning positive come the second half. Just maybe you could kind of put that in context for us in terms of the timing and in particular, just given the heat wave that's kind of continued so far through Q3, how you see that volume improvement in Europe, particularly evolving in the second half?

Yes. We have 3 today. So I'm going to put Luca to work a little bit too, and let him answer the European question.

Peter, thank you for your question. As we said, the European chocolate business is on a positive volume mix trajectory. And that's really what you're going to see in the second part of the year. Volumes are improving, and we see that continuing through the second half, particularly as we start lapping prior year pricing. You might have seen a little bit of a negative pricing in Q2 in Europe. That is the result of pricing adjustments that we made already in the second part of last year to adjust some specific price gaps, but really nothing to worry about share, particularly is -- has been moving in the right direction in the last several months, both in volume and value. And importantly, past the heat wave, I think you're going to see more execution and more activation, particularly around Biscoff. And we have another brand that is milk [indiscernible] and that is doing very, very well.

So we feel confident about the improved trajectory in Europe, the second part of the year. We are also leaning into new channel and pursuing incremental growth. And then clearly, we are investing much more agency. So Q2 is a little bit below where we would have expected it to be, quite frankly, but it is mostly because we can't trade stock in control given the heat wave that came and impacted particularly chocolate consumption.

So I feel optimistic about the second part of the year in Europe. I think you are going to see much better top line. We are happy with the share numbers. And importantly, we are going to see a rebound in profitability as well. And that really sets the stage for continued growth, top and bottom in 2027.

Great. And maybe as a follow-up, Luca, just your perspective with Cocoa at these levels. Obviously, there's been a lot of movement in kind of the futures market over the past few months. Just how you're viewing the environment from an environmental discipline perspective amongst the players. Maybe any color on coverage into next year? And then just how you're thinking about Super El Nino, at least at this point as it relates to Cocoa.

Yes. I think, look, on Cocoa, despite the most recent run-ups in Cocoa prices, the market fundamentally is in a very different place versus what drove the crisis, I would say, in 2024. So predominantly, I would say the current reaction in the market price of Cocoa is due to 3 elements. It is the pulp count that is a little bit below the average. But quite frankly, that is driven by what happened to the mid-crop that was exceptionally good.

There is a short squeeze so specs covering their positions, and that drove, again, support to the price and clearly, El Nino. Though from a fundamental standpoint, I think we all need to realize that the surplus in -- between demand and supply in Cocoa is a historical high. I think for this year, we are going to have at least 0.5 million metric tons of surplus and that is the equivalent of 10% of the total demand for Cocoa. So not inconsequential.

The industry coverage is at 10 months, so very different place compared to what happened in '24 when the industry was covered just 7 months. And then as I said, I think the early pop counts suggest that this is not going to be a great crop, but is still opportunity for the crop to develop and catch up with the historical norms. Finally, the specs are now short only in inverted commerce, less than 200,000 metric tons. And so the market is already pricing some downside. So I would say structurally, the market is in a very different position.

To your question about '27, look, I don't want to make this necessarily how well or how bad are we covered into 2027. Reality is that, as we mentioned a few times, '27 earnings are expected to be strong. And quite frankly, earnings are insulated from commodity volatility for us, please. We are using multiple levers into 2027. We still believe this company can deliver positive volume mix and differentiated volume mix compared to many others. As we said many times, we are full steam into delivering elevated productivities, particularly in supply chain, in places like Europe and the U.S. We have interesting programs in terms of AI efficiencies that will drive overhead down and then even our portfolio strategy to become less Cocoa reliant company and so pushing portfolio of solutions that are less Cocoa intense, I think continues to make side.

So even acknowledging the uncertainty around Cocoa for 2027, [indiscernible] El Nino, et cetera. I think the structural position in Cocoa is much better than 2024. And our '27 earnings is around execution and levers that I just mentioned. So I feel quite good about 2027. And look, as we exit the year with momentum, we are going to see continuation into 2027 of top and bottom.

We'll now move on to Peter Grom with UBS.

Great. I was hoping to get some perspective on growth margin performance [indiscernible]. So the 34% in Q2, it was a bit better than I think we and others have modeled. So just curious if you can impact how that came around in to your expectations. And then you mentioned some Cocoa phasing impacting the back half of earnings guidance. Can you maybe just frame how to think about gross margin in the back half fell to the 34%?

Yes. The line was quite disturbed, but I got the gist of your question, which I think is around gross margin. Look, I think we moved away from guiding to gross margin percentage. We were very happy with the plus 3% in gross profit dollar terms that we saw in Q2. You are going to see an acceleration of the gross profit dollar number, particularly in Q3, but also in Q4. The EBIT in absolute dollar terms is going to be up in both Q3 and Q4. More in Q4, quite frankly, for a series of reasons. But we feel very good about the guidance we gave you for EPS for the full year, recognizing that there are a couple of items below the line in Q3 that are going to cause a little bit of a high autos between EBIT and EPS, but really nothing structural, nothing to worry about.

Top line is coming. Volume mix is coming. Gross profit dollar is coming. And so despite the material investments we are going to have in AMC, we are going to see EBIT growth in both Q3 and Q4. EPS, as I said, is a little bit pressured in Q3. So we are happy with the gross profit dollar. The outcome of the gross profit dollar is us holding prices in chocolate, given also the fact that the environment is fairly rational across the board. It is the result of volume mix leverage. This is a result of the incredible amount of work our supply chain, both procurement and manufacturing are doing in terms of productivities. And as I said, hopefully, we're going to see a continuation of this throughout 2027.

Great. Hopefully, this is a little bit better. And then just a clarification -- all right, well, sorry about that, guys. Just more 1 clarification. I think in reference to -- I think it was Andrew's question, you talked about positive volume mix in North America and how it improved sequentially versus 1Q, and that you expect that to continue. So I just want to clarify, should we expect volume mix to accelerate relative to the 1.2% that you delivered in 2Q in the back half of the year?

I stay disciplined in not guiding through many variables. What I said is that we are happy with the volume mix momentum we see in emerging markets that we see in North America. Europe, I think, was pressure, but you're going to see a sequential improvement. Now I wouldn't guide you necessarily to volume mix for the second part of the year, but it will be positive. I think in terms of top line, what we said, at least 2% reflects positive volume mix and modest contribution from pricing.

We'll move on now to Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler.

Welcome, Amit. I just wanted to follow up on a comment from the prepared remarks, just talking about expecting strong 2027 EPS growth. Any key levers you're watching for how that unfolds? Or maybe any way you could maybe elaborate on how you define strong or put that in a little bit more context?

Look, I think it is really premature to give you more color than what we said consistently, I would say, in the last 3 earnings calls in terms of 2027. I said in -- for a previous question that again, earnings are expected to be strong and insulated somewhat from commodity volatility. We are going to see into 2027 volume/mix positive, continuous momentum in emerging markets. I think you are going to see a European situation that is stabilized and North America continuing, particularly around us going after incremental opportunities, both in terms of channels, alternate channels, innovation and strength of our brand.

I think Dirk mentioned a few times in one of the past calls that we're going to have a full relaunch for Oreo, and that, I believe, is going to make us flush into North America volume mix. You are going to see accelerated productivity and cost savings. We mentioned a few times the supply chain program in the U.S., but there are cost opportunities that are meaningful in Europe too. And then from an overhead standpoint, we are accelerating our savings and driving efficiencies, particularly through AI. So when you put all these things together, we feel quite confident in telling you today that earnings for 2027 is going to be strong.

That's great color. Very helpful. And just on innovation. Could you elaborate there a little bit more and maybe going to some of what's really working or key focus areas? And maybe specifically, I would love if you could elaborate on Biscoff in particular and how that's playing out. I know there's some different layers to that.

Yes. So one of the things we're doing is reduce our innovation portfolio going for bigger and fewer beds and make sure that those are based on platform that we can prove. Of course, sort of the breakthrough innovation, we have to combine that still with renovation, flavors, PPA, seasonals and so on. And so this year, we're seeing particularly good traction on some of those innovations, particularly for instance, in health and wellness and functional, our snack bar portfolio driven by the protein trends, of course, is doing well. Gluten-free is working well for us, zero sugar also. We see good traction in cakes and pastries with Give & Go and Evirth in China.

And then we have -- particularly Ritz, as I mentioned, as an example, as it relates into salty. And then in premium and indulgent, we have Toblerones [ pralines ]. We have the Cadbury and more range that we are launching around the world. And in the U.S., the [indiscernible] are doing well. So very good in well-being, cakes and pastries, premium and indulgent chocolate. As it relates to Biscoff, there's layers to the Biscoff collaboration.

The first one is that we are launching in our chocolate range, a special Biscoff range. Basically, it is tablets, in the first place filled with different forms of Biscoff could be sprinkles of Biscoff or the Biscoff cream or even a full Biscoff cookie. We then bring that into other formats like, for instance, the Cadbury eggs. And we go around the world. We just launched in Scandinavia, for instance, where this new range took 7% market share just in the first month that we launched it. In Australia, the chocolate range added 3% growth to the chocolate category on a year basis. So very, very strong reaction to this. And we step it up. It's not like we launched once. We continue bringing new innovations every 6 months or so under this Biscoff range. We think we have a runway for a number of years to keep on doing that.

The second part is that we are starting to represent with license Biscoff in certain markets around the world. We launched in India with great success. In fact, we built one line, and we sold out that line from the first month. So we are hurrying up the building of the second line, and we see Biscoff really becoming an important biscuit brand in India. We are preparing a launch in Brazil, where we're going to launch in the beginning of next year and so on. So it's largely going to be in emerging markets, but the idea is that we keep on adding emerging markets where we build up the Biscoff presence as a biscuit.

And then the third part of this cooperation is basically that we have developed a range of ice cream products for Biscoff, which we are also representing for them. We're starting to explore a fourth leg. We haven't done anything yet, but we are thinking about our other product categories, what can we do with Biscoff. To give you an idea starting to think in the 7 days range, [ croissants ] with Biscoff filling it. We're thinking about a launch of an Oreo with Biscoff cream inside and things like that. So there's another leg that we are developing.

So if you look at that, this will take a magnitude that is going to be in the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars. And I personally believe if you look at it also their side because they are starting to do a number of innovations on their side. Think about the Biscoff which has a layer of category or a layer of mill count up, but that's going to be sold by Lotus bakeries. If you add that all up, I think this is a collaboration that in the coming years will be worth $500 million to about $1 billion.

We'll move on now to David Palmer of Evercore ISI.

I'm just hearing all this talk about different growth stuff, innovation, your double-digit investment in A&C. Just wondering maybe sort of a big picture as you're thinking about this, A&C has been higher in the past. I wonder as we're scaling through what we're going to see in terms of Cocoa over the next couple of years, would you see A&C reaching past peak levels in the percent of sales? And then -- and certainly, that with that ability to spend, you're going to want to do that well. I'm wondering how are you spending that A&C if you seeing how -- sometimes when you take things on and take things off, you're beginning to see what works and what doesn't, plus you've mentioned a lot of innovation. So I'm wondering how your priorities in terms of A&C are shifting as you're going through that ramp? And I'll have a quick follow-up.

Yes. Look, I think, again, we think in dollar terms in the company, and I can assure you that even despite the cuts that we made last year that were, for the most part, in the nonworking media. If you look consistently over the last few years, A&C is the line on the P&L that is really growing the most. So we have consistently invested. We are investing in our brands. And we have some belief that reinvesting in our brands is really the best thing. I would also say that the quality of how we spend has improved dramatically. We give clear guidelines in terms of what we expect the A&C investments to be by main buckets.

So we expect communication. We expect a certain amount of digital. We expect a certain amount of activation at point of sales through material that drives consumption and quality of execution and consumption of our brands and category consumption. And so we have tightened up these crews quite a bit in terms of guidelines. I think there is now an important frontier, which is what AI can do, particularly to creative media. And I think there is going to be important steps in terms of how efficiently we are going to spend.

Now I would be lying if I would say A&C and the amount of money we spend is consistently high across the board. We know there are situations where quality of media can improve and particularly targeting specific cohorts and going after incremental opportunities. And so tailoring communication to consumer cohorts is really something that we are trying to do more and more. And so expect better spending going forward, higher spending, but also expect better execution on how we spend the A&C. But having said that, I think we should be happy with the amount of work the marketing teams have done around the world to ensure that we spend and we spend well to support our brands.

And just a quick follow-up on that. You've talked about some innovation. You mentioned some Biscoff innovation before. Is there any way to roll up the scale of innovation this year, percent of sales that you anticipate from new ideas? And then to what degree is -- are you spending money advertising on some of your increases allocated to that? And then if you had to isolate distribution gains, typically in a given year might be 2 points of distribution gains just as a typical amount of revenue lift from distribution. Like how would you characterize distribution as a lift? And then I'll pass it on.

Go ahead.

No, no, you go ahead.

Yes. I think it's going a little bit too deep if we have to sort of separate out how much we are doing in innovation. But in a typical thinking about innovation, I think you're performing well as a company, and we are at that level, even slightly below is that 10% of your net revenue is coming from innovations that were launched in the last 3 years, and that we're there slightly above. So that's typically what we're aiming at. We would like to see that go up going forward to potentially more like 15%, but that is sort of the benchmark that we have in mind. The way things are going this year, I feel that, that part that innovation represents in our net revenue will continue to go up.

The second part of the question was about distribution. I'm difficult to put an exact number on our global distribution gains, how much that represents in our net revenue gains. But in a market like India or China, whatever our net revenue growth is usually 50% is an increase in same-store sales and 50% of that NAV growth is extra stores that we open. We're continuing at the same rhythm, as I mentioned before, we are now in 1 million stores in Brazil. We've added 100,000 stores in India. We see a runway in most emerging markets to continue to do that. And at the same time, even in developed markets, like I was explaining in North America, the value chain away from home, convenience, still are channels where we can gain significant distribution. And so that runway of distribution that we have almost in every market around the world is one of the reasons that we believe we can perform quite well in top line growth.

