Q1 2026 trading update conference call and live webcast. I am Moira, the Chorus C all operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen- only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star one on your telephone. Webcast viewers may submit their questions or comments in writing via the relative field. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Xavier Rossinyol, CEO of Avolta. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Thank you for attending this trading update for the first quarter 2026 of Avolta. My name is Xavier Rossinyol, and I'm here with our CFO, Yves Gerster. I'm gonna go straight to the highlights in page four of our presentation. We have presented today strong and positive results for the first quarter of 2026. Our core turnover reached CHF 2.9 billion with an organic growth of 4.7%. Without the estimated effect of the Middle East crisis, our organic growth would have been 5.9% on the first quarter of the year. Core EBITDA has reached CHF 190 million, which implies a margin of 6.6%, which is 20 basis points better than last year for the same period. Equity free cash flow has been negative, as it is always on the first quarter of the year because of the seasonality on CHF 164 million. Affected by some net working capital effects due to new operations that Yves will explain in detail in a few minutes. Those are strong and positive results in a context that is, number one, the lowest quarter for us. Number two, with effects on seasonality like Easter, the Orthodox Easter, the beginning and the end of the holy month of Ramadan between March and April, and of course, the Middle East crisis. Despite all those conditions, we have reported a strong quarter one. Because of that, we reconfirm once more our focus on our capital allocation policy. Leverage has reached 2.1x net debt to EBITDA, which is another decrease year-on-year. Yesterday, our general assembly approved the proposal of the Board to distribute CHF 1.15 per share as a dividend, which implies a growth of 15% versus the dividend of last year. We are progressing in the announced share buyback for 2026 of CHF 225 million. Today, we are confirming again that what we are seeing, particularly in the Middle East, but also the expected consequences on a wider sense, we regard them as temporary, not affecting our core business, and therefore, we are confirming our mid-term outlook today. Moving to the next slide. I think looking at the performance by region helps to explain the strength of our business. Organic growth has been, in the first three months of the year, 2.5% in EMEA, the region most affected by the Middle East crisis, 3.9% in North America, 6.9% in Latin America, and 17% in Asia- Pacific, yielding the 4.7% I already mentioned before, which will be close to 6% without the Middle East. I consider more interesting in this page to look at the last column, which is a combination of March plus April. I've been pretty consistent over the years that April and March needs to be seen together because it's when you have the effects I mentioned before that are purely seasonal. You look at that, you see a very clear numbers. EMEA is slightly negative, 0.6% organic, the effect of the Middle East, an effect that is higher on the lowest season quarters than in the full year. Middle East is one of the regions less or least seasonal according the year, and EMEA is one of the most seasonal regions. The weight of the Middle East in quarter one is the highest and much less in quarter two and especially in quarter three. North America, a very strong performance of 5.4% in combination of March and April. We see very good signs in North America. LATAM, 3.8%, but that was temporarily affected by some of the security concerns in Mexico that affects the number of tourists. We are seeing an improvement on the numbers after those events. Very strong APAC, both on like-for-like and on change of scope, as we've been consistently saying we want to grow everywhere, but we are underrepresented in Asia- Pacific. All in all, organic growth for March and April combined has been 3%, and we think the estimated effect of the Middle East during those two months have been another 3%. Without the Middle East would have been an organic growth of 6%. In North America, maybe just to mention that we regard the potential effects of the Spirit Airlines, Chapter 11 extremely limited. They represent 1.5% of the overall domestic traffic in the U.S., significantly less for our portfolio. Based on previous experience and already recent announcements, we believe other airlines will take the potential passengers. We consider that a very limited effect, if any. Moving to the next slide. A little bit more deep dive into the Middle East. We said when the start of the crisis that Middle East, direct and indirect, represents around 3% of our turnover on a full year, a little bit more on quarter one, quarter four, less in quarter two and quarter three. We have seen a limited effect. March and April is pretty good. You can see that the effect has been 3%. Already in May, early days, but already May, the effect is more limited because today some of the airports that were closed in the Middle East are open, and the number of flights and passengers in the region are rapidly increasing. They're still not in a normalized situation, but better today than two weeks ago. We do have experience on some of the spillover effects this crisis has on oil price, potential ticket prices. Oil goes up and down over the months and over the years. We know that now it's particularly high levels, but we think also those effects, despite being negative, it will be on a limited measure for our oil portfolio. We do have limited visibility, like everybody else. We don't believe anything that is happening today is structurally affecting neither the industry nor our core business model. Together with