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Hudson Ltd. (HUD)
Q1 2019 Earnings Call
May 14, 2019, 8:30 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good morning and welcome to the Hudson Group 2019 First Quarter Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. (Operator Instructions) After today's presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. (Operator Instructions). Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Deborah Belevan, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Deborah Belevan -- Vice President of Investor Relations
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Earlier this morning we released our first quarter results. Please note that we released our results at the same time as our Swiss-based parent company Dufry.
You can find a copy of our press release and the presentation on our website at investors.hudsongroup.com, along with our interim report. On today's call we will have Roger Fordyce, our CEO; and Adrian Bartella, our CFO.
Please note the management may make forward-looking statements regarding their beliefs and expectations to the company's future business prospects and results. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. Although we believe the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that such expectations will be realized. We urge everyone to review the Safe Harbor statements provided in our earnings release as well as the risk factors contained in our 2018 Annual Report on Form 20-F which is available on the SEC's website.
During today's call we'll refer to both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures of the company’s operating and financial results. For information regarding our non-IFRS financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable IFRS measures, please refer to the earnings release.
And with that, I'll turn the call over to Roger.
Roger Fordyce -- Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thank you, Debbie, and good morning, everyone. I would like to start this morning by providing an overview of the first quarter's performance and operating highlights. And then I will turn it over to Adrian for a deeper dive on our financial results. We've had a strong start to 2019, delivering solid growth in both turnover and EBITDA, as well as continued gross margin expansion.
We made progress on growing our footprint in North America's busiest airports, executing on our strategic initiatives, and increasing employee engagement across the organization. And I'm confident we are well-positioned to deliver on our goals for this year and beyond. During the first quarter, we achieved 4.7% organic sales growth, in line with our expectations despite industry challenges during the quarter, including governments shut down during the first three weeks of the year, a shift in the timing of Easter weekend-related travel into the second quarter, and continued currency FX headwinds.
In regards to the headwinds related to the Chinese passenger trends that resulted in softer duty free and luxury sales in the second half of last year, this trend appears to have moderated during the first quarter. However, we are closely monitoring sales trends in the segment and caution that the headwinds may not have fully subsided. As we discussed on our year-end call, we had implemented some promotional programs starting in December to offset softening sales. This continued in quarter one, but with a different focus. Specifically, we ran events around the Chinese New Year. We partnered with Vancouver and Toronto airports to promote the holiday on various social media platforms and overall we were quite successful in driving sales and higher-average tickets in these locations. We also had enter into strategic partnerships with credit card companies to create offers for using their card in our shops, which was well received. As you can see, these programs had minimal impact on our overall gross margin which expanded by 100 basis points during the quarter to 63.8%.
On the business development front, our net new business was up 2.5%. During the first quarter, we had two key wins, a 10-year contract win at Indianapolis International Airport that will add an additional nine stores and 9,000 square feet to our portfolio. And the expansion of an existing contract at Philadelphia International Airport which brings our footprint to over 17,000 square feet at this location. As recently announced, we were also awarded a master concession contract in partnership with SSP at St. Pete-Clearwater Airport. We continue to have a robust pipeline of projects that we're working on for future opportunities in both retail and food and beverage.
It was also a busy quarter for new store development. As you may know, Hudson operates many concepts and brands outside of its core travel convenience stores, including souvenir shops and landmarks and museums and luxury stores and airports. The breadth of our offering not only serves to diversify our business across locations, customer demographics, and product categories, it is also the key advantage that allows us to deliver a wide range of choices for travelers across North America's busiest travel hubs and landmark locations.
I'd like to highlight a few key locations we opened during the quarter. In February, we unveiled a newly designed 4,500 square foot Empire State Building official store in New York City's most famous landmark which caters to over 4 million annual visitors from all over the world. The renovation which was part of a broader, reimagined Empire State Building observatory experience features art deco and modern design along with unique products like curated souvenirs, mementos and exclusive luxury branded products.
Even Hudson's deep roots in the Big Apple, we are very proud to partner with Empire State Realty Trust at this location, elevating gift store experience to a new level and showcasing our talents in this channel.
As you may recall, in 2018, we announced a partnership with FAO Schwarz to serve as the exclusive airport retailer for this iconic toy brand. During the first quarter, we opened our second FAO Schwarz store as part of this agreement in Chicago Midway International Airport. Our first location was opened at LaGuardia Airport during the fourth quarter and our team is excited by the early performance results. We look forward to future expansion opportunities and growth for this brand.