And we'll move on to our final question today from Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities.

I wanted to follow up on this line of thinking actually around distribution with a focus on North America. Last quarter, you talked about growing under-indexed channels, namely in the U.S. This quarter, you're flagging high single-digit growth in value channels away from home is up, I think, mid-single digits. But can you expand on I don't know the history, if you will, of what brought us to this point that such a scaled company still has such opportunity from a distribution standpoint in a market as seemingly developed and mature as North America. What are you doing specifically to accelerate your distribution in these channels? Where -- when do you think that inflection point in distribution came? Is it specifically this year versus perhaps consumers just seeking value? And then just maybe -- you've touched on it a bit, but just the concept of durability of expanding distribution. Again, all of this is specific to the North America business. So I would just appreciate additional context there?

Yes. I would say that historically, these channels have not been a priority in the sense that -- usually, the growth that we could get in the food channel, for instance, was already quite substantial. And as a company, from a history perspective, that's the channels where we were always big in. I would say the value channel, yes, in theory, the value channel in the past was a channel that we didn't focus that much on because of margins. But now we see the consumer is really migrating there. So we are developing special pack and working on the margin structure in those channels. And so we feel that we can push much harder.

I believe that still is going to be quite a runway for us. Convenience has always been a bit of an opportunity for us. It might seem very logic, but inconvenience, you need to have the right product range. And while Oreo in our biscuit range are, of course, very successful, they are a little bit more of a home consumption and consumers walking into a convenience store, tend to go more for a drink or a coffee or cake and pastry, and it's not that obvious. Now with -- recently with things such as CLIF and some of the other bars that we have, we believe that there's an opportunity. We've also historically covered that channel through brokers. We've started to do more directly in a number of cities, and we're seeing some significant growth there.

So we believe we still have a good growth rate for a few years in convenience. And then away-from-home a bit the same story. It wasn't really something that we were focused on because we felt that we had to prioritize our growth in the other channels. But now in the days that we see food not necessarily growing as fast. We're starting to focus more and more on away-from-home. And I believe that there is a big opportunity for us. Away-from-home is quite particular in the sense that you need to develop products and innovations together with the client. Often I'm thinking about McDonald's here or some of the other QSRs or a range for company, cafeterias and things like that.

So you need to really put in place and infrastructure to make that happen. We are now doing that on a global basis. And I think the opportunity for us there is going to be quite substantial in the years to come. So I would focus a little bit more on what it could represent for us. So then why we are not yet as developed as we should be. I think at this stage, it really gives us a significant opportunity to grow more than you would expect with the normal channels.

Okay. Great context. And then just as a second question, the organic sales growth in the front half of the year is already tracking well, I suppose, in line with at least 2% for the full year, obviously a bit better than 2%. And into the back half of the year, I mostly see easier volume compares and most of your regions globally. I realize there will be some normalization of pricing. But if you look into the back half of the year, just kind of sticking around that 2% range and not being a bit more forthright about a bit more upside. Is that just uncertainty in the global macros, which, by the way, makes total sense. Are you seeing things in the business that you would just flag for us maybe globally that would cause you some concern about potential deceleration. Just any context for what is now going to be a potentially wide range for back half top line outcomes.

We don't see any major concerns. Clearly, we told you already that the Middle East crisis is causing us some eves on top and bottom, more to the bottom line, quite frankly, but we still lost quite a bit of revenue in the first half. So that's factored into the first half and will be entities in our guidance for the second part of the year. So other than that, I would say what we said about continuous momentum in emerging markets in North America and Europe rebound, particularly on the volume mix line, still stands far away. But that's also why we say at least 2%.

And look, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. So let's see how Q3 pans out. In Q3, there is still an element in Europe that is related to the unprecedented heat wave and we see some markets in chocolate specifically being quite impacted. And so look, I think there might be more upside than the 2%, but that's why we say at least 2%. And -- but I wouldn't get to a number that is necessarily much higher than 2%, 2.5% in the second part of the year.

I think that's it. That was the last question. So I want to thank you for connecting to the call. We are very satisfied with our results. We have a good view on the second half. We think it's going to be a strong second half for the company. And we'll see you during the next earnings call or hear you during the next earnings call. Thank you.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate the time and participation. You may now disconnect.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Mondelez International First Quarter 2026 Earnings Question-and-Answer Session. [Operator Instructions]

On today's call are Dirk Van de Put, Chairman and CEO; Luca Zaramella, COO and CFO; and Shep Dunlap, SVP of Investor Relations. Earlier this afternoon, the company posted a press release and prepared remarks, both of which are available on its website.

During this call, the company will make forward-looking statements about performance. These statements are based on how the company sees things today. Actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in the company's 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K filings for more details on forward-looking statements.

As the company discusses results today, unless noted as reported, it will be referencing non-GAAP financial measures, which adjust for certain items included in the company's GAAP results. In addition, the company provides year-over-year growth on a constant currency basis unless otherwise noted. You can find the comparable GAAP measures and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations within the company's earnings release and at the back of the slide presentation.

We will now move to our first question. We'll take our first question from Andrew Lazar with Barclays.

Dirk, I was hoping you could walk us through a bit more around the key drivers and climate in emerging markets as well as where you're seeing improvement in some of the key developed markets. I think in the prepared remarks, you mentioned returning to volume share growth in European chocolate while in U.S. biscuit, I think there was a positive inflection in March. And both of these are areas where there's been more pressure and in large part, why some flexibility was built into guidance to start the year for fiscal '26?

Andrew, yes, let me maybe start with developed markets. We're pleased with our improving performance in the developed markets. It's in line, maybe even slightly better than our expectations. If I first look at Europe, consumer confidence there is stable, but it's fragile as you would expect from the Middle East conflict. Snacking value growth is holding up quite well, and the penetration of biscuits and chocolate categories, for instance, is holding up also. So we had a good start of the year. The retailer negotiations are generally complete, and they are in line with our planning. We had a very robust Easter season, which share improvements in several of our markets. Our Biscoff partnership continues to do really well. So happy with the European performance.

Linked to that, the chocolate in Australia and New Zealand had very strong growth, again, driven by strong Easter. Biscoff there is on to an incredible start, and we have some very strong share gains. The U.S., the consumer confidence there remains quite low. We expect it to further deteriorate as the Middle East conflict continues. Purchasing power is up, but the consumer remains very concerned about affordability, economic outlook and job security.

Our main category, biscuits, the value is flattish. And where there is growth that's usually in the value club channels and in better-for-you and premium. We feel that we had a good first quarter with slightly positive net revenue growth in North America, driven by that momentum in the growth channels that I was saying. We gained some share in crackers led by strong performance of REITs. And also our candy business is doing quite well as well as our North American ventures, particularly, Perfect Bar and -- they continue to grow well.

Oreo was a little bit less, but we had a limited time offer this year that didn't perform as well as last year's, but we have strong plans in place to improve Oreo in the year to go. I think we will continue to see a gradual improvement of our North American business because we are increasing our brand reinvestments. We're trying to sharpen our PPA and hit the right price points as well as in Europe, of course. We have the growth channels and the new occasions, and we've got some strong good innovations that are in flight. So on developed markets, I would say, a good performance.

Then emerging markets, we are very pleased with our performance in emerging markets. It remains very strong. It's about 40% of our business, as you know. We grew 6.3% in Q1. If I first go to the consumers, of our 4 key markets, the only place where the consumer is softer is in China, although it improved versus the last quarter, the confidence. And we remain positive that, that consumer confidence in China will continue to improve. We see a very positive confidence in India. And also Mexico and Brazil, we feel the consumer is in a good place. Of course, everywhere the consumer is quite cautious as it relates to the conflict and what that could mean for inflation and their energy cost.

Snacking categories remain quite resilient across all those emerging markets, also in other geographies on top of the top 4. Value growth is holding up really well, and particularly, biscuits and chocolates are doing quite well.

So if I look at the results of our business, this will -- they were all driven by strong Easter. So overall, a 6.3% growth. Volume mix in the emerging markets was up 0.5%. If I take Argentina out, it's almost 1% volume growth. China was mid-single digit. We had a strong Chinese New Year. Ever, the acquisition there in -- High single-digit growth and we continue to increase our distribution.

India, we had a strong double-digit growth in Q1 in chocolate and in biscuits. There, we launched Biscoff biscuits and our line is already sold out. So very strong launch there, too. And then, of course, there was a GST change in India that is helping consumption in quite a way.

Brazil, we have high single digit very strong execution across biscuits, chocolate and gum in candy. Mexico was flat in Q1. But overall, we feel good about our gum biscuits, chocolate and meals business, but we had some softness in our candy and powdered beverages there.

We continue to see emerging markets as a sustainable growth engine, and we are quite optimistic for the long term. Our categories are still underpenetrated. We are reinvesting quite strongly this year. We have a long runway on distribution. We continue to build our global brands, and we can start doing some RGM in these markets. So we feel very good about the start in the emerging markets. That would be it, Andrew.

We'll move on now to Peter Galbo with Bank of America.

Dirk, there was a -- in the prepared remarks, you talked a lot about reinvestment. Obviously, a strong start to the year here, but there was a decision kind of made to reaffirm the guidance. Obviously, you mentioned some of the parameters around consumer confidence globally. But maybe you can just expand a little bit on, given the strong start to Q1, the decision to only reaffirm EPS, a little bit more around the reinvestment. And then I believe there's a line in the slides about strong earnings growth for 2027. Off the back of that, I know it's probably too early, but if there's any parameters you can put around that as well.

Thank you, Peter. I'll take the question, given it is on EPS and overall broader outlook, I presume. So look, we feel quite good about the start of the year. I think you saw the emerging market numbers. They are performing well. I would bet maybe a little bit of color saying that the growth is really broad-based across categories and across geographies. Clearly encouraged by developed markets where having addressed some chocolate price caps in Europe and having fine-tuned the promo strategy in the U.S. is yielding good results. And importantly, I think we have some new product launches that are performing well above all, we mentioned Biscoff.

So look, I think it's fair to say we are ahead of expectations in Q1. But on the remainder of the year, while we continue to be cautiously optimistic, we need also to address some headwinds that we didn't have in our original forecast, particularly as they stem out of the Middle East crisis. The team is managing that situation quite well, finding alternative routes to produce our brands and to deliver our brand. But that is coming at an extra cost. And clearly, the oil cost albeit we are covered for the year is having a little bit of an impact on the profitability. So look, we were ahead. We are ahead. We are optimistic about the remainder of the year. We have the Middle East situation in terms of extra costs under control. But at this point in time, to be able to swallow it, we had to confirm guidance on the bottom line.

Clearly, we are confident. But as I said also, quite a few times given there is quite a bit of momentum, particularly in emerging markets and in some brands, both in Europe and in the U.S., if EPS upsides materializes, we would like -- most likely to invest it back in the business and really continued momentum ahead of clearly what we committed to, which is a strong 2027 EPS growth. hope that makes sense.

Yes. And Luca, maybe just as a follow-up. You said you're through most of the European negotiations at this point kind of in line with expectations. Just -- maybe you can give us a little bit more color like where are you still left to go? Are there certain geographies that are wrapping up still just as we think about kind of goal post getting through 2Q and wrapping up negotiations in Europe?

No, we are almost entirely done. I mean we are talking about a couple of small customers here and there, but nothing really material. Importantly, we executed well in Easter, and we have promotions lined up for the remainder of the year. So we feel quite good that relationship with retailers in Europe is in good terms and in good territory in terms of the remainder of the year.

We'll move on to Megan Clapp with Morgan Stanley.

Maybe we could pick up there on Europe and Luca or Dirk, maybe you could just talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the competitive environment today? Clearly, it's been a big focus. And you talked about when we were sitting here 2 months ago, some questions as to how the competitive environment could evolve given the volatility in cocoa. So just maybe you could give us an update on what you're seeing in the competitive environment and how you're kind of thinking about the rest of the year?

Yes, yes. Thank you, Megan. So like I said, overall, so far, things are going well in Europe. There were some questions as we entered the year, how the customer negotiations with coal. I think at this stage, yes, cocoa has improved. But most of the industry still covered for the year. And we still have to see what the main crop is going to bring us in cocoa. So at this stage, customer negotiations have gone, as we said quite well. We had a very strong Easter campaign, which includes the U.K., we have that success with Biscoff I was talking about. We have Toblerone, -- doing well. So overall, I would say our business in the chocolate category is off to a good start in Europe. And that, I think, has sort of calmed down the situation a little bit. We don't see any movements in price happening at the moment. I believe that everybody understands that we have to wait and see what's going to happen here to Cocoa in the second half of the year. And that at this stage, since the chocolate market is doing quite well, that everybody is quite pleased with what's going on.

For our business itself, like I said, very strong Easter. Our share trends are improving. Our base business -- if I take Easter out turn from a share loss into slightly positive over the last month, our volume trends are improving sequentially and -- that was originally driven the volume trends for influenced by, of course, elasticities, which still continues in this year. We also did a lot of downsizing, and we had a plant outage last year. So we're starting to lap that. And we are focused on execution for the rest of the year, but we feel good about '26 and particularly about '27. We will continue to do strong activations. We are significantly stepping up investment in working media and our brands. We're doing PPA. We have reset a number of price points, which were off in certain markets, and we're starting to see a positive effect from that. And we continue to make sure that we do strong activations to drive consumers in the category. So overall, I would say we feel good about where the chocolate market is, where the reaction of the clients and the competition has been, and we expect that the year will continue quite strongly.

