Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Coca-Cola HBC's conference call for the 2025 half year results. We have with us Zoran Bogdanovic, Chief Executive Officer, Anastasis Stamoulis, Chief Financial Officer, and Jemima Benstead, Head of Investor Relations. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be some opening remarks followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad at any time and wait until your name is announced. I must also advise that this conference is being recorded today, 6th of August 2025. I now pass the floor to one of your speakers, Jemima. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning and thank you all for joining the call. I'm here with our CEO Zoran Bogdanovic. Our CFO Anastasis Stamoulis. We have about an hour for the call today, which should give plenty of time for a good discussion. Please keep to one question and one follow-up, waiting for us to answer the first question before moving to your follow-up. I will also remind you that this conference call contains various forward-looking statements. These should be considered in conjunction with t he cautionary statements in our press results. Preparation this morning and at the end o f our slide deck. With that I will turn the call over to Zoran. Thank you Jemima. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining the call this morning. I will start by sharing our operational review for the first half with updates on a few strategic areas of the business. Will then take you through our financial performance in more detail. I will then come back to touch on the environment and discuss the outlook for 2025. I am very pleased with our progress in the first half of 2025. We've continued to execute our strategy delivering a strong performance in a mixed market environment while investing in our portfolio and capabilities. I'd like to call out three things that stand out for me in the period. First, the high quality top line growth we've delivered. Organic revenue grew 9.9% with good volume growth of 2.6%. Growth was led by two of our strategic priority categories, sparkling and energy, and I'm pleased that we saw an improved volume performance in the second quarter. Second, the strong EBIT performance both in terms of organic growth and margin expansion and even better delivery of EPS growing nearly 26%. Anastasis will get into more detail here shortly. Third, we continue to win in the market and deliver real value to our customers. We gained a further 100 basis points of value share in NARTD year to date and we remain the number one contributor to our retail customers' absolute revenue growth within FMCG in Europe. The numbers we have reported today show that our growth strategy is working and give us the confidence to update our guidance for 2025 as well. More on that later. Let's get straight into the drivers of our strong top line performance from a category perspective, starting with sparkling. Sparkling remains the most important engine of growth for our company and has performed well this half with organic volume growth of 2.3% supported by our focus in market execution of campaigns and innovations. In April we launched the Share a Coke campaign across most of our markets with locally relevant consumer and customer experiences across all channels. This campaign has had a great start and will continue throughout the summer. We are looking forward to launching the campaign in Nigeria in Q4 during their peak season with a record 1,000 popular first names on bottles. We saw good ongoing performance from Coke Zero, up high single- digits. Sprite delivered an improved performance, up mid single- digits. The reformulation we had at the end of last year is seeing good results, and we continued with the Sprite Spicy Meals campaign. Fanta grew low single- digits, and we launched a new limited edition flavor across several markets, Fanta, Tutti Frutti. In Adult, Sparkling, we also delivered mid single- digit growth with a good performance from Schweppes, particularly in Nigeria and Egypt. In the second quarter, we launched a new purple flavor with a strong market activation. Energy continues to perform very well, up 30% even against increasingly tough comparatives. All segments saw strong growth, with our segmented portfolio allowing us to tailor the offering to different market demographics and affordability needs. Monster performed well, helped by successful innovations such as Rio Punch and Ultra Strawberry. Predator and Fury, our affordable offers in Africa also continue to perform strongly, supported by locally relevant marketing and partnerships that resonate with consumers. The innovation continues, and we are really looking forward to the launch of the new Monster Drink with Lando Norris, which we've started rolling out already and is coming to most of our markets in Q3. Moving on to coffee, as I mentioned in the last few sets of results, we have made the strategic decision with our partners at Costa Coffee to prioritize the out-of-home channel. Now, with both Costa Coffee and Caffè Vergnano, we are putting our full focus behind this channel because that is where we see the greatest potential for sustainable, profitable growth. This means we are seeing an impact on total coffee volumes this year, and in the first half, volumes declined 7.6%. That said, I am really encouraged that we are seeing good results from the out-of-home channel, with volume growth of 17% from both existing outlets and newly recruited outlets. Stills volumes were broadly flat. We are focused on capturing growth in the highest value parts of the portfolio. That means prioritizing premium water, sports drinks, and Ready to Drink Tea with offers tailored to the local market. In Ready to Drink Tea, we launched Peace Tea in Switzerland in Q2 with activations focused on Gen Z consumers. Sports drinks continues to be a standout performer, delivering mid teens growth with Powerade. We leveraged relevant global football activations featuring new ambassadors Barcelona Yamal and Real Madrid Rodrigo. We also executed many local activations to drive growth across summer sporting activities such as running events and in local gyms. We launched Powerade in Romania in the period and rolled out flavor innovations such as Mountain Blast Zero Premium Spirits v olumes grew by 24% with good growth across all three segments. I'm pleased that we saw growth from both Finlandia Vodka