We also continue to expand our luxury brand portfolio as we announced the opening of our first Moncler boutique at Vancouver International Airport, bringing our total duty free footprint at this airport to 18 stores. This store has performed very well in its first two months, exceeding our expectations.
And in our travel convenience concepts, we opened a number of unique localized Hudson stores that cater to the sense of place airports are looking to deliver to their customers. These include a combination of Ironwood and giant coffee stores in Phoenix, a San Francisco Chronicle branded store in San Francisco and Ontario provisions at Ontario International Airport.
Lastly, I'm excited to announce a new partnership that we just signed with Joe & The Juice. This award-winning Scandinavian coffee and juice concept will have two locations opening this year at Vancouver International Airport, serving its signature organic coffee blend, fruit and vegetable juices and made-to-order sandwiches. We're confident this concept will resonate well with travelers given the huge success this brand has had to date. This is a great addition to our portfolio of food and beverage concepts and further advances our expansion into this category.
At Hudson, we work hard to stay competitive as a retail business and landlord partner, but also as an employer. With unemployment at its historic lows, a modern workplace that includes four different generations spanning Baby Boomers, Gen X, millennials, and now Gen Z, we are in a more dynamic workforce environment than ever before.
We have recently introduced new projects and processes that utilize the ever changing opportunities of digital technology as it relates to employee engagement and training. During the quarter, we rolled out Travel Retail University, a proprietary training tool for Hudson employees to manage the company's learning materials categorized by specific role or function as well as instructor-led courses that permit staff to self-design their training paths regardless of where the employee is located.
We are also piloting a new internal social media tool to boost collaboration and communication that will eventually reach employees across all locations, whether they are in our North American support center, our warehouses or in one of our stores. The goal is to further drive employee engagement and encourage innovation and idea generation. And we've already seen widespread adoption. At Hudson, we know that engaged employees lead to an overall better experience for our customers which will ultimately drive value for all of our stakeholders. Additionally, high engagement leads to low turnover and we've seen success in reducing our employee turnover which is already well below the industry average.
Finally, before I turn it over to Adrian, I'd like to reiterate my commitment to drive the growth strategy that we laid out during our IPO just over a year ago. Through a combination of best-in-class merchandising, product selection, store formats and digital enhancements, we are constantly thinking about ways to enhance the customer experience and grow sales and profitability. These elements, supported by a strong industry growth fundamentals, net new business wins, and the benefit of selective strategic M&A down the line, will position us for long-term growth. Reflecting over the past few months in my new role as CEO, I can assure you that our growth strategy has not changed.
We have picked up momentum on some projects that were in the infancy last year and are making progress on exciting new initiatives that stretch across the organization and that we'll be sharing over the next few quarters. We are working on a broad range of projects many of which center around the use of digital technology that will improve the experiential and transactional elements of our stores, as well as the overall efficiency of the organization. The team is energized with a renewed sense of urgency to bring these projects to fruition. My goal is to make our team feel empowered, encourage forward-thinking and challenge our team members to think outside of the box. This is critical to further strengthen our competitive edge and expand our market share. So stay tuned. There is a lot more to come.
I will now turn it over to Adrian for the financial details.
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Roger. Before I get into our financial results, I would like to highlight some changes you will see in our presentation of our financial statements, which came into effect during the first quarter. First, as of January 1, 2019, we implemented the new IFRS 16 accounting standards related to capitalization of leases.
Under this standard, companies are required to record a right of use asset and the lease obligation for capitalized leases. The income statement is impacted as these leases move out of rent expense and now we have depreciation on the assets and finance expense on obligation. Variable lease continue to be recorded under lease expense.
Also, the treatment of leases now differs from U.S. GAAP considerably. Under IFRS 16, there is a front-loading effect from interest expenses compared to this trade line expensing under U.S. GAAP. It's important to understand that adoption of IFRS 16 does not impact our strategy, our cash flows, and doesn't change how we run the business.
To address IFRS 16 income statement effects, we have revised our definitions of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net profit to be more comparable to previous periods. Specifically, adjusted EBITDA removes the charge related to capitalized leases to be more comparable to prior years. And adjusted net profit now additionally backs out impairment of asset, the income tax adjustment on amortization and impairment and one-off tax charges. We also disclose separately the impact of IFRS 16 on the adjusted net profit. More detailed information on these changes can be found in our press release and attached table. Following the adoption of IFRS 16, we have also revised our chart of accounts to comply with IFRS 16 requirements and to better align our operation.