Great. That's really helpful. And then maybe just a related follow-up. You said we kind of have to wait and see what's going to happen for Cocoa in the second half of the year, prices obviously fell pretty quickly at the beginning of the year but seemed to have kind of stabilized in a range. So as you look at kind of the cocoa market and the dynamics, what's your kind of assessment of of Cocoa as we sit here today?

Yes. I think the -- nothing has really fundamentally changed. The mid-crop was quite positive. We are encouraged by what we see as it relates to next year crop as well. I think you know that supply, particularly out of Latin America and other places that are not the Ivory cost of Ghana, the supply is quite positive. So I feel that from a fundamental standpoint, nothing has really changed. There is effect that has happened over the last few months, I would say, since cocoa, heat one of the lowest levels in 2, 3 years. And it is the fact that the industry overall has gone a little bit longer. In fact, if we look at the average coverage of the industry at this point in time, it exceeds around about 10 months, which is the highest we have seen in a while. And so to say that what you saw in terms of price increases in the cocoa market compared to the lowest levels that we saw earlier this year, it has been due to the fact that the industry has been going longer. So fundamentally, nothing has changed. We believe 2,500, which is the level we see at this moment is a much better representation of what supply and demand would say. And look, I think most likely, we will be headed for another year of surplus in terms of supply and demand, you saw the grinding numbers. They were a little bit better than anticipated, but still negative. And particularly in Europe, demand of cocoa is quite subdued. So I feel overall 2,500 is a fair representation and potentially there might be a little bit of a lower level lying ahead.

We'll move next to David Palmer with Evercore ISI.

Great. Just wanted to follow up on Europe. More on the consumer and what you're seeing by market out there, organic sales down only 0.5% or so. And you talked in your prepared remarks about how volume would improve -- our volume trends would improve through the year. And some of that makes sense given the comparisons, but it sounds pretty constructive. Are you seeing -- what are you seeing from a price elasticity standpoint out there? You talked about a fragile consumer, but at the same time, it doesn't seem like you're seeing much slippage so far. So anything you're really watching out there from a market perspective, where maybe you're seeing a little bit more trade down here or there? Anything you're watching? And I have a quick follow-up.

Yes. At this stage, I would say we don't see anything in the consumer that would be something that preoccupies us in their sales or in their buying patterns. But we know from the fact that the Middle East conflict will affect energy prices, which are very sensitive in Europe, that's one -- the one thing to watch. I think the after effects of the Middle Eastern conflict, if it continues, it's going to show in many areas like fertilizers, packaging, oil prices and so on. And the consumer will start to feel that probably with increased inflation. So they're aware of that. They've seen these sort of situations. So that's what I meant when I said it's very fragile in the sense that they are vigilant. But so far, I would say from a categories perspective, there's nothing there that we feel is starting to show that there's a slowdown or something like that. No, like I said, we feel pretty good about how particularly chocolate has been behaving in the first quarter of the year.

And then gross margins were better than what we had thought. We were thinking there might be something like $350 million in inventory phasing drag to the quarter, and gross margins were down only 270 basis points. So I don't know if we were thinking about that inventory phasing right, correctly in the quarter, but how should we be thinking about gross margins going forward?

So yes, the headwind for the quarter is around about $350 million, a little bit more than that. So we got it right and we guided you to the right number. I mean, as we said, excluding on sizing, volume mix was slightly positive. So there was leverage into the P&L. We had some upsides in specific countries that are quite profitable. China in the quarter, for instance, grew 5%, and that's a quite profitable business. And so there was a little bit of additional leverage coming into the P&L. The supply chain folks are doing quite an amazing job between procurement and manufacturing. We are delivering year-on-year benefit to the P&L. So whether it was the usual high-performance supply chains of Latin America and EMEA, we added quite a bit of upside even in places like North America this quarter. So all in all, I think between the volume mix, as pricing in line with expectations, costs coming a little bit better due to productivity. I mean all of that resulted in the upside now. That upside would have resulted in a benefit to the year, quite frankly. But at this point in time, as I said, there is a little bit of cost that will coming out of the Middle East situation. We are well covered for oil and packaging costs for the remainder of the year. And quite frankly, also into 2027, but some regulated markets do not allow us to do anything in terms of protecting ourselves, and that's the constant win that will materialize in the remainder of the year, for which we have to account and that's where we decided to guide for clear EPS in line with what we said the last time. .

We have also unlocked additional investments in a couple of places. As we look around, we see that there are things that work extremely well that are gaining momentum, and we still believe there is upside in there. So that's where we decided to invest more in A&C and other things.

We'll now move on to Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler.

Could you just maybe elaborate a little bit on your innovation strategy? And it seems like now with COVID in the rearview and the supply disruptions that kind of changed some of the thinking of that for a few years. It's focus again. Can you maybe point to where you've got a particular focus or maybe key consumer insights that are considerations and just how you're thinking about that?

Yes, yes. So yes, after COVID, there was a lot of in-home consumption and then the beginning of the higher inflationary period where the consumer was still sitting on a lot of savings. We are now into a situation, as we all know where the consumer is a lot more anxious about how and where they are spending their money. Their basket is not going up. So we believe that the way to approach that is, in the first place, you need to hit the right price points on your core range and that has become quite important, be it with chocolate in Europe or with biscuits in the U.S. you need to make sure that you are where the consumer really can afford you. So that's a big focus that we have at the moment.

Then in-store activations, big activations around teams that consumers really are interested in are also very important. And then the third one is to present them with innovations that stand out and that are really breaking through the normal mold. So we've been doing this for a while, but I would say we're seeing some of the traction coming from that. So we've been focused on doing a lot of bigger and fewer beds, particularly improvement platforms. So if you think about innovation in the company, there is what I would call the base renovation of our products, like improving the normal mass of chocolate or the biscuits, launching new flavors, doing PPA, getting the seasonals right. But on top of that, we are trying to come with some new news in the different categories. And at this stage, we feel that we have a number of launches that are starting to do really well for us.

So if I go through the big subjects that we have there, of course, there's first -- the well-being acceleration that we're seeing, and that's really on two fronts for us. First of all, there is the whole protein fiber, which we are working on. So we've got perfect bar, really doing well with the protein range. Builders bar in the cliff range doing quite well. We are now also having a builder's bar with low sugar and a perfect bar with 20 grams of protein. So that's an important part of our innovation.

At the same time, we are launching a number of products within our global brands like Oreo that go into sort of added benefits like gluten-free or zero added sugar, which is a gluten-free is doing well in the U.S. Zero average sugar is doing well in China and has been launched in U.S. So that's I would call the well-being acceleration. Then there is, of course, cakes and pistories, where we've done a number of acquisitions but we are also launching products under our brands in cakes and pastries. So in Europe, the Milka Crosson is really off to a very strong start, and we're expanding that geographically. We've taken 7 days, the acquisition we did in Europe, and we launched it in Brazil. And then we've launched cakes under Oreo in China and in the U.S. and that is doing -- both are doing quite well for us.

The third big area where we are trying to innovate is in premium and indulgent chocolate or to go through -- or we have 3 access there. One is Toblerone. We are really developing Toblerone into our premium brand around the world. We are upgrading with unique innovations and very hard to get innovations under the main range, but also the Pralines are really starting to take off for us, not the Toblerone

Then second big act there is in premium under our normal brands, we're launching this range called Cadbury and More, which is an indulgent range under Cadbury in the U.K. and in Australia. And then we've got that also under Milka called Milka MAX in Europe, which has been in the market for a while and is doing quite well. And then in the U.S., we have a vegan brand, you. Also a premium chocolate brand, and that is starting to show some real traction for us and growing quite fast at this stage. So those are the 3 initiatives in premium chocolate for us.

And then I would say the last one that we really are very happy with is the whole partnership that we have with Biscoff. I've explained this a few times, this will be really quite big for them and for us in the coming years. We're off to a very strong start. As you know, we launched -- Biscoff in certain emerging markets. And we launched also our chocolate range, which has Biscoff cream or Biscoff crumbs into our chocolate. And so that collaboration will keep on expanding over the years, and I expect that we will come up with a few more in the coming years. So those are the sort of the four areas that I would highlight as our main innovation focus at the moment. We're also doing a lot in munching and on the go. So we launched Ritz Drizzle. And Ritz Bite is doing quite well also. So we think that's also an interesting innovation act for us. Those would be the ones I mentioned, but we're very pleased with how these innovations are behaving at the moment.

We'll now move on to Robert Moskow with TD Cowen.

Dirk, I was hoping you could reconcile for me your comment about the consumer in the U.S. I think you said you expect consumer spending to weaken or confidence to weaken because of the impact of the Middle East war. But I think you also said that you expect your own North American business to continue to improve during the year. I think consensus has North America flat for the year. Do you think North America can get back to like a normal kind of low single-digit growth this year?

Yes. Let me talk a little bit about the consumer and then let Luca talk a little bit about our business within that consumer context. So I think consumption in the U.S. for a number of reasons will remain subdued in general. I think the consumer is quite concerned about their financial situation. Most food categories and snacking categories remain soft in general, I would say. We can look at the basket -- the shopping basket, which has not increased in dollar value for 3 years now. But at the same time, the items in that basket have gone quite up in price. And so consumers need to take more conscious decisions.

We see a shift where hiring from consumers, yes, by premium products as the K-shape economy. But then we also see lower income consumers really focused on lower unit prices and being very selective when and what exactly they buy. We see the channel shifts that we talked about from food and mass to Value club and online. For instance, Walmart, the value channel and Costco, so biscuits grew over 4% versus the total U.S. biscuit market, which was only 0.3% up. So I would say, yes, the consumer, to my opinion, will remain quite anxious. I think as the conflict continues and they see the effect of oil prices, and they will start to see in some of the other things they buy, I believe that, that is not going to help with the overall consumer confidence. But that doesn't mean that our business is not going to continue to improve, but I'll let Luca talk about that.

Yes. So look, I think the comments of -- they are mostly related, I would say, to category dynamics and some of the snacking categories. And quite frankly, we haven't projected for the remainder of the year a better category number. Having said that, you're going to see a volume and revenue inflection as we go into the second part of the year in the U.S. There are already quite a few things that are working well. We are very pleased with the share of Savory. We are gaining quite a bit of share, remarkably through and some of the platforms that Dirk was referring to, namely bids and resell. But not only that, it is a really fresh stack and some propositions in that are delivering quite nice share growth.

We are extremely pleased with the performance of sour patch kids. It is a brand that most likely for the year is going to grow double digit, and we have still plenty of opportunities and chose has been an amazing innovation that is incremental. And importantly, the sales team is executing very well in channels that are growing fast, namely Club, but also, I would say, value. And so you are going to see a sequential improvement of the U.S. market specifically, particularly as we continue to execute well in the areas I've talked about. It is certainly a share gain plan because -- at this point in time, we don't see really the category improving much.

I would also say that the ventures are delivering material growth. Besides the examples there gave you, we are very pleased with taste, which is gaining share. And then as we said, the bars, including Cliff, are really delivering share growth. And for instance, the bar continues to grow close to double digits. So there are quite a few things that we feel are working well. We are investing in those. And I guess you're going to see volume and revenue turning around positively for the remainder of the year in the North American business. I admitted to talk about Canada, which in the big scheme of things, maybe is not the biggest, but they had a terrific Q1 as well. So hope that Canada will continue growing as well.

We'll move next to John Baumgartner with Mizuho Securities.

Wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on the supply chain program in North America biscuits that was touched on in CAGNY. I'm curious, over the past 10, 15 years, you've already consolidated manufacturing. You had the big modernization some time with the spin-off from Kraft. I guess, what does this new modernization entail resulting growth opportunities, route to market changes from here? How do we think about the opportunities there?

Yes. No, thank you for the question. I would start by saying that around about 60% of the network we have in the U.S. is really state-of-the-art. So the overwhelming majority of the network is in good shape. It is a competitive advantage. I think you know most likely the amount of profit we generate in the U.S. and the cash that we generate in the U.S. And I believe the competitive advantage we have besides DSD is really part of the network. So we feel quite good about that. Having said that, some plants in the U.S. still run on high waste, still run on the level of productivity that is below expectations. And so we will have to bring this network up to speed. We have come to terms that some of the plants will have to deal with much simpler lines as opposed to having complex rate of-the-art lines. And so we will play to the strengths of the plan. And importantly, we have proven lines of business that are at the moment manufactured through manufacturers. And we want to bring those in-house. So those are proven volume platform things that really work well from a consumer standpoint. And reality is by bringing them in-house, we will save quite a bit of money. We will invest in some packaging capabilities. One of the things that we are realizing is that consumers are shifting through channels to different pack sizes. So if you want to compete in clubs, you need to have specific format types, if you want to have an appeal to certain consumers, you need to invest in what we call multipacks, which are mixed bags of our cookies and crackers. And some of these, we don't have in-house at the moment, and the supply chain is fairly inefficient and quite rigid. And so we will invest in flexibility, bringing in-house some of these propositions.

Finally, one of the things that we're going to touch is the DSD network, which, at this point in time, relies upon, I would say, 4, 5 distribution centers, but 55 branches that allow us to reach the point of sale that we service, in general, I would say, 2, 3 times a week at least. And by automating those centers and by creating automation and AI fulfillment centers, we'll be able to achieve the point of sales in a much faster way and importantly, to reduce our stock and reduce our cost in those branches. So that's really the idea.

I think we can leave it at this for the time being. Thank you again for connecting. I hope we explained that the quarter was pretty good. We're looking forward to the rest of the year. And -- if any other questions, our IR team is available to help you out. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.

If we could just find our seats, we'll kick off our next presentation. We're thrilled to welcome Mondelez International back to the CAGNY stage. Please join me in thanking the company for again [indiscernible] following this presentation.

Let's be careful out there. [indiscernible] special dynamic environment [indiscernible] so we're excited to have a company to go into more detailed. Its initiatives to improve top line growth in North America [indiscernible] CFO. Thanks for being here. Over to you, Dirk.

