North America Flat, Asia-Pacific +44% — the Real Reason Avolta Held on to World No. 1 for a Third Straight Year

The July/August issue of The Moodie Davitt Report, published on August 10, unveiled its ranking of the world's largest travel-retail operators by 2025 revenue. On the surface, it's a familiar picture: Avolta held the No. 1 spot for a third consecutive year. But pull up the full-year 2025 results Avolta itself had already disclosed back in March, and a regional story emerges that "third straight year at No. 1" doesn't quite capture. North America was essentially flat. Asia-Pacific posted a striking +44.4% on a reported basis — but most of that came not from selling more in existing stores, from newly won contracts. The winner on the league table and the winner on the earnings sheet are, on closer inspection, telling two different stories.

The League Table View — No. 1 in Retail, No. 1 in F&B

In Moodie Davitt's 2025 revenue ranking, Avolta topped the combined retail-and-food-and-beverage (F&B) category and also topped the F&B-only category. CDFG (China Duty Free Group), a China Tourism Group subsidiary, ranked No. 2 overall, followed by Lagardère Travel Retail at No. 3. In the F&B-only ranking, SSP Group came in second behind Avolta, with Areas at No. 3. Avolta is the only operator to hold the No. 1 spot in both retail and F&B.

Moodie Davitt cited "shifting consumer behavior, slowing consumption in China, pressure on Korea's duty-free market, and geopolitical uncertainty" as the industry backdrop shaping this year's rankings. The headline is that Avolta held its ranking against those four headwinds — but open up Avolta's own 2025 results, and the traces of all four pressures show up clearly, region by region.

The Source Numbers — 2025 by the Figures

Avolta disclosed its full-year 2025 results on March 11. As is the company's practice, it reports two parallel sets of figures — IFRS (statutory accounting) and CORE (business performance excluding non-recurring items) — and the gap between the two is the first thing to understand about this release.

Metric	IFRS Basis	CORE Basis
Turnover	CHF 13.98 billion (approx. US$17.97 billion), +1.9%	CHF 13.72 billion, +5.9% CER / +5.5% organic
Operating Profit	CHF 1.10 billion (approx. US$1.40 billion), +18.1%, 7.9% margin	CORE EBIT CHF 963 million, 7.0% margin
EBITDA	—	CHF 1.32 billion, +4.5% (+9.7% CER), 9.7% margin (+0.3pp)
Net Income (attributable)	CHF 199 million, basic EPS CHF 1.39	CHF 498 million, basic EPS CHF 3.48 (+33%)
Equity Free Cash Flow (EFCF)	CHF 487 million, +14.6%	—

Reported turnover growth was +1.9%, versus +5.5% CORE organic growth. Most of that 3.6-point gap comes down to currency (-4.0%) — a strong Swiss franc ate into overseas revenue by roughly that much when translated back. Net income tells the opposite story: IFRS net income (CHF 199 million) is 2.5x lower than CORE net income (CHF 498 million), meaning one-off costs and amortization pulled the IFRS figure down by that much. Reading either data set alone gives you only half the picture of whether Avolta had a good year or a bad one.

Key Insight — Extremes by Region, and Asia-Pacific's Illusion

The real story is in the regional breakdown. CORE-basis regional revenue and growth for 2025:

Region	Revenue (CHFm)	Reported Growth	FX Impact	Organic Growth
Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA)	7,240	+3.0%	-2.2%	+8.2%
North America	4,049	-5.8%	-6.1%	+0.3%
Latin America	1,595	+1.5%	-5.8%	+7.4%
Asia-Pacific	836	+44.4%	-6.8%	+6.9%
Group Total	13,720	+1.8%	-4.0%	+5.5%

North America stands out first. Reported growth was -5.8%, but stripping out the currency impact (-6.1%) leaves organic growth at +0.3% — essentially flat. Avolta pointed to softening U.S. passenger demand and currency exposure (average USD/CHF was down 5.7% year over year in 2025) as the causes. What's notable is that Avolta signed new contracts at major North American airports — JFK, West Palm Beach, Atlanta, San Jose — in the same year. Growing store count without growing revenue means average spend and traffic per existing store fell by that much.

Second is Asia-Pacific's +44.4%. On the surface it looks like the group's fastest-growing region, but organic growth there was only +6.9%. Add organic growth (+6.9%) and the currency drag (-6.8%) together and you're still nowhere near the reported +44.4% — the gap (over 40 points) was filled by a new "next-generation" duty-free contract at Shanghai Pudong Airport, mainland China's first of its kind, plus the new entry at Japan's Kansai Airport. In other words, Asia-Pacific's headline growth wasn't existing stores selling more — it was new stores opening. In fact, Avolta separately disclosed that Asia-Pacific "spend-based performance was soft" over the same period. Contracts went up, but per-customer spend actually went down.

By contrast, EMEA (+8.2% organic) and Latin America (+7.4% organic) both beat the group average (+5.5%) without the benefit of new-contract effects. In the end, Avolta's real growth engines in 2025 were neither North America nor Asia-Pacific — they were EMEA and Latin America. Asia-Pacific got bigger in size, but this table shows it hasn't yet built the muscle to match.

The Gap With No. 2 — CDFG's Revenue Actually Fell

Part of the reason Avolta held on to No. 1 for a third straight year is its own growth — but part of it is its closest rival stepping back. CDFG's parent, China Tourism Group Duty Free, disclosed full-year 2025 revenue of RMB 53.7 billion (approx. US$7.8 billion), down 4.9% year over year. Net income fell nearly 16% to RMB 3.585 billion (approx. US$520 million). Fourth-quarter net income did jump 53.5% on a rebound in Hainan duty-free sales, but it wasn't enough to offset the full-year decline.