and our brand distribution partners. In April, we launched a new marketing campaign for Finlandia Vodka. While it's still early days, we've had positive feedback from consumers and customers. We are also investing in our team and capabilities with a refreshed premium spirits academy for our salespeople, and we are building stronger marketing capabilities. We also launched Bacardi and Coca-Cola in 11 markets in the first half with encouraging initial signs. One area of the business we don't talk about every quarter is our digital data and AI transformation in Coca-Cola HBC. These capabilities are truly an accelerator of business growth and transformation, and they are constantly evolving. Our investment is focused in three key areas to drive growth and transformation. Firstly, consumer and customer centricity. This is how we use data, digital tools, and AI to power our commercial capabilities like revenue growth management and route to market. We continue to enhance our ability to drive personalized execution for every outlet with suggested orders, personalized marketing, and optimized promotions to name just a few. Secondly, operational productivities within our enterprise. We've been investing ahead of the curve in this area for a number of years. For example, we've been live with SAP S/4 Hana across 28 markets since 2021 and added Egypt last year. This gives us the latest capabilities from SAP including real-time reporting and is, we believe, a real competitive advantage. Across our supply chain, we are driving Industry 4.0 transformation, which basically means leveraging automation, computer vision, and advanced analytics. Thirdly, transforming and digitizing the employee experience to drive collaboration, productivity, and foster a digital workplace. Let me touch for a moment on digital commerce. We've been investing and developing our digital commerce platforms to better serve the growing numbers of consumers and customers choosing to shop online. We broadly split these opportunities between Route to Customer and Route to Consumer. In our Route to Customer, Customer Portal is our largest B2B platform, which allows our customers to buy CCH products through our platform any time of the day. This platform is most relevant for our direct sales delivery customers, and we are live in 20 markets. We continue to see good growth in the number of active customers, orders, and revenue generated. We also have Sirvis, our B2B marketplace for the HoReCa channel, which is mostly relevant for indirect customers. As well as offering our own 24/7 beverage portfolio, the platform also offers a range of products from our wholesale partners and a range of services. After piloting this in 2022 in Italy, we've seen a great increase in its share of orders. Sirvis is now live in five markets, with Croatia having launched earlier this year and more markets coming. In Nigeria, as you might have seen in the Bites ize event a few weeks ago, we have developed a WhatsApp chatbot, a tool made specifically for customers in Nigeria to effortlessly place orders directly via the platform. When it comes to Route to Consumer, we are partnering with e-retailers and food delivery platforms. This area of our business grew by 25% in the first half and is margin accretive. At Coca-Cola HBC, we believe sustainability is key to our business growth. Let me share some of the highlights. During the first half, we are pleased to be part of a co-developed sustainable linked business plan announced by The Coca-Cola Company and our valued customer Carrefour. This is the first time that a retailer and a manufacturer have formalized joint goals in sustainability with an aim to reduce packaging waste and cut carbon emissions. Our team in Romania will be one of the first markets to implement this. It is collaboration with our partners that can help us deliver our sustainability targets and drive value for our customers and consumers. Packaging circularity remains at the top of our agenda. Deposit return schemes, or DRS, are one way to ensure both high packaging collection rate and supply of feedstock for recycling. DRS went live in Austria in January this year with a promising start. In general, we are finding that the transitions to DRS are progressing in line with plans, and customers and consumers are responding positively. For example, both Romania and Hungary have seen average return rates of around 80% this year. Achieving our decarbonization targets requires innovation. We started using biomethane, a clean and renewable source of energy at our Knockmore Hill plant in Northern Ireland. This should contribute up to 25% of the energy at the plant by the end of 2025. Finally, it's great that we have retained our A- list position in CDP's 2024 Supplier Engagement Assessment and the highest score in the FTSE Russell ESG Report of the Soft Drinks category. Let me now hand over to Anastasis to take you through the financial results. Thank you Zoran and good morning everyone. In the first half we delivered strong top line growth with organic sales up 9.9% driven by both volumes and revenue per case expansion. We also drove organic EBIT growth and margin improvement, leading to strong comparable earnings per share growth of nearly 26%, which was also supported by better net finance costs. Finally, free cash flow increased by 10% to EUR 243 million, driven by the EBIT delivery while also increasing CapEx. Let me start with a strong top line performance. As Zoran mentioned, the quality of our organic revenue growth of 9.9% remains high with 2.6% volume growth and with volumes accelerating in quarter two and growing in all three segments, organic revenue per case increased by 7.2%, a slowdown vs quarter one. As expected, overall pricing remained the most important driver of revenue per case. Carryover pricing drove over half of this, largely due to the pricing in Nigeria and Egypt over the last 12 months as we mitigated inflation and currency devaluation. In line with our plans, we saw this impact reduced in quarter two compared to quarter one. Category mix and package mix were also positive with continued improvement in single serve mix, which expanded by 120 basis points in the first half. Comparable EBIT grew 11.8% on an organic basis in the first half to EUR 650 million. Our comparable EBIT margin increased 70 basis points on a reported basis to 11.6% and increased 20 basis points organically. Let me break