BBB Foods Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
April 10, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Tiendas Tresbe opened 138 net new stores in Q4 and 484 for the full year, driving same-store sales growth of 11.8% in Q4 and 13.4% for 2024 versus the prior year.
  • Q4 revenues rose 32.7% to MXN 16.3 billion and full-year revenues grew 30.3% to MXN 57.4 billion, with net cash flow from operations up 19.4% and a year-end net cash position of COP 1.4 billion plus USD 150 million retained since the IPO.
  • Q4 EBITDA reached MXN 845 million (5.2% margin) and full-year EBITDA was MXN 2.8 billion (5.0% margin), each up 51% year-over-year, reflecting strong top-line growth, margin expansion and cost control.
  • SG&A expenses increased to 15.2% of revenue in Q4 due to nonrecurring items and growth investments, but management expects both selling and administrative costs (ex-one-offs) to trend lower as a percentage of sales over time.
  • Guidance for 2025 calls for same-store sales growth of 11–14%, total revenue growth of 26–29% and the opening of 500–550 new stores, underpinned by the hard-discount model’s resilience in all economic environments.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
BBB Foods Q4 2024
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good morning, everyone. My name is Daniela, and I will be your conference operator. Welcome to Tiendas Tresbe Fourth Quarter and full year twenty twenty four conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. There will be a question and answer session after the speakers' remarks, and instructions will be given at that time.

Operator

Please ensure that your full name is displayed correctly on Zoom. And if not, please take a moment to edit your display name. Also, please note this call is for investors and analysts only. Questions from the media will not be taken nor should the call be reported on. Any forward looking statements made during this conference call are based on information that is currently available to us.

Operator

Today, we are joined by Tientas Tre Trezbe's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Anthony Hatoum, and Chief Financial Officer, Eduardo Pizzuto. I will now turn the call over to Anthony. Please go ahead.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on this earnings call where we're going to talk about our fourth quarter and full year 2024. I will begin with a review of our operating results and will be followed by our CFO, Eduardo Pizzuto, who will provide an overview of our financial performance and an outline for our guidance for 2025. We will conclude with a Q and A session to answer any questions you may have. I'm pleased to report another strong year and another strong quarter for 3B. We opened 138 net new stores during the fourth quarter and a total of four eighty four new stores for the full year.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Same store sales growth for the fourth quarter grew by 11.8% compared to 4Q twenty twenty three and for the full year grew by 13.4% compared to last year. Total revenues for the fourth quarter increased by 32.7% to MXN16.3 billion, and full year revenues increased by 30.3% to MXN57.4 billion. For the year, net cash flows generated by operating activity reached million, a 19.4% increase year over year. We ended the year with a net cash position of approximately COP1.4 billion, and in addition to that, we have about USD150 million that we've kept since our IPO last year. Let's turn to operational performance.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Starting with store openings. We successfully accelerated our store opening, closing the year with a store count above our original guidance. As mentioned, we opened 138 net new stores in the fourth quarter. And for the full year, we opened four eighty four net new stores, a 21% increase over 2023. We continue to increase the density of our stores in the geographies where we currently operate, and at the same time, we are stretching to new geographies.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

And in 2024, we opened two new distribution centers. Moving on to revenues and same store sales growth. Total revenues for the full year were billion, growing over 30% year over year. Not on the slide, our fourth quarter, we saw MXN16.3 billion, a 32.7% increase over last year. In the pink bubbles that you see at the bottom of this chart, we have same store sales growth.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

And for the year, we saw a 13.4% growth rate, and that's significant given the notable decrease in inflation. Going on to the next slide where we can look at quarterly same store sales growth and compare them to Ontod's numbers. We continue to significantly outperform the Ontod number throughout the year. In the fourth quarter, our same store sales grew by 11.8%, well above Ontod's two point six percent. And even as the overall market appears to have slowed down in the second half of the year, our momentum has remained strong.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

And I think our strong value proposition is driving this. When the economy is slowing down and the cost of living is rising, that tends to play in our favor. Some of you will be familiar with the spaghetti chart, which we updated. These are the sales curves of our 2,005 to 2,023 cohort of stores. These numbers are adjusted for inflation.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

You will note that the newer cohorts of stores start with a higher sales level and grow faster than our older stores. And you'll note that no curve has yet flattened up. What is driving this is a continuous improvement in our value proposition to customers. And this happens when you scale because you drive costs down and you improve your private labels quality and few features. So as a result, you offer better value to your clients.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