our diversification geographically, and it's very interesting because the first few months of 2026 are showing some regions performing better, others worse, like last year, but they were in a different trend. The geographical diversification do matter in this business. Also, the channel diversification, we have retail and we have food and beverage. I think it's of particular interest to point out that apart from the effect on sales, the effect in results and cash flow are always more limited because our cost base has flexible components. As we have shown over the years, in every crisis, we can take decisions, and we can focus on protecting the profitability, both on EBITDA, net earnings, and also in working capital. Moving to the next slide. Today is a trading update. It's not the moment to make a full review of how we are running the business, but I thought it was important to put a slide to reassure that, yes, we are focusing on managing the temporary headwinds, but we are also continuing in our commercial data and digital transformation. We keep focusing in all the key aspects of the growth engine, from the hybrids to the entertainment, to the local stores, to the pricing, the assortment, et cetera. We are progressively increasing our focus on data and digital. You know those figures, but I like to remind them from time to time. Of the 10 billion people traveling a year, we have exposure to 2.5 billion. We had last year 682 million customers, and today our Club Avolta has 18 million members, 2 million more than in our last reporting date. Club Avolta members represent 8% of the sales, and the growth on partnered link accounts year-over-year, it stands now to 132%. This data, organized in a proper way with the transactional data, airport data, passengers data, Net Promoter Scores, data from our POS, et cetera, et cetera, and the partnership with Avolta Next, that is our platform for startups, all that together keeps improving the way we manage the business and allows us to use more data to optimize that business. In every aspect I just mentioned, we are always trying to get the best monetization possible. Moving to the next slide. Which is becoming a classic because we have been showing exactly the same slide for quite a few years now. I think it's important in these troubled times to confirm a steady direction. Geopolitics is affecting us like it's affecting everybody else. B, I wanna be very clear, we do take the current events extremely serious. We monitor them on a daily basis at airport basis. When necessary, we take decisive actions where and when is needed. If we need to do more because things go on one direction or the other, we will do. Said that, we regard what is happening as temporary, and it's not affecting the way we address our strategy and our operating model. Thanks to our diversification, that's why today we feel comfortable confirming our medium-term outlook of an organic growth of 5% to 7% on turnover, an EBITDA margin expansion of 20- 40 basis points per year, and a further increase of at least 100 basis points on the equity free cash flow conversion. As we feel comfortable on our midterm outlook, we are also comfortable in reconfirming once more our commitment to the capital policy allocation. The capital allocation policy. Number one, investment in the business. Investment in the shops, investment in the restaurants, investment in the business development, investment on the digital transformation. Potential mid- to small- size M&A, always focusing on the accretion that they will deliver, financed with our own resources and, of course, with an extreme focus on ROIC that for us is fundamental. Second, continuing the deleveraging. Our target leverage is 1.5x-2x net debt to EBITDA. We are in that level on a full- year basis with a possibility to go 2.5x on a temporary basis if we will do an M&A. The third priority is very clear. The excess cash goes to shareholders. A yearly dividend that we have committed to be at least 1/3 of the equity free cash flow. Yesterday, I said earlier, our general assembly approved that for this year we will distribute CHF 1.15 per share, which is an increase of 15%. It's the third year in a row that we distribute an increased dividend. If there is more excess cash, we will be doing share buybacks. We did one in 2024, one in 2025, and we announced we will do one in 2026. The combination of the dividends and the three share buybacks will give you more or less CHF 1 billion that we will have distributed directly to the shareholders. With that, I hand over to Yves. Thank you. Thank you very much, Xavi, and good morning and good afternoon to everybody on the line also from my side. Looking at the financial result, turnover, core turnover came in at CHF 2.9 billion, which represents a growth, an organic growth of 4.7% year-on-year. If you strip out the Middle East impact, which has affected us in the first quarter by -1.2%, the group would have grown at 5.9%. Core EBITDA came in at CHF 190 million, and EBITDA margin was 6.6%, an improvement of 0.2% versus the same period of the previous year. Equity free cash flow came in at CHF 164 million, leverage stood at 2.1x net debt to EBITDA, a further decrease of 0.1x versus March 2025. Let's look into the details of the financial result on the next slide with the EBITDA and the equity free cash flow. Look, what is important to note, firstly, on the EBITDA, is that we have faced an FX headwind of around 8.8% on the turnover. This is also visible on the EBITDA. EBITDA at constant currency would actually have increased versus last year of 8.5%. Due to the headwinds, the reported amount is lacking slightly behind the CHF 196 million of last year. Again, as a margin, the situation has improved by 20 basis points. In regarding the FX headwinds, it's also important to note that while the impact was severe in the first quarter, we do