AB Akola Group (AKO1L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Akola Investor Relations Conference. I'm Emilia from NASDAQ Vilnius, and I'll be moderating today's event. [Operator Instructions] Please be informed that this webinar is being recorded and will be available on the NASDAQ Baltic YouTube channel. I encourage everyone to submit questions in the Q&A section at the bottom of the screen. With that said, I'm pleased to introduce today's presenter, the CFO of the company, Mazvydas Sileika. Please, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Akola Group investor webinar for the first 3 months of financial year '24-'25. We just published our results and we will go through the main features of the performance of the group today. As always we have some forward-looking statements, but that's merely a management's opinion of the current view of the situation. So we're always aware of that. And of course, I will be today with you going through the main points in our financials. So how does the group look by the end of the first quarter, this financial year? We have 62 subsidiaries and 2 associate companies. During the first quarter of this financial year, we have sold shares of UAB Sunvesta. It was an SPV company where we were planning to develop solar panels, but we have canceled that idea and decided to sell it as a project onwards. It's not a particularly high amount. So we haven't announced that separately. We have also sold our minority stakes in KG Khumex Coldstore and Khumex Holding. Those were companies which where -- we're using for poultry trade with one of our partners. We acquired those companies. We have Kauno Grudai and Vilniaus Paukštynas, but the business model actually does not work anymore for us, and we decided to leave those small joint ventures. And we have also closed and deregistered one of our companies, Gerera UAB. So that's why we are making the group structure more efficient. One of the main developments during the first quarter is that we received approval from Latvian Competition Council to acquire SIA Elagro Trade. We are currently in the process to close the deal. And hopefully, we will be able to do that by the end of the calendar year. So the main highlights of Akola Group. For the first quarter, we delivered EUR 27 million in EBITDA versus last year, EUR 33 million. So we have a slight decrease in EBITDA for the first quarter. We will talk about the reasons a bit later on. However, we are still performing better for the first quarter as our 5-year average, it used to be EUR 23 million. So I would say that on average, we are doing quite all right. Also, if you look at our profitability, EBIT margin, it has slipped from last year. If you remember, last year was actually very good in terms of profitability and different levels for the company. So this year, we're 1% lower, 4.9% versus 5.9%. However, we are above our 5-year average for now. So if you look at other ratios, which are calculated on a 12-month rolling basis, you can see that our return on capital employed is higher year-on-year and a bit lower than our 5-year average. Price to earnings, now it's 9.32, which is our -- close to our long-term average. And earnings per share is EUR 0.12 versus EUR 0.03 last year. So 12-month rolling basis, we actually look pretty good. So our 5-year average EPS is EUR 0.18 for that, but it's only the start of the year and we see -- we'll see how the seasonality turns out this year. If we move forward to the balance sheet part, everything is looking more or less okay. We have quite high balance sheet for the first quarter, close to EUR 1 billion. We are quite high on our inventory. So we have a lot of unsold stock in our trading part of the business, and we are also steadily investing into fixed assets, meaning property plant and equipment, which is growing quarter-by-quarter as we are pursuing our investment plans. If you look at our borrowing base composition. I think it's even lower than last year. We are pretty well financed and quite enough equity in the system to trade. And our liquidity position as of end of September is EUR 450 million. We have rolled over our main facilities with no major changes. CapEx for the first quarter is EUR 19 million. So we are on our program to finish some of the investments we have started to intensely develop other like the biogas plant in Lukšiu and we will see how we will go on throughout the year. Our total debt is EUR 377 million, of which 40% is long term debt or leases. So we are increasing a bit on long-term debt, and that's reconnected with the investments I just told you before. Our capital ratio is 33% as this quarter is one of the quarters where we have the biggest balance sheet. I think we're doing really good. And our net debt or leverage ratios, if we calculate that with a 12-month rolling basis, EBITDA, which stands at EUR 68 million, is 5 point, almost 3 net debt-to-EBITDA and 3.25x if we adjust this ratio by readily marketable inventory. So we are below our long-term target of 4. So how does the first quarter actually, look? We are lower in sales year-on-year. So we have EUR 384 million this year versus EUR 421 million last year. We are more or less down by 4% on volume. So we are, again, fourth year in a row during the first quarter, decreasing in volumes. However, revenue decreased by 9%. So meaning that the decrease in revenues came both through the volume part as well as the price part. But this is actually a part of our strategy especially in trading, which we actually started or continuing from last year is that we are not rushing to trade our main commodities because we want to be focused on the profitability. So you will see later on the first quarter for Partners for Farmers segment is a bit challenging. However, it's only the first quarter, and we will see how it continues or how it goes throughout the year. What is a good trend is that our food production part now in the portfolio in terms of sales stands at 28%, and it is increasing year-by-year, meaning that last year, we had EUR 100 million. And this year, we have EUR 107 million already. So if you look at profitability and gross profit level, we also have a decline it's really closely related with our sales. And we have EUR 44 million versus EUR 51 million last year. And profitability-wise, we have gross profit margin at 11.5% which is a bit lower than last year. However, overall, it looks quite good for the last 2 or 3 years and very good in terms of our 5-year average, which is 8.6%. So our gross profitability is actually split very quite evenly between Food Production and Partners for Farmers. So what is the good point here is that you can see how food production became important in group's portfolio. So we went from EUR 16 million last year to EUR 21 million this year, which is also with lower sales makes that 47% of the total portfolio. Unfortunately, we have a lower start in Partners for Farmers, and you can see that we are below actually our 2 or 3 years performance, which is EUR 22 million. But I think that's only the start of the year. So we will -- we know that we need to make our draw conclusions in trading in the end of the season. So we still have all the year to go. In terms of operating profit, so we delivered EUR 19 million versus EUR 25 million last year. We have a drop in operating profit as well, which comes from sales and gross profit. We also have a bit more pressure on the cost part. Wage inflation is still in the market. Other costs have decreased increasing drastically, but still are quite tense and you can see that out of 11 -- out of EUR 19 million, EUR 11 million was delivered by Food Production and EUR 9 million by Partners for Farmers. So we actually see all the benefit going from