down the drivers of this. We improved gross profit margins by 60 basis points with a strong recovery in the emerging segment, which benefited from pricing leverage, easing cost pressure, and efficiency initiatives. Operating costs excluding direct marketing expenses improved by 50 basis points as a percent of revenue. You may recall that last year we faced headwinds in our operating expense line due to the foreign currency remeasurement of balance sheet items in Egypt following the significant devaluation of the Egyptian pound. This gave us a cycling benefit this year as expected since we did not face additional currency headwinds. This improvement in OpEx was partially offset by an increase in direct marketing expenses. We invested in the Share a Coke and the new Finlandia marketing campaigns as well as investments ahead of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Italy in February 2026. Let's now look at the drivers of performance by segment. I'm going to discuss these figures on an organic basis and for the first half of the year in the established segment, revenue grew by 2.5%. Established markets volume was broadly in line with last year and with a return to growth in quarter two, partly helped by a later Catholic Easter than in 2023. Sparkling volumes decreased low single digit despite mid single- digit growth in Coke Zero and high single- digit growth in Sprite. Energy saw good momentum with volumes growing mid teens in the period. Stills grew low single- digits with sports drinks growing high single- digits. On a country basis, it was good to see better volumes in Italy, up low single digits in the first half. The return to growth in quarter two was supported by later Easter and better start to the summer season compared to the prior year. In Greece, volumes grew low single- digit in half one. In the second quarter, we saw a slowdown in volume growth against the tough comparative and with less favorable weather resulting in a late start to the season. Established revenue per case was up 2.4% driven by pricing as well as positive package and category mix. Established segment comparable EBIT declined 7.2% due to the accelerated marketing investments and operating expenses in the period. Turning to the developing segment, revenues were up 6.4%. Volumes were flat but returned to growth in quarter two supported by later Catholic Easter. Sparkling volumes declined by low single- digits despite growth in Coke Zero, Fanta, and Sprite. Energy grew strongly on a soft comparative. Stills declined mid single- digits driven by water despite strong double digit growth in sports drinks. In terms of country performance, Czech was a standout performer, growing volumes high single- digits despite the tough comparative. Poland declined but saw an improvement in quarter two as we expect a better second half. Developing revenue per case increased by 6.4% driven by pricing actions taken to manage inflation along with positive category and package mix. Comparable EBIT was down 0.6% year- on- year due to higher operating and marketing expense in the period, mainly due to the new philanthropy marketing campaign. In the emerging segment, revenue grew by 17.4% driven by both volume and good price mix. Emerging markets volume grew 4.1%. Sparkling volumes increased by mid single- digits with mid single- digit growth in trademark Coke, Sprite, and Adult Sparkling energy grew strongly despite up comparatives driven by affordable brands. Steel volumes grew low single- digits with a very strong growth on a small basis in Sports drinks. In terms of countries, the performance of both Nigeria and Egypt has been really impressive in the first half of the year, with volumes up mid single- digit and high single- digit respectively. I'd also like to mention Ukraine, where volumes grew high single- digits in what continues to be a tough market to operate in. Emerging segment revenue per case increased 12.7% with a step down in quarter two relative to quarter one as we started to see inflation come down in Nigeria and Egypt, which also had more stable currencies in the first half. Overall, we benefited from pricing actions taken throughout the last 12 months to manage the impact of currency devaluation and cost inflation as well as from positive category mix. Comparable EBIT grew 31.3%, a strong rebound due to organic growth as well as citing the impact of foreign currency remeasurement in Egypt last year. Moving to the Group P&L, we saw comparable earnings per share grow 26% to EUR 1.31. This was supported by the strong EBIT delivery and lower net finance cost than the previous year. The better finance costs were due to several factors. We delivered better cash flow than we expected in Nigeria and Egypt, meaning we had lower financing needs as we've seen greater currency stability this year, which meant lower foreign exchange losses compared to the previous year, and we also benefited from higher finance income. This performance has allowed us to upgrade the finance cost guidance for the year. We also improved our FX translation guidance. The first half saw year-on-year step up in CapEx in line with our plans. CapEx was 5% of the revenues in the period, up 100 basis points compared to the same period last year in line with the planned phasing. For the full year, w e expect CapEx to be within our guided range of 6.5%- 7.5% of revenue. We continue to generate strong free cash flow of EUR 243 million, 10% higher year- on- year reflecting higher EBIT and improving working capital, partly offset by the higher CapEx. Let me now hand back to Zoran to share more perspectives on the market environment and our expectations for the rest of the year. Thanks, Anastasis. As Anastasis has laid out, we've delivered strong results at the group level in the first half of the year, building on what has been a good performance in the last few years as well. This performance has been achieved despite operating in a mixed market environment. We have seen and continue to see a range of trends across our diverse 29 markets, with some areas that have been more challenging and sensitive to the consumer environment. What we've learned across many years operating in a range of markets and conditions is that there is no one size fits all approach. We strike a careful balance to focus on what makes the local market unique, staying relevant and tailoring our approach while aligning with a group strategy, leveraging