expect it to be reduced and ease as we go along during the year. We currently do expect the full- year impact to be around - 5%. Reason for that is the easing of the impact, as we go along with the third and fourth quarter, already had a quite significant impact last year and therefore, from a comparable basis, is becoming less pronounced this year. The second point is on the equity free cash flow. Equity free cash flow came in at CHF -164 million versus the CHF -104 million of last year. What is important to note here is that we had two impacts or specific impacts, one of them being a one-off. As you know, we have opened and started to operate in Pudong, and we are the first one in a generation to start to operate with a duty-free license in mainland China. We have opened that operation in a rush. We got awarded in the second half of December last year and had to open the stores on the 2nd of January, 2026. As a consequence, because of that speed, we took over some merchandise from the previous operator in the amount of roughly CHF 50 million equivalent. That merchandise came in without any payable. From a net working capital perspective, we took the full hit of the inventory. As you know, the Pudong operations are ramping up during the course of the year. While we started with a small footprint already at the beginning of 2026, not all of the stores are fully up and running and operational. That is expected to happen within the next two quarters or three quarters during the course of 2026, therefore, also the net working capital impact will fade out during the course of the year. Point number two there is a CHF 8 million impact from the Middle East, moderate impact in the first quarter due to the Middle East crisis. Moving on to the next slide, with the typical treasury overview with financial net debt and also leverage. As I've mentioned previously, leverage decreased further from 2.2x net debt to EBITDA in March 2025 to 2.1x in March 2026. A further reduction of 0.1x, despite the fact that we did a CHF 200 million share buyback last year, a dividend payment last year, and have started to buy back shares up to CHF 225 million share buyback program this year already. If you look at the bottom line, you see the typical maturity profile. No material facilities coming up for renewal in the next couple of years. The next big one is 2030. However, in 2027 and 2028, in each year, we have a bond. The one in 2027, we are currently looking and preparing for the refinancing, so you can expect to hear some news from our side in the coming weeks and month. Having said that, it's also important to note that the group has currently access to around CHF 2 billion of liquidity, so there is no refinancing risk at all, and we will execute, as always, this refinancing in an opportunistic way over the next couple of months. Moving on to the next slide, with the conclusion. What is the key takeaway from my side looking at the financial result of the first quarter? Overall, a strong result despite the Middle East crisis. In regard to the outlook, while a lot of things are remaining fluid and liquid as we are talking, I'm convinced to achieve the medium-term outlook as also confirmed before by Xavi. The key reason for that is on one hand side, our resilience and global platform, which we have built up over the last years. It's the strong balance sheet with the reduced leverage, and it's the flexible cost structure which allows us to react if and when required in a decisive manner. Having said that, I hand over back to Xavi for the conclusion. Thank you very much, Yves. I think the conclusion is one word, consistency. I think we deliver consistent results, consistent outlook, consistent strategy, consistent operations, and consistent capital allocation. We monitor everything carefully, and we take decisive actions when needed, but we continue to be as consistent as possible delivering on what we say. With that, I think we can open the floor for Q&A. Once more, thank you for your attention so far. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast while asking a question. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relative field. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Natasha Bonnet from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. This is Natasha Bonnet from Morgan Stanley. I've got two. The first is, could you talk to us a bit more about the underlying spend trends you're seeing by, you know, traffic and spend per passenger? The second is on the margin front. You've confirmed the mid-term guidance for, you know, an increase of the EBITDA margin of 20- 40 basis points. What level of organic growth do you need to keep margins flat? What levers do you have to manage your cost base? Thank you. Thank you, Natasha, for your questions. On the trends in passenger and spend per passenger, I think first is the low month. What I'm going to say, you need to put it as what it is, the low season. We don't see major changes. Versus the last few quarters, maybe with a couple of exceptions. Exception number one, some of the Middle East traffic going to Europe has been reduced, and some of them are higher spenders on their duty-free, for example. The effect is minor, but to mention one. The second, we see more strength in the spending in North America that what we have seen in the last year or so. The rest remains pretty much in line with previous quarters, taking into consideration, of course, the effects of the low season. On your second question, maybe you take it? Yes, absolutely. Look, on the second question in regard how much turnover or growth we need, positive or negative, to basically be flat on the EBITDA margin year-on-year. Look, a big part of the expected improvement of the EBITDA margin is coming from the initiatives we have. From Club Avolta to all the digital initiatives, to the data analytics, to the store upgrades, the refurbishments we do, et cetera, et cetera. All of that is expected to lead to the improvement. Obviously, that's the lion's share of the improvement. To a smaller part, obviously, there is some economies of scale. I mean, you have one CEO, you have one CFO, the more growth you have, obviously, that has an impact. The impact is relatively moderate. To answer your question, even in a scenario where you see a slowdown of the growth or even a stop or hold of that, we do expect to be in a position to improve our margins in line with expectations and in line with our outlook. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Manjari Dhar from RBC. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions. I also have two, if I may. My first question was on Asia. I was just wondering if you could give some color on sort of the consumer behavior and the trends you're seeing there, given the strong improvement, and maybe some color on the early signs from the Pudong units that have opened. My second question, I think on the Middle East slide, you mentioned that you can take some targeted actions if required to protect profitability. I just wondered sort of if you could give some color on what those actions would be and under what scenario you would need to take those. Thank you. Thank you very much. Asia is a very interesting area for us because, as you know, we are growing in line with what we said a few years ago on our strategic plan. We have a wider and wider portfolio. That in itself is also helpful because we want a global diversification, but we also want a regional diversification. Risk management, but also the possibility to capture the passengers that are growing. There are always some expenditure going up. The question if you get or not exposure to those. Now we have better exposure in Asia-Pacific that we used to have. We have a wider portfolio, a healthier portfolio, and we benefit better. Pudong is very early to say, because we are ramping up the operation from, if I recall properly, we started with two shops, and we will keep ramping up to 20+ shops over the next few months. I don't think we will have a full Pudong until the second half of the year and probably the last part of the year. Twenty twenty-seven, we should have a full Pudong and see the full benefit of this material operation. What actions we can take on the cost, you wanna take that also? Yes, sure. Look, I mean, the actions we take and the area where we can take them depends very much on how severe the situation potentially becomes. I mean, you can basically look into the Middle East crisis as something which you assume will continue to happen for the next two, three weeks, two, three months, or a couple of quarters. Depending on that, I can already tell you today, and we didn't disclose that in details, but that we have the corresponding plans already on the shelf and ready to execute if and when required. That goes from light planning of shifts, rehiring of people, taking holidays and incentivizing holidays, to more severe and stronger actions, including management of personal expenses, general expenses, or also potentially the management of some of the cash flows, including CapEx, in case this becomes required. Look, having said that, and just to be very clear, all of that has no impact on the strategy. It's done in a way that whenever the situation is normalizing or growth is accelerating again, we are ready to do so. It has no impact on the strategy of the organization, specifically when it comes to business development and is done in a very careful but also decisive and timely manner if and when required. We are pretty far away from any of those actions at the moment. Maybe just to add, you could see the way we act. If you look at the revenues or the turnover and the profitability of North America, yes, last year, full year, it tells you that when it's necessary, we can adapt the cost base to the turnover. I always give the same simple example. You don't want to cut, for example, high season personnel if you're gonna have a very good season because you want people serving them. If you know the passengers and the number of potential customers will decrease, you can also decrease the sales force. We did that, and I think it's not, I think it's pretty clear that we did that or our North American team did that very decisively last year. If it's needed to do the same in EMEA this year or in parts of EMEA, we will do it. It's never perfect because, of course, you need to have certain visibility on when things are going to happen. We do have ways to minimize any effect, negative effect on sales, minimize them in the effect in the results. Great. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Harry Gowers from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Yeah. Morning both, or afternoon even. I've got two questions, if I could. The first one, just on the 3% Middle East negative impact, I was wondering if you could break that down into any kind of more detailed high-level buckets. Maybe how much was stores based in the Middle East and store closures and how much of that was maybe weakness in the rest of EMEA or other regions with a high degree of outbound travel going into the Middle East? The second one, you know, I guess a little bit more of a technical one, but you said the Middle East is 3% of group sales. Was that an annual figure or was that a very much a March and April figure? Because obviously you mentioned the seasonality point. Actually, is the Middle East exposure much lower than that 3% as we go into the summer months? Thanks a lot. As we always talk about Middle East exposure, direct and indirect, the numbers are not 100% precise, but I will tell you, the average of the year is about 3%. It is more around 3.5%-4% on the low seasons and going down to 2% on the high season, roughly. Of the effect of the 3% is probably today about two-thirds direct effect and one-third indirect effect, meaning demand in other places of the world that is linked to the Middle East. I answered your two questions the other way around, but I hope it is okay. That's perfect. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Joern Iffert from UBS. Please go ahead. Hello, and thanks for taking my questions. I would have two to three. The first one is, good to see the trend change in North America with healthy organic sales growth in the last couple of weeks. What would you say is the reason for this? Why is this improving, and in which categories you are seeing this? Is this more food? Is it classical retail? This will be the first question, please. Second question, just as a reminder, when you have big sports events or big events like the World Cup now coming up in the U.S., what is your current expectations? Is this a material positive one-off for the region, or is this balancing in other regions of the world? Maybe your latest thoughts on this one would be helpful. The third one, I know it's a very general question, but given all your market intelligence you have, all the pre-bookings you are seeing at airlines, your conversations with landlords, what is currently your best guess what is happening with global passenger growth over the next couple of quarters? If you can answer that all. Thank you very much. Thank you. First, just, the change of trend of the U.S. is not the last few weeks, it's the last few months, at least for a little bit more than two months, we have seen a positive trend, both in retail and F&B, maybe a little bit more in F&B. But again, I answer the question because you asked me, not necessarily because, I believe that is so relevant in just the beginning of the year. We need to see the full year, et cetera. And again, it's very interesting. We typically don't cover that because we focus more on the segment reporting by region. But this diversification that balances our portfolio that we see in the regions, we also see in the segment, by business line. Not always the three business lines, duty-free, duty-paid, and food and beverage behave the same way. The beauty of the merger we did three years ago is that today, that might be interesting for a conversation. It's definitely interesting for pricing policy, assortment, et cetera. Also, at the end of the day, it helps us to perform on a more regular basis, even if the trends on categories or type of business changes. Your second question. The World Cup, the big events. Look, we regard these big events as, number one, positive, in general, with limited effect. It will have some effects, a few days in a few airports, but that doesn't mean it will probably group-wise be something you will see very materially. They typically are neutral to slightly positive. On the last one, I'm going to answer in a certain way, if I could answer perfectly, probably I should be selling the answer not answering. Look, it's a very interesting question, and we talked to all our landlords at all the airports where we operate, airlines, we read everything. It depends a little bit on the markets. For example, bookings to or from the Middle East are more limited than one would expect in a normal circumstances. Sorry. They are less than what you normally will see, but it's not something you would that you would be surprised because sometimes the schedules are variable, et cetera. The airlines there feel pretty comfortable and pretty reassuring that when the security circumstances change, the demand will be back very fast. In Europe, in general, the outbound markets on tourism for the summer do not see major differences from other years at this point in time. In general, people are still booking holidays to the southern part of Europe. Maybe Western Europe or Western Mediterranean a little bit more than Eastern Mediterranean, which is also normal to what we have seen in the past. In the, in the Western Mediterranean, I include South of Europe, but also North of Africa. As you know, we have operations both in the east and the west of North Africa. The Middle East crisis have had limited effects so far in North America, limited effects in Latin America. Even if our numbers don't show that at all, a little bit more effects in Asia on number of flights, but not material in number of passengers. What airlines are doing are reducing many times the number of flights, but increasing the load factor. Because of course, to maximize or to optimize their P&L, they need to reduce the weight of the fuel. That's something It's not there is no correlation, but it's not a 100% correlation, the number of flights and the number of passengers. I still expect 2026 to be weaker in overall passengers than without the Middle East crisis, but with, as we said, temporary effects and more limited than maybe in the middle of the crisis it looks like. That's the best way I can answer. I hope it's good enough. No, I appreciate your thoughts, helpful, definitely. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next question comes on the line of Jon Cox from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, guys. Just a couple more technical questions from my side. You mentioned Middle East passengers. Sorry, Middle East, 3% of group. You talk about indirect effects. How much is that sort of Middle East population when they travel into Europe? Is that another couple of points? If you can just give us some granularity on that. Back to North America, I'm just wondering in terms of is the growth really part of this whole K-shaped economy? 