The portfolio of products that you find today in our stores is significantly better than what you would have found in our stores five years ago. So as a result, our existing customers buy more from us, and we gain new customers. I also add that our brand three b is getting stronger. Our clients know what we stand for and trust us more every day, and that helps our new stores start stronger. If we go into more detail, we see that our sales growth in 2024 was driven by both higher store traffic and increased ticket size.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

For our stores with five or more years of operations, we saw a 4.6% increase in the number of transactions per store per month and a 3.6% increase in the average ticket size. This growth was driven by the increase in value we offer our clients, in big part from our private labels. And our private labels now represent 54% of our sales, up from 47% in 2023. I'll pass the mic now to Eduardo.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

Thank you, Anthony. Good morning, everyone. SG and A as a percentage of revenue increased by 96 basis points, reaching 15.2% in Q4 twenty twenty four. Here's a breakdown. Sales expenses rose 40 basis points from 11.3% to 11.7%.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

However, this includes approximately 47 basis points of nonrecurring noncash expenses. Excluding these, sales expenses declined as a percentage of revenue. Moving on to admin expenses increased by 56 basis points from 2.9% to 3.4%, and approximately 11 basis points are nonrecurring cash expenses, mainly related to legal matters and preparing for our follow on offering in Q1. Excluding these, admin expenses rose by 45 basis points. Now this increase is mainly driven by hiring additional personnel to support our growth, public company expenses such as reporting and compliance, and expansion of our regional operations.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

In the first quarter in the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we expect to record approximately about $2,000,000 for our follow on. Over time, we expect our admin expenses to decrease as a percentage of sales as we continue to to build on a solid foundation for our future growth and comply with the public company requirements. Moving on to EBITDA and EBITDA margin. Our EBITDA for Q4 twenty twenty four reached $845,000,000 or a 5.2% margin, which represents a 51% growth versus Q4 of last year. For the full year, EBITDA reached 2,800,000,000.0 or a 5% margin, which represents 51% growth versus 2023.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

I do remind you that we do not manage our business with an EBITDA goal in mind. EBITDA for us is a consequence of meeting our objectives of revenue, product contribution, margin and lower cost as a percentage of sales. Moving on to negative working capital. As you can see from the chart, our negative working capital continues to be very strong. As of 12/31/2024, adjusted negative working capital represented 10.6% of total revenue.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

It continues to reflect our operational efficiency and the strength of our company. As mentioned in previous calls, this is a unique business model that generates a significant amount of cash. In 2024, we once again self funded our aggressive growth, clearly demonstrating the strength and resilience of the hard discount business model. And finally, moving on to our guidance for 2025. We are operating under uncertain environment, but historically, 3B has performed well during economic downturns and periods of uncertainty, but also in economic upturns.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

And thus, we continue to grow strongly. For 2025, our same store sales guidance is between 1114%, total revenue growth in the range of 26% to 29%, and we plan to open between five hundred and five fifty new stores. Overall, we expect a very strong year. I will now turn the call back to Anthony for closing remarks.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Thank you all once again for joining us today. Ours is a business that is robust and highly resilient in turbulent times. We thrive irrespective of economic scenarios. We are seeing strong growth across the board in sales, in same store sales, and we are seeing continued operational leverage driven by scale and increasing operational efficiency. We continue to scale and execute with focus and discipline.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

We are doing what we have always done, only faster and better. And despite what appears to be turbulent times, we are confident that 2025 is going to be a strong year for us. Thank you. We'll now start the Q and A session. So please go ahead, operator.

Operator

Thank you. We will now conduct a q and a session with both Anthony and Elanco. If you would like to ask a question, please press the raise your hand button, which is located at the bottom of the screen. If you are connected via telephone, please dial 9. We remind you that all lines have been placed on mute.

Operator

When it is your turn to ask a question, you will be given permission to speak, and then you will be able to unmute yourself and ask your question. We will now pause for questions and try to catch them as they come along in the queue. Thank you. Our first question comes from Bob Voort and Merrill Lynch.

Robert Ford Aguilar
Robert Ford Aguilar
Senior Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Anthony, in your commentary to shareholders in the press release, I was drawn to three words, right? Expand, enhance, and improve. And with respect to expansion, how should we think about the balance of growth across new and existing trade areas this year? And how is your view on potential store densities evolving? With respect to enhancing capabilities, which capabilities are you focused on this year?