[indiscernible]. These categories remain resilient and durable even during challenging times [indiscernible]. The average consumer snacking more than 3.5x a day. About half of consumers believe that snacking helps their well-being and about 60% constantly wants to try new flavors and taste combinations. We are confident that we are well positioned to take advantage of these growing trends.

Our global position across our core categories provides a great starting point, and we're well positioned to capture significant headroom. In our categories, we currently hold a clear #1 global position in Biscuits with 17% share in a market that's valued at $128 billion. We have a very close #2 global position in Chocolate with 12.4% share in a market valued at $147 billion. We have the #3 global position in Cakes and Pastries, with 3.9 share in a market value at $100 billion. And the #3 global position in Snack Bars with 8.6% share in a market of nearly $20 billion.

These core snacking categories are continuing to grow at 1.4x faster than other food categories. Despite several headwinds, including a soft U.S. consumer and global chocolate price increases, core snacks per capita consumption stayed flat. There is still huge potential per capita consumption growth over time leading to a forecasted 5% value CAGR for our categories.

Along with our category focus, our geographic footprint represents an important growth driver and competitive advantage. About 40% of our 2025 revenues came from high-growth emerging markets, growing at a CAGR of 13.4% over the last 5 years. At the same time, our developed markets, primarily in Europe and North America delivered a strong 5% revenue growth CAGR over the last 5 years. Our stable of iconic brands possess strong equity among our consumers. In almost every market around the world, they stand out with above-market equity and their strength is increasing.

Oreo stands out particularly with a dominant equity score. So in almost every market around the world, our brands stand out with above market.

All right. In almost every market around the world, our brands still stand out with above-market equity and their strength is increasing. Oreo particularly stands out with a dominant equity score more than 2x higher than the average. The same is true for Cadbury, which is also one of the most valuable global food and beverage brands. Over the past several years, we have significantly invested in scaling our capabilities to accelerate growth. We have achieved critical mass in emerging markets, not only in terms of geography, but also in terms of locally and culturally nuanced relationships and know-how.

Similarly, our localized supply chain enables real consumer connection and speed to market while benefiting from local costs. Our local critical mass and expertise enables strong marketing and sales execution, both in-store and through digital commerce. We also invested in building specialized research and development capabilities focused on next-generation biscuits and chocolate product development. Taken together, these capabilities form the backbone of our growth system.

Behind this strong foundation is perhaps our most compelling strategic advantage, our great people. Our local teams are empowered and incentivized to stay close to our consumers and customers to rapidly adapt to changing local trends. At the same time, our local teams receive robust support from our relatively lean global center. We truly believe that our unique culture represents a critical strategic advantage. The combination of these enduring competitive advantages positions us well for consistent delivery of our long-term algorithm. Our leadership in the attractive and resilient core categories of chocolate, biscuits and baked snacks combined with our truly global footprint offers substantial growth runway.

Our iconic brands drive tremendous consumer loyalty and win-win partnerships with retailers. Our advanced marketing and sales capabilities, alongside growing investments in new channels, make our snacks increasingly visible and accessible, meeting our consumers where they are. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, our winning culture enables us to attract, retain and motivate the very best talent. This virtuous circle gives us strong confidence that we will continue to deliver our long-term growth algorithm, 3% to 5% organic net revenue growth reinvesting half of our gross profit growth, high single-digit adjusted EPS growth and more than $3 billion in free cash flow.

So now let's dive deeper in the North American market, where we have strong plans to strengthen our business and growth trajectory. Our North American business delivered solid growth of about 4% CAGR over the past 5 years, with 2025 net revenue of about $11 billion. U.S. biscuits account for about 63% of revenue with about a 42% share anchored by the iconic Oreo brand, delivering $2 billion in net revenue. Additionally, we have 14 brands with more than $200 million in revenue. And despite an anxious and frugal consumer, our penetration grew by more than 1 million households in 2025. Our strong direct store delivery network drives consistent visibility and availability while ensuring strong partnerships with retailers.

Despite broad economic uncertainty, American consumers still love snacking, and they're still looking for ways to fit their favorite snacks into their daily budgets. Biscuit category penetration remained strong at 94% of households and Mondelez penetration stands at 82%. While penetration is constant because of higher prices, and flat spendable income, purchase frequency is declining slightly. Our brands remain healthy with Oreo significantly increasing its #1 position in consumer awareness and our second brand, Chips Ahoy!, increasing its penetration by approximately 1 percentage point versus prior year. While we have a very strong North American business, it is well known that U.S. consumer behaviors are changing during this period of economic uncertainty.

The 6 key trends we need to address are the following: flat grocery basket sizes unease with current prices, channel shifts in search of greater value, higher income consumers seeking new premium options as well health-conscious functional snacks and increase in on-the-go consumption. With biscuit basket sizes virtually flat over the last 2 years, it is critical that our brands stand out more than others. The first step is increasing our investments to boost share of voice and increase awareness.

In store, we are aiming for a more standout presence and bigger, more exciting activations. And we are continuing to reconfigure our price pack architecture to ensure a broad range of offers to meet critical price points. Second, many consumers are uneasy with the current average price levels of snacks. U.S. wage increases are being outpaced by total snack inflation. To meet consumers' desire for more affordability, we will significantly expand offerings at the right price points.

For example, our portable fresh snack packs priced under $3 will be expanded to more of our brands. We're leveraging our direct store delivery system through its continuous in-store presence to drive greater visibility of affordable offerings via increased displays and we are activating a comprehensive supply chain improvement program to optimize costs. Consumers continue to shift to new channels, looking for better value so we're investing aggressively to expand total distribution points in club, value and convenience stores as well as, of course, e-commerce. Our refreshed price pack architecture will address unmet needs through single-serve variety and club packs. At the same time, we are increasing our capacity for these value packs in our supply chain.

We also have strong plans to meet the evolving needs of higher income cohorts. These consumers increasingly are choosing premium indulgence options. For example, premium indulgence cookies are growing 2.4% in an overall flat total cookie category. To benefit from this trend, we are increasing our investments and ambitions for our premium brands and ranges. For example, our Tate's Bake Shop portfolio offers a strong heritage of high-quality fresh cookie tastes and textures on the East Coast.

In 2026, we're investing significantly in expanding Tate's national awareness and visibility. Similarly, we are continuing to scale premium versions of our core Oreo platform. Oreo Thins is helping to drive growth among adults seeking indulgent evening snacks. We're also launching new premium offerings such as Sargento Cheese Bakes by Nabisco. More consumers increasingly are turning to better-for-use snacking profiles, seeking cleaner labels, fewer ingredients and higher protein content. Growth in these segments continues to outpace the broader biscuits and bars categories. We are prioritizing strategic actions to improve growth in these segments including launching Oreo Zero Sugar and increasing awareness of Oreo gluten-free. We're also scaling GOOD THiNS crackers and driving our healthy belVita morning brand. Additionally, we are significantly expanding our protein bar offerings, mainly under the Perfect Bar, BUILDERS and Zbar brands. Our protein-rich range is already showing healthy double-digit growth.

Finally, On-The-Go consumption is on the rise with 1 out of 4 of every snacks eaten away from home. Consumers are looking for convenience, meal replacement and quick energy or indulgence. Our Oreo Minis or Ritz Bits portfolio is perfectly suited for these occasions, offering fuel, comfort and social connection. Another way we are stepping into these new snacking occasions is with a broad range of new multipacks, portable packages and immediate consumption formats. We're also investing significantly in portable morning snacks like belVita Bites and 7Days Croissants.

To support these 6 growth platforms, we've launched a robust multiyear supply chain capability improvement program designed to upgrade our U.S. biscuits operations, increased capacity on key biscuits, cakes and pastries, modernize our route to market and packaging capabilities and increase our network flexibility. All of this is meant to optimize working capital, increase margins and improve customer service. We expect to realize the benefits of these supply chain enhancements in the beginning of 2027.

In summary, we are strongly committed to improving the performance of our North American business, and we're investing in a robust strategic plan to deliver it. Our plan focuses on accelerating consumer-centric product offerings increasing investments in working media and in-store presence and activating a robust supply chain optimization program. We are already starting to see the first effects with strong growth over the last 3 months in both our largest mass retail partner and in the value chain. All in all, we are confident in the execution capabilities of our team and the long-term prospects of our categories here in North America.

Now let's take a closer look and our plan to drive long-term growth in Europe. Our European business has delivered robust growth of about 8% over the past 5 years with 2025 net revenue of about $15 billion. Mondelez is the #1 snacking player in Europe with about 20% share. We hold the leading position in our core categories in 19 markets, and we have 13 brands with more than $200 billion in net revenue. Chocolate accounts for about half of our European business anchored by the Cadbury and Milka brands each delivering $3 billion in net revenue. Chocolate remains a great category. It is continuing to grow with volume resiliency, posting a CAGR of 7% over the past 5 years.

Within this category, our iconic brands are strong leaders, often representing the taste of the nation. Consumers across Europe are intensely loyal to the chocolate brands they grow upwards, not just Cadbury and Milka but also Côte d'Or in France, in Belgium, Marabou in Sweden, Freia in Norway and so on. These beloved brands represent core cultural touch points. As a result, consumers rarely consider switching brands. Against this strong heritage of brand loyalty and historically low elasticity, the past few years of record cocoa input cost inflation have posed significant challenges.

Let's take a closer look at our key challenges impacting our recent performance and our plans to address them. First, cocoa-led pricing and pack resizing impacted short-term volumes more significantly than expected, although elasticity remains at an acceptable 0.7. Second, pricing tactics among companies less dependent on cocoa unfavorably impacted us in 2025. Third, we saw elevated volume declines in select market segments and geographies. And finally, we found that some price pack innovations did not fully address consumer expectations.

To overcome these challenges, we have identified 5 key strategic actions. Hitting the right price points and increasing connection to our brands, broadening our offerings across chocolate segments, scaling up our premium chocolate, increasing presence in under-indexed channels and strengthening resilience across our cocoa supply chain.

Our performance in chocolate has been strong historically with robust volume growth prior to the recent super cycle of pricing driven by cocoa cost volatility. The value of our business has grown significantly. Today, with last year's cocoa disruption behind us, and the strong actions we're putting in place, we remain confident that the future prospect of the European chocolate market is great. We are continuing to refine our pack formats to deliver the right value to consumers, ensuring that we meet critical price points. To support this enhanced portfolio, we're stepping up investments in working media to grow brand awareness and purchase interest. And at the same time, we are expanding in-store activations and rolling out disruptive innovations with new experiences.

For example, we are rapidly expanding new offerings developed through our partnership with Lotus Bakeries, the Biscoff brand, with the delicious range of co-branded chocolate bars and prolenes combining the unique caramelized crispy Biscoff taste with our iconic brands. Second, we are investing in new formats and offerings with reduced cocoa content to mitigate the impact of elevated commodity costs. We're expanding our bars portfolio while growing our range of tablets filled with nougat, caramel, nuts and fruits and other delicious flavors. We're continuing to grow Choco Bakery with both new innovation and expanded distribution. And in cakes and pastries, our Milka croissants is performing very well, offering consumers a new occasion to enjoy Milka chocolate. We will be handing out the Milka croissant later on. This innovation alone has helped deliver about 1 point of share gain in Europe cakes and pastries.

Third, we are expanding our offerings in the premium chocolate segment where consumers consistently seek innovative indulgence and are willing to pay more for it. The premium segment RSV per kilo is double the RSV per kilo in the mainstream segment. Our Toblerone brand is a strong vehicle for premium growth. We accelerate penetration through creative personalization, celebrations and gifting. Toblerone anchors our strong presence in the world travel retail channel, where we recently ranked #1 in the Advantage survey across all travel retail categories. At the same time, our expanded indulgence range, Milka MMMAX and Cadbury and more is driving growth among consumers seeking a next-level chocolate experience.

Fourth, we are leveraging our full price pack architecture playbook to grow our presence in under-indexed channels. We are particularly expanding category occasions across channels with more convenient on-the-go products at affordable price points. We're also starting to grow our away-from-home channel at an accelerated speed.

The fifth and final pillar of our chocolate growth strategy is improving the resilience and stability of the cocoa supply chain. To more effectively manage risk, we are aiming to improve crop forecasting while maintaining our robust hedging frameworks. Additionally, we are expanding sourcing to additional regions, including Latin America, while helping to scale up best practices in cocoa farming in West Africa. We're also partnering with suppliers to help transition to large-scale farming, while enhancing processing practices and technologies to get more cocoa out of a single beam.

And finally, we are investing in alternative technologies, including cell cultured and fermented cocoa as well as plant-based alternatives. While still early, we view these investments in next-generation cocoa as a strategic insurance policy against traditional sourcing risk.

In recent weeks, cocoa prices have decreased quite rapidly, driven by the prospect of oversupply in the current year. In the short term, this rapid rate of decline is causing a discrepancy between industry coverage and market prices. As a result, we may need to respond to possible competitive action or client disruption, which might require some price reinvestment ahead of our actual pipeline costs. But over the long term, increasing stabilization of cocoa prices will enable a return to normal category health with consumption growth, increased investments and restored profit.

In summary, we are confident in our plans to deliver sustained growth in European chocolate. In recent months, we have seen a stabilization of our chocolate performance, underpinned by increased investments and hitting the right price points in specific market segments. At the same time, we are expanding into new chocolate segments, adjacencies and under-indexed channels. And we are executing against a robust plan to ensure long-term supply chain stability and resiliency. We remain confident that we have the right brands and the right playbook to deliver sustained growth.

With that, I'll turn the microphone over to Luca to walk you through our plans for growth in emerging markets and wrap up with an update on our cash generation and capital allocation priorities. Luca?

Hello, everyone, and thank you, Dirk. Today, I will discuss our opportunities and capabilities as well as initiatives to build upon what is already a strong emerging market business. And I'll close by covering cash generation and capital allocation.