Turning to results. We are pleased with our solid financial performance during the first quarter, which highlights our continued ability to drive organic sales and strengthen our gross margin. During the quarter, our turnover defined as net sales less advertising income increased to healthy 4.3% compared to the first quarter of 2018 and reached $445 million. Adjusted EBITDA on a comparable basis to last year increased 2.4% to $37.7 million. Our adjusted net profit to equity holders of the parent more than doubled to $7.8 million or $0.08 per share versus $0.04 last year. If we back out the impact of IFRS 16 to be more comparable to prior year, adjusted net profit and earnings per share attributable to equity holders of the parent were $11.1 million and $0.12 respectively.
Organic sales growth, which is a combination of like-for-like sales and net new business, was 4.7% during the first quarter compared to 4.1% in the fourth quarter of last year and 9.4% in the first quarter of 2018. In the terms of the two components of organic growth, we continue to see similar trends as in the last few quarters.
First like-for-like sales. For the quarter, like-for-like sales on a constant currency basis grew 3.2% compared to 4.5% in Q1 2018. This quarter, like-for-like sales growth was driven primarily by robust duty paid growth and partially offset by weaker duty free and luxury sale.
Duty paid like-for-like grew at 4.2% at constant currency and duty free grew at 0.5%. Duty free was on par of the fourth quarter 2018 and we anticipate continued softness in this part of our business given the variability we have seen. The second component organic growth is net new business. The total contribution of net new business to organic growth was 2.5% in Q1 as compared to 3.9% in the first quarter of 2018.
Turning to income statement. During the first quarter, our gross margin improved approximately 100 basis points to 63.8%. Key drivers of this upside were improved vendor terms and continued sales mix shift to higher-margin categories. As previously noted, there was a change in the structure of our vendor allowances. We started in Q2 2018 and was retroactive to January 1, 2019 (ph). Vendor support now comes in the form of reduction of -- in cost of sales instead of advertising income. While we continue to evaluate our cost structure to identify opportunities to enhance margins, we will anniversary the benefit of this change in vendor terms beginning in the second quarter of 2019. As a result, we expect gross margin in the second quarter to be slightly down on a year-over-year basis.
For the first quarter, lease expenses formerly called selling expenses were $45.4 million, down from $96.9 million due to the implementation of IFRS 16, requiring the capitalization of fixed concession fees and other rent payments on January 1, 2019.
During the first quarter 2019, personal expenses rose 17.8% to $115 million. Of this increase, $7.6 million was attributable to executive separation expense. The remaining increase was driven by wage increases, new hires associated with opening of new store locations and public company related hires. The other expense line item which was formerly called general expenses, has the most changes in our new income statement format. As you can see from the table six in our press release, this line item now includes non-concession fee related selling expenses, like for example, credit card fees and also includes other operational result. While premise expenses items, including rent on locations like warehouses and office spaces were moved to the lease expense line item, as required by IFRS 16. Other expenses decreased 4.8% to $37.4 million during the first quarter.
Turning to our balance sheet. You can see the line item that were impacted by the adoption of IFRS 16, primary capitalizing the right of use assets and recording the lease obligation.
Moving to adjusted net debt and cash flow. As of the March 31, 2019, our adjusted net debt position, excluding lease obligations was $304 million, resulting in an adjusted net debt leverage of 1.3x and in line with our year-end level. Cash flow from operating activities for the quarter were $93.5 million compared to $50.5 million in the last year period. The sharp increase in operating cash flow was mainly driven by the reclassification of lease payments moving from operating to financing cash flows as a result of IFRS 16. Capital expenditures increased $20.1 million in the quarter from $15.3 million in the prior year, as a result of timing of new projects.
Lastly, I would like to remind you of our 2019 outlook, which remains unchanged from our last call. In the first half of the year we expect to see similar currency headwinds as in the second half of 2018, due to the weakening of our Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar, as well duty free and luxury sales weaknesses.
