Hello, and welcome to the DP Eurasia Trading Update call. Throughout the call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. Today, I'm pleased to present Aslan Saranga. Please go ahead with your meeting. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our trading update for the four months ended 30 April 2022. We have started the year well despite the headwinds of high inflation and geopolitical tensions owing to management experience in navigating volatility. Group system sales remained in strong growth at 57% with a solid 36% like-for-like performance versus a year ago. Our Turkish operations were robust with system sales growth of 55% and 48% like-for-like. We are pleased with this like-for-like performance given it's set against a tough prior comparative. Last year, like-for-like was 62%. 2021 was enhanced by a pandemic-driven boost to deliveries and tailwind from temporary VAT reduction to 1% from 8%, while 2022 has taken in an additional Ramadan impact of 11 days, making the year-on-year comparison less favorable. While responding to high inflation via price increases on sales to both consumers and franchisees, we remain committed to providing the best value-for-money proposition and ensuring our franchisees remain profitable. We believe that we are well-positioned to succeed in this environment and deliver long-term sustainable growth. Our online channel continues to be the main driver behind our solid growth rates. In Turkey, like-for-like growth for online system sales was 56%, carrying the share in Turkey delivery system sales to almost 80%. This corresponds with more than six percentage point increase over the last 12 months and is a composition that supports our customer-centric approach as we gain more insight from their purchases and accordingly develop our tailor-made offerings. In Russia, we have returned a flat like-for-like performance as a result of strong comparable periods and the sustained conflict in the region. However, trends improved since our preliminary results release, and our average like-for-like growth in April was 8%. The online system sales share increased to 94%, delivering around 1.5 percentage point increase. We continue to monitor the situation in the region closely while the safety and welfare of all the group's employees and customers remains our priority. The group has been focused on optimizing the existing store coverage areas in Russia, resulting in closure of 4 stores during the first month of the year. Product innovation continued in 2022. In Turkey, we introduced Cheddarlı Dev Sosisli pizza, which means pizza with hotdog and cheddar, as well as new side offerings such as extension of the oven-baked bread line with new toppings and the renovation of the Döner (shawarma) wrap range. Turkey also extended its entry price offerings by adding two topping pizzas to the product range. With these developments, we increased the segments from four to five, enhancing the variety of our offerings. The strong performance in Turkey is continuing to generate a very robust franchise demand. We opened 12 new stores in Turkey during the first month. Given our strong pipeline, we remain confident that 2022 will be another solid year for store growth. Good liquidity position at the period end, with TRY 68 million cash and undrawn bank facility of TRY 173 million Turkish liras. Our own branded coffee concept that was launched last year has performed extremely well so far. Currently trading from 12 stores by the period end and 7 of which are franchised, while more openings are expected in the coming months. While coffee remains in early stage, having launched in 2021, the group believes it represents an outstanding growth opportunity. Thank you for listening to us, and if you have any further questions, we'll be happy to answer. Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. There will just be a brief pause while any questions are being registered. We have a question from the line of Anubhav Malhotra from Liberum. Please go ahead. Anubhav, if your line is on mute, can you please unmute yourself? Hi. Hi Aslan. It's Anubhav here. I just had a couple of questions, if you don't mind. First, on the coffee brand that you have launched recently, can you just give us an idea of what could be the potential market size of the coffee market in Turkey? And how would it compare to, on maybe the number of store basis to what you have, for the pizza market, if you have done any studies around it. Second, on the Russian market, can you give us an idea on what kind of interest from new franchises you are seeing at the moment? If you are intentionally holding back from opening new stores, or is it just that there's, at the moment, limited demand from franchisees for new store opening? Thank you. Yeah. I mean, you know, coffee is a traditional drink of the Turkish people. You know, Turkish coffee is very popular. Last 20 years with the entrance of Starbucks to the market, there was lot of international chains. Starbucks has more than 500 stores. There is Caffè Nero, Gloria Jean's, and lot of different brands. I believe our coffee brand has a lot of potential. You know, I cannot give you exact numbers right now. Right now we are trying to build the different concepts like, you know, small concepts, express concept, large concepts. At the moment, all of them is working really well. Our target this year is to come to 30-40 stores. We have a pipeline of these openings right now. Since it's a new concept, we'll take it from there. You know, it's early now to talk about the long-term growth potential. We have some numbers, but we want to be to understand the market and to make the analysis little bit more. In the coming updates, we'll give more information about these subjects. Coffee concept is really going very good, and we have a strong pipeline of store openings. Regarding Russia, you know, right now our priority is the welfare and security of our employees. We try to build a sustainable business model there. We want to, you know, keep our business. At the moment, you know, it's still very early to talk about new store openings. I can tell you that our Russian business is sustainable. You know, as I said in my update, you know, in April we had 8% like-for-like growth. The franchises are going on with their business. We have good relationship. That's all I can say at the moment. Thank you. Can I just ask a follow-up on the coffee? The 30-40 store target for this year- Yes. What is it likely going to be a lot more franchisee driven or is it corporate store driven? More franchisee driven, but we want to open strategic corporate stores like in new formats or larger formats to try whether it's going to work because most of our stores are smaller formats. Now we are trying larger formats. Mostly it will be mostly franchised. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Just as a final reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now. There seems to be no further questions, so I'll hand it back to the speaker. Thank you for listening to us, and hope to see you in our next update. Thanks. This concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.
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