AB Akola Group (AKO1L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Akola Group Investor Conference for the 12 months of Financial Year 2024 and 2025 performance. I'm Simona from Nasdaq Vilnius, and I have the pleasure of moderating today's session. Thank you for taking time to join us today. I will provide you with comprehensive insight into Akola Group financial performance and recent activities. Before we begin, a few quick notes. This session is being recorded and will be made available on the Nasdaq Baltic YouTube channel shortly after we conclude. We encourage you to submit your questions using the Q&A function located at the bottom of your screen throughout the presentation. We'll address these during our dedicated Q&A session following the presentation. I'm delighted to introduce today's presenter, Mazvydas Sileika, Chief Financial Officer and member of the Board of the company, who will walk you through the company's performance and answer your questions. Without further delay, I'll turn the floor over to Mazvydas. Please, the floor is yours.

Good morning, dear investor community. It's my pleasure this morning to host you in Akola Group webinar, where I will go through the financial activities of full year -- full financial year '24, '25. As always, please keep in mind that this presentation can carry directly or indirectly express forward-looking statements, and these are only reflections assuming the current view of the industry and the company and it's only management's best judgment efforts. My name is Mazvydas. I am my CFO and Board member of Akola Group, and I will take you through the presentation today. I really encourage you to ask questions in the end of the presentation. I will start with the structure of the group, which hasn't changed a lot since last quarter. However, we have a few developments, and we are continuing the simplification of the group structure as it is. Now we have 59 subsidiaries. So we actually closed two companies during the quarter, and we also merged our recent acquisition, SIA Elagro Trade into SIA Linas Agro. That was one of the steps of integrating this company into the group structure and operating activities. After the reporting period, we further on simplified our structure and merged two companies, Šlaituva and Grybai LT. Grybai LT is the company we bought from AUGA Group into Kauno Grudai, meaning that the legal integration of this entity and the other one is done as well. So we will have a further simplification of structure coming forward. If we look to the highlights of the 12 months of Akola Group, which we presented yesterday is that our EBITDA increased, and we actually recorded the second best year in group's history, and EBITDA is standing at EUR 111 million compared to last year's EUR 73 million, and that's a 51% increase year-on-year. If we compare to our five-year average, it's much more because our five-year average is around EUR 65 million. So it's a really good result for the group. You have probably noticed that we were coming to that result during the year. and we even have issued a profit warning where we have upgraded our strategic forecast for the year '24, '25. When we look at our EBIT margin, it stands at 5%, which is 2% higher than last year. And we are also well above our strategic target, which is 3% as well. So looking at this year, it's really a good year in terms of profitability as well. You will see later on what are the main causes of that, but we have increased our EBIT margin for this year considerably. The other thing which I'm really happy, and it's always a challenge for the group when we employ so much working capital facilities and working capital. Working capital is a huge challenge for us is return on capital employed. This year, we delivered 11% ratio of capital employed versus almost 8% last year. That's a significant increase, and now we're very, very close to our target, and it's well above our five-year average, which is close to 9%. With these financial results, our earnings per share have more than doubled. We recorded EUR 0.38 per share of net profit, while last year, it was EUR 0.15, well above last year and good result for this financial year. On the closing period, price-to-earnings ratio stands at almost 4x. So that's for the end of June. Our five-year average is closer to 9 and last year, it was around 8. So we are quite above the five-year average or last year. When we look to our Akola Group balance sheet, it has, of course, increased during the year. It's now around EUR 1 billion. A major part of that is still current assets, meaning inventory which we trade. However, the biggest increase overall is in the property, plant and equipment because we were quite heavily investing in the last year, which increased our fixed asset base. Overall, we have a good borrowing base ratio, meaning that we are fully controlling our working capital cycle, and we have quite enough equity in the system. We see that it's 57%. Last year, it was 56%, still very reasonable number. We have fully secured our trading activities last year. We have enough liquidity to perform our operations for this year. And CapEx, which we have done during the last financial year is EUR 59 million. We will see later on what were the biggest projects, which we started or finished last year, but part of that as well as ongoing maintenance, which we need to do every year. Our total debt for the end of the year with leases is almost EUR 400 million. Out of that 42% is long-term debt. And of course, that has increased during the year because we have used quite a few long-term loans to finance our investments. Equity position, which