'Cause you obviously see all the, you know, who these people are buying this stuff, or is it just general U.S. consumers coming through? Because this pickup does seem a bit strange given everything that's happening, and I'm just wondering if it's like, you know, another indication of the K-shaped economy where, you know, well-off people are still traveling and buying luxury goods, for example. Then just to come to, you know, this whole point about, you know, any slowdown, what the impact will be on EBITDA or cash flow. You know, and I think I mentioned to Yves this morning, you know, you guys did a fantastic job during the financial crisis. Sales were down almost 10%, you know, during periods, and you still maintain more or less your margin and cash flow dynamics. Is it fair to say then, Yves, that, you know, even with flat sales this year, you would still be able to maintain EBITDA margin and your cash flow conversion? Thanks very much. Look, the Middle East, when we say 3%, we include the direct effects or the potential effects in the Middle East region as such, but also in direct flights, so flights from big capitals or big cities in Europe to the Middle East. As I said, in low season, this effect could be maybe 4%. In high season for the group, it could be 2%. On average, it's around 3%. The Middle East passengers flying to the rest of the world, of course, you have all kind of profiles on that traffic. To name three, you have local population, which travel in particular months of the year to other locations, mostly in Europe, which are high spenders, but the number is extremely limited. You know that because the local population in the Middle East is very limited. You have overseas workers that constitute the majority of the number of passengers, but they typically go back home once, twice a year, and that could be India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Philippines, et cetera. Their consumer profile is completely different. They buy another type of products, not on the luxury side, but maybe on the food and other aspects. You have the population in between that also travels on a regular basis in Europe mostly. The effect, of course, of the current crisis has been in the three because they couldn't fly as often as they used. I think on the first constituency, the effect will be limited because if they don't travel now, will travel later, the consumption pattern will not change. In the last ones, they have to retain some of the flights. They will retain it because sometimes even for visa conditions, they need to take some mandatory flights a year, they go back home to see their families that they sometimes are not together. On the middle one, we believe that's what the airlines in the region are saying, that when the possibility to travel again on a regular basis will be there. What there will be probably a slightly more, a slightly additional effect are the tourists going to the region that in our experience, maybe not in the Middle East, but in other areas of the world, when there is a crisis, the tourism stops, but it reinitiates as soon as the security conditions fell correct. I think that was your first question. North America, as you know, most of our business is domestic business, which means convenience stores and food and beverage. The duty-free is more limited. Duty-free is going quite well this year so far. Also because the perimeter has expanded. As you know, we won significant contracts in JFK last year, which included duty-free food and beverage and convenience. That is supporting because they are material on the duty-free. It's true, if you look at the categories, they are going a little bit better. In general, the American consumption, the American passenger is consuming more on the food and beverage and the convenience. Yes, it might look a slightly contradiction if you look at some of the macroeconomic data and our data. If you look at last year, the macroeconomic data was slightly better than our sales. Now our data is slightly better than the microeconomic data. I can give you the data. The reasoning behind, I don't 100% can answer, but we are performing better in our sales than the number of passengers according to TSA. The team in North America feels moderate optimistic for the remaining of the year, but we need to see. The prediction of consuming patterns on group wise are always much more reliable than when you go to region, or you go to country, or you go to airport. The more detail you go, the less precise is the forecast. In your last question, I think if addressed before, but I can add one very clear point. If we have the same sales on last year, we should have the same results on last year. Nothing should avoid that happening because even if you have some cost base increasing, in other places you can cut the base. I was reluctant to answer that question because you are kind of putting the scenario of zero sales growth on the mind of people, and that's not what we want. I think there has been twice the question, so I think it's fair to answer. Great. Thanks very much. Thank you, Jon. The next question comes from the line of Gian Marco Werro from ZKB. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Two questions from my side. First one on the self-checkouts. As I understand correctly, the rollout is most complete in the U.S. Can you give us a bit more visibility on the rollout in Europe or EMEA region? How much more can you do there also in regards to your cost flexibility? That would be interesting. The second question is on your CapEx plans. Now considering different scenarios for 2026, how much of your CapEx plans that you have budgeted for this year do you really need to spend and to also, yeah, to consider as a cash out? How much more visibility do you have there or flexibility do you have there to reduce it then also for the second half, depending on a more dark scenario? Thank you. First question was about? The first question was about self-checkout in Europe. How advanced and— Do you wanna take that or I take it? You can take it. Look, the self-checkouts, we will go in and they are going everywhere, it's slightly different depending on the