Nomad Foods Q3 2026 Earnings Call: 2027 Inflation, Savings and Q4 Pricing

Key Takeaways

• Nomad Foods maintained its 2026 outlook despite additional Q4 inflation, primarily related to fish, and uncertainty around shipment patterns following a second off-cycle price increase.
• Management reiterated its 2027 assumptions: approximately 7% gross inflation, around 3% savings and net inflation of about 4% to be addressed through selective pricing and volume actions.
• The company reconfirmed its 2027 EBITDA guidance of 0% to 2% and said its plans to improve cash flow, reduce nonrecurring costs and deleverage remain unchanged.
• Q3 nonrecurring costs were below EUR 4 million. Management also said underlying indirect costs declined after adjusting for year-over-year bonus effects.
• Cyberattacks affecting supermarket freezer systems caused temporary disruption, but replenishment orders more than offset the initial impact. Management described the net effect on Nomad Foods as modest, slightly positive and not material.
• Discussions with European discount retailers remain ongoing. Management said it was reasonably positive about the talks but provided no new commercial update.

Key Financial Data

Business and Operating Performance

Nomad Foods is reducing nonworking advertising and promotion expenditure while maintaining what management described as a healthy level of consumer-facing, working A&P. The company also emphasized competitive pricing as an important factor in marketing effectiveness.

Underlying indirect expenses declined after excluding year-over-year bonus and incentive compensation effects. Cost actions include reductions in central overhead, changes to local organizations and an announced smaller factory closure.

In the discount channel, management said discussions with retailers continue. The company views European discounters as a large and growing segment but did not announce additional distribution wins during the call.

Management Guidance

Management maintained its existing outlook. For Q4 2026, EBITDA is expected to face pressure from additional inflation, mainly in fish.

The principal source of Q4 variability is the customer response to Nomad Foods’ second off-cycle price increase and the resulting effect on shipment timing and volumes. Management also said any upside relative to plan could be reinvested in incentive compensation, business strengthening and sustainable long-term growth.

For 2027, the company continues to expect approximately 7% gross inflation and around 3% savings, leaving net inflation of roughly 4%. Management plans to respond selectively, using price increases in some cases and pursuing volume opportunities in others.

Risks and Areas to Watch

• Input-cost inflation: Fish inflation is the main incremental pressure identified for Q4.
• Pricing execution: Customer responses to the second off-cycle price increase could create variability in shipment patterns.
• Retail cybersecurity: Attacks on supermarket freezer systems disrupted frozen-food availability in France, Belgium and other European markets. Nomad Foods said its own operations and supply chain had not experienced a cyber incident to date.
• Reinvestment: Potential upside may be redirected toward incentive compensation and long-term growth initiatives rather than fully flowing through to near-term earnings.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

Analysts focused on discount-channel expansion, cyber-related retail disruption, Q4 guidance, marketing efficiency and the 2027 cost outlook.

Management said freezer-system cyberattacks initially reduced retail availability and sales, but subsequent restocking orders more than offset the disruption. The overall financial effect was not material.

On expenses, management attributed underlying indirect cost improvement to restructuring and savings initiatives. It also reiterated that reductions in A&P are concentrated in nonworking spending rather than consumer-visible marketing.

Regarding 2027, management said the inflation, savings, EBITDA and cash-flow building blocks presented at its Analyst Day remain unchanged.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, greetings, and welcome to the Nomad Foods Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Q&A Session.

[Operator Instructions]

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Jason English, Head of Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Jason English

Thank you, and hello, everyone. Welcome to Nomad Foods Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Question-and-Answer Session. We posted the associated press release, prepared remarks and investor presentation on Nomad Foods website at nomadfoods.com. I hope you've all had a chance to review them. I'm Jason English, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy, and I'm joined by Dominic Brisby, our CEO; and Ruben Baldew, our CFO.

During this call, we'll make forward-looking statements about performance that are based on our view of the company's prospects, expectations and intentions at this time. Actual results may differ due to risks and uncertainties, which are discussed in our press release, our filings with the SEC and in our investor presentation, which includes cautionary language. We'll also discuss non-IFRS financial measures during the call today. These non-IFRS financial measures should not be considered a replacement for and should be read together with IFRS results.