we use in the company is EUR 370 million. It is higher year-on-year, but we still maintain a very nice capital ratio, which is 36%. And our debt for this year is fully under control where our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio is at 3.4x. Our strategic target is to have less than 4x. So after a successful year, our liquidity position and debt position is really under control. Let's look at our earnings profile. So this year, we have almost EUR 1.6 billion in sales and EUR 3.1 million turnover in various commodities. Our volume has increased year-on-year by 3%, while growth was seen in all key segments and the highest quantities came, of course, from Partners for Farmers segments. Mostly or notably improvements or increases are in fertilizers and other plant protection areas or inputs overall. Compound feed quantities have increased and soybean and soymeal trade quantities have increased. When we look at revenues, so revenue has increased by 5%. So basically, the growth in sales came partly from traded larger number of tonnage, but as well as a bit higher prices. However, the deflationary momentum in Partners for Farmers segment is still evident. The prices there are lower year-on-year. However, we have offset that -- those lower prices with higher prices in poultry and raw milk. The proportion of the sales coming from two main segments, Partners for Farmers and Food has actually stayed quite stable year-on-year, even though increased slightly, but it hasn't changed dramatically. So the earnings profile, I would say, this year is really positive going forward. While looking at the gross profit composition, gross profit for this year is EUR 196 million, and you can see in terms of gross profit, it's even better than in '21, '22. And the total share has shifted even more, I would say, practically well, looking from group diversification perspective, we have 44% coming from food and 47% coming from trading activities or as we call it, Partners for Farmers. Gross profit margin for full year, 12.4% versus 7.8% if we look to our five-year average. And main highlights is that despite lower market prices, the group has secured highly profitable transactions in grain and oilseed trading category. You will see later on, we have lower tonnage traded. However, we're emphasizing for the second year in a row profitability in this area. We showed improved profitability in all input positions because previous two years were quite depressed for inputs. This year, we have a positive trade. We get reported profitability deterioration within compound feed. We have huge price pressure there, raw materials and feed additive trades. If we look at Farming, gross profit nicely above five-year average, and that's driven mainly by raw milk sales. And if we look at Food segment of food production, our gross profit margin as well above our five-year average, and that's mainly driven by poultry segment. So overall, I would say that all the developments in gross profit area are really positive. Let's move then to our operating profit area, and we delivered EUR 80 million of operating profit and the share here or the diversification is even changing more than previous year because we have 50% coming from Food, 37% coming from trading activities of Partners for Farmers, and that's more than last year. So last year, we had a bit more equal proportion. This year, Food delivered even more than last year. If we look at our EBIT margin, so it's 5.1%, as I mentioned before, well above our strategic target of 3%. And we can say that overall, our EBIT of EUR 111 million is also above our strategic indicated target of EUR 70 million to EUR 90 million. We have revised this for the last financial year. However, currently, it stands unrevised. So please keep that in mind. It's still EUR 70 million to EUR 90 million. We will have developments here, but of course, we'll communicate to the market accordingly. So let's look more tentatively to Partners for Farmers segments. As you can see, we have grown in sales just slightly, very modest improvement in sales. Tonnage has increased a bit more, but you can see that actually the proportions have been driven by different segments this year, more coming from inputs, whilst feed and raw material trade is more or less stable and less from grains and oilseeds. Looking at the segment's profitability, overall, the segment delivered EUR 93 million of gross profit. That's EUR 11 million more than last year. If we look at different segments, we see that grain storage and logistics have lower quantities collected last year. That was evident during the whole year, the whole quarters. And we also have squeezed the profitability in our elevator network because we have less drying services, less quantities. So thus the gross profit is EUR 3 million lower. If we look at grains and oilseeds, so we traded less, as you can see here. However, the market was more favorable for us, and we have managed to improve our profitability, especially coming from rapeseed and maize, so not the main commodity of our wheat, but mainly due to other a bit more niche commodities which we trade. Raw feed material trade, so this is the yellow one. We have a lower result by EUR 2 million. We consider that to be more or less stable. However, that's the consequences of remaining trade restrictions, very strong competition, high purchase prices from Ukraine and notably global oversupply of soy, for example, that's one of the drivers. Our compound feed products maintain a high demand. We have increased our quantities sold. However, the price pressure in the market really is there. So we have a lower gross