Robert Ford Aguilar
Robert Ford Aguilar
Senior Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

And how much of the step up in the underlying cost structure is associated with new competencies versus compliance control and and simply growth support? And then lastly, when it comes to improving value propositions, how should we think about innovation this year, new categories, price gaps and store service levels? Thank you.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Thanks, Bob. Multiple questions. So I'll start with the real estate one. We haven't seen any change in how we do real estate. We we like to repeat that, you know, there's tremendous white space ahead of us.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

And so our strategy, as you know, in real estate is a very it's a decentralized operation, and each regional CEO is in charge of doing their own search for stores where they are stretching distances a little bit from their distribution centers while at the same time backfilling and increasing density closer to this distribution center. And this approach has not really changed. So what we're likely to see is the same again this year in 2025, more density where we are. And, again, I see plenty of white space even in the areas where we operate and an expansion of the the locations where we are currently just a stretch of these borders that, if you wanna look at them this way, towards more new geographies where we're not operating today.

Robert Ford Aguilar
Robert Ford Aguilar
Senior Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

And when it comes to the density view, is there any like, as you drive greater density in your earliest markets, are you becoming more comfortable in in terms of an equilibrium population combined with disposable income metric that that may determine where how far you can go? Are you are you yet to see that?

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

No. We have yet to see that, but then again, this plays to our favor. We have our sweet spot is so broad in terms of economic purchasing power. And, you know, what stores that we put in high end neighborhoods have done extremely well. And so, you know, when we look at have we hit a limit on where we can put stores in the areas where we are present?

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

We don't see it even in areas that are extremely, you know, dense and maybe harder to put stores in, like, Mexico City. So, again, I'd say, no. Nothing that indicates that we've hit a we're we are about to hit a wall in terms of, you know, being able to increase the density of stores in areas where we operate.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

Bob, you had a second question on on on the step up cost. And don't know you have a third question.

Robert Ford Aguilar
Robert Ford Aguilar
Senior Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Enhancing capabilities. Right? So it was it's it's all driven by the commentary in the press release, and it was just, you know, the capabilities that you may be focused on this year and then how much of the step up in the underlying cost structure is associated with with new competencies versus all the regulatory requirements and compliance and controls here or simply growth support?

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

Yeah. So yeah. And and and as I mentioned in in one of the the slides, Bob, we we do expect to continue to hire to hire talent in 2025 across multiple areas of the company, in in, actually, several areas of the company. And so we will continue to focus on on on on talent density. As far as also compliance and controls, etcetera, we we did a good investment in 2024.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

We will continue to do some investment in 2025. And then as I mentioned before, we should expect that these admin expenses over time should trend down as a percentage of revenue. But we will we will definitely continue to invest in talent in in in 2025, Bob.

Robert Ford Aguilar
Robert Ford Aguilar
Senior Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Understood. And then the last one was just on value propositions in terms of innovation, new categories, price gaps, store service levels.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Most of you are familiar that at any point in time, we are running up to 60 different tests of different products and categories, of which, you know, some of you have seen us run the test for fruits and vegetables and meats. And, again, it's nothing new in what we do. We've always done that. We've done that when we launched cosmetics. We've done that when we launched frozen, and we're continuing to do this today.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

So, you know, next things on the horizon are fruits and vegetables and meats. And, again, they will happen when we're ready. But, you know, innovation is core to us, and continuing to improve our value proposition on existing products is continuous. There is not a single year where we haven't either improved price or the quality of a product or the feature of a product that's important to our clients. And that, in turn, explains why, you know, we continue to see very strong same store sales growth even from our oldest vintages.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

So as long as we're doing this, we will continue to see strong same store sales growth. And you can expect that in 2025, we're gonna see also improvements across the board. And if we're ready to introduce new categories, they will be introduced in 2025.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Joseph Giordano. Please state your company name and then ask your question.

Joseph Giordano
Joseph Giordano
Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan

Good afternoon, Anthony and Eduardo. Thanks for taking my question. I would like to explore a little bit more the same store sales composition here. So we we see a very solid ticket component when we extrapolate that at what would be the proxy for mature stores. So here, like, I want I wanted to understand, like, if you're being, like, how how we should break it down?