our global scale, tools, and capabilities, particularly with digital and data insights to drive personalized execution in some of our emerging markets. In Africa particularly, we manage volatility proactively with rigorous scenario planning and empower local teams. I am particularly pleased that despite the external challenges, Nigeria and Egypt have both delivered strong volume growth and share gain in the period and improvements in profitability. In some of our European markets, consumer sentiment has remained a bit softer, but in these markets we remain agile in adapting our plan, investing more in marketing, and stepping up promotions and affordable offers. We expect these conditions to persist in the second half and we will continue to take these steps to drive growth. We've demonstrated our ability to adapt to local market dynamics and consistently deliver at the group level, which is why we remain confident in achieving low single-d igit volume growth in 2025 with all segments growing. Moving to the outlook for the year as we progress into the second half, we do expect the broader macro-economic and geopolitical environment to remain challenging with the consumer environment still a mixed picture across our market. Having said that, we have high confidence in our unique 24/7 portfolio, in our bespoke capabilities, in the growth opportunities across our diverse market, and in our people. Given our strong first half performance, we now expect to deliver growth in organic revenue and organic EBIT at the top end of our guided ranges. To close, I'd like to finish on the three areas I highlighted at the start. First, the strong and high quality top line growth we've delivered in the first half of the year. Second, the strong EBIT performance and even better delivery of EPS. Third, our ongoing investment in our strategic priorities is allowing us to continue to win in the market and deliver real value to our customers. Before I close, I would like to sincerely thank all our colleagues, customers, suppliers, and partners for their ongoing efforts and support. Thank you for your attention. With that, let us now open the call up to questions. Thank you. To ask a question you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press Star one and one again. We will now take the first question. This is from the line of Laurence Whyatt from Barclays. Please go ahead. Morning. Thanks very much for the questions. Anastasis, Jemima, thanks. Thanks very much. First one for me on Finlandia. You've had that brand now for a couple of years. I'm just wondering how you're thinking about y our portfolio of alcoholic products. Would you increase your number of spirits that you own? Would you expand into ready-to-drink products? Of course you've got some with the Coke brand already, but using your vodka brands and you can imagine things like vodka tonics or Coke and tonics using the brands that you've got and then also the non-alcoholic products that would be adjacent to that. With Costa you could have something like an Espresso Martini, non-alcoholic or non-alcoholic products using the Coke brand that you own. Are these being considered and how do you think about that sort of merging of categories? Good morning Laurence. Thanks for this question. First of all, we are very pleased with the addition of Finlandia into our portfolio from the angle of us being the owner. Let me just say that the fact that we are seeing very good and very strong growth now is the result of the fact that the whole transition and integration into Hellenic has gone very smoothly, very well. As we highlighted last year, we took the time to develop a marketing campaign which started this year and we are very pleased how it is progressing. Finlandia proves its role as a fantastic mixer with our core portfolio of non-alcohol, non-alcohol portfolio driving clearly transactions. To remind you, on top of this we have a range of high quality premium brands in partnership with Brown-Forman, Edrington, and Bacardi and to some extent Campari. Very strong portfolio. This is where we see ourselves primarily as the partner and distributor of these brands. As a reminder, Finlandia was a unique opportunity and fit because 60% of its global volume is in our territories. That's why it was a great strategic fit and we are now focused on working with that primarily and supporting and working with all other partners for their brand. That's where we stand now as our priority in terms of the ready to drink things. This is where we partner with our, of course, key partner The Coca-Cola Company and beyond Jack and Coke now also with Bacardi, Bacardi and Coca-Cola which is performing b oth of those are performing very well. This is where we plan extensions as those might be coming in the future. Just to say on Espresso Martini for example, we actually do that already in the channels of out-of-home where we are really leveraging portfolio, our coffee presence. Mixability is a great part of our strategic focus, how we drive transactions in the out-of-home channel. We are actually doing those whether they are alcoholic or non-alcoholic as we call them, mocktails so all of that is fully activated and used. Just to close to say that we really feel excited about the growth prospect that we have with this part of the portfolio and how it perfectly blends with our non-alcohol part of the portfolio. Super. Thank you very much. As a follow up, I'd just like to talk about the guidance in the second half of the year. Of course, you delivered EBIT growth ahead of your guidance range in the first half. What's giving you the caution in the second half of the year not to raise that top end of the guidance range? Are there any circumstances in which that could happen or what particularly are you concerned about? Thank you. Hi, good morning. Laurence, Anastasis, first of all, let me reiterate that we are very pleased with the strong performance in the first half of the year when we saw a delivery of 11.8% organic EBIT growth. Now, actually, we have updated our guidance to the top end of what we have already provided of 7%- 11%. This, as you understand, assumes slowdown in the second half of the year. That is in line with the expectations of the phase we had for the year and that's something we had already communicated at our earlier calls. If you recall, we were also cycling the catastrophe valuation, the remeasurement impact we