Users can find the IFRS to non-IFRS reconciliations within our earnings release and in the appendices at the end of the slide presentation available on our website. Please note that certain financial information within this presentation represents adjusted figures. All adjusted figures have been adjusted primarily for, when applicable, share-based payment expenses and related employer payroll taxes, exceptional items, foreign currency translation charges or gains and hedge ineffectiveness. Unless otherwise noted, comments from here will refer to those adjusted numbers.

With that, operator, let's open the line to questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

The first question is from Jon Tanwanteng from CJS Securities.

Question-and-Answer Session

Jonathan Tanwanteng

Congrats on getting back to the organic growth in the quarter. My first question is, I think you mentioned in your recent Investor Day that you were making significant progress in getting products into the discounters with one win and more in the pipeline. I was wondering if you could update us on that progress and how you're seeing that thrust into these new market segments evolve.

Dominic Brisby

Yes. Thank you very much for the question, and thanks for the congratulations on the results as well. We're always very happy to deliver for our shareholders. So we did talk about getting into discounters. And as you know, discounters is a massive segment in Europe, and it's a heavily growing one. We're still in conversations with them. So there's not that much new to talk about at the moment. But we're reasonably positive in how those discussions go. And as we have new news to report, we'll let you know what's going on there.

Jonathan Tanwanteng

Okay. Fair enough. And then just we've seen several reports in the media of cyberattacks on grocery stores in Europe. I think there have been 2 major ones so far. Can you talk about the impact that might be having on your results, your discussions with your customers and if that would be a negative or a positive for you as they restock or if there's going to be a financial issue with your customers?

Dominic Brisby

Yes, definitely. So for those who may not be familiar with the situation, cyberattacks on freezer systems occurred on certain supermarkets in France on October 11 and October 12 and caused disruptions to frozen food availability there. This also happened again earlier this week to numerous smaller retailers, mostly franchises, some of whom have not followed recommended security guidelines. And this occurred in Belgium and it occurred in various other European markets as well.

I think the first thing to say is these incidents are very unfortunate and highlight the importance of resilience across the frozen food chain. Our immediate priority has been to support our customers and support our consumers by leveraging the flexibility of our manufacturing and our supply network to restore product availability. More broadly, we're focused on strengthening supply chain resilience throughout our supply chain. This includes maintaining robust cybersecurity across our own operations, ensuring we have appropriate safeguards, ring-fencing capabilities, response protocols in place and so on. And it's worth noting we haven't experienced any cyber incidents within our own operations or our own supply chain to date.

We're also working very closely with our retail partners and logistics providers and suppliers to support efforts to strengthen resilience across the broader frozen food ecosystem. In terms of absolute business impact on Nomad, the net effect has not been material. So temporary freezer outages have reduced category availability and retail sales in the immediate aftermath of these attacks. But that impact has been more than offset by subsequent replenishment orders as customers have had to restock inventories. So as a result, the overall impact on our business has been modest and slightly positive, but not material.

Operator

The next question is from Scott Marks from Jefferies.

Scott Marks

I wanted to just ask first about the holding the guidance and the implications for Q4 because I think it implies a pretty wide range of outcomes for the quarter. So wondering if you can just walk us through some of the puts and takes as we think about the quarter as well as how to think about magnitude of impact or reversal from the tough prior year compares that you called out in the prerecorded remarks.

Ruben Baldew

Yes. Thank you, Scott. Let me take that question. So we have a range and also the guidance, if you look at quarter 4, there's a negative EBITDA. Now the main driver impacting EBITDA is the additional inflation in quarter 4, which we already alluded to earlier, which is mainly driven by the additional inflation on fish. And despite that, we're actually pleased that we have been able to maintain our EBITDA guidance.

The main driver of the range in the fourth quarter is the customer response to our second off-cycle price increase and the associated variability in our shipment patterns. As you know, we have the inflation coming into quarter 4. As we speak, we are taking the pricing, but there's a variability on the impact, how that could play out on our shipments. In addition, as we consistently communicate, any upside relative to our plan will be thoughtfully reinvested to restore incentive compensation, strengthening the business and also supporting sustainable long-term growth. Now -- and to the range, all of those factors appear to already be reflected in current market expectation. And as a result, we don't see a need to alter our outlook at this point.

