Thank you very much. A very pleasant afternoon to everyone, and welcome to the PSC Star Investor Day. On behalf of Philippine Seven Corporation, I would like to extend our appreciation to the Philippine Stock Exchange and Bloomberg for giving us the opportunity to present our financial and operating performance for the first half of 2025. PSC operates 7-Eleven, the country's largest convenience store chain. As of June 30, 2025, our network has expanded to 4,268 stores, serving the daily needs of customers nationwide. 7-Eleven continues to set the standard for modern convenience, making everyday life easier in the communities where we operate. We are part of a truly global brand with nearly 84,000 stores worldwide. Philippine Seven Corporation is proud to rank as the sixth largest 7-Eleven operator among 20 countries, led by Japan with over 21,000 stores, followed by Thailand with 15,595 stores, the United States with 12,800, South Korea with 11,400, and our parent company, 7-Eleven Taiwan, with 7,180 stores as of June. Philippine Seven is the sixth, as we ended the first half of the year with 4,250 stores in the whole country. Our management team has also been recognized globally. In 2019, our licensor Seven & i awarded Philippine Seven as the licensee with the highest growth in same-store sales. The award was received by then Vice President Richard Lee, along with key officers of the company. That same year, our President, Mr. Victor Paterno, was honored by PepsiCo and the National Association of Convenience Stores as the Asian Convenience Industry Leader of the Year. In 2023, Mr. Paterno made history as the first Asian-elected global chairman of NACS, completing his term in 2024 while continuing to serve on its executive committee. Since the start of this year, our stock has been included in the PSC Mid-Cap Index, which has helped boost our average daily trading value by 40% to around PHP 32 million per day. Our majority shareholder, President Shane Stohr, holds 56% of the outstanding capital stock, while foreign institutional investors, led by First Sentier Investors at 5.3%, own up to 20% of the outstanding capital stock of the company. The founding families, on the other hand, collectively hold another 20%. This month, we are proud to share that we also paid a cash dividend of PHP 1 per share, which represents 40% of our full year 2024 net income. For some corporate developments, last month we marked an important leadership transition at Philippine Seven. Our Chairman of the Board since 2015 and one of the company's original founders, Mr. Jose Pardo, retires and now serves as Chairman Emeritus and heads the advisory board of the company. Effective July 17, our President since 2005, Mr. Victor Paterno, assumed the role of the Chairman of the Board and the Chair of the Executive Committee, while Mr. Richard Lee was appointed as our new President. Mr. Lee, who joined PSC in 2010, has held various leadership roles, most recently as Vice President, bringing with him a wealth of experience and a deep understanding of our business as well as the local market. By the end of the first half of 2025, we operated 4,268 stores nationwide. Store openings outside Metro Manila accelerated as we responded to shifting consumer behavior and pursued first-mover advantage in underserved markets. Of our current network, 53% are corporate-owned and 47% are franchise-operated. In the first six months alone, we opened 177 new stores and closed 39 underperforming stores. Our pipeline remains to be very strong, with over 200 stores in various stages of construction, keeping us on track to reach our 5,000-store milestone before the end of next year. In October of last year, we celebrated a very important milestone with the opening of the 4,000th store of 7-Eleven, located at the Newport Circle in Pasay City. This is a new concept store that showcases our City Café Reserve and 21TOGO roasted chicken offerings. Designed with ample dining space and food counters, it caters to dining customers and reflects our commitment to elevating convenience. The grand opening was honored by the presence of UniPCSE Group Chairman, Mr. Alex Lo, Group President, Mr. Sweden Wang, PSC Chairman, Mr. Jose Pardo, PSC President, Mr. Victor Paterno, Alliance Global Chairman, Mr. Andrew Tan, and Pasay City Mayor, Imelda Calixto Rubiano. To add more excitement to our offerings, we recently welcomed Darren Espanto, one of today's most popular young artists, as the new face of City Café. We also launched the City Café Blind Cups collectibles, featuring four Yuma charm designs plus a secret charm, creating an element of surprise for customers. On top of this, we continue to drive product innovation by introducing new flavored syrup options, giving customers more ways to enjoy their City Café experience. We also take pride in our proprietary brands, which set us apart and strengthen our value proposition versus other channels. Our fried chicken program, Crunch Time, is now available in nearly 3,000 7-Eleven stores, delivering consistent quality and great value for money. Our legacy brands, Slurpee, Big Bite, and Gulp, continue to provide the classic convenience our customers know and love. At the same time, our alliances with the partner brands bring innovation and diversity to our ready-to-eat offerings, from rice meals and snacks to healthier food alternatives. We continuously roll out promotions to drive higher revenues per store. In partnership with our suppliers, our annual 7-Eleven Day Sale remains a strong draw, allowing us to thank our loyal customers for their continued support. We also strengthen engagement