the sales to operating profit in food production. Very unfortunate results so far from Partners for Farmers, 2x lower than last year. You will see where that comes from in a second when we will go to the segments. However, if you look at profitability, 4.9% in terms of EBIT margin is higher than our 5-year average, which stands at 3.7% lower than the last 2 years but still in the area where we would expect to see it. Our long-term average in EBIT margin is 3%. So we are above that. And if you would see the 12-month rolling basis, EBITDA, which is EUR 68.1 million, it is very close to our target which we target for the group as a whole for year-end in terms of EUR 70 million and EUR 90 million. So where that actually the results come from? So we will start from Partners for Farmers, and this is the overview of the segment, which probably and hopefully will change in the next quarter as we will add a new company to the segment, Elagro Trade in Latvia, which is a very similar company as Linas Agro SIA or Linas Agro Lithuania. And if we look at total sales for this segment, it went down from EUR 332 million to EUR 283 million. So that's roughly EUR 50 million less. In terms of quantities, we went around 40,000 tons less in quantities. We grew only in one segment in terms of quantities that inputs and out of inputs, we did good in seeds and fertilizers. Others are a bit sluggish. If you would look at feed part, it is a bit of a flattish view. However, raw trade material -- raw material trade from Ukraine and other areas is shrinking, but feed production is actually helping. But the biggest impact comes from grains and oilseeds trade. So we didn't do a lot of -- or we did 50,000 less tons in trading, which of course, is tangible. And we have those quantities in our books. So those will come later on in the next quarters. If we draw down into the composition of our profitability. We see that grain storage and logistics have lower quantities this year collected and also the grain came into elevators quite dry. So we didn't have a lot of income from drying services. Lower -- grain and oil seeds. As I mentioned just before, lower quantities traded. We actually do that on purpose. We are looking for profitable trades and we want to continue on that. We haven't decreased that much in quantities which we bought from farmers, there is a slight drop, but it's not a significant one. Compound feed is offsetting the drop in raw materials trade and inputs, as I mentioned, in profitability terms, it decreased a bit. However, we are really doing good in seeds and fertilizers this year. Agro machinery is a really challenging year for Agro machinery. The market has decreased in the Baltic states from 20% to 30%. So the market has -- is in a significant turmoil and we are selling overall, less machinery differently in different countries. However, we see that overall, we are doing not that bad because our overall stock is actually decreasing, which we have in our warehouses. Let's move to Food Production and the food production segment sales grew by EUR 7 million and quantities are more or less flattish, 46,000 tons. We grew in poultry and others decreased a bit. So that's the main reason how we kept it more or less the same. If you look at profitability, poultry is doing really great. So far, the first quarter is very successful. We have EUR 70 million gross profit versus EUR 10 million last year. So the good trend from last year, last quarter is continuing. If you would look at instant and ready-to-eat foods, sold quantities and units increased by 11%. However, the gross profitability was more or less stable. We haven't launched yet production or full production of our new factory. This is coming live in the second quarter, and that should start making impact since the second quarter of the financial year. Flour average product portfolio price has decreased by 14%. However, we maintained our margins. So the profitability was not impacted that much. Coating Systems, very similar view. We have pressure on the product prices. They decreased by 8%. However, we have maintained our profitability and overall that part is profitable. So food is growing nicely, we have EUR 21 million in gross profit versus EUR 16 million last year, majority of that coming from recovery in the poultry segment. Agricultural production sales are flat. However, our quantities of cereal sold have increased from 31,000 to 39,000 tons. But we have around 10% to 15% lower prices for main cereals, for main grains. That's why the higher quantities we have more or less the same sales. Overall, we harvested 4% more in volume this season. So we'll have 4% more volume to sell. If we look at our milk production, so very similar year-on-year. However, average quantities per cow of milk throughout the first quarter was 3.1 tons of milk, compared to 2.8 tons last year. So our efficiency per cow is increasing. So by the end of the year if the trend continues, we will have more quantities of milk produced than last year. If we look at profitability, so far, milk production is more profitable than last year, and this helps the segment because we have higher prices year-on-year, approximately 10% of our raw milk. If that continues throughout the year, it will help the segment however for the first quarter, the quantities or the cereals we sold were on the less profitable side so far. And maybe a short overview about our sustainability efforts. We have produced our third GRI based report of our annual accounts, and you can access them on our website. They are produced annually and maybe a few things regarding last year, '23/'24. Main emissions, including CO2, energy, consumption, packaging, and waste have increased, unfortunately, because we have increased in our production. However, we see that we have higher production and higher efficiency per quantity, per ton that will have a better ratio. The group finished close to 5,000 people last year. We have acquired a good retention rate, overall diversity in the group is good if you look at the total employee part. However, in quality on top management is still a bit of an issue for us. We are working hard on that, and we see more and more women coming into agri sector to work and see their career in these areas. We are lower in incidents. That's an area which we actually are very focused on. And overall, the projects, we are looking forward in the sustainability area this year is, of course, our biomethane plants. One is already in progress in Lukšiu. Other was announced that it's on the table to be discussed, and we are looking if we can do that in Kaišiadoriu. We have a few solar panel investments, but those are more connected to our production facilities, infrastructure and elevators. We want to put those on the roofs. We are improving our efficiencies with new products, better packaging and more recyclability. We announced during the first quarter a partnership with Head of Finance, where we want to promote sustainable agriculture for farmers. And I hope that kicks off this year. And of course, we supported last year the communities locally and countries like Ukraine in their effort last year around EUR 380,000, a bit less than last year. So all in all, thank you for staying with me going through the presentation. Don't forget to subscribe for our news letters, and I'm looking forward for the questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question we received is regarding SIA Elagro Trade. It has a 15% share in Latvian grain market. After acquiring it, Akola Group will roughly double its market share in this country to around 30%, which is pretty solid in itself. Could you please name your largest competitors in Latvian grain market and their approximate market shares?