profit margin as well. Inputs, very same tendencies, very same background. We have higher quantities traded to almost 400,000 tonnes. However, we have lower prices. So in terms of euros, we have sold less and moderately improved profitability. So from 8.3% going to 10%, and that's EUR 9 million more in gross profit, but that mainly came from higher quantities we have managed to sell. Agricultural machinery improved market share in all countries and especially in harvesters. We have decreasing inventory levels, healthy product margins preserved, as you can see that we have 13.3% versus 12.8%, even though the market is very competitive. So more or less, you can see that agri machinery and services gross profit margin is more or less in the same level. Food production. This is a segment which delivered more in sales, and that's EUR 50 million more going from almost 400 million to 450 million in terms of quantity sold of tonnes sold, it's a very similar amount. So the main driver for this segment and for the whole group this year, which is, of course, the champion of this year is our poultry business, which delivered both higher quantities and higher profitability. So we went to EUR 69 million versus EUR 34 million. You can remember that we have very challenging four years in poultry business that were almost all the years were in negative figures. However, the tide has shifted in this business, at least for now. We have a strong demand for poultry. There are various reasons behind that. And we have maintained stable input prices. We have the mild winter, which helped us to maintain profitability. And this is, of course, the tendency and the market situation in the whole Europe for sure. Instant Foods, we have higher and further increase in scale. So we have higher quantities sold of instant foods. However, the profitability is squeezed. And you can see that last year, we had EUR 13 million. We went to EUR 9 million, and that's mainly due to our new capacities going live. We have a bit more time and cost to go-live with our new production factory. And also we have some issues with going with our margins and product portfolio. In ready-to-eat food sales increased with the majority of our products additions going to additional capacity or increases going to U.S., U.K. and Denmark. Flour, very stable result, EUR 4 million last year, EUR 4 million this year, lower scale to third-party sales, more went to our internal production. We have withdrawal of one of our key partners or key buyers in the Lithuania, but our profitability has been restored. In coating systems in April '25, we have started a new factory in Kedainiai that will give 12,000 tonnes of additional capacity in our coating system production. Overall, our profitability in this area was squeezed a bit as well due to extra cost we have to launch the new factory. Agricultural production. Sales are more or less flat. In terms of tonnes, we have a bit more. That's mainly driven by our crop segment. We have harvested more of last year's crop. However, crop production for '24, '25 closed poorly with continuously low price environment. The prices for main crops are lower by 10% to 15%. And that's, of course, a significant impact as well on the biological asset valuation. The prospects for '25, '26, we have sold 35% of our potential harvest. That's a lower ratio than last year or historically because the low price environment has been persistent. And it's a small or very small motivation to sell the harvest for such low prices. So we will see how the price environment will develop further. Milk production for this year is a completely different story than last year. We have more or less the same quantities, as you can see here, we have a slight increase. However, the milk purchase prices are around 25% higher than year-on-year. So that's what helped the segment to improve, and that's a really healthy earnings from milk production. So I would like to go through as well our main investment projects, which we have finished or they are ongoing this year. As mentioned before, we have EUR 59 million of CapEx for '24, '25. One of the bigger things we've done last year was the acquisition of Elagro Trade, which was around EUR 25.5 million. We did that in December, and we actually now went through the main phases of integrating this business into our processes. Other investment, which is still ongoing, it's our biomethane plant in Lukšiu farming company. We are expecting to go live with this project in the second quarter of 2026. This is around EUR 9 million of investment. So that started last year and is still ongoing this year. In the end of the financial year, we opened a new seed factory in Latvia. That's a EUR 10 million investment, and we have added additional 30,000 tonnes of certified seeds capacity into our portfolio. It's a very similar plant which we have in Dotnuva, Kedainiai district, which we are operating since 2003. So a very nice addition to partners for Farmers segment in terms of new capacity. Two biggest investments for in our food production segment is our new breadcrumbs factory in Kedainiai. That's almost a EUR 7 million investment. It started production in the second quarter of 2025. And of course, our additional capacity of Alytus instant-noodle factory, that's a EUR 32 million investment. We have launched it in November of 2024. So these are the main investments. And I would really like to go to the questions. If you have -- if you are not yet registered, please register to our news subscription center, and you will have all the latest news coming from us from then. Thank you very much, and I'm looking forward to your questions.

