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

Page 2 of 10

And so the team at OXXO has been looking for ways to incentivize traffic through the levers that they have, pricing, promotional activity, further segmentation and it’s working well. And I would even say it’s moving into this year. We’re off to a very strong start in ’23. The loyalty program, OXXO Premia is also beginning to add and we’re talking about 1 out of 5 transactions at OXXO now being associated with the rewards program. So a lot of things coming together at the same time to, I think, combined to help this over 4 points of traffic, which is just fantastic, I think.

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

Daniel Rodríguez: We don’t hear you, Bob.

Operator: We will go ahead and skip to the next person, who is Alan calling from Santander.

Alan Alanis: Can you hear me?

Daniel Rodríguez: Yes.

Alan Alanis: Perfect. Okay. I’m sorry, I’m going to misbehave. Just 2 quick questions. I mean, the first one is they focus on the traffic. But my quick question on the — it’s on the ticket. I mean, it’s half of food inflation, it was 7%. If you can elaborate a bit on that why the average ticket is not — is below inflation in Mexico. But the most important question, I think, is more strategic. I mean, you’ve seen the share price move pretty much flat since Friday’s conference call. And you’re going to go and see investors next week in the United States and Europe. Could you share your thoughts about what you ponder, what you’ve learned, what you’ve decided to communicate and what you will aim to achieve next week by meeting investors in all of these people regarding the reaction of the stock after the announcement. And I think specifically regarding the capital allocation and the potential dividends ahead?

Francisco Camacho Beltrán: All right. Alan, thank you for the questions. And just as for the traffic and the ticket side, and your comment on the inflation. I mean, clearly, these are variables that our team at OXXO manages according to what is happening in the market on the competitive side, what each of the categories in the store are doing from a supplier standpoint. And clearly, the objective is always to keep oil prices below inflation. That’s clearly the priority. And second, the ticket continues to be benefited by the job that was done over the last several months regarding traditional categories that were added to the store like liquor, for example; second, the segmentation work that has been done by the team; and third, I would say, just a natural movement of what consumers are shopping.

So moving forward, just similarly to the traffic, there are a number of structural and fundamental things that improve over the last few months that we expect to continue benefiting from and that’s why the traffic is behaving like that on the ticket side.

Juan Fonseca: Yes. I think just — Alan, I mean the ticket toward to what Paco just said, we pass through, as you know, we pass through the increases from our suppliers. So mix is a big part of it. And the number is a little bit different from just general CPI, it will basically mean that our mix is different from the CPI basket. But we don’t ever keep any of the price increase kind of swallow it ourselves, as you know, it’s a full pass-through situation. On your other question about what we’re trying to achieve going on the road, I mean, obviously, what we communicated last week is relevant and meaningful, and it prompt a lot of questions, and it certainly deserves going and meeting with — some of our biggest investors, we’re going to be meeting with many of you guys and also with investors that for one reason or another have not been invested in FEMSA, but that historically should have or have been kind of because of the good fit between their portfolios and what our company is.

Page 2 of 10