type of business. For example, self-checkouts for convenience store, and the number of convenience store we have in the U.S. is bigger than anywhere else, it's a no-brainer. For food and beverage, depends on the type of food. You have the self-checkouts, but you also have the self-kiosk that is even more sophisticated. In duty-free, we have self-checkouts practically everywhere, but we, in those cases, we combine it with typical cashiers and also with, in some cases, handles on certain parts of the store, also depending on the size. There is a progressive deployment of self-checkouts across the group. It's true in the U.S. or in North America, we are more advanced because of the type of business. Probably to reach the point that we would like to reach is another 12- 18 months to go. On CapEx, we always have some commitments, but part of the CapEx can be cut or postponed if needed. We have a reasonable amount of flexibility. I also wanna say something. If it's not needed, I rather do the CapEx, because if the CapEx is done properly, it brings you higher sales and higher profitability. I like to cut I don't like to cut positive ROIC CapEx unless it's strictly necessary. If it's necessary, we have flexibility. Very clear. Thank you. For any further questions, please press star and one. The next question comes from the line of Luca Trnovsek from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I had two, please. The first one was on Club Avolta. You mentioned that it's growing both in membership and also as a share of group revenue. I was wondering, do members skew toward any particular business? Are they buying more F&B or duty-free? Do you see a natural limit to how big the program can get? Just number two, I was curious about margin. Do you see any particular kind of regional differences in margin this year? Do you think margin improvement can be broad-based across the group, or do you see it being more concentrated in the Americas given, you know, the Shanghai ramp-up in APAC and I guess, the Middle East impact in EMEA? Thank you. Thank you very much, Luca. We'll take the first one. It's super interesting, the data we take from Club Avolta. We learn so much about the Club Avolta members, and we learn so much also from those Club Avolta members how to profile other type of non-Club Avolta members, and we can improve, thanks to that, the shops, the restaurants, the assortment, the pricing, et cetera. The information or the examples I'm gonna give are exactly zero because this is a competitive advantage for us. Nobody is even close to what we have on Club Avolta. Be assured, we learn a lot, we profile a lot, and it's a key tool, together with others on the digital side, to keep improving our business and keep sustaining the continuous improvement on sales over the incoming years. You might want to take the second one. Absolutely. Look, on the second one on the margin, if I understood your question correctly, it was around if the margin, and I assume EBITDA margin, is different or if we see the trends in the different regions. The answer is no. Yeah. We don't see a specific trend or a change in the trend in that regard. I mean, obviously, all our initiatives target to an improvement of the EBITDA margin globally in all our operations. I mean, that's obviously not limited to certain regions. Otherwise, also with the current situation of the Middle East, we don't see a change or a different trend than what we typically would expect to see in regard to the margin. Maybe what I can add there is that in situations where you have, on a regional limited basis, issue like the Middle East crisis at the moment, what we obviously always do, and I think we're very clear on that, is on making sure that the cash flow is optimized. That typically, in most of the cases, also means maintaining the margin, obviously. Look, there might be also cases where, on a situative basis, we may go for some additional promotions, et cetera, to drive sales in specific locations or regions, to ultimately generate and maximize the cash flow. At the moment, it's not the case, but just to be clear and also complete there. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Isacco Brambilla from Mediobanca. Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. The first one is on the equity free cash flow. I appreciate your guidance and commitment is on equity free cash flow conversion, but focus for the market, for investors is on absolute values. Based on your comments looks to me current consensus expectations touch above CHF 500 million seem at reach. Is this statement correct in your view, based on the current scenario, or am I missing something? Second question is on the March/April current trading specifically on the trajectory across the two months. Looking at European data looks like the worst point in terms of flight traffic was touched around mid-April, and now traffic is improving. You have a more global perspective. Do you see that indication as somehow reliable on the trajectory seen over the past weeks? Take the first one? Yeah. Look, on the equity free cash flow conversion for this year, I think what we try to do today is to provide you a clear and transparent picture of where we see the current situation, also taking into account the Middle East crisis. From today's perspective, it's obviously extremely difficult to make a forecast for the full year, and that's why we confirm the medium- term outlook. Having said that, looking at current trading, and Xavi will answer that question in a minute, and also considering what we see in the market, what we see in regard to Middle East and what we hear, there is nothing at this stage which prevents us from achieving the consensus or the targeted goal for this year in line with our expectation. Again, it's very intransparent what is currently going on. The situation remains fluid and therefore we