Thank you for your insightful presentation. Now indeed, we will move to our Q&A session. And the first question we received in advance and it is the following. How group sees earning potential on grain trade currently? What are trends of poultry business?

Grain market is very different this year. You probably noticed that due to those bad weather conditions or very humid weather conditions, the harvesting have shifted very late into the summer. So since the beginning of this week, we estimate that around 40% of the harvest is still in the fields. And this week is very important that farmers go and harvest that the weather conditions are suitable for them. So everything has shifted very late into the market or late into the first quarter. So it's still very hard to judge how it will look. However, we see that the tonnes or the yield the farmers are getting from the fields are good. That's what we expected because the potential of the crop was really good. However, the market prices are low, and that's persistent due to good harvest conditions or good crop prospects throughout all the world. And we will see what will be the pattern of farmers to sell the grains, will they keep them, how long and when the selling decisions will be made. When we talk about poultry, so far, the conditions are more or less the same. Summer is a seasonally good period for poultry because due to higher demand of products. Input prices, as you probably can imagine, one of the inputs are grain for the feed of broilers and grain prices are persistent low. So that's one of the factors, which more or less for now keep the conditions at the same level for poultry as well.

Thank you. One of participants want to know free cash flows and their allocation into growth for next year.

For next year, we haven't budgeted very significant investments. One of the investments which we now postponed was biogas plant in Kaišiadorys. We will see how it goes with that, and we will resume the project and communicate separately. So the investments on the table for now are more smaller or maintenance scale or some efficiency improvements. If we look to our net profit possible allocation, so we have a dividend strategy or dividend policy of 20% from the net profit. And you can probably calculate very easily what that would mean for the shareholders and the market and other would remain in the company for future projects if or otherwise decided by the Board or the shareholders.

Thank you. One of the analysts says, congrats on killer results. Could you please comment on the crop situation in the Baltic region?

So as I mentioned a bit before, the harvest is very late. It's quite humid. Potential was very, very good and majority of that potential is still valid. We see the yields are good. However, quality can be challenging depending on the effect of the humidity and the rain will take place on the crop or on the grain, but that is still to be seen. Very similar situation throughout the Baltics. Of course, Latvia and Estonia are naturally harvesting a bit later due to their geographical position more north. So it's very still hard to judge, but the potential from our perspective is still there.

Thank you. Akola enjoyed very successful and profitable grain and oilseeds trades in the fiscal year 2024, 2025, even by its own high standards. Could you please give us a hint what the secret sauce was?

I will maybe reframe a bit, and I would say that maybe the previous two years was underperforming or not delivering the potential we can do in grain trade. So I would say that we have now delivered more or less from the business what we have delivered historically, if you would compare. Of course, now the scale is bigger, so you cannot compare tête-à-tête. But previously, grain trade was one of the backyard horses of Akola Group where we were -- before maybe the acquisition of Kauno Grudai. It's one of the business where the group has started even. So I would say that now we are reaching our potential. And of course, one of the thing is that we have maybe different priorities. We acquired Elagro Trade in Latvia and that the market was more favorable for us this year. We had very successful trades, not in our main commodities like wheat and rapeseed, but we also had successful trades more in our niche commodities, which helped to improve our profitability overall. So that's very important as well.

Thank you. Could you please elaborate a bit more on the recent strategic expansion into the Polish market, feeds business synergies, efficiency, et cetera?

Yes, Feed business is looking for its strategic advantage with the trade from Ukraine. We are looking how we can operate in Poland or through Poland. And that's still to be seen because the market as it is now, we can see from our financial results as well that raw material feed trade, it's lower. The profitability is lower on that end. So we are searching for new competitive advantages, and one of that is to do more business in Poland, but that's still in the area of planning and looking what are the opportunities because it's a very, very competitive market. So we are not planning there at least now to acquire or to build some infrastructure or acquire companies. We're looking there how we can be more successful in other ways.

