Sodexo SA: Investor Day: We Expect a Reset Event Not a Recovery Event

Research evidence excerpt

Sodexo SA: Investor Day: We Expect a Reset Event Not a Recovery Event

IdeaMweaker culture of outsourcing, more public sector exposure, lower retention, is

more fragmented, has less scale at the country level, and GPOs have less power.

Sodexo also has a higher exposure to Facilities Management (34% of sales vs ~85%),

which compared to Catering is a lower margin and lower growth segment. If we take

the organic sales and margin underperformance of Europe vs North America, and

FM vs Catering, we think it explains a ~200bps organic sales growth gap and an

~80bps margin gap. That still leaves room for Sodexo to improve, but it will likely

remain slower growth and lower margin than peers. We also note most of Sodexo's

net new sales weakness relates to weaker retention, rather than weaker contract

wins, and this will also take time to resolve.

Remain Underweight: We leave FY26 unchanged after our c.30% EPS cut last

month, but lower FY27/FY28 EPS by c.6%, and our FY27 EPS of €3.44 is 11% below

Visible Alpha consensus. Our price target actually rises to €44 from €40 because

peers have rerated, but this still implies downside to the current share price, and an

unattractive risk-reward, we remain Underweight.

Q3 sales 2 July: Q3 sales will be reported a fortnight before the Investor Day. We

forecast €6.0bn (-1.8%), assuming -0.6% organic sales, -1.9% currency, -0.9%

accounting and +0.8% M&A. Our organic sales assumption is in-line with the 2H26

implied guidance of 0% to -1% (0% to +1% excluding the accounting impact). We are

not expecting the company to change its FY26 guidance or comment on FY27 or its

targets.

Exhibit 1: Sodexo: our expectation for FY27 guidance and medium-term targets

Our FY27 guidance expectation Likely medium-term targets