Today, our emerging market represents a strong $15 billion-plus business with fast growth, superior scale, strong capabilities and significant white space runway. Emerging market total snacking, including our core categories, is a $350 billion market and is expected to achieve or to reach $530 billion by 2030. Emerging market growth has significantly outpaced developed growth over the past 5 years. This trend is expected to continue. We compounded annual growth of 9% over the next 5 years, fueled by robust disposable income growth, both from a widening middle class and favorable demographics, including younger population and urbanization.

Our winning recipe in emerging markets revolves around the strong unmatched competitive position, underpinned by a local first operating model. This position includes highly aspirational industry-leading brands supported by significant marketing investments made available both at affordable price points and in more premium forms, well-established route-to-market capabilities with critical mass and scale. Advantaged and localized supply chains that are built to optimize efficiencies in both cost and service delivery and strong local market expertise with an entrepreneurial spirit and approach to growth.

We believe these competitive advantages will help us deliver strong results over the next 5 years. We expect sustained volume-led growth in the mid- to high single digits, increasing scale in China, India, Brazil and Mexico, which represent about $7 billion of revenue today and strong presence in the next wave of emerging growth markets, including Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Western Andean region and Central America. We remain focused on both establishing and expanding our scale presence in the core categories of biscuit, chocolate and cakes and pastries, leveraging clear playbooks, including bolt-on acquisitions. Our aspiration is to be the category leaders across emerging markets.

Now let's take a closer look at our top 4 markets, which represent about half of our revenue in emerging markets with growth of low double digits over the past 5 years. Let's start with China. China is, for us, a $2 billion business with a history of attractive growth, strong market position and favorable growth ahead of market. We have a great local team that drives growth through superior brands like Oreo, distribution gains and investing in both marketing and supply chain capabilities. As an example, Oreo share is about 18% in China biscuit, the highest share in the world for Oreo, a clear aspiration for across all our markets.

We have 3 clear initiatives in China to drive volume led driven growth over the next 5 years. This includes continuing to accelerate our availability in all physical channel, winning digital commerce by strengthening social commerce and quick commerce with right packs and last mile capabilities and scaling our cakes and pastries business through our recent Evirth acquisition and continued innovation with an ambition to $1 billion revenue by 2030. This ambition is underpinned by a massive package cakes and pastries category in China. That is about $15 billion and growing. The category remains highly fragmented, and there is significant opportunity for us in branding and innovation.

Let's double-click on our offline distribution opportunities. There is a meaningful runway as we currently cover 3 million stores with an addressable universe of $6 million. We plan to add more than 60,000 stores per year as we broaden our coverage through wholesalers and eB2B. We are focused on increasing assortment with low unit price offerings and digitization while capturing the growing channel opportunities within the club and snack chains.

Now over to India, which represents one of our most compelling opportunities. India is a $1.7 billion revenue market with an impressive track record of growth and cash generation. This performance is underpinned by a talented employee base of over 1,000 and 4 localized manufacturing facilities, catering to about 4.5 million stores. Like China, India has tremendous runway and favorable demographics, significant per capita headroom and long-term growth potential. Our plans to drive continued growth in India center around expanding reach of our route to market, scaling our biscuit business through premium leadership, including Oreo and Biscoff. And recruiting new consumers and occasions with continued innovation led by chocolate, but also in biscuits, and cakes and pastries.

Focusing on our first initiative of route-to-market expansion, we have strong direct coverage in India at 2.5 million stores. However, there is a vast runway given more than 9 million stores in total. We expect to add 100,000 stores per year by tapping into advanced store analytics and machine learning in order to optimize orders on a store-by-store basis. We are also moving quickly to address the emerging quick commerce and away from home opportunities, and we continue our rapid expansion of Visicoolers that provide a unique and advantage in store presence to showcase our great leading products such as Cadbury Daily Milk and Silk.

Moving from EMEA to Latin America, starting with Brazil, which represents our largest and most diversified emerging markets with strong multi-category leadership. Brazil is for us a $1.8 billion business with a leading position in chocolate, biscuits, and gum and candy alongside vast opportunities in cakes and pastries. It has a large young population, consistent economic growth and significant room for per capita consumption increases in both chocolate and biscuits. The growth agenda in Brazil includes bolstering iconic brands like Lacta and Oreo, expanding distribution and penetration and building out a scaled cakes and pastry platform.

Focusing on Lacta and Oreo growth for a moment. Today, we have a leading position in Brazil chocolate behind the strength of our Lacta brand, which is #1 in the market. However, substantial opportunities lie ahead. To broaden our presence by further elevating taste profiles, covering a wider range of price points and expanding on shelf presence through new occasions. Brazil is also an Oreo priority market as we build awareness and localize appeal through tailor marketing and taste profiles to drive numerical distribution and assortment.

The last key priority market is Mexico. Mexico is a strong franchise with attractive long-term growth fundamentals and critical mass with the recent addition of the Ricolino business. Our plans to accelerate growth in Mexico are grounded in solidifying our biscuit presence through Oreo expansion, growing traditional trade presence on recently acquired BSD House and building out a scaled chocolate platform, while continuing to bolster our great gum and candy brand portfolio.

Our plans to drive a leading biscuit position in Oreo are rooted in substantial brand investments to highlight the cultural relevance of the brand, key consumption occasions and superior taste credentials. Whether it is China, India, Brazil or Mexico, the outcomes of our strategic initiatives should be consistent, driving deeper and digitized distribution in traditional and modern trade. Increasing brand penetration to establish or further consolidated leadership positions, innovating around new consumer occasions and building out multi-category scale with leading positions in chocolate, biscuits, cakes and pastries, and gum and candy.

Altogether, we believe that our emerging markets will be a sustainable volume-led growth engine for years to come. We have iconic global and local brands that are continuing to grow and innovate. Our route-to-market and supply chain scale is unrivaled. Our 4 priority markets of China, India, Brazil and Mexico are large with clear playbooks, long growth runways and plans to win. And these components will provide confidence that we can deliver mid- to high single-digit organic net revenue growth, led by volumes with attractive profitability.

To close our presentation, I'll share a few thoughts with respect to cash generation, capital allocation and balance sheet. We remain committed to increasing free cash flow through strong profit dollar growth and cash conversion. Although record cocoa inflation put pressure on 2025 free cash flow, we still managed to deliver strong results. Moving forward, as we drive our growth agenda that you heard from both developed and emerging markets, coupled with more opportunities to streamline this inventory. We are targeting a $4 billion plus in free cash flow generation.

Moving to capital return. We continue to prioritize return of capital to shareholders. This includes double-digit dividend growth in 9 of the last 10 years and approximately $15 billion in share repurchase which has resulted in nearly a 20% reduction in each account. Altogether, we have returned more than $30 billion over the past 8 years.

Bolt-on acquisitions are the other pillar of our capital allocation strategies. We have made 10 such acquisitions since 2018, with the vast majority delivering strong growth and value. Specifically, key acquisitions in cakes and pastries like Chipita and Give & Go have grown since acquisition, high single digit and low double digits, respectively. Others like Tate's and Processed Snacks have grown mid-teens and our latest acquisition Evirth has grown in the low 20s.

We evaluate our acquisitions on numerous metrics, including ROI, cash-on-cash return, but at a high level, we believe we have been successful at strengthening our core, expanding into attractive adjacencies, while realizing revenue and value accretion on or above plan in most cases. While we have delivered significant value through capital return on M&A, we continue to be very focused on maintaining a strong balance sheet and remain in a solid position.

Turning to our '26 outlook. There is no change from what we discussed 2 weeks ago. We remain optimistic for 2027 with strong EPS growth driven by improving performance in developed markets, continued strong growth in emerging markets, productivities across supply chain and SG&A and continued stabilization of cocoa.

To close, we believe the company remains well positioned to generate significant and lasting value. Our long-term fundamentals remain strong, categories, geography brands and capital allocations. We have clear action plans to drive improved volumes and return our developed markets to the normal cadence of profitable growth while continuing to maintain the momentum in our emerging markets business.

Thank you all for your time.

We've got time for probably one and we're going to go to the break out. We're going to go to the breakout then.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Mondelez International 2025 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Earnings Question-and-Answer session.

[Operator Instructions]

On today's call are Dirk Van de Put, Chairman and CEO; Luca Zaramella, COO and CFO. And Shep Dunlap, SVP of Investor Relations. Earlier this afternoon, the company posted a press release and prepared remarks, both of which are available on its website. During this call, the company will make forward-looking statements about performance. These statements are based on how the company sees things today. Actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties.

Please refer to the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in the company's 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K filings for more details on forward-looking statements. As the company discusses results today, unless noted as reported, it will be referencing non-GAAP financial measures, which adjust for certain items included in the company's GAAP results.

In addition, the company provides over year growth on a constant currency basis unless otherwise noted. You can find the comparable GAAP measures and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations within the company's earning release and at the back of the slide presentation.

We will now move to our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Lazar with Barclays.

Dirk, maybe to start us off. Clearly, significant interest in, obviously, the chocolate category and how the presides fall in Cocoa could impact the dynamic. Where is Mondelez currently on its chocolate strategy? How does it play out from here, particularly as it relates to the potential for some price deflation in areas where obviously significant pricing has been taken?

Yes. Thank you, Andrew. I would start off by saying that if you look at 2025 and the overall chocolate market in the world, seen the rather important price increases that took place that the category overall has shown a lot of resilience despite all the volatility. In that, we had a playbook for our chocolate strategy, which was largely to price -- list price or do revenue growth management largely through price pack architecture.

And we've executed well against that chocolate playbook in '25. If you then look at the markets around the world, I think places like India, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, some of our bigger chocolate markets, we have done quite well. And also in Europe, in about half of the market, things played out exactly as expected. However, I would say, in the more northern markets in Europe, Germany, the Nordics, the U.K., we saw a higher-than-expected elasticity. And so we have to take adjustments in '26. We have learned that certain price points are very important. And so we have adjusted already to put our products at the right price point. Some of the PPA worked, others didn't. So we are adjusting also some of the PPA we have in the market.

We are planning to increase our investments behind our brand because in this year, our cocoa coverage is at a better cost than it was in '25 so we are able to increase substantially investment behind our brands, and we do that because we want to get back to the normal frequency and quantity of consumption that we've seen.

Penetration hasn't gone down, but the frequency and the quantity of consumption did. We are also investing in price. As I mentioned, to hit those right price points and as well in new PPA. We're going to push hard on innovation. We have our collaboration with Biscoff which was very successful in '25, but it really is going to go to the next level in '26.

So I think we've got a very strong innovation agenda led by Biscoff with a number of other things in Europe. And then we are going to some important activations in store. However, as you probably have seen in the last 2 weeks, suddenly, the cocoa price has declined more than anybody would have expected. And this will have some short-term pressures largely as it relates to probably have an industry or the largest players in industry that already are covered for '26 at a higher price than the current market price. And this could maybe give us some unexpected competitive reactions and so we want to build in some flexibility in our guidance because we don't quite know how that is going to play out in the market in '26.

What is good in all of this is that cocoa now has returned to a level that is much more in line with the historic price that we've seen and that bodes very well for '27. As I said, we've already covered for '26. There's not a lot we can do anymore, but '27 certainly will benefit from this. So we see our chocolate business in '27 increase its margin in a considerable way.

As it relates to '26, like I said, we're going to remain very agile. We're going to do all the things that we set and then make sure we enter '27 with a lot of strength. We are planning to go through a lot more detail on what our chocolate strategy is during the CAGNY conference. So I would certainly invite everybody to come and listen to us there.

Great. Really helpful. Hopefully, you can arrange and get some of the Biscoff stuff down there as well. That's just a personal favorite. And then Luca, maybe shifting gears over to the outlook. Maybe what's your thought process on the guidance range and sort of investment flexibility that Dirk mentioned in light of the fall in cocoa costs? And what are your updated thoughts on sort of the cocoa environment, if you will, from here.

Thank you, Andrew. So before commenting on the '26 guidance, maybe a brief comment about how we ended the year. And I think, as we said, we are quite happy with our emerging markets momentum. And quite frankly, also happy because we saw sequential improvement in developed markets, albeit we are not fully there yet. On '26, the guiding principle of the guidance was to be prudent, particularly as we see some short-term pressure points like in the U.S. You know that the biscuits category is still subdued. And the plan is that it will continue like that for the first half at least with some marginal improvements in the second half.

In Europe, we have planned for a chocolate category that is stable after the meaningful prices that were taken, but we also plan for some disruption due to the usual customer negotiation process that takes place in the first part of the year. The main reason for the guidance range is that recent and sudden cocoa dynamics might require some adjustments and flexibility depending on how competition will react to those prices and where cocoa eventually will stabilize.

As we said, our pipeline cost for 26 is determined at this point in time, and it is clearly at higher than current cocoa spot. So this is something that we hadn't anticipated before. And as we said, we just happened in the last couple of weeks. Our objectives are clear. We want to win with the consumers. We want to win in the marketplace. And that's one of the reasons why we are investing substantially behind our brands. And hopefully, the goal is to have improved volume trajectory, particularly as we move through the year.

On the phasing, maybe just one word. I commented already on the customer disruption in Europe in the first part of the year, but on profit given the way our inventory accounting works, we will face some headwinds, and we mentioned that in the prepared remarks.

On Cocoa, I said it a few times, and I believe fundamentally, nothing has changed. If you look at supply and demand, the dynamics were clear well before the last couple of weeks. And so I believe what the market is recognizing now is maybe a little bit overdue. Obviously, we would have liked a little bit more of a balanced approach to the weigh-down of cocoa. It happened all of a sudden by reality is that in our minds, Cocoa as it stands out is a fatter presentation of supply and demand. That's why we believe this level is important for us to realize as we look at profitability, particularly going forward into 2017 and beyond.