A simple comparison shows Avolta's 2025 IFRS revenue (approx. US$17.97 billion) at roughly 2.3x CDFG's (approx. US$7.8 billion). Avolta was already No. 1 a year earlier too — but with CDFG stepping back and Avolta pushing forward, the gap has only widened. Reading "third straight year at No. 1" purely as a testament to Avolta's own execution tells only half the story; the structural fragility of a CDFG that leans heavily on Hainan voucher demand showed up plainly over the same period.

Balance Sheet Health and Shareholder Returns

The underlying financial metrics also improved. Year-end net financial debt stood at CHF 2.53 billion, bringing leverage down to 1.96x — an extension of the "deleveraging into the high-1x range" trend the company had already flagged at its Q3 report. In May, it issued a new EUR 500 million euro-denominated bond maturing in 2032 at a 4.5% coupon, further optimizing its funding structure.

Shareholder returns expanded too. The dividend was raised 15% to CHF 1.15 per share, to be proposed at the May 2026 annual general meeting. Share buybacks retired 4,861,342 shares (3.3% of registered capital) in 2025 alone, with a new CHF 225 million program to run over roughly the next 12 months. Combined with the 2024 buyback, the goal is to reduce registered capital by around 10%. As much as the growth numbers, the improving ability to turn profit into cash returned to shareholders is a signal worth noting.

Early 2026 Trends and Risks

Avolta reaffirmed its medium-term guidance of 5-7% annual organic growth, 20-40bp of annual CORE EBITDA margin improvement, and 100-150bp of annual EFCF conversion improvement. But the start of 2026 hasn't been smooth. The company said "January started weak due to the high base effect from January 2025," while year-to-date organic growth through February came in around +4.5%, with the February standalone figure recovering somewhat to about +5.5%. At current exchange rates, the company expects a full-year currency headwind of around -5% — potentially wider than 2025's -4.0%.

Geopolitical risk was flagged too. The company said "direct exposure to the Middle East is limited," while adding that it is "closely monitoring the recent regional situation." CEO Xavier Rossinyol said, "Scale, diversification, and clear strategic direction give us confidence amid a complex external environment." He added that "for a fourth consecutive year, 2025 once again proved Avolta's ability to consistently exceed our strategic, operational, commercial, and financial commitments."

What Korea's Duty-Free Industry Should Take From This

Moodie Davitt explicitly cited "pressure on Korea's duty-free market" as part of the backdrop for this year's rankings, which makes it worth Korean industry players' time to sit with. Avolta's 2025 results offer two takeaways on how to hold on to global No. 1 even under that pressure.

First, the source of growth needs to be tracked separately. As Asia-Pacific's +44.4% shows, growth built on new contracts and organic growth at existing stores are not equally durable. Korean duty-free operators, too, should disclose and manage supply-side growth — like newly won Incheon Airport zones or downtown store expansions — separately from demand-side growth, meaning the recovery of spend-per-visitor and visitor count at existing stores. Second, there's the power of diversification against currency and geopolitical risk. Avolta is spread evenly across EMEA, North America, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific, giving the group the resilience to absorb a shock in any one region. By contrast, Korea's duty-free structure — heavily dependent on specific countries such as inbound Chinese demand — can see its entire result swing on a single country's consumer sentiment or policy shift. That both Avolta and CDFG saw such sharp regional and channel divergence in 2025 is itself a cautionary example of the risk in an undiversified business structure.

Practical Takeaways

• Korean duty-free operators: Building the habit of disclosing new-contract (supply-expansion) growth separately from existing-store organic growth would help avoid the kind of misread Avolta's Asia-Pacific case invites — "high growth rate, but underlying strength is actually weak."
• Finance and IR teams: Get in the habit of reviewing IFRS and CORE (ex-non-recurring) results together. In periods with a wide gap between the two, as with Avolta this year (currency, one-off costs), reading the headline number alone risks serious misinterpretation.
• Global business development teams: Contracts that win a "first-of-its-kind" title in a new market, like Shanghai Pudong or Kansai, can lift headline revenue sharply in the short term — but given the gap versus organic growth (+6.9%) here, breakeven timing for new stores needs to be tracked as a separate metric.
• Analysts and investors: Avolta (diversified, global) and CDFG (concentrated in China and Hainan) make a useful comparative pair of growth models for the travel-retail sector. 2025 showed that operators with high regional or country concentration experienced sharply higher volatility.
• FX risk managers: The prospect of Avolta's currency headwind widening from -4.0% in 2025 to as much as -5% in 2026 is a warning that applies broadly to multinational travel-retail and duty-free operators. It's worth pre-checking revenue sensitivity to won strength and weakness scenarios.

Conclusion

Avolta's "third straight year at world No. 1" is accurate, but underneath it is not one success story — it's four different regional stories layered together. EMEA and Latin America were genuinely strong; North America was flat despite new contracts; Asia-Pacific's growth was built on top of new-contract numbers, not organic strength. Add in No. 2 CDFG's revenue decline, and the gap on the league table widened further. Read the headline alone and it's "still a dominant No. 1." Read the underlying results and it's closer to "a No. 1 whose growth strategy needs to be rewritten region by region."