In the second half of the year, we anticipate that the currency headwinds and macro-economical factors will dissipate as we anniversary their impact. However, we will face contract expirations that will impact second half growth. Given these factors, our expectations for 2019 are as follows; while we have confidence in our long-term growth framework and believe that our organic sales growth will ramp up over the long term, as currency headwinds and duty free and luxury sales weaknesses mitigate, we expect organic sales growth for 2019 to be in the low- to mid-single digit range, and our adjusted EBITDA margin to stay relatively flat. We expect our adjusted EPS, which has been revised to be comparable year-over-year also to be remain relatively flat this year.
In summary, we are pleased with our performance in the first quarter, particularly with sales growth and gross margin improvement, which led to solid earnings performance. And we look forward to building on our progress in 2019.
I will now turn it back over to the operator to open it up to Q&A.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
We will now begin the question and answer session. (Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from Seth Sigman of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Seth Sigman -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst
Hey, guys, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Nice quarter. My first question is on the duty free business. There was a comment that you're starting to see some signs of improvement. It looks like just from the disclosure that duty free was down slightly and maybe a little bit -- a little bit weaker than last quarter on a reported basis. How do we reconcile that? Is there something else going on there from a constant currency perspective we should know about? And then, just add any more color on how the duty free business trended through the quarter. Should we interpret that maybe you exited or the second half of the quarter showed some signs of improvement? Thanks.
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
Hi, Seth. It's Adrian here. So we have disclosed in our presentation this time the like-for-like for both duty free and duty paid in constant currency basis. So you can see the duty paid grew at 4.2% in Q1 and duty free was 0.5%. So the 0.5% was more or less in line with what we have seen in Q4 2018. We see still pressures on this part, the duty free and luxury segment of our business. And even if the situation is not worse than in 2018, it's still very volatile. So we don't know if the worse is over or not so we would -- we still are cautioning, monitoring the situation and we'll see how Q2 will perform.
Seth Sigman -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst
Okay. And then the comment that you're seeing signs of improvement, is that more because of internal initiatives, some of the things that Roger talked about to sort of offset those pressures, is that how we should be thinking about that?
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
On one side, yes. To Roger's point, he was commenting on all the different initiatives we ran which helped to stabilize the situation. The way to interpret this types of improvement, I would say, we have seen a deceleration in the growth over the last four quarters and it looks like this stopped and now as I said we are more or less in line with the performance in Q4.
In the prior few quarters, we have seen duty free like-for-like on constant currency decreasing every quarter. So now it seems the situation moderated. But as I said, it's still very volatile. So we need to monitor it closely and we are working on additional initiatives to offset and help the growth.
Seth Sigman -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst
Okay, that's great. Thank you. That's helpful. And just a follow-up question on the new store pipeline. Can you just remind us the expected closings for this year when that was expected to become a headwind, I think it was late Q2. Is that still the right way to think about that?
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
So we expect -- the biggest expected closings will happen in Q3 and Q4, more or less. We have some closings, we already like newer (ph) Terminal B we already closed. It was in Q1, was a bit later than expected. This is why we had some tailwind coming from, from the delays in the closings of newer (ph) Terminal B. But this will impact our growth in Q2 and then we will see additional closings, mainly, New Orleans in Q3 and Q4.
Seth Sigman -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst
Got it. Okay. Thanks very much.
Operator
Our next question comes from Michael Lasser of UBS. Please go ahead.
Michael Lasser -- UBS -- Analyst
Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. Can you quantify the delayed Easter and its impact on like-for-like growth in the quarter?
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
I would not say it's so material. I mean, the Easter and the way we define Easter is not primary Easter, it's more than like the spring break season. And even if Easter this year was in Q2 in April, the spring break historically starts sometimes mid of March. So we have seen some benefits from this in Q1 and Q2. So I would say roughly, last year we said 30 to 40 bps impact in Q1 which was helping us. This year, I would say, the 30, 40 are relatively spread between those two quarters. So those -- we will see half of the Easter benefit in Q1, half in Q2.
Michael Lasser -- UBS -- Analyst
And as we think about the impact to tariffs on your business, how the move to 25% impact both your like-for-like growth and your margin?
Roger Fordyce -- Chief Executive Officer and Director
Good morning, Michael, it's Roger. So we've monitored very, very closely and have looked intensely at the list of impacted items and the threat of even additional items being tariffed. There's, obviously, at some point in time there's going to be some products that are going to impact our business model, although they don't, primarily, to be a significant impact at this juncture from what we can see. It's a little premature to see what the exact costs are going to be. But as we've dealt with this in the past, we'll continue to look at alternative sources for products that may be impacted and/or potentially look at price adjustments accordingly to ensure that we're protecting our margins.