through our Click Loyalty platform, where members enjoy exclusive discounts on select items at specific times of the day. In addition, our rice meal and beverage combo offers provide even more value for money, giving customers more reason to choose 7-Eleven. At this point, I will now turn over the presentation to our Finance Team Lead so that she can discuss and share with you our financial and operating performance for the first half of 2025. Almarie. Thank you, Lawrence. Looking at our financial highlights, Q2 of 2025 saw strong growth in key metrics. System-wide sales reached PHP 25.41 billion, a 6.2% increase, and operating revenue grew by an impressive 9.3% to PHP 24.79 billion. For the first half of 2025, system-wide sales stood at PHP 48.47 billion, up 5.6%, and operating income rose by 8.2% to PHP 2.77 billion, demonstrating consistent top line and operating performance. While registered as a slight negative, same-store sales growth of 0.5% in Q2, impacted by specific challenges like vape import issues and EMI downtime, our underlying profitability remains strong. Our non-alcoholic beverages and consumer packaged food categories were major contributors of 26% of our share and indicating successful product mix optimization. We saw an improvement in EBITDA margin. The net margin experienced a slight dip due to higher net interest expense, mainly from reduced interest income from investments and increased lease liabilities interest. Merchandise sales rose 7.1% to PHP 41.1 billion, driven by strong demand for non-alcoholic beverages. Gross profit surged 12.5%, reflecting improved margins. Operating expenses grew 12.5% primarily due to network expansion and efficiency initiatives. Net income reached PHP 1.78 billion, up slightly 0.7% year-over-year. Q2 saw a 4.6% boost in net income, aided by the timing of the holiday in April. Our balance sheet reflects a healthy financial position and strong cash generation. Our cash reserves increased by 27.74% year-on-year to PHP 9.97 billion, and total assets grew by 22.13% to PHP 43.59 billion. Equity surged by over 53% to PHP 10.85 billion, with book value per share at PHP 7.2. Importantly, we generated a positive free cash flow of PHP 152.27 million, primarily driven by efficient receivables collection but offset by PHP 1.61 billion increase in merchandise inventories. Our working capital cycle also shows improvement, with shorter days receivable outstanding and longer days payable outstanding. Innovation is also a key driver. Our Seven Bank ATM rollout has activated 3,620 ATMs, covering 84% of our stores, enhancing customer convenience and foot traffic. Looking ahead, we remain focused on strategic store network expansion and continuous operational efficiency improvements. We will leverage initiatives like our Seven Bank ATMs to deepen customer engagement and expand our reach. Addressing market challenges through product mix optimization and operational enhancements will be critical. We are confident in our strategy to drive sustainable long-term shareholder value creation. That wraps up our presentation. Thank you. We will now go straight to the Q&A portion. Thank you for the presentation. Before we start the Q&A, we are introducing the speakers from Philippine Seven Corporation: Mr. Francis Medina, Operations Director, Mr. Almarie De Leon, Head of Finance and Investor Relations, Ms. Almarie De Leon, Finance Team Lead, and I'm Marla Tomalde, and I'll be the moderator for this session. Proceeding to the Q&A segment, again, to the investors and participants, you may send your questions through the chat function. In terms of your expansion plans, how many stores are you looking to open for this year, and are there plans to expand in the Visayas and Mindanao area? I'll answer that. Currently, we're looking at opening at least 500 stores until the end of this year, and the bulk of which, I think, close to 70%, you will find in both Visayas and Mindanao. This is mainly due to the growth that we've seen in the past two or three years, surpassing Luzon even in NCR stores. That's the balance. As of today, we have opened around 218 stores, so around 250 more stores are due to open in the next following months. All right. In terms of your earnings results, can you give color on the main drivers for the weakness in same-store sales growth in the recent and past few quarters? Are there specific trends such as a slowdown in specific categories or types of goods underperforming, or are we seeing smaller basket sizes? As far as basket size, I think it has retained at the same level. What we saw is consumers prioritizing products that they can bring home, like canned goods and groceries. What we are doing now is we're going to a program focusing on improving our assortment on the non-core categories. These are grocery, canned goods, non-food, and health and beauty items. For the past two months, how have the months of July and August been as a fleet? Are we seeing improvements or similar trends to the first half of 2025? July and August were tough. July, mainly because of the really bad weather. We experienced several typhoons and the monsoon altogether. I think performance dipped a bit for July. We saw some recovery in August year to date, and for the remaining half of the year, I think we're optimistic of at least making the targets set for 2025. Just going back to your expansion plans, in terms of long-term strategy, is there a certain mix of company-owned and franchise-operated stores that the company intends to maintain? Yeah, as a working target, every year we have to open at least 50% of new stores operated by franchisees. This is more