Yes, that's probably quite precise. We will more or less double in our market share, and we will have a similar market share as we have in Lithuania. Main competitors in Latvia are the 2 same ones which we have in Lithuania. These are Scandagra and Baltic Agro because they are working in all 3 Baltic states as we are as well. And there are a few local ones, which are cooperatives. So they are more or less coming from the farmer side. But at the end of the day, probably the market will be more or less similar market shares between for players in Latvia.

Thank you. More questions regarding Elagro Trade. Is it possible to get more financial data such as complete P&L, balance sheet for the last 2, 3 years? And what's your expected return on the acquisition?

We haven't yet acquired the company, so we are not in a position to share or speculate with any financial information from their side. When we announced the transaction, we have announced several numbers in terms of their performance as well as their operations. It's still a private company owned by other shareholders, so we cannot do that. But we are expecting to payback back from this investment in on average around 5 years. So we will see how that goes, of course, depending on the market overall in Latvia and in grain trade and input trade, but more or less with the operations, infrastructure, people, clients, which we acquire, we seek that we can basically double our performance or financials in Latvia in this part of our business, and the payback we calculate is around 5 years.

And the following question is also on Elagro Trade. The company expects certain synergies from the acquisition such as increased footprint, higher bargaining power or logistics efficiencies. Could you please quantify them?