Joseph Giordano
Joseph Giordano
Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan

Like so if it's more, like, capturing new clients, because when you think about penetration, we're still relatively low in the neighborhoods cons compared to other neighborhood supermarkets, or you're actually seeing a higher volume of visits. And when I go to the ticket side, we see kinda ticket inflation like growth, but what we have been seeing on the flip side is that penetration of private labels continue to increase. So technically speaking, like, the average ticket would be down. So I would like to understand how this basket size is actually behaving because part of the thesis is that, like, the customer will address more of your needs in your stores. Last but not least, like, not to take much of the time, like, we saw the huge gap that you opened versus Antad.

Joseph Giordano
Joseph Giordano
Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan

We see Antad trading, like, close to the muted growth in the first quarter. So I'd like to understand, like, how you're seeing your performance, like, if this, like, 12% kind of same store sales level that we saw throughout the second half of the year is very likely to be maintained in this first half?

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Let me start, Joe, by answering your last question whether, you know, same store sales growth will continue. I mean, it's a million dollar the million dollar question here in the sense that, you know, we we look conservatively at same store sales growth, and then we're always pleasantly surprised to see it be higher than what we thought it would be. And, when we go down to, you know, what's driving this, it sounds a little bit trite, but I'll I'll repeat. As long as we are improving the value proposition in our portfolio of products, we know that we're gonna increase same store sales growth or at least maintain high growth rates the way you've seen them develop over 2024. And, you know, when we ask why, again, you then you refer correctly to, you know, number of tickets increases, which we also interpret as, you know, new clients coming into our store for the first time even on our older vintages, and an increase a healthy increase in ticket size despite having very, you know, strong deflation this year. And when, you know, we look at numbers that you don't necessarily have access to, which are unit sales, kilos, items, etcetera, we see very a very robust increase. And, of course, you mentioned it too, the fact that, you you know, we sell more private labels and our private labels are priced lower. You know, we need to be selling more units to compensate and to be able to generate the higher ticket size like you're seeing it today reflected in these numbers. So, you know, in summary, we believe that as long as we're improving the value proposition, we're gonna see all these metrics either maintain or improve over time.

Joseph Giordano
Joseph Giordano
Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank thank you. Our next question comes from Andrew Rubin at Morgan Stanley.

Andrew Ruben
Andrew Ruben
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

I'm sorry about that question.

Andrew Ruben
Andrew Ruben
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Like to dig in a bit more on the store opening guidance as well. Maybe first, the retrospective on 2024. As you mentioned, you came in above the high end of your initial store opening guidance. So I'm curious if you could talk us through what the factors that were that enabled you to end up coming in above. And then as we look to the guidance for this year, if you could talk through scenarios that could drive you to be at the high or low end and to the same degree operationally, what do you see as the main bottlenecks for accelerating the pace even further? I appreciate it.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Sure thing. You know, the three factors in opening stores, Andrew, are availability of real estate, availability of capital, availability of human resources at the level and quality that we want to have to operate stores. And I would say that capital is not an issue. Availability of real estate, as we've mentioned, white space is abundant. And then if you look at more detail into real estate, you get something that is a little bit out of our hands, which is obtaining permits, and we've mitigated that by just increasing the pipeline of stores that we process at any one point in time.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

So this is just to give you a little bit of context and background on what it what you're what we need to be able to open stores. And then as you probably know, our operations for real estate are very decentralized. So every region that we operate has its own real estate team, and we've published that on average, each team has a throughput of about two stores per month in terms of stores opened. And as we open more regions, and we we're expecting to open four more regions in 2025, you can expect to have four more new teams that are focused on opening stores, and these four more new teams, we expect, would be also opening about two new stores per month in for each of these regions. And that's how we can project and we project what we expect our new store openings to be in 2025.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

There's not much more to it, and it's been very consistent over the last year. So, you know, we're confident that this is the number that we're gonna achieve.

Andrew Ruben
Andrew Ruben
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Thanks, Anthony. Appreciate it.

Operator

Our next question comes from Alejandro Fuchs at Itau. And, Alejandro, I believe you are on mute. You may now unmute yourself.

Alejandro Fuchs
Vice President , Equity Research at Banco Itaú BBA

Thank you. Hello hello, Anthony, Eduardo, team. Thank you for the space for questions, and congratulations on the results. Two quick ones from my end. First, on the gross margin.