Thank you. Gross profit in poultry doubled to EUR 69 million on the same volumes in the fiscal year, boosted by strong demand, higher prices and favorable cost situation. Arguably, next fiscal year, we'll see certain normalization as Polish producers return to the market after limitations due to the spread of Avian disease earlier. Could you please give us some flavor on how much you expect gross profit in poultry to normalize this fiscal year?

We cannot provide you with forward-looking statements in this area. I would say that demand for poultry overall is quite strong because it is a sustainable and a good protein and the demand for poultry in Europe is growing by 2% to 3% every year. So that's also a big driver for improving sales or increasing sales. We also see that -- there are certain regulations coming in different countries like U.K. and Netherlands, and they are decreasing the density of broilers they can raise in 1 square meter. That's also limiting supply from the -- from those producers or those countries, they need to invest additionally to maintain the supply. So these are good macro trends which we see in the market. Of course, now we have a more extreme situation with the diseases, especially in Poland as well as in Italy and other countries in Europe, which limit the supply from those countries. It's very hard to judge because we are very early into the year. That's one of the reasons, how it will develop. The other thing is that we are really considering and looking what we can do from our side, meaning being efficient, having a good valuable sales portfolio, how we sell and where we sell to get an added value margin for our products. And we cannot say or we cannot foresee for the full year our main input prices, meaning feed prices, gas prices and similar. So we need to see how it settles because we had four years of prices or three to four years of prices. Now we have a good -- a very good situation, and we will see how it will develop going forward.

Thank you. Conversely, gross profit in instant foods and ready-to-eat products decreased by 31% to EUR 9.3 million last year, but by low efficiency of -- hurt by low efficiency of the new Alytus plant, inflation of input cost and price pressure from large-scale orders. Could you please help us understand if profitability recovery is on cards this fiscal year as some of previously experienced headwinds wins?

We are doing everything to keep or start running smoothly with our new investment. That took a bit more time than we expected. These are solvable things. It's only the matter of time, and these are the biggest pressures of the profitability for this segment because basically, we have higher costs than we planned or we expect. Portfolio of our sales is moving constantly. It's not fixed for a long period of time. So we do shift the portfolio according to the market situation and our main partners. So that's also basically manageable in our area, and we will do the best we can through the next year to bring this business back to where it was for the last two years.

Thank you. When do you expect the new Alytus factory to be operating at 100% capacity?

This is also a question of our sales portfolio. So I would not be able to tell you when we will be running at 100% because our business -- even our business plan, which we have when we invested into this factory has a gradual increase of our production capacity through the several years when we start. So that's not only the aim to run at 100%. It's the aim to run it profitably with profitable contracts and good contracts of sales.

Thank you. Given the strong outperformance last year, is the group planning to adjust its long-term EBITDA guidance of EUR 70 million to EUR 90 million upwards.

There are certain uncertainties in the market, which we are facing. And we have some of the investments still going live next year. As soon as we are confident of our strategic EBITDA target, we will review it. And we, of course, will announce it to Nasdaq for everyone to see, and we will be able to judge how it is looking.

Thanks. What is the quality of the harvest in Lithuania and Latvia, both LA and your customers separately?

The harvest, probably we talked quite a bit about the harvest. The quality is still being judged. We have quite a lot of crop in the field yet, but we assume that the harvest will be more or less average, historical average in Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia as well.

Thank you. Grain prices are currently at record lows. If prices start to rise in the autumn, is this trend positive, neutral or negative for LA results?

It really depends. It is, of course, positive for crop producers, meaning farming companies who haven't sold will be able to sell for higher prices. For our trading company, it really depends as well on the premiums we can get in the market who probably are following our group and our trading activities historically know that the most important thing for us is the margin, the premium we can get in the market. So that's a bit more difficult exercise than only rising prices. However, rising prices in the market usually give more positive sentiment to the margins of the premiums of the trader. However, it also depends on grain quality, different supply-demand different supply-demand buildup in the market and not necessarily always brings the results only positive from the price increase.

Thank you. We answered already nine questions and still 10 open questions left. Let's take them. To which year can this year's harvest be compared?