Yes, you're correct. We will acquire significantly more infrastructure than we currently have now in Latvia. We will have synergies in terms of management of the company because we have all the people and team in Linas Agro SIA, which will smoothly take over the team and operations in Elagro Trade. We also will have some efficiencies in logistics or synergies in logistics as we will move higher quantities, and we will have a higher marketing power, of course, and imports as well with the suppliers. But I would not like to quantify them as of now. We will acquire the company fully. We will take a hold of their accounts and operations. And when we do that, we will follow up with the synergies, it's probably every quarter. As if you remember, we did we have Kauno Grudai as well. But to be very precise in terms of overall group portfolio or group results in terms of EBITDA at the company, which we acquired is roughly around EUR 3 million. So you can expect that coming into the P&L of the group during the next full financial year.

Thank you. RMI increased 9x from EUR 17 million to EUR 150 million, while net debt increased just EUR 57 million. What were the sources of such big RMI growth that reduced your net debt-to-EBITDA ratio?

RMI is usually highest during the first and second quarters, where we have the highest stock because when we have the highest stock and that's grains or the most liquid grains, that's when RMI increased the most. But if you look at overall, the financing composition of our stock portfolio is usually, of course, our own equity than financing facilities, which include credit lines as well as factoring lines, supply chain lines and also we get some advanced payments as well. So the portfolio, how we finance the trade hasn't changed that much. It's only how the combination looks for the first quarter as such.

Thank you. Increase in inventories was higher compared to last year. Could you please comment on the difference?

That's very true. And that's very much connected with the quantities we traded this quarter. We bought a very similar amount, slightly lower amount of grain from farmers compared to last year, but we traded significantly less than last year out of our books. So that's the difference, which we have now on inventory. Trade was slower first quarter because we were on purpose, more protective of our margins and looking for better trades, which unfortunately goes longer in time. That's why we have a higher balance sheet and higher inventory. The balance sheet is close to EUR 1 billion, which we haven't seen yet for the last year or so. So we still have a lot to trade, which you will see in the next quarters and we hope that we will focus further on the profitability and the trades will be profitable on average, more profitable than it used to be. There's no bigger, so to say, reasoning for that. The higher inventory is very much connected, which -- with how much we bought and how much we traded out and we bought very similar amounts.

And what is the EBITDA target for the new [indiscernible] facilities? When will it start production?

It will start production -- it just started production in November. So November is the first month when we are -- well, it won't be actually full production, but it already is in the finishing stage of commissioning. We have actually the opening of the plant tomorrow, an official opening. So more or less, we are done with the commissioning of the plant and in December and going forward, it will start regular production on the contracts we have. We haven't disclosed the particular EBITDA of that plant, and we haven't done that on purpose. And it is quite sensitive information. But if you would see that our quantities will double in terms of instant noodle packages. So more or less, if you assume that the profitability will remain on those quantities something similar we have now. The math is very similar on the potential size of gross profit or EBITDA coming from that plant. But that's still to come. It won't start or won't kick off 100% production. It will ramp up during the year. So we see -- we will see how -- how quickly we actually reach more or less full capacity of that.

Thank you. It looks like we've covered most of the questions so far. If you would like to submit your question, please do so now. And final question is audited results were confirmed just a few months ago, plenty of adjustments to the '23-'24 preliminary report financial figures were made in the audited reports. And again, in the Q1 report, some adjustments were done. Any chance the reports will be less adjusted in the future.

Yes. Of course, our aim is that we avoid any potential adjustments in the future. We want to have prudent financial accounting, prudent decision-making on accounting judgments. However, Sometimes, we are dealing with very complicated judgments in terms of reporting and accounting where we need to make assumptions. And sometimes the assumptions don't go through as we expected, and that's why we need to do the adjustments. We are learning from the mistakes or the adjustments we make. And hopefully, we will not continue going forward. We are also improving our reporting standards as well as processes and to have us move financial reporting as possible. But of course, you understand that there are different views in terms of accounting or financial judgments between us, auditors, market performance and others. So without any big explanation, we are aiming to have equally smooth performance and reporting year-on-year. The first quarter adjustments are still connected with the same ones which were did in the last financial year. So they are not new ones. They are only continuing.

Thank you. And it looks like all questions have been answered. So on behalf of Akola and NASDAQ Vilnius, thank you, everyone. It was a pleasure being with you today. The recording of the presentation will be available on the Nasdaq Baltic YouTube channel. Thank you for a very informative conference. Have a great day.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Bye.