Fomento Económico Mexicano, S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:FMX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Having said that, to the extent that we start to see some breakage in OXXO Premia in a better engagement from the customer, more elasticity in terms of how many times he comes back, vis-a-vis, the point that he redeems, there could be some upside to that assumption.

Operator: The next question comes from the line of Thiago Bortoluci calling from Goldman Sachs.

Thiago Bortoluci: I have 2 follow-ups here. And I’d like to explore a little bit the bottom line dynamics, right? So I believe there is this impact of this noncash tax effect on your net financial expenses that we clearly understand. But it also seems to me that equity income brings a little bit softer than expected, right? And obviously, there are a few things that you account there. I would just like to get a better color from you on how the results from Brazil are trending, right? Obviously, I understand you are very early on and the store are maturing. But is it fair to assume that most of the stores are already printing above breakeven? And what is the marginal level of returns and margins that you expect for Brazil? Is the first one.

And the second one, very quickly, just to make sure we understand all the dynamics, right? In the sense of our plan, you mentioned potential consolidated net income of , right? And I see you reported . Sorry if I’m not wrong here, what was the right change versus what you had to release…

Eugenio Garza: Yes. If I understood the first question correctly, it was on the read-through on the equity consolidation part of net income and the trends that Brazil has in that. Was that the first question, right? Did I get that correctly?

Thiago Bortoluci: That’s right. Perfect.

Eugenio Garza: Perfect. So first, let me just remind you that in that line, we also are passing through the results from Heineken. And if you recall, Heineken last year had an extraordinary gain given the consolidation of their Indian operation. So on a like-for-like basis, there was a steep contraction in the net income portion of that. So that’s what what’s driving the movement in that specific line item. On Brazil, what I can tell you is that, again, both on the top line and at the store level, we’re performing better than expected. We are still in heavy expansion mode. I mean, we are opening up, I mean, upwards of 100 or more stores per year. So that is clearly — I mean, still dragging in terms of the contribution, both from an operating income perspective as well as from a net income perspective.

So I mean, that, of course, will change over time, and you will see that start to flow into that line item in the income statement going forward. But at this point, it is not a significant contributor. The movement that you see there is mostly related to the Heineken. And then your second question is with regards to the difference between the net income that we, I mean, flashed last week in the FEMSA forward statement what you saw. Just to remind you that the one we flashed last year was, I mean, unaudited. We continue to, I mean, work with our auditors to get the final audit one. And there were some movements specifically on the tax line as we continue to, I mean, fine-tune adjustments on the deferred taxes and the current part of taxes that are creating some movement there, but nothing related to our operations.

It’s just as we are fine-tuning our expectations on what the final tax number will be in our statements, which is now obviously in the report that you saw this morning.

Operator: The next question comes from the line of Bob Ford calling from Bank of America.

Robert Ford: Eugenio, what’s the CapEx budget for this year and next year for the retained businesses with the step up? And can you provide a breakdown of that by division and geography, please?

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