Grupo Comercial Ched Ord (GCHEF) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning to all participants and welcome to the Grupo Commercial Chidrawi first quarter 2026 conference call. Participating in the conference call today will be Mr. Jose Antonio Chidrawi, CEO of Grupo Commercial Chidrawi, Mr. Carlos Smith, CEO of Chidrawi USA, Humberto Tafoya, CFO, and Arturo Velasquez, IRO for the company. We will begin the call with initial comments on Grupo Comercial Chedraui's first quarter financial results by the company's CEO, Mr. Jose Antonio Chedraui, and Chedraui USA CEO, Carlos Smith. Thank you. You may begin. Good morning to all, and welcome to our presentation of Grupo Comercial Chedraui's first quarter 2026 results. I want to thank all of our employees for their hard work and dedication to our mission, improving the lives of people by bringing the products they prefer at the best price to as many places as possible, thereby inspiring them to grow and develop within Chedraui. Their commitment has been key to maintaining strong margins even as soft consumer trends continue to be present in Mexico and the United States. In Mexico, consumer spending has been weaker than initially expected, especially in the Southeast. This affected our same-store sales growth this quarter. Despite soft consumer spending, we outperformed in TAD's self-service segment by 73 basis points, making this our 23rd straight quarter of outperformance. Our margins at Chedraui, Mexico remained strong at 9.5%, even with higher labor costs, thanks to our expense control and expansion in our gross margin. At Chedraui, USA, sales continued to be impacted by stricter immigration enforcement. Despite the loss of operating leverage, EBITDA margin improved by 21 basis points to 7.7%. As a result of rigorous expense management and efficiencies from our Rancho Cucamonga Dist...