Alejandro Fuchs
Vice President , Equity Research at Banco Itaú BBA

Wanted to see if you can elaborate a little bit. We saw an expansion this quarter of 20 bps. Maybe you can tell us a little bit how, you know, relationship with suppliers, private label and so on, you know, is going and if you expect this trend to continue. And then second, twenty twenty five, maybe a follow-up to Joseph's question. We're seeing a slowdown in consumption and economic activity in Mexico.

Alejandro Fuchs
Vice President , Equity Research at Banco Itaú BBA

I know you expect a very good year, right, given the format. But how are you seeing the competition? Anything that caught your attention during these first four months on the competitive landscape in the country? Or are you seeing the trends very similar to the end of last year? Thank you.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Okay. So the first part of your question was on gross margins. Again, it's worth going back and looking at what drives improvements in gross margin, and it's fairly straightforward. As we scale, our purchasing power increases and efficiencies across the board increase. So you you have an improvement in the purchasing cost of the goods you're selling.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

And then the question is, what do do with this improvement? Do you pass it into gross margin, or do you pass it into price? And we've mentioned in previous calls that what we do for our private label, is we let the market tell us what the optimum decision is regarding to the percentage you go you put into margin and the percentage that goes into price, and that we do by continuous elasticity testing of all our products. What you will see over time, of course, is there's always a small part that goes into gross margins, so you will definitely see an upward trend on gross margins over time. But as I've also mentioned in previous calls, quarter to quarter, you're gonna see volatility in this gross margin.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Over time, over a longer period of time, you'll see an upward trending slope. So if you tell me if this is the number I expect to see in the next quarter, I tell you I'll tell you, I don't know. But what I can tell you is that if you look at this trend over the next couple of years, you'll definitely see an upward trend. The second part of your question had to do with competition and slowdown of consumption or what appears to be a slowdown in consumption. We haven't seen it.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

You see it in our numbers. If there is a slowdown in consumption, as has happened in previous downturns, we have been a net beneficiary of downturns. And in upturns, these clients tend to be extremely sticky and don't go back to previous purchasing habits. So we thrive in a downturn usually. And in terms of competition, competition has always been healthy in Mexico, and it's one of the most competitive landscapes for grocery retail.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

And as you've seen, you know, we've done extremely well over the years and have held our own. So, you know, no big changes in competition. Just it continues to be strong and robust, and we continue to perform strongly and robustly.

Alejandro Fuchs
Vice President , Equity Research at Banco Itaú BBA

Very clear. Thank you, Anthony.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Felicius Zarrotte at Santander.

Analyst

Anthony, Eduardo, thanks for the space for questions here. One quick one from my side, and I was wondering if maybe you could elaborate there on the drivers behind the increase in the private label penetration we saw through 2024. Maybe if you guys could share some color on how this is evolving versus the business plan and and also if you have any color as to how this could evolve or how we could expect this to evolve in the coming years. Thank you so much.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Hi. I think here you may you might have the benefit of a time machine in the form of BIM in Turkey. And you can if you look at how their historical evolution has been in terms of private label, I think that would be a fairly accurate expectation of what the future might have for us. Now in terms of what drives the increase of private label versus brands, it's not you know, very simply, the more value you're offering in your private labels, the more percentage of your sales you're gonna see shifting towards the private label. There's nothing magical about it except that, again, as you scale and as you're continuously improving the value that you offer in your private label, whether it's an improvement in quality, an improvement in a feature, an improvement in communication sometimes, an improvement in packaging, improvement, and therefore, an improvement in the value proposition, customers are gonna consume more of the private label, and therefore, you'll see an increase in the penetration.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

It's as simple as that. And as long as our efforts to scale and our efforts to improve private labels don't stop, you'll see this number increase.

Analyst

Very clear. Thanks so much for that, Anthony.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Thank you, Luci.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Daniela Brett Howard at HSBC.

Daniela Bretthauer
Daniela Bretthauer
Analyst at HSBC

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on the results. I was wondering if you could share with us the level of expenses that you understand to be optimal as a percentage of sales because you are growing sales quite fast, but, you're not maximizing your operating leverage or your margins because, you know, you've been investing, in the structure to support, you know, this growth. But, just to clarify, the selling expenses one off was Ps.

Daniela Bretthauer
Daniela Bretthauer
Analyst at HSBC

70 7 million and for G and A was Ps. 18 million?