We'll now move on to Peter Galbo with Bank of America.

Luca, maybe if I can actually pick up on the comments you just made around some of the phasing more on the cost side. I know that you mentioned, I think the lion's share of it comes in, in the first quarter. But maybe you can just talk us through a bit more the cost phasing on cocoa to '26 and then maybe how we would think about the phasing on potential price investments in chocolate over the balance of the year.

Thank you, Peter. So fundamentally, maybe I'll start with the top line because I think that's a clear component of how we think about the plan in '26. As you might imagine, at this level, we are not going to price cocoa further necessarily, but it is also important to know that our profit took quite a material hit in 2025. And so we were not certainly fully priced at the level of cocoa in '25.

And albeit the pipeline cost is coming down in we need to keep a level of pricing that is pretty much the same as we had in '25. In terms of cost, the way our inventory accounting works is that we will have to adjust the level of inventory in the first day of the year. to the actual pipeline costs that we see in 2026 versus how we exited the year in 2025. And that is a onetime adjustment that takes place on the inventory, and that is causing in the first 2 quarters, but predominantly in Q1, an impact that is $0.5 billion. And that gives you an idea of the dislocation of cost that we see throughout the 2 years.

So in terms of top line, I would say, in chocolate specifically, flat pricing in terms of volume, some implications as the risk of a disruption as there is customer disruption in Europe. And in terms of cost, higher cost in the first half versus the second half. And so as we move through the year, I think you're going to see a sequential improvement of volume and revenue, but most importantly in terms of phasing.

In all of these investments in A&C is equally spaced throughout the quarter, so no material changes, I would say, quarter-on-quarter in absolute terms of our A&C investment.

Great. And Dirk, maybe to pivot to North America, I mean I know it continues to kind of be a difficult operating environment. Volume trends are still a bit weak. There's a view maybe that this is more K-shape or cyclical tide versus structural? And maybe in the context of just one of your largest peers announcing price cuts today in the packing category. I would just love to get your perspective on the North America market where you stand on that to be? And again, on the pricing front, kind of what the go-forward actions might look like there.

Okay, Peter. Well, first of all, I think the thing in North America is the consumer. The consumer confidence is near historic low. They're worried about overall affordability. They are fed up with the price increases. They don't feel good about their personal economic outlook. They doubt about job security -- so what we are seeing is that the average shopping basket of the consumer in the U.S., whether you're in the higher or in the lower social economic classes has not increased for the last 2, 3 years.

Within that basket, they spent more money on the basics, milk, meat, bread and so on. And as a consequence, snacking is being affected. And you can see that in all of the snacking categories. You talked about the K-shaped economy. There is clearly a group of consumers, the more wealthy consumers that do spend differently in the sense that you can see that things like premium and better for you are growing within the snacking market, also some under go -- but the bulk of the consumers, they are really into value seeking.

So what they do is they look for lower unit prices. They look for deals. If they have a bit more money, they will look for build packs or multipacks and they also shift channels in -- from food and mass into value, club and online. As you said, the biscuit category is showing a soft volume. It was the last 3 months, it's down 4% in volume, 3% for the year, '25.

So overall, we don't necessarily see an immediate change as it relates to where the consumer is. And as a consequence, we need to adapt to the circumstances. So what we do, we are going to invest more to drive awareness. We see the same as in chocolate in Europe, penetration of our brands is not decreasing or sometimes just a little bit. It's largely the frequency and the quantity but that is being affected.

So we're going to invest in improving the frequency and the quantity bot. We're going to use PPA to address some of the affordability. We are expanding in some of these channels that I was mentioning. We are under-indexed, so we are pushing harder and we are increasing our market share. And we have offerings that are doing well. I'm thinking about the perfect bar, which is a protein offer or it dates a premium biscuit or a premium in chocolate or builders bar in the cliff range, which is also protein, they are all doing well, growing double digits.

So we're going to push harder on those brands. And then lastly, I would say, we are activating a supply chain program, which is meant to run over the next 3, 4 years. It's largely to modernize our operations, but it also will improve our efficiency and our costs. We will give us more network flexibility.

So overall, I would say we are entering a year in North America, we are stronger in the sense that we will do more investments that we've understood better what works and what doesn't work and that we have quite an extensive plan on things we want to do.

As it relates to pricing itself, we started off 25%, and we're quite aggressive on promotions and on deals, working on price. I have to say it didn't give us a return on our investment. So in the second half of '25, we changed our strategy. We did a lot less promotion and pricing. As a consequence, our price realization went up -- and I would say, overall, our P&L improved in North America, but we lost some market share because our volume performance wasn't the same.

But overall, I would say that probably it was better for us. So the way forward for us is better activations, interest to consumer more, make sure that they feel compelled to rice by snacks, our snacks on every shopping trip but we don't necessarily think that we need to decrease our prices to the magnitude that I heard from another company.

We'll now move on to Megan Clapp with Morgan Stanley.

I wanted to just maybe Luca follow up on the answer to Pete's first question just to make sure I fully understand kind of the message you're talking about is there are a lot of moving parts with cocoa and pricing. So when you talk about flat chocolate pricing in '26, that's the expectation, cocoa should be down, I think, significantly. But should we think about the net price cost relationship embedded in the guide is roughly neutral to the year because of the inventory accounting and the elevated hedges flowing through? Or is it still a net positive? I'm just trying to kind of understand the dynamics there.

And then is the idea that if pricing can kind of stabilize in '26, cocoa resets lower in '27. So that's really when the real profit recovery starts to show up.

Yes. Thank you, Megan. The idea is to have a neutral to positive balance in chocolate, specifically between cost and pricing. And albeit pricing is not going to move much. As I said, there is an element of cost that was locked for 2026.

So in general, used to think about pricing net of cost as slightly positive to neutral for chocolate. That's the way we have prepared the plan.

Okay. That's super helpful. And then just to come back to the organic sales outlook, 0% to 2%. You've got some nice momentum in emerging markets, I think, finished the year around high single digits. So is that the expectation for 2026 that emerging markets can kind of be in that high single-digit range? And if so, I think mathematically would imply kind of developed markets decline in the low to mid-single-digit range. So is that math fair? And just any way to kind of think about the U.S. versus Europe and relation to that?

The emerging markets will continue growing. And hopefully, they will do even better than what is embedded, quite frankly, in the guidance. We are happy with the momentum we are seeing in both Latin America and EMEA now -- in both segments, we have a meaningful presence in chocolate. And if you look at how much we price -- that contribution is not going to be there for 2026.

But on the flip side, there should be less elasticity now, I would say, majority of the volume declines that you see, particularly in EMEA, but also in Latin America are due to PPA. So the volume momentum is really there when you take out the PPA impact.

The idea for 2026 is again, to grow this market pretty much at the same level, but there will be a little bit less contribution from pricing and more contribution from volume mix.

We'll now move on to Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler.

You touched on the advertising spend of the tailwind in 4Q, but you've talked about stepping up investments next year. Can you give a sense of order of magnitude? And would 2026 be basically back to normal? Is there any kind of push beyond that? How do we just think about what kind of investment level you've got in store for the year?

So Michael, if you look at the SG&A line, it was clearly down year-on-year, '25 on '24 . One of the drivers there is continued over savings, but we had to a little bit into ASC 2. We said many times that we didn't touch the working media line, but we touch the nonworking media predominantly. The idea is to continue with lower nonworking media, but to clearly step up in the working part. And if you look over a couple of years, between '24 and '26, we will more than recover what we have to pull back in '25 into the overall line.

On the other part of SG&A, go the overhead part, we will continue with cost savings, but we will have to step up a little bit the annual incentive plan. So all in all, the investments in AMC over 2 years. I think it's going to be substantial. If you take '24 to '26, it's up quite meaningfully.

Okay. That's helpful. And just back to emerging markets, maybe touch on that, specifically maybe LatAm. It's down now a couple of years. What can you do to grow volumes there? And can you give any sense maybe of what kind of assumptions would be baked into the guidance?

Look, I think the simple answer there is that in LatAm, there is Argentina, which went through quite a bit of economic turmoil and there were material issues in the country. And on top of that, we decided to protect working capital and not to extend payment terms to anybody, and we did quite, I believe, a good work in keeping the business in accordance to our operating principles that are protect cash in Argentina and bringing the cash flow. That's what we did. When you strip out Argentina and you look around Clearly, Brazil got a little bit impacted by elasticity in chocolate, but Brazil is 1 of the best-performing markets that we have top and bottom line. They did an amazing job in terms of and minimizing elasticity. We are growing quite well outside of chocolate.

If you look at Mexico, there was a big comeback. The country is now in growth territory and doing fairly well. And so the 2 major markets LatAm are doing quite well. It is Argentina masking a little bit the performance of the region.

We'll now move on to Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities.

I wanted to start with this comment on the company's goal to demonstrate significant volume trajectory change over the course of 2026. Can you help us understand regionally where that change might be occurring, some of the key drivers, for example, the channel strategies that you have in North America. Are those expected to be material European or comps in Europe get quite a bit easier into the back half of the year. You mentioned the piece with PPA impacting emerging market volumes, a touch, and elasticity is getting better. Just give us a sense of what significant volume trajectory improvement looks like and contextualizing a bit where that's coming from and why?

Yes. I mean, if I go through the regions, we clearly expect EMEA overall, if you look at how we're doing in India, in Australia, China, coming back. So we see EMEA as being a big source of volume growth for us. So that's certainly a region that -- where we will see some good performance. If you then look to Latin America, as Luca was saying, there also, we think that it's going to be quite a good year for us.

North America, as I was explaining, the consumer confidence is in there, the biscuit category is soft. We expect that the the volume decline that you see in the category of 4% will ease, but we are not exactly counting on volume growth in North America. And then in Europe, what I expect there is that First of all, in our other categories, we had a pretty good year already in '25. We expect that to continue and talking about biscuits, cases and bases and meals.

And in chocolate, the price increase as we discussed, is going to ease. In fact, we are readjusting some of our pricing in certain markets. So all that we expect also will have a positive effect of volumes as compared to '25. So hopefully, that gives you an idea where the volume growth is going to come from. The phasing during the year is as these different activities come to bear. -- we expect that gradually to be better and also the lapping effect will help us over the year.

Great. And I know it's been broached a bit, but just to confirm, as we get into 2027, and really I'm asking just because it was included in the prepared remarks, can you give us a sense of the investments that will have been lapped going into 2027. Should we expect the media investment to be done in 2016, the rebasing of media, the rebasing of comp, the investments into channel expansion strategy such that going into 2027, we're really just thinking about an improved complexion of the top line gross margins getting a bit more life against lower cocoa price and more operating leverage to SG&A? Or is there multiyear investments that we'll be continuing to come into the model as we get into 2027. I realize we may get more information on this at CAGNY, but again, it was in the prepared remarks. So I figured I get a bit more context on that.

Yes. So as we explained. So in 2016, we are taking a step forward and significantly increase our investment in working media as compared to 25%. Taking into account that 25%, we took a step down largely in nonworking media, but also a little bit in working media. For 2017, we expect that we will do another step-up in investments. We believe that we have to continue to invest in our brands. The opportunity is big. And we want to drive volume growth because that needs to be the first base of growth for the company, combined with hopefully, over time, a little bit of pricing. So that's our thinking. As it relates to margins, we feel that overall, from a commodity perspective that things will ease, particularly in cocoa. And so we can see a significant uplift in our chocolate margins in which will be divided by reinvesting part of it and part flowing to the bottom line. And so we will -- we are aiming for a strong EPS growth in 2017. But at the same time, we want to keep on investing in our brands.

So we are not planning to flow everything to the bottom line if that would be the thinking.

Thank you all. Appreciate it.

And we'll go next to David Palmer with Evercore ISI.

Sort of a big picture question on European chocolate in your division there. I wonder how are you thinking about the path to a profitability recovery there to sort of a pre-25 levels that we saw for a few years, if you think that is even the norm that where we saw profitability there. And I wonder with prices having come down, is 27% the beginning of a recovery.

And what is there a path back to pre-25 levels of profitability? And how do you think that would play out? And I have a follow-up.

So the IDA, David, is to go back to the profit pool as it used to be. And hopefully, even a little bit better because remember, we really have growth opportunities even in Europe. And quite frankly, -- we still have to invest quite a bit of AMC and expand both in the developed part of Europe but also in the developing part of Europe.

We still have plenty of opportunities in terms of price point, channel segment within chocolate and our goal is to grow the chocolate business in Europe after the meaningful price increases we have taken in '25 if cocoa ranges at around 3,000, our goal is to get into '27 with a much improved situation. and to really be able to get back to the all profit pool. And if we have to make some selective price investments, we will make them. I think if you look at the way the '26 plan is structured in Europe, there are more promotions. We are going to offer more value to some of the consumers. And all in all, I think while '26 can be a new base, 27% can really be a step change for our chocolate market overall around the world, including Europe.

Are there any sort of milestones this year that will that you're going to be really watching for, whether it's perhaps how you see the retailer brand pricing works or your own price elasticity levels remaining better than a certain threshold. I mean what are some things that you're going to be looking for and that we could even look for in the data?

It is potential competitive reaction, as we said a couple of times already.

We'll now move on to Scott Marks with Jefferies.

First 1 for me. I don't believe I've heard any discussion thus far about GLP-1 and some of the more recent developments in that market, especially with some of the newer oral medications. So just wondering if you can share a bit about how you're thinking about that and what you're expecting on that front for this year and beyond.

Yes. Well, we model it out every quarter basically based on the latest information. And we have noted the fact that -- the price of some of it has come down. We have noted that there is a oral being approved -- we've taken into account the estimates as it relates to that. And I have to say that up to our opinion that will not significantly change the estimates that we've had so far.