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
I mean, just to complement Roger’s statement, yeah, we will try to pass the cost increases to our customers.
Michael Lasser -- UBS -- Analyst
So as you look at the current list, there's not a lot of exposure as it currently stands?
Roger Fordyce -- Chief Executive Officer and Director
Not from what we can see, but again, there is continued threats of expanding that list. Again, there is, I think, primarily on the electronic side and potentially a little bit on the apparel side where we see impacts. Again, we continue to look at alternative sources, but again, where there are cost impacts, we'll adjust our retails accordingly.
Michael Lasser -- UBS -- Analyst
If the full list was implemented, do you have a sense of what your exposure would be?
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
It's difficult to tell. Because if you think about our product mix you'll see half of our product mix is food and beverage which, technically, there are some food and beverage items on the list but we don't think we will be impacted by those. So there is a smaller group of products which may be impacted but to Roger's point, we will look an alternative sourcing and we will work with our pricing to adjust the impact. So over long-term, we feel confident on that.
Michael Lasser -- UBS -- Analyst
Thank you very much.
Operator
Our next question comes from Vincent Sinisi of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Vincent Sinisi -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Hey, great. Good morning, guys. Thanks very much for taking my questions. Wanted to see if you can give a little bit more color on the December promotions. How much maybe can you either quantify or qualify that maybe that helps some of the headwind moderation? And then also, to your point, you still have strong gross margin. So just wondering what the learnings there is, is there going to be kind of any change of thought or strategy with your kind of your marketing, promotional cadence going forward?
Roger Fordyce -- Chief Executive Officer and Director
So I don't know that we've actually quantified the December promotions to understand. We -- obviously, a lot of that was built around discounting to try to drive sales, to drive top line sales. As we moved into the first quarter, as I mentioned earlier, we looked at other types of promotions to try to drive sales. I think as we continue to face the headwinds and I think it's a combination of not just the issues with the overall Chinese spend, but also the strength of the U.S. dollar as well too impacting the, particularly, against the Canadian currency, impacting our travel out of the U.S. into Canada.
We are continuously looking at promotional tools and different ways of trying to drive sales. And then in the U.S. in particular we're continuing to try to drive the domestic side of the business to offset any headwinds we're facing from the true international traveler. So it's an ongoing process. We're continuing to test and move different type of promotions in and out as we understand where these headwinds are taking us.
Vincent Sinisi -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Okay. All right, that's helpful, Roger. Thank you. And then maybe just a quick follow up. Can you guys just give us an update, I know you've been talking kind of digital initiatives as kind of overall, but just kind of what's kind of first and foremost on tap? What should we maybe expect to see as we go through the rest of this year at this point?
Roger Fordyce -- Chief Executive Officer and Director
So we're driving a number of different areas as it pertains to using digital technology to enhance our overall business. I mentioned earlier in the call about our use for employee engagement. But we're also continuing to experiment and pilot a number of initiatives that we're looking to -- to see, how it would impact both the experiential as well as the transactional elements of our stores. As you know, there's the changing demographics of the passenger base, the broad range of demographics of our passenger base, each shop differently are looking at trends and looking at the experiential nature, as well as how they conduct transactions on a regular basis. So those are the areas I think that we will, throughout the year be potentially talking about a little bit more of how each of those are impacting our stores.
Vincent Sinisi -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Okay. Very helpful. Best of luck guys. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Marisa Sullivan of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.
Marisa Sullivan -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Good morning and thanks for taking the question. I just want to circle back on organic growth. I wonder if you can give us some additional color on how to think about the cadence of organic growth. And specifically, in 2Q, should we expect an improvement from 1Q or are there other factors that could be offset? I know you called out things like spring break shifting into 2Q? And then with the delayed Q1 closings, how should we think about the 2Q net new business contribution?
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
So, we had -- we had Q1, Q1 was better than expected. We're very pleased with the performance and primarily driven by different initiatives and some one-off effects like, for example, the Chinese New Year was better than -- than expected. We had some delayed closures which helped us. So those items won't be there in Q2. So we think, as I mentioned before, we expect the pressure on luxury and duty free to continue into -- into Q2. And in absence of the -- and there will be absence of the one-off effects we have seen in Q1.