evident in the areas of Visayas and Mindanao, wherein most new stores, more than half, are franchise-operated, while Luzon stores and particularly CR remain to be corporate-owned stores. Every year it's a 50% working number for us. On a competition standpoint, are mini-mart and hard discounters a threat to Philippine Seven, and what would you say are Seven's competitive advantages? Oh, yeah. You see them opening left and right. Yes, they are a threat on the perspective of site acquisition. They practically open in the same areas where we want to open. On site bidding, at the same time, they focus mainly on residential clusters, which we are also going into. Our advantage, on the other hand, is not all of them operate 24 hours. It's a big plus for 7-Eleven. Most of them open at 6:00 A.M. and close at 10:00 P.M. while we open 24 hours. A second big advantage is we serve fast food, which most of them don't have. Third is we have dining spaces. This gives customers more options. They can sit down while shopping. It's a challenging environment now, but I think we have learned how to leverage 7-Eleven. Plus, they're still not yet in business, so our objective is to acquire most of the best sites as soon as possible to prevent or make it difficult for any competition to open. Regarding your e-wallet partners, can you please give an update and clarification of the potential incentive cut from your e-wallet partner, particularly GCash, and how would Philippine Seven plan to mitigate the impact on the service income? How much would net impact on earnings be, and when should we expect to see such impact? Yeah, I'll get that. Our revenue share remains to be the same, despite earlier indications that there will be a reduction in fees. That was a year ago. We made significant strides with regards to our payment business. Middle of last month, we were able to migrate into a new payment switch. The new payment switch allows us to increase uptime and reliability. We have been using an old legacy system for the past several years. The very good news is that last July we were able to transition to the new switch, and it will also increase not only the cash-in services but also the other services categories like bills payment and e-loads as well as top-ups of mobile phones. Going back to competition, do you think the aggressive expansion of Alfamart is impacting your same-store sales growth? Sales growth, not much. If we open side by side, we have at least a single-digit hit on certain SKUs. Our stores recover after six months, mainly maybe due to trial on their part. As our main advantage, we offer more SKUs plus we offer fast food items. It's a big plus for us for customers to return and go back to the regular habit of going to Seven. There was also a recently implemented wage hike in NCR around a month ago. Are you seeing the wage adjustment to have a positive or negative impact to the company? Positive in a sense that workers will be more motivated to work, increase their output. On the downside, of course, costs will increase, but I think that can be recovered with efficiencies on our side also. Could you also share how the company benefits from elections pending? Does this only occur during the quarter when elections are held, or is there a spillover to the succeeding quarters? Yeah, it benefits us, especially with the higher disposable income of customers. Historically, it contributes a lot to our revenues. This year, since the automated count happened very fast, somehow the spillover effect became tempered for this year. We still benefited from election-related spending, especially in strengthening the purchasing power of convenience customers. It was also mentioned earlier that there were recent leadership changes. Could you share how the company's strategy and outlook moving forward will be? Internally, it remains to be the same, business as usual, since most of the processes, especially on the site acquisition stage up to the point where we open a store in different markets, as well as determining which products to sell in our stores, were all established many years ago. Internally, the transition will not create a significant impact since this is mostly intended to support the succession planning program of the parent company. At the same time, our Chairman of the Board, Mr. Jose Pardo, who is now Chairman Emeritus, announced his retirement as early as April. The next individual who will succeed him, of course, is our President, Victor Paterno, who started as the President since 2005. Now, he's assuming the role of the Chairman of the Board. The one who succeeded him is Mr. Richard Lee, who assumed several leadership roles ever since he started with the company way back in 2010. Just going back to your expansion plans, what's the main factor in deciding whether to operate the store corporate-owned or franchised? Typically, what we do is we have a plan. We call it a market development plan. If we are opening in a current market wherein there are already existing franchisees, and if they pass certain qualifiers, we give them first crack on that specific location. If nobody gets it, of course, it will be run directly by the company. In terms of your expansion plans in Visayas and Mindanao, what would you consider the biggest threat? Currently, as I mentioned, there's no competition, no solid competition in both Visayas and Mindanao. I think the biggest threat will be the most challenging part in both Visayas, particularly, is the logistics as we cross islands. We have started opening several warehouses in major islands. It used to be only Cebu. Now, we've jumped to Iloilo, the