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

Daniela. Thank you for your question. On your first I'll start with the latter question. It's about EUR 18,000,000 on and EUR 67,000,000 on the numbers that you just mentioned. On your first question and expenses as a percentage of sales, I think we need to look at it on the two buckets that we have.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

One on on the one side, we have selling expenses. And if you look at the numbers even on on an annual basis, and that's the way we like to look at it, not not necessarily on a quarterly basis, but on an annual basis, these do come down as a percentage of sales. As as we've mentioned before, the one thing that we look as management is every line item should go down as a percentage of sales, and that's that's the case. That's been happening, and we expect that to continue to happen. And the reason for that is as we continue to scale up, as we continue to increase our sales, and as we continue to maintain and sustain a very efficient operation at the store level and at DC level, we should expect to to increase our leverage.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

Then if we look at a second bucket, which is admin expenses, as I mentioned earlier, we yes. We do invest, and we will continue to invest in talent. We think that this is the best way to continue our our our a solid foundation for growth, and that will happen in in that will continue to happen in in 2025. And as I mentioned to Bob, this we we do we should expect that over time, this number will come down as a percentage of sales. We believe that investment in talent is an is an important topic.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

We've always mentioned that HR is a critical function for us, and we will continue to invest in that. Now we also expect that, as I mentioned, that eventually these these numbers will continue to come will will come down as a percentage of sales.

Daniela Bretthauer
Daniela Bretthauer
Analyst at HSBC

Thank you. And if I may add a follow-up question on the level of tax rate that we should work in our models going forward because that's being quite volatile. And it may have to do with the currency or not, so I just wanted to get some insights on on that as well. Thank you.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

Yeah. Of course. On the on the tax rate, Daniel, I think the best way to look at it in in in is to to look at it from from from it's twofold. First of all, the the the income tax or taxable profits are the Mexican level, the Mexican operating companies. So the suggestion would be to strip out all the expenses that are not on the Mexican on the Mexican level.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

That is preview on if you look at previous peers, we have the promissory notes, but now we have the also, we have the ESOPs and and the the the foreign exchange. If you strip these two out and apply the 30% rate, you will get a pretty good idea of what the the the the tax rate should be. That's that's my my suggestion on how do you look at it. And then on your second question on by the way, we will in in in in the coming weeks, we will publish our twentieth, and in it, you will have much more detail on the on the tax calculation. And if you have any questions, I can we can gladly jump in and call.

Daniela Bretthauer
Daniela Bretthauer
Analyst at HSBC

Wonderful. Thank you.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

And then on the your second question was on FX. So the FX, the the the positive impact that we had is because of the the amount in U. S.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

Dollars that we kept in our accounts since the IPO, and that is the effect that you're seeing mostly that is the effect that you're seeing there.

Daniela Bretthauer
Daniela Bretthauer
Analyst at HSBC

Thank you so much.

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

Thank you, Daniela.

Operator

Thanks. Our next question comes from Froylan Mendez at JPMorgan.

Fernando Froylan Mendez Solther
Fernando Froylan Mendez Solther
Executive Director at JP Morgan

Guys, thank you very much for taking my question. Just one question for you guys. How big of a game changer do you think is for the penetration of the hard discount model in Mexico is bringing the ultra fresh to the shell? I mean, mainly fruit and vegetables. And in that sense, what needs to happen to scale this category in a margin neutral basis?

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Hi, Frolong. I'll take this one. First, you know, the first part of the question, what does it take to launch this? Right? And the same the same with any category that we've ever launched or even any product that we've ever launched, we need to make sure that it meets our criteria, which basically are great value proposition to our customers and extremely efficient in terms of operations.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

So in the case of fruits and vegetables, if we ever were to launch it, then we want to make sure that not only facing the customer, it's great and it rotates, but then everything on the back end of the operation is working perfectly. And until we have that ironed out and working perfectly, you won't see it. And of course, you won't see it if it's not value accretive or if it's not a positive it doesn't have a positive impact on our operations. You know, we're not interested in losing money on anything. And let me caveat all of this by saying, you know, the business remains extremely successful, stand alone without fresh fruits and vegetables and without meats.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

And we've never included any of these categories in any of our projections going forward. So if it does happen, it's just icing on the cake for everybody.

Fernando Froylan Mendez Solther
Fernando Froylan Mendez Solther
Executive Director at JP Morgan

Thank you, Anthony.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jorge Sierdo at BTG Pactual.