had in Egypt in the first half of 2024. Obviously, that's something that is reflected in the guidance. Now, as you understand, we're in the middle of the peak trading season. We have ahead of us a big five months. Considering the external environment with a certain level of unpredictability, the macro-economic movement, the geopolitical landscape, we believe that the current guidance captures very well what we see outside. We will continue to invest in the market as we have done so far and we feel strong about delivering another strong year. That's really clear. Thank you very much. Thank you. We will now take the next question. This is from Aron Adamski from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning. Zoran, Anastasis, Jemima, thanks for taking my questions. I have two. My first question is on the share buyback program. I believe you have not been executing on the remaining portion of the buyback program since September last year. Therefore, I was wondering what are your plans with respect to those funds and would you consider returning it to shareholders in a different way, perhaps a special dividend as you have done in the past? Good morning, Aron. Let me take that one. Overall, we have progressed strongly with the share buyback program. We have repurchased about $226 million worth of shares since the start of the program, with about 60% of the top end of the target of the program. Now, having said that, we always say that we have full discretion over the program. We have been very disciplined on how we use our capital allocation priorities, particularly in times of volatility, as we've seen going on over this year. The program remains in place and we are flexible on how we'll execute it as we see through the year, adapting to the current market environment, always appropriate. Thank you. That's clear. My second question is on t he retailer landscape in Europe. I think in the release you highlighted your number one position when it comes t o generate the FMCG revenue growth for retailers. I was wondering if the recent i ncrease in the number of retailer purchasing groups we've seen in Europe, if that c oncerns you in any way when it comes to next year's price negotiations, or? Do you see yourself as being relatively more immune than other FMCG companies given the value you create for those retailers? Hi Aron. In short, we've been dealing and partnering with such various retailer groups for a number of years. They are not new to us, and we have very strong capability. Within the house from our key account teams that is working on this, I can say that so far we've been partnering very effectively, and we have always come to win-win agreements, creating evident value. In short, I believe this is going to be such a case also for the future. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now take the next question. This is from Nadine Sarwat. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning everybody. Two questions for me. First, comparable EBIT margin was I think quite weak vs expectations in the established and developed markets. I know you called out higher marketing and operating expenses as a driver both in the release and your prepared remarks. Could you unpack that a little bit further? You know, crucially, how are you expecting those line items to play out in the second year and then maybe as a follow up in established markets? I know you commented on what you're seeing in Q2 vs Q1 and improvements there for the top line. Are you able to comment on any exit rates in Q2 and perhaps what you're seeing in July? Thank you. Hi Nadine. Let me start, then Zoran will take the second part of the question on the trading. Let me give a bigger view over the segment movement and particularly on the Established, as you referred to. Right. We have, as we said earlier on the call, stepped up on our investment across the group with the Share a Coke campaign and the new Finlandia marketing campaign launch. Specifically in the Established, the performance was broadly in line with expectations, especially when it comes to the gross margins. The step up on investments with the Share a Coke campaign, as well as some particular market activities like the Fanta 70 years anniversary in Italy or the Winter Olympics, step up on the investments ahead in preparation of the Winter Olympics in Milano, which had even 40 basis points on the margin as an effect, are some of the key drivers. In addition, I would like to call out that we had increased investments when it comes to our field force in the out-of-home channel in markets like Greece, cycling the incremental field force that we have in the second half of 2024. I think on the second point, on the Developing markets, the performance was in line with the expectation, and again the incremental investment in marketing was the key driver here. In addition to the Share a Coke campaign, the other big driver has been the new Finlandia marketing campaign. It's a relaunch of the whole brand out on a global basis. Considering the fact that in the Developing segment is where we have the biggest turnover in business in Finlandia, and Poland in particular, you see a bigger weight out of this marketing allocation expense being driven there. On top of that, operating expenses, similarly as said before in Established, was on the upper end in line with our expectations. Now, if we look into the second half of the year, we do expect that both segments will continue to improve profitability, and they will be adding to the overall organic EBIT growth as I guided earlier. Yeah Nadine, r elated to Q2 and your question, first of all, we are very pleased that established performed positively in Q2, bearing in mind that it was cycling a solid Q2 of last year. I would particularly highlight very good performance of Italy, which had a very nice Q2, bringing Italy to be at the end of first half on a positive note, exactly as we were anticipating and planning. In that regard, you see Ireland performing quite well, Greece staying positive for the first half. Yes, we also have some markets like Austria and Switzerland where we did see some more consumer price sensitivity and softness. However, all in all, we are positive that Established for the full year will be positive in the second half and we remain very much focused on the execution. We are in the middle of the season, so if you will, the game is on. I just reiterate that all three segments we anticipate to be positive to land overall with a low single- digit volume positive performance for the full year as we said from the beginning of the year. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next question is from Edward Mundy from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Morning Zoran. Morning Anastasis. My first question is around your comment in the release around stepping up promo activity. I know that you drive volume growth and I know that this is part of your normal playbook to balance affordability with premiumization, but perhaps a few comments on what you're seeing with regards to external environment. Are you seeing it deteriorating or is this just the standard practice that you carry out to drive volume growth? Hi Ed, let me start saying I would rather see that as a quite standard practice, and promo is one of the excellent tools to drive value together with customers. This is part of that agile approach that we talk about, and quickly, swiftly adapting as the circumstances in the countries evolve. I just mentioned good performance in Italy, for example, where we have seen some more positive recovery, and you might remember how I said already in the last two, three calls how we have been rewiring the algorithm in Italy to support more of the volume performance because we were also adjusting the promo investment as part of the overall RGM. Similar is being done as we speak in other markets, and those are not necessarily only price promotions. We equally focus on value-added promotions, leveraging on a number of excellent assets that we have in our hand. One of those is already Olympics, where we have our winning ticket promotions. It is a variety of things, just for the sake of saying it clearly, that when we say promotions, we do not only think price promotion, and promotions are also helping us to drive mix. You've seen that our mix again has been quite positive, established. Every single country has, for example, positive mix, and with promotions we are driving transactions. Just a little bit longer answer, but basically to say that where we are and what we are planning for is in the frame of a standard approach. Understood. Thanks for clearing that up. Zoran and Anastasis, just on the finance charges which are coming in slightly lighter than we've seen in the past, and I think you highlighted the cash flow in Nigeria, Egypt, some greater currency stability, perhaps a bit more finance income from certain markets. Is this the right level of finance costs going forward assuming currencies stay where they are? There's no big M&A, there's no special divvy or incremental buyback based on what we're seeing today. Is this the right level of interest that we should be modeling going forward? Yes, I mean look, as you rightfully highlighted, yes. I mean the first half of the year we benefited from the environment, especially in Nigeria and Egypt, normalizing, less currency volatility, good cash generation, better than expected in this case or less need for capital and better income from finance. Right now for the second half of the year, and this is on the back of this performance, we have updated our guidance to EUR 15 million-EUR 25 million right now on the second half of the year. That would imply that there is a step up and that's because we considering that we think that it's the mix of environment out in the markets and also including the dynamics from Russia as well as the cost we have. We believe that this range is capturing for this year the needs on finance cost. If you're implying about longer term like 2026 onwards, what I can say, even if we don't provide guidance at this stage of the year, what we can say is that directionally we would expect finance costs to normalize at a higher level in 2026 and 2025, but probably not as high as we had in 2024 given the current situation of the available cash, the income from this case and the stability we see in the particular markets. Great, very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Next question is from Sanjeet Aujla from UBS. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi, morning Zoran, Anastasis, Jemima. Couple from me as well, please. Firstly, Zoran, can you just talk to what you're seeing in establishing, developing between away from home and the home channel p erformance in particular, I'm curious to get a sense of to what extent i nvestment you put in OpEx is already paying back in the away from home in particular. My follow up question is just o n the cash pile that's building up in Russia, I think that's got up to over EUR 700 million now. Anastasis, is there any update on y our ability to be able to extract that cash or upstream that cash out of Russia? What needs to change for that to happen? Thank you. Hi Sanjeet. On established and developing, first to highlight that both of those in Q2 had very good progress vs Q1. As from intro remarks, you've seen that we really have a number of markets performing well while also having a few where we see watch outs, and for those we've been adjusting quickly plans. Overall, I'm very positive that both in developing and established we will have a positive volume performance in the second half, and good to see that overall for us as the whole company, we had growth coming from both away from home and at home. I'm very happy that out of home has been positive across all three segments. Same goes for at home, with the only exception in developing for Poland, and that's for this particular specific situation of a key competitor reentry into the largest customer in Poland, which we know is going to have just a short-term impact. We are not concerned about that. We anticipated that. Just to highlight that when you take out and exclude this event and situation in the rest of the Poland market, we are gaining share both in NARTD as well as in Sparkling. Good morning, Sanjeet. No, nothing has changed to what we have previously communicated in relation to the cash positions in Russia apart from the amount, as you said. As per the current requirements and legal obligations, we're not able to currently have a dividend out of Russia. Let me remind that the cash there is covering the operational needs of the business, which is being fully self-sustained, and there's no cash injections coming from the group to Russia. I would really like to stress that our balance sheet remains strong, and the cash position in Russia does not limit our ability to pay dividends or invest in the group or in general execute our capital allocation strategy. Thank you. Thank you. Next question is from Charlie Higgs from Redburn Limited. Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning Zoran and Anastasis. Hope you're both well. My first question is on energy drinks where I think volumes accelerated in Q2 and Q3. You've got some pretty exciting launches coming. Could you maybe just talk a bit more about the energy drinks performance in Q2? Maybe split between Monster and then Predator, Fury in some of the emerging markets w here were you seeing particular strength and should we expect that to continue in H2? That's my first question. Hi Charlie, hope you are well as well. Energy, as expected, has performed very strong. I highlighted in the intro remarks several, again, very, very good innovations that we had in our portfolio activities and that really worked very well, v ery excited with the fact that we already started launching the Lando Norris new flavor and initial reactions are excellent as one would assume. The great thing is that all the brands are performing very well in their own segment, delivering on their own purpose and positioning. Very happy that Fury and Predator in Africa are really kicking extremely well. Monster overall is leveraging excellent assets that those brands are bringing that we are activating through the promotions, but also emphasizing that there is a lot on the experiential part, the way the brands are activated throughout the countries, and this is what the target consumers really, really want. I think that the overall performance of energy just is a testament to strong plans, multi-brand strategy, which allows us to play across all segments, leveraging strong assets and coupling it with very disciplined focus execution in the market, fueled also by continuously increasing number of cold drink equipment, which is important for this category as well. All in all, we continue to be very positive and confident about the performance of energy, which, just as a reminder, nine years in a row we've been delivering at a very strong double-digit growth, and this year will be no exception. We remain positive that also in the years to come, energy will be more than average contributor to our overall growth algorithm. Thanks, Zohan. My second question for Anastasis on COGS per unit case inflation, 4.8% in H1. Are you able to maybe provide a bit more color on commodity inflation within that and transactional effects, and then how you see COGS per unit case trending for the rest of the year? Some early thoughts perhaps on 2026 given current hedging? Thank you. Yeah, good morning Charlie. Okay, for the first half of the year we benefited from lower sugar costs vs prior year. Aluminum and PET remained inflationary. We also face certain higher COGS when it comes to finished goods like the energy, premium spirits being part of the portfolio in the mix effect, and also certain level from impact from taxation like the sugar tax in Slovakia. Now this year you're right, we did not benefit from translational effects impact as much as we had last year. I remind you that last year, for example, the cold spring case which had been double digitized by Google, around 10% if it were for the currency valuation. Nigeria and Egypt right? This year we don't have this type of volatility. We expect for the remaining of the year and the full 2025 to keep the cost per case in low to mid single- digit. When we see the commodities, as I said, we've seen some moderation when it comes to sugar and oil, but aluminum and secondary packaging materials remain relatively elevated. To this point, I want to highlight that we have a very strong hedging coverage against our key commodities. We are above 85% cover with most coverage in sugar and aluminum above 90%, which pretty much means that regardless of any possible movements on the year to go, we wouldn't see any significant impact on the cost, whether it's on the positive or negative side. Even if we're looking for any improvements to your question for 2026, it's a bit too early to comment on how we can guide on the cost for next year. What I can say is that we already stepped up on our hedging coverage. I can say that we are significantly better covered at this stage of the year compared to the same period last year. We'll provide more guidance on 2026 at a later comp. Perfect, thanks. Thank you. Next question is from Matthew Ford, BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Morning all. Thanks for the question. I've actually just got one question. It's on the volume performance in Nigeria and Egypt. Clearly very strong as you alluded to. Can I just get your thoughts around the kind of H2 progression on volumes? I think looking at the comp base for markets like Nigeria, I think we're about to start cycling some easier comps, mainly in Q4. Any sense of what you're expecting, would you expect a kind of underlying improvement in H2 in both these markets vs what we saw in Q2 and then just your overall take on the volume outlook going into 2026 in these markets? Thank you. Hi Matt. We've seen in both of those markets, Nigeria and Egypt, a more stable environment over the last six or even more months, and that is also one of the reasons that such environment and backdrop create a better environment for us to perform and to demonstrate all the strong plans that we have in both of those countries, which is reflected in the very strong revenue growth delivered by also positive volume growth in parallel with very strong price mix for the obvious reason. I really want to highlight that in both of those markets we have a very good and strong and consistent share gain both in NARTD and Sparkling. Expectation is that both of those markets will have a positive volume in the second half of the year. Both of those markets are robust growth markets with very strong potential, and that's how we are thinking about both of those for the years to come, and we have a very strong plan for the rest of the year. I already mentioned Q4 with Nigeria Share a Coke, which I'm very confident that this is going to be a very strong driver and that is going to have a very strong appeal for the consumers there. In short, very excited and confident for both of the markets for the rest of the year and for the years ahead. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Next question is from Simon Hales from Citi. P lease go ahead. Thank you. Morning everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. Zoran, I wonder if I could just. Come back to trading. As we've started into Q3 again, I wonder if you could just provide a little bit more color, perhaps what you've seen as you come out of July. I think the weather has clearly been okay in your established markets, but maybe a bit more mix still in some of your developing market footprint. Just interested in what you've seen specifically Q3 to date, and with regards to the developing markets and particularly Poland, what's really giving you the confidence of that acceleration in H2 volumes in that key market? That's my first question. I'll come back in a second. Hi, Simon. So first of all on the you said about the trading and Q3, I can say that Q3 started in line with our expectations, with what we really say is a dynamic environment, which I, we truly mean that because what I said earlier, you see that in some of the markets there is more positive development. In some of our markets there is something slow. Overall it started in line with our expectations and within the guidance that we have provided where we felt confident to say that we see ourselves really being at the top end of what we guided for so far to be fair for the weather, which of course we don't control. However, we fully control what we do in the circumstances that we have. Overall, we can say that weather was varied and let's say in general for the majority of all countries, we saw less good weather. Year- on- year Q2 was similar. You know, May was not easy in many markets, then June was quite better. We've seen the very varied picture in July. This we also don't take as a surprise. We know that weather patterns have been evolving over the years. This is also part of our contingency planning. You know, we are ready for all kinds of eventualities. In short, overall in line with expectations and fully focused on our relentless execution in every country. Got it. Thanks for that, Zoran. My second question was just coming back to the Russian cash pile that Sanjeet referenced. I think there's a 50% increase in that Russian cash to EUR 730 million from where we were at the end of December. That's quite a big move in the first half. I think you talked about Russian volumes in the market being up mid single- digit in the first half of the year. What's driving that massive step up in cash flow? There is also a certain element of phasing compared to the same period last year. It was also a different phasing, and also the currency has an impact on the ruble translation. What I can say is that if we were to look at the emerging segment performance on an organic basis, if you exclude Russia, it will be even faster than what you see today on the segment. Okay, got it. Thanks, Anastasis. Thank you. We will now take the last question. This is from Philip Spain from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. My first one was just on sparkling volumes. They were in decline, I think low single digits decline both in the established and developed segments in the first half. I just want to understand firstly, was this driven mainly by trademark Coke and if it was, what do you think you need to do to drive trademark Coke back into growth in these segments? I'm thinking particularly given this came at the time when you were doing the Share a Coke campaign from the second quarter as well. Thank you. Yeah. Hi Philip. Yeah, that. On the overall trademark Coke we do see that very strong performance of Coke Zero. Really love to see ramping up also and stronger and wider performance of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, zero caffeine. On the original, yes, this is where we have seen a slight decline. We are confident that with the Share a Coke campaign, which only de facto started in Q2 and goes through the summer, even in several selected markets we have extension of that campaign amplified with some local specificities and also with the strong plans that we have for the rest of the year. That's part of the whole plan, which I would rather say that is quite intense plan that we have for the Coke. Reminder that in developing, because of that specificity of the key competitor entering in the largest customer, this is where I would see just a short-term impact. Overall, I have no doubt about expectation for Coca-Cola trademark to perform and deliver based on the very strong calendar that we have for the year to go and also shaping up plans for the next year. Thanks very much. Then my follow up was just on y ou spoke earlier on the call in the press release about the very strong single-serve mix you'd be seeing. I wondered if you could just give u s a bit more color on what d rove that in the first half, be it cooler rollout or things you're doing by channel as well. That'd be really helpful. Thank you. Yeah, look, single- serve is for us, as we always say in the RGM, apart from price and volume mix, is a very important element. We've been consistently for now many years focusing on driving single- serve mix to constantly strengthen the quality of the revenue we generate. That is supported by, you're right, coolers, then types of promotions that we are doing. I just mentioned single- serves, sorry, Share a Coke campaign, which is done both on multi serve, but even more is amplified in the single- serve part of our portfolio. You have also our intentional drive with multipacks of single serves in the at-h ome channel, where we are creating the habit of single- serve in home consumption, which also is showing good, good results. I mentioned at the beginning of the call mixability programs, which are also supporting the single- serves. We have constant focus on our glass bottle across the market. There is a whole suite of things that are serving the need of driving growth with single- serves. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. We have no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Zoran for closing remarks. Thank you. Thank you, operator. I'd like to thank everyone for taking part in today's call. Let me just very briefly conclude that we are very pleased with our performance year to date, and we feel very well positioned to continue delivering in 2025 and beyond. Thank you very much and goodbye. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.