province of Leyte. Even Boracay, we've opened a satellite warehouse. For Mindanao, the same thing. We have opened in the Zamboanga area. A new RVC is also opening by next year. All of these efforts will support store opening in general and support expansion at the same time. What are the key strategies the company is doing to boost sales as a fleet? Any examples of the more effective promos that the company has put into place that have seen good success? Yeah. Earlier, Lawrence showed the Blind Cups promotion. This is in collaboration with the City Blends coffee program. Together with our endorser, Darren Espanto, this has generated a buzz not only in social media but also a good effect to our stores. This promo is a blind cups promo wherein you don't really know what kind of item you will get. This gives people reason to go back and forth to get the character they would want to get. The second biggest promo we have, as mentioned, is always the 7-Eleven Day promo. This is like a week-long promotion culminated by huge discounts on major items, not only on grocery but also on food service items. The second and last thing is the Christmas promo, which is yet to be announced, but yeah, that's also another big promotion that we expect to help boost sales and bring customers to their stores. There was also a follow-up question in relation to same-store sales growth. Can you explain more about your comment that same-store sales have been weak because consumers have focused on buying goods they can bring home? Why is this? Basically, that means customers are more rational. They would like to focus on essentials. As you see, both our competition in the market now, all of them are basically hard discounters. The environment has shifted. For example, if you look at the hard discounters, the main items they sell are basically essentials, like an extension of a pantry of your home. We have decided to focus on these items and at the same time offer where we are strong, our chips, our noodles, our fast food items, etc. In terms of sales, did the rise of online gambling affect your revenue growth? Yes, in a way. Instead of buying grocery, they opt to put it on a bet. Many studies have come up. Now they're detaching online gambling from the e-payment facilities, which is a good thing for us, actually. What's the current service level of your ready-to-eat offerings? For example, product availability and store coverage. Is there an immediate plan to improve? Do you have a target RDE sales contribution and timeline to achieve that? In terms of ratio, our fast food items are about 25% of our sales. These are served by different commissaries also situated nationwide. I think the most you will see a full complement if you are here in Luzon, but there will be slight changes when you jump to Visayas and Mindanao. Our standard items, proprietary items, are shophouse and hot dog and the fried chicken and the coffee program. That's standard to all stores. We are also very confident with the increasing share of our ready-to-eat offerings. In fact, for our coffee program, City Café, we are replacing more than 1,000 old units, which we acquired almost 10 years ago, to support the continued growth of our City Café offering. Most of the units will be deployed third quarter and fourth quarter of the year to make sure that product quality is always at the set levels. For our Crunch Time fried chicken program, since there are space limitations in our stores, not all stores can have their in-store fryers. We are also investing in putting up satellite kitchens. That's also part of our CapEx budget. Each of the satellite kitchens can serve up to 50 stores within a 30-minute bike ride, ensuring product quality and consistency. The ready-to-eat offerings are a very important category for Seven since that also serves as a differentiation compared with new formats or emerging competition. Of course, the contribution to operating income is much better for our ready-to-eat. In relation to CapEx, what is the company's total CapEx for this year and how will it be funded? We announced a PHP 5.5 billion capital expenditures for this year. Most will go to growth CapEx as we aim to open 500 new stores. The bulk of the budget will go there. On maintenance CapEx, mostly for the remodeling of older stores and at the same time, the replacement of old coffee machines. We're looking at this level year on year since the market development plan calls for around 500 new stores per year. The good thing about our business is the bulk of the CapEx is actually funded internally. Our level of debt is very minimal, only around PHP 100 million, and was incurred by our logistics subsidiary since our logistics require more investments to support our push to the islands. For instance, in the third quarter, we'll be opening our 31st distribution center in Ormoc, Leyte, to support our push to the eastern part of Visayas. To support our expansion in southwestern Mindanao in Zamboanga, we are also set to open another distribution center, also intended to support our new store openings down in Mindanao. This is very important for us because in Visayas and Mindanao, there's still very few competition. It also serves as a barrier to entry among the other indirect formats, the groceries, the hard discounters, since their supply line is only focused in Luzon. Even if there's a heightened competition in Luzon, Metro Manila, not that much. In Visayas and Mindanao, that remains to be uncontested. We wanted to secure our first-mover advantage, capitalizing on our strong balance sheet so that when the other players decide to go there, we already