Marisa Sullivan -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Got you. And then, just in terms of thinking about your overall organic sales outlook for the year, should we be thinking just, does it kind of, even out a little bit in 2Q and the whole range is open or given the solid 1Q sales performance in some of the things you're doing to drive like-for-like, could the organic sales growth expectations track more towards kind of the mid- to higher-end of the range?
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
No. I would say, at the moment, we are trucking to the middle the -- middle of the range.
Marisa Sullivan -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Got you. And then if I could just squeeze one last one in, just on some of the initiatives that you're implementing to drive like-for-like growth on the duty paid side, can you just give us an update on some of the things you've talked about in the past like rolling out more coolers, new brands or merchandise? What have you been doing that’s been -- been able to -- to drive that strong performance on duty paid?
Roger Fordyce -- Chief Executive Officer and Director
So as we've continued to report, obviously, the food and beverage expansion continues -- continued into Q1. I believe we added another 19 additional coolers during the quarter. But we are also embarking on other areas as well too, adding additional products to our mix. We were successful in being able to add ample accessories this quarter to our electronics mix.
We continue to look at electronics, a broad range of categories of product to supplement and complement the current offerings in our overall travel convenience store. It's a great opportunity as the overall shopping trends change, as I mentioned earlier, to really start to look at some new trends and some new directions to add. So our merchandising teams are continuing down the path of looking at categories of wellness, potential cosmetics, and categories that are not traditional to the convenience stores as opportunities for us to continue to add on the merchandising mix in addition to the continued growth on the food and beverage side.
Marisa Sullivan -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Thanks so much.
Operator
(Operator Instructions). And our next question will come from Chris Prykull of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Christopher Prykull -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I just had one on personnel expenses. Can you quantify the impact that the long-term incentive plan had year-over-year in 1Q '19? And then do you think you can leverage that expense line item as a percentage of sales in the back half of the year? I know you mentioned some training initiatives, Travel Retail University, any expense impact from that roll out?
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
So I will start with the -- hi, Chris. I will start with the public company cost. So overall, the long-term incentive plan plus other incremental -- new incremental public company personnel-related expenses added around 25 bps to our personnel expense line. And for the full year, we expect around 10 bps to 20 bps, the leveraging coming from this line, assuming the organic growth in the expected range.
Christopher Prykull -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Got you. That's Helpful. And then I think about the implications from a bigger push into food and beverage for the P&L over the long term, particularly QSR, and/or traditional restaurants as opposed to the grab and go. How should -- how do you all think about layering in that business to your current business? For example, I know it's a, generally, it's a higher sales growth category, there's high gross margins, but is it really EBIT margin neutral given the higher labor expense and so it's really just an opportunity to grab share?
Roger Fordyce -- Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yeah. I think that's a good analogy. It is somewhat EBITDA neutral. And we look at that as something that's a good complement to our current retail portfolio to the point that you mentioned, typically higher margins but typically higher labor costs as well
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
And lower rents.
Christopher Prykull -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Lower rents. Got it. And then maybe just lastly on the balance sheet, how should we think about the right leverage ratio going forward? I mean, cash is about 17%, 18% of market cap, 12% of EV. I understand M&A is still an option, so you may want to keep some on hand for that but how are you all thinking about capital allocation?
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
So as we always -- always communicated, so organic growth is the number one priority. And M&A is the second one. We are working hard to -- on the food and beverage strategy and we are keeping our leverage to be able to execute on the strategy if the right target is there. I would say our leverage, as mentioned earlier, 3x will be the cap, we would like to push it. So we have some room to acquire small- to mid-sized operators.
Christopher Prykull -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Got it. That's helpful. Good luck to rest of the year.
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Chris.
Operator
This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Deborah Belevan for any closing remarks.
Deborah Belevan -- Vice President of Investor Relations
Thank you, operator, and thanks everyone for joining us today. Just a reminder, we will have a replay of this webcast on our website. Thanks and have a great day. Bye.
Operator
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
Duration: 38 minutes
Call participants:
Deborah Belevan -- Vice President of Investor Relations
Roger Fordyce -- Chief Executive Officer and Director
Adrian Bartella -- Chief Financial Officer
Seth Sigman -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst
Michael Lasser -- UBS -- Analyst
Vincent Sinisi -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Marisa Sullivan -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Christopher Prykull -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