Scott Marks

Okay. Understood. And then maybe just moving down, if we think about the operating expenses in the quarter, you held them pretty flat versus last year. And you also noted A&P being down in the year as you pulled back on some of the nonworking media. I'm wondering if you can help us understand some of the puts and takes there because previously, I think you had mentioned feeling comfortable about level of marketing spend, but maybe just shifting where it was spent. So wondering if you could just walk us through maybe both puts and takes on SG&A in addition to the A&P.

Dominic Brisby

Yes. So I'll start on the A&P point. So you remember that historically, Nomad spent a very large chunk of its total A&P on what we call nonworking, so essentially things which consumers don't see. As a result of this, we've been able to make sure that the level of working A&P through the course of this year and indeed in this quarter has remained pretty healthy. But we're not afraid to cut A&P when it's not working, when it's not something that consumers see and it's not something that's been visible.

The other thing that's worth saying, of course, as well is that if pricing is wrong, you can spend as much A&P as you like, and it's not going to have much of an impact. And we put enormous effort during the course of this year to make sure that our prices are competitive in the market, and this is something that we're benefiting from in certain areas. In terms of the SG&A, Ruben, maybe you'd like to handle that.

Ruben Baldew

No, sure, Dominic. So if you look at our indirect, and we've spoken before on the bonus rebuild. So if you completely compare SG&A this quarter versus last quarter, there is a kind of year-on-year impact of bonus and bonus rebuild versus what was done last year. If you correct for that, actually, our indirects are down, and that is a result of the fact that we're driving indirect restructuring. We shared at the Analyst Day and also, I think, in previous quarterly calls that we've taken steps on our central overhead costs. We've taken steps on our local organization. We've spoken about marketing. So those are things we're driving down in terms of savings in the indirect. By the way, then it's beyond savings in indirect. As you might have seen, we've also announced a smaller factory closure. So we're also tackling the cost base, excluding indirects, whilst making sure we don't spend a high amount of nonrecurring. And hopefully, you've also seen our nonrecurring, which was down quite a bit. So we're driving all those things. And underlying, we see a reduction of indirect driven by savings.

Operator

The next question is from Angeline Goh from Deutsche Bank.

Voon Pang Goh

This is Angeline on for Steve. Just a quick question on your '27 outlook. Any updates on your inflation targets or savings targets since we last spoke? Oil has moved a little bit from where it was.

Ruben Baldew

Yes, I can answer that. What you see today, also what we reiterated in our prepared remarks, is that we are reiterating the guidance, which we also gave during our Analyst Day. Within that, the assumptions we've given to you during the Analyst Day are unchanged. So you see inflation of around 7%. We -- that's gross inflation. We're driving savings hard, as I just mentioned, and it's not -- it's the biggest amount, but it's, I think, an example of us being decisive and tackling the cost base of small factory closure. So we're estimating savings to be around 3%. With that, we're looking at a net inflation of 4%. We'll tackle that through pricing. But as I said before, it's not only one-dimensional price discussion. We will be quite surgical. In some cases, we'll go to price. In some cases, we go a bit more on volume if we see a volume opportunity.

So I think the overall construct of our plan hasn't changed also in terms of the EBITDA guidance, which we reconfirm to 0% to 2%, and also in terms of driving cash in terms of lower nonrecurring. You've seen our nonrecurring this quarter was less than EUR 4 million. There was a kind of underlying help, maybe underlying was more like EUR 6.5 million, EUR 7 million. So I think the building blocks we've set out to drive top line growth to drive EBITDA growth in a sustainable manner to drive cash flow growth also by lower nonrecurring and therefore, better quality of earnings and therefore, also deleveraging have not changed versus what we set out around a month ago.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Dominic Brisby for closing comments.

Dominic Brisby

Thank you all very much for joining us today, and thank you for your interest in Nomad Foods.

Operator

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.