Jorge Izquierdo
Equity Research Associate Director at BTG Pactual

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the space for questions. My question is on private label penetration. We saw a nice increase during 2024, and I would like to know how we should think about fresh products within the sales mix going forward.

Jorge Izquierdo
Equity Research Associate Director at BTG Pactual

I mean, my specific question is, should we consider the fresh category as part of private label sales? Any comments you could share would be helpful. Thank you very much.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

You know, again, I'm gonna answer this theoretically because we have not given any indication that we will be launching fresh fruits and vegetables at any point in time. All we said is we're testing them the same way we've tested. We're testing at this point around 60 different products and categories. You know, back to the question of, you know, whether this is a private label or not, you know, just assume that it is. Right?

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Because I don't see you know, in fruits and vegetables, I don't see branding playing a big role. It's more the same where you're just wanting to offer as much value as possible in that fruit and vegetable that you put on the shelf to ensure that it rotates and to ensure that, you know, all the operations behind it are extremely efficient. The same way we do when we're developing, you know, a private label can of beans. Exactly the same. So, yeah, I know.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

If you had to put it in one bucket, put it in the bucket of private label.

Jorge Izquierdo
Equity Research Associate Director at BTG Pactual

Thank you, Anthony.

Operator

Thank you all. We have received a written question since this participant couldn't, participate in the call. This is from Hector Maya at Scotia. Hi, Anthony. Eduardo.

Operator

Thank you very much for the call. Some of my questions have been answered already, but I just wanted to understand for context. Considering the current conditions, what kind of planning discussions are you have right now with your suppliers on how to tackle the rest of the year, particularly on the develop and a new product lines just to see if the uncertainty is shifting or altering your plans there, or maybe if there's any opportunity to grow your relationship with suppliers throughout tough times. And, also, if services like remin remittances could be coming soon or if that would still be something that would come up more in the distant future? Thank you.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

K. Thank you for that question. I'll start with the latter part, which is services. And, you know, the best way to think about remittances or any other service is three b is a platform, and it's a platform that touches its client with a touch frequency that is very high, on average three times a week. And this client not only needs grocery products.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

And so whatever else that client needs could be game in terms of offering it to them as long as it meets our key criteria, which are value for money, efficiency, high rotation, and, you know, again, as I mentioned previously, not interested in doing any business that doesn't make money. So it's on the table. And, you know, in the in the vast list of opportunities that we face, we, of course, go for the ones that have the biggest impact and the lowest hanging one, and then we start looking at the ones that are further out. And so, you know, I cannot tell you where remittances fall on that list, but I can say that it's definitely on the list. Now in the second part of your quest the first part of your question, you asked how do we manage our suppliers and the relationship with suppliers?

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

I would tell I would start by saying that, you know, what we're seeing today, what we'll see in 2025 has already been discussed with our suppliers a long time ago. And what we do now is basically looking at the future two to three years down the road with our private label suppliers. And the current uncertainty in the markets, whether it's because of uncertainty and interest rates or funding or whatever, have already been taken care of for this year. So we don't honestly, we don't see any major impact from the current volatility that we might be experiencing in 2025. It's all been planned a long time ago.

Operator

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Thank you.

Operator

And we have time for one last question. This is from Pablo Valles at Summit Management. Could you try that microphone out, please? Because I believe you're not on mute. I'm sorry. I think we're not getting your audio.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Let's go to the next question, and then we can come back to Pablo.

Operator

Alright. Please hold.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Operator, have we been able to get

Operator

Pablo, could you try that out one more time, please?

Eduardo Pizzuto
CFO at Tiendas 3B

Did we get Pablo's question, operator?

Operator

No. It's not coming through, so we can conclude the call.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Right. Pablo, please, you know, feel free to send it by email. We'll be happy to answer.

Operator

Any further questions can also be sent out to the IR team, but I will hand the call back over to Anthony Hathun for his closing remarks.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Again, thank you all. Thank you, investors. Thank you, analysts, for your continued support and confidence in our strategy. And, you know, we're we're very open to receiving your questions after this, so please feel free to reach out to us. And, also, welcome to come and visit us anytime.

Anthony Hatoum
Chairman & CEO at Tiendas 3B

Thank you again, and we'll be talking again soon. Bye bye.

Operator

That concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.

Analysts
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