And the estimates we have so far, first of all, we do not see a short-term impact on our business because there is a very modest adoption rate right now and also the calorie reduction is relatively benign that we see. But if we expand 10 year, and we take an adoption rate in the U.S., which would be somewhere between 10% and 20%. And even then, we do not see a significant effect on our overall business. We believe that over that period of time, it could have a 0.5% to 1.5% effect on our overall volumes. So almost negligible over a period of 10 years.

So at this stage, I can't say that we feel that it is having a major impact on our business.

I appreciate the color there. Maybe next question for me. You made some comments in the prepared remarks about continued investments in cocoa growing regions maybe outside of West Africa. Just wondering if you can share an update on some of those investments and how you're thinking about those moving forward relative to kind of the traditional cocoa-growing regions?

Yes. I think it's just better from an overall long-term risk management perspective that we balance our supply of cocoa into different geographical regions. Those regions are largely Latin America mainly and also a little bit in Asia in places like India, Indonesia, -- in Latin America, the countries that are stepping up are largely Ecuador and Brazil, different farming models.

In Brazil, we see some large farms coming up, and we we are having long-term agreements with them to suppliers. And then in Ecuador, it's smaller farmers, but who are getting together, and we see those countries significantly increase their output. And so over time, that might not give the best cocoa price, but we think the current price that we see should be sustainable, but it will significantly decrease the risk of events like a bad crop or a disease that affects the crop in a country that, that is going to have a big impact on the overall cocoa market as we currently see whereby Ghana and Ivory Coast have close to 60%, 65% of the global cocoa supply.

The other one I would say that is worthwhile is that, I think over time, there will be more and more lab-grown cocoa that will become available, not GMO but lab grown, and we think that there will be an interest from the European Commission and the U.S. government to approve that sort of cocoa. Why? Because it has significant beneficial effect in the sense that all the negatives that surround the Cocoa supply chain would not be there as it relates to climate and other social effects.

So in that sense, that's also a direction that we are investing in and supporting.

Thank you. I think that was the last question for today. I would like to thank you for your attention. I would like to reiterate the fact that we will be going deeper in CAGNY into the European chocolate situation and give you the details on how we're planning to tackle it. We'll also go deeper in our North American situation and what our plans are there. And we will cover the emerging markets and, of course, our financial outlook.

So we're looking forward to see you there to spend some more time explaining our business to you. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Mondelez International 2025 Third Quarter Earnings Question-and-Answer session. [Operator Instructions]

On today's call are Dirk Van de Put, Chairman and CEO; Luca Zaramella, CFO; and Shep Dunlap, SVP of Investor Relations. Earlier this afternoon, the company posted a press release and prepared remarks, both of which are available on its website.

During this call, the company will make forward-looking statements about performance. These statements are based on how the company sees things today. Actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in the company's 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K filings for more details on forward-looking statements.

As the company discusses results today, unless noted as reported, it will be referencing non-GAAP financial measures, which adjust for certain items included in the company's GAAP results. In addition, the company provides year-over-year growth on a constant currency basis unless otherwise noted. You can find the comparable GAAP measures and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations within the company's earnings release and at the back of the slide presentation.

We will now move to our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Lazar with Barclays.

Dirk, maybe to start off, I was hoping you could talk a bit more in depth about Europe, how you're seeing things as you sort of close the year and into next, particularly when it comes to pricing that's been landed and movements sort of that you deem that you need to make, as you mentioned, price gap management in certain European markets.

Yes, Andrew. So I would say, if I start with the consumer in Europe, I would say the consumer confidence remains, in general, stable, unchanged versus the last quarter. If I look at our biscuits, cakes and pastries and meals business, they're all performing well, where we have share growth and volume/mix growth. And if I look at it from an overall euro perspective, I would say the category is performing generally in line -- the chocolate categories in general, in line with expectations.

We've seen the cocoa situation. As you know, we had to do quite substantial price increases in the order of about 30%. And so broadly speaking, I would say the chocolate business is fine, but we are clearly seeing a couple of pockets of pressure that we need to address. These are caused sometimes by competitive situations where our competitors did not increase their pricing as much as we did, largely because they are private companies.

And the other thing I would say is that in certain markets, the retailers also suddenly took more margin than they have historically done. So we're fixing these problems. I wouldn't say it's a structural issue, but we need to be -- deal with, and that has caused a difference in what we were expecting for this quarter in Europe.

I would also mention that as you look at the European situation, there was a heatwave in July, which has affected our volumes, plus we have done some significant downsizing also, which affects our volumes. The two markets where we have these situations are the U.K. and Germany. We are starting to see a reaction to the repositioning of the price points in certain areas of the portfolio that we have done. And so we are seeing the volume and the share improve as a consequence of that. We've also seen that competition has started to price recently. So that also will help the situation going forward.

Overall, I would say, as I see how the pricing is landing in Europe, elasticity is around 0.7, 0.8, it's higher than we would have expected where -- our thinking was more like 0.4, 0.5. And so we are taking on top of what I already explained to a number of other actions in the sense that we are innovating with new flavors and new formats. We are investing more in A&C. We're driving the seasonals very hard. We're working on promo effectiveness because that's also not playing out sometimes the way we would have expected. And largely our main focus is on hitting the right price points where in certain cases, like on our 300-gram range in chocolate, we passed 2 key price points, and that was probably a little bit more than the consumer can accept at the moment.

We are, of course, accompanying that with a lot of productivity and cost savings. But overall, I would say, seen the fact that this was the heaviest cocoa cost that we would have in the year from here going forward, we expect a significant improvement. We expect to see a significant improvement in Europe. I hope that helps, Andrew.

Yes, really thorough. Really appreciate that. And I guess, lastly, with respect to guidance, maybe you could talk briefly about the implied Q4 guidance change, just as I would assume, cocoa is largely been locked in at this point.

And then what's the key reason behind, I guess, the cut? And then as it relates to '26, you make reference to being an algorithm and EPS. I was hoping you could add a bit more color on your confidence around this. And I guess, more importantly, the sort of the key puts and takes that we should think about when thinking about organic sales growth next year in light of the planned investments that you're making and some of the elasticity concerns?

Thank you, Andrew. I will start by saying that on the 25% guidance we had a series of impacts that clearly, we weren't anticipating at the time of us giving guidance for 2025. The three main ones are the tariffs and related uncertainty affecting the overall consumer confidence. The second one is the material destocking that happened in the U.S. due to retailers lowering their working capital. And the third one clearly was the unprecedented heatwave in Europe. .

Those elements lowered already, when we talked to you for Q2, our flexibility for the year. With incremental softening of the U.S. biscuit market at the end of Q3, and we saw the market declining in volume terms a little bit more than the previous quarters, and the higher chocolate elasticities in Europe. Clearly, that caused a volume/mix impact that at this point in time, we don't want to offset by cutting costs and potential growth into next year.

I think importantly, in the prepared remarks, we give you a sense of all the actions we are taking to improve the volume trend that we see specifically in the U.S. and in Europe. And importantly, we have taken additional pricing in the U.S. We have confidence in all the plants that we are putting in place around seasonals. I think we call out clear elements of growth in the U.S. like Tate's, the Ventures and Give and Go. And I think when you really look at what the new guidance means in terms of implied Q4 you see a step-up in the top line. 4 is year-to-date organic net revenue growth, we are guiding you at more than 4. And importantly, last year, below the line, we had an $0.08 impact in the tax line that is nonrecurring this year.

And so the implied EPS growth will translate in an over delivery compared to last year of the EBIT that will be quite good in terms of growth.

Obviously, as far as '26 goes, it is a little bit premature to put all the pieces together for you at this point in time. We are literally going through the plants. And you might imagine that the big question we are asking ourselves is, what cocoa level are we going to have into next year? As I mentioned a few times, we are well protected and covered. But reality is we have put in place a series of coverage strategies that would allow us to participate cocoa further potential declines. And so we need to understand a little bit better, and we will have a better sense of what the real cocoa impact is going to be for next year. It's certainly going to be positive even if cocoa is trading at a level that is quite higher compared to historical norms.

We feel quite good about the plans we have been reviewing with all the business units in terms of chocolate. We are clearly optimizing GP dollars into next year, in line with our guidelines and how we want to manage the business. The commercial approach to chocolate is quite good. We are doubling down on things that are working really well for us. And obviously, we want to build share, drive consumer value and protecting penetration.

And I don't have to tell you again that we have big opportunities in all emerging markets. I mean, adjacencies like cakes and pasteries [indiscernible] bar and premium. So cocoa will be deflationary in 26, and we wanted you to hear that our goal is clear in terms of EPS growth for next year. And so we are really targeting a high single-digit EPS growth for 2026 even after the material investments that we're going to put into the business to really protect the long-term growth of our categories.

We'll move next to Peter Galbo with Bank of America.

Dirk, I was hoping maybe you could give us a similar walk around the U.S. in terms of the path forward maybe to getting back to growth? I know you gave kind of a very detailed answer around Europe, but would appreciate kind of a similar level of detail on the U.S., please.

Yes, yes. Well, so as Luca already said, we saw the category slowing down more in the last quarter versus what we saw in the first half, which is obviously not good. If you look at it, the volume was down 4% versus 2.8% average year-to-date. That is driven obviously by a consumer that is very concerned in general about the economy, frustrated with the pricing they're seeing. And we're seeing the same behavior that we've been seeing before in the sense that they are really seeking for value, that means different things for the lower-income consumers, that means going to smaller packs at the right price points. For the higher income consumer that usually goes for bigger packs and buying when they're own promotion.

We see that the basket size of the consumer is really not increasing over the last 3 years. And as you can imagine, as prices have gone up, they're being more squeezed on what they can buy within that basket. And they are tending to focus on what are the essentials. And as a consequence, snacking categories are not that essential for them, and we're seeing that in our volumes.

And on top of that, promos are not necessarily delivering the expected ROI. What else are they doing? They're shifting channels and format. So we see a big shift from food and mass to value, club and online. We see more multipacks being sold.

There's also some good news in the sense that some of the premium segments are doing well, like take for us is doing well and some of the better-for-you offerings, particularly protein related, that is for us a Builder's Bar under the Clif range, or a Perfect bar. They're doing well. We have You, which is our vegan chocolate is doing well. So we can see that there are areas that are connecting with the consumer for instance, also a Give and Go is doing quite well.

The main concern is the U.S. biscuits category. And of course, the government shop shutdown going forward will not help with the confidence of the consumer.

If I look at the OI, the reason why the OI is negative in North America is largely driven also by cocoa. It might not immediately be clear, but Oreo or chips or Tate's also have quite a bit of chocolate in them. And so they are affected by them. At the moment, it's not easy to price in the U.S.

So what are we doing about all this is the big question, of course. I would say in the first place, the one thing that's important to realize is that our presence in those channels that are benefiting, club, value and e-commerce is good, but we don't have the same market share as we have in food and mass. So we've been working very hard to increase our presence there over the past more than 1 year. And every quarter, our market share in those channels is increasing, and we will continue to do so. That means we have to adapt our PPA. We have to increase the number of displays we have in these channels, and we need to do some route-to-market investments.

The other channel that we are pushing very hard is on the go. And on the go, you can reach the consumer on the go with multipacks. If you think about a big multipack, and mom has to put a snack in the lunch basket, if you buy a multipack, that can cover several days or more than a week. And so we see a big opportunity in multipacks. Of course, we are working very hard on C stores because that's the other big area where on the go is happening.

Overall, price points are critical, so we're doing a lot of RGM work on hitting the right price points. And that means really PPA at both ends of the spectrum. On one hand, the lower price. And so we've been talking about in previous calls that we need to get really to that $3 price point with some of our packs and then also the big pack as I was starting about before.

The other thing, as I said, better for you, particularly protein is doing well. So we're driving our protein range quite hard. We're seeing 20%-plus growth there in Perfect bar and in Builders. So that is something that we will continue to double down on.

And then as it relates to premium, particularly brands like Tate's, belVita and You are the other ones that we are going to double down on. As it relates to health and wellness, we also see a little bit of movement in overall health and wellness. We are working on expanding the Zero Oreo range and also the gluten-free Oreo and Tate's range.

So maybe the last thing I would mention there on how we are trying to get back to growth is that we are studying very carefully how our promotions are working, and we've seen that we have to shift the way we do certain promotions. We need a lot more activation, not just a price decrease, but activation featuring special events, things like that.

So those -- all those activities combined at this stage, make us believe that we can get to positive growth next year in U.S.

Great. And Luca, maybe just on the prior question, maybe a bit more directly, you seem to have the visibility on, on-algorithm EPS growth for next year. I mean, should we be expecting that on top line, you'd have some visibility to algorithm top line, even if it's at the low end, just I know it's a bit more of a direct question, but would be helpful just from a modeling standpoint.

As I said, Peter, we need to put together our thinking at this point in time on what type of cocoa levels we are going to have into 2026. As I mentioned, we are well protected, but should cocoa go even lower, we will take advantage of that.

I think the way you have to think about the top line is in three key components. One, it is Europe, where clearly, chocolate pricing might be deflationary. But as a consequence, the elasticity that we saw on the way up, should happen on the way down as well. And importantly, I think we will be seeing volume growth in the chocolate business for 2026 in Europe.

The other component is developing markets where I think you're going to see continuous growth, volume and price-driven at this point in time. And the third component is really the U.S. where we are not projecting an improvement of the market situation, but where we will have material benefits coming out of channel expansion, us investing more in our brands and importantly, going after things that are really working well for us and doubling down on those. I think in the prepared remarks, for instance, we mentioned Oreo with Reese's.

So it's really impossible for us at this point in time to give you exactly the range of top line growth of 2026. But rest assured that we are driving for volume growth in chocolate in Europe, we are going to restore top line and bottom line in the U.S. And third, emerging markets will continue growing for us.

We'll move next to David Palmer with Evercore ISI.

I just want to circle back to Europe. You mentioned the price elasticity up to 0.7 or so. And you also talked about there's some price gap issues and some competitors that have lagged on pricing. I'm curious how you're thinking about the outlook for price elasticity going forward, maybe some of the gives and takes since we don't deal with that market quite as much. One scenario would be that you're making adjustments right now. And that price elasticity could come back down.

And then you mentioned the historically high prices, and we've seen categories where there's a little bit of fatigue after a series of prices and that price elasticity can continue to be stubborn and rising. So I wanted to get your sense on that. And I have a quick follow-up.

Yes. Well, the type of price increases we had to implement our kind of unprecedented if you think about it. We are players that are largely in the tablet market. We are also in the other segments of chocolate, which is gifting or [indiscernible] lines. But largely tablet players, which has the biggest content of cocoa. So as a consequence, we had to do, as I said before, about a 30% price increase. And historically, the elasticity has been around 0.4, 0.5. It is higher, as I said, 0.7, 0.8, but that's not yet dramatic in the scheme of things, I would say that's pretty good as long as you're below 1, I don't think there's many categories that would have such a limited price elasticity.

But the main thing is, if you think about a 30% price increase on a 300-gram chocolate bar, for instance, you start to really get into quite high euros per bar. And I think as an example, that one, that's the one where we believe that we need to do something going forward.

That doesn't necessarily mean elasticity needs to improve. What we need to do is get that bar to a price point, which is much more acceptable for the consumer. Short term, we can do that by reducing the price. Long term, we have to see if we reduce it to for instance, a 250-gram bar or something like that. So it is really adapting to very specific circumstances where we knew that we were taking a risk by passing certain price points, and in some cases, that worked quite well. In other cases, it didn't turn out so well. So that's one movement we are doing right now.

That movement is helped a little bit by some of the more benign cocoa environment. I wouldn't say cocoa is getting extremely cheap, but it's still much higher than it used to be, but at least it's come down from the high that we saw during this year.

The other one is probably that we need to adapt certain formats and look at where our competition is placed and make sure that we are in a much more competitive level. That would be the second big movement that we need to make.

So these two movements, we believe, will solve some of the issues that we're seeing. And again, I want to emphasize that, yes, things are different than we expected, but it's not that they're often a major way of what we would have expected to happen in Europe, but we do need to make a number of adjustments of which I just gave you two.

And when you look at your emerging markets, do you -- I don't want to make a big deal of the type of price elasticities that it looked like in the third quarter, they were still not bad. Your volume was down, the price elasticity would be sub-0.5, even if you take that quarter in isolation. But are you seeing certain markets where you're seeing a little bit of fatigue or maybe price gap issues? Or is that is that playing out just as you would think there, and I'll pass it on.

Yes. I would say, in the emerging markets, I would say it's playing out largely the way that we would expect. The first thing I would say is there is more downsizing that has an effect on our volume.

So if you think about it, our emerging markets, volume was down 4.7%. And first of all, Argentina, where everything has been going on. I probably assume that you're aware of that. So there, we saw hyperinflation, very negative macros and so our volumes were significantly affected in the quarter in Argentina. I guess with the recent elections that will start to improve going forward.

And then the other big market for us is India, where we decided not to increase our prices that much, but to downsize quite a bit. So if you take out those two, the 4.7% becomes a 3% volume decline. So there's a number of effects in there that are driven by downsizing or the economy in two markets.

If I then go a little bit around, I would say, the one market that we are experiencing more pressure is China, where we had low single-digit growth, a negative low single-digit growth in Q3, which is a new thing for us. Year-to-date, we are positive in our growth. We do see some short-term pressure. But overall, we believe that things will be okay going forward. And as you know, we still have a big distribution runway. It's clear that the consumer there is still not in the same confidence and probably still at a low for the last 20 years, and we're starting to see some signs of that. But we do believe gradually, the consumer confidence will come back.

India, I mentioned, India in fact is doing quite well in the movement that we had to make. So performing better than we expected, mid-single-digit growth in Q3, low single digit year-to-date. And then if I go to Brazil, double-digit growth in Q3, excellent execution in biscuits, chocolate and gum and candy. And then Mexico, also improving. I wouldn't say that the consumer in Mexico is in a good place. Clearly, very concerned about the economy and overall job opportunities, but our business is recuperating from some of the issues that we had before. We're seeing good mid-single-digit growth in Q3.

So I would say, overall, we feel pretty good. Maybe looking at the volume, you might say that there is -- or it might look like there's a big elasticity effect, but that's really not the case from our perspective. And on our four big markets, we feel quite good at the moment.

We'll take our next question from Megan Clapp with Morgan Stanley.

Luca, maybe just a quick follow-up. I think in one of your answers, you said the guide does imply a step-up in the fourth quarter from an organic sales perspective. It sounds like that's mostly driven by Europe. I guess, is that fair?

And then just the second part of the question, I think you had anticipated some rebound in North America just as the pricing flowed through. So can you just help us understand a little bit more about what you're expecting for North America in the fourth quarter, just given [indiscernible] data has been a little bit softer recently.

Thank you, Megan. Yes, we expect a bit of a rebound in Europe. Definitely, there is going to be a big activation around Christmas, so the team is full steam ahead in terms of delivering the season and -- so you will see a little bit of a volume step-up in Europe, and that's one of the drivers.

I think you see emerging markets despite the numbers that on the face of it are in terms of volume/mix, maybe a little bit lower than you would have expected. As Dirk mentioned, there is a big impact of Argentina, but the chocolate elasticity in emerging markets is just on [ 0.3x ] as of Q3. And we expect that not to improve, but not worsen either in Q4. And importantly, in places like Mexico, China, India, Brazil, et cetera. I think the top line will continue to be good. So yes, there will be a better top line going into Q4.

In the U.S. we are projecting a market that is in line with the minus 4% volume wise that we have been talking. But as we said, we are fine-tuning our pricing strategies and our promos, and so you will see a little bit of more pricing kicking in, and that will have a positive impact on both the top and the bottom line. And so that's where we are at this point in time.

Okay. Great. And then maybe just as a follow-up. You talked about in the prepared remarks, the new multiyear North America supply chain program. Maybe you can just spend a little bit of time helping us understand what's different about this from prior productivity programs and any early targets you can share today?

Yes, it is a plan that we have been reviewing with the team for the last, I would say, 6 to 9 months. It is leveraging the competitive advantages that we have in terms of supply chain already. I think if you look at our profitability in the U.S. in biscuits and compare it to other players, it is obvious that we have quite a few good things to -- that help us deliver good profitability of the business.

The new program will be intended to address mostly cost in some of the U.S. bakeries. I think we still have opportunities in terms of putting down lines that are more automated and address, a, some capacity constraints that we have, but importantly, our overall cost structure, and I think it will be a meaningful impact, again, that you will start seeing most likely as of 2027.

And the second big element that we are addressing at this point in time is our DSD system. We stand by it, it is a competitive advantage. And so we're not talking about the front-face delivery of our great brands to retailers, but we are rather talking about the logistics system that is in the back of all of that. And having potentially fewer distribution centers and branches and automating those will result, a, in much better cost from a logistics standpoint, but second, in a much better service level and inventory for retailers.

And so let's stay tuned. We'll talk a little bit more about it in the next few months. And all of this will be done within the envelope of the cash flow goals that we have.

We'll move next to Tom Palmer with JPMorgan.

You noted the planned reinvestment for 2026 just when kind of talking about earnings, SG&A has been running down quite a bit this year. I guess any framing of how much of the reduction we've seen this year is more persistent cost reductions versus items that kind of come back next year?

So in terms of SG&A, I would say there are three key components of it. The #1 is clearly the working media and working media is a little bit in decline compared to last year, but we didn't touch structurally the amount of spending investments we have been making in that P&L line in 2025. Going forward, you will see a big step-up of that line into 2026, and we firmly believe that the virtuous cycle that has delivered great results for us will have to be put back in place in 2026, particularly as there is cocoa coming down and there is a cost favorability due to that.

The second element is non-working media that has been managed in a declining mode for 2025 and that will continue into 2026. Obviously, we'll have to make some specific investments, but we expect the non-working media line to be cutting control.

And the third element is the overhead. This year, specifically, there is a positive impact due to our incentive plan that is not as high as we had it last year. But importantly, as we go forward, I think the team is working on initiatives that will deliver further SG&A savings. And so we expect that line to be in level to 2025 in 2026, with the exception, obviously, of the incentive that will be planned at 100% for 2026.

Okay. And I apologize for asking again on Europe. But I do just want to clarify on elasticity because I think there's kind of two pieces you discussed. This 0.7 to 0.8, that's effectively like non-seasonal products where you're seeing that elasticity and the belief is that will not change for the quarter. But as you shift more to seasonal, you'll effectively see better volume trends because those items we'll have less elasticity?

Yes. That's basically the correct assumption in the sense that the 0.7, 0.8, unless we start to do major movements, and what I said is we are adapting in certain areas, that means it's not an across the board sort of adjustment of our pricing. It's only in those specific cases where we think we need to bring it back to the right price point.

And so the 0.7, 0.8 roughly will be maintained on the normal range. And just historically, we noticed that the seasonal range, the consumer is not that clear on what the right price point is and also is inclined to pay a little bit more. So the seasonal range will have less elasticity.

We will take our next question from Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities.

So I wanted to ask about North America strategy. Some of your competitors in North America or peers maybe better said, have taken the approach of investing into value, into pricing, so as to establish a foundation from which to grow volume longer term and have effectively accepted the consequences over a 12-month time horizon. I think you certainly dabbled with this strategy in the front half of the year, and it impacted your profitability and there's been some shift towards, I suppose, protecting the profit pool.

Can you just talk about your, I suppose, level of confidence is the right way to put this, that a strategy that's a bit more focused on value and protecting the profit pool is the right strategy as we exit this cycle over the next 6 to 12 months? And maybe just if you could highlight a bit more whether you don't see these as mutually exclusive items, you can both protect the profit pool with pricing, but also offer value with some of the innovations and pack changes. So a little bit of detail on the strategy evolution in North America regarding pricing and volume.

Yes. Well, I would start with saying it's a particular year for us in the sense that you have on one hand, the whole chocolate, cocoa movement that we have to deal with. And on top of that, you've got North America, particularly U.S. market that is slower than we've seen in quite a while. And so at a certain stage, we need to, yes, protect our overall profit pool, and we cannot try to solve for all problems at the same time. And so that would be one reflection that we had.

The other one, I would say, as we started off the year, and we had a certain promotional strategy, what we noticed in North America is that, that promotional strategy was not giving us the volume effect that we were hoping for. And as a consequence, that started to affect our margins more than what we have thought or our profit pool, if you want.

And so the shift that you've seen with now some price increases and some changes in the way we promote are really not driven necessarily by protecting the profit pool but are really driven by seeing how can we optimize our situation. And so going forward, as you look into next year, on one hand, as we explained, we think that the chocolate situation will significantly improve and that will allow us also to invest more into North America.

If we would use that extra investment for a value play at the moment, I'm not convinced that, that is the best solution. As I said before, consumers don't seem to necessarily just react to value. They seem to be much more in a situation where they say, "Well, I can buy in my basket today what I can afford. I'm not planning to increase my spending. Within that, I need to cover my essentials. And yes, sometimes I will buy my biscuits, sometimes I won't." But even if the biscuits are a very cheap price, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will buy them. So our experience with the value strategy hasn't been that great.

What we do, do is in our PPA strategy, we have launched a range of products that are at lower price points, you get less product for it, but at least it's available at the $3 or the $4 price point where about 1.5 years ago, 70% of our range or so was above the $4 price point. And we've significantly moved that in a way, that is a value strategy, but those products come still at very good margins. So that's the way I see the movements that we are going to do. And I hope this clarifies it a little bit.

Yes. Helpful. One quick follow-up on the investment a little bit around this SG&A buckets. Is there any pull forward of investment that you had planned for 2026 coming into Q4 as you see some opportunities to lean in to achieve some of those outcomes that you're looking for?

And then just as it pertains to this 2026 earnings outlook, does that embed a full spending, a replenishment of spending that you would expect to be sufficient so as not to need to do that again going into 2027?

Look, I think the -- at this point in time, the Q4 plans for A&C investments are locked in. So there is -- the guidance we gave you is in line with the level of spending. And clearly, we allocated money in the places where we saw opportunities. And as I said, we pulled back, particularly on nonworking media. But in general, pricing a lot, and they are contemplated in guidance.

The virtuous model of this company is continuous investments in our brands, in our franchises and execution at point of sales and activation at point of sales. For instance, if you take some of the plans we have for next year, particularly around our chocolate with Biscoff or the fact that we are launching Biscoff in India. I think that will be meaningful spending and incremental cost due to activation at point of sales.

I don't think it's possible to assume in a growth company like the one we want to be that we have done in 2026 with the investment. If you look at the amount of working media we have put into the system in the last few years, it is quite meaningful. But I think that is one of the reasons why we see our categories doing well. We have seen the company delivering good top line, volume-driven and price driven in a balanced way, and we want to continue that algorithm.

I think importantly, you will see us in the years to come to go more deliberately after key incremental spaces like snack bars and cakes and pastries. We have just launched 7 Days in Brazil, we want to make sure there is efficiency of spending behind all these incremental initiatives. And so we don't want to play necessarily on a model that is launched, see how it does and then invest A&C, we want to go all in at both in terms of execution at point of sales and support to our brands.

And this does conclude our question-and-answer session. I would now like to hand it back to Dirk Van de Put for any additional or closing remarks.

Well, thank you for attending our Q3 earnings call. Obviously, if you have any further questions, our IR team, Shep and Ron are available to answer anything else that you would like to discuss. Thank you.

Thank you, everybody.

This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time, and have a wonderful evening.