also cannot and will not give any outlook or guidance for this year specifically. On the second question, first a caveat. Like I said, our numbers at group level are much more reliable than if you stop down to regions, countries, airports, et cetera. The same thing happens with the figures. They are on a temporary basis. They are more reliable on a year basis than on a quarter, on a month or a few days. That is what I'm gonna answer. With this caveat, what we are seeing at the end of April and beginning of May, it's a clear decrease of the effect of the Middle East. If in April and March, the effect was in the range in March, April, was in the range of a 3%, now in the last few days, the effect is closer to 2% than to 3%. But again, very few days, we still want to be vigilant. As you ask, the trend in recent days is getting slightly better than in the middle of the Middle East crisis. It's also reasonable. I mean, some airports that were shut down are open. Some routes that were shut down, they are open. The effects also in overall number of passengers is every day, every week, a little bit less than the previous week. That's very helpful. Many thanks. We have a follow-up question from Joern Iffert from UBS. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my follow-up questions. It's two, please. The first one is just a housekeeping one. What you have seen in Q1, is this mainly volume driven or is it more price mix driven? Just have a feeling here, please. The second question is, with the next generation of scanners implemented at some airports, so you can bring liquids of 500+ ml, do you see any changes there in consumption patterns of consumers behind the security line, buying less liquids, buying less sandwich or anything else, or not really meaningful? Thank you very much. The effect we have seen in the first quarter is more related to passengers. There were a certain routes in the Middle East, obviously, and flights to and from the Middle East, there were less passengers. That has been the major effect on the revenues. No meaningful effect of the new generation of scanners. We didn't see a big pickup of sales when there was the first time the liquid restrictions were added and no big changes now. Of course, you have people that maybe buy the perfume after a big perfume after the security for themselves. That is very limited. People buy perfumes in a store for a gifting, et cetera. You want it with a package, wrapped, et cetera. In general, the effects are very limited on the negative side. What might be helpful is that experience shows that less stressful pre-shopping experience is helpful. Less traffic to the airport, less queues in the checking of the bags, on the security, on the passport controls, immigration. Whatever of those, all these stressful situations get better, and the new scanners are improving that. That, in general, gives a peace of mind that helps potentially the consumption. Again, let's not go to an extreme that is negative, to the extreme that is super positive. In general, a less stressful pre-shopping experience is helpful. We like the massive investment our airports are doing in improving the customer journey and experience. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Manuel Lang from Vontobel. Please go ahead. Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question. Actually, sorry if I missed that earlier, it is one to better understand the sentiment or the spending patterns of the passengers a little bit better. Where do you see, like, the spending being most resilient in terms of products? Tobacco and food, like basic needs, if one can say that, or luxury goods and perfumes. I'm talking about March, April only now. That would be helpful. Thanks. Very good question. Look and very complex to answer because depends on the regions, depends on the type of business, depends on touristic, non-touristic airports, depends on the weeks of Easter, people coming in or out of Easter or, a normal week, a normal workday, et cetera. I think the best way is it's not material change of trends on what we have seen in the last 12, 18, 24 months. Depends on the places, depends on the leisure, non-leisure, depends on the routes, the behavior, it stays consistent with what we expected. There are always changes, but it's not that we can say in the last three months there has been a major change on the consumer sentiment across the group, and now this category is gone and this category is growing. It's more linked to origin, destination, profile of customer and seasonality. Let's see, in 12 months at the end of the year, probably it's always more relevant to answer a question like yours because then you have 12 months, you have more distance with the prior year, you can see more the trends. Now, it's too early to announce any big headline on change on consumer sentiment. Thank you for the question. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Xavier Rossinyol for any closing remarks. First, thank you very much for attending this call and thank you for your thoughtful questions. Second, as I always like, I want to publicly thank all the Avolta team members. It's thanks to you on the shops, on the warehouse, on the offices, in the global and local and regional functions that we work. I want to give a special thanks to our team members in the Middle East and their families. Been very difficult couple of months. You've been always supporting the company, supporting the shop, supporting the restaurants. It's highly appreciated. The last point, as this is an advertising opportunity, please become a member of Club Avolta. It will be very good for you, and we will try to use whatever data we get for that to make a better offer for yourself. Once more, thank you, everybody, and I hope see you soon in our shops and restaurants. Safe travels. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.