have the best location and they can have higher rental rates if they decide to go there, even if they establish their DC, which is also capital intensive. Most of the CapEx would be funded internally. There's a standby loan facility from the banks, which remains to be unutilized even at this point. With regards to your stores, when will all stores fully accept e-wallets and debit or credit card payments? That's also related to the migration to the new payment switch. We're looking at fourth quarter to start the deployment to at least 1,000 7-Eleven stores since we're already confident with the stability of the new payment switch. At the same time, we had support or we received support in the amount of $1 million from one of the payment gateway facilities to also allow us to expand the coverage of credit card terminals so that we can increase payment reliability and, of course, deliver on the convenience promised to our customers who opt to pay through debit cards, through QRPH, or even through their credit cards. In terms of your stores for Metro Manila and provincial stores, is there a difference in terms of store size and merchandise mix? Yeah, store sizes outside Metro Manila tend to be bigger. If you look at stores in the business district, they're averaging about 80 sqm- 100 sqm, while most of the new stores we opened are ranging from 130 sqm- 150 sqm, especially in Visayas and Mindanao. In terms of financial standpoint, how did the recent storms affect the company financially? Those are unfortunate events, especially the flooding. Some of the stores in low-lying areas got submerged in June and July because of the southwest monsoon, which is cyclical in nature. We always make sure that stores are prepared to continue serving customers 24/7. 7-Eleven is very well known for that. Despite calamities, whether there's no electricity or whether it's flooded, we continue to deliver on our promise. We make the necessary preparations all the time to equip our frontliners. At the same time, in order to serve the communities, we always make sure that the basic essentials, the emergency items are always in stock during those unfavorable weather patterns. In terms of products that you carry, are you looking into carrying more in-house brands versus national brands? What is the company's strategy on this? Yes, we have a few selected private label brands, but there's no direction yet whether to expand this. You can find this, for example, in tissue paper, wipes, bottled water. We also have pet food items, also Seven Select brands, etc., nuts and seeds at the same time. It's under study, similar to other licenses globally. It has a big impact not only on brand but also on profitability. What is the company's plan for the cash recycling machines? Currently, it only accepts deposits from store sales. Customers can only withdraw. Is there a plan where customers may be able to withdraw? It may attract more customers. Yes, that's the unique feature of the cash recycling ATM. It's owned by Seven Bank. There are now 3,600+, 85% coverage. Our stores accept a lot of cash. Our store operators feed the cash into the machine, and the machine recycles the funds for the withdrawals of the different customers of the partner banks. For the banks which are partnered with Seven Bank, their customers can deposit on us. It's free of charge. They will not pay PHP 18. It also increases our customer traffic because when people withdraw, they have money and they buy something else. It generates incremental sales. Quite recently, in April, one of the major partners, which is the biggest bank, already started to charge their customers PHP 18. Somehow it reduced the number of transactions since, of course, customers do not want to pay PHP 18 off us. We're working closely with Seven Bank to offer free withdrawals at least once a month to the customers of the different banks so that they can enjoy the convenience of withdrawing 24/7. Our stores are very well lighted, with CCTV footage or CCTV surveillance, ensuring security 24/7. We're working closely with them to allow withdrawals. Also, for EMI holders, e-wallet owners, they can also withdraw. Soon we can open up cash deposits to other customers. It just so happens that our stores generate a lot of cash and the machine easily gets full. We'll figure that out so that we can open the service for others as well. All right. I believe we have time for one last question. Considering that the cash conversion cycle is considerably low because of cash sales, do you intend to invest those excess cash? That's what we're doing. We're temporarily parking funds to time deposits, short-term investments account. In fact, last year we generated a high amount of cash for the past three years. Our cash level was way above our normal operating requirements. That's why part of our capital allocation decision is to give out special dividends to shareholders. That's why we paid out a historic high, PHP 7.2 billion in cash dividends in 2024, translating to around PHP 9.40 per share. This year we paid out regular cash dividends, which corresponds to a 40% payout. Moving forward, we intend to maintain that level so that Seven can be a very good investment alternative since the company's focus remains to be growth. We need to fund that growth from internal cash, and any excess compared with the normal operating level will be paying those out as cash dividends to shareholders. All right. That ends the Q&A segment. Thank you again to Philippine Seven Corporation team and also to the participants. Should